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Losing 100 pounds in 276 days
- Jacq5 8y agoGreat story, keep it up! Often there is a misconception that if you do not exercise - you will not lose weight. Once again - diet is the key part.
- arsenico 8y agoImportant to note, that only with metabolism of a young male, it is possible to lose weight without exercise. I am 37 and restricting my calorie intake helps, but not greatly. Exercising daily - helped a lot. Most women of 30+ must exercise to lose weight - metabolism is completely different.
- endless1234 8y agoSource on your claim that women over 30 won't lose weight if they are on e.g. a consistent 500 kcal daily deficit?
- weliketocode 8y agoWhy would you bother asking for a source for this?
- fredoliveira 8y agoBecause he/she would like to learn more, or potentially dispel a myth? I don't get why you'd ever question curiosity.
- weliketocode 8y agoIt sounded more to me that he/she was being sarcastic than curiosity. And, of course I can question curiosity. We're in the internet age. If you have a basic question, ask google.
- endless1234 8y ago>We're in the internet age. If you have a basic question, ask google. When somebody presents an opinion that seems to go against the general scientific consensus, no, I won't just google it, I'd rather ask what they base it on.
- _up 8y agoHe didn't say that! It gets harder to maintain that deficit because your metabolism will start to conserve energy, your body gets colder and sleepy and therefore uses less energy. At least if the deficit is chosen too high.
- endless1234 8y agoOkay, that makes more sense, that the maximum sustainable deficit would decrease with age.
- arsenico 8y agoCan you live a life on a consistent 500 kcal diet? I was saying that with age (and with gender) it is much more difficult to maintain weight with just lowering down the calorie intake.
- mlrtime 8y agoOf course you can , but if you think living life = pizza, cake, fries, then you will have to make adjustments.
- arsenico 8y agoLiving life is going to work every day, working 8 hours a day, and then having something for yourself in the evening - walks in the park, or some exercise, or something else that actually requires energy.
- endless1234 8y agoI get that it's more difficult to do such changes the older you get just from a psychological standpoint, especially if your body is used to a caloric surplus (which it probably is if you're thinking about going to a 500 kcal deficit). But I'm interested in knowing if the body metabolism really changes so drastically when you get older as to make a -500 kcal diet impractical, and where the cutoff for practicality would then be.
- arsenico 8y agoAnd sorry, no source on this, but a lot of people around fighting gaining weight while restricting calories.
- marticode 8y agoYou are mistaken - all life forms including humans obey the laws of physics. If you eat at a caloric deficit you will lose weight no matter your age or if you do exercise.
- shawn 8y agoThey are not necessarily mistaken just because we have a hypothesis. It's a fact that it's harder for women to lose weight than men in certain cases. Their point was that "caloric deficit" is different for each person, and sometimes dramatically so.
- inertiatic 8y agoNo, a caloric deficit is not different for each person. Every living person that is maintaining their weight can eat 500 kcals a day less than they do now and they'd lose weight.
- arsenico 8y agoNow imagine a woman who eats 1000 kcal a day already. How is she supposed to survive and maintain a liveable lifestyle at 500 kcal/day?
- highace 8y agoIf she's eating 1000 kcal a day then she probably isn't overweight so wouldn't need to cut down further.
- ionised 8y agoPretty sure that would be bordering on anorexia.
- inertiatic 8y agoI would wager that woman: a) Doesn't really eat 1000 kcals a day if she's active, and should, instead of building a diet by counting calories (doing which she's prone to miscalculation), simply eat less of whatever she usually eats. b) Doesn't need to lose half a kg of fat every week.
- DanBC 8y agoExercise does not help weight loss. Exercise is important, and people should exercise because they get benefits even if they don't lose weight, but you should stop saying it's useful to reduce weight. We think that people heavily over-estimate the amount of calories burnt by exercise; they under-estimate the amount of calories they eat; and exercising gives people "permission" to eat more calories than they normally would. http://www.cochrane.org/CD003817/ENDOC_exercise-for-overweight-or-obesity http://www.cochrane.org/CD003817/ENDOC_exercise-for-overweig...
- tallanvor 8y agoExercise burns calories, so it certainly does help weight loss if done in conjunction with a proper diet. You are correct that people frequently overestimate how many calories they burn working out, and that they then eat more as a result - both because they think they've earned it, but also because exercise stimulates your appetite. But when you understand these instincts and stick to the diet, exercise will help you lose weight more quickly.
