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You can have as many sweet treats as you want, but you have to make them yourself. No bought treats. I haven't had a bought biscuit in two weeks. It results in a lot less snacking when you can't be bothered to make stuff, but I have also noticed that the homemade stuff is much more satisfying and less addictive than the bought stuff as well as being more delicious. I can eat a modest serving of homemade ice cream and not want more, but I could eat a whole pot of Ben and Jerry's.
It might lead to fewer calories (although looking at these flapjacks I doubt it) but the aim is to cut out ultra processed food. There is a suggestion that the emulsifiers in UPFs cause problems and can lead to weight gain either intrinsically or as a result of increased appetite/compulsion. Plus it's well known that bought stuff is engineered to be as moreish as possible. Like my homemade version, supermarket ice cream contains lots of sugar and fat, but it contains added lecithin; whereas mine still has lecithin but it's from four egg yolks with the associated protein, nutrients and deliciousness.
I can also control the yumminess by making things slightly plainer if I want, to make them last longer. I'm going to make some bread tonight too in the machine.
I've removed most upfs over the last year or so. Don't eat a lot of sweet things anyway but in summer I do enjoy a sort of homemade ice-cream. I just get whatever frozen berries and sometimes banana slices that I've frozen when we've had bananas going over ripe. Put a couple handfuls of frozen fruit in a bowl pour over a big glug of double cream which promptly freezes and then sit and mash it all up with a dessert spoon in the bowl until it reaches a nice consistency. I find it sweet enough from the fruit and no need for egg or anything else. I also do a frozen banana and cacao powder blend which is a yummy version of chocolate ice-cream.
Certainly feeling better for the improved diet and have lost a few kgs.
The cream/fruit idea sounds pretty good.
You can have as many sweet treats as you want, but you have to make them yourself. No bought treats. I haven't had a bought biscuit in two weeks. It results in a lot less snacking when you can't be bothered to make stuff, but I have also noticed that the homemade stuff is much more satisfying and less addictive than the bought stuff as well as being more delicious. I can eat a modest serving of homemade ice cream and not want more, but I could eat a whole pot of Ben and Jerry's.
It might lead to fewer calories (although looking at these flapjacks I doubt it) but the aim is to cut out ultra processed food. There is a suggestion that the emulsifiers in UPFs cause problems and can lead to weight gain either intrinsically or as a result of increased appetite/compulsion. Plus it's well known that bought stuff is engineered to be as moreish as possible. Like my homemade version, supermarket ice cream contains lots of sugar and fat, but it contains added lecithin; whereas mine still has lecithin but it's from four egg yolks with the associated protein, nutrients and deliciousness.
I can also control the yumminess by making things slightly plainer if I want, to make them last longer. I'm going to make some bread tonight too in the machine.
I'm not entirely convinced it's the lecithin in ice cream that's the probem, I suspect the problem is that it's mostly fat and sugar!
We all should know that’s UPFs are very bad however so is mixing sugar and fat; that’s any fat (especially seed oils) and any sugar (all carbs are sugar). Google the Randall Cycle.
The human body only requires protein and fat to thrive. Carbohydrates cause insulin spikes (insulin is a fat storing hormone) the more carbs you eat and the more often you eat them the more fat you will store.
I got into baking a few years ago and I found I put on loads of weight because I was baking such lovely stuff. I was baking as a distraction from studying however 🙂
Thinking that i could lose a bit of weight (good for knees, and improve my watt/kg) but don't want to go keto cos that sabotages cycling training, so thinking i'll go 5:2 this autumn on rest days and see how that goes. Likely doing more endurance work rather than VO2/SS so that might work to shed the weight over a few months and adapt once i am working on higher outputs in the spring
Of course i can just keep eating dried figs once the harvest is over (see Alpin's thread) and that should lose me 2 kg a day
and TJ, I knew it was Lambchop reading his message before i saw who wrote it......
Eat less, move more. HTH.
No need to diet here, there again I don't eat any of the cold desert type gunge in the opening post whether home made or not. 🙂
What flour and other ingredients are you using for the homemade bread, Molgrips? That's one way you can improve on industrial stuff if you don't have much choice commercially.
