Best Diet Advice You Have Heard in Recent Memory

#1

I am being serious here. Below is the best diet advice I have heard in a while. What is yours?

Edited: I am not asking about the standard keto lines, eat meat lots of it, I mean real behavior or diet or health advice that is applicable across the ways of eating.

I recently watched a show on Amazon Prime about why diets don’t work (spoiler alert, eat plants! I know, that was not the good part) While I found most of the show pretty worthless, at one point the doctor being interviewed said, if you go off your diet/way of eating for a meal, go back on the next meal, don’t say, well I blew it I might as well keep bingeing BECAUSE, that would be like getting a flat tire on a highway and then slashing the other three because the car was not running anyway!

While not a perfect analogy, it has really helped me over the last month not eat at night when I am tempted to or after I have indulged in a dinner out the way I normally would

(Alec) #2

Dr Ken Berry: “Eat mostly fatty meat” or “Eat beef, butter, bacon and eggs”

(Richard M) #3

I think this came from Dr. Fung. “Keep your meals boring or most of them”. You don’t need a lot of ingredients. KISS. BBBE

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

Best advice I’ve encountered was Dr. Phinney’s lectures at LCDU events on how a keto diet works and how to stay on it.

#5

I don’t remember anything like that but what is best for me (after I introduced various diets to my body so it knows what it likes) is listening to my body and eat food it wants when it wants and as much as it wants, basically… :smiley: It’s not that simple but all is mostly well until parts of my mind start to interfere… I still don’t know what to do with that problem but it’s better now.

(KM) #6

I picked up a copy of Whole30 at a thrift store the other day. Some of what they have to say agrees with my philosophy and some of it doesn’t, I may be doing a 30-day challenge with myself but it won’t be this one. Still they had one nugget. “This is not hard. Getting cancer is hard. Getting your PhD is hard. Losing a loved one is hard. Drinking your coffee without cream is not hard.”

I have the kind of dogged personality that does not want to ever admit defeat or give in. This is a reminder that in the moment, these little choices or sacrifices we have to make are rarely all that difficult, they’re not soul crushing, they’re not insurmountable mountains. It can be easy to look far and wide and say oh I could never, I always, I must have, but truly, taken one second at a time, this is not hard.

#7

I disagree :smiley: It’s quite hard. (Well I can make it work somehow if I don’t have any cream in the house, I have egg milk with butter or milk but otherwise… Cream and coffee is a match made in heaven. I can’t even not drink coffee when I have cream, usually. And I am training myself not to drink coffee since some time. It doesn’t go well but having an opened box of cream makes it hopeless. Mmmm, coffee and cream… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:)

But the gust of the advice, yes, it’s useful and has a point.

What’s the problem with creamy coffees according to Whole30? I only read once about one of these whole+number things, it told me if I make a perfectly fine omelet and call it a pancake, it becomes a bad food, I said bye then and never was curious about it again… Maybe creamy coffees are desserts (they totally are to me) and that is the problem? They must be against that if they are against my nutritious perfect pancakes (that may or may not be desserts).

(KM) #8

As far as I’m concerned, it is not hard. It’s inconvenient, it’s disappointing, it’s tempting, it’s annoying. Looked at over a long period of time there may be difficult choices that seem like a tremendous struggle. Looked at one freaking cup of coffee at a time? This is not hard.

(Chuck) #9

The best advice I have gotten through my research is eat real food, no fast food, no highly processed carbs, no artificial sweeteners or anything that the label has unrecognizable ingredients in it. For me that is a moderately low carb diet with fasting to help me control when I eat and how much.
It really is about a balanced metabolism, which simply means the body is in balance hormone wise, activity wise, and the digestive system is happy. Oh I have add no wheat products at all for me.

(KM) #10

The program is basically a 30-day elimination diet using all whole foods. They include a lot of plant carbs I wouldn’t, but they don’t want you eating any dairy, not even butter. (And they have a hilarious statement in the beginning. Something like, x y and z are really bad for you, so we will be reintroducing them to your diet slowly at the end. Ummm … what?)

It’s not about coffee at all, I just liked that statement as a bit of a kick in the pants. Drinking a cup of coffee, this one cup in front of me, without cream, is not a tragedy worthy of my attention. :slightly_smiling_face:

To add, they do concede that a lifetime of changing your dietary habits is indeed difficult. But we know that. This is more like Paul’s / AA’s advice that you can have as much wine as you want. Tomorrow. Not having it right now? Not so hard. Not such a big deal. Not something you can’t handle. Not worth making a fuss

(KM) #11

Yes! Turning Michael Pollan on his head, eat real food, plenty of animals, to satiety.

(Bob M) #12

I’ve done Whole 30, and it is one version of an elimination diet. It still does allow some things (like hot sauce) that I find a bit questionable. But as an elimination diet, it’s pretty good.

It’s one of the ways I’ve figure out that I can’t tell I have any (or very few) issues with dairy. Eating dairy or not eating dairy, I can’t tell a difference.

