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What's interesting about this post isn't the actual diet advice, but the guidance to track and see what works for you. Different people react to fasting differ

What's interesting about this post isn't the actual diet advice, but the guidance to track and see what works for you. Different people react to fasting differently - some continue to burn calories and drop weight, some just go into starvation mode, have their BMR crash through the floor, and end up exhausted all the time because their body is fighting like crazy to conserve energy. Likewise - some people, when they start to eat carbs, see their BMR ramp up, are full of energy, and end up running 5-10 miles a day to burn that energy off, and are pumped the rest of the day. Also, focussing on weight to the exclusion of everything else is really horrible. It's pretty easy to lose 40-50 pounds and end up being much less healthier than you were before if you aren't careful. Having some sense of your V02 max, your strength, endurance, flexibility, etc.. are sometimes as important, if not more important, than what your weight is to +/- 20 pounds. Everybody is somewhat different in how they'll react to various diet and exercise regimes. Understanding that, and taking a bit of time to watch how your body responds, is the important insight here.

zatkin 10y ago
I do a lot of rock climbing, so most of my body is muscle. I'm currently floating at 170 lbs, but would love to lose 10 lbs so I can get up the wall faster. I think that fasting might be foolish because my body needs energy for climbing. In fact, if I wait too long after eating lunch, I tend to get really hungry during climbing and I start yawning a lot (not sure why).
- personjerry 10y ago
  Might be lacking glucose; I believe that is why marathon runners eat glucose before they run.
  - zatkin 10y ago
    What do you mean by glucose exactly? What kind of foods should I be eating? I usually just get whatever for lunch at my company - tacos, Indian food, whatever is being served.
    - ihsw 10y ago
      Depends, how long are you training? I'm not familiar with the effort required for mountain climbing, but eating a varied meal beforehand would help. Personally, a peanut butter sandwich, banana, half an avocado (depending on the size of the avocado), tall glass of milk, and celery with hummus will prepare me well for the following few hours. Adjust this for yourself as needed. A healthy balance between fat, fiber, carbs, and protein is what you're looking for. I can't give any any hard numbers but a good macro-nutrient balance is the first step to a healthy diet, with the second step being fresh food.
    - mpbm 10y ago
      From experience, you'll need to spend a lot of time learning about macros before advice on what food to eat will do you much good. For example, if someone says "eat two cups of green salad with 2 tablespoons of olive oil" you'd have to A) already know what all that means or B) spend a couple hours researching how to estimate volume and source predictable ingredients and prepare them or C) just wing it and end up with some bullshit from a store that's lettuce covered in croutons, cheese, and sugary dressing. A good heuristic is that if you bought it, or it was bought for you, it's got too much refined carbohydrate in it and the serving size is too large. This is because to consumers value=(volume*taste)/dollar
  - ihsw 10y ago
    This is probably it -- after exhausting the contents of the digestive tract, the body resorts to glycogen reserves in muscle and the liver. Your glycogen reserves are your "blood-sugar" and consuming them requires a burst of oxygen, so depleted oxygen typically follows low blood-sugar, ergo yawning. Energy gels are usually high-energy but low-everything-else, which is probably what the parent is referring to ("eat glucose"). This is to supplement blood-sugar levels without affecting the digestive process too much, or, more to the point, without affecting their marathon performance.
    - fpoling 10y ago
      Only muscles can use glycogen stored in muscles. Brain, digestive tract can only use glycogen energy from liver. Also note that eating just glucose or table sugar before marathon also helps to minimize digestion energy expenditure so most stored glycogen in liver will be used on brain and nervous tissue, not on processing food.
  - tigerBL00D 10y ago