Mrs dB makes delicious ice cream, latest was green gage & even recently dandelion flavours - consequently I'm on constant 5-2 diet
Unfettered homemade flapjack and bread to lose weight?
All I can say is, good luck with that!
Google 3 ingredient peanut butter cookies, make some and tell me you can stop at one. Added chocolate chips/chunks and some caramel flavouring for additional goodness.
Am GF, so have to make my own biscuits 😭
Unfettered homemade flapjack and bread to lose weight?
It is incredibly delicious but I don't want to stuff my face with it because I'd have to make more. I've only had one bit.
Eat less, move more. HTH.
No it doesn't help, shut up.
What flour and other ingredients are you using for the homemade bread, Molgrips?
Wholemeal flour, yeast, milk.. what else goes in bread? Oh, I do put vitamin C in it.
The human body only requires protein and fat to thrive.
Nah, not true. There's a LOT more to it than that.
Surely like any diet, its a mental thing. Hope it works for you though @molgrips.
There are no biscuits in our house (poor visitors), due to us devouring a packet once opened. Yes I do make my own cakes, biscuits and puddings, but we only have a piece, slab, serving each and send the rest to the family with four children across the road. Sometimes I freeze certain baked goods.
I prefer Gelato it ice cream.
what else goes in bread?
Salt, oh and no milk(IMO)! Not that I can eat it any more anyway.
due to us devouring a packet once opened.
Apparently known as a "snackcident" according to Sarah off sewing bee
To be fair to the eat less move more crew, the OP is doing 50% of that.
The human body only requires protein and fat to thrive.
I mean other than preventing scurvy ............. rickets ............. osteoporosis ............ improving cognitive function and regulation ...... transported oxygen around the body ........ enabled metabolism .............. what have micronutrients ever done for us?
yes it does.
you're just not moving enough and eating too much. HTH.
sure. wanna buy some magic beans? 😉
It doesn't help.
Mostly it ignores that "move more" is actually a very small part of the "calories in = calories out" equation. It's a heck of a lot easier to not eat three chocolate chip cookies than it is to swim a mile at 2:20/100yds pace (although my dopamine addicted brain quite likes both).
the balance between the two will be a very individual thing.
but you can't escape thermodynamics.
but you can't escape thermodynamics.
You cannot deny that people who exercise more tend to be less overweight.
I've adjusted my diet to reduce processed food because it all contains significant amounts of salt. My blood pressure was a bit high and when I added it up I was way over the 6mg per day recommendation. To get below 6mg I've had to make about half my diet from things with no salt at all, to keep the total down when I can't reduce it in the other half. But it has fixed my blood pressure.
6mg per day recommendation
I thought it was 6g which I am way under, who says 6mg? I've tried to add a little to my diet as MyFitnessPal suggested I wasn't getting enough but I'm certainly over 6mg
Yes NHS recommendation is 6g per day but certainly reducing UPF in the diet will massively reduce salt intake. Having said that home cooked food made from raw ingredients is more enjoyable than any UPF and cooking is a lovely way to wind down and to increase your appreciation of the food you eat. Home cooking can however play havoc with wine consumption. As it has this evening.
Well done, greybeard. It's 6g (or 5g according to WHO) but obviously just a typo.
Now we just have to convince someone to adopt sensible eating habits that are more mediterranean diet than home made ice cream and flapjack..
This takes me back to the iDave fad diet rip off saga. 🙂 Anyone care to hunt down the threads? The point in STW history at which Molgrips terminally fell out with me. 😉
Yes, 6g, not 6mg. Sorry.
Not an excuse, but it also gets complicated because some recommendations are grammes of salt, some grammes of sodium, and some moles of sodium.
No white carbs, no dairy, no fruit, no cereal, no drinks with calories, glass of red wine with meals - 6 days a week. Cheat day, have what you want.
Courtesy of iDave.
New diet
Why not? I don't know if I'll do much baking, but I'm going to make an effort to cut out the junk. I do like a good ANZAC cookie though.