#13

Exactly! This advice does not have to be about coffee or cream. It can instead be geared to Keto or IF, limiting your carbs to 20 a day or not eating after 7pm or whatever is part of your personal health journey is not hard but in the moment it seems really tempting.

#14

Yeah that totally couldn’t work for me at least until carnivore. If I wanted something, I ate it, I couldn’t even wait a whole hour! :smiley:
Now I can postpone things sometimes but when the time comes and I still like the idea (or just got used to it so I EXPECT the thing so it’s dangerous a bit), I definitely will want and eat it then.
But sometimes I can wait and I lose interest when the time comes, that’s nice. And it doesn’t work for fruits, for example (I tend to eat them as soon as the thought enters my mind, it don’t need any need, craving, not even desire… it’s there and nice so of course I eat it. it’s a small miracle I have so many carni days in winter and spring. but only then).

It works better for the wrong food, good luck to keep myself from eating pork when I have it and I am not totally satiated (but I easily can eat even then if I get the desire). Avoiding something that I really don’t want to eat when I think about it as it’s not good for me? It’s normal, I am trying to do it since about 13 years. It’s still not always easy but yep, I can wait some more time there as it’s normal.

Coffee without cream is plain impossible when I have cream. It’s how I function. We are all different and we obviously find other things hard. It’s very easy not to drink coffee at all if I haven’t access to it. Maybe I miss it here and there but no big deal. But if I have it? I drink it all the time and if I have cream or milk, I use that too. I don’t like black coffee so coffee triggers putting things into them, even in my supposed to be fasting window. I have no control over this.

I never would or could do stupid diets that would keep me from butter. Or anything I may fancy, actually but I can work with that to some extent, determination helps short term. Long term too but I need some very serious reason to avoid something. I have that with some items, I can’t do 100% especially when I forget to read the labels but I can get super close.

Changing our woe at least semi-permanently is way easier to me than saying “tomorrow” or rather “next month” so I get some breather and possibly results. I NEEDED to cut out sugar for good and know it’s in the past and never will come back and the same with very many things. It was liberating… Just skipping it for some days isn’t, it would have been uncomfortable. I do that to good, beloved things of mine only like dairy. I may skip them for 1-2 days but I wouldn’t even try to give them up for a whole week or something, it wouldn’t work anyway. I wouldn’t do one week without milk without some very good reason! :smiley: And I lived years without any, actually decades with almost none. But it would be a bad deal to give it up now.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #15

Fasting will not kill you. Keep Calm and Fast On I think it was Brenda Zorn who told me that one.

Eating low carb/keto is great but fasting got me to goal weight and when I get our of my set range now, I just do some fasting protocols till I am back where I belong.still there after over 6 yrs. now.

(Geoffrey) #16

A couple of things actually.
Eat when you are hungry and then eat until you are satiated.
Learn to listen to your body, it will tell you what it needs.
If the food you’re fixing to eat requires more than just salt and butter on it to make it palatable then maybe you don’t need it.

And lastly mine….Light the fire. Burn the beast and be happy.

(Robin) #17

(ahem)

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #18

The best advice is don’t diet … as we all know, they don’t work. When regular people eat fries and rice and grain and processed food they don’t call it a diet so when we eat No/Low carb that also is not a diet. It’s life. ‘Just not as we know it Jim’.

(B Creighton) #19

My best advice, and one I’ve heard is not to “diet.” I always eat to at least satiety, and enjoy my food. I have never counted the calories of a meal I have eaten in my entire life. I have taken to doing keto and intermittent fasting in mid-fall. Right now I am low carb. Food has always been an enjoyable part of my life, and I am not going to adopt some way of eating I do not like. I want to eat in a way I will enjoy, and will optimize my health for the remainder of my life.

I try to eat at least a 1/2 pound of some kind of animal meat once per day - this is in the evening - in a meal with veggies, kale salad, etc. I have been eating a 3 course breakfast starting with a raw whole milk goat yogurt I make to which I add things like berries, cherries, etc. After that I have a red grapefruit unless I am doing keto. And then if doing keto I generally have eggs, etc. The rest of the year I have PB, raisin, and banana sandwich with organic ingredients. This is enough fat and sugar to get me through the day. So, I eat two meals per day, and sometimes have about a cup of a nut mix I make for lunch or a snack in the middle of the day. I was hanging above 175 lbs, until I finally gave up refined carb desserts. Instead, I have been trying to eat whole fruit for dessert. Right now peaches are in season, so I have been eating about two of them for dessert. When there is not a local fruit in season, I can always find grapes, mangoes, etc.

So, my Renpho scale says that I was still hovering just above 20% body fat, but since I have been concentrating on whole fruit for dessert, I have lost an additional 5 pounds, and am now at 18% body fat - my goal is 11% body fat. I am at 170.2 pounds as of yesterday morning - my lowest in 2 decades. So, I need to start building more muscle…

(Geoffrey) #20

I know, I know. :roll_eyes::grin: