As we said in the last issue , the second stage that the aspirant to lose weight comes to is the choice of diet. Meanwhile, there are thousands of different diets in the world. Or even tens and hundreds of thousands. However, despite the apparent variety, these diets (along with dietary patterns) can be broken down into a very small number of groups.

Group # 1 – Calorie Counting

Strictly speaking, this is not even a diet, because there may not be any restrictions on food – only in quantity. It all works very simply: with the help of special tables or simple programs, you determine what maximum calorie content of food you should consume during the day in order to start losing weight at the desired rate. Next, you use the calorie tables or using simple programs to calculate your daily menu, after which you start eating, adhering to this menu, and most importantly, the amount (weight) of a particular dish.

On the one hand, calorie counting is a simple, visual and indicative tool for assessing what you eat as food and how certain physical activities will affect the process of losing weight, however, when the whole nutrition system is replaced by the “calorie counting” tool , with the help of which you need to get in shape, here you often get a complete zilch. Although, as a tool, counting calories is a very important thing and for the vast majority of cases it is simply necessary. But precisely as a tool.

I, reading all sorts of forums on weight loss and studying what users write about these or those systems, just wondered how some people manage to pervert certain types of weight loss methods. For example, about the calorie counting system a hundred times I came across statements from the series: “Oh, girls, I was so hungry almost all day, so I was so hungry, but in the evening I was able to allow myself to eat a piece of cake.” She was so hungry all day, so hungry. I suffered in inescapable melancholy. But in the evening, she beat her body with nimble, like a sperm, high-calorie carbohydrates that would cause her insulin burst, a temporary attack of irrepressible energy, as a result of which she might even wash the dishes, and then these carbohydrates will quickly and freely settle in her fat layer. And, interestingly, after this, after a short time, the body will again require a lot of insulin (and cho, in the evening it was so good) and the lovely lady will again want to EAT. Moreover, not to eat, namely to EAT, because easily digestible carbohydrates are so harmful that, on the one hand, they give a short-term feeling of satiety, but then after them the feeling of hunger reappears quite quickly, and at that, atrocious.

Well, why do you need to sit on such “diets”? This is not only pointless, but also specifically harmful.

Also, I often saw joyful letters on the forums about how people discovered the “Mini concentration camp for quick weight loss” diet, where daily food is limited to fascist and completely inhuman 600-800 kilocalories per day. People, gnashing their teeth, sit on such a diet, lose two or three pounds a week and think that all this is good, all this is correct, you just need to be patient – and then the end is near.

Well, the end is not the end, but in a hospital on such a “diet” to please – just spit, get some serious diseases – just spit, and after this diet, after a short time, a person will quickly become fat, and even more than ever – here I am ready to bet on anything: I can even put my beloved pet on the line – I mean my computer.

But even when people nevertheless approach the calorie-restricted diet more responsibly – they do not go to extremes, they keep the recommended rate of weight loss, choose the right foods and their ratios – unfortunately, without fulfilling several other conditions, a large number of these people, having reached the desired weight, then after a while they are again eaten away. Because they stop looking after themselves, they stop controlling themselves. And this cannot be avoided: if you were once fat (fatty) and managed to return to normal weight, then the body will still remember those sweet years when it made such wonderful fat reserves and was so freely nourished so that it would have these reserves could save and multiply.

I, of course, do not and cannot have accurate statistics, however, of all my friends-acquaintances who happily lost weight according to the calorie counting system (I repeat once again: as an assessment tool, the calorie counting system is very effective and often absolutely necessary), then they were again consumed ALL. In general, everything. My sample is, of course, completely unrepresentative, but this is just a small private observation. Moreover, the maximum retention period for the result was about a couple of years, and the rest, as a rule, were gradually eroded again in just a year.

And note that when you are losing weight, almost all of your friends and acquaintances will happily note out loud that you are losing weight, and when you start to get fat again, everyone will be silent about it. Out of delicacy. And you, if you cease to control yourself, will not notice that you are getting fat again – just as you did not notice it, getting fat the very first time.

Group number 2 – mono-diets

A terribly popular type of diet among lovely ladies, because it captivates them with its simplicity and speed of the result. Whether he bribes them with the simplicity of acquiring problems with the stomach, pancreas, liver, skin, as well as the complete lack of results in any way in the long term – I do not know, but, apparently, it bribes, because these diets are very popular and are constantly discussed.

What is their essence? Yes, the fact that you are left with only one main product for consumption, and in this case it does not matter at all which one: rice, kefir, buckwheat, cabbage, carrots, chicken or apples.

What is the mechanism of action here? Yes, you know which one: you deprive the body of a balanced diet and at the same time overfeed it with one single product. Naturally, the body has to draw resources to obtain energy from pre-stored reserves, but where does it go? And you really do lose weight very quickly – by 4-7 kilograms per week.

What are the downsides? Yes in everything! There are no advantages at all. Firstly, to sit, for example, a week only on rice, buckwheat or cabbage – this is really very, very difficult. Even one day to sit on rice, buckwheat or cabbage is already a test for the psyche. And already a day on kefir or cottage cheese … I tried it once: I can only say that within a radius of five hundred meters from me all living beings were in terrible danger, it’s good only that I felt such a breakdown that I was not able to drag me to window machine gun to shoot everyone in the rags.

But a day is still here and there, in fact, a day on a mono-diet will not create any special problems and this can be considered simply as a “fasting day” – a thing, in general, even useful.

But 5-7 days or even more – such a huge imbalance in the diet leads to a wide variety of troubles, and constant diarrhea (a faithful companion of a kefir or curd diet) is not the worst thing. There is also anemia (oat and apple mono diets), gallstones, decreased hemoglobin and constipation (rice), skin problems (kefir), dietary hepatitis (carrot) and other entertainment.

Even the chocolate mono diet is popular with some lovely ladies and honorable gentlemen. Although it would seem! But no, there is one, quite famous: chocolate and coffee, coffee and chocolate. Because it’s delicious, and cool, and you really lose weight quickly. In a separate form, without other products, it gives an absolutely amazing blow to the central nervous system, liver and pancreas, and if you sit in this madhouse for a week, you can lose weight perfectly to insulin-dependent diabetes: this is an effective and very short way to achieve this bright goal.

What do mono diets give besides troubles and health problems? Nothing at all. A short-term rapid weight loss is a strong blow to the body, weight also decreases due to muscle tissue, and, of course, the weight will return quite rapidly and, as always in such cases, with excess. Moreover, after mono-diets, the body stores fat much more actively than before them, precisely due to stress.

Also, long-term (over three days) mono-diets are always accompanied by poor health, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, may be accompanied by bouts of aggression or, conversely, complete apathy, so my advice to you: if your spouse (husband) began to get involved in mono-diets, collect you your little things and dump for this time to live with a friend or just in a hotel, you will be more whole.

Otherwise, come home from work like this, and there your wife is on a cabbage diet for the third day. Raw cabbage – a thing like this: she, being in a stomach in splendid isolation, creates there a small adorable “Gazprom”, and how all this “gorgeous” affects the mood – and can not convey! So, not only does the spouse burn the lid of the piano with her gaze, and not only does she arrange concerts that will make you remember the PMS scandals as minutes of serene happiness, but also during the showdown, she will constantly poke around, making the atmosphere in the house hard to tolerate during in every sense.

And what are you laughing at? Do you think men on mono-diets behave somehow differently? Yes, there in general it can reach, if not to self-harm (I know one courageous person who, during a kefir diet, tried to eat his finger – he really wanted meat), then even to tectonic breaks in furniture – easily, this happened more than once.

No, don’t get me wrong, for situations where, for some reason, people with more or less correct weight need to lose a few pounds, this is completely normal: to sit on a mono-diet for a couple of days and quickly achieve the desired result. Why, for example, the names of professions are often found among mono-diets – for example, “Jockey diet”, “Model’s diet” and so on. These are their purely professional things, it works great for them.

Somehow I had the opportunity to get acquainted with how the most real fashion model eats. Honestly! Then I could not sleep for two nights: I kept jumping out of bed, running to the refrigerator, opening the door and caressing the stocks of such wonderful and so tempting food with my eyes. And I didn’t even have a romance with this photo model: how can you start an affair with a man who eats two boiled Brussels sprouts for lunch, and yogurt and an apple for dinner? When I looked at her food, hungry faints immediately began. 

