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I hate that movie. If you eat more than your resting metabolic rate and calories burned through activity you gain weight. Surprise! I personally have lost 55

I hate that movie. If you eat more than your resting metabolic rate and calories burned through activity you gain weight. Surprise! I personally have lost 55 lbs since January 25th of this year and McDonalds hamburgers and fudge sundaes have been a meal frequently.

toomanybeersies 8y ago
The McDouble/hamburger diet is a legitimate diet. You can dial in exactly how many calories you're eating. To prove a point a few years back, I ate nothing but pizza and diet Pepsi for several weeks and lost weight. 2 supermarket pizzas was something like 1800 calories.
- moorhosj 8y ago
  ==To prove a point a few years back, I ate nothing but pizza and diet Pepsi for several weeks and lost weight.== What point did this prove? Weight is hardly the sole determinant of health.
  - izzydata 8y ago
    Pretty sure that was the point he was proving. You can eat only unhealthy foods and lose weight.
symlock 8y ago
"I hate that" people think calories and weight is the primary gauge of health. It's true weight is very often a negative health indicator because of the toxic nature of the diet that results in weight gain. However, losing weight is not always a sign of being more healthy. Shutting down your liver, clogging your arteries, and generally filling your soft tissue and fat storage with toxins is not healthy even if you appear to be losing weight.
- jerf 8y ago
  The doctor who does my physicals commented that he considers weight to be maybe the fourth or fifth thing he looks at when considering your basic health. Being overweight is bad, but because it's so overemphasized (and so easy to see), people ignore some things that should go in front of it. (Though one imagines that if one is not willing to change one's diet or exercise habits to lose weight, the odds of them willing to do it to lower blood pressure or other such indicators seems low too.)
- philwelch 8y ago
  While true, I think this sentiment is vastly overstated. For the typical American eating the typical American diet, obesity is one of the biggest risks. It's right up there with smoking, except smoking is getting less popular and obesity is getting more popular. Let's clear one thing up first: aside from a few issues like joint stress, it's not weight in general that's the problem; it's body fat. If you're a power athlete with significant muscle mass, you're going to be able to carry a lot of weight and still be perfectly healthy as long as it's lean weight. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson shouldn't worry about his weight, despite having a BMI that's technically in the obese category. If you have a high weight for your height and you don't look like a professional wrestler, you should definitely be concerned about your weight. Aside from the problems caused directly by excess body fat, carrying around excess body fat also makes it far more difficult and far riskier to exercise, which means all your other health indicators are going to go down south. Even mental health is pretty strongly influenced by exercise. Also, excess body fat is a far more difficult problem to solve.
  - symlock 8y ago
    > problems caused directly by excess body fat I would say this is putting the cart before the horse. It's not excess body fat that is the source of health problems. It's the lifestyle (diet and movement) that leads to excess body fat (as one of the many symptoms of growing health problems) from choices. In other words, baldness, obesity, sluggishness, headaches, etc... are not the source of health problems - they are the symptoms.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Visceral fat is a pretty significant source of health problems.
  - handsomechad 8y ago
    The Rock should absolutely be worried about his health, specifically his endocrine system as it is physiologically supranormal because of the cocktail of drugs he is undoubtedly on.
dopamean 8y ago
As someone who would like to lose about 50lbs I have a lot of questions. Mostly I'd like to know how you determined your resting metabolic rate. I've started working out a little and adjusted my diet a lot but I kinda feel like I'm fumbling around in the dark.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  I lost about 60 lbs on Phentermine, then gained 10 lbs back, then lost about 15 lbs just dieting, and then gained about 10 lbs back. Phentermine made it a lot easier because I didn't feel hungry, even when I was. But other than that, the same techniques applied: I used a calorie counter and tried to stick to the recommendation that it gave. After using it a month or 2, I realized that its numbers were slightly high for me, and cut my max allowed calories a little further and started losing weight. If you're wondering what your number is, the easiest way is probably just to follow what some tool tells you (I used Weight Watchers, then SparkPeople) and adjust the calories according to whether you are losing weight or not. One caution: There is a rather large gap where you go from gaining weight to maintaining weight to losing weight. The area where you maintain weight is pretty broad. Finding that area is the first step, then slowly removing some calories until you start losing is the key, IMO. If you go too fast, you might remove too many calories and actually make it harder to lose weight than it should be. Your body will try to compensate for lack of calories.
- Domenic_S 8y ago
  Don't worry about any of that. Do this diet: no sugar, no grains. That's it. Eat as much of everything else as you want. Watch the pounds melt.
  - rexgallorum2 8y ago
    That will definitely work, but there must be some other factor at play. There are plenty of populations in the world that consume a lot of grain but do not necessarily suffer from increased rates of obesity.
    - 8y ago

toomanybeersies 8y ago

The McDouble/hamburger diet is a legitimate diet. You can dial in exactly how many calories you're eating. To prove a point a few years back, I ate nothing but pizza and diet Pepsi for several weeks and lost weight. 2 supermarket pizzas was something like 1800 calories.

