I posted this in the war zone but I really doubt this is going to get heated

I was listening to a personal trainer, who is a friend of mine. She had a very interesting opinion on dieting. She thinks that one of the main reasons that diets fail is because people Diet Forward - as she likes to call it. Meaning, they go from horrendous eating habits to - COLD TURKEY - into a strict diet program

So they make substantial changes to their eating habits in the space of a very short period in time. And as we know, many of them don't end up CHANGING their diet habits, and go back into the vicious cycle of gaining the weight back and dieting again

She thinks that long-term, people would be thinner and healthier if they Diet Backwards. What she means by that is basically, make one change at a time until you arrive at an optimal diet, instead of radically changing to an optimal diet.

So, in her opinion, people should say, give up soda first. Do that for two weeks to a month. Then, they should reduce their sugar intake. Again, stay with just those first two changes for another month. And then continue

She says she has clients who have lost weight through this kind of methodology, and they tend to be the ones who have kept it off the longest.

The one example she gave me was of a guy who drank at least a litre of full calorie soda each day. He switched to diet for 2 months and lost 15 pounds. Then, he started to exercise. Did that for a month, and lost 5 pounds. Then, he started cutting down on eating out. And on and on. He ended up losing 100 pounds and he's kept it off for 5 years, and he is in phenomenal shape

Thought this was an interesting concept that we could discuss here. The Atkins diet also works "Forward" - in that you have to go to the strictest level of carb intake, and work up from there. So I guess there are two main things we could discuss:

1. Would Atkins be easier to adopt as a WOL if people succesively reduced their carb intake, rather than going cold turkey to induction?

2. Ignoring Atkins, what do you think of her theory?

Don't know about atkins, but this is what I did. It was MUCH easier to make small changes, see some weight loss, get motivated and make bigger changes. However, some folks may find it easier to go cold turkey. For me, all the cold turkey starts I made were unsuccessful.

Now, whenever I get the 'can you help ME' lose weight, I say 'sure! give up all sugar sodas for two weeks as a start'. I figure if they can't even give up that, they aren't ready.

Kind of as a quick aside - do you know how much weight the general population would lose if they just cut out soda? I'm totally floored by the amount of full calorie soda that some people drink

Was watching our local news yesterday, and they were talking about just this subject and kids in school. They quoted that one can of regular soda equals 15% of their daily calorie reccomendation! ACK!! They also equated regular soda to "liquid candy". I would have to agree!

The cut down slowly is part of "Life without Bread". Dr. Lutz recommends that those with health problems eliminate carbs from their diet slower, to avoid any shock to their system.

For me the 'cold turkey' approach is what worked. Cutting things out one at a time would have been pure torture.

I had to cut my carbs slowly as the sudden change irritates my heart murmur. I think if you are really dedicated to making a change it doesn't matter which way you do it. I did cut out diet coke and when I had one a few weeks ago it triggered a hypoglycemic episode. That totally caught me by surprise. I would have sworn that diet coke had no effect on me at all. I only cut it out because my dentist was saying how crappy it makes your teeth look when your old. My chiropractor kept saying it leaches minerals out of your bones.

I totally agree with the trainer. This is the reason they advise people to lose weight slowly. Slow weight loss isn't objectively better, it's just an indicator of doing things that make STAYING at your goal effortless. If you make slow little changes one at a time, giving yourself time to adapt to the changes and live with them, you are better off than the person who goes on optifast or has their stomach shrunk with a surgery, losing gobs of weight really fast. Because, when you eventually reach your goal you are pretty much already in maintenance you know but the person on optifast or who basically got anorexia surgery needs to figure that out. I can't tell you how many times I've read "success stories" where people plan on bearing down and getting to goal asap, but then doing something like binging once they get there.

This is also the reason formal diets don't work. First of all it forces people to take on too much at once. Except very few abnormally organized and/or motivated individuals, most will eventually rebel against all the sudden extreme changes by dropping the diet. Diets don't give you enough time to adapt to change. People need to feel safe and secure and comfortable, too much instability and change and lack of comfort (the familiar) is poorly tolerated by almost all (except for that minority previously mentioned). So almost no one turns their diet into a lifestyle change, despite what everyone says they are doing.
Also, diets don't concentrate enough on getting people to realize it's all about changing who you are with food, on learning to make the right choices of your own volition. Instead they work on a primitive "moralizing" of food - that food type/amount is bad and/or forbidden, that food type/amount is good and/or safe. People on diets never learn it's not the FOOD, it's how you're eating it, so they never quite get that they have the control to make the right choice. There needs to be more focus on learning to make good choices to achieve what you want to achieve, not following rules out of fear or ignorance.
Formal diets are basically strict rules that you are following, it's unnatural and no one does it forever. Formal diets can be a gateway to lifestyle changes, though, they are usually a step you have to cross before you know what & how to eat.

