Most real life studies show that the by orders of magnitude most important effect is the bare number of calory intake – what you actually eat does not really matter.
That may be numerically almost right but is meaningless in practice, because if you eat 1000 cal of plant matter you are filled up, whereas if you eat 1000 cal of ice cream (or meat, etc) you digest it fast and get hungry and raid the fridge, and get fat!
That is why most peoples’ attempts at weight loss fail completely. You can’t do it by eating less.
If you want to eat a daily energy of 2.000kcal by kale only, you need to eat 2kg of kale every day. Even the biggest vegan fanatics would not eat 2kg of kale a day.
That’s a ridiculous example; nobody would need or want to do that. The “art” of a plant based regime is that you eat “substantial” veg e.g. sweet potato, radishes, not lettuce.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Most real life studies show that the by orders of magnitude most important effect is the bare number of calory intake – what you actually eat does not really matter. It is just that some diets make it simpler to reduce calories than others.
I’m not so sure about that. French women are the group of women in Europe eating most calories. They also are the slimmest women in Europe. Marine fat is healthy, red meat animal fat is not and so on.
LeSving wrote:
French women are the group of women in Europe eating most calories
Fascinating. Where can I find data on this? I’m aware of data that shows that French (independent of gender) have the fewest meals per day across Europe (something like 4.5 compared to e.g. Dutch with >7 on average) but don’t know data on calorie intake.
have the fewest meals per day across Europe (something like 4.5 compared to e.g. Dutch with >7 on average)
Huh? How could you possibly find time to have 7 meals per day? I suppose if you count a biscuit with a cup of coffee or a piece of cheese at teatime as w hole meal, you could get there.
Yes the French ladies enjoy their food as do French men. Do we have less meals? I don’t know. I think we have some of the longest, especially with the family. I wouldn’t say we live to eat,but food is an important part of our life so we make sure we enjoy it. In other countries they eat to live and that’s their choice. But IMO this just allows work to take over your life and leave nothing for anything or anybody else.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Fascinating. Where can I find data on this? I’m aware of data that shows that French (independent of gender) have the fewest meals per day across Europe (something like 4.5 compared to e.g. Dutch with >7 on average) but don’t know data on calorie intake.
I lived in France for years and was married to a (slender) French woman for over 20 years, IMHO the answer is quite simple – as a generalization, the French don’t snack between meals. It’s three meals a day with perhaps a coffee in between. Contrast that with Britain, where everyone seems to run around with a pack of crisps (potato chips for the uninitiated) 24/7/365. Not to speak of the US, where you have to try pretty hard to avoid sugar. I personally hate sugar and once you leave the cities it can be impossible to even get unsweetened ice tea.
gallois wrote:
food is an important part of our life so we make sure we enjoy it.
As it is one of the best cuisines in the world, that is entirely understandable!
Jujupilote wrote:
Basically it is every year, next year.
Old tradition…. things will always be finished “tomorrow”.
Old story I picked up in Bulgaria:
A guy who has lived for 50 years abroad comes to his hometown the first time since he emigrated. When he wanders down the old haunts, he suddenly remembers he left some shoes with a shoemaker before he left but forgot to pick them 50 years ago. So he decides to go and see if the man is still alive and, lo and behold, finds him a lively 90 still in his attelier repairing shoes.
When he tells him who he is, the old shoemaker goes into deep thinking. “Oh, yes, I think I remember. Those were leather shoes which needed a new heels?”
“Yes,” shouts the emigrant. “I am so sorry I never picked them up before I left”.
“Ah, no problem,” sais the old man. “They’ll be finished this time tomorrow!”
Speaking as an avid fan of French food… sugar is added to pretty much nothing here, except obvious things like desserts. In the US, you can’t even buy bread without sugar in it! (Well, unless you pay crazy amounts at a boutique baker, if you live where there are some). Much the same is true of salt. I find US restaurant and prepared food frequently inedible because it is so sweet or salty or both.
As for people, I think it’s all a question of social norms. In much of the US people look at you with suspicion if your BMI is much under 35. My wife (French, fits the profile) often got catty remarks from women where she worked – and we’re talking Seattle, not Alabama. But in France, to a first approximation all of the women look good. (Of course there are exceptions, but that’s what they are – exceptions). And so there’s a social pressure to be reasonably slim, to dress well and to look nice.
That really came to my attention when we went to a wedding in a chic Paris suburb a while back. Every single one of the women there – aged jail-bait to 80 – looked really nice (making allowances for age, of course). There was just ONE woman who was bit “rondelette” – she would have been called skinny in Mississippi – and all the other women were making excuses for her, how she’d had health and family problems and so on. Men generally take decent care of their appearance too, again certainly compared to the US. I made myself lose 25 kilos when we decided to return to France. OK, there were other reasons too, but this was one.
Still, the French do eat well and they do snack – I was at the supermarket today and I promise, there were lots of snacks.
johnh wrote:
In much of the US people look at you with suspicion if your BMI is much under 35.
LOL, maybe I should finally move to the US :)
A good friend of mine once said, if you wanna look slender, surround yourself with people who are fatter than you…
172driver wrote:
Not to speak of the US, where you have to try pretty hard to avoid sugar. I personally hate sugar and once you leave the cities it can be impossible to even get unsweetened ice tea.
As always, there is not one US. I spend time in the west and the southeast and they are two different places in terms of diet, as much as say France and the UK. In our area I think you can buy literally any kind of food, or almost, more variety anyway than any single place I’ve been in Europe. But you do have to know what you want, find the place that sells it, and make the effort to buy it.
Having said that, my wife works in the catering business and gets discounted ingredients. Her recipes are similar to those of her employer, except she leaves out almost all the sugar. I eat well, although too much.
Our combined weight is 130 Kg.
