How long should a diet be applied to understand if it helps to lose weight or not?
a) A week
b) A month
c) 3 months
How to decide if a diet is causing weight loss? managing weight maintenance?
How frequently should one weigh herself/himself with a balance to understand what is going on with a new diet.
Below is an imaginary overweight person about 35 years old woman drawed by a computer program, her imaginary name is Guwaksak. What should be the strategy for such a woman to lose weight? Guwaksak does not have any health problem, her blood pressure, heart, lung, or any system is healthy.
She experiences constipation over some weight losing diets. She does not have any gastritis, but if she decreases the amount of foods too much she will have some gastric problems, her stomach feels better when full. She does not like to calculate food calories or exercise calories. She does not want to memorize or read a monthly diet menu. She wants a simple healthy menu that she could apply for at least 3 months. She does not like to go to exercise saloons, but likes to walk everyday at least 45 minutes. She is not very rich.
(Overweight woman)
PHOTO B. Her ideal weight
The questions are: Which weight losing diet duration is better to reach PHOTO B. What goals could be realistic for her to follow?
Yes, the body in PHOTO A can healthily turn into PHOTO B without any surgery
losing 2kg each month and walking 45 minutes/day regularly over 1 or 2 years. (Guwaksak leads rather a normal life, Guwaksak is not a world champion sportswoman at all who could burn 6000 calories a day).
The PHOTO A body may turn into PHOTO B in very short time by excess exercise and too low calorie diets; but from the point of health,
losing only 2kg a month is most appropriate for PHOTO A.
Since Guwaksak needs to lose at least 30 kg, she needs to diet at least 15 months.
Lets say Guwaksak applied the diet here and lost only 15 kg a year, what should Guwaksak do? An important diet strategy question.
Even if she manages to lose only 12 kg a year applying the diet here, she(Guwaksak) is still very succeed in dieting. A healthy diet that manages to lose 12 kg a year is good.
That it will take Guwaksak to lose 30kg more than two years is not any failure but rather healthy slow weight losing. Such slow weight losing will also teach Guwaksak to maintain her weight better.
Too low calorie diets are not life-time repeatable, whereas the diet here is a gold menu for anytime to repeat without any harm.
Guwaksak after such a diet will learn her body reaction to this diet. Guwaksak will learn the best durations to apply this diet, whether months or years. But, she will never be a failure in maintaining weight.
Lets say she dropped 30 kg over 2 years, but on a vacation she could not find fat-free food, changed her menu and gained 4kg in only a 1 month vacation when away from her kitchen, since she is excelled in this diet, she will need only two months to have PHOTO B. body again. Only weekly weight measurement will be enough for her. If she gained 6 kg a week (Though Guwaksak even never gains weight that fast), she again starts the diet here .
Specially female bodies, regardless of the diet, may hold water by physiological changes in hormones, thus daily weight measurement will be meaningful only to those who measures body hormones, Guwaksak never interested in to know if her hormones holding water some days, thus for her, the daily weight measurement is not the best method; but weekly, monthly or yearly measurements are meaningful.
Guwaksak is a lazy person to search exact calories for each food, for each exercise, She likes this diet here because all she need to learn is leaving out any fat/oil from her diet, to manage to cook meat/fish to melt away excess fat, and eat cooked vegetables anytime she feel hungry. The strategy is to increase the duration of a healthy low-calorie-diet, rather than restricting the calories too much.
When Guwaksak started her almost fat-free, high protein, high vegetable healthy weight-losing diet here, since Guwaksak was overweight by at least 30 kgs, her 5 kg weight lost over 3 months was not noticed by her close people at all. But, she did not hurry to drop pounds. Only after 6 months her weight loss has been noticed even in her dresses.
That Guwaksak sometimes gained 4kg is not meaning that she will be obese again. It is OK that Guwaksak sometimes gained 4kg (not more). Humans are not machines, such weight gain is normal to tolerate, such small weight gain does not mean at all that Guwaksak will be obese again. Accepting such a tolerated limited weight is an important key to successful weight maintenance. Even if Guwaksak gains 4kg month, she did not failed in maintaining her weight. But, she is not allowed to gain 5kg a month, for her body gaining more than 4 kg a month is considered a failure in her diet.
This diet is here arranged so that it will be repeated safely anytime at least for months, whereas too-low-calorie diets can not be applied repeatedly. Learning the reaction of body to unhealthy too-low-calorie-diets has no meaning to educate an obese person. Whereas a repeatable healthy diet will insure a person, will educate a person to lose any excess 4 kg or more weight anytime. Guwaksak will never forget what she experienced over 6 months with this diet, this is her diet experience/education. Guwaksak after losing 30 kg; many times noticed that she gained 3 or 4 kg a month. Since she was experienced in this simple diet here , always succeed to apply it to drop back to her ideal weight each time after balance showed her excess weight.
I investigated hundreds of living overweight people who used fast weight losing diets, most of them dropped maybe pounds immediately in months/weeks, but failed to maintain a healthy weight for a life time.
Meanwhile, overweight is not someone who is heavier than photoshopped models, but who has pounds to worsen her/his health, or fitness.
Guwaksak is not supposed to compare herself to a woman who dances 8 hours a day as a work.
She hardly has anytime to exercise.
