My recent trip to sin city did me well. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been a calorie counting machine. I love entering my exercise into Lose It! and watching my net calories for the day drop. It’s so liberating! If I exercise every day, I can basically eat whatever I want and still lose weight. Working hard and exercising hard are definitely starting to pay off. I’m eating the right amount of calories to drop my 1 pound per week and I don’t feel deprived at all.  I’ve been struck with another bout of writer’s block, however. I’ve got posts in my head, but every single sentence that I type comes out sounding horrible and takes way too long to write. So I’ve scoured the internet and found a few news articles that you may find interesting:
Study Zeroes In on Calories, Not Diet, for Loss: A New study reveals that it doesn’t matter what diet you are on. Low carb, low fat, high protein–they all work. The key to losing weight is counting calories. Take in less than you burn and you’ll lose weight. It doesn’t matter where those calories come from.
Great Workout, Forget the View : There are lots of ways to get a good workout without joining the gym. Try running up the stairwell of the Empire State Building.
Fitness Isn?t an Overnight Sensation :Getting fit doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, for most people, it takes between 6 months and 1 year of dedication to a fitness regiment. Give up before that and you’re likely to lose whatever gains you’ve made. Make it past a year and you’re likely to have changed your life forever.
Trim chefs share their fitness secrets: It’s tough to be a fit chef. Long hours, tasting food all day, and food apathy make it very easy to be fat. Several popular chefs in Los Angeles share how they have lost weight while others dole out their secrets to staying in shape.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
So I was very excited about the first article – the one that says your diet doesn’t matter. And then I started reading comments by people who actually read the study (I, of course, just read the newspaper article – bad idea!) and they made the point that while the goal consumption of protein, fat and carbs of each diet were (sort of) different, in reality the diets ended up being very similar. Here is a breakdown:
Goals: Cal/Prot/Fat %
low fat/av prot: 65/15/20
low fat/high prot 55/25/20
low carb/av prot 45/15/40
low carb/high prot 35/25/40
2-year actual cal/prot/fat %
low fat/av prot: 53/20/27
low fat/high prot: 51/21/28
low carb/av prot: 49/20/33
low carb/high prot: 43/21/35
So it turns out that in what people actually ate, there was very little difference, thus making the study more inconclusive – at least for me.
Plus, other commenters noted that the participants only retained an average loss of 9 pounds over two years – which they said was not very inspiring for those trying to lose wait. Many said, “would it be worth the effort?”
I just wanted to make sure that all sides were represented! I’m still fairly staunch in my belief of moderation, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie and just plain old staying away from junk food.
I agree with Liz above. If you want to lose weight, eat less, eat healthier food, and exercise. If you eat crap (and we all do, from time to time), just try to eat less of it. I think this will work for everyone. It worked for me!
- Dave
Spot on! The math behind weight loss is quite simple. It’s the psychology that is so hard…
Moderation is definitely key. I;m not perfect as I do eat fatty foods sometimes but it’s always in moderation