OK not every, you can diss the rest below.
Paleo
The return to monke diet. This is one of the most popular. The entire rationale behind it is just wrong and silly although the diet itself is accidentally not absolute trash. The main idea is that you should eat more like paleolithic humans because our body never evolved to eat the stuff that became available with farming, such as dairy, legumes, grains, processed oils, etc. This can have some advantages over the diets of the average person who eats trash, mostly because it avoids some really garbage processed foods and sugars etc. However there are several things wrong with it. First of all the whole "its what the cavemen ate so it's better" is basically a refined form of naturalistic fallacy and it's not supported by any scientific data. But even if it was true that it's best to eat like our ancestors did, it would still wouldn't say much at all because there was incredible variation in what paleolithic humans used to eat, according to location. Additionally, modern research shows that they did eat grain and wild legumes etc earlier than previously thought. Also, obviously humans evolved to adapt to changing diets pretty fast, which is how so many of us have lactose tolerance. So the thesis is just wrong on every level. But nonsense rationale aside, how good is it? I for one have no idea why you would want to specifically exclude legumes from your diet. I can maybe understand the rest (although if you're not vegan and don't have lactose intolerance excluding dairy altogether is not very smart either) but why the fuck would you exclude fucking legumes? There is no good reason. Legumes are major components of diets which have demonstrated to have health benefits, like the Mediterranean diet. Legumes are a good way to get protein and other important stuff without having to eat meat all the time. Legumes don't destroy the environment either, at least compared to other stuff we eat. Legumes are good. Eat legumes. It's 2021 ffs. You're following a restrictive diet already, at least have your restrictions be reasonable instead of nonsense. So it's mostly a grift but at least not a terrible one.
Carnivore diet
Similar rationale to paleo, but more wrong plus more fragile masculinity, and actually very bad for you unlike paleo. Basically everyone who follows this because they read about it on the Internet or whatever and not out of necessity or tradition is not to be reasoned with and should be rounded up and either put into a zoo or released into the wild, far from human society.
Carnivore diet sickos who eat rotten meat
Same with vanilla carnivore diet except its practicioners should be shot on sight before they bite someone and give them some fucked up disease that was thought to be extinct.
Keto/zero carb diets
Restricting carbs can be good for weight loss sometimes, again mostly because the average person in the west gets their carba from the shittiest sources possible. The "I must avoid all carbs at all costs" psychosis is weird and funny and just not very good, especially when it leads to people skipping on stuff that's actually important for them jsur because they have some carbs. The funniest thing is when gym bros obsess about carbs. Anyone who knows athletes knows that they eat truckloads of carbs. Gymbros avoiding carbs at all costs are hurting themselves and their muscle growth because carbs act to preserve tissue protein because your body uses them for energy isntead of the protein. If you don't eat enough carbs you strain your muscle protein levels as well as your kidneys, because they have to excrete the nasty byproducts of protein breakdown. There are diets which are low in carbs but not so criminally low that they have adverse effects like that, however they haven't been demonstrated to have particularly beneficial effects either. Still, it may be a good idea for weight loss, mostly because it is more straightforward to follow it practically for some time. Not so much for the long term. Again, mostly a grift.
Fasting diets
Another one of the "why the fuck are you doing this when you can just not do it" sort. Just eat ffs. A good diet is one you can comfortably follow for the rest of your life. No one but the bad kind of sickos can stick to eating every second or third day or whatever for the rest of their lives, and you'll probably completely mess up your body in the process of the diet anyways. Stop torturing yourself, jeez.
Breatharianism/sun diet/Inedia/prana
OK this one is by far the dumbest. Yes, even worse than the rotten meat one. Breatharianism is kinda like intermittent fasting etc, except you also fast the rest of the days too. Yeah. "But if I do that I'll just starve and die" you say. Correct. That's exactly the problem. And yes, people have done that and they died. Why? I don't know. They believe they can survive by "feeding" on sun's energy and the air like a fucking lettuce. Newsflash, people aren't lettuce. I don't know why this is lost on some people. Apparently a lot of grifters in places such as India and weird American hippies pretend to have been living like that for years, but obvious bullshit is obvious. I rember reading a dumbass times of India article which said some stuff along the lines of "well, a pure sunlight diet is bad for you and you will probably die, but it's good to combine a normal healthy diet with the sunlight diet and find a healthy mean, because sun is good for vitamin D etc". Yeah, that's not combining prana with a normal diet, it's just a normal fucking diet but also maybe get out every now and then.
