The Right Diet.?!

The Right Diet.?

Hello all you answerers out there!
I have finally admitted to myself that I have growen too fond of the fatty foods out there (why do kebabs taste so good?) and would like to start a diet.
But
There is loads of diets out there and I was wondering if anyone has tried the Atkins diet?
Yes, yes I have read up on it but I would like to hear from the people who are actually ON it.
If you don't agree with the Atkins diet what alternatives are there?
It seems to be short term gains for long term losses,
or
Long term gains with no quick results. (within 6 months)

Any help?

Any suggestions on how a kebab loving guy like me can diet?
To let you know I'm not obese it's just now I've been told I'm getting that "pregnant look". (cheeky people aren't they!)
Yes yes I know exercise is good etc... and I know how to do that, but I haven't got a clue about dieting.

Cheers, Abyss.

The Atkins diet is unhealthy, lack of fibers and of vitamines.
I have read a lot about diets and experienced some of them.
Hereafter the best advices to loose weight that I have put together myself and that I experience mostly every day. It’s more than a diet; it’s a manner to live and to appreciate tasty, healthy meals preferring quality to quantity.
This diet is long lasting, not annoying, not too difficult and without negative effects. It helps you to loose weight and to stabilize your weight, which is, I assure you, more difficult.

First your normal weight (not the ideal weight) following to the BMI.
Body-Mass-Index = weight
height x height
The Body-Mass-Index increases with the age.
19-24 years:19- 24/ 25-34 y: 20-25/ 35-44 y: 21-26/
45-54 years: 22-27/ 55-64 y: 23-28/ 64 years and more: 24-29
An example: You are 1,74 m tall (5’7”) and you weight 83 kg (183 lbs).
Ft = 30,48 cm/ Inch = 2,5 cm/ Pound = 453,59 g = 0,45359 kg.
BMI: 83/ 1,74x1,74 = 27,41 (183/ 5’7“ x 5’7“) = 27,41
It’s ok when you are 64 years old and more. It’s not ok from 19 to 54 years.
Ideal weight: 174 cm – 100 = 74 kg. It is tolerable if you have 10% more or less. More than 20% more or less is considered as problematical. But this scale is very rough and ignores important points as sexual characteristics, little stature.
1. Eat what is at your taste. Have excellent meals with several dishes.
2. Choose what is healthy for you. I give here only advices that are healthy for normally healthy people.
3. Try to find out by what dishes you loose weight and by what dishes you put on. People are different in all, what makes put on weight the one, doesn’t necessarily put on flesh to the other one.
4. Don’t eat more than 1500 to 1800 kcal per day. It depends on your objective. If you want to loose about 5 kg (2,265 lbs) in a week, eat only 1200 calories.
An adult woman needs about 2100 kcal a day.
An adult man needs about 2600 kcal a day.
The best is to eat 5 small meals during well dispersed all over the day. But many people lack of opportunities to do so. And many others fail because they are hungry, as they eat less. So they haven’t often enough willpower to stay to their calories-limit.
People who are good fat burners (high metabolism) can eat more calories without putting weight on. But with growing age the metabolism weakens and people put on weight faster. The metabolism weakens also by wrong diets, when you loose weight too quickly. After that the metabolism changes because you eat less food. And when you begin afterwards to eat normally a maximum is extracted out of the food and you put on weight more quickly than you have lost it.
So the best is to avoid an unfavorable change of the metabolism by eating aliments with little fibers and many calories (sweets, meat, sausages, hamburgers, fish, cream, French-fried…).
However if you eat aliments which have many fibers and little calories (vegetables, fruits but no bananas, whole bread, whole rice…), you will not change your metabolism negatively, but you will loose weight less quickly.
5. Try to get a table of food-calories by downloading it out of the Internet, for instance.
6. Fix a maximum of weight you will absolutely not pass beyond. Weigh you every day, the best in the morning. So you can easily find out what makes you gain weight or loose weight. It’s much easier than counting calories every day. And the result is the same if you weigh you every day.
7. Eat slowly and without stress. Let smelt tasty dishes on the tongue. Remember that you eat too much and without control under stress.
8. Do prefer good tasting dishes with few calories to dishes with many calories: fruit, vegetables, meager meats, meager fish, sweets with less sugar or sweetening or sugar mixed with sweetening 1:1. For myself I prefer good savory meats and fish and then I eat less or I eat several dishes.
9. Before breakfast, start with a cup of lukewarm water. Then eat what you like.
10. At least an hour before the main meal, start with fruits of the season. Or eat a salad an hour before the real meal. So you will be less hungry before the meal. It is much healthier than taking powders diluted in water to fill the stomach up.
By the way fruits taste better if you put half a strawberry on a slice of a nectarine on a slice of an apple. Half a berry of a grape on a slice of a pear on a slice of a peach. Or make a salad of fresh fruit.
An example of several dishes prepared very quickly: Fruit / smoked salmon with salad/ main dish/ dessert.