    Some corrections from the point of view of an endurance athlete (triathlon). First of all you don't really "eat glucose", that would be an oversimplification. Glucose is produced by your own body when metabolizing carbohydrates. As a backup mechanism your liver can also produce glucose by converting amino acids (muscle) and even fat, a process known as gluconeogenesis. Now, if we replace "eat glucose" with "eat carbohydrates", then the statement is still not quite accurate. Experienced marathon runners (and other endurance athletes) will not consume carbs before the run because doing so would spike insulin and effectively shut down breakdown of fatty acids in the liver. Liver can more or less either convert glucose to glycogen and fat, or break down fat, and is not great at doing both simultaneously. Maintaining fat metabolism is hugely important when going the distance since it's the largest energy reserve available in your body (50,000+ calories vs <2000 calories as glucose). Marathon runners consume moderate amounts of carbohydrates DURING exercise when insulin response is blunted. The idea here is to maintain glucose levels and avoid going into hypoglycemic state (low blood sugar). Ingesting moderate amounts of simple and complex carbs during exercise spares glycogen without necessarily spiking blood glucose to where liver has to regulate toxicity. This way you can keep on going longer.
    - CarpetBench 10y ago
      > As a backup mechanism your liver can also produce glucose by converting amino acids (muscle) and even fat, a process known as gluconeogenesis. Just a quick note, and your explanation is fantastic otherwise: this isn't quite correct. The (human) liver doesn't use fat directly for gluconeogenesis. It's just not efficient for humans: We wouldn't gain enough energy from it. The liver uses fat indirectly through glycerol (which is a product of fatty acid catabolism), but it's important to draw a distinction here because this is why ketosis occurs - if the liver could efficiently break down fat directly, ketosis would never happen at all! Most tissues would much rather use glucose directly if it's an option. While muscle breakdown occurs in small amounts normally it's mostly a last resort that occurs after an extended period of starvation. Which makes sense: You wouldn't want to break down the thing (skeletal muscle) you need to get more food except as a last resort. The amino acids involved in more typical gluconeogenesis largely come from other sources.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  There is an often-forgot other situation where your body needs some stored energy: sickness and accidents.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Does it really need stored energy? Parenteral nutrition in hospital works fine with plain glucose. One would assume you could just eat fruit (or drink soda, I guess) when sick, to get the energy you need right then.
    - gaius 10y ago
      Yes, your body can't carry that much energy in your blood - it gets shunted off to glycogen or fat quickly because if it didn't the chemistry would start to go horribly wrong. You could maybe do what you suggest by just slowly sipping a glucose solution over the course of a few hours but it would be very inefficient.
    - sgt101 10y ago
      One problem for athletes is that they take an energy drink or bar and then feel dopey. This is because as soon as a surge of glucose hits your blood your pancreas pumps out insulin and sweeps it all up leading to a crash. Instead drink milk or eat complex un processed carbs like oat cakes (but not ones that have a ton of honey).
      - cel1ne 10y ago
        People who consider themselves "athletes" should know that.
  - geomark 10y ago
    I experienced this. I never needed to lose weight, always been lean. But I wanted to see if I could reduce my blood sugar since it was borderline high. So I went very low carb for a while. Did not intend to but lost 5 kilos right away and felt fine, although it seemed like I was a bit underweight. A few weeks later got a miserable case of flu and couldn't eat for a few days. Lost even more weight, felt terrible, looked like death. It seems like the little reserves I previously had were gone from my change in diet.
- readme 10y ago
  Just fast on rest days, or don't climb those days. Go for a a short/easy hike or something. I do a lot of cardio. Some days I will burn 5000+ cal. I am absolutely unable to lose weight or restrict calories on those days because I always feel insatiable hunger.
  - clockwerx 10y ago
    Interesting - I can do 3000-4000 calories through cycling and get away with only a small protein rich meal (scrambled eggs + steak) after. Even today, another 2 hour mild session (appx 1000 cal) and have only had light breakfast, coffee + pie. Hunger is there, but not at the forefront at all.... unless I eat a few sugary meals in a row.
