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Healthy eating
I can't believe that I'm having to tell my own mother that diets which advise you to exclude a major food group are not healthy! Your body needs that stuff plus it won't actually help control your weight in the long term because as soon as you stop the faddy diet your body thinks "Ah, carbs! These are obviously subject to supply shortages so I'll lay down a big stock for the next drought" and you put it all back on plus a little bit extra. But even if that wasn't true, its still a BAD IDEA (tm). See, I did learn something in Food Technology classes.
This stems from a phone call we had the other day where she mentioned that a friend of hers at school had lost 10lb in a week on the Atkins diet, which is too fast to be healthy anyway in my opinion, and that she was thinking of trying it out and wondering if I wanted to join her. My theory of dieting is that there's no point in (and no chance I'll stick to) a diet which forces you to cut out a lot of things you normally eat for the duration of the diet because as soon as you decide "Right, I've lost enough weight" and stop dieting you start to put it all back on. The trick seems to me to be to find a diet which helps you change your daily eating habits to ones which don't cause you to put on weight. I'm working on it :)
The other problem is, of course, that my Mum actually worries more about my weight than I do. This is partly because she's very sensitive about her own weight. She was once very skinny but then put on a lot when she came to live in Norfolk. She's not obese - she's only 2 sizes bigger than I am - but it bothers her a lot and she's always trying some diet, mostly weight watchers, with varying degrees of success. So she's always encouraging me to diet hoping that I won't get to the point she's at now. I'd like to lose a bit of weight, but in the end, it doesn't bother me that much. I don't think I look that bad, personally, I just want to be able to wear a few really lovely dresses I still have but can no longer fit into, and I wouldn't mind a shapelier figure (hence the gym work - toning up). I've never been very good at self denial though and I'm not unhappy enough about it that it's a big issue in my life (although for something which is not a big issue, I sure have plenty to say about it :) ). So every now and then we have one of those dispiriting conversations where I'm left with the feeling that while I'm OK with where I am now, maybe I should be more aspirational. Or something. I don't know. In the end, I always end up concluding that my method seems to leave me happier than Mum is so I leave it at that.
This stems from a phone call we had the other day where she mentioned that a friend of hers at school had lost 10lb in a week on the Atkins diet, which is too fast to be healthy anyway in my opinion, and that she was thinking of trying it out and wondering if I wanted to join her. My theory of dieting is that there's no point in (and no chance I'll stick to) a diet which forces you to cut out a lot of things you normally eat for the duration of the diet because as soon as you decide "Right, I've lost enough weight" and stop dieting you start to put it all back on. The trick seems to me to be to find a diet which helps you change your daily eating habits to ones which don't cause you to put on weight. I'm working on it :)
The other problem is, of course, that my Mum actually worries more about my weight than I do. This is partly because she's very sensitive about her own weight. She was once very skinny but then put on a lot when she came to live in Norfolk. She's not obese - she's only 2 sizes bigger than I am - but it bothers her a lot and she's always trying some diet, mostly weight watchers, with varying degrees of success. So she's always encouraging me to diet hoping that I won't get to the point she's at now. I'd like to lose a bit of weight, but in the end, it doesn't bother me that much. I don't think I look that bad, personally, I just want to be able to wear a few really lovely dresses I still have but can no longer fit into, and I wouldn't mind a shapelier figure (hence the gym work - toning up). I've never been very good at self denial though and I'm not unhappy enough about it that it's a big issue in my life (although for something which is not a big issue, I sure have plenty to say about it :) ). So every now and then we have one of those dispiriting conversations where I'm left with the feeling that while I'm OK with where I am now, maybe I should be more aspirational. Or something. I don't know. In the end, I always end up concluding that my method seems to leave me happier than Mum is so I leave it at that.
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Anyone want to try something like tennis, badmington? Could be fun...?
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I think most women worry way too darned much about their weight.
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See:
http://atkins.com/Archive/2001/12/15-616901.html
For more info.
(And no, I'm not an Atkins booster -- I believe in the importance of eating a wide variety of foods. I just happen to know some people who follow Atkins, so I hear about it.)
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It's not a diet I'd risk, since rice and pasta are important (though admittedly incomplete) sources of protein, but upping the ratio of fresh fruit and veg to "normal" food is generally a good idea, even for people not actively seeking to lose weight.
A lot of these "special" diets claim to make it easy to lose weight, eradicating the need for scales, or difficult adding-up, or that sort of thing. In my experience, unless I'm actually committed to it, not even an easy diet will work, so it's best just to go with the sensible menu-planning and calorie-counting scheme when necessary.