Ha ha ha, I can't wait to weigh in at the end of the month and see where I am. I imagine I'll be somewhere close to a sperm whale's brain.

Welcome! I would also recommend joining the group for Vegetarians and Vegans.

I'm type O and I eat a near vegan diet and I feel fantastic doing it. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I think the whole blood type diet is sudo-science crap. There is a notable lack of clinical trials.

I cut out meat a while ago and have more recently cut out all animal proteins after really doing my research. The ONLY nutrient that you will have trouble getting on a natural vegan diet is B12 which is the result of modern farming practices. Most milk replacements (soy milk, rice milk, etc) are fortified with B12. Just check and make sure that you have something like that or take a B12 vitamin. A major pro is that I feel fantastic and find I have a lot more energy.

Hi, its really easy to add stuff to the data base. Go to your food log and do all the steps to type in a food. Run the search and when what you want doesn't come up go to the bottom of the section and you will see something that says "add new food." Click on that and the rest will be self explanatory. Then you can choose to share your entry with everyone and add it to the food data list. If you do share it with everyone please just make sure the info you enter is accurate. Hope this was helpful.

I agree with Spacey47. You have to find something that is a healthy way of eating that you can maintain for the rest of your life. Like you, I tried a whole bunch of different fad diets and always gained the weight back. Now I am leaving all that behind and I'm really working to educate myself and make life changes. Basically, I'm learning what the habits of healthy people are and adopting those. If I eat and exercise like a healthy person then I will be healthy :) As a good start I would suggest educating yourself more on health and less on whatever the latest magical diet is. I am going the more natural route - what were our bodies meant to eat? I would suggest reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Polan and watching "Forks over Knives" its on Netflix if you're interested. Since I've started doing this I have tons more energy, I'm not hungry, and my clothes are all way to big on me. I'm really starting to enjoy the food too and I don't see myself going back to my old bad habits. Good Luck :)

Juicing really isn't all its cracked up to be. Eating fruit is great, but when you juice you take out a lot of the good stuff like fiber. Better to just eat the fruit whole. If I were you I would stick to lean proteins, lots of veggies, some fruit.

I've completely stopped weighing myself because it was making me obsessive. I don't know what I weigh but I can tell that I feel healthier and have more energy and my clothes are definitely a bit looser. Eventually I'm going to step on the scale and have my spouse record my weight without my looking just so that my exercise calories will be more accurate. I'm a lot happier this way and the numbers I'm paying attention to are how many minutes I exercised or how fast I was able to walk my usual route.

Ajujichcg - I wish you had respected what I said in the original post and not tried to advocate the use of HCG. There is no scientific study (other than the original that has not been shown to be repeatable) that shows HCG helps with weight loss and it has serious side effects. Your comment was inappropriate in this line of conversation. Fortunately I was able to talk my dad out of taking this poison.

I find the things that really cut hunger are high in protein or fiber. I really like the little individual sized cottage cheese cups. Breakstone makes them. I get the 2% milk kind and its high in protein for the number of calories it is. Getting the individual serving size ones also means I won't accidentally eat too much.

There's a lot of vegetables out there that are higher in protein than you probably realize. Asparagus and mushrooms for example. I also get a lot of my protein from low fat dairy and eggs. Often when I make an omelet I will use one whole egg and two egg whites. I don't tend to eat a lot of nuts because they are really high calorie for the amount of protein you get. Legumes such as lentils or edamame are good.

Thank you all for you comments. I had the initial talk with my dad, it led to a big fight and brought up a lot of history. He's agreed to stop taking the hCG, but still insists on trying to keep to a super low calorie diet. I told him that anorexia has a lot of side effects. I'm still not through with arguing with him. I want to convince him to go see a nutritionist who is reasonable and responsible and I would also like him to see a psychologist to deal with the binge eating, emotional eating, yo-yo dieting problem. (I am so pissed at the "dr" prescribing him this poison, whatever happened to "do no harm"?) Nimm thank you for the links, very helpful. PeeFat, my mom is a doctor and she's already tried to talk him out of this. She refuses to shop or cook for this crazy diet so he's doing it on his own. He never listens to her and I'm the only one in the family that has a chance of getting through to him. What can I say, I'm daddy's little girl. This tactic worked 20 years ago to get him to stop smoking, lets hope he still finds me too adorable to say no too. Thank you all.

