The FastDay Forum

I have just seen episode 2 in catchup and thank goodness I am not an emotional eater! That lighthouse was just cruel. And in another way, so was the strawberry picking test in Part 1. I could not resist a fresh British strawberry 10 minutes after a meal let alone an hour or two.

I was initially disappointed that they didn't break down weight loss by group, but realised that it would have defeated the object of the whole testing process. If their testing was correct in identifying the right diet for each group, then even if (for example) the Fasting group lost the most weight, it would not work as well for Emotional Eaters.

What I've taken from this is that Fasting is right for me. I had already decided at the beginning of the year to aim for low carb and no alcohol on weekdays. I have done my first back to back fast this week, and found it fine, and have ordered Ketosticks (The ones I had from when I did Atkins expired in 2003) and am going to use those to keep an eye on the effects of my carb consumption.

One minor moan is that the ebook is not available on PC or in hard copy and I would like to have that as a reference.

Looking at the different diets, I'm so glad I'm fasting. The thought of not having puddings and just sticking to grains and fish and chicken is just boring and I'll be surprised if many in that category stick to their diet. At least with fasting you can have a bit of everything and still lose weight.

I have finally caught up with watching the programme. I support wholeheartedly any research in this area and applaud the team for their efforts. However I do think Horizon oversimplified what actually happened for the benefit of national television and I'd really like to get a bit more behind the science and detail of their findings.

In the last episode, whilst the study sample was extremely small, I found the burger eating test for the feasters quite interesting. For those who did not see it, they measured speed of eating and how it impacted GLP-1, with slower eating speeds showing a definite increase in the amount of GLP-1 produced.

I also enjoyed the cake eating experiment for the emo eaters, where the "sod it the diet is blown" theory was well and truly exposed with quite shocking results in those who knew they had bust their diet vs. the others.

I found some of the emotional eaters stories quite heartbreaking and it was great to see many of them overcoming their issues with food.

I was skeptical of the advice on their website it gave me after the test (41% emotional/36% feaster/23% constant craver). I don't think the site has done them any favours really. So with my score, you have to figure out for yourself how to manage what is quite a deadly emo/feasting combination in my case. No wonder I feel like I'm fighting myself all of the time. I guess they could have combined some of the diet plans into one, but maybe that was not the point of the exercise. Perhaps they could have had a second control group who all followed the same diet across all three groups and compared the results to the group on the TV.

I got a bit needled by them using low GI instead of low GL. Bit surprised about that but there you go.

It is such a shame that they chose to over simplify what is a complex topic. But overall I did thoroughly enjoy it and hope that they can continue to explore this in more depth.

I would like to see a follow-up programme in a years time in which they see how the different groups have fared in following their diets without the knowledge that they are to be on national TV. It would be interesting to find out how sustainable the different groups found their diet.

Yes I agree with that. It would definitely be interesting to see the results after a year. I'm sure there are two groups that just aren't sustainable!

nursebean wrote: Yes I agree with that. It would definitely be interesting to see the results after a year. I'm sure there are two groups that just aren't sustainable!

I've been thinking about this (rather too much). I wonder if the people in the Feasters group will discover that they genuinely benefit from learning what it is to enjoy satiety? And from this notional way to work to their own benefit with their gut hormones? I know rationality doesn't govern weight change much in the face of so much temptations/pull to the contrary but I wonder if the 1 year success rate for this would be substantially worse than for other WOE/diets? (I.e., a statistical piece of misery.)

The Emotional Eaters - much would depend on what skills they'd been able to adapt and adopt from CBT as well as feeling supported by their selected group? I'm occasionally taken aback and rather sad when I read of people who are struggling and it's shame that stops them from interacting with people and matters deteriorate. And this happens even when they know that people won't judge them. Again, I can't see any reason why this would be worse than other WOE/diets.

Tricky to extrapolate from the Constant Cravers - as a self-selecting group of people who do this already, we wouldn't be doing this unless we believed it works, IYSWIM.

Overall - I still don't know what I think about the programme. It was far too light on the science with a horrible tendency to overclaim for what is already known - and I know a lot of the pressure for that will have come from the TV editing. I did think the examples of people getting discouraged after their rate of weight loss slowed was useful. Plus, I have my reservations about it, but that was a superb illustration of people planning to 'Eat 'cos I ate' in the cake sequence when some of the group were manipulated into thinking they were within bounds for their calorie budget for the day and others knew that they'd already blown it.

SSure wrote: Tricky to extrapolate from the Constant Cravers - as a self-selecting group of people who do this already, we wouldn't be doing this unless we believed it works, IYSWIM.

For a little old Bean...what does IYSWIM mean?

nursebean wrote:

SSure wrote: Tricky to extrapolate from the Constant Cravers - as a self-selecting group of people who do this already, we wouldn't be doing this unless we believed it works, IYSWIM.

For a little old Bean...what does IYSWIM mean?

If You See What I Mean

Ohhhhh! Thank you

can classified myself between constant eater and emotional eater. This make my life drastically change. thankgod i manage to substain being emotional eater little by little at the moment.