Sigh. This was not meant to be a weight loss thread, but for the benefit of the smug gits:
but you can't escape thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics is about things like heat engines and carnot cycles and such. That's a million miles from how human bodies work. When you eat something with calorific value, what actually happens to it? How does it get turned into kinetic energy? Or fat? It doesn't get burned, like petrol in a car. You can verify this by drinking a cup of diesel each morning and seeing if you gain weight. Cows get a large number of calories from eating grass, you could try eating grass all day and seeing if you become as big as a cow. Obviously silly examples, but it highlights that this is not about thermodynamics. When you eat food, it gets broken down into component parts by gut bacteria and acid, and there are many species of these bacteria and they produce all sorts of metabolic products of their own. Your guts are also full of brain cells, which interact with those chemicals. When glucose from the food enters your blood stream, or when there isn't enough glucose, what happens depends on the hormones that are produced in response to that. There are also processes that affect your brain on a basic level and also more indirectly. This can then change what your brain does next. Human brains are not at all rational - that's why so many people eat too much junk food, or they smoke, or they are alcoholics, or they're addicted to gambling or porn. This is all critically important in how people get fat.
You cannot deny that people who exercise more tend to be less overweight.
Yes, but is that because they enjoy it more because they aren't especially fat to begin with? How many people have taken up exercising, lost a load of weight, then given up and got fat? The answer is most of them - research shows that most people who diet and exercise to lose weight end up putting it back on. Why? Because they are morally inferior and degenerate? Don't be tempted to think that, it's a pretty toxic viewpoint. You have to admit that if you are already fat, trying to go for a run or a bike ride can be an absolutely ****ing miserable experience with no reward. So it's really hard to keep doing it. But if you're young and/or thin and fit-ish, like I was when I started, it's a lot more enjoyable.
If you're skinny, ask yourself how hard it was to become skinny? How much self denial do you go through every day? Usually when this comes up people say 'oh it's easy, just don't eat junk food' but what if it's not easy for you? I mean, I find it really easy not to smoke, or drink a bottle of whiskey. It's the easiest thing in the world for me to do, because I've never drank or smoked. But I absolutely would not log onto an Alcoholics Anonymous forum and say 'just don't drink, HTH'. Of course, over-eating does not (usually) have such grave consequences as alcoholism or other substance abuse, but it has similar roots and is easier to do because it's very normal and we're surrounded by yummy food everywhere we go and it's even more a part of culture than alcohol is. And of course, you need to eat. I have a mate who is extremely skinny, about 6% body fat or something. He rides probably 4-6hrs a week, runs a bit, swims and does yoga. But here's the thing - he has always been that skinny, before he took up exercise. And he also eats whatever he wants. I'm not riding that much currently, but I have done for plenty of my life. When we go out for coffee, he orders a cake. But I have to agonise over it and feel like a **** if I do. Why? His body is completely different to mine. He's got a 350W FTP but a 5s sprint of about 450W. He can also only ride for about 5hrs before giving up completely. I doubt he can deadlift much. We're all comfortable with people having different body types based on these kind of performance numbers - everyone knows that - but we also have different characteristics on the inside, and a lot of people don't really understand that.
So why I am I fat? What do I blame? I seem to have moderate ADHD which screws up my life in a lot of ways. People with ADHD have low levels of dopamine in their brain (amongst other things), and since dopamine is a neurotransmitter and one of the chemicals that our brain operates on, it has a big impact on their personality and functioning. I have to sit at home on my own and work all day, and often that work is dull and not challenging. This means I have low dopamine most of the day which is really hard to deal with. But there is a cupboard full of dopamine downstairs! If that's empty, I can walk up the road to a shop full of dopamine. I don't meet people often, but if I do, they are all eating and drinking dopamine.