..
This blog emphasises that the most important thing in successful diet is not to manage to drop pound fast, but learning a good diet habit so that any time the balance would show 4 kg excess, slow weight weight-losing diet starts again.
The eating disorders bulimia-and-anorexia somehow resulted from again the lack of some simple basic education; not knowing the OK weight gain limits, such as 4kg allowance. Some of people are somehow are inadequately inputted computer-robots, their flowchart misses required
knowledge-input, and they fails to do arrange their eating healthily. Think that an engineer is creating a software program for an automatic robotic car to fill its oil itself timely for efficient go, but the software program missing some number inputs for the robot.
On which day to start to weight losing diet, or weight maintaining diet, they do not know. This question is explained in this blog.
The missing information will be available to them by education from correct resources. Some girls even ban themselves from any food upon even gaining only 2 kg by physiological hormone changes. They are afraid too much to look as PHOTO A again. They are afraid too much that they gained 2kgs, they lost any control over their bodies. They are not educated to know allowed changes in body weight or shape.
I am the first who is clearly suggesting that allowing 4kg weight gain a month rather helps to maintain healthy ideal weight. For a bigger woman who sports heavily, the allowed weight gain a month is even 5 kg.
Each year putting on 4kg again, and losing again is not meaning that the person will be obese again.
Too unrealistic plans only will cause losing the control over a working diet.
Such a diet strategy will work at very late ages, such as 60 or more.
Being overweight when young many times means this person is experienced in diets, and easily will maintain her weight when old. Many normal weighted people are not experienced in dieting, and at late ages their weight always is higher(10 kg or more) than then their young ages.
An anecdote from my birth city:
Obese Temel asks for a remedy for his obesity; when given a Diet List, he could not believe that he is supposed to leave out table-sugar, flour, any butter/fat/oil, bread from his meals, then asks if the things in the Diet List is eaten after of before meals. Many people do not like learning dieting.
Although my diet is explained clearly as a summary, when it comes to application of the diet on any wishing person, some sort of education level might be needed. Maybe in secondary school there should be a monthly one hour lesson teaching that 'water has zero calorie', but alcohol, though looks similar, has very high calorie.
High calorie intake means getting obese. Even Some market food label reading should be taught in schools. Such a lesson could be selective for those wanting it.
I met people who did not drink water to lose weight, or did not understand that eating
table-sugar in cookies is also consuming it. Consuming a food as mixture of sugar and fat is again consuming sugar and fat. Drinking table-sugar is again consuming it. I am not blaming anyone for not knowing such facts, but some knowledge in recognizing foods will be helpful. Some people even does not know what does plant, vegetable or fat means, or what classified as fat.
Such knowledge is Food Ingredients Language.
Sure one hour per month will not teach all scientific details, but telling a menu requires usage of a language, recognition of some food groups.
Such education is not equal getting lean; but, such food recognition knowledge is permissive to learn diet menus.
Sure rich people does not require any knowledge to apply any diet, but millions of people in US or in many somehow developed countries are fat and not rich.
Remedies are endless if even moderately rich.
A fat-free internet market/store could be open which bans table-sugar products, any fat/oil or products with fat indeed correctly (Some misleading products are mislabeled as fat/sugar free). Then the dieting person would hire a Cook who knows to melt away the fat from some fishes/meat if further needed, and knows to recognise fat-free product-stores to buy ingredients. Another hired diet program responsible person would tell, e-mail, the Cook daily menu for this dieting person with such a weight. The diet-programmer is required to calculate exact calories for exercises, for any food, not the Cooker, but an educated person in diet programs.
If not all, some cooks should be educated in fat-free cooking during their certification by some short courses. Sometimes a cook knows to cook fat-free foods, but since he/she is not taught to know that they are fat-free, says that he/she does not know fat-free cooking. Or, some will still use some different fat, but will not unerstand it is fat, and incorrectly describe some foods fat-free.
My mother was an already good cook, after cooking my fat-free meals for years, she is a very good fat-free cooking Cook. Only a high school or secondary school educated good Cook will easily learn fat-free cooking. My mother recognizes fat/oil versions, table-sugar foods, does not use them for my meals, she also cooks vegetables tasty without any fat/oil. Now, at 72 still cooks for me once a month.
Maybe on TV, on internet videos such language will be taught. The ultra level of such language is the subject of Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Medicine etc. and is not asked from the dieting or cooking person.
There are millions of people who are obese in US, in world, 60% of these people in US could afford to pay fat-free high protein, high vegetable diet if some organizations would make a good connections between people. The organization would ask commitment to buy fat-free products for at least 2 years. Then the dieting person would sign a deal with the
fat-free store, with the cook and with the diet/meal calculating person to decrease prices.
Almost 80% of obese people are obese, because they eat wrong; not because they have bad genes, or they like eating anomalously too much.
Many man world champions eat incredible amounts of foods, then burn it by exercise, they do not have bad genes since they can eat that much.
In this portray, I am all (I wish I were richer to afford to hire a Cook). I am the fat-free cooking person, I am the ultra-knowledged ultra-educated degreed diet Creator, I am the calorie calculator; but my advantage is that my educational field more appropriate for such fields. for example the field of musician requires different education, for a musician learning such calorie things, cooking is more difficult.
