What Are the Worst (and Best) Dieting Tips You've Ever Heard?

[seoulsearch]

Hey Everyone!

(For anyone not wanting to read the entire post, the summary of the thread is highlighted at the very end.)

What's faster than a speeding bullet, carries its own spinning blades, and does enough chopping to put even Jackie Chan to shame?

You guessed it--"The Ninja"... or "Nutri Bullet" juicers.

It's THAT time of year again... When pulverizing health food machines are the most-researched, most frequently purchased... and frankly, most often returned... items in the retail business.

As a twist to the near-universal New Year's resolution of losing weight and/or getting in shape, what are some of the most ridiculous things you've heard, tried, or given up in your search for better health? Are there any tips you've picked up along the way that really DID work? Please feel free to share them all.

In my own quest to have a healthier year, I have always meant to read up on whether bananas actually contribute to stomach fat. I had always found this a bit depressing because bananas are one of my favorite foods ever, and I'd even read a book by a Christian doctor who advised AGAINST eating bananas. Sigh. Is it true? Are bananas really of the devil?

After spending some time reading and watching health vlogs, here are two tips I wanted to share:

1. First, the epic fail. One of my health goals is try to cut down on processed sugar and eventually try to eliminate it as much as possible (which, at this point, is hard for me to do even in a single day.) I've read this tip before several years ago but simply CANNOT bring myself to do it: the site I read today recommended envisioning that sugary food as something... extremely unsavory. Several retch-worthy suggestions were given, none of which I will mention here because they are so repulsive.

I have never been able to do this because I know that for myself, the thoughts would eventually transfer to everything I eat. Sigh. There goes one possibly helpful dieting tip... right down the toilet. Quite literally.

2. And now for the good news!!! I just spent 20 minutes reading an article that points out the fact that overall calorie consumption is much more important than specific foods, especially healthy ones. It also stated that the obesity epidemic is usually not caused by eating too much fruit!

Happily, the best advice this article had to give was: "Eat a banana. While standing up. Or better yet, as you take a walk."

Hooray!!!! I am no longer viewing those 3 bananas on my counter top as The Enemy and my Inner Monkey is now gloating with joy... (However, if anyone out there HAS cut out bananas and now has washboard abs to prove it... please share that in your post. I may have to tearfully reconsider.)

*How about the rest of you? What are the best and worst diet/health/fitness tips you've heard or tried? This could be about you or someone else you know. Please share your stories here!*

 

[Siberian_Khatru]

There's no one-size-fits-all diet or fitness program (I feel like a goober for stating the obvious), but more often than not, going organic and cutting out known bad food as much as possible makes a tremendous difference. Someone I met online years ago, who was really into bodybuilding and had a friend who had an academic background in nutrition, had told me that supposedly 80% (give or take) of our physique is depicted by what we eat.

Bananas tend to get stigmatized due to their Glycemia index, as far as I know. They're not a particularly fattening fruit, and generally fruits and vegetables that are fatty tend to be high in the "good" types of fats (monosaturated and monounsaturated).

Happy dieting and living, seoulsearch!

 

[ChandlerFan]

These are some thoughts and tips that I've found helpful:

