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What was "The Diet" when you were growing up?

Apparently "intermittent fasting" is popular now.

Seems to work for a lot of people.

Not for me though. I do the opposite. I eat six small meals a day equally spaced out, that way I always has some food in my stomach and never feel hungry (never feel over full or bloated either).
 
When I was a kid it was whatever was cooked. It was called "healthy," but what that really meant was that the food was cooked from scratch and not junk or fast food.

In my 30s and 40s, it was super healthy in the way we mean that phrase today. I counted grams of protein, fat, and carbs per meal, matched the intake of each, along with total caloric intake, to what my trainer said I should be at. I was guy who would go to fancy restaurants for business meetings and ask them to leave things out of the dish, cook stuff shown on the menu in some way other than how it appeared on the menu (e.g., asking them to steam or poach fish or veggies rather than sauteing them).

In my 50s to the present it's been a mix of super healthy and whatever I feel like eating, but my breakfasts and three of my lunches/snack meals are nearly always very healthy (complex carbs, clean protein, very low to no animal fats). Dinner ranges from healthy to indulgent, depending on my mood.

I've always been the sort to daily eat "three main meals" with "grazing" in between, all day long, up to about an hour before I go to sleep.
 
Apparently "intermittent fasting" is popular now.

Seems to work for a lot of people.

Not for me though. I do the opposite. I eat six small meals a day equally spaced out, that way I always has some food in my stomach and never feel hungry (never feel over full or bloated either).

I guess that "intermittent fasting" works for some. I haven't really tried it in any deliberate way. I have three large meals and "graze" in between all day.


I don't know how so it be or be not, but my fitness trainer told me ages ago that the fasting thing makes the body think there's a "famine," and so it burns less food than it does when there's constantly nourishment coming. He described as the body/brain going into "save some for a rainy day" mode....and we all know where the body "saves" a lot of it: right around the middle.
 
I guess that "intermittent fasting" works for some. I haven't really tried it in any deliberate way. I have three large meals and "graze" in between all day.


I don't know how so it be or be not, but my fitness trainer told me ages ago that the fasting thing makes the body think there's a "famine," and so it burns less food than it does when there's constantly nourishment coming. He described as the body/brain going into "save some for a rainy day" mode....and we all know where the body "saves" a lot of it: right around the middle.

Yeah, that's what I've read, also...fasting or skipping meals slows your metabolism way down...it's best to eat small, regular meals throughout the day...
 
Yeah, that's what I've read, also...fasting or skipping meals slows your metabolism way down...it's best to eat small, regular meals throughout the day...

I agree. It's almost obvious that that is the ideal way to eat. It's how my pets eat....

I find it hard not to eat a big meal right after working out and at breakfast. Indeed, when I wake up, I'm famished, so I immediately eat a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts even before my feet hit the floor. Dinner tends to be a big meal too, but mostly because I'm indulging my taste buds...big dinners are mostly a mental habit because, unlike breakfast and my post-workout meal, i never finish all that I've prepared or ordered to eat. I love leftover, though...they end up in one or more of in-between meals I eat later in the week.

Even though I'm 60 now, my body still wants a lot of calories, so I eat between 2800 and 3300 calories a day. (I'm somewhat active; 6'2" tall; 210 lbs; ~6%-12% body fat, depending on the time of year -- spring, summer and fall are my lean periods and the holidays to mid-winter are my less lean period.) That's slightly less than I used to eat, but not much less, though I've shed about ten pounds over the past 20 years.

I don't know, though; my weight isn't something I stress about....I really only care what it all looks like hanging on me. As long as I look "hot," I'm fine with whatever the weight is. Hell, the only reason I exercised after turning 30 was to look good naked, at the pool and on the beach. Whatever eating habits it takes to make that happen work for me. LOL
 
I guess that "intermittent fasting" works for some. I haven't really tried it in any deliberate way. I have three large meals and "graze" in between all day.