Either way, the fact is big goals are made up of lots of little changes. Learning how to make lots of little changes in your real life that you can do forever more or less naturally and innately (without a lot of self-forcing and conscious control) is what successful weight loss is all about. Anyway you can do that is the real goal, not a size or a number.

Just to throw in another opinion or viewpoint, the diet I'm currently on is supposed to be fast weight-loss. (It isn't for me, its normal weight loss, just because my metabolism is so pokey.) But there are 2 week long breaks on this diet where the goal is to maintain. So its an opportunity to sit down and really think through the whole maintenance thing and practice it.

I think one of the things I have to learn is how to eat at maintenance levels but how to have feast days occassionally. So there needs to be continual balancing of calories and flexibility.

But isn't it important to go cold turkey on carbs to get rid of the cravings? I mean, I thought that was the point of Atkins, get the blood chemistry under control quickly, cut down the cravings, get into ketosis and then go from there. its all about fixing the insulin resistance problems.

I agree, i think giving up things gradually is a great plan and should work, but for some people, it just isnt enough and they need to go cold turkey so they dont crawl up the walls and end up binging on food that isnt good for them.

whatever works for YOU is what works.

Even Atkins concedes that not everyone can go cold turkey. The changeover of metabolism from sugar burning to fat burning can be brutally hard on some people. He recommends for those people to do it more gradually.

The thing that is hard for me to grasp about maintenance is the forever part of it. On the hypoglycemic diet you are not supposed to eat sugar, alcohol, caffeine or aspartame ever again! Just thinking about it makes me want to buy a box of Godiva chocolates. The fact that those foods are off limits to me will probably make me have a binge because my mind feels like there are no levels of blowing it. Another words your either perfect or your not. How do you learn to deal with something like that?

I think its a pretty good idea....it just might work much better for those who have a problem with radical change...or for those who resist changing their diet completely. I didn't have a problem with it....and i think as far as atkins is concerned induction is probably the best way to start....but i'd say for someone who constantly quits..why not try another approach!?

One argument I can see (for those living a low-carb life) is that you would continually be restricting, whereas at least with the cold turkey approach, the restriction is all at once

And one of the reasons Atkins is more sucessful than other diets is because once you restrict, generally you experience the positives of a) weight loss b) reduced hunger and c) general improvement in your physical well-being due to blood-sugar control. Which, you wouldn't experience to the same degree on a general reduction program

However, like most females I'm perpetually on a diet, and I can say that the nutrition improvements that have lasted the longest with me are the ones that I did gradually (and, one at a time)

I suppose that all depends on how severe the consequences are if and when you do decide to 'blow it' and eat one of those forbidden foods. For me, the absolute crappy way I feel when I eat something high in sugar and/or starch is more than enough motivation to avoid eating something like that more than a few times a year...it just isn't worth it. It almost seems a little twisted to me how we can convince ourselves that we are deprived by choosing to not eat something that makes us feel like crap every time we eat it! It's almost like a recovering drug addict convincing themselves that they are deprived because they can never have their drug of choice ever again. Every day, you have the option of eating something or not eating it. When you have a choice, it's not deprivation, it's a self-imposed limitation and whether or not you choose to cross that boundry is up to you.
As for the 'dieting backwards' theory, I think it would work for some people. I also think it wouldn't work for a lot of people due to the fact that you have to maintain each previous change every time you make a new one in order for it to work and it's very much human nature to convince ourselves that we 'deserve' to have something that we previously gave up because, after all, look at all the other good changes we've made, right? Before long, you're right back where you started.

Everyone is different. I know when I stopped drinking so much pop (I always drank diet), once I kicked the habit - it was kicked. I can have pop occasionally now without wanting to go back to my old habits

But I imagine if I tried to give up coffee - I might be more easily romanced back into a full-fledged coffee drinker after a dalliance or two