Bottom line, here's my epic health tips for the day: eat something every now and then because otherwise you will starve and die, that something should be something other than rotten meat, touching a bread crumb won't kill your gains and don't be the bad kind of sicko.
My favorite is the raw food diet, often related to the paleo diet.
Someone just sat around thinking "what about before we invented fire? Back when evolution was happening" and turned that half-ass shower thought into an actual real life diet.
We didn't invent fire making or cooking, not even close. Cooking invented us. Cooking was invented by a bunch of hairy monkey looking mother fuckers, and it created our species. We have literally never not cooked.
"I'm strictly limiting my protein intake to the receptors collected from the surface of phospholipid bilayers, just like my ancestors ate"
Intermittent fasting is basically my natural diet, but only because I forget to eat until my body tells me I need to.
Basically yeah lmao. I'm the same way, lunch sometimes too. A lot of times when I eat I just get so tired, unless it's something like a small salad, I just end up waiting till like 6 or so for a nice sized meal and then relaxing.
Still fuckin fat somehow though.
The all meat diet made :jordan-eboy-peterson: so powerful that a glass of apple cider nearly killed him.
Hi! Quick question here! :mao-wave:
To confirm, you're saying that people aren't plants who can just absorb the sun's energy??
for keto or low carb diets, every time I hear someone say "Yea, low carb diets really work, I've been doing for 2 months and lost x pounds and feel so much better"
I just think, ok, so what you're telling me is that you cut out pizza, cake, cookies, doughnuts, pie, ice cream, sugary Starbucks drinks, candy, beer, fries, soda etc and then you lost weight and felt better?
Yea no shit, that's cause all of that food junk that's super high in calories and super low in nutritional value. Obviously if you cut down on that and replace it with eggs, meats, beans, vegetables, water, you will feel better.
That doesn't mean that having a banana in the morning or a bowl of rice at dinner is going to make you fat tho. People in Japan/China/Korea are eating rice everyday and they are skinny and live to be like 95 years old.
I just think, ok, so what you’re telling me is that you cut out pizza, cake, cookies, doughnuts, pie, ice cream, sugary Starbucks drinks, candy, beer, fries, soda etc and then you lost weight and felt better?
Yeah you pretty much hit the nail on the head. People see results mostly because the carbs they eat are shit and from addictive and very calorically rich foods that make you eat more and more. The diet could be "stop eating any added sugar at all" and it would probably have a similar result for many people.
forreal, I lost weight merely by giving up soda.
For most people tho, I think keto is so extreme that it becomes too difficult to maintain. Most people want to have a beer every now and again, and want to eat pizza with their friends on friday night.
The thing is, you can still lose wight even while eating some of that stuff, as long as you keep it under a certain level. People asked me how I lost 20 lbs over a single semester and I tell them to calorie count. You can eat what you want, but you just cant always eat as much of it as you want, or as frequently as you want.
Why aren't I losing weight, doc? I'm eating fried cheese four times a day like the internet says.
Paleo is so fucking stupid
how tf these folk think modern crops were developed? do they have an inkling of how diverse a diet gets when all the meat has to be laboriously caught/hunted?
its just an excuse for assholes to maximise their meat consumption while imagining a fucking caveman couldda slaughtered 8 aurochs a year for that shit
In the anthro present (the 20th century before the 70s), yeah, but when there were megafauna that percentage was probably much higher. You've got to say which era you're taking about.
To be fair many paleo people aren't just eating truckloads of meat. There is those who eat a fairly balanced diet and simply exclude grains, legumes and dairy, which isn't terrible but it's just kinda weird because there isn't a very good reason for a blanket ban on these things. Then there's the weirdos who think eating meat every day 2 times a day makes them an alpha male. Regardless, the idea behind it is wrong so...
eat something every now and then because otherwise you will starve and die,
I’m skeptical of this claim
The necessity of eating is a tankie lie created to discredit western embargoes.
I've made a lot of posts here but also obligatory link to Citations Needed 139: "Of Meat and Men: How Beef Became Synonymous With Settler Colonial Domination"
Extremely pertinent to the subject of all-meat diet freaks.
Idk I like fasting a day or two every week when I'm feeling up to it. It legitimately feels nice to me.
But yeah I just mostly focus on calories and trying to balance out the trash
Not to mention intermittent fasting, which isn't particularly harmful and has been shown to have some benefits
Intermittent fasting has not been shown to have any kind of serious benefits other than maybe some weight loss, which is better achieved by a more modest calorie restricted diet which you can actually permanently maintain easier, will make you less tired, is definitely more studied in terms of health effects and you run a lesser risk of developing an eating disorder.
