The issue is that fruits supply a good hunk of the nutrients you need, as well, certain vitamins and other things, come with the calories. Where as the Big Mac may supply some of your protein needs, it's debatable how much of a burger patty is beef and how much is various fillers. The BM also provides a lot of fat, and a good dose of sugar (the special sauce, is probably a high sugar salad dressing), so it meets 5% if your nutritional needs and (with the fries and sugar laden soda pop), 60% of your calorie needs. A piece of fruit, on the other hand may meet 5% of your nutritional needs, and 5% of your calorie needs.

I understand all of you that have listened to my comment with horror....let me clarify my thinking....I personally am an over eater....I can make rice cakes a bad meal on short time...SO the weight loss industry makes people think (in general) that fruit is a good thing....replacing those 10 cokes you have a day with OJ or feel free to insert your favorite fruit juice is still not a good thing....

I do agree fruit is good but it is not a direct replacement for all of the intake if you are a over eater. (I personally feel many over weight people are)

So that is where I am coming from.....I mostly eat dried fruits now....I don't drink much fruit juice anymore....I am a fan of unfiltered apple juice though....so that is my weakness....
:)

A lot of the recent research has convinced me that diets don't work, pills don't work, surgery doesn't work, nothing works. Short of starving yourself (which is almost impossible to sustain), your body will naturally go to the weight it feels comfortable at, its set point. There are a number of hormones and neurotransmitters that makes this happen--things we have no control over.

I'm male, 5'11". I weighed 320 pounds at one time, about 7 years ago, and felt horrible and had life-threatening health problems like CAD and diabetes. I've gotten down to 180 a couple times, but my weight always crept back up to about 210 to 220. I now think that's my set point. I feel healthy at that weight, and I'm neither hungry or overstuffed. My cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure are all normal at this weight. It's not as thin as I'd like to be according to our culture, but it's a hell of a lot better than the 320 of 7 years ago!

I do have to work to keep it at 220, or I'll creep up again even higher. But at least I don't have to be hungry or deprived, and I don't feel weak and tired, as I did at 180. I feel strong and healthy! I LIKE THAT FEELING.

BTW, IMO the OP is doing very well, but might stronger and lose some weight with more exercise. I need 60 to 90 minutes a day (averaged over a week) and some of that must be truly challenging exercise. YMMV, of course.

Does your significant other also have trouble keeping his/her weight down? If so, its DEFINITELY your diet and activity level that needs a fix. Married people tend to eat alike and exercise alike -- they eat the same thing for dinner and breakfast every day-- if your girl is skinny and you pack on the pounds, then maybe you need to get your thyroid checked-- if both of you have some extra baggage, then both of you need to work together on it.

Reality check: go to a dietitian and have them explain the math and see exactly how small a recommended portion is. (have you ever eaten one serving of cereal? I haven't!) Its kinda yucky feeling to realize you have been eating for three your whole life, but it might help you get rid of your illusions.

and finally, being on your feet is not the same thing as having an active job-- a bike messenger is an active job-- being on your feet all day just means your joints ache without burning many more calories than sitting all day.

I gained 50 pounds one year when I was a waiter-- I justified all the **** I was eating by saying hey Im active I need food! But really, I was not burning off what I put in.

Fruit juice != fruit!
Fruits fill you much more than fruit juice ever can since you eat the fiber with the fruit and the solid part. A glass of fruit juice might have 4 - 5 apples in it for example and you can drink that down in almost one sip. But eating an apple or two might satisfy you for a while and provide the fiber and nutrients your body needs.

I'll agree with you, swapping 10 cokes for 10 apple juices, is not a good thing, but at least you have defined the problem. Which means your on the road to recovery.

You have already taken the first step, defined the problem, so now you need to find out why, you should
first talk to your doctor, and get a full checkup, to rule out medical causes, if there is no medical cause, then your doctor can refer you to someone to see if there is a psycological cause. Don't be afraid of that word psychological, it's doesn't mean your nuts, it means that you may have a reason for over eating, and if that reason can be discovered, and treated, then you don't need to over eat anymore, and that will allow you to work out a proper diet and exercise program, to get your weight under your control.

