I was watching MTV TRue Life: I'm on a diet. They told one of the ladies on it that she should do a combination of "Low fat" and "low carb" with restricted salt. I got that. But her dinners were rice and boiled chicken, her lunches were sweetened fruits and cottage cheese... Everything she ate was disgusting and flavorless, and I saw her eat NO veggies.

How is that low carb done properly? Could you imagine subjecting yourself to that torture? Why wouldn't MTV include those who were doing a TRUE low carb lifestyle (I know it's not a diet, but it would make a way better weight loss special than what they showed).

Also, they included a teen who crash dieted to becoming Miss Teen America and a guy who starved himself to make wrestling weight.

They say WE are the unhealthy ones???

Aren't vegetables IMPORTANT to this type of a lifestyle?

vegetables & fiber are key ingredients in a healthy eat life style and low fat & low carb diet doesnt include rice & sweetened fruit....... someone didnt read up, lol...

Did you watch the MTV's true life I'm obese about the boy that was eating tons of stuff ie hot cheetos, mc flurryies etc waiting to get the gastric by pass surgery and was using that as an excuse to eat all that stuff. Whats sad is I guess he's still waiting for his insurance to okay it and in the mean while he's literally eating tons of stuff and gaining more weight. I understand in extreme case of getting the surgery but I think that if people just gave low carb a chance they would know that they can eat lots of yummy foods, and not feel deprived.

I watched that one. Sad. They were calling her plan "high-protein" and occasionally mentioned low carb. I thought it odd, too that they forbade even DIET soda, but let her eat huge piles of fruit.

The pageant crash-dieter referred to her own "plan" as low carb... her daily menu consisted of an apple. Then, against the advice of the nutritionist, who told her to eat 5 small meals of protein, veggies and fruit a day, she decided it was "faster" to just eat cottage cheese for two weeks. RIGHT after the pageant, she went and gorged, gained a few punds back, and it said, went on another crash diet to get ready for the next pageant.

I could barely stand to watch the young wrestler starving and sweating to make weight. I felt for his Mom.

What I noticed with the girls that I've seen a LOT among chronic dieters, was the "Last Supper" mentality. How many of us decide we'll start on a particular day, then have a free-for-all the day before? The Pageant Girl's Mom asked her why she didn't just follow the moderate route and not pig out the night before. The girl said she needed to get all her favorite foods in before she had to starve herself for so long... and it would be MONTHS before she could eat "normally" again. Then the Mom shut up and ate right along with her.

I thought it was absolutely horrible the way they threw the word "low carb" and "high protein" around. It made us look horrible.

They made dieting look so painful, and revealed the obvious gremlins that young dieters face. I was disappointed that the pageant girl went against the nutritionist who encouraged her to eat more food and lose more weight... She'd be a lot more healthy and would lose just as much if not more weight by stoking her metabolism.

I did the same kind of dieting in high school. That's one of the reasons my metabolism is shot NOW. Teenagers often can't see past the immediate need. Her attitude that she KNEW it wasn't healthy, but it "worked better" sums it up, really. Middle age is SO far in the future it isn't a factor.

i saw both of those...and that wrestling guy looked like he was going to pass out...he looked so sick...i felt so bad for him...141 was definatley not the weight he should be...and that girl who ate cottage cheese for like a week...that was just gross...and her mom is dumb...she had to hid to eat from her daughter because her daughter wanted her to starve herself...the mom should have corrected her thinking at that moment....as for the girl eating the boiled chicken...she lost 30 pounds in a month...i was like wow...but all her stuff was flavorless...that was pure torture....

Then the im obese one...that boy reminded me of myself when he ate all he could because he was gonna get the surgery...i do the same thing...if i know im going to start a diet monday...i eat everything i can all the way up until monday...such bad thinking...but im getting better slowly

What I don't understand about crash dieters, yo-yo dieters, and others who starve to lose weight, is they seem to have this almost fantasy, irrational, almost insane way of looking at the body and food.
They don't think logically about it. They look at food as this "bad scary thing that makes you fat". They look at food as poison, they look at their shape and size as the products of being "attacked by food". They look at food and size emotionally and don't think about it logically and rationally.

They don't realize food is merely fuel, food does not make you fat, and that to lose weight and look GOOD (aka healthy) you actually DO need food. Food is needed for energy, to build muscles, to keep youthful apperance and to look good. Starving for a beauty pagent is counter productive. If you starve yourself what you wind up with is high body fat, no muscles, and a look of unhealthy emaciation. You look sick, your face looks drawn, you look "skinny fat".

I think the reason people with this mentality have a "last supper" (and then a post diet binge) is because, mentally and emotionally they are so afraid of food (since they have an irrational view of food as "evil" and "poison" or somehow "dangerous") that they won't even attempt to try to be moderate and enjoy food while losing weight. They don't feel it possible. Single minded focus on their goal is what they are concerned with. Their goal is weight loss, and they erroneously believe that their goal is incongruent with eating. The less they can eat, the better, and since they want to lose it ASAP that means total and complete deprivation.

In reality better physical results are obtained by eating food - as long as the food is the right foods and for the right reasons. I lost weight very quickly and I made sure to eat the right foods. Though I did cut back a lot to force faster loss, when I was TRULY hungry I always ate, I never tried to totally deny my body when it beconned for nourishment. This is because, despite my "food issues" I always was very rational and logical about food. The only time I ever felt that "food phobia" was with carbs (and that's ONLY because I had been almost exclusively avoiding them, and doing so made it easy to lose weight/control hunger... so I was very unsure of HOW MANY or WHAT KINDS of carbs were the problem, it may have been carbs in general for all I knew).