- arsenico 8y agoExercise doesn't burn a lot of calories, but it changes the way your body processes calories (or spends them vs stores them).
- janlaureys 8y agoCalorie counting apps are great for battling that, after a while I'm like: "Is it worth running 2 hours for this bag of potato chips ?"
- saiya-jin 8y agoRestricting calories sufficiently can create weight loss at any age. Metabolism is not magic but basic chemistry/physics, if output exceeds input this will happen. Of course each of us is unique, and also changes over time, so efficiency of both inputs and outputs varies. I believe you meant that its mentally hard to restrict one so much in later age to suffer from hunger enough to lose weight, but technically its doable and happening in millions of instances around the world all the time (ie due to long term illnesses). Exercise helps tremendously of course, and everybody should do enough of any healthy type every day to get sweaty (and more). But it isn't necessary to lose weight, not at all, at any age.
- krzat 8y agoAt 30 photosynthesis starts or what?
- arsenico 8y agoI wish - then it would be enough to be in the sun.
- pottspotts 8y agoThis is incorrect. The laws of physics in play are biochemically complex but the net energy differential is straight forward. Calorie Intake > Burn Rate = Weight Gain, and vice-versa. Exercise increases the burn rate, but it doesn't change the formula.
- briandon 8y agoCompletely eliminating simple carbs (bread, noodles, rice, pasta, potatoes, and the like) and eating meat and veg and dairy (i.e. a cheese-heavy salad with sugar-less dressing, a big bowl of broccoli with cheese melted on it, as many chicken breasts, steaks, and burgers as I liked, coffee with heavy cream but no sugar, etc.) exclusively worked for me. Weight gradually melted away over the course of the past year and I'm still dropping pounds. Meals like those fill me up quickly and I stay full longer. All while I've exercised very little. And I'm older than you.
- arsenico 8y agoYou're in ketosis basically. I love keto and think it is the best thing that I can do to actually love weight and still be able to enjoy food.
- tzahola 8y agoOh yeah. And after 40, you start to gain weight by not eating! /s
- k__ 8y agoYou don't need to exercise, but you'll lose more muscle if you don't. But yes, diet is much more important than exercise.
- tsenkov 8y agoWell, to be fair you will lose it if you had it in first place. People who don't bulk up by training, only cary the muscle that... carries them. As long as you keep your protein intake as recommended, you will keep the muscle you need in your regular physical activity level.
- pottspotts 8y agoReally great data! Thank you for sharing. The hard part for me is mindset and willpower. Unfortunately, knowing the physics* behind weight loss doesn't make it any easier, and perhaps might make it more stressful. Why can't I do this simple thing that logically is as complex as 2+2. Our minds have their own prerogatives. I wonder then what did you tell yourself? How many times did you have a bad day? What was your mood like throughout? I'd love to know so much more about the psychology. Great article though and thanks again for sharing! * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE
- quakenul 8y agoI think daily tracking in combination with a long term goal is key here, because it allows you some wiggle room when it comes to progress while having a strong rubber band effect (that gets stronger the more you sway) to get you back on track.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoHaving lost and kept off half my body weight, yeah, the math is really, really, really stupidly easy part of weight loss. I envy people who don't know what it is like to feel compelled to gorge themselves. It's an unstoppable force sometimes. You'd be amazed at what your mind will do to make you ingest more calories. And then you get on the internet and, in addition to all the "it's really simple, just eat fewer calories" idiots, there's a thousand know-it-all fucks trying to tell you that if you just follow their fad diet you'll never feel hungry again and your dick will grow three sizes and you'll win the lottery.
- wukerplank 8y ago> [...] you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday and > I never understood how simple it was before starting this. Sounds so trivial, but sadly true for a lot of things in life. You read and hear something multiple times, but you have to make the experience yourself to get your eyes opened.
- saiya-jin 8y agoDon't cheat, lie or harm any other human being in any way. Sounds simple enough. If all would be heeding this rules, we would have paradise on this planet. Every sane person must realize this when reaching adulthood. Rest should be treated by professionals. Yet somehow, billions failed, fail and will fail spectacularly.