I'm out in AZ visiting my parents right now and I've just discovered that my dad is taking HCG and is on a diet of less that 800 calories a day. The "doctor" that he has been seeing is clearly a quack and is charging an insane amount of money for this "treatment." He's in his 60s and I'm so concerned about what this is doing to his internal organs, especially his heart. He tried to keep this secret from me, and just told me that he was seeing a doctor who was helping him lose weight. But he left the pills next to the coffee pot and I found them. I'm going to confront him about this tonight and I want to be armed with facts. I would appreciate it if you could post any good sources that I can use to help me to help him. If you are an HCG advocate please do not respond to this, this is about my father and has nothing to do with you. Advocating HCG will not be helpful and will only receive a negative response from me. Thank you all in advance.

My favorite form of exercise is going hiking in the state park with my dogs. To keep my mind more active while walking I decided to start learning to identify the plants that surround me on my travels. The other day I looked around and realized that I was standing next to what appeared to be a large cluster of wintergreen plants. I picked a leaf, ripped it, and took a sniff. There was no mistaking that sharp minty smell. So, I picked some leaves, brought them home, crushed them up and added them to my loose leaf green tea. Yum. The variety of plants eaten by the average person has decreased dramatically as people rely on supermarkets and foods shipped in from other countries. It would be interesting to investigate some of the wild plant food options out there. So I got a field guide and I'm planning on broadening my wild foods palate. It will add to my level of nutrition, cause me to get outdoors and be more active, and engage my mind. I'm not planning on doing anything crazy like experimenting with wild mushrooms, but I got a field guide and I plan on collecting some things like dandelions and wood sorrel - easily identifiable, and safe. Has anyone else out there had any adventures with edible wild plants? Any advice for a beginner?

Good for you, just remember that there is such a thing as eating too little and it is possible to lose weight so fast its unhealthy. Make sure your RDI is appropriate for you. Patience is a huge component of success.

Great job on cutting out the soda. I think the biggest thing that you need to realize is that you have to change your habits for life, so you have to find habits that you can tolerate for life. For example, I know that I have a weak spot for chocolate so I've found a way to incorporate without going over board. I keep some high quality chocolate in the freezer and when I want some I will have a square or two. I just make sure that I record it. If you want to go to taco bell then go, but look up the calories ahead of time, try and pick something lower cal from the menu and then record it. Recording my food, just becoming more aware of what I eat, has helped a lot. Even if I go over my RDI I can still make sure that I am in the negative in terms of net calories for the day. If you want educate yourself about eating healthier I would strongly suggest the book "In Defense of Food" It looks at the history of food, the food industry, and the diet industry, and gives some great common sense ideas. For me another stumbling block was getting past the emotional baggage that is connected to food and my body. I had to start thinking about things in terms of math and physics. Energy consumed vs. energy expended. Mass decreases as it is turned into energy. Thinking of it this way made it less personal for me, which in this case was a healthy mental move. Good Luck.

That sounds yummy, I may have to try that. The other thing I've done is to make eggplant crust pizza. I like it because it's really quick to make. I basically take slices of eggplant and bake them then put tomato sauce and cheese on top and stick it back in the oven. If you are just making it for one person then using the toaster oven works.

Bring along a big veggie platter or something else you can snack on at will without disrupting your diet. This way you always have something to keep your mouth busy if you want to distract it from the less healthy food and your a wonderful guest for bringing something to the party.

An easy way to increase the amount of protein in your eggs is to add egg whites. When I make scrambled eggs I mix whole eggs together with egg whites. Whey powder is another good protein source. Pay attention to your vegetables and take note of which ones are high in protein per calorie. Asparagus is a great one, mushrooms are good too. Greek yogurt, part skim mozzarella, and low fat cottage cheese are also good.

Part skim mozzarella cheese sticks are great for eating on the go. Some veggies also have a high protein to calorie ratio Asparagus is one of my favorites.