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Starvation mode? ha! Nobody gets fat from eating fewer calories than they burn. Fat people simply lie about food intake.
eggy 10y ago
All that, and fat/muscle ratio over watching weight. I can weigh 200 lbs at 14% body fat and be in great shape, or 175 lbs at 21% body fat, and be lethargic and weak. I am now around 180 lbs at 14% body fat, and the combination of low body fat, and weight for my 6 ft frame, makes it easier to climb, run, do handstand pushups, whatever, and generally move around more effortlessly with less impact and pain. His focus on moving to America may be a statistical correlation, but I have lived in SE Asia for over 7 years, the last year in the rice fields of East Java, and I can tell you that there are plenty of poor diets and obesity over here. Also, I noticed that even among the average thin-looking person over here, muscle tone is poor. Skinny people with flappy arms and other body masses. Of course this does not apply to the fitness practioner or to the rice farmers who work all day and are active. They do like a lot of fried foods, and think I am a goat for eating raw veggies or even cooked veggies ;) The rice served here is almost always white rice, which is the same rice as the healthier brown rice, but Asians just prefer white rice. It's all about how much you 'polish' or remove the outer layers of the rice grain that gives you a brown, fibrous shell of brown rice, or a soft white cooked rice. Again, here is where weight is not a good indicator, but muscle tone, and muscle mass/fat mass ratio. Skinny shouldn't be your goal, but fit should, since muscle weighs more than fat, you can weigh the same and look thinner and more defined. I also went vegetarian almost 3 years ago, and I have never been in better shape than I am now. I get my healthy fats from walnuts, flax seeds and flax oil mainly. A plant-based diet, and regular exercise. That and I have not drank alcohol for about 7 years (good money saver too!). Although, it has been proven, diet is the biggest contributing factor, even over intense exercise. Exercise polishes off the remaining percentage aside from any enjoyment factor you might gain from it. Life is also about your goals. Some people want to bodybuild for size, rock climb, run, do yoga, fight MMA, swim, golf, what have you, and each has a trade-off. It is about achieving your goals and happiness, so different strokes for different folks; there is no one right way. At my age, I am shooting for maintaining flexibility, dexterity, moderate strength, and aesthetics comes in last (52 now, so not in the courting game ;) ). Functional fitness, and body movement per the work of Ido Portal [1]. Trying new activities to ward off becoming too efficient at the ones I have practiced for many years keeps me honest and burning more calories. I swim too efficiently to burn calories. A new swimmer thrashing about is an inefficient swimmer, but will burn more calories in 5 minutes than me in 20! The biggest revelation to me was that most people tend to be tight up front, and loose in back. In other words, we focus on the front muscles due to common daily activities in the office-bound Western world: carrying kids, groceries, leaning forward at a desk, to the detriment of our posterior. I gained this from a marvelous book by Judy Alter 'Stretch and Strengthen'. The single most valuable piece of advice I have every taken up. Our backs are weak in general. It's amazing what a few weeks of squats without weights, superman poses on the floor to strengthen the lower back, and some pull-ups or hanging exercises can do for back flexibility and warding off pain. Stretching the front chest, arms, and thighs while strengthening the back muscles and back leg muscles is a good counter strategy. I did yoga too, which is good, but I agree with some physiologists that the hyperextension of knees or other joints stretches the ligaments, which when you're older and your muscles are not as toned or strong, your joints are floppy due to stretched out ligaments. Think old leather belt stretched over the years, never regaining it's original length.
khattam 10y ago
> It's pretty easy to lose 40-50 pounds and end up being much less healthier than you were before Maybe if you amputate your legs or catch AIDS or syphilis in the process. Otherwise, I can't see how losing 50 pounds will leave you less healthier than before.
- GirlsCanCode 10y ago
  Fat people are always trying to justify their dangerous lifestyles. Sadly, they get a lot of sympathy here. You, of course, are correct. It is always bad to be overweight.