- notheguyouthink 8y agoIt's also massively dependent on the person. People like me, yes it really is that simple. I naturally don't even care about eating, and my metabolism seems quite active, as it's hard for me to even gain weight. My wife on the other hand, even just mentally, is another ball game. Food is a big part of her life, even just speaking emotionally. Then of course you have her cycle, which causes her normal urges to ramp up to 7->10. Also, eating.. pickiness too. I don't mind leftovers, hell I don't even mind eating the same thing for a week, two, etc. She hates leftovers and always wants freshly cooked. Also rotating food types, as it can't be too similar to what she ate recently. All combined it means that finding hearty meals (and now keto for us) are more effort for her than for someone like me. To no surprise, I have no weight to lose (I need to workout to even maintain weight), but it really frustrates her at how different our bodies are. She considers her food habits to be an "addiction" in large part due to how different her and my reactions are to food. Her struggles are far more than mine on this front.
- ska 8y agoSimple is not the same thing as easy. Mostly "diet plans" are basically psychological tools to help you do a difficult but simple thing.
- Mashimo 8y ago> I tried running – about 30m, every morning, for 3 months. For a few seconds I was confused as to how much running 30 meters would help :D But I guess he means 30 minutes.
- HiBloo 8y agoIn some cases, 30 meters is the most you can get. Sometimes flapping your hands is the most you can do. Moving is the point, no matter the distance I guess. :D
- hazz99 8y agoDamn dude, that's awesome progress! I love the consistency. On average, it takes about 3,500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat. Suppose you eat 1,000 fewer calories than your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). After a week your body will burn 7,000 calories or 2 lbs of fat. I'm almost surprised that the weight curve dropped off linearly -- I always thought weight fell off quickly at the beginning, before plateauing towards the end. Great personal "myth" to have dispelled. Can I also compliment the site design? It's very clean, and presented the information well.
- fabricexpert 8y agoIt most likely follows a non-linear pattern in individuals who are consuming an extreme amount of calories. As the author notes, your calorie intake needs to drop as you lose weight to maintain that progress. If you're consuming 4000 calories a day it's really easy to cut to 2000 in the beginning by just not eating sugary crap, but getting down to say 1250 calories a day is a lot harder, which often requires meticulous management.
- tallanvor 8y agoThe consistency is hard to achieve because he had to regularly adjust his calorie intake as he lost weight. If you don't do that, it will work the way you thought - the weight loss slows over time. That's also one of the reasons people feel the last pounds are always the hardest to lose
- pottspotts 8y agoIt may have helped that he became more proficient at dieting and using the app as well as intermittent fasting.
- organsnyder 8y ago> I'm almost surprised that the weight curve dropped off linearly -- I always thought weight fell off quickly at the beginning, before plateauing towards the end. Great personal "myth" to have dispelled. I think that this is due to people not modifying behavior as they lose weight. A person weighing 250 lbs has a higher BMR than when they weigh 200 lbs. So if you lose weight and don't adjust your daily calorie goal, you're no longer eating as far under your BMR as you used to.
- afpx 8y agoFor people who accomplish things like this, I often wonder about how often they tried and failed in the past and what factors changed to make them finally succeed.
- HiBloo 8y agoIn most of the cases - hearth problems are the catalyst. Until you are hurt, you do not really care. Had the same done with my lungs. Oh, humans...
- cm2187 8y agoThe approach I have to lose weight is fasting. One meal a day for a long period of time (3+ months) + daily exercise. The hard part is to get into the diet. Fighting appetite is very hard, it's what drives us to leave our cave to hunt a mammoth. So the hard part is to get into a habit of eating less. After a couple of weeks, appetite has reduced, and it is easy to follow. One way to get into this habit is the Ulysses approach (tying oneself to a mast, i.e. going to a place where you can't snack). Another is to utilize a period of depression or after having catched a bug which results in no appetite for a few days. And then the secret is zero exception. A single weekend of indulgence and the appetite comes back and the diet is dead. Another secret is also to do that in a period of low stress. High stress will kill any diet.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoAs with many things in life, it is a matter of persistence and sacrifice. You have to want it bad enough to suffer through your body literally eating itself, and to keep trying things until you find something that allows you to endure that suffering for the rest of your life, because you don't ever get to stop.
