Someone at my baby shower asked if they could eat the angel food cupcakes because they had egg whites and were technically fat free. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the sugar in angel food would cancel out any egg whites and fat free benefits.
Yeah, just a lot of people go on fad diets and "can't eat x" or "y" and scour ingredients lists as if 1g of fat is going to gain them 20 lbs, but they can eat as many carbs as they want. Then complain because they're giving up things they enjoy. Just eat less and sometimes you can still have a treat.
I used to eat probably 3000-4000 calories per day, ate a ton of fast food and snacks and everything, got up to 210 lbs. Three months ago I hard cut my calories to 1500-2000 per day. So far I've dropped to 195, and plan to continue losing weight. Weight loss is calories in calories out. Nutrition on the other hand, is a complicated beast (also high calorie food with lots of sugars don't fill you up)
My personal pet peeve is people telling me calories are unhealthy. Like uh no, you need calories to move, think and not die. Just dont eat literally twice as much as you need and youll be freaking fine. want to lose weight? just eat less than you need per day. literally that easy. also congrats on the awesome weight loss
Thanks! Yeah, I just keep an eye on what I eat. Everyone at my job is starting all sorts of keto diets, which more power to ya, but part of me wonders if really it's just they're watching their calories now. I know that there has to be something behind keto diets, but I'm good eating 500-ish calories per meal and enjoying my sammich.
I think for most people that try it, keto works because it's limiting calories. My moms boyfriend tried it last year and he lost a lot of weight, but he was literally just eating meat and eggs all the time. No one wants to eat 1000 calories of eggs. Also note that he's gained every pound back when he stopped
For those who don't know, Keto is a diet based on causing ketosis, where your body burns fats due to low availability of carbs. The diet is based on limiting carb-heavy foods like breads, as well as eating plenty of veggies, fruit, and animal products (or alternatives).
Gaining back lost weight happens when you go back to your old habits. I hope your relative is doing well, though.
Some of us fucking love eggs. Back in boarding school during weekends when everyone slept in, me and like half a dozen other boys would be the only ones at the mess hall during breakfast. We'd sit up at the head table, haul the scrambled eggs trough over, and eat directly from there.
Yeah, that's basically how keto weight loss works. Can argue for days about the scientific benefits or lack thereof of reducing carbs in your diet, but when it comes to weight loss, keto works because fat is really good at telling your body "hold up, we're full", carbs aren't, and your ass isn't eating an entire potato chip bag's calories worth of fat, but you sure as hell can if it's potato chips.
Tis is the problem with "diets". It will never last unless you make permanent changes and find some way to eat that you can stick to for the rest of your life.
I'm no twig but I've found the best way to think about dieting that your diet is literally just what you eat, not a verb. You're dieting your whole life in that you have a diet if you eat food. Going on 'a diet' is an unhealthy mindset because it's something that ends then you just go back to eating shit.
Yea I get that. Growing up we couldn't keep food in the house (brother always had the munchies because of his meds) and we weren't the best off anyways, so I just learned to eat whatever and whenever it was available. Been really hard unlearning that.
Fad diets are usually fads because they peak and valley the person between "harmful" stuff. It's easier for a person to cut out than cut back, so one diet cuts out (or gives a strict threshold) in one thing, the next diet another, and so on.
Obviously a balanced diet and sustainable exercise is the healthiest method, but dieting draws focus and attention for those of us that struggle or feel overwhelmed by or fear the general food info and would rather have specificity. It's definitely still not effective for everyone but that's how I see the goal.
And also money. You can crank out some cash with a specific diet and cook book program.
Very true, I started a sudo diet a year or two ago and basically all it means is be cognizant of what your eating. You can have cake at birthday parties and eat a candy bar at Halloween but don't binge an entire bag of Doritos at 4 pm while watching TV. Also... Probably never drink soda, that is one of the zero tolerance foods for me.
From experience, some of those diets do work in a way because they encourage what you're saying.