- jokamoto 10y ago
  Two possible ways: Being underweight is dangerous, just as being overweight is dangerous. Instead of heart disease and joint damage, you end up with osteoporosis, anemia, etc. Losing weight without paying attention to nutrient intake and balance can have similar effects, even if you'd be at or above healthy weight losing 50lbs.
  - Tharkun 10y ago
    Erhm, yeah, good luck losing that amount of weight easily and ending up underweight...
    - chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
      Stop eating carbs and see what happens. It's surprisingly easy to end up underweight when sugar isn't present.
- ghshephard 10y ago
  What I was trying to say, perhaps poorly, that is if you were heavy because you were working out a lot, and eating a lot, and then decided to lose weight by reducing the eating/working out, you can end up being skinny/fat/weak. At the very least, doing regular body-weight resistance training (pushups, situps, pullups, air-squats), helps to reduce the amount of muscle you are losing while you are losing weight.
ht85 10y ago
When you say BMR crash, what exactly do you mean? In what proportion? While I understand that going on a diet can make you feel less energetic, depressed and a variety of other things, the "base" in BMR is there for a reason. I've seen many people suggest that your BMR could significantly lessen, but I've never seen anything scientific demonstrating that, and all our understanding points to it not being possible, unless you stop breathing and your blood stops pumping. Maybe a diet could interfere with your exercise regimen and be counter-productive, but for someone who is completely sedentary and who's TDEE is close to his BMR, I don't think it could significantly go down.
danjoc 10y ago
>Everybody is somewhat different in how they'll react to various diet and exercise regimes. Understanding that, and taking a bit of time to watch how your body responds, is the important insight here. This exactly. I did the same thing to lose a bit of extra weight, except the machine learning part was just using my noodle. I found it interesting that the author didn't notice sleep reducing weight right away. He only measures morning weight. If he measured morning and at night before bed, he would have noticed right away. Some other things the author seems to have overlooked in his analysis. 1) While sleep is good for weight loss, eating before sleep is not. I give at least a 2 hour window before bed where no food is allowed. 2) Track how often you poop. When I'm not pooping, I'm putting on weight. I don't mean poop is heavy. The stuff floats. Weigh before and after a big poop and be prepared to be surprised. People will commonly say that weight loss is just energy in < energy used. Well, it's more like energy in < (energy used + energy out). Poop has calories. It burns. Eating foods that keep you regular will keep you leaner. 3) Weigh before bed too. I noticed some foods were "soft" weight and some are "hard" weight. Soft weight goes on fast but drops quickly. I found some things shoot my night weight way up, but it's mostly gone by the next morning. Other foods, hard weight, put on fewer pounds, but take days to lose again. For me, fried potatoes are the absolute worst hard weight. Anyway, if you only weigh in the morning, you may see you gained a pound from the day before. If it's soft weight, no worries. That will be gone before lunch. If it's hard weight, it will still be there tomorrow, and the next day too. 4) Be on the lookout for magic combos. Some foods individually are weight gain, but combined are weight loss. Take coconut rice as an example. Rice by itself is a soft weight gain for me. It's not hard to lose, but it puts on pounds. Coconut rice on the other hand is weight loss for me. My spouse made it with some spicy thai chicken and I fully expected to gain, but I didn't. Now I can eat it without reservations. Apparently, I'm not alone, and there's some science behind this one http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3009374/Want-rice-HALF-calories-Just-cook-coconut-oil-refrigerate-overnight-eating.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3009374/Want-rice-...
- fanf2 10y ago
  Never believe anything in the Daily Mail, especially when it is about food and diet. http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com
fearface 10y ago
You say much more about youself and you're implicit excuse-system why you are overweight, than any kind of factual information. Been there, lost weight, normal now. The brain is the biggest hurdle.