- feintruled 8y agoAll my previous attempts at weight loss had been exercise based, but to be honest I was too damn lazy to stick at it. Eating less on the other hand is actually less effort (only being slightly facetious). But seriously - if you bring in your own lunch to work, you are totally in control of the calories you will eat that day (assuming you leave your wallet behind! Work vending machines are your pernicious enemy.) Willpower is of course the problem for all strategies, and breaking habits. If you get used to your chocolate bar at 3pm every day, it is hard to suddenly forgo it.
- brohoolio 8y agoCongrats! This is a great achievement. It’s not easy. Don’t let up! Maintenance of your current weight can be just as tough.
- edpichler 8y agoI used the same approach explained in the article and it also worked very very fast for me. The most pain to me was using MyFitnesPal, that is really annoying because of its usability. It was a pain to use it. I will try to use pencil and paper, and one time a day, type it all on the app.
- thermodynthrway 8y agoMyfitnesspal and and fatsecret (the two most popular apps) are annoying as hell in the same way. They make it very difficult to just add calories because they want you to help fill in their food database. Anyone know of an app that only tracks calories? I personally don't care about my "macros" and salt etc . There's almost no chance of going over recommended values at 1600 calories a day anyways unless you only eat gas station food
- edpichler 8y agoYes, and one of the things that makes me sad is when the screen delays to update. When you touch on the screen to add a food, it goes to a blog post (the slow UI update make you do mistake several times each use). I wish to have time to develop a better app, but I already busy with another. There is a big opportunity for solving this problem. PS: I reported the bugs but I always was ignored, even being a paid user.
- edpichler 8y agoThe fun here is that the app gave me more pain than changing my eating habits.
- m_ke 8y agoNot trying to push our app too much here but we made Bitesnap for this reason. I was overweight as a kid and tried really hard to use MFP but it was the biggest chore of the whole weight loss process. With Bitesnap we're trying to automate things using computer vision.
- secabeen 8y agoThis is old, but MFP does have the quick add at the bottom of each add food page where you just stick in the calories.
- nonbel 8y ago>"The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. The magnitude of the caloric difference will regulate how quickly or slowly you lose the weight. [...] I naturally started eating healthy foods because I could eat more of them. If you eat a chocolate bar, you will still be hungry. For the same amount of calories, you could eat a few bowls of vegetables and be full. [...] Somewhere along the journey I picked up intermittent fasting. I like it but it’s also not necessary. I found that it helped reduce my appetite which means I can eat fewer calories." I don't really think this is consistent. Basically yes if you eat less calories than are used you must lose weight, but the ease of doing this depends on what you are eating.
- k__ 8y agoThis. The devil is in the details. Sure the rule is simple: Calories in == Calories out But you need to find out rather exactly how much you really burn, it's often less than you think. And then you have to eat stuff that doesn't fill your daily calories with one meal, or else you will crave more later that day.
- latortuga 8y agoNot only is it less than you think, but it changes with consumption! CICO is true but only trivially so, the variables are dependent. You can run 3mi to burn more calories, but you get more hungry as a result.
- bognition 8y agoThe biggest challenges I've observed with people trying to lose weight with CICO (calories in, calories out) it getting a reliable estimate of how much your eating and how many calories your body is truly burning. Being off by 100 calories translates into roughly 12 pounds per year. I know you can use a food scale to get a more accurate estimate of calories in but I'm still at a loss to determine an accurate estimate of calories out.
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- feintruled 8y agoI embarked on a similar course as the author - just after Christmas I realised my BMI was well into the overweight category - and the same strategy of calorie counting worked for me. I can especially recommend using an app, this really helped me too. Turns it into a game almost - where can I cut out the unnecessary calories? Whereas before you might help yourself to a biscuit with a coffee now you know it is going to blow your budget right open. Makes it a lot easier to resist. And it was easier than I thought - a piece of fruit for breakfast, a small lunch (single sandwich, down from two with crisps and chocolate bar on top some days), and a normal evening meal. That would come to around 1500 calories or less a day, easily enough to lose a few pounds a week. It becomes easier as time goes on - your body expects less, I guess. And you do gravitate towards healthier food, simply because you can eat so much more of it. I've lost two and a half stone since then (I don't follow the diet at weekends so I could have lost more) and am back in the green. Not as much as the article's author - his loss was spectacular! Alas I did not take a before and after picture, though others have commented, which feels good. So yeah, great article that I can fully endorse, and encourage others to follow. Just set realistic targets, change will come eventually.
