Yesterday in Facebook, I came across a cite to the following article.
I haven't checked out the underlying research, 
and I don't plan to experiment with this idea,
because I've already had a lifetime
of unsuccessful experimentation wth it.

Still, it's an interesting article, 
and I see it as one more example
of how different each of us can be, and
that the same things don't work for everyone.

"10 February 2012

Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term, explains Daniela Jakubowicz, professor at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, who led the study.

Over the course of a 32-week-long study, participants who added dessert to their breakfast - cookies, cake, or chocolate - lost an average of 40 pounds more than a group that avoided such foods, the journal Steroids reports.

What’s more, they kept off the pounds longer. A meal in the morning provides energy for the day’s tasks, aids in brain functioning, and kick-starts the body’s metabolism, making it crucial for weight loss and maintenance, according to a Tel Aviv statement.

And breakfast is the meal that most successfully regulates ghrelin, the hormone that increases hunger, explains Jakubowicz. While the level of ghrelin rises before every meal, it is suppressed most effectively at breakfast time.

These findings were based on 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults, who were randomly assigned to one of two diet groups with identical caloric intake - the men consumed 1,600 calories daily and the women 1,400.

However, the first group was given a low carbohydrate diet including a small 300 calorie breakfast, and the second was given a 600 calorie breakfast high in protein and carbohydrates, always including a dessert item (i.e. chocolate).

Halfway through the study, participants in both groups had lost an average of 33 pounds per person. But in the second half of the study, results differed drastically.

The participants in the low-carb group regained an average of 22 pounds each, but participants in the group with a larger breakfast lost another 15 pounds each.

At the end of the 32 weeks, those who had consumed a 600 calorie breakfast had lost an average of 40 pounds more per person than their peers.

Jakubowicz conducted the study with Julio Wainstein and Mona Boaz from Tel Aviv and Oren Froy of Hebrew University Jerusalem."

                          

Portion control is essential to successfully manage weight. 
This is true for weight-loss and for maintaining weight-loss.

It is valuable to learn what a portion really looks like. 

Portion control is a basic principle of almost all weight-loss plans,

and yet, it is one of the hardest skills for people to master.

Most restaurant plate servings  contain between 2 to 4 portions,

and finishing the entire plate can go far beyond the limits 

of what the body can use on that day.  

 Visualizing what one normal portion looks like can be helpful. 

Here are some examples:

Meat = the size of  a deck of cards or a cassette audiotape

Fish = the size of a checkbook

Peanut butter=- the size of a walnut

Dressing = the size of a shot glass

Butter = the size of a postage stamp

Cereal = the size of a woman's fist, or a baseball

Rice or pasta = one-half a baseball

Potato = the size of a computer mouse

Bread = the size of 1 CD

Hard Cheese = the size of 2 dominoes or 4 dice

Mixed nuts = fits into the cupped palm of a child's hand, or the size of a golf ball

Generally, a single serving consists of:

1 cup (8 ounces) of milk

1 ounce of cheese

½ cup of vegetables

1 small piece, or `½ cup to 1 cup of fresh fruit

½ cup to 1 cup of cooked rice or pasta

3 ounces of lean meat, fish, chicken.

 We need to retain our brains to think small.

When we measure with our eyes, remember:

1 teaspoon = the size of a fingertip (top to middle joint); fits into the screw cap of a water bottle.

1 tablespoon = the size of a thumb tip (tip to middle joint)

¼ cup = the size of a golf ball

½ cup = a fruit or vegetable that fits into the palm of your hand - about the size of a tennis ball.

1 cup (dry) = the size of a woman's fist or a baseball. 

 Some common Myths and Misconceptions are:

"It's low in fat so I can eat more." 

This is a common mistake, but it isn't true - just because a package says "low fat"

doesn't mean that food is low in calories. Portion control is important for all foods,

even those claiming to be low in fat or calories.  

"Liquids don't count". 

Yes they do - and here it is easy to misjudge the intake of a food portion. 