-Every person's body is different in some way or another, so you have to have patience to learn about your body, learn what various kinds of food and exercise do to your body, try some things out, and figure out what works best for you in terms of develop a sustainable, habitual regimen of diet and exercise.
-Be patient. Achieving health and a healthy weight take time, patience, diligence, and perseverance.
-If your only goal is to drop some weight, you are most likely going to achieve success if you can simply manage to consumer fewer calories than you burn.
-Sugar is a significant enemy of weight loss. Sugar can come in the forms you see on the ingredient labels (fructose, sucrose, corn syrup, etc.), but it can also come in the form of white bread, flour, and rice because your body immediately breaks those things down into simple sugar. Your body then converts that simple sugar into fat. There are numerous other reasons why sugar is pretty terrible for our bodies as well.
-Consuming fat, on the other hand, is not quite as detrimental because your body will flush it out, however there are good fats and bad fats to be aware of. While there has been debate about what fats actually are better or worse for you, the most reliable information I've found has said that saturated fats are more favorable than poly- and monounsaturated fats.
-Soda is just plain awful. Period.
-There are great health benefits to simply just taking a half hour walk everyday. To be healthy you don't necessarily have to run 5 miles a day.
-Give yourself grace if you have a poor eating day. Just don't let it become poor eating days.
-The closer a food item is to its natural state, the better it's going to be for you to eat.
-"You are not what you eat, you are what you eat eats." Meaning that when you eat meat, your body can be positively or negatively impacted by how the animal ate or how it was fed. Grass-fed beef is a much better option than grain-fed beef if you ever have the opportunity to make that choice.
-Many oils that are used in cooking are not good for you. This includes vegetable and peanut oil. These oils can actually literally become rancid in the bottle before they even get to your kitchen cabinet, and this rancidification can cause changes to the oil that are actually linked to cancer. Coconut oil and olive oil are safe, though.

These are all random and in no specific order, and I don't heed to every one of these. But this is information that I was glad to read about and be aware of.

 

[ardchoille]

The best diet tips I have found:

1) Only eat when hungry - never eat when bored, anxious, stressed, etc.
2) Never eat to the point of being full - there is a difference in being "full" and "no longer hungry"
3) Realize that, after coming off a diet, going back to old eating habits will eventually return the body to its previous weight because the old eating habits were the reason for the old body weight - a new body weight will require a change in lifestyle
4) You are what you eat - the types of food you eat are just as important as the quantity

Following these tips helped me reduce my body weight as well as my blood pressure.

My current statistics:
Weight: 140 pounds
Blood pressure: 110 over 78
Medical problems: None
Medications: None
Age: 50

 

[Siberian_Khatru]

4) You are what you eat...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[gymnerd]

The worst advice I got was that stuff like taco bell is bodybuilding food. Yeah I couldn't help but laugh when I heard that.

Some of the best stuff I have found is almost anything by Stew Smith and scoobysworkshop.com

Stew is an ex navy seal who now has a lot of info all over youtube and his own website, stewsmith.com

scooby is just a regular guy who has been into natural bodybuilding since his teens, he is now in his fiftys and his website is full of good nutritional and workout advice.

I think the best advice I can give is, if you plan on losing weight or getting in shape, you should plan on changing the way you live, diets don't work forever.

 

[Lynx]

You are what you eat...

I am what I ate. And it scares me!

 

[Shouryu]

Any tip or product that claims to spot reduce or spot eliminate. You cannot focus down a specific fat store on your body; doing a bajillion crunches or drinking green tea will not eliminate belly fat.

When it comes to fat, your body operates like an HR department when it's time for cutbacks: Last In, First Out. Everyone's body is different in how it chooses to store fat. Some people have a tendency to collect fat around the midsection quickest, some around the thighs, some around the glutes, some actually tend to "marble" their fat stores within the muscles themselves. That specific spot where you gather fat the quickest will be the slowest to actually eliminate fat from, regardless of the method you choose to approach fat loss (diet, resistance training, cardio, etc). On the flip side, areas of your body that were less noticeable but gaining fat regardless will be the first to shrink - the last place you actually started gaining size is the first place you'll start losing. Your body puts on fat how it chooses to, not how YOU choose to, and it will eliminate fat the same way...how IT chooses to, not how YOU choose to do so.

I have known many women to task themselves with attacking their thighs, hips, and glutes, and so they work hard, and within the first month, instead of seeing any real progress on their legs...they lose two cup sizes on their breasts, and their arms and back shrink a little. They may not have picked up a single dumbbell, but the body chooses to burn fat at the easy places first, rather than the places it WANTS the fat to be.

Do this simple trick to eliminate thigh fat! Biggest lie EVAR. (Well, except the skim milk thing.)