I don't know how so it be or be not, but my fitness trainer told me ages ago that the fasting thing makes the body think there's a "famine," and so it burns less food than it does when there's constantly nourishment coming. He described as the body/brain going into "save some for a rainy day" mode....and we all know where the body "saves" a lot of it: right around the middle.

Yeah, that's what I've read, also...fasting or skipping meals slows your metabolism way down...it's best to eat small, regular meals throughout the day...

I've actually been doing intermittent fasting for about a month now. I have lost weight quicker than any diet I've ever tried.

The science behind it --- insulin and glucose are what cause weight gain. Every time you eat, your insulin and glucose levels rise. When you eat all day long, your insulin and glucose levels never have a chance to deplete, therefore, your body is always burning insulin and glucose and not fat. When you fast, your body burns up all of the insulin and glucose and then needs something else to burn --- fat. The whole "starvation" mode thing is a myth.
 
I've actually been doing intermittent fasting for about a month now. I have lost weight quicker than any diet I've ever tried.

The science behind it --- insulin and glucose are what cause weight gain. Every time you eat, your insulin and glucose levels rise. When you eat all day long, your insulin and glucose levels never have a chance to deplete, therefore, your body is always burning insulin and glucose and not fat. When you fast, your body burns up all of the insulin and glucose and then needs something else to burn --- fat. The whole "starvation" mode thing is a myth.

I'm definitely not the guy to talk to about "diets." "Diet" for me is a noun, not a verb: I have a diet, but I don't diet.

Diet makes all the difference in the world as goes the effectiveness of one's "get fit/look good naked" efforts. That said, it seems to me, as goes meeting that goal, exercise (weight training and aerobics, both, not one or the other) is far more important than worrying about what I eat. As they say, "Everyone's got a washboard, but some folks keep theirs behind a six pack."

Truly, though, if one is active enough, one can eat literally anything. Getting rid of the fat is simple: consume fewer calories than one burns each day and the fat will disappear. Exercise just makes it happen faster. It also allows one to eat more and more of the stuff one likes to eat.


Starvation mode myth --> Myth or not, I haven't done it and I haven't found a reason to try.
  • 60 years old; 6'2"; 210 lbs.; 44-46 chest; 32-34 waist, depending on the season

Edit:
I just measured my waist. It's 33 right now. That's news to me. I still fit my 31 inch waist pants, but I guess the measurements aren't right on them or something...
 
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I don't know how so it be or be not, but my fitness trainer told me ages ago that the fasting thing makes the body think there's a "famine," and so it burns less food than it does when there's constantly nourishment coming. He described as the body/brain going into "save some for a rainy day" mode....and we all know where the body "saves" a lot of it: right around the middle.

It's amazing how so many different "experts" will tell you different stuff. the reality is that they make up stuff to try to sound like an expert. My thought is eat whatever and whenever it makes sense to you. That doesn't mean eat 5000 calories of junk food a day though, unless ones goal is to be fat and unhealthy.

A meta-study I read recently determined that all diets work the same way, you consume fewer calories that you burn. Any diet that restricts you food consumption, whether it is by type of food or by reducing your food consumption window, will result in you eating less.

My in-laws (who have both passed away due to weight related illness) once got really excited about the Atkins diet. What made them excited was thinking that they could eat all the high fat meats that they wanted to. The reality is that when food intake is restricted by any parameter, they one will tend to eat less food overall. Fifty slices of bacon at a meal somehow doesn't seem so appetizing after a few meals of it, and it's no substitute for a candybar or slice of bread.
 
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It's amazing how so many different "experts" will tell you different stuff. the reality is that they make up stuff to try to sound like an expert. My thought is eat whatever and whenever it makes sense to you. That doesn't mean eat 5000 calories of junk food a day though, unless ones goal is to be fat and unhealthy.