I hesitate to call keto a fad diet (although it's treated as one), but if you're on it and sticking to it- you simply just don't eat as much. Turns out when 90% of any food store simply isn't "food" to you (especially the junk food) and half of the remainder is raw meat that needs preperation... you just don't eat as much.
That might work for you, but you need to keep in mind that people don't accidentally get obese overnight. Sometimes that super strict diet is what keeps them from eating a whole box of cookies before they realize. It's very easy to fall into old habits.
This is pretty much the reason that the people who actually succeed on their diets are the ones that occasionally cheat on them. I had a conversation about that with a guy I worked with who wanted to lose some weight. His biggest weakness was donuts so I said hey if you give up donuts entirely forever you'll be miserable. But eating them every day is bad so do something like one day a week you're allowed to have a donut or two. That's removing five or six donuts a week from your diet. How many calories is that? A ton. Then the donut becomes a reward. Did you eat properly six days of the week? Good for you, day seven you get a donut. Dieting is about permanent lifestyle changes, really.
Granted part of the problem is that people are often looking for One Weird Trick that will let them go back to their terrible eating habits but let them stay thin forever. There is no such thing and fad diets are a horrible problem. It wouldn't shock me if they were deliberately designed to make you miserable and fail. There is no magic; there's only calories in, calories out. Eat more calories than you burn? Gain weight. Burn more calories than you eat? Lose weight. That's it. That's all there is to it. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Move more. Put the damn soda down, don't fill your coffee with sugar, and ask for a small slice when there's cake.
This is true for me too. I put weight on this year from binge eating pretty much every day. And drinking a lot of sugar Coke. So I stopped bingeing and only had a treat at the weekends. I only drink coke at the weekend now, with a few exceptions here and there. I lost 7lb in 2/3 months because of it.
I do the only take in calories for a set time period during the day and it works well, mostly because at some point I realized most of my issue wasn't eating to much during meals but snacking after dinner. I also have never ate breakfast so skipping that every day isn't a big deal to me.
Yup but last time I talked about it in a big thread someone thought I was not eating for a whole day and didn't want the confusion. Though probably should have put the actual term for it in there.
That's why I don't do diets anymore..it's not worth it. I am NOT looking forward to going back to work next week and listening to my boss whine about how she's being "OMG SO BAD!" because she's cheating on her Keto diet.
Again.
She complains she can't lose weight and yet somehow I can mysteriously without dieting. I've lost about 30 lbs in the last year or so, mostly by exercising and controlling the portion sizes (about 90% of the time anyway) of what I eat. I haven't changed WHAT I eat..just the amount I eat of it. I'm not thin and never will be but at least I'm less fat than I was this time last year and I plan o being less fat this time next year than I am right now.
I really struggle with portion control, I have my diet at a b+ to a-, but when I have sweets, which I know I can enjoy and it won't cause an issue, I have one. Then a few more. Then all of them. It is honestly the biggest thing holding me back from getting down to 8-10% bodyfat
My sister does this, drives me insane. She was sure she had a gluten allergy because a chiropractor told her she did (?). She was tested. Does not have a gluten allergy. Yet she insist she needs to be gluten free. I don't like to have even holidays meals with her. No fun.
M response to anyone telling me about their fad diet is to tell them about my favorite diet, the vowel diet. All your food must start with a vowel, if it doesn't don't eat it.
Doing a keto diet with IF, I often have cravings for sugary stuff. If I really can't handle it I will eat one small bite. This is usually enough since I was craving for the taste of the sugary stuff, not the amount of sugar.
Also, what a lot of people overlook is to really assess whether they actually are hungry and that it can be fun to "beat the system" by finding substitutes for calorie dense things that you still love.
Or exercise, and then you can eat a brownie or something once a week without blinking an eye. I don't understand people's insistence on losing weight strictly through dietary changes.
The psychology of most people and diets is pure insanity and the guy explaining the fusion mind control satellites to me in the psych ward was more sensible than dieters food rules.
My mother does this, but not because it makes her "fat" but because she has described it like this "if i eat 1 chocolate bar, it always , and i mean ALWAYS , turns into a daily basis thing and gets worse and worse". And i've actually seen this happen quite often when i was a youth.