I think it's not a great idea to stake your argument on "easier" as that's pretty individual.
Like if you tell me there's health complications that could arise from the intermittent fasting (directly, not "you will overeat more") I'll hand you that, but me and many people I know find it way easier to just not eat for a large part of the day and then have big portions (of healthy food).
I think it’s not a great idea to stake your argument on “easier” as that’s pretty individual.
Well yeah that's a fair point, although there are things that are easier for most people. Intermittent fasting diets have pretty high drop out rates in various studies that have been conducted on them.
Like if you tell me there’s health complications that could arise from the intermittent fasting (directly, not “you will overeat more”)
Directly I can't say because there really haven't been good long term studies on that. It's just one of those things that people don't usually enjoy very much and they actually don't have to do it to get what they want. Like if you enjoy it it's probably not bad in general although I don't know how it affects fitness goals.
yeah intermittent fasting is very doable in my experience. not any worse than eating smaller portions, but probably easier to control.
They're usually just like 16-18 hours anyways, so I get something in there
My diet consists entirely of liberal tears and conservative rage. Oh and vodka.
Newsflash, people aren’t lettuce
As a (n absentee) mod of this community, I'm gonna need a source for this one
Okay, how should you be dieting? I suck at this shit and have just flip-flopped from eating disorder to eating disorder for my entire life.
Calorie counting and limiting sugar intake especially. If you're in the US just maintaining a small amount of sugar intake will be challenge within itself unless you're already or prepared to start meal prepping a majority of what you eat
I'm Canadian, so same thing. I already do meal prep almost everything I eat. The main issue is that I binge eat a shocking amount every time I do eat.
Yeah that's a tough one tbh, I'd recommend when you do feel binging you just gotta force yourself to eat healthy as possible. I had a lot of success with baby carrots, broccoli, edamame, apples, or just salad with an stuff like olive oil or a vinaigrette.
It takes awhile to get both into that habit and maintaining it. Not saying this about you, but the other part was accepting I have an eating disorder and a damn near toxic relationship with food and finding support in other avenues than just diet. I made small goals and mostly stuck to them. It's hard in a lot of ways, especially when you're going through other shit and regular stress. The key with this and quitting anything is it's always one day at a time, if you fuck up one day and binge bad it's not the end of everything, it's best to make yourself work out a bit more the next day because of that but like you also can't beat yourself up over it. It's not the end of anything and most people have that issue when dramatically changing diets
I want to add that, in my experience having lost 15kg recently, that calorie counting doesn't need to last forever. I think the diet needs to be easy and sustainable or you start cutting corners, stop counting, get discouraged, and fuck off. If you take a month to count calories, I think you'll make every conclusion you need to on your own. I like a month because you might eat extra clean under fear of scrutiny for a week or two. More than that and you begin to see what your normal habits are like and those are the decisions, strategies, and indulgences one ought to critique when the desire is a more restricted diet.
After that month, take some time to think of what you want to do differently and ways to effect that change. An example might be, "I get so hungry in the afternoon and reach for something greasy. If I meal prep a 3pm snack, I might avoid that habit. I'm going to keep half a baked potato and a cheese stick around." Something like that. You can stick 3 potatoes in the oven, cut them in half, and keep them in Tupperware for $2 and 3 minutes of effort.
Edit: also, I went into a lab and got my BMR tested and I found that even with a history of athletics and lifting that an online TDEE calculator is basically correct
That's a great point, planning ahead is a big step in better controlling both how much and what you consume.
Definitely everybody is different too, like if you're at a certain higher weight it's very likely you do need to eat more than what a lot of people recommend, but setting the goal over time to keep reducing it at a safe and comfortable rate can help immensely maintaining weight loss. A lot of people try to essentially starve themselves and that is dangerous and will probably fail in the long term. Actually maintaining weight loss takes a lot of time, which can be super discouraging. But it's a journey and not a race, this stuff can cause a lot of stress which could essentially backfire on you. Finding your comfort level when cutting food is very important.
There isn't a one true way of dieting. You have to start from what you like and build a diet around it, and just weed out/cut down on the stuff that is bad for yourself. If you want to lose weight, you figure out how many calories you normally eat on average and then reduce that (just don't go nuts with the reduction because that may give you an eating disorder or it may have some other adverse health effects). If you are exercising and want more muscle, add more protein rich foods, and maybe eat a little bit more frequently. Usually 3 meals and 1-3 snacks every day are recommended, which is more frequent than most people eat in my experience.
