Your body lowers your blood sugar by storing energy. This is really important because that is exactly the opposite of how your body loses weight. If your blood sugar goes up your weight is not going down, end of story. In a healthy person this would be physiologically impossible.

Better half went on the Dukan diet. Prior to this, she had tried just about everything else with limited success.

After approx. 3 months on this diet, she's gone from a size 10 to a size 6.

Not bad for an older woman.

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Mike Murrell
1991 300-SEL - Model 126
M103 - SOHC
"Fräulein"

I preferred the Dunkin Diet, hence the threat of diabetes.

I'm going to clarify some stuff on here, I see misinformation of nutrition and diets about as bad as bad info on cars when repairing your car. Just a disclaimer I'm not a registered nutritionist so take this with a grain of salt. However most of this info came from my nutritionist so its not all bad. Also, not meaning this to attack anyone, just as a clarification.

Those "master cleanse" things are just a matter of getting rid of the bacteria in your intestines. They'll regrow but obviously you'll have the weight back too. Its natural to have that in there. Drinking only lemonade or eating watermelon starves your body of a ton of nutrients and logically there is no way for this to work, nor remotely healthy. If you want to drop a big black log in the toilet, take a bunch of metamucil and guzzle some pepto bismal. If you look at the label on those "natural colon cleanse" products you'll find that they're just fiber (psyllium husk as main ingredient)

"optimal" is not 10x body weight for anything. You need to calculate your BMR (not BMI) using many online calculators to determine how many calories a day you burn through exercise. Use that against tracking every calorie along with gram of fat, carbs, protein, and satfat. Then you can determine an adequate calorie deficit and begin dieting. Skippy (OP) is doing it "right"...obviously there are different styles of diets but that is one proven to work. One of the most useful tools I've ever come across is livestrong.com, which allows you to track anything and everything. I've been using it for years (back when it was thedailyplate.com) and they have mobile apps that work great as well.

Well done! You should be proud of you weight loss and glad that everything is at a healthy level.

BMI is a crock of BS for actually determining anything factual. For example, I was considered "obese" for a while at 215 lbs, but what it fails to consider is the fact that I had less than 20% body fat. So statistically I was considered part of a national (global?) epidemic yet as a recreational weightlifter in some of the best shape of my life. All I'm saying is take BMI with a grain of salt

This is true from a ketogenic (such as Atkins) standpoint but very untrue from other diets'. By cutting carbs you drain your body of glucose, and force your liver into creating ketones to burn (called a state of ketosis). Ketones are generated from fat, and therefore your body will begin consuming its own fat along with that which you ingest. However, the balance between fat, carbs, fiber (also carbs), and protein is absolutely crucial. First, consuming this much fat often causes your cholesterol to spike so you need to have a healthy level of cholesterol before even starting....to maintain a healthy level you need to eat a large amount of fiber every day to essentially flush it out of your system. The fiber also helps move things along, if you catch my drift. If you do strenuous exercise you also need to consider "carbing up", which basically spikes glucose levels quickly and replenishes your muscles for a lot of energy exertion. A lot of folks also cycle in and out of ketosis not only as a "cheat day" but also to keep their livers in spec. In short, if you're on a regular low-cal-low-fat diet like most are, you can't just toss the bun from the burger and think its okay. It will work against you. The only time that sort of thinking is true is if your body is in ketosis and requires both the protein and fat to operate.

I think it would be fun to have a PP "biggest loser" contest. Obviously voluntary but it seems like there is a common shared interest on here. Just a thought!

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Retro is cool again! I'm like the new camaro

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

That wasn't clarification, actually had a good bit of confusion and misinformation added to the mix.

I can agree with what you said about fiber, BMR and few other things but all in all you have a long way to go on understanding how your body works. I suspect you are still living on your youth and that lets you get by.

Consider the possibility that the information that you got was directed toward your weight lifting efforts and may not be useful to most of the population who are not weight lifters. Most of the official advice on diet is debatable and clear information is very difficult to find. What works for one person is not necessarily the best for another.

Master cleanse and Atkins are very misunderstood and shouldn't be commented on by people who have not read the source materials. I don't think that either one is a good place to start and should be fully understood before anyone tries to use them.

BMI is not a crock for most people and I'm betting that your waistline was larger than it should have been even when you thought you were in the peak of your health.

BTW, I read that Master Cleanse is actually a ketogenic diet. Didn't go back yet to follow up but I can see it is possible.

Basal metabolic rate: What you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day. Basal Metabolic Rate : Calculators : Discovery Health Mine worked out to 1654 calories per day at my starting weight of 165 lbs.

Body Mass Index: Free Body Mass Calculator : Free BMI Calculator : Discovery Health Mine was 30.2 at the start of this, so I was obese, at least by BMI. On my last BCA a few weeks ago, I taped at 21.5% body fat, which isn't great but isn't terrible either. I know from personal experience that my best weight is about 152-154 lbs. Above that I don't get much stronger, and below that I get a lot weaker. According to the BMI folks, I'd still be "overweight" at that weight. (Note: Those of you good at math can now figure out how tall I am.)

I decided to start tracking my sodium intake to see if it's changed significantly from the baseline study I did in March. At that time I was consuming an average of about 3000 mg of sodium daily.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 401,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 26,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.
99 Mazda Miata 183,xxx miles.

This is one of the areas where the official advice is highly questionable. Some people get by fine with about 200-300mg of sodium a day. Average in the US is probably over 5000mg. If you eat restaurant food sodium is out of control. Ditto with processed food.

MSG is a big one too. Gluten, glutamate, glutamine, know them all and decide for yourself.

20% bodyfat for a guy is actually pretty terrible.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

You are right I am stating it from the position of someone who regularly gets strenuous exercise. It doesn't make the principles invalid however, and there are numerous source documents available via the internet and academic resources (if you have those available). I would like to see, outside of a keto diet where eating large amounts of fat is healthy except in rare and unusual circumstances.

I admit I don't know much about "master cleanse", I thought it was sort of like a long term colon flow commercial because there are a ton of those "diets" out there. THOSE are not healthy.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Keep up the fight.

You get older and you're wishing you could see around your belly just to see the numbers on the scale. Eyes wouldn't focus on something that small anyway. 20% is "the good old days". A whole lot of people can't get to their feet to wash them.

I refuse to be a part of it, won't go there. The food industry in this country is the genocide industry.

17-18% for a 5'11 215-220lb guy isn't too bad . Not great/cut but certainly not bad.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

As I understand it, the master cleanse was a diet designed by a doctor in the 1970s to give the digestive tract a chance to rest, heal, and get a chance to be completely cleaned out. I knew a bunch of guys with intestinal infections, ulcers and the like who did thie cleanse, and no more uncers, and the digestive tract infections were gone...

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All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to stand by and do nothing.

Too many people tip toe through life, never attempting or doing anything great, hoping to make it safely to death... Bob Proctor

'95 S320 LWB
'87 300SDL
'04 E500 wagon 4matic

That's not that bad for a white adult man. You're not in top shape but not obese.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

The worst part of the fat seems to be all of the fat soluble chemicals. Modified fats are neck and neck for that position though and both are best avoided. Some fats pass through the cell wall and so are often the delivery mechanism for drugs and hormones. Steroids are part of this line of information. Good clean fat should be part of your diet but within reason. Actually our brains have a lot of cholesterol naturally. They don't tell you that when they are trying to prescribe anti-cholesterol drugs.

Most of the Keto diets are not super high in fats if you play them right. At first, back in the 70's, Dr. Atkins didn't seem to understand what fiber was. His later work was much better.