WHAT the body is fed matters. Junk foods filled with fats/carbs combo is the worst foods according to Dr. ATKINS.

Dr. BERRY, as I recall, discussed a relatively new study comparing low carb to low fat . No change in calorie intake, not a weight loss focus. ENTIRE FAMILIES participated. Looked at many markers like body composition and %fatty liver among others.

Simply changing the balance of calories from carbs to fats CHANGED the body composition.Without decreasing the total calories.

Based on how McD,s dealt with calorie reporting, the customer infornation sheet also included carbs, fats, and protein.

With access to such information many people have kearned their fast food contains FAR more calories than they estimated. We on this forum have become experts at knowing the number of carbs, fats and protein in every food. Most people who have "dieted" can read food labels. The rest of the populace is in darkness.

What we eat matters. Showing the public the content of their restaurant food will show the fat/carb/protein...the macros most dieters follow.

There is hope here that the national conversation on food content is changing.

Its not the level we on this forum live at, but its a push in the right direction.

Dr Aseem Malhotra's opinion piece in today's Telegraph:

Good article from Malhotra, Demi. This is the reality check that's needed to temper people/ politicians who immediately desire to spring into action to defeat obesity with no fundamental understanding of the basics. I love these statements:


Being blunt about what works and what doesn't in terms of losing weight and achieving health must come from one who has the knowledge to tell the difference and has sound experience from clinical practice and studies to prove it. Malhotra hits the prime issues of exercise, calorie reduction and favors quality of calories rather than quantity. The question is will other medical professionals take the time to learn what constitutes sound nutrition? Will the masses eager for public acceptance step aside to let experts like Malhotra, Unwin, and others lead the way? Stay tuned . . . . . . .

When potato chips cost the same per pound as filet mignon (as a forum member has stated) there's an enormous profit motive built into 80% of what is sold in the supermarket. I avoid more aisles than I go down.

Reform will require a completely different way of managing and handling food.

The cost oer pound chips equalling a pound of a great cut of meat is the reason I kerp spewing eating simple meat and veg neals IS affordable. ADD in fasting, and meat and veg based meals become more affordable.

Veggies are cheaper than chips, too. Maybe not baby leaf lettuce......

I dont mind my teens skipping a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

I dont mind making "breakfast" at 11-noon.

I dont mind if oldest eats only once a day occassionally.....

Lose a Stone in 21 Days with Michael Mosley

https://www.channel4.com/programmes...-michael-mosley

Good intentions, but unfortunately too low in energy. Body's survival instinct will kick in at this calorie level and fight back, forcing failure. I wish they had the information available on, say, THIS website.

Yep, and this is very telling:






Dizzy spells are a warning sign that something isn't right. In this case it's the diet, since there was such an abrupt and drastic change to the diet, especially to a diet so low in calories.



I'm so sick of signing up/registering to every site out that that I want to just read or watch one thing that I rebelliously refused to do it this time, so I don't know any more about the diet than what Demi posted here.



But just as a first impression, I'm always skeptical of any diet that makes an absolute promise that you WILL lose a certain number of pounds in a certain number of days/weeks, in this case a stone (14 lbs) in 3 weeks.



What about someone who has already lost 50 or 100 lbs or more, and is only 14 pounds from their goal weight? Does he guarantee that person will also lose 14 lbs in 3 weeks?


Or what about someone who has done dozens of diets over a period of a few years: low cal, low fat, grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, crash 500 calorie diets, yo-yo-ing constantly up and down 10-15 lbs, with losses occurring much more slowly with each succeeding diet (leading to the habitual dieter white-knuckling it through the most restrictive diets for several months to lose the desired amount of weight, rather than just the few recommended weeks), with the pounds coming back on lightning fast, without any kind of binging, just by resuming a somewhat less restrictive diet - how is any loss on this particular diet supposed to be any more sustainable for that person?


What is his maintenance plan? That's the most important part of any diet - there needs to be a maintenance plan so that you don't regain the weight, and not just "if you gain weight, go back on the diet again".


Without seeing any more information about this diet, I'm left thinking that it's just another calories in/calories out, you deserve to starve to lose the weight, as your punishment for allowing yourself to gain so much weight.

It's based on his Fast 800 plan:

It amazes me at the level of cynacism expressed.....we should be the cheerleaders of change.......any change that results in weight loss is a good thing. There is no perfect diet. What works for one may not for another. The more optiobs that can entice people to reaccess their food intake and their level of obesity is critical to change this obesety/chronic disease epidemic.

Atkins doesnt work for everyone.
Nor Mediterranian.
Nor CAD.

OMAD worked well for at one point dropping about 20 pounds in 37 days.

Every other day fasting works for others.