I think your right about many overweight people, the cause may be relatively minor, but they over eat a little, get fat, get depressed, overeat more, get fatter, get more depressed, overeat still more, and begin a downward spiral.

-- deleted post -- Now no one has to cry about it.

For those of you who would like some good solid weight loss info, Jillian Michaels from Biggest loser show has a radio show here in LA on Sundays.. Follow the link below and you will see mp3's of her shows for the last 4 months.. If you right click you can download them..

http://www.kfi640.com/cc-common/podc...ast=SUNDAY.xml

So really you just wanted an answer to the question, "Should I take diet pills?" And we wasted your time by giving you a lot of extraneous information. Oh well. Sorry....I guess.

The answer to your question is NO.

Enough said.

In that case, fruit is not the devil, but the devil is in your overeating on them. You can eat too much of anything. That's not the food's fault.

So you didn't want advice, but merely confirmation of your already made decision. Lovely.

Balderdash. "Set point" is fat acceptance BS. Your body wants to maintain the weight its currently at. Nothing more than that.

Your own life experience refutes the "set point" BS. If set points existed, you wouldn't have been able to drop from 320 to 180. As for not remaining at 180, that's your choice.

Incidentally, congratulations on the weight loss.

I'm going to disagree with you there, but only slightly.

There are places where your bone structure/musculature set you up. If you have been overweight since childhood, your bone structure will be much larger than a skinny person. I cant find a watch that fits my wrist to save my life, and my wrist is literally skin and bone. There is a point you get to where your body is, in fact, in harmony.

When bone/muscle/fat percentages are where they need to be, thats where you should be. I have a buddy who (before i know him) was over 400 lbs. he got down to 180, and looked great. Hes 135 now, and he looks really wierd. Hes not in proportion. Wide shoulders and hips, skinny stomach, big neck, big knees, lower legs look to small.

This is the exact reasoning behind the BMI numbers being complete and total BS (aside from the fact that they were invented by a statistician, with no medical knowledge for the purpose of census data and were never meant to be a medical tool)

Now, when someone says that they are 400lbs, and thats where their body is happy, is full of ####. When most people say that, they are just trying to fool themselves. But there IS actually a point that your body wants to be, and the weight number you end up at might not be the ideal number.

I don't even think there's a disagreement. I was refuting the NAAFA cr*p Roody was misguidedly serving up. I don't disagree with your point.

Haha... NAAFA ...

I actually chuckled when I read that, I had forgotten all about that rediculous organization.

Logging everything you eat may be a good idea, but after a few months of doing that on Weight Watchers I wanted no more of it. I still find it difficult to do.

My wife is good at watching food labels. Because of her we eat more fiber and less fat, more fruit and less desserts, not to mention smaller portions. If I could suggest one thing it is that no one try to make many changes at one time. Make a small change and when that has been integrated as a habit make another. I think long term change will last if changes are made gradually.

Losing six pounds over four months does not sound too bad. Someone posted that losing weight by exercising alone will result in a loss of about 1 to 1.5 pounds per month. Even with fewer bad eating habits I am grateful for a steady loss at that rate. No matter what I try, that is about the rate I have been seeing for the last year. With Weight Watchers I lost about that amount per week, but the changes I made with WW were not permanent enough and I put most of the lost weight back on over the next four years.

Cycling at a heart beat of 167 sounds too high. Most things on weight loss and heart rate suggest weight loss works better at around 70 percent of maximum heart rate--longer and slower. Download and read Cycling and Health.

Weight loss is slow business. We get too impatient, especially when we read about someone else dropping lots of pounds in a few months while we seem to be stuck on the same number for a couple of weeks.

Yes, you are totally right! Go tell a doctor you need weight loss medicine.

Why bother with a doctor? He can get it online.

Yes, NAAFA, also known as the death cult.