- xevb3k 8y agoDownloaded the app, immediately deleted it because it asked me to create an account. Are there any similar apps which store the data locally?
- feintruled 8y agoI used the Samsung Health fitness app, you can use it without an account I think. Seems to offer pretty much the same functionality (definitely does the calorie counting and targetting).
- kofejnik 8y agoYou don't need to create any accounts with Samsung, they already have all your data anyway, linked to your device Id. Your data is safe in their cloud, don't worry. /s
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- weliketocode 8y agoA friend was telling me about her latest date. The guy refused to eat at dinner because he gets his energy from the sun using photosynthesis. As laughable as it sounds, it's not out-of-line compared to all the dietary marketing myths and superstitions that somehow persist.
- kyberias 8y agoHe eats plants.
- jsty 8y ago> The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. The magnitude of the caloric difference will regulate how quickly or slowly you lose the weight. One important point to note is that past a certain level, usually around a 500kcal per day deficit, it becomes extremely hard to maintain. Performance physically + mentally will start dropping off quickly. If you do want / need a larger deficit, do more low-intensity exercise rather than reducing caloric intake, and make sure you have a reasonably varied diet (or at least take a multivitamin). (I used to do competitive sport with weight classes, and messing up your weight plan was never fun ...). Standard disclaimer: I am not a doctor or nutritionist etc.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoLow-intensity exercise burns such a remarkably tiny amount of calories that it basically worthless. A 200lb person running will burn about 150kcal/mile, which is a single can of soda, a third of a donut, 1.5 apples, 2 eggs, or 1.5 slices of bread.
- nonbel 8y ago>"A 200lb person running will burn about 150kcal/mile, which is a single can of soda, a third of a donut, 1.5 apples, 2 eggs, or 1.5 slices of bread." The error is to think that 1 mile is a long distance. That takes like 7-20 minutes.
- noarchy 8y ago>The error is to think that 1 mile is a long distance. That takes like 7-20 minutes. That time frame represents a big range of abilities. The person doing it in 7 minutes is probably in good shape. The person doing it in 20 minutes is probably walking it, and not fast.
- nonbel 8y agoEven walking is going to be ~100 kcal/mile, so I'd say even walking 5 miles in 1.5 hrs is substantial calorie-wise.
- npstr 8y agoExercise isn't only great because it burns calories directly. What it does is retain / build up muscle, and that in turn increases your base calories burning rate, each day.
- maxerickson 8y agoA pound of muscle (which is a lot) needs like 8 calories for maintenance.
- davidlago 8y agoNutrition and weight regulation is not as simple as a direct function of calorie intake. The storage of fat in our bodies does not follow the "laws of physics" like someone down in the comments mentioned. This field is actively being studied (and heavily lobbied/backed by some food companies). I'm glad this strategy worked for you, but I hope people don't take this as advice that is easily generalized.
- mlrtime 8y agoThe only wait to loose weight is to consume less calories than you burn.
- auntienomen 8y agoYes, duh. You keep saying this like it's a revelation to people who're discussing which mechanisms are available to a) control how many calories consumed and b) control how many calories are burned, and c) what feedback loops exists between a) and b). For a lot of people here, I suspect, it's like getting a lecture on if statements when discussing multi-threaded control flow.
- jlebrech 8y agothat's a great result. did you find exercise made you hungry? maybe that's why going for a run before bed might be beneficial as you can sleep rather than eat.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoI've found exercising right before lunch works really well to avoid this problem. Of course, not everyone has the luxury to exercise for half an hour, have a shower, and then eat lunch in the middle of the day. Any company that doesn't give their employees adequate time to exercise is just harming itself. Healthy employees are productive employees.
- jlebrech 8y agomaybe that's why walking desks are a good idea.
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- jlebrech 8y agoit would be easier to meal prep a few days in advance rather than recording everything you eat.
- _up 8y agoMyfitness Pal should publish some data. I would for example like to know if weather/temp. has a role in appetite.
- rcatcher 8y agoYou don't have to exercise, but keep in mind that way you'll go from being fat to being skinny fat. I made that mistake myself and to be honest my body looked better before losing weight.
- tjr225 8y agoI went from 260 to 160 and I my body looked way better at 160 than it did at 260 so ymmv...