But when a fat woman (fat man) sits on a mono-diet for a long time and she (he) is quite seriously going to bring herself into shape with such a madhouse, then you need to immediately call the telephone operator. Oh, the orderlies should be called, not the telephone operator. Or spouse (wife) to move out of the house. No, it’s selfish. You better tie her (him) and read a book about the correct ways to lose weight, and do not untie (and do not feed) until she (he) makes a terrible oath that he will not get involved with these mono-diets under any circumstances. Did you agree? Otherwise, I warned you, just write it down.

Group number 3 – intricate

In fact, this is a subsection of certain variations of mono-diets, which are very fond of publishing in all sorts of glossy women’s magazines called “Larisa Dolina’s Diet”, “Alla Pugacheva’s Diet”, “Alena Apina’s Diet” and so on, while the real Dolina-Pugacheva-Apin These diets, of course, do not have the slightest relation, and they themselves lost weight either according to Dukan, or according to Atkins, or they took a personal trainer, and he lost them so much, so lost weight …

And here there are both combined mono-diets, which are noticeably less harmful in comparison with rigid mono-diets, and all sorts of intricate diets with a combination of ordinary days with mono-days – such diets are designed for long-term use.

What is the essence of the combined mono diet? Yes, we just take seven relatively diverse options for mono-diets – fruits, proteins, dairy products, vegetables, cereals – and for each of them we allocate one day a week.

For example, here is the “Summer Diet of the Cat Bagel”:

  • Monday – only apples or pears.
  • Tuesday – only boiled chicken without fat and without skin (no skin, children, this is very important).
  • Wednesday – fresh vegetables, boiled vegetables (pureed).
  • Thursday – hello, white toilet friend: all day only kefir, drinking low-fat yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese; it is better not to leave the house and stay at first base, and if you use low-fat yogurt and cottage cheese, then it is better not to leave the toilet at all – it is irrelevant.
  • Friday – fresh vegetables, boiled vegetables (pureed).
  • Saturday – porridge (oatmeal, buckwheat, rice).
  • Sunday – vegetables and fruits.

Not a single more or less normal man on such a diet will not even make it to Thursday, but women can stand it quite well – at least one week. In this case, you will lose three or four kilos, and without much damage to the body, but with a serious shock to the psyche. And all this, of course, is completely useless for fat men, this works normally only for women who have gained three or four kilos from their normal weight and cannot fit into their favorite dress – yes, this is a quick and completely reliable way. But only for such cases.

What are fancy diets? This is just the “Diet of Larisa Dolina” or “Diet of Irina Otieva”. Everything is the same there, but not every day. That is, for example, one day eat everything as usual, and the next day – on kefir. Then everything is as usual, and the next day – only vegetables. And so on. For special intricacy, instead of just “vegetables” they can write “only mashed beets” or “finely chopped zucchini stewed for half an hour in the light of the full moon”, and then, as you understand, with this abstract “vegetables” there will be less confidence in the miraculous diet from “Larissa Dolina”.

Do these fancy diets help you lose weight? Yes, of course, fasting days will certainly lead to the fact that your weight will decrease. But if on the rest of the days you eat exactly the same as on those serene days when you were over-eaten, the effect will even be negative, because the days of mono-diets are serious tests for the psyche.

Group No. 4 – separate meals

We owe this extremely fascinating, albeit completely unscientific idiot to the American charlatan Herbert Shelton, who, like the wonderful electrical fitter-healer Gennady Malakhov, did not have any medical education, but was actively involved in all sorts of naturopathies, chiropractors, heliotherapy, raw food diet, fasting and other dendrotherapy …

(In an epic voice.) Even as a child, Herbert Shelton, his most respectable mother, declared: “Truly I tell you, Hera, never eat pickles with milk, because they DO NOT COMBINE.” At first, Herbert did not take mother’s words seriously and once ate a pickle with a glass of milk. And when it RAPED, Herbert realized that mother was absolutely right.