Everyone, by the respone in the last couple posts obviously I jaded your feelings a little. I'm sorry if it came across that way. For me I was frustrated because I was just wanting a response to the question in that scenario. I figured this would be a place to ask since there might be people that have used an option like that before. It didn't mean that I was going to go that route. I just wanted a little guidance. The overwhelming response about my diet wasn't the response I needed. I appreciate the response about my diet, but on the same token to each his own. There has been numerous people on this board who have lost weight. All the people did it in slightly different ways. Some just watched there diet (ie. types of food), some moderated their food intake, some had gastric bypass (with other lifestyle changes), some already had a fine diet and worked out, I'll guarantee somebody took weight loss pills. I was trying to direct my question at those who had. I come from a long line of people in the medical field. There is 2 doctors, 3 nurses, and a Drug Rep in my family. So I know the consequences of that route. I apologize for offending anyone or for seeming like I didn't care about your responses. Maybe we need to have a thread called "Weightloss: What Worked For Me..." stickied at the top of the forum. I can imagine it'd be a great resource with the experiences that you guys have all gone through.

I think you're humpty-dumptying here, but you have a couple hundred million potato-heads who will say you're right, so go for it. The truth, though, is that "society" doesn't know jack **** about healthy eating, so if you're using the conventional so-called wisdom as far as what constitutes a "healthy option" and what constitutes a "health nut", you've bought into a mindset that's been programmed by a marketing machine that makes a lot of money selling an unhealthy lifestyle. Healthy eating isn't a matter of popular opinion, it's a matter of biological fact -- ignore that at your peril.

As for your "health nut" label, let me remind you that your ancestors, and mine, have evolved through tens of thousands of years in which almost everybody did hard physical work all day (because they had to), and ate a modest quantity of lean and unrefined foods (because that's what they could get). If someone lived like that today, you'd no doubt sneer at them and label them as a "health nut", but those are the conditions for which our bodies are optimized. Those are the conditions that existed right up to my grandparents' time. Now in just two generations, we have a situation of caloric abundance combined with sedentary work and lifestyles. That's much, much too fast for our bodies to evolve to cope. We need to be eating and using our bodies more like our ancestors did -- once again, that's simple biological fact.

You can choose the drugs. I think that's stupid. Even the legitimate ones are trying to short-circuit biological processes that are incompletely understood at best. But it's a societal ill of ours, that we do stupid things and then hope for some technological genie to fix the problem. It never does. Solve the problem at the root; don't do the wrong thing and then go looking for technological whiz-bang to clean up the mess afterwards.

Just to be clear here: My position is to use the tools available. Pharmacological and surgical approaches do work, some better than others. Optimally, if you can lose it without Pharm or Surgical intervention, by lifestyle change, then that is biologically and behaviorally the best way.

If you do need intervention techniques, then by all means, use them, but be fully informed as to risks and complications. As you know, I did use the surgical intervention route, because I was for all intents and purposes, circling the drain. Surgical, though, in the long run is not a magic bullet, because you have to do the same life change as you would without it. All you are really doing is bypassing a large portion of your nutrient receptors. I went the route I did, risks and all, because I HAD to to stay alive.

EDIT: Pharmacological has these issues as well, in that you do need to make behavioral changes that you would have to make anyway. Just my take.

+1
I couldn't' agree more.

Set Points
 

I believe a clarification of "set point" is in order here. The term is not "fat acceptance BS" as far as I can tell. It is used within the fitness industry to describe a period where your current metabolism resists further change. This may actually be the body's way of telling us that progress is too quick. Some people refer to these periods as plateaus. "Set point BS" would be when someone uses lack of progress in weight loss as a sign that they have reached an ideal weight. At which point, I agree, they are full of BS.

The difficulty is in determining what the cause of the lack of progress is. It may be a return to bad habits in eating, but it can also be caused by no increase in volume, intensity, or both in exercise. The fact of the matter is that we get into ruts very easily. Careful attention to the training journal is just as important as careful attention to the food journal. Simply getting out to ride may not do you as much good now as it did six months ago, especially if the intensities of the rides are the same. The body is an incredibly adaptable machine and needs to be pushed just a little bit on a regular basis.

So the take-home point here is that you have to stick with the good eating and hard training for the long haul. Things like weight loss pills (to get back to the main topic) are useful tools (yes, I have used them with success with no ill physical effects or mental trauma) when used at appropriate times. They can also become a crutch to those who are looking for the quick fix and are unwilling to develop the necessary life changes to see success in fat loss.