Biggest Gripe About Avatar Nutrition

nutrition in general is such a misunderstood concept bc everybody wants that quick fix. i have the stereotypical woman is my office that is 100% committed to whatever the new trend is at the time and every other way of doing things is wrong. it bothers me so much.

I have to agree with you on this, and there are some real attention whores in the group as well. I don't think this is really limited to Avatar, though. MFP community is even worse.

Unfortunately a lot of people in the group fall into the flexible dieting trap of eating crap just because you can. I've fallen into it myself in the past. The philosophy is supposed to be 80/20 but a lot of people simply do "meet protein and fiber and eat wtf i want!". They miss the boat and don't realize how eating out all the time and eating crap all the time makes it so much harder to be consistent and see the results they want. They would not be losing calories so quickly if they were tightly controlling the calories. It's all a relative estimate anyway, but eating out and eating snacks and stuff make it so much easier to overeat without realizing it. I had an ice cream sandwich the other day, but that was the first 'treat' i had all week and I am about 95% compliant most weeks and that is only 150 calories. I'm not wolfing down McD's hamburgers just because I can.

Another gripe I have with AN is that for years they pushed reverse diets too much. The majority of people don't have slow metabolisms and probably don't have much metabolic adaptation, they just misjudge their intake/expenditure greatly. They pushed people to reverse and acted as if you could push your reverse past the point of maintenance and actually increase your maintenance calories. This is only the case for people with severe metabolic adaptation, such as bikini competitors. Pushing people to reverse resulted in a lot of people, myself included, in gaining weight unnecessarily. It seems they've backed off on pushing reversing but people still love it. Reversing should be very temporary and only to maintenance, to the tune of 4 weeks. Not 12 weeks.

Now, if you are smart and follow the prescribed macros and don't eat like dogshit every day, it works.

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I have to agree with you on this, and there are some real attention whores in the group as well. I don't think this is really limited to Avatar, though. MFP community is even worse

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Avatar is a great system, but most of the people that use it are complete fricking idiots and look and eat like shite.

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Unfortunately a lot of people in the group fall into the flexible dieting trap of eating crap just because you can. I've fallen into it myself in the past. The philosophy is supposed to be 80/20 but a lot of people simply do "meet protein and fiber and eat wtf i want!". They miss the boat and don't realize how eating out all the time and eating crap all the time makes it so much harder to be consistent and see the results they want. They would not be losing calories so quickly if they were tightly controlling the calories. It's all a relative estimate anyway, but eating out and eating snacks and stuff make it so much easier to overeat without realizing it. I had an ice cream sandwich the other day, but that was the first 'treat' i had all week and I am about 95% compliant most weeks and that is only 150 calories. I'm not wolfing down McD's hamburgers just because I can.

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Like OWS said most people on there are fricking stupid and think 1800 calories for a women is poverty macros...they only think that because they are fat fricks who are used to eating like fat fricks.

It's annoying as shite, I don't look at the group much because of that bullshite. I just want to shake some of the fat peoe on there who bitch about being 500 calories below maintenance.

The system works people are just scared to stick to it and let it work.

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Another gripe I have with AN is that for years they pushed reverse diets too much. The majority of people don't have slow metabolisms and probably don't have much metabolic adaptation, they just misjudge their intake/expenditure greatly. They pushed people to reverse and acted as if you could push your reverse past the point of maintenance and actually increase your maintenance calories. This is only the case for people with severe metabolic adaptation, such as bikini competitors. Pushing people to reverse resulted in a lot of people, myself included, in gaining weight unnecessarily. It seems they've backed off on pushing reversing but people still love it. Reversing should be very temporary and only to maintenance, to the tune of 4 weeks. Not 12 weeks.

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The AN management doesn't do a good job at all of explaining what reverse diets are used for. Reverse diet should be used to continue the fat loss process by breaking plateaus through restarting the hormones that have bottomed out. Other reason is for the reasons you stated.

Studies have shown over and over metabolic disorders are very rare in non competitive physique athletes.

Reverse diets should be used like this

Women stays on fat loss for 10 weeks being strict and complaint the whole time. She whittles her calories down to 1200 with 600 of those from protein. At this point she stalls after 3 weeks on 1200. She has really already maxed out her NEAT and exercise calroeis and she can't raise her dietary induced thermogenesis without going to a protein sparing modified fast. So she has two chooses, go directly to maintenance and take a diet break to raise hormones like leptin or she can reverse diet back to maintenance delivering the much needed calories to get her hormones levels rising again.

So she goes to 1450 Cal's for 2 weeks and after gaining a little water weight, ends up 2 pounds down total over the two weeks. She goes to 1700 the next two week and loses another 2 lbs. Goes to 1950 and loses 1 over 2 weeks. Then to maintenance fora 3-4 week diet break.


Another gripe I have is how they act like diet breaks are needed physically, they aren't and fall under the same conditions as reverse dieting. Most people do not have metabolic syndrome. Mentally they are good but physically most of the time they are not needed for non competing athletes