- spoiler 8y agoI started body weight exercises with a friend who guided me—and is very experienced in the area, and also started being in a slight [1] calories deficit. I've been at it for about 5 months now and I've dropped 30 kg as of a few days ago (from 118kg), which is 66lbs (from 260lbs). The added benefit of exercise is that my energy levels are much more stable throughout the day, and my mood is generally better and more positive. Also, this wasn't so much of a diet as a lifestyle change. I always wanted to get into body weight exercises and gymnastics, but got discouraged by injuries and lack of knowledge/guidance. So, I'm very lucky to have met my friend (in more ways than one) who helped set me on the path I wanted to be! [1]: The deficit might not be so slight anymore, given I gained strength and increased my intnesity whilst keeping the calories the same. I've started eating a bit more to compensate for that now, but I'm still in a net deficit.
- dalbasal 8y agoCounting calories in/out is a way to lose weight that works for a lot of people. It also works well in clinical & research settings, where control mechanisms are strong. That said: "The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss" This may be one of the most harmful statements about diet. It's mostly true, but in a fairly banal sense. A baby will have a caloric surpluss as it grow. So will a potato. Without the calories, growth will stunt. This is the trivial fact. The growth trajectory of a potato or baby is not trivially determined by caloric surplusses. One big factor is genetics, which tell babies and potatoes to grow. There are environmental factors, many of which are calorie related. "This is a scientific fact" is in the context it's used, an empty tautology. Caloric surplusses can be used in exactly the same way to "explain" why an elephant is bigger than a mouse, why there are 6 billion people on the planet, how a bodybuilder got his biceps or why you got fat. This makes it a nonexplanation. A less abstract hint that we're dealing with a nonexplanation is apples. Add one apple a day to your diet, and calorie counting will tell you that amounts to 5kg fat per year. We know from experience that people do not gain/lose 10 lbs per year by adding an apple a day to their diet. Your apetite or metabolism (these are related) will compensate for the apple. That doesn't mean that intentional caloric restriction isn't a good method. It works well for some. Other things work well for others. We don't have perfect knowledge about what works "in the wild" or even in the lab.
- janlaureys 8y agoAll calories are equal, but some are more equal than others.
- mlrtime 8y agoAfter all that you typed out it still doesn't matter, the only way to loose weight is to consume less calories than you "burn". Everything else you talk about is either different ways to accomplish this or excuses. There is no beating conservation of energy.
- deno 8y agoDepends on how you define consume[1]. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093802-stomach-tap-to-let-obese-people-empty-their-gut-after-eating/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093802-stomach-tap-to-...
- ericcholis 8y agoI've found that intermittent fasting was easies to implement in 12, 14, 16 hour increments. I do "cheat" just a bit with a coffee in the morning, and 14 hour cheat days on the weekends. Intermittent fasting, allegedly, has numerous benefits. Stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system. Improved dopamine levels in the brain. Increased growth hormone production. I personally have found that I do feel "run down" which turned out to be lower blood pressure. I attributed this to low sodium intake. So, I drink two very low sugar (6g) recovery drinks for my first caloric intake around noon. One thing that wasn't covered, and likely isn't in many of these weight loss recaps, is not just caloric deficit; but also food content. Sugar's (and carbs) relationship to fat and our bodies cannot be understated. There's plenty of reading on how high sugar diets are detrimental. Here's an interesting listen: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/refined-sugar https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/refined-sugar This image alone scares the snot out of me: http://reachingutopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sugar-in-drinks.jpg http://reachingutopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sugar-i... I think most people are aware of this in principle, but don't often associate normal foods as being high in sugar. Orange juice is probably the worst offender. All the sugar, none of the fiber.
- anonu 8y agoIve been hearing more and more about IF. Curious how you manage it - for lets say 16 hours? Do you have a "dinner cutoff time" that works well? Does it mean you're skipping breakfast? I never believed that breakfast was "the most important meal of the day". IF success sort of supports this & the fact that it was mostly marketing.
- DisruptiveDave 8y agoI basically eat during work. That's it. Not before office hours and not after. Makes it very simple to track and routine-ize.
- bonesss 8y agoI do the opposite: dinner time to a bit before bed-time. Easy routine, no gross co-worker lunch smells, and I'm always eating planned meals I prepare. Better a hot steak than something reheated at work, IME.