Consider veganism. It allows you to adopt an attitude of superiority (justified) and knocks out like 80% of the worst garbage from the Amerikkkan diet.
It's usually a good idea for people to go vegan if they can handle it but if someone is finding it hard to have a balanced diet, veganism won't help much. It's so restrictive in what you can eat that many people just end up with various deficiencies because they just eat pasta, bread and rice all the time. Also I wouldn't say it avoids most of the worst garbage, it doesn't avoid nasty processed carbs and the weird vegetable oils/fizzy drinks Americans consume a lot.
Yep. I already struggle with eating disorders a lot, and having had my sister go vegan (diet only, she's still obsessed with leather goods) in a race to the bottom with orthorexia to a point where she was hospitalized and nearly died, I can't imagine that being a solution in and of itself for the issue.
Wow yeah sounds bad. Well, idk. I think you may need some professional help there because anything someone may tell you to do may trigger some kind of disorder somehow. I have no idea about eating disorders, so I can't really say. Still, it's probably not a bad idea to figure out what you eat, think about what you like, and then try to replace the things you probably eat too much of with better alternatives you also actually like. BTW do you want to lose weight, gain weight, or neither and just want to eat better?
At this point, I need to lose weight. The pandemic 20 has been really fucking weighing on my psyche and I am not emotionally prepared for the end of the "me having abs" era in any way shape or form. I'm actually losing sleep over it. I can't really afford professional help because apparently according to Ontario, the brain is a luxury organ and somehow I don't qualify for the food addiction recovery thing.
Oof if you already have abs I'm not sure it's a good idea to try and lose more weight when you've had eating disorders in the past... Also therapy should really be free...
Yeah idk. Perhaps try to maintain the same weight and exercise more to keep your abs? Maybe set some other fitness goals too.
I used to have abs... I can't see them anymore is the thing, since I gained some real pandemic weight. I want it gone.
Ooooh I see. Was it just because you were underweight though? Some people's abs just show because they are really really skinny, perhaps your abs could still show if you worked out more. Can you see them if you flex them/strerch your skin a bit or can you just not see them at all?
Nah, I'm properly fat these days. I used to be in pretty great shape, as I was super active and rock climbing on a daily basis and have never actually been underweight, based on bmi.
based on bmi
Being "in shape" is cool and good, but the BMI scale is honestly pretty horrific and a bad judge. It's basically phrenology for fitness (with the same racism and bullshit involved as actual phrenology).
According to that nonsense I'm obese. I also ran almost 8 miles today and most people are surprised when I tell them my BMI is over 30 (I only have a rough idea of what my BMI is because I was able to get my COVID vaccine a little earlier because I'm obese).
Definitely don't hold yourself to that fucking nonsense's ideals. It's all about feeling good in your own skin.
I mean, yeah, the BMI system is deeply flawed, but I also kinda know my body and I know I stick fairly normally along the lines that defines.
Alright, that's definitely good then. Knowing your body and how you feel is definitely more important.
Oh that's good. Well, maybe cleaning up your normal diet a bit (getting rid of the worst stuff and reaching them with better alternatives with fewer calories) but ootherwise eating more or less the same (but not more) in terms of quantity while increasing your activity level would help without running as much of a risk of triggering some kind of disorder, at least it SEEMS to me that way and it may not be a good idea because again I don't know nothing about eating disorders so take that with a grain of salt. What do you typically eat?
I think increasing my activity level is key. I work from home and am terrified of Covid, so I am pretty much entirely sedentary and never leave the apartment. I'd love to get into a halfway decent exercise routine, but cannot for the life of me hold myself accountable on it.
I'm trying to eat mostly decently, so a lot of rice, veggies, and occasional eggs, fish, and leaner meats like chicken or turkey about once a week... But I also slip on that way too often so I end up eating junky food like breakfast burritos, frozen pizza, instant ramen, or White People Taco Night tacos a few times a week.
I'm guessing you'd be fine if you slipped up less often, maybe looking up some nice healthy foods that you didn't previously know but that actually sounds tasty to you to add some variety would help with that.