Later, when Herbert graduated from the American School of Naturopathy and received his doctorate in naturopathic literature (he successfully treated it by fasting), the future great political scientist thought that if, that means, pickles with milk are not combined, then, it means, there may be other products , which – this – this – also do not match!

Herbert secretly guessed that foods are made up of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, as well as other, less significant components. But what if it’s hard for the body to process, you know, protein and fat at the same time? After all, if a normal sexually mature man simultaneously takes a blonde and a brunette in bed, then what will come of it? One little bit of it will come of it, especially since Herbert reflected in the early twentieth century, when sexual practices were not very common.

The blonde is in her hour, Herbert said, the brunette is hers. And the redhead, by which he meant carbohydrates, is also its own hour, completely different.

Well, the body does not know how, Herbert argued, boldly opposing millions of years of human development, to successfully process mixed food. One has only to load mixed food into the body, as some enzymes will begin to fight with others, and as a result – fermentation, decay, intoxication and increased gas production. Humanity farts too much, Herbert argued, and it farts because of a mixed diet.

And what is the natural conclusion from this? The food should be separate. You can’t have a cucumber with milk – no way, just write it down! Carbohydrates are not allowed with acid. Proteins are not allowed with carbohydrates. Even two different protein products – absolutely impossible, they will fight in the stomach. Fats cannot be combined with proteins. (Fans of rib-eye steaks, by the way, several times ambushed Shelton, but he was a smart guy and, with the help of apitherapy, sent hordes of hungry bees to opponents.) You can’t starch with sugar. Melons and watermelons can only be eaten separately, and then three days without even looking at other food!


Rib eye steak

Anyway, Herbert argued, a monotrophic raw food diet is our everything! We consume only one plant product at a time, and without any processing! Do you know how interesting it will smell from you? It will smell very interesting, that’s the whole point! Even the wind will sway you. But you will die healthy if you don’t blow it away with the wind earlier.

Dr. Shelton knew that humans are naturally weak and subject to many temptations. That there are literally few real monotrophs among them. And that others want to eat a wide variety of foods, including processed foods. Well, idiots, what to take from them?

And since Dr. Shelton wanted to help all people, even idiots (especially since they paid well for it), he developed a separate food system, where he clearly described what was allowed and what was not. He compiled a “food compatibility table” based on the careful results of analyzing his inflamed imagination, and further on this table could be used to design a wide variety of diets, which is still being done by numerous followers of this system.

I once learned about the system of separate feeding thanks to one girl. Friends introduced me to her, we started dating – going to the cinema, now and then, and at some point I invited her to dinner. The times were hungry – Soviet and student, so I could not offer ram saddles with truffles, so the menu for a romantic dinner consisted of boiled chicken eggs stuffed with cheese and mayonnaise (a fashionable dish in those days) and fried chicken legs with potatoes.

A sweet girl, seeing the dishes on the table, immediately announced that it was impossible to eat all this by definition, after which she gave me a short two-hour lecture about the great scientist Herbert Shelton and the principles of separate nutrition. And all the sex on that romantic evening was just that I had a brain with this quack system.

I remember that it all ended badly: I starved to the point of sheer brutality, and then briefly but energetically told the girl everything I thought about her, about this damn Shelton and his moronic system. Then the girl left my house forever, and I ate the cooled potatoes with chicken legs, growling with pleasure, like a cave bear.

All sorts of real doctors and scientists have tried many times to explain that the pancreas simultaneously secretes various digestive enzymes, completely regardless of whether the food taken is proteins, fats and carbohydrates, that different enzymes, contrary to the assertions of the venerable charlatan, do not inhibit each other at all, which is separate nutrition is not only unhealthy, but in some cases it is harmful that food as such can contain both proteins, fats, and carbohydrates (or some of these combinations) at the same time, that there is no “separate digestion” that “discovered” Shelton doesn’t exist at all, but it was all to no avail.

Of course, scientists also carried out purely practical experiments, as is always done in cases when it is necessary to confirm or refute a theory. Two groups of people with similar data and similar overweight were taken, and for a certain period (these experiments were carried out many times, and the duration was different) one group received a standard balanced diet with a restriction on calories, and the other received separate meals according to the Shelton method with the same calorie restriction.