Cut calories, and focus on strength. Watch EVERYTHING get better. BOOM.

 

[psychomom]

my mom was here over Christmas, and told me a tip her doctor gave her.

(and i quote)
drink water and eat grapefruit every other day.

i was like...drink water every other day????

c'mon, that's gotta be the worst diet tip ever. and from a doctor! lol

 

[JesusLives]

The Aliens did it I tell you!!! It was the Aliens!!!!

They are the ones who came up with the idea of diet...thinking about it makes me want to Die with a t........lol

How about the cookie diet or the Cabbage Soup diet......fasting is so much fun lets all try it until we pass out - Now there is a bad/worst diet idea for ya.....

Moderation and exercise is the best way to go and how many of us are really doing that? Just saying the word makes me tired....

 

[proverbs35]

Worst diet ever - the tapeworm diet. Please don't ever try this at home or anywhere else.

 

[JesusLives]

You are what you eat...

I am what I ate. And it scares me!

I must be pineapple then cause I just ate some pineapple upside down cake....fruit for the New Year check off one resolution....I am shaped like a pineapple...therefore I am what I ate....lol

 

[tourist]

I must be pineapple then cause I just ate some pineapple upside down cake....fruit for the New Year check off one resolution....I am shaped like a pineapple...therefore I am what I ate....lol

Things are starting to get TROPICAL

 

[seoulsearch]

Being the rebellious person I am, my afternoon snack is going to be a banana... with peanut butter. Extra crunchy peanut butter at that.

Followed by a side dish of tapeworms... (UGH!!!)

 

[Descyple]

I was once told that if I eat a lot of chocolate, it will make me a very sweet guy.

Well, I've eaten as much chocolate as I can, but many people claim I'm not a sweet guy yet.

So I guess I'll just keep on eating lots of chocolate until it finally happens (when I set goals, I don't give up until I reach them, especially if the path to that goal is paved with cocoa beans!!!)

 

[proverbs35]

Being the rebellious person I am, my afternoon snack is going to be a banana... with peanut butter. Extra crunchy peanut butter at that.

Followed by a side dish of tapeworms... (UGH!!!)

UGH!!! is right. Hard to believe people actually do it. I just saw an episode of Mystery Diagnosis where a girl's mother gave her a capsule with tapeworm eggs in it. The girl didn't know what her mom had given her. She got very sick and had to be taken to the emergency room. It took doctors some time to figure out what was going on. It is treatable if caught early, but those worms can do a lot of damage.

The things some people do for vanity.

 

[Lynx]

That's my kinda goal path, the one paved with cocoa beans.

 

[JesusLives]

Things are starting to get TROPICAL

Well you do know that we are celebrating the 17 Days of Christmas which started on my Birthday December 23 and ends on yours January 9th..... So our dieting will start on the 10th day of January....There will be a lot of salads going on in the Tourist household....problem is that only Mrs. Tourist needs to belly up to that bar...Mr. Tourist I will still be shoving food at to fatten him up a bit....I love my thin man.....wish I thought and ate like him - that's never gonna happen.....Me likes me food too much.... Oh salads here I come......lol

 

[tourist]

Well you do know that we are celebrating the 17 Days of Christmas which started on my Birthday December 23 and ends on yours January 9th..... So our dieting will start on the 10th day of January....There will be a lot of salads going on in the Tourist household....problem is that only Mrs. Tourist needs to belly up to that bar...Mr. Tourist I will still be shoving food at to fatten him up a bit....I love my thin man.....wish I thought and ate like him - that's never gonna happen.....Me likes me food too much.... Oh salads here I come......lol

I will require many cherry tomatoes.

 

[proverbs35]

Then there's the cabbage diet. I'm not sure... something about eating a lot of cabbage. It's suppose to be good for the digestion. I would think that would make a person especially gassy. Someone on that particular diet would probably need to keep a lot of beano on hand.