I feel you though when it comes to getting into an exercise routine, it's not easy when you're at home all day and I had a lot of trouble with it during the lockdowns. I've more or less found my footing now though and I'm glad about it. I think part of it was setting realistic targets which are quantifiable and you can see yourself doing progress. One mistake I used to make is trying to do things which were too varied and/or hard to progress in, or it was unclear what progress was, and it's bad for motivation. For instance, a badly constructed goal is "get more flexible". A good goal is "I want to be able to touch the floor with my legs straight" plus a few other flexibility benchmarks in similar senses. The first one is unclear, whereas the second one you can test yourself constantly and see how you progressed. Or, for instance, I was constantly changing the exercises I was doing, or doing lots of exercises which you couldn't realistically improve very much so I wasn't getting that sweet linear progression that helps motivate you.
What type of exercise are you trying to get into?
I think cardio is probably a good idea. I also have Ring Fit Adventure, which I don't think is a super rigorous training system, but I haven't used it much since my setup is absolutely awful for it. The TV is directly in front of the bed right now haha.
I think a goal would be hitting like 73 kg/160 lbs and be able to run like a mile or so without stopping. That's a bit less in weight than I was before I started getting out of shape but I've definitely lost muscle mass so I think it's achievable.
I'd say have a few more goals in other aspects of fitness (mobility, flexibility, strength), it's a good goal though so good luck with that!
I mean, there's plenty of absolute junk food that's vegan and I don't really eat much junk food. My main problem rn is just that I cannot stop binge eating so the cico is bad. I suppose I could switch to an all-celery diet and that way I can eat an infinite amount of food without issue.
feck. I had a whole long reply typed out, and then hexbear shenanigans disappeared it.
anyway, I think weight watchers is actually quite good. they have a "correct" dieting philosophy that's basically "you can eat whatever you want, but if something is less healthy, you eat less of it."
and exercise is super important. it's hard to healthily lose weight with diet alone. your base metabolic rate essentially demands a certain number of calories per day just to keep your brain functioning. so it's hard to lose weight if you're sedentary because the number of calories you need to just exist and not starve your brain is enough that you won't lose a lot of weight.
excluding dairy altogether is not very smart either
source please, why is it smart for adults to drink breast milk from another species
Because it is a good source of many good things such as calcium, protein, phosphorus, B2 and D vitamins etc. Yes, you can get these things from other stuff too but if you don't have some sort of serious reason to exclude it, it's sorta pointless to do so.
Idk what it coming from some other species has to do with anything, pretty much everything people eat comes from other species, unless you are a cannibal I guess.
serious reason to exclude it
@the majority of the world's population which is some variety of lactose intolerant
(i just found that after i sent post, sorry )
but i'll stand by 'X' culture not having dairy as sufficient evidence humans don't need it
No, people don't need it, I agree. However I don't really see the benefit of excluding them when it is a decent source of many good things. You don't really need any specific thing, but it's kinda weird and counterproductive to arbitrarily remove some of the most useful ones, thus reducing the variety available to the people following it.
I get drinking the breast milk of your own species if you are a baby. Why the need to go to the absurd lengths of getting a completely different species to give you their breast milk when there are perfectly normal and more healthy sources of the nutrients you mentioned?
Why the need to go to the absurd lengths of getting a completely different species to give you their breast milk
I just went to the supermarket, was pretty easy. It's kind of a long walk I guess so you could say it was technically a great length but that's about it.
there are perfectly normal and more healthy sources of the nutrients you mentioned?
Dairy is a perfectly normal and healthy (as long as you don't have some kind of allergy or lactose intolerance) source of these nutrients as long as you aren't consuming absurd quantities I guess, plus you could say the same thing about pretty much every food, I don't really understand this argument or why it's important that it comes from a different species, like, the fact that my food doesn't come from other humans is a pro in my book lol
If you are talking about this from a vegan perspective then I already said being vegan is a valid reason not to have dairy, I'm talking specifically about the benefits or lack thereof of excluding it from the diet of people who are capable of consuming it and ostensibly would otherwise.
getting a completely different species to give you their breast milk
what does this have to do with anything
Edited to remove specific locations.
Jeez, milk prices vary an insane amount. I pay double that.
https://ballotpedia.org/Milk_prices_by_state,_2018
Its higher in Europe where they have laws requiring you don't torture animals, and no subsidies for dairy production in a lot of places
source please, why is it smart for adults to drink breast milk from another species
This is a weird framing, you could just as easily ask "Why is it smart for adults to eat tree sperm?" and it'd come off just as silly.
What matters is the specific nutrients/ingredients in it and if your body can process them safely.
Milk is to the baby as endosperm is to the germ (of wheat/grains). When you eat grains, you're eating the 'milk' of the germ. Its just organic matter that can be broken down into nutrients that a body can use.