zatkin 10y ago

I do a lot of rock climbing, so most of my body is muscle. I'm currently floating at 170 lbs, but would love to lose 10 lbs so I can get up the wall faster. I think that fasting might be foolish because my body needs energy for climbing. In fact, if I wait too long after eating lunch, I tend to get really hungry during climbing and I start yawning a lot (not sure why).

personjerry 10y ago
Might be lacking glucose; I believe that is why marathon runners eat glucose before they run.
- zatkin 10y ago
  What do you mean by glucose exactly? What kind of foods should I be eating? I usually just get whatever for lunch at my company - tacos, Indian food, whatever is being served.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    Depends, how long are you training? I'm not familiar with the effort required for mountain climbing, but eating a varied meal beforehand would help. Personally, a peanut butter sandwich, banana, half an avocado (depending on the size of the avocado), tall glass of milk, and celery with hummus will prepare me well for the following few hours. Adjust this for yourself as needed. A healthy balance between fat, fiber, carbs, and protein is what you're looking for. I can't give any any hard numbers but a good macro-nutrient balance is the first step to a healthy diet, with the second step being fresh food.
  - mpbm 10y ago
    From experience, you'll need to spend a lot of time learning about macros before advice on what food to eat will do you much good. For example, if someone says "eat two cups of green salad with 2 tablespoons of olive oil" you'd have to A) already know what all that means or B) spend a couple hours researching how to estimate volume and source predictable ingredients and prepare them or C) just wing it and end up with some bullshit from a store that's lettuce covered in croutons, cheese, and sugary dressing. A good heuristic is that if you bought it, or it was bought for you, it's got too much refined carbohydrate in it and the serving size is too large. This is because to consumers value=(volume*taste)/dollar
- ihsw 10y ago
  This is probably it -- after exhausting the contents of the digestive tract, the body resorts to glycogen reserves in muscle and the liver. Your glycogen reserves are your "blood-sugar" and consuming them requires a burst of oxygen, so depleted oxygen typically follows low blood-sugar, ergo yawning. Energy gels are usually high-energy but low-everything-else, which is probably what the parent is referring to ("eat glucose"). This is to supplement blood-sugar levels without affecting the digestive process too much, or, more to the point, without affecting their marathon performance.
  - fpoling 10y ago
    Only muscles can use glycogen stored in muscles. Brain, digestive tract can only use glycogen energy from liver. Also note that eating just glucose or table sugar before marathon also helps to minimize digestion energy expenditure so most stored glycogen in liver will be used on brain and nervous tissue, not on processing food.
- tigerBL00D 10y ago
  Some corrections from the point of view of an endurance athlete (triathlon). First of all you don't really "eat glucose", that would be an oversimplification. Glucose is produced by your own body when metabolizing carbohydrates. As a backup mechanism your liver can also produce glucose by converting amino acids (muscle) and even fat, a process known as gluconeogenesis. Now, if we replace "eat glucose" with "eat carbohydrates", then the statement is still not quite accurate. Experienced marathon runners (and other endurance athletes) will not consume carbs before the run because doing so would spike insulin and effectively shut down breakdown of fatty acids in the liver. Liver can more or less either convert glucose to glycogen and fat, or break down fat, and is not great at doing both simultaneously. Maintaining fat metabolism is hugely important when going the distance since it's the largest energy reserve available in your body (50,000+ calories vs <2000 calories as glucose). Marathon runners consume moderate amounts of carbohydrates DURING exercise when insulin response is blunted. The idea here is to maintain glucose levels and avoid going into hypoglycemic state (low blood sugar). Ingesting moderate amounts of simple and complex carbs during exercise spares glycogen without necessarily spiking blood glucose to where liver has to regulate toxicity. This way you can keep on going longer.
  - CarpetBench 10y ago
    > As a backup mechanism your liver can also produce glucose by converting amino acids (muscle) and even fat, a process known as gluconeogenesis. Just a quick note, and your explanation is fantastic otherwise: this isn't quite correct. The (human) liver doesn't use fat directly for gluconeogenesis. It's just not efficient for humans: We wouldn't gain enough energy from it. The liver uses fat indirectly through glycerol (which is a product of fatty acid catabolism), but it's important to draw a distinction here because this is why ketosis occurs - if the liver could efficiently break down fat directly, ketosis would never happen at all! Most tissues would much rather use glucose directly if it's an option. While muscle breakdown occurs in small amounts normally it's mostly a last resort that occurs after an extended period of starvation. Which makes sense: You wouldn't want to break down the thing (skeletal muscle) you need to get more food except as a last resort. The amino acids involved in more typical gluconeogenesis largely come from other sources.
cel1ne 10y ago
There is an often-forgot other situation where your body needs some stored energy: sickness and accidents.
- derefr 10y ago
  Does it really need stored energy? Parenteral nutrition in hospital works fine with plain glucose. One would assume you could just eat fruit (or drink soda, I guess) when sick, to get the energy you need right then.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Yes, your body can't carry that much energy in your blood - it gets shunted off to glycogen or fat quickly because if it didn't the chemistry would start to go horribly wrong. You could maybe do what you suggest by just slowly sipping a glucose solution over the course of a few hours but it would be very inefficient.
  - sgt101 10y ago
    One problem for athletes is that they take an energy drink or bar and then feel dopey. This is because as soon as a surge of glucose hits your blood your pancreas pumps out insulin and sweeps it all up leading to a crash. Instead drink milk or eat complex un processed carbs like oat cakes (but not ones that have a ton of honey).
    - cel1ne 10y ago
      People who consider themselves "athletes" should know that.
- geomark 10y ago
  I experienced this. I never needed to lose weight, always been lean. But I wanted to see if I could reduce my blood sugar since it was borderline high. So I went very low carb for a while. Did not intend to but lost 5 kilos right away and felt fine, although it seemed like I was a bit underweight. A few weeks later got a miserable case of flu and couldn't eat for a few days. Lost even more weight, felt terrible, looked like death. It seems like the little reserves I previously had were gone from my change in diet.
readme 10y ago
Just fast on rest days, or don't climb those days. Go for a a short/easy hike or something. I do a lot of cardio. Some days I will burn 5000+ cal. I am absolutely unable to lose weight or restrict calories on those days because I always feel insatiable hunger.
- clockwerx 10y ago
  Interesting - I can do 3000-4000 calories through cycling and get away with only a small protein rich meal (scrambled eggs + steak) after. Even today, another 2 hour mild session (appx 1000 cal) and have only had light breakfast, coffee + pie. Hunger is there, but not at the forefront at all.... unless I eat a few sugary meals in a row.