I wouldn't know about what "experts" say or don't. I just follow my trainer's directions. And you know what? It's been working for just under 30 years. The worst my body ever looks -- that is, the least defined I have been in the past 30 years -- is like this:

1209157-dan002.jpg



That's roughly my fitness/shape when I go to the Caribbean in the winter -- that guy is a touch more "mezo" than I am -- which is fine with me because nobody expects one to be in optimum shape right after the holidays. Even so, I'm comfortable with that level of fitness being a non-athlete, especially of my age. Come summertime, the extra weight on my middle is gone so my abs look more "washboardy." Right now, I've gotten rid of the winter fat and cut the creases back into my gut.


Shirt-Problem.jpg


The ab definition that guy has is about as fit as I can get these days, and while I looked better when I was younger, more angular, I was supposed to look better when I was younger.

As I say all the time, it's really about the results -- looking good naked or nearly naked. That's what makes me feel good and it's what makes my lady happy....more because when we're walking on the beach or going around town at the shore or something -- settings where it's not weird to wear clothes that don't hide that one is fit -- she likes being on my arm and seeing what she describes as the covetous looks she notices other women sending our way.

She says sees them all the time, but do you think she tells me about them in a timely fashion? Not at all! She's says stuff like, "Did you notice such and such woman? She was eying you and throwing daggers at me." Apparently women have ways of communicating "yes, this is mine; yes, it's hot; and no, you can't have it," and my lady loves playing it. Whatever....I still wish she'd be more timely in letting me know; it'd be nice to see just who are these women with whom my lady is having her "competitive" moments. (It's not that I don't see that there's a woman "there." I most certainly do. It's more that once I determine they aren't gym-fit, I don't pay them any more mind than I would a dude, so by the time she brings it up, I don't remember who she's talking about.)

At any rate, just following my trainer's instructions has kept me fit enough to keep my lady content and attract the attentions of other women. That's good enough for me, however right, wrong, expert or not he is. The results are acceptable either way. After all, he works for me, I workout for me, and if the results weren't suitable, I'd have long since found a different trainer.
 
What I mean is -- what was the trend in dieting when you were young? I've noticed that the trend seems to change every 10 years or so. When I was young, it was all about low fat, fat free, low cholesterol, etc. The Food Pyramid was the guideline. Breads and pastas were what you were mainly supposed to eat since they were low in fat. Then I think around my college years (late 90s to early 2000s) the Atkins diet was THE diet.

What about the diets that were popular when you were younger? Do you remember your mom or dad being on a specific diet plan? What did you learn in school about diet? Did you try any diets?

"Diet" for me when I was growing up was whatever Mom put on the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--except back then it was breakfast, dinner, and supper. There was no such thing as 'fast food' and nothing was processed any more than what we 'canned' in Mason jars and/or had curing in the 'smoke house'--pork was salt cured instead of smoked though. Most of our meat and vegetables we grew ourselves, churned our own butter, eggs were fresh from the hen house, and meat was what most often what was cured out there in the smoke house or caught, killed, cleaned, and plucked just before it went into the frying pan.

As a result, we enjoyed 'organic' foods before we knew what they were, ate a pretty balanced diet, and a lot of the allergies, obesity, and other ailments that are routine now, were pretty rare back then.

There are some things that were done better back in the 1940's and 50's.
 
"Diet" for me when I was growing up was whatever Mom put on the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--except back then it was breakfast, dinner, and supper. There was no such thing as 'fast food' and nothing was processed any more than what we 'canned' in Mason jars and/or had curing in the 'smoke house'--pork was salt cured instead of smoked though. Most of our meat and vegetables we grew ourselves, churned our own butter, eggs were fresh from the hen house, and meat was what most often what was cured out there in the smoke house or caught, killed, cleaned, and plucked just before it went into the frying pan.

As a result, we enjoyed 'organic' foods before we knew what they were, ate a pretty balanced diet, and a lot of the allergies, obesity, and other ailments that are routine now, were pretty rare back then.

There are some things that were done better back in the 1940's and 50's.

