Since I came in Switzerland I gained 10 kilos ... looks like I love too much cheese and chocolate ... I am actually a cheese freak, I just love it.

Now I think it's about the time to do something with my extra kilos and I think it will work better with company for the challenge and support.

Who want's to start a diet with me? I am thinking to start with a dissociate eating plan for a week and then starting to eat normal but healthy.

Did you try some eating plans that were successful? Of course combined with more sports.

No diet needed. Eat less, move more.

That's true but when you want to start to loose weight is indicated to have a cure for detoxifying the body at first.

Why?

Sweating also does that.

I feel your 'gain'!!! The cheese is definitely sticking to my bum and thighs!! I lost a lot of weight a few years back and was very motivated by the Superfoods books by Stephen Pratt. And yes - it isn't a 'diet' - eating healthy and getting some more exercise. I have slipped a bit withh the move here because I love trying new things and it all looks so good!! Plus, things are very seasonal here so I feel like if I don't try it now in a few weeks it will gone.

So my goal now is to try and get back on track with the healthy eating but to kick start some weight loss I do a fruit day once a week. Just fruit, water and herbal tea. Then sticking to the super foods for the rest of the week, occasional treats and trying to get more exercise. I have replaced most meat with turkey - luckily very available here and not very expensive and eat lots of beans, grains, veg, berries, nuts/seeds. If you want some recipes let me know.

I don't have my exercise equipment in BAsel so need to find a gym but I do have my pilates and yoga DVD's (not very motivated to do them though) and the hubby and I go for an hour walk everynight. In the UK we used to go see live bands (local bands in little venues) 3 or 4 nights a week and I would groove til the sweat was pouring. I think the loss of that fun form of exercise is also a factor in putting on some weight.

Good luck and if you find any good ways to motivate please pass them on!!! Tomorrow is my fruit day - wish me luck!!!

buy a bicycle. use it.

I am not gonna explain why body detox is necessary or healthy from time to time, even if you don't plan to loose weight...

Some of us we need more efforts to become active again and to have the weight that we want. Besides my cheese and chocolate period I could gain weight even from air. All the feminine side of my family - mother, grandmothers are overweighted ...

This sentence actually doesn't make sense. Could you clarify please?

I really wanted to know....

Translation: people who peddle their diets as "easy" solutions say that you need to do it with a detox diet (usually involving their products).

You'll lose a few kilos and gain the confidence to continue losing more, supposedly. What you're actually doing by going on a low-calorie diet is forcing your body to go into deprivation mode and forcing it eat away at not only fat, but also solid tissue and muscle.

You may be losing weight, but you're not getting the benefits you'd be getting by keeping your body decently (not excessively) nourished and by exercising, which has more benefits than just burning away calories - it speeds up your metabolism, it burns fat, it makes you sweat (thus lose toxins and water retention) and it builds muscle.

So as Carlos said, eat less and move more. And it was said even better in another thread a while back, can't remember by whom, but it needs to be copyrighted as a weight-loss plan name: "Just cut the crap and do the exercise."

caloric deficit.

you need certain amount depending on your size and activity.
As long as you get the deficit you should be losing weight.

Just eating less doesn't cut it as the body figures there is something afoot and changes the metabolism, you need to zigzag it a bit.

It's complicated and annoying

Buy much stronger tasting cheese and much higher cocoa percentage chocolate. You eat less and get more flavour.

...and here was I thinking that a picture was worth a 1000 words...

Really. I've just a month of manual labour, working min 10 hour days, lifting bags of cement, painting, laying floor and generally making a house habitable.

Calorie intake was probably slightly reduced to normal, exercise/movement massively increased and I lost close to 3 kg over that period. Probably the first time in my life that I've lost weight over the Christmas period!

Seems simple to me... but then, as you know, I'm a simple chap, with religious beliefs

I train 5x a week (sometimes 6). Having to count calories is annoying went you try to make a weight division.

good thing I don't have the heavy weight of those things

true

And true. Losing weight is hard. It's evolutionarily programmed to be.

Yeah, but that's on top of your desk job, no? As a generalisation, most people eat too much compared to what they are doing day to day.

In my recent experience, my reduced calory intake was simply a function eating less, moving more:

• not having much time to get food
• having limited spare food lying around (on building site, although we did have snacks available)
• not having time to stop, no coffee, no tea
• not sitting a desk all day, being bored and posting on EF (look at my post count for that period )

I've noticed a similar thing when our first was born and I took 3 weeks off to help around the house. Not sitting at a desk and moving made a huge difference to my weight, i.e. 1-2 kg's lost.

If you are talking about weight divisions, then yes, I agree, it is more complex as you are trying to achieve and maintain a specific goal. But just loosing weight? Nope, fairly simple as Ruskov says.

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I am in a similar situation unfortunately... diet does not help....I can tell that, I have got some experience.
You can have a diet for 1 week, 2 weeks, half year, eventually you are going to leave it. I did.

I have to keep some rules and discontinue some bad habits which does not come easy.

No food after 6 pm. That is really hard. I am not hungry but I have got this silly habit to go home, drop down dead in front of the tv and get some tiny thingies AND red wine. This is a calorie bomb!
I managed to quit beer drinking at home - I keep the space for the weekend

No pasta, no bread - I try to keep this to a minimum.

Schoggi - no schoggie at home. If I don't have it, I am just too lazy to go and buy it. (same applies to chips)

Workout - I love sports I just did not do for a while because I had reasons. No more reasons anymore. I made a pact with my daughter that mummy is away at least 3 times a week (in the gym, of course).

I try to eat more frequently, take a lot of fruits to the office, rice crackers, chewing gum...

I still have to clean some sweeties of my daughter from the kitchen chest... it is good that I have to write about it!