moorhosj 8y ago
==To prove a point a few years back, I ate nothing but pizza and diet Pepsi for several weeks and lost weight.== What point did this prove? Weight is hardly the sole determinant of health.
- izzydata 8y ago
  Pretty sure that was the point he was proving. You can eat only unhealthy foods and lose weight.

symlock 8y ago

"I hate that" people think calories and weight is the primary gauge of health. It's true weight is very often a negative health indicator because of the toxic nature of the diet that results in weight gain. However, losing weight is not always a sign of being more healthy. Shutting down your liver, clogging your arteries, and generally filling your soft tissue and fat storage with toxins is not healthy even if you appear to be losing weight.

jerf 8y ago
The doctor who does my physicals commented that he considers weight to be maybe the fourth or fifth thing he looks at when considering your basic health. Being overweight is bad, but because it's so overemphasized (and so easy to see), people ignore some things that should go in front of it. (Though one imagines that if one is not willing to change one's diet or exercise habits to lose weight, the odds of them willing to do it to lower blood pressure or other such indicators seems low too.)
philwelch 8y ago
While true, I think this sentiment is vastly overstated. For the typical American eating the typical American diet, obesity is one of the biggest risks. It's right up there with smoking, except smoking is getting less popular and obesity is getting more popular. Let's clear one thing up first: aside from a few issues like joint stress, it's not weight in general that's the problem; it's body fat. If you're a power athlete with significant muscle mass, you're going to be able to carry a lot of weight and still be perfectly healthy as long as it's lean weight. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson shouldn't worry about his weight, despite having a BMI that's technically in the obese category. If you have a high weight for your height and you don't look like a professional wrestler, you should definitely be concerned about your weight. Aside from the problems caused directly by excess body fat, carrying around excess body fat also makes it far more difficult and far riskier to exercise, which means all your other health indicators are going to go down south. Even mental health is pretty strongly influenced by exercise. Also, excess body fat is a far more difficult problem to solve.
- symlock 8y ago
  > problems caused directly by excess body fat I would say this is putting the cart before the horse. It's not excess body fat that is the source of health problems. It's the lifestyle (diet and movement) that leads to excess body fat (as one of the many symptoms of growing health problems) from choices. In other words, baldness, obesity, sluggishness, headaches, etc... are not the source of health problems - they are the symptoms.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Visceral fat is a pretty significant source of health problems.
- handsomechad 8y ago
  The Rock should absolutely be worried about his health, specifically his endocrine system as it is physiologically supranormal because of the cocktail of drugs he is undoubtedly on.

dopamean 8y ago

As someone who would like to lose about 50lbs I have a lot of questions. Mostly I'd like to know how you determined your resting metabolic rate. I've started working out a little and adjusted my diet a lot but I kinda feel like I'm fumbling around in the dark.

wccrawford 8y ago
I lost about 60 lbs on Phentermine, then gained 10 lbs back, then lost about 15 lbs just dieting, and then gained about 10 lbs back. Phentermine made it a lot easier because I didn't feel hungry, even when I was. But other than that, the same techniques applied: I used a calorie counter and tried to stick to the recommendation that it gave. After using it a month or 2, I realized that its numbers were slightly high for me, and cut my max allowed calories a little further and started losing weight. If you're wondering what your number is, the easiest way is probably just to follow what some tool tells you (I used Weight Watchers, then SparkPeople) and adjust the calories according to whether you are losing weight or not. One caution: There is a rather large gap where you go from gaining weight to maintaining weight to losing weight. The area where you maintain weight is pretty broad. Finding that area is the first step, then slowly removing some calories until you start losing is the key, IMO. If you go too fast, you might remove too many calories and actually make it harder to lose weight than it should be. Your body will try to compensate for lack of calories.
Domenic_S 8y ago
Don't worry about any of that. Do this diet: no sugar, no grains. That's it. Eat as much of everything else as you want. Watch the pounds melt.
- rexgallorum2 8y ago
  That will definitely work, but there must be some other factor at play. There are plenty of populations in the world that consume a lot of grain but do not necessarily suffer from increased rates of obesity.
  - 8y ago