- anonu 8y ago> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss This is generally contested by recent diet and nutrition research, as I understand it.
- apexalpha 8y agoit can't be. This is physics, not nutrition. If you have a jar with €100 in it, and you put €9 more in every month but also take out €10 then you will lose €1, no matter what an economist says. There is still research being done in how the body reacts to different caloric deficits, but the basics hold up.
- anonu 8y agoNot if the jar pays you an interest rate. I'm being facetious. But my point is calories out will vary depending on calories in. You can eat 2000 calories of carbs 1 day and 2000 calories of protein the next... turns out your calories out will be higher when you eat protein because your metabolism increases. This isn't physics. This is nutrition. And its still not fully understood IMHO.
- AJRF 8y agoI feel like there are some parralels between understanding how you lose weight and how you retain money / stop yourself living paycheck to paycheck. The Calories in / Calories out dichotomy is similar to the double accounting Assets = Liabilities + Capital in that it is so simple, but until you start to pay attention you can make that equation massively unbalanced to the point it starts to hurt you.
- rburhum 8y agoFirst of all, congrats - that is amazing and really shows true commitment. As somebody that lost 30+ pounds (I am 5ft 65 and went from 205lbs to 172lbs), I definitely understand can sympathize with the work it takes. For anyone else embarking on the journey, I would add a few things: - When you are in caloric deficit and thus loosing weight, you can choose not to go to the gym, but you will lose muscle mass faster. If you want to maintain muscle mass as much as possible you are better off doing some weight lifting instead of running. You won't gain muscle mass, but you'll reduce the loss. - Ghrelin is the hormone that you will need to control. It is what makes you hungry and ultimately ruins your diet. Funny enough, you control it by constantly eating low caloric foods. You want to eat a lot of veggies, fats (avocado will be your friend) and protein throughout the day in low amounts. Just stay under your target caloric intake. - The most difficult part is not eating out. Meal preparation is key, and this takes time. When you eat out, you just don't know how people prepared the meal you are eating. Sadly, meals that you eat outside have a huge amount of oil and counting calories will be next to impossible most of the time. Even in the cases where a restaurant lists caloric numbers with their plates, you can be certain that the cook is less interested in your caloric intake and more in getting your order out the door. Six tablespoons of olive oil instead of the one you are counting and you are off for the day already. The best you can hope when eating out is maintaining weight. - Your body is designed for homeostasis and will fight you back to get you to regain it (through Ghrelin, mood swings, etc). After loosing the target weight, increase your caloric intake to stabilize it. If you can keep your weight for a year, it will be easy to remain at that weight later on. Good luck!
- bad_good_guy 8y agoI would also add to your points: - If you are lifting weights at a decent intensity, as in squatting 80% of your bodyweight for an example, you WILL gain muscle mass if you are new to it despite a calorie deficit. Noob gains are a powerful thing. Most people just curl 5 lb dumbbells or do some other motion with a weight that is barely noticable. - This guy was eating at a very unhealthy calorie deficit (1000). You should never go over 500 kcal deficit if you don't want to lose loads of muscle in the process. A calorie deficit as high as his is comparable to a crash diet, and is prone to result in a quick upswing in weight once the diet ends, as you will have been starving yourself.
- Tade0 8y agoYou don’t have to exercise. I tried that last year and lost... 1kg over the course of three months on a decent calorie deficit(or so I thought). Gained that much - and more - in two weeks or so during Christmas. Granted I didn't move at all, because I was working remotely and had no incentive to go out. I guess when you're obese your diaphragm working to keep you oxygenated is enough "exercise", so that may be sound advice if you're on that end of the scale. I know my last year's approach led me to lose a significant amount of muscle mass, so I recommend some light exercise - yoga works well because you only need 2m x 2m of real estate, a mat and thirty minutes of your time daily. At this rate you're well within the recommended amount of physical activity.
- EpicEng 8y ago>or so I thought That would be your issue. If you're eating a good bit below your maintenance level you'll lose weight. Period. You were not. You likely overestimated maintenance else you simply ate more than you tracked.