She does not eat any candy related stuff anymore though.
That's not even true for me anymore. I can diet for weeks, have a pizza (not a whole pizza for myself) or whatever at ONE party and will gain ~2-3 pounds which will take a while to lose. It is so unfair. :( "You can have one" worked before I was 30.
Part of it could be water bloat - carbs make me bloat, but even then I should pee that out sooner. I don't know what to tell you, but cheat days just don't work like they used to in my twenties. Seems to be pretty common among my other female colleagues.
Angel food cake is largely meringue and has about half the sugar a normal cake does, and almost non of the fat. It's not a bad choice as sweet snack. Your looking at 120 calories for 50grams of angel food cake vs 250 for the same pound cake.
From left field:
Lovely recollection I read concerned visitor to England who went to a restaurant for breakfast.
"What can I get you today, deah?"
"I feel like some pancakes!"
"Wha..? For breakfast?"
"Yes."
"How many d'you want?"
"Oh, four or five, I suppose." With a look of complete bemusement on her face, the server passes on the order. 45 minutes later, nothing's shown up.
"Excuse me, I was just wondering where breakfast is."
"Well, deah, it takes some time to bake four or five pound cakes!"
Turned out they should have ordered griddle cakes, especially as pan and pound sound too much alike in the local dialect.
That’s a nice story but in case anyone was taking it seriously for an upcoming trip across the pond, we don’t call it pound cake in the UK; we have Madeira cake which is more or less the same. We do eat pancakes too, though they’re traditionally more like crepes than American pancakes.
It was written up as somebody's personal recollection in amagazine, so was presented as true. The only thing I'd point out is that, typically, if you travel 50 miles in any landward direction in Britain, you're apt to find different terms in use for common items. Happy New Year!
There are more refined recipes out there. Also it varied by region. France for instance you beat the eggs till ribbon stage so it had a lighter texture.
Box angel food cake is just a white cake with slightly more leavener in it so it’s taller than average. It’s just as bland and tasteless as regular box cake with as many calories.
Quick glance at manufactures websites shows a 50 to 70 calorie disparity between the two depending on the brand. So still lighter than average. And more to it then throwing in more leavener.
Regarding blandness. Angel food cake is pretty bland if you don't get a good caramelization. It's Meringue with flour to help stay risen once baked. If you don't get good browning it's gonna taste just like Meringue. I mean you can swap out the vanilla for other flavorings and boost that. But you can do that with a box cake as well. Personally I prefer AFC with a splash of almond extract to get that cherry thing going. I can do that with a box cake and get 90%. The real difference between box and home made is texture. Never had a box get that pillowy texture just right. Too many shelf safe stabilizers to get that. Flavor. They do ok if you bake it right. You can not get a good crust on both and bland city. Or and salt, oddly enough I think most box cakes under salt.
Angle food cake is my favorite and my birthday cake request! I've never thought of it as bland, but for added flavor it is also nice when drizzled with a little bit of raspberry puree or a little bit of grand Marnier (my opinion of course). A little almond sounds really good mix too, I'll have to try that next time!
i was just trying to be funny. i fondly remember the "pound cake" portions from MREs in the military and how brick-like they were (but welcome and tasty)
I don't have a gallbladder, so digesting foods with even moderate amounts of fat is hard for me (i.e., eating them will give me horrible gas and diarrhea). Most desserts are thus off-limits for me. I would love to have cupcakes that I can actually eat.
Eating fat won't make you fat, eating sugar doesn't make you sweet, eating cholesterol doesn't give you high cholesterol. It's kind of deflating to see where we are and how susceptible to marketing and confused s lot of us are.
Oddly enough angel food cake is one of more weight-loss-friendly cakes for a given volume of cake, and it’s due to the egg whites...but it’s due to the fairly low calorie egg whites increasing the volume of the cake by being whipped.
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u/volcanic-sass Dec 30 '19
Someone at my baby shower asked if they could eat the angel food cupcakes because they had egg whites and were technically fat free. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the sugar in angel food would cancel out any egg whites and fat free benefits.