If 800 calories for a few weeks shows willing participants what is possible and is an intro to taking control of ones health via food, why not?

Light headed? Well that can happen on Atkins too. On either diet, support should be offered during the transition. Imho a little light headedness us well worth avoiding toe amputations, foot amputation and leg amputation.

On this forum, we have a lot to offer in experience to assist those ready to change and jump into weight loss. Getting over the hump is what everyone experiences at whatever level of distress.

Thank you, Demi - that was the information I needed, because the articles I saw above told me next to nothing, except that it was 800 cals (which is technically considered to be a starvation diet), and the lady who loved the diet was having dizzy spells from it, which to me still indicates there's some kind of problem.

Other diets can make you dizzy too - but to me, that says she needs something changed about it to keep her from having dizzy spells, which I'm guessing are most likely related to low blood sugar, perhaps from some of the higher carb recipes. With only 3 recipes in that article, there's one that has only about 3 oz chicken per serving, but then has chickpeas, apparently to increase the protein content. The recipe says a "tin of chickpeas", and a tin of chopped tomatoes.

I don't know how big a can/tin of chickpeas is in the UK, but back when I was eating beans, chickpeas were the one bean that it seemed only came in a 29 oz can (seven 1/2 cup servings, 20 carbs per serving), so that recipe could potentially have 75 g carbs/serving, just from the chickpeas alone. Even if it's one of the smaller cans that most beans come in here (15-16 oz, 3-1/2 servings) if you use the entire can in that recipe, that's still 35 g carbs per serving - add to that the tin of chopped tomatoes (again, how big? I've seen 14-15 oz cans, 3-1/2 servings, 6ish carbs per serving, as well as 28 oz cans, with 6 or 7 servings) - the smaller can would add an additional 10ish grams carbs per serving, the larger can another 20ish g/serving), and the medium onion (approximately another 5 g carbs per serving)... so that would put you at a minimum of 45-50 g carbs/serving for that meal (or closer to 100, if you're in the US and think those recipes are indicating the larger cans), so not one that I would call truly LC, even if it is certainly better than pasta, potato chips, donuts, and cake.



I wasn't trying to be cynical about it - I was basing what I said on what little was indicated in the article. First that it was an 800 calorie diet (didn't mention that it could be as much as 1000 calories), then that you would definitely lose a stone (14 lbs) in 3 weeks. Without knowing who Dr Mosley is (I'm terrible with names, so even though there was a thread on here earlier, I didn't associate the name) Basically, to me 800 calories, "it's so good!" about the recipes, and the promise of losing 14 lbs in 3 weeks - it looked like an article that could have come from one of junky women's magazines at the grocery store that always have these two things on the cover: some amazing diet-of-the-week... and a huge, tempting, decadent cake recipe.

On the other hand, what Dr Mosley says in the article he wrote is:



See, now isn't that a much better description "lose a stone in 3 weeks on 800 calories a day"?

Then there's this:




So did all of them lose at least 14 lbs in the 3 weeks, as well as significantly improving their blood work? That doesn't sound like even he knows as of the date her wrote that article - and he says he's optimistic, but also says you never quite know what will happen.

I'm glad to hear that it's not just a quick fix either, that he intends to support them long term - and hopefully, they're not going to be stuck at such a low calorie intake long term, based on this:




If done properly is the big thing, and it appears that he's doing it right. Even for such a low calorie diet, the recipes in that article are not skimping on protein, not skimping on veggies, and his recipes actually call for added fats, even if not much, since the calories would add up way too fast if they did have a lot of fat.

So after finding out what HE actually has to say about it, I don't have nearly as many reservations about the diet.

There are articles about this latest diet by Mosley in The Times and The Radio Times. His long-term maintenance strategy is that the dieters should be eating 3/4 of what they are before they began the 800 calories regime, preferably sticking to Mediterranean diet principles.

I am surprised he said he lost weight and reversed his type 2 with his Fadt800 diet as back in 2012 he said he had done this with his 5:2 version of intermittent fasting.

I agree with your assessments Caliana

Don't forget a reduced calories diet is also, inevitably, a reduced low carb diet.

My concern with extremely low calorie diets is how the human body deals with the perceived state of famine by dropping the number of calories expended (including healthy things your body needs like immunity, growth or whatever) to try to match what's coming in to avoid death by starvation. A person may lose some weight that way while the body desperately attempts to compensate for the perceived survival threat, but then what? Raise the calorie level even not especially very much, not even anywhere near a normal reasonable amount of food for one's needs, and due to the starvation-depressed metabolism the person will gain weight due to even that still low calorie level being above what the body had to get itself down to burning to survive the very low-calorie episode. I remember the study done on Biggest Losers finding their metabolisms still depressed something like five years later. Due to this problem I don't think super low calorie diets are a great idea.