When I was a student, I had lots of friends and I went from group to group socialising all the time (and not doing uni work). Instead of drinking alcohol I drank coke which was a terrible idea although I didn't realise it at the time. I also ate whatever I fancied because I was exercising a fair amount. I was fairly skinny although I was slowly gaining weight. I didn't even weigh myself at the time as I took it for granted that biking would keep me thin. When I did go biking, I went all out because I am a sprinter, so I sprinted everywhere, this is probably related to dopamine as well. That meant I trashed my glycogen stores and came home and ate every simple carb I could find. I suspect this altered my gut biome to make me really good at digesting sugar (and I still am - I can fuel myself entirely on gels all day and not get any bad guts). When I try to 'move more' I naturally end up riding too hard, which depletes glycogen stores, and when this happens I crave simple carbs in a way that some of you congenitally skinny people have probably never experienced - but here's the thing: Simple carbs are actually great for recovery after hard exercise. So then do I recover faster and do more exercise the next day? Or do I not recover as well, try to exercise, and end up riding slower and moving less after my bike ride?. There have been studies that show that our bodies self regulate to a large extent - if we cut calories we end up cutting expenditure throughout the day as a result. I know that if I cut calories too much, I not only get tired but I start to get cold as well - I need more clothes and I sleep a lot colder. And I get really bloody miserable, which makes daily life and work a lot harder.
So I think that my struggle to lose weight is related to my brain, my physiology, and the things I did when I was younger, in complex ways. The thing you have to remember is that we all know you're supposed to eat less and move more. And yet, a relatively small proportion of us have actually succeeded long term in changing our bodies for the better. Why is this? I think of it like like a roleplaying game. We're all born with a set of stats related to how we find dopamine, our capacity for self denial, our urges to seek pleasure, our physical response to exercise, and the exercise we like to do. All these things play a part in how we play the game, and how we end up after 40 years of it.
So no, 'eat less move more' does NOT help but thanks. Actually no, no thanks, because you know damn well we know this, you're saying it to denigrate us fatties, because you think we're either stupid or morally feeble. Don't you? Be honest. How many people have gone from being fat buggers to properly skinny athletes and stayed that way? I'm sure you'll find some, but NOT MANY and that is the point. It takes a very specific set of stats to be able to do that and it's quite rare - but not non-existent. What's much more common is a set of stats that let you easily enjoy exercise, and be good at it. And another stat that means you enjoy doing things that are healthy and make you thin. We could all eat less and move more, but a lot of people would find that very hard and be very miserable. And are you really expecting people to make themselves miserable all their lives? Would that be more healthy, do you think?
Anyway this was meant to be a tongue in cheek thread about treats, and some thoughts on UPFs. I was hoping maybe for a few recipes and other views on going UPF free. But predicably we've had toxic judgements dressed up as weight loss 'advice' yet again we're still only on page 1. Ho hum.
You cannot deny that people who exercise more tend to be less overweight.
I vaguely remember someone saying something about correlation and causation ...
And back on track - here's a lemon drizzle that doesn't have any butter. MrsP had to change her diet a while back and found this recipe which she's now adapted to do coffee and walnut cake, ginger cake and a chocolate cake.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/lighter-lemon-drizzle-cake
How moreish is it though? I suspect butter helps with the satisfyingness of cake?
My flapjacks were mostly butter/sugar, I think there was way too much. I could probably use double the oats next time.
Moreish? It's cake therefore by definition one slice is never enough. It's probably lighter than a normal lemon drizzle though. Also on flapjacks she uses rape seed oil instead of butter which world's fine (and chucks in pumpkin seeds, chopped dates, macadamias, cranberries, sunflower seeds, small bits of 100% chocolate etc)
Great post molgrips
but you can't escape thermodynamics.
Always enjoy a STW diet thread. Countless studies have shown that humans need about 2000-2500 calories a day, and it regulates itself quite directly, so a Miner or a bushman in the Amazon and a office worker and the man that tests mattresses for a living, all need just the same intake to maintain their weight. Put in less than that over time,you'll loose weight, put in more, over time you'll gain weight. What those 2000-2500 calories are is mostly less important, but a balanced diet that includes meat, veg and fruit - what we're 'designed to eat' seems like a sensible choice. Do whatever you need to do to make the changes you want (within reason). If that's home baking your flapjack, then crack on.