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Someone I work with, who I have know for quite some time has started on this diet. Okay he has lost 20kg in a couple of weeks. Good for him!

But I held my tongue when he told me the diet he was on.... The cambridge diet ?

Never heard of it before but he told me he takes shakes and bars for 2 weeks and then has "real" food for 1 week, then 2 weeks of shakes and bars etc. till he meets his goal weight. For me it looks like he is starving his body, only feeding it on sugary bars and shakes. Losing too much weight in too little time.

I'm sorry but I can't see this as being a healthy diet. Doesn't help that I don't believe in "diets", I believe in life choices. Someone else at work has made a "life choice", he has learnt what is bad to eat (sugar, fats, amounts etc) and is now going to the gym as well. Very slowly is he losing weight, but he is losing it! And maintaining it!

Diets just seem to me a temporary thing, whilst a life choice is a lifestyle you can keep up for the rest of your life even with the odd biscuit.

Diets only seem to make you gain even more weight after you stop following the diet.

Aren't lifestyle choices the way to go ? Diets just seem so unhealthy to me, the cambridge diet my co-worker is on, seems to be filled with sugar.. ?? what happens after the diet??

Do you follow diets or make lifestyle choices and why?

It would be fair to answer my own question:

I eat what I want, when I want it and how much I want. It's a lifestyle choice, I listen to how much and what my body needs and I eat it, I don't over eat as I have a weak tummy. These days I can't finish a bag of sweets or crisps as I have had enough after a couple. I hate salty, very sweet, vinegar filled, fatty foods. I do have the odd hamburger but rarely enjoy it. I have biscuits in the house for my boyfriend but I don't eat any and no coca cola drinks for me.

I must sound boring :wah: I do love eating whole grain bread though, the darker the better with cheese.. lots of cheese :wah:

Just eat in moderation. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables along with the proteins. Drink lots of water. And move that body.

One of my girlfriends went on The Cambridge diet when she wanted to slim down for her wedding. When she started, she was fairly overweight and a size 20 In clothes. After 9 months she was a size 12. Towards the end and with the final big push, she went without eating solid food for weeks, just the shakes but she looked fantastic and glowing.

The plan really does work but It's very expensive. The shakes have a balanced Intake of everything In the way of minerals and vitamins the body needs.

I'm on a major diet regime myself at the moment. I need surgery on the back of my neck to remove a number of tumours, but have been told that before I can undergo the anaesthetic I have to lose at least 30 kg. in the first week I lost about 6 kg. After that, though, things began to level off & everything became far more difficult to make any headway. So far, after about 8 weeks now, I have managed a total of 18 kg - so am past the halfway mark.

The thing is, though, that because of it happening gradually, over a period of time, I don't notice any difference myself, but it becomes noticeable to others who haven't seen me for a while - even from week to week at the choir. Epilepsy Nurse, who hadn't seen me for about 6 months was amazed when she saw me a couple of weeks ago.

The only change I really get to notice in myself is that all my clothes appear to be 'stretching' & that trousers that used to be quite tight now need replacing because they won't stay up without a belt - which also need replacing. I even bought some new belts recently, which came through a couple of weeks ago - and already they're too big.

I also try to put in 100 x 25m length (2.5 km) at the pool at least once a week, as I did yesterday. I got home about 17:00, absolutely exhausted, went straight to bed, and woke us, 12 hours later, at 05:00 this morning. Hopefully that'll result in another kg by tomorrow.

I can't remember the last time I had a proper cooked meal, though. All I've been living on are salads, fruits & lots of liquids.

If you are present when your food is put on your plate, simply ask the person "dishing up" to give you a half portion of everything. This shouldn't be a problem because most of our meals are probably eaten at the home of family/friends. Whenever a plate of food is put in front of you at a restaurant just eat half of everything. You're paying for it so you do not have to eat everything.

Our brain take a while to figure out that our stomach is full so make sure you stop eating when you feel you could eat a little more. Within twenty minutes you'll feel you've had enough.

FourParts: I'm glad to read you are losing the weight that is needed for your operation! Obviously your reason for a diet is a very important one.. It's not a beauty thing, it's a health thing. I hope your operation goes okay ! I understand it will still be a little while before your operation will be done, but please let me know how it went. Good luck !

Oscar: I'm glad your friend lost the weight that she wanted to lose. I'm just having a difficult time understanding this diet. There is just so much sugar in it (well it seems so to me). Will she stop taking the shakes/has she stopped taking the shakes now? Will the weight stay off after eating normally again?

JJ: I picked up on some tests that have been done about food habbits. If your plate has the same colour as the food, people will most likely dish up more. Having the pots of food on the table, will make you "pick" at food after you have just had a plate (so you eat more without really realizing it). Bigger plate size will (most of the time) result in people dishing up more, because they want to see a full plate (so smaller plate, less food being dished up).

And so on.

So in my way of thinking it's a matter of (re)training your brain to become aware of what, when and how much you eat.

I don't own a weighing scale so I don't know how much my boyfriend weighs. Anyway, we worked out he was drinking more than 1000 calories a day in fizzy drinks.

When he started working he was losing weight, then he stopped with the fizzy drinks.. and oh my the pounds just flew off! I must say he still has a poor diet when he can make food choices, but within 6 months he went down at least 3 sizes. (again I don't know the amount of weight he has lost as I don't own a weighing scale).

* oh and obviously I know some people will never lose weight whatever they do due to for instance medical reasons, like hypothyroidism.

Most of my problem is also due to meds. Because of Epilepsy I take Epilim Chrono, which has the known side effects of increased appetite & slow metabolism, thus resulting in weight gain. However, my doctor is currently considering putting me on Metaphormine (or something like that). It's a medication intended for diabetes and, although I'm not diabetic, it has the opposite effect as the Epilim regarding appetite & weight gain.

FourPart;1457278 wrote: Most of my problem is also due to meds. Because of Epilepsy I take Epilim Chrono, which has the known side effects of increased appetite & slow metabolism, thus resulting in weight gain. However, my doctor is currently considering putting me on Metaphormine (or something like that). It's a medication intended for diabetes and, although I'm not diabetic, it has the opposite effect as the Epilim regarding appetite & weight gain.


I hope your doctor can find something that works for you, medication can have so many (sometimes strange) side effects....

along-for-the-ride;1457073 wrote: Just eat in moderation. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables along with the proteins. Drink lots of water. And move that body.




How simple to loose weight isn't it. I agree with you a lot, as eating, excercise and water , three golden things will bring the right weight to the body

kentro;1465343 wrote: How simple to loose weight isn't it. I agree with you a lot, as eating, excercise and water , three golden things will bring the right weight to the body
I hope that was meant in sarcasm, as it certainly isn't easy, regardless of the effort put in.

While it is true that my previous diet & lifestyle was hardly conducive to weight loss (in fact it was more surprising that I didn't keep adding it on once I got to a certain point), but with a new regime of diet & exercise I have gone from 160kg to just under 140kg, and entering into the 130s was a major milestone - then nothing. No matter what I do it's just plateaued out. Furthermore, whenever it creeps back into that 140s range (which isn't much of a change, I know), it's a major hit to the morale.

Because my system seems to have got so used to my lifestyle & diet now, nothing more is happening, and there are times when I'm tempted to quit the regime altogether for a while in the hope that another sudden diet blitz at a later date will kick start it back in.

Perhaps now that I've got a job (leaving in about 45 mins) it might help matters.

Diet is really hard, What I do is drink some probiotic drink and a daily dose of fruit and vegetables. Sometimes people just need probiotics to improve their digestion. I loss 3-5 kg just by eating fruits and vegetables + probiotic drinks