:agree: It sounds like I grew up in your house! We didn't have a smoke house, though - we were "city folks." My grandma raised chickens on her lot, though, so we always had eggs. The one thing I remember vividly is that our milk was delivered by the milkman, and in the Winter it was so cool to see the milk rising up out of the milk jar by several inches, with the paper lid on the jars in Winter just sitting on top of the frozen fountains of milk, after they were delivered to our front porch! :mrgreen:

I agree with your memory of raising the fruits and veggies on your own lot, then canning them, which meant the kitchen was hot, because the jars had to be cooked in boiling water for hours to eliminate the possibility of food poisoning - pressure canners came later. Kudos to whoever invented them!

We also said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school, and we obeyed our teachers -I don't know about you, but if we made trouble at school, we were in worst trouble when we got home! :eek:

All in all, it was a good time to be alive! Maybe our parents worried, but us kids sure didn't! We listened to the radio and the adults read the newspaper to get the news.

The movie The Christmas Story is pretty accurate, and we watch it every year on TV. We have also been to Cleveland many times to see the actual house where it was filmed, and they have new things added all the time. :thumbs:
 
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What I mean is -- what was the trend in dieting when you were young? I've noticed that the trend seems to change every 10 years or so. When I was young, it was all about low fat, fat free, low cholesterol, etc. The Food Pyramid was the guideline. Breads and pastas were what you were mainly supposed to eat since they were low in fat. Then I think around my college years (late 90s to early 2000s) the Atkins diet was THE diet.

What about the diets that were popular when you were younger? Do you remember your mom or dad being on a specific diet plan? What did you learn in school about diet? Did you try any diets?

Low carb was all the craze. I think that movement was on track. I think it's refined sugars that cause problems in US diets.
 
... She was eying you and throwing daggers at me....

It never seems to be the ladies who are looking at me. I spent the week before last in Mexico, It's amazing how many compliments I got on my shape, but 100% were from guys (not in a homo way).
 
Low carb was all the craze. I think that movement was on track. I think it's refined sugars that cause problems in US diets.

Yup. Just one sugar sweetened drink a day adds about 54,750 calories a year - that's enough empty calories to gain 16 lbs of fat. And most people who drink at least one a day, probably drink several a day.
 
It never seems to be the ladies who are looking at me. I spent the week before last in Mexico, It's amazing how many compliments I got on my shape, but 100% were from guys (not in a homo way).

Well, perhaps you're like me in that you don't timely enough notice the ladies doing so (other than the overt ones).

I think women, like men, most certainly do notice fit, dashing men, more so as a man ages because being "hot" becomes less common as people age. Unlike men, however, women are slier with their glances. Unlike me, though, my lady friend looks for women who're doing it. It's part of what she does to "lay claim" to what's hers. At least that's how I understand it from what she's described to me.

Generally, straight men don't remark on my physique. When I was younger, yes, once in a while a male friend who wasn't quite as "ripped" as I would comment and ask for pointers, but that's about it. In my later years (40+), the most I hear is something like a kindhearted jibe like "okay, Mr. Muscles, can you help me move this "whatever" or some similar comment....nothing so overt as a direct compliment, however. Gay men do remark on my build.
 
Yup. Just one sugar sweetened drink a day adds about 54,750 calories a year - that's enough empty calories to gain 16 lbs of fat. And most people who drink at least one a day, probably drink several a day.

Not to mention what all that sugar does to your body
 
What I mean is -- what was the trend in dieting when you were young? I've noticed that the trend seems to change every 10 years or so. When I was young, it was all about low fat, fat free, low cholesterol, etc. The Food Pyramid was the guideline. Breads and pastas were what you were mainly supposed to eat since they were low in fat. Then I think around my college years (late 90s to early 2000s) the Atkins diet was THE diet.

What about the diets that were popular when you were younger? Do you remember your mom or dad being on a specific diet plan? What did you learn in school about diet? Did you try any diets?

Don't remember, but my mom and all her friends drank Tab and Pepsi Light back in the 70s, eating practically nothing.

They're all still here, likely preserved from being chemically pickled from what was in those drinks.
 
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