If people could just view weight and eating a little more rationally you wouldn't have people trying to achieve their "ideal size" by eating only cottage cheese or only apples or other craziness.

When people ask for advice on weight loss, those who are more of an emotional disposition and less of a logical/rational one usually tend to get that "food phobia" thing. I'll spend forever trying to offer advice to them on everthing that worked for me. I always warn that what works for one might not work for another, but some things are pretty universal. It's a good idea to avoid starch and sugar since it offers a lot of calories and no satiation. It's a good idea to eat lots of veggies because they're healthy and add bulk to meals. When you want to impulsive eat and snack, instead of just denying yourself (that wont work) make healthy choices. Grab a baby carrot instead of a handful of chips. Learn to listen to your body and determine which hungers are "true" and which are just yearnings to nibble because of boredom. Feed the previous hunger with the right foods that control sugar; feed the latter hunger with big salads made of zero cal dressings and baby carrots .
It's a bad idea to try to be really extreme and not try to enjoy your diet since that will lead to cheating and binging.
It's a good idea, most importantly, to listen to your body and pay attention to how food makes you feel, impulses to eat, what they mean. Think hard on it and really focus and you'll know what you have to do to reach yoru goal.

I find very often the case they'll try this advice for awhile, and they'll feel better and lose weight...but then they'll become dissatisfied with the fact it's taking "so long" to reach goal. They become impatient. Since they view food irrationally (as something that "attacks them and makes them fat"), they view food as an unnecessary hostile alien to their desired shape/body. So then, despite the fact it goes against generally good advice and common sense, they attempt to be really strict to speed things up. They'll cut out meals, they'll go to bed starving. They keep this up for a short period of time and then they eventually break down and give up and start eating poorly again.

It all comes down to not being rational about this, having an irrational emotional approach to weight/size/food produces the extreme thoughts (unrealistic expectations, the belief that food is unnecessary and the less the better, etc), which leads to extreme behaviors, and inability to be moderate.

I agree with Wooo about how a person's way of thinking can very much influence how they diet and the success they enjoy.

I agree that an ability to be rational about food choices and an awareness and sensitivity to your body's needs is also a very helpful tool in enabling you to make good choices.

However, I think that it is important to recognise that I don't really know a SINGLE PERSON who has a completely rational relationship with food or their body. Food is not looked on entirely as fuel in society. It has always served emotional, social, ceremonial purposes. Being fed is a way that we are shown love by our families and in turn, the way that many of us show love to others.

I think just as important as developing a more rational way of thinking about food is also developing a healthier and happier way of dealing with the emotions that do surround food.

Sometimes just becoming more clinical and rational doesn't help heal the scars of obesity and disordered eating.

Very good post, Wooo.

What I also wonder about a lot is when people use words like "sinning" and "cheating" about eating certain foods. I just can't imagine that it can be healthy to think that way. There are better or worse choices, of course, but it's not as if any one food is going to poison you or mess you up forever. When I was still thinking that way (pre-WW, and I must say that's one really good thing about that program), I would feel so guilty after eating something "sinful" that I'd just pack it in and splurge completely.

I could not believe the glut of high carb foods those kids were eating as their "diet food". I was horrified to see a wrestler choose a giant bagel that was double the recommended portion size as his main meal before his wrestling match. If he'd eaten meat, fish, fowl, and low carb veggies he could have eaten his fill and not had to spend his life "dieting."

He clearly didn't understand that the breads, pasta and power bars were loaded with calories, too much for even an athlete. I doubt these kids even know how to read a food label.

The beauty queen who ate sweetened yogurt and an apple as her one meal each day could have had meat, salad, cheese, eggs, nuts -- I can't even begin to enumerate the low carb foods she could have eaten in abundance instead of rice and apples which are so incredibly high in carbs. She would not have been hungry and would not have felt deprived.

It's not wonder those kids spent their life dieting; theywere doing it wrong! And the nutrionists were a joke; their advice was stuck in the 80's.

One "nutrionist" on the show served up boiled flavorless chicken as a low carb meat; no greens, no flavor, just boiled chicken! Low carb doesn't mean going without flavor and serving tasteless food - it just makes it that much harder for these young kids to stay on a meal plan. Worst of all the "nutrionists" cut out butter, oil, bacon -- things that we know are perfect for a low carb lifestyle. The whole episode made me cringe the entire time, and I hope all the kids pick up the Atkins book and learn just what it means to eat healthy.

I didn't see this special, but I've read most of the posts here. Did any of them ever even mention exercise? That seems to be absent from this conversation. It's a key part, if they are truly trying to do it the right way.

Completely agreed!!! I can't imagine what kind of nutritionist would reccommend boiled chicken and white rice ::shudders::

Vegetables -- yes, important.

FAT -- a high fat intake -- even more so.

You cannot do "low carb, low fat" over an extended time period. The result will be sickness... severe physical malaise as the body cannot thrive without the essential nutrients -- and energy -- found in fat.

In LIFE WITHOUT BREAD, I believe Allan and Lutz describe an elegant method of executing political prisoners in Argentina (or another country). They feed them LEAN MEAT -- nothing else. Eventually the prisoners die of starvation. Had they been fed FAT MEAT -- no problem. They would have survived.

That said, rice and sweetened fruit do not a low carb diet make. Sheesh.

Andrea