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

Starvation mode? ha! Nobody gets fat from eating fewer calories than they burn. Fat people simply lie about food intake.

eggy 10y ago

All that, and fat/muscle ratio over watching weight. I can weigh 200 lbs at 14% body fat and be in great shape, or 175 lbs at 21% body fat, and be lethargic and weak. I am now around 180 lbs at 14% body fat, and the combination of low body fat, and weight for my 6 ft frame, makes it easier to climb, run, do handstand pushups, whatever, and generally move around more effortlessly with less impact and pain. His focus on moving to America may be a statistical correlation, but I have lived in SE Asia for over 7 years, the last year in the rice fields of East Java, and I can tell you that there are plenty of poor diets and obesity over here. Also, I noticed that even among the average thin-looking person over here, muscle tone is poor. Skinny people with flappy arms and other body masses. Of course this does not apply to the fitness practioner or to the rice farmers who work all day and are active. They do like a lot of fried foods, and think I am a goat for eating raw veggies or even cooked veggies ;) The rice served here is almost always white rice, which is the same rice as the healthier brown rice, but Asians just prefer white rice. It's all about how much you 'polish' or remove the outer layers of the rice grain that gives you a brown, fibrous shell of brown rice, or a soft white cooked rice. Again, here is where weight is not a good indicator, but muscle tone, and muscle mass/fat mass ratio. Skinny shouldn't be your goal, but fit should, since muscle weighs more than fat, you can weigh the same and look thinner and more defined. I also went vegetarian almost 3 years ago, and I have never been in better shape than I am now. I get my healthy fats from walnuts, flax seeds and flax oil mainly. A plant-based diet, and regular exercise. That and I have not drank alcohol for about 7 years (good money saver too!). Although, it has been proven, diet is the biggest contributing factor, even over intense exercise. Exercise polishes off the remaining percentage aside from any enjoyment factor you might gain from it. Life is also about your goals. Some people want to bodybuild for size, rock climb, run, do yoga, fight MMA, swim, golf, what have you, and each has a trade-off. It is about achieving your goals and happiness, so different strokes for different folks; there is no one right way. At my age, I am shooting for maintaining flexibility, dexterity, moderate strength, and aesthetics comes in last (52 now, so not in the courting game ;) ). Functional fitness, and body movement per the work of Ido Portal [1]. Trying new activities to ward off becoming too efficient at the ones I have practiced for many years keeps me honest and burning more calories. I swim too efficiently to burn calories. A new swimmer thrashing about is an inefficient swimmer, but will burn more calories in 5 minutes than me in 20! The biggest revelation to me was that most people tend to be tight up front, and loose in back. In other words, we focus on the front muscles due to common daily activities in the office-bound Western world: carrying kids, groceries, leaning forward at a desk, to the detriment of our posterior. I gained this from a marvelous book by Judy Alter 'Stretch and Strengthen'. The single most valuable piece of advice I have every taken up. Our backs are weak in general. It's amazing what a few weeks of squats without weights, superman poses on the floor to strengthen the lower back, and some pull-ups or hanging exercises can do for back flexibility and warding off pain. Stretching the front chest, arms, and thighs while strengthening the back muscles and back leg muscles is a good counter strategy. I did yoga too, which is good, but I agree with some physiologists that the hyperextension of knees or other joints stretches the ligaments, which when you're older and your muscles are not as toned or strong, your joints are floppy due to stretched out ligaments. Think old leather belt stretched over the years, never regaining it's original length.

khattam 10y ago

> It's pretty easy to lose 40-50 pounds and end up being much less healthier than you were before Maybe if you amputate your legs or catch AIDS or syphilis in the process. Otherwise, I can't see how losing 50 pounds will leave you less healthier than before.

GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Fat people are always trying to justify their dangerous lifestyles. Sadly, they get a lot of sympathy here. You, of course, are correct. It is always bad to be overweight.
jokamoto 10y ago
Two possible ways: Being underweight is dangerous, just as being overweight is dangerous. Instead of heart disease and joint damage, you end up with osteoporosis, anemia, etc. Losing weight without paying attention to nutrient intake and balance can have similar effects, even if you'd be at or above healthy weight losing 50lbs.
- Tharkun 10y ago
  Erhm, yeah, good luck losing that amount of weight easily and ending up underweight...
  - chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
    Stop eating carbs and see what happens. It's surprisingly easy to end up underweight when sugar isn't present.
ghshephard 10y ago
What I was trying to say, perhaps poorly, that is if you were heavy because you were working out a lot, and eating a lot, and then decided to lose weight by reducing the eating/working out, you can end up being skinny/fat/weak. At the very least, doing regular body-weight resistance training (pushups, situps, pullups, air-squats), helps to reduce the amount of muscle you are losing while you are losing weight.

ht85 10y ago

When you say BMR crash, what exactly do you mean? In what proportion? While I understand that going on a diet can make you feel less energetic, depressed and a variety of other things, the "base" in BMR is there for a reason. I've seen many people suggest that your BMR could significantly lessen, but I've never seen anything scientific demonstrating that, and all our understanding points to it not being possible, unless you stop breathing and your blood stops pumping. Maybe a diet could interfere with your exercise regimen and be counter-productive, but for someone who is completely sedentary and who's TDEE is close to his BMR, I don't think it could significantly go down.

danjoc 10y ago

>Everybody is somewhat different in how they'll react to various diet and exercise regimes. Understanding that, and taking a bit of time to watch how your body responds, is the important insight here. This exactly. I did the same thing to lose a bit of extra weight, except the machine learning part was just using my noodle. I found it interesting that the author didn't notice sleep reducing weight right away. He only measures morning weight. If he measured morning and at night before bed, he would have noticed right away. Some other things the author seems to have overlooked in his analysis. 1) While sleep is good for weight loss, eating before sleep is not. I give at least a 2 hour window before bed where no food is allowed. 2) Track how often you poop. When I'm not pooping, I'm putting on weight. I don't mean poop is heavy. The stuff floats. Weigh before and after a big poop and be prepared to be surprised. People will commonly say that weight loss is just energy in < energy used. Well, it's more like energy in < (energy used + energy out). Poop has calories. It burns. Eating foods that keep you regular will keep you leaner. 3) Weigh before bed too. I noticed some foods were "soft" weight and some are "hard" weight. Soft weight goes on fast but drops quickly. I found some things shoot my night weight way up, but it's mostly gone by the next morning. Other foods, hard weight, put on fewer pounds, but take days to lose again. For me, fried potatoes are the absolute worst hard weight. Anyway, if you only weigh in the morning, you may see you gained a pound from the day before. If it's soft weight, no worries. That will be gone before lunch. If it's hard weight, it will still be there tomorrow, and the next day too. 4) Be on the lookout for magic combos. Some foods individually are weight gain, but combined are weight loss. Take coconut rice as an example. Rice by itself is a soft weight gain for me. It's not hard to lose, but it puts on pounds. Coconut rice on the other hand is weight loss for me. My spouse made it with some spicy thai chicken and I fully expected to gain, but I didn't. Now I can eat it without reservations. Apparently, I'm not alone, and there's some science behind this one http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3009374/Want-rice-HALF-calories-Just-cook-coconut-oil-refrigerate-overnight-eating.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3009374/Want-rice-...

fanf2 10y ago
Never believe anything in the Daily Mail, especially when it is about food and diet. http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com

fearface 10y ago

You say much more about youself and you're implicit excuse-system why you are overweight, than any kind of factual information. Been there, lost weight, normal now. The brain is the biggest hurdle.