Dieting?

[Miaka_M]

A friend of mine has called on me and told me that she has a lack of self-esteem and she feels very unworthy around people all because of her weight. Hearing this made me feel absolutely awful. She asked me "how do you do it?" I told her that she shouldn't eat before 6, drink plenty of water and that she should portion her meals, if you eat a vast amount of food your stomach actually learns to expand itself to accommodate the food! I also told her to eat more protein because it'll keep her full a little longer than carbs would. Is there anything else that I should suggest to her?

 

[MyPaperBleedsInk]

You should direct her to a site or app that'll make things much easier to visually see - such as My Fitness Pal. She can enter in each day what she eats so she can see the sort of calories she's taking in compared to the amount she should be eating to maintain or lose weight. I could never figure out what I was doing wrong - I'm not horrible with portion control - until I joined that site. Turned out I was intaking thousands of liquid calories each day through soda, excessive amounts of milk, and juice etc.

She should find people who will support her or join her so everyone can hold each other accountable for their actions. Can you join her for walks or bouts of exercise?

 

[isabbbela]

Those are good tips for a generic diet/eating habits change. You should also tell her to cut as much of the sweets as possible, and try to replace them for low fat, low calorie alternatives instead. However, I find doing these doesn't work for everyone. Some people are just real impulse eaters (like myself), so they can't keep portion control for a long time or eat a bunch of healthy foods and not sweets and carbs. For me, those were always a way out when I got depressed, anxious, nervous or mad. Heck, even when I got excited! So for me, the Dukan diet fit pretty well... because I don't need to control my portions, I just need to eat the allowed foods.... and that means some foods are absolutely forbidden, which is OK for me, since I prefer not to be able to eat them at all than to be allowed only one small bite!
Your friend will just need to find the best option for her!

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Loosing weight needs to include exercise as well as reducing the number of calories you eat. Dieting alone will not work and what she needs is a change in lifestyle not a diet otherwise when the diet comes to an end, she will simply return to her old eating habits and put the weight back on making her feel worse in the long run. My mother yo-yo diets this way constantly and it does her no good whatsoever.

One of the "tricks" I have found is to re-educate the mind that being hungry is not actually something negative (unless it is keeping me awake in the middle of the night). Drinking a glass of water when you feel hungry outside of meal times is a good way of working out if you are actually hungry or simply thirsty. If the hunger goes away, you were actually thirsty, not hungry. If it comes back very quickly, you are genuinely hungry, but this does not mean you necessarily need to actually eat - you will only loose weight if your body uses the fat reserves up instead of the food in your stomach, but your friend should also talk to her doctor and make sure that there are not underlying medical issues first.

When I need to loose weight, I don't go for the low fat option, I don't go with the cut sugars out completely, I don't go with the no chocolate whatsoever options... these don't work for me. I simply eat smaller quantities of what I like rather than stuff I don't like the taste of. (I don't need to exercise more - I already do way more than most people cycling 150-200 miles a week.)

Keeping track of her calorie intake is also quite useful - my fitness pal works to an extent. I tried it last year when I needed to track my potassium intake, but it didn't work very well for me because of a number of issues. The main issue being I cook virtually everything from scratch and this meant each and every new recipe had to be entered by hand for me. Another issue was that there would be multiple entries of the same things, but with different calorific values entered or people who can't tell the difference between sodium and salt or milligrams (mg) and grams (g) and often muddled the 2. However, if your friend eats everything pre-packed and ready made, and has a smartphone with a camera, then tracking calories would be easy for her because the myfitnesspal app has the ability to scan barcodes and enter the details for you, you simply say how many portions and for what meal it was.

 

[crimsonghost747]

There are a million different diets and a million different opinions on which is the best, how do it correctly, what times to eat, what things to eat, when not to eat, what not to touch etc.

I would recommend everyone throws most of that to garbage and uses common sense. Fat is extra energy. How do you get energy? Food. How do you lose energy? Exercise. When the energy input is larger than the output, you gain weight. When the output is larger than the input, you lose weight.
Really isn't that complicated, burned calories has to be greater than eaten calories.

 

[Miaka_M]

She should find people who will support her or join her so everyone can hold each other accountable for their actions. Can you join her for walks or bouts of exercise?

Sadly she lives on the opposite side of the city so I can't go for a walk with her or do some exercise with her. The only time we meet is once a week at our religious community temple and it's for the service which usually takes up most of our time. We do have a dance session though, and sometimes she refuses to join because of her low self-esteem. As much as I try to encourage her to join me, sometimes she just won't give in.

You should also tell her to cut as much of the sweets as possible, and try to replace them for low fat, low calorie alternatives instead. However, I find doing these doesn't work for everyone. Some people are just real impulse eaters (like myself), so they can't keep portion control for a long time or eat a bunch of healthy foods and not sweets and carbs.

This is true, she is indeed an impulse eater. Her mom does most of the cooking in the house and if there is no food, I've seen her eat nutella and strawberries, not a very good option for a late night snack. I'll tell her to cut down on some sweets if she hasn't already.

Keeping track of her calorie intake is also quite useful.

Tracking her calorie intake is a great idea!

Thanks everyone for the help.