Obvious?  You could burn fat even if you have other forms of fuel.  I just
said that carrying more muscle doesn't imply that your body will burn fat.
It depends.

{see -- this is what happens when I get bored!}

What makes you think that constant calorie restriction is boring?

http://www.moonglow.net/ccd/pictures/moon/index.html
Lift well, Eat less, Walk fast, Live long.

I *hate* those people.  :-)  Okay, not really.  But I think you are right -
I have just always loved eating and could always eat.  Many people are not
like that, and really stop when they aren't hungry.  For me, to get and stay
thin I will have to accept that vigilance will perpetually be required.
These are the cards I was dealt.  There are other things in life that are
easier for me than they are for some people, so I suppose it all evens out
in the end.

carla

Jean,

There is some dreadful metabolic shift that takes place as we age. The stats
I've seen is 10% slowdown per decade starting in your 20s.

But in my experience it is the people who were thin when they were young who
suffer the most because they never learned how to think about what they were
eating.  They still have the body image of a skinny person who other people
are urging "eat, eat!"

When the slowdown hits, they take a long time to notice they aren't thin any
more and then their dieting can be pretty unintentionally funny to those of
us who have had to watch everything we eat since we were teenagers.  My mom
saved all her dresses from when she was in her 30s for me--the ones with
with the 18 inch waists--though given my linebacker build I would have had
to have had a few ribs removed to be able to fit them. But by the time she
was my age she had that pouter pigeon dowager look. She'd diet for two
thirds of a meal and then conclude that since she'd "only had the salad"
(with a couple ladles full of dressing), there was no harm in eating dessert
and she'd polish off an ice cream sundae. My brother is just the same. Thin
until his 30s, and now twice my size.

My mom's best friend had a weight problem all her life, but she ended up in
a lot better shape in middle age because she did know a lot more about food
and though she didn't always stick to her diet, she did not let things get
out of hand.

--Jenny  - Low Carbing for 4 years. At goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes,
hba1c 5.2.
Cut the carbs to respond to my  email address!

Low carb facts and figures, my weight-loss photos, tips, recipes,
strategies for dealing with diabetes and more at
http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/

Looking for help controlling your blood sugar?
Visit  http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/Newly%20Diagnosed.htm

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195118537/103-7964538-9087028

My pleasure, kind sir!

You know, you are so right Mu, as usual.  Except IME, 99.9% of the
people on the 2PD fail because they don't want to carry those scales
around.  That's why I invented the Two Foot Diet.  I know that a Big
Time Trainer like yourself can appreciate the advantages.

I developed the Two Foot Diet approach (2FD) as a replacement for Dr.
Chung's Amazing Logic Defying Two Pound Diet to avoid having to carry a
scale around.

Inspired by Dr. Chung's scientific approach, as described on his
website, in 2003, my wife and I attended an IMAX film about climbing
the Bavarian Alps and learned that despite their exhausting regimen,
the climbers consumed only 10 packages of wieners per week. That's less
than 2 feet of wieners per day! Since none of the climbers died from
starvation, I think it is safe to assume that 2 feet of food per day
should be more than adequate for us non-climbing folks.  

So I started a little experiment with the agreeable obese friends in my
neighborhood. I gave them ordinary 6 inch rulers with instructions to
measure the length of everything substantial that passed into their
mouths. The only things exempted were water and sugar-free drinks. What
I learned was that my obese friends were consuming between 8 to 12 feet
of food per day! At the time, I was about 10 lbs. over my ideal body
weight so I decided to find out how much I was eating per day... 3
feet. I cut back to less than 2 feet and was at my proper weight in one
month.

My friends have responded similarly except they have taken longer
because of having to lose more weight. Admittedly, some of my obese
friends were especially slow to respond. They also happen to be the
ones with an unfortunate propensity for accidentally loosing their 6
inch rulers and taking weeks to buy replacements.

So here's the deal: measure all the food you eat, using it's longest
dimension, and keep the total length to less than two feet per day.  
That's all there is.  No scales, no counting calories or carbohydrates.
Heck, if you loose your ruler, you can even use the first joint of your
thumb to measure.

I am making this diet available as a public service and without
compensation.

If you have any questions, just see Dr. Chung's helpful FAQ and
substitute "Two Feet" for "Two Pounds" everywhere... what could be
simpler?

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the
shoulders of midgets"

Mu, which diet a person decides to do, 2pound, low carb etc. they must
learn portion control and apply that as their WOE, WOL. Some think that
they lost all this weight etc etc they can binge again...wrong! Must
continue the portion control and exercise to keep it off.

Myway

I have been lowcarbing since last June and have not been on a diet any of
that time.  I have not measured or weighed my food.  I just concentrate on
eating fat and protein and avoiding high carb foods.  I have "only" lost 37
pounds so far but the trend is steadily downwrd and that doesn't seem too
bad to me for not dieting.  I have not eaten any high carb food in all that
time and have no desire to go back to the way I was eating, not even for one
meal.  I feel better and am not hungry all the time the way I used to be.  I
may never get to be a size 10 but that is not what I care about.  My only
goal is to feel better.  So I am doing just the opposite of what you
describe below.  Seems to me low carb can work very well without getting
anal over it.

In news:6dfr00dmjuv4fdn7ls4pm69sgnpdoj8p2k@4ax.com,
Mucho M_uns <muchomuns@hotmail.com> stated

Nope, not correct.  I feel like Q in a James Bond movie.  "Do pay
attention" in an exasparated voice.

Wrong.  Once you've learned the lesson of low carb, they include
controlling your food.  Thus maintaining through *always* controlling.
Always relying on a change that, once learned actuall manges to teach
you what caused the problem in the first place.  Avoid cause, avoid
symptom.  Avoid addictive foods, avoid addictive binges.  Avoid high
glycemic index foods, avoid low blood sugar phases and loss of control.
No more need to a diet thanks to the lessons learned during the diet
phase.

And since I see that sci.med.cardiology got included in the discussion,
there are those other advantages of low carbing.  The normallized blood
pressure that is as much a standard and predictable result of low
carbing as weight loss.  The normallized blood lipid chemistry that
happens to 80% of low carbers, at least as good a success rate as any
one medication and it doesn't even check off any of the medications as
having been tried so it keeps the options more open.  The insistance on
eating real food, mandatory veggies each and every day isn't something
any doctor should ever condemn yet every low carb plan in existance has
exactly that.  The normallized blood glucose levels that avoid onset of
diabetes and reduces the symptoms of preexisting diabetes.  The well
documented and well known medical advantages of low carbing abound.

That was the opinion of one person.  It's not valid for me at all.  I'm
coming up on 5 years lowcarbing in Feb, 5 years of that maintaining.

I only count calories or carbs once in a while.  After about a year, I
had the carb counts of the items and recipes that I like to eat and make
pretty much memorized, and I could be pretty close at eyeballing calories
by the time I reached maintenance.  I spot check measure occasionally,
to ensure that my eyeballing amounts don't wander off on the high side.

But I was never much of an overeater in the first place.  I was not
overweight the first 35 or so years of my life.  Most of my weight gain
was due to curtailed types of activity after severing my ACL which my HMO
would not repair because I can walk (but cannot run/jump/turn quickly),
combined with excessive appetite caused by the doctor-directed lowfat
diet, which was supposed to lower my familial high cholesterol but merely
decimated my HDL and skyrocketed my LDL.

168/125/125   LC since 2/18/97 maintaining since 3/17/99