Prefer fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, or frozen vegetables, to fruits and vegetables in cans and glasses.
11. Drink at least 2 liters of beverage without calories. Water / Water with lemon juice and sweetening / Water with fresh fruit juice and sweetening / Water with a spoonful of apple vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.
After getting up drink a glass of warm water.
Drink sometimes water with a spoon of apple vinegar.
12. If you discover in the morning that you have put on weight stop eating the same day five hours before going to bed.
13. Don’t eat much at the evening. Or dishes with few calories: salads, soup of vegetables without butter or cream, prefer milk.
14. Prefer fat and oil made out of vegetables: olive oil and colza oil. Do not heat over 100°, then it is not healthy anymore. So it is not good for roasting, grilling...
Sunflower oil is good for everything, because healthy and neutral of taste.
Restrict fat made out of cream and extracted out of animal protein.
ATTENTION:
15. At evening before TV. When the gustatory papilla’s are excited by some food even of very few calories it becomes difficult to retain the desire to eat something else. The best is to drink water or tea (peppermint, chamomile etc.) without sugar or sweetening.
- If you can control your envy anymore, than do any activity, the best outside or wherever there is no food.
16. Mental preparation is important too: be proud that you eat now very controlled, that you prefer quality to quantity, that you make a healthy and a tasty choice of dishes, that you eat like people who know much about good food, that you are self-controlled and have got a strong will to do right, that you have made new experiences and that you know more than many others about good food, that you can share your experiences with others and give them good advices.
17. Mostly all diets have negative and only short effects.
18. Make sports, I mean physical exercises, which make you transpire.
Fact is, that if you are able to make sports during three hours a day, you loose mostly water, you build up muscles and you loose more or less 1000 gr. One hour of exercises is a loss of 300-400 gr.
Be aware, that the higher you’re overweight, the more you are able to loose weight at the beginning of the diet.
Don’t get disappointed when you find out that there are days you haven’t lost weight, despise of your efforts. It’s quite normal because men don’t make progress continuously but by steps. After some days of stagnation you will go on loosing weight at the condition that you won’t have lost your courage and your will.
19. Tips for dishes:
- Buy vanilla ice cream, mix fruit (strawberries or mangos or kiwis or.) in a mixer, freeze it, and mix the half frozen fruit with the ice cream 1:1. And you will get an ice-cream, better than those you can buy, with half fewer fat and half fewer sugar, and very easy to prepare.
- Mix fresh fruit; add low fat yogurt and sweetening. Mix all.
- Eat whole grain bread and rice. If you ask me on this side, I will give you an excellent recipe for whole grain bread easily to bake.
- Eat only chocolate of more than 75% cacao.
20. Last and efficient advice, try this:
Fix your objective and limit the amount of calories per day according to it. Don’t forget to take in consideration the 19 points described above.
Eat what you want in the morning and at noon.
But in the evening eat fruits, or vegetables, or vegetable soup, or salad, or meat, or fish.
Don’t eat at your last meal milk products, or sweets, or food made out of flour, or potatoes, or rice, or nuts, and I guess you will loose weight rapidly. This is similar to the so-called “food separation diet”. This diet has the advantage that you feel light after the meal. But here, as well as anywhere else, you must avoid, to take more calories, that you are able to burn. Otherwise you will surely put on weight.

Don’t ever forget that people are different. No diet and no advices are necessarily adapted to you.
So every diet has to be adapted to the patient, and not the patient to the diet. That’s what I would like to write on the door of every school: The pedagogical principals must be adapted to the different pupils and not the pupils to the pedagogical principles.

P. s: It exists a variation. Eat as described above the first day, but stop eating at 16 hours. The second day eat only vegetable soup. And go on like this as long as you want. This is also a perfectly healthy and efficient diet.
A recipe for an excellent soup: put in a pan olive oil and half an onion cut in slices. Let it blanch. Add a small potato cut in small pieces and vegetables. The best are all sorts of cabbage, kale, cauliflower and others with few calories salad, spinach, celery, tomatoes... Use eventually deep frozen vegetables; it’s less preparation and they have at least as many vitamins. By blanching the vegetables get more taste. Boil water. Add soup tablets (I prefer vegetable powder ) and salt. Add the vegetables. Let cook. Mix all up. Add cream (more calories), or milk (less calories), or water (no calories).
A last idea: if you eat this or a similar soup during several days and nothing else, and drink 5 pints of water you will loose more or less two pounds every day. It’s a healthy diet (I give only healthy advices), but it is dull.

With my best wishes.