As a result of the experiment, it turned out that the separate feeding scheme itself had no effect either on the process of losing weight, or on the condition of the patients, or on the indicators of sugar, cholesterol, insulin, and so on.

So why does the split power scheme still work, and why does it still have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of fans? Yes, because the diets that are for this diet are low-calorie, contain natural products and it is forbidden to use any fast-digesting carbohydrates there. That is, people are offered a completely correct and healthy diet leading to weight loss, coloring it with all this crap about the “incompatibility” of some products for the imaginary significance. (Note, I will not argue with the fact that pickles with milk are still better not to use, here the honorable charlatan’s mother was absolutely right.)


Separate meals

If you take the “Separate Food Diet” and follow it, while not at all steaming with “compatibility”, then you will lose weight quite normally. It is exactly the same as if you follow this diet, reverently avoiding the blasphemous combination of legumes with meat and eggs and potatoes.

That’s all you need to know about the split power system.

Yes, and the last one on this topic. Supporters of the theory of separate feeding separately emphasize that Herbert Shelton lived to be 90 years old. They say that only the theory of separate feeding allowed him to live for so long. Well, my dears, if you follow this logic, then you need to immediately start smoking, drinking liters of alcohol, taking a wide variety of drugs and eating hell knows what to live to at least 73 years old, like the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who is the public with incredible amazement discovers every morning completely alive and already drunk in the morning.

Group number 5 – do not eat after six

Why did I single it out as a separate group, when “do not eat after six” is never a diet, but is simply a certain principle of nutrition? Because this cute idiocy is terribly popular. “Losing weight is very simple: it is enough not to eat after six” – this phrase has probably heard each of you, and many times. You probably had a lot of acquaintances who “did not eat after six” for some time.

I remember that I learned about this charming scheme at one of the student parties. We ate salad Olivier, ate sausage and chicken navels, drank vodka and “Arbatskoye semi-sweet”. And suddenly, on the opposite side of the table, I noticed a classmate Lena, who did not touch anything, and on her face she had an expression from the series “I just ate five lemons in vinegar.”

– What’s with her? – I asked my then friend, with whom I came to the party.

– Shhhhhhh, – answered the friend, – do not pay attention: Helen is losing weight and does not eat after six. 

– Then why doesn’t she drink, – I asked, – since she doesn’t eat?

“She’s afraid,” the friend replied, “that the alcohol will break loose and eat something.

At the same time, my friend could not answer the question, to the devil Lenka generally came to the party, since she “does not eat after six” and spoils everyone’s mood with her feisty face. (You will forgive me for putting it this way, but I am by birth a simple country boy, so I was not shy in expressions both then and now.)

I personally know people who “haven’t eaten after six.” I didn’t even eat once myself after six. More precisely, from six to ten. At ten, I already fought my way to the refrigerator, which my wife defended at a serious risk to her life: it was she who encouraged me to “not eat after six” and she believed that she had to hold me back. I am happy to report that nothing came of it: I still broke through, and she was forced to retreat when she saw that I began to gnaw at the door of my iron friend.

Almost everyone has gone through this. Some even managed to survive for a week. Individual individuals – almost a month. Have they managed to lose weight? Not everything, but if you don’t eat after six (and also after five, after seven, or after eight), you can really lose some weight. However, the majority could not do this. A completely classic scheme: a beautiful fat man who decided “not to eat after six”, at five hours forty-five minutes sits down to eat in three throats in order to be able to hold out and “not eat after six.” He still won’t hold out, and even if he holds out – well, what the hell is that all about? Fuck doing some blatant idiocy

But “don’t eat after six” is a very stable thing. After all, all you need to do is “not eat after six” – and you will lose weight, as this cute folk cretinism says.

***

Well, now we have come to the most demanded, the most popular and quite working group of diets under the code name “BJU Restriction”. These include diets such as the Ducan diet, the Atkins diet, the LCHF diet (aka Swedish), and so on and so forth. We will talk about them next time, and we will also answer the question why some of these super popular diets (it is better for the evil old Dukan to start smoking nervously) is better not to use.