Some liquids contain a lot of calories.  A simple coffee latte contains about 212 calories,

and the skinny option contains about 167 calories. 

Anything that goes into your body, liquid or solid, will impact your weight.

Sometimes, when I look at the different weight-loss websites
I am amazed at their ability to frequently and continually
churn out interesting articles.

I'm finding that it takes an enormous amount of time and energy
to write about things that I find meaningful.

I have to put ideas and concepts into my mind,
and mull them about a bit,
before I come up with something to say.
That takes time, too.

I would like this website, DietHobby,
to be helpful to others, but
it is primarily intended to help and encourage me
with my own weight-loss maintenance efforts.

 So this is sort of a disclaimer.
If you come here, and find nothing of interest,
it's because at that particular time, that particular day,
either, I had nothing new to say,
or nothing that I felt that I needed to share.

This ia  picture of one serving of food from my new cooking video,
Tuna Noodle Casserole
which is located at DietHobby, under RECIPES,  Mealtime.

I used up my inspiration and energy in writing this long e-mail answer, so I'm sharing it here in this article. 

 Someone asked me the following question:

"Can you tell me how many carbs you limited yourself to
when you were on low carb?
Did it work well for you?
I seem to have more luck counting carbs."
 

Here's my answer. 

I think that low-carb is an excellent diet plan, and if it is a workable plan for you, go for it. Personally, whether I'm doing low-carb or not, I've found that it is necessary for me to track my food, and count calories.

All of my own research and experimentation and observation leads me to believe that Calories Count, even when doing low-carb, and IF there is a "calorie edge" to eating low carb, it is a very small one, probably not more than 100 calories a day.

I've seen that people who choose to eat more calories than they burn ...over time... while doing low-carb will still gain weight. Low-carb -- when it's VERY low carb -- tends to be more satiating, and more and more I suspect that --- over time --- it works primarily because people ingest less food.

My experiments with low-carb have been during maintenance at normal weight, so it can't be fairly compared with someone in the weight-loss phase.

I am intrigued by Gary Taubes' position about carbs, (see the BOOK TALK Section at DietHobby.com) and did a lot of experimenting with it in 2011.

I have experimented with what is known as ZERO carb -- which actually turned out to be around 5-10 carbs a day, because I choose not to give up my very small amount of plain, Greek yogurt.

However, during most of my low-carb experimentation, I worked to keep my carbs around 20 or less.

When I'm doing my "normal" - "balanced" food plan, my carbs are usually around 50-80 or less. For me, a normal, really high-carb day would only be about 100 carbs. It just turns out that way, because I don't have a large enough calorie allowance for more.

My own experience .. so far .. because I expect to be doing further future experimentation with low-carb
is that ... either because of the lack of variety in the food, or because carbs cause more cravings (& at this point for me I can't honestly say which)

My appetite tends to be satisfied at around 1100-1200 calories a day, which is just a tiny bit ABOVE my calorie allowance to maintain my current weight, and over a long period of time, would still involve a weight-gain, but I didn't lose any actual fat weight at that calorie level on 20 carbs or on zero carbs.

What happened for my body, was that my weight dropped between 3 to 5 lbs DURING THE TIME I was low-carb, but I feel very certain that this drop was only due to water-weight, because within a week or two of returning to a very-low-calorie, "balanced" diet of around averaging only 800 calories, and my weight quickly adjusted to the previous number.

This happened to me 4 different times, each time after more than a month of successful low-carb eating so I never experienced even a real fat loss of even 1 or 2 lbs,after weeks and weeks of low-carb eating.

That's the personal data I have so far, but it isn't conclusive, and I will be doing more experimentation.

My preference is to receive diet questions in the comment section of DietHobby.com rather than in e-mails, so that the comment and my answer will benefit all of the readers there.

Due to my time limitations, When I spend time writing a long e-mail answer, there's a good chance it will wind up as a future article, anyway.

Like it just did.