- freehunter 8y agoI'm not trying to discount your progress, but you likely didn't lose 1kg of fat. If you were actively trying to change your diet, you probably consumed fewer carbs or less salt, which having fewer carbs and less salt causes your body to retain less water. Low carb diets often show a very dramatic weight loss in the first week because as carbs are flushed from your body, the water they're holding onto is flushed as well.
- dpark 8y agoI think you misread the parent comment. 1kg is not much weight and is not presented as if it is. He’s saying he didn’t exercise and essentially lost no weight.
- freehunter 8y agoI understand that, the point I was trying to make is the "I gained that back over the holiday" isn't actually gaining the weight back, it's just putting more carbs and salt into your body so the scale goes up, but the fat levels likely didn't change. I understand they were dancing around saying "I didn't lose anything", I was just trying to make the point that they likely didn't gain much either. Tiny fluctuations like that happen more around water weight than fat weight.
- dalore 8y ago> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss > The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. The magnitude of the caloric difference will regulate how quickly or slowly you lose the weight. This is actually not so clear cut. It's currently being debated if this model is right or the hormonal model is right. https://peterattiamd.com/do-calories-matter/ https://peterattiamd.com/do-calories-matter/ What I suspect with the author was that his caloric deficit was also restricting carbs and once the carbs was restricted his body started to burn fat when there was no more insulin in his blood. Counting carbs and restricting them leads to an easier lifestyle to follow where you don't worry about getting hungry and making sure you're burning more then you eat (Vs counting calories).
- bluedino 8y agoI'm always amazed at the people who can drop a hundred lbs in a year. "I just changed my diet to 1500 calories and bam, the weight fell off." Not that it isn't that simple, because it is. But, because for most people who are 100lbs overweight, they have a very unhealthy relationship with food. They stress eat, binge eat, binge drink, purge... I guess it's kind of like the people who can just all of a sudden quit smoking, cold-turkey one day. Maybe they weren't addicted to nicotine in the first place?
- koolba 8y ago> Not that it isn't that simple, because it is. But, because for most people who are 100lbs overweight, they have a very unhealthy relationship with food. They stress eat, binge eat, binge drink, purge... I've tried explaining this to people who claim, "But X barely eats and doesn't lose any weight.". While there may be some variation in body efficiency and metabolism, if a person isn't losing weight over an extended period of time then they're eating more than they're burning and they're probably doing it when you can't see them.
- RandallBrown 8y agoSaw a video about two women, one overweight and one skinny. They ate together regularly and the skinny woman would always eat much more food. They followed both around and while it was true that the skinny woman ate more at meals, that was also pretty much the only time she ate anything. The overweight woman was snacking all day long. When I was working on losing weight, I very loosely did the calorie counting thing and realized that the milk and cookies I would occasionally make after dinner was like 700 calories. Before I would just think about my meals with almost no thought about the extras.
- vidarh 8y agoI think a lot of it comes down to what made you decide to change. 10-12 years ago I decided to get in shape, and I calorie counted and exercised every day for the next 2 years, and stuck to the gym for a decade. Now I'm struggling to get back into it again after letting my weight creep up. What made me start the first time was a really scary moment of getting up and nearly blacking out (not getting up to fast and getting dizzy; I'm talking things just went properly black in a way I've not experienced before or since) and having distorted vision for 20 seconds or so after I sat back down. Couple that with persistent knee pain that made my doctor look at me for about 10 seconds before giving me an exercise sheet for old people (when you're in your 30's and get handed a sheet of exercises where the pictures are of people 60+ it's not a good sign). Get the right motivation and it gets a lot easier to stick with it. Different life events made me start to slip a couple of years back, and at the moment I find it hard to be motivated in part because I still feel healthier than I did last time, and I'm far stronger than I was, and feeling like I'm in a better position makes it so easy to justify that one extra helping of food. I'm not saying that to diminish the effort it takes to stick with it, but just to point out that even for the same person, the right catalyst (or lack of one) can mean the difference between sticking through it all the way through and not even getting started. Also keep in mind survivor bias - not many of us will write about how we hoped to drop a hundred lbs but failed 5 lbs in. 10 times in a row.
- nassyweazy 8y agoAs someone who lost over 100 pounds (6"2 and from 279 to 169 pounds), I can honestly say that loosing weight is way easier than it seems, provided you have a good work-life balance. I lost the first 45 pounds in 3 weeks by doing the following daily routine: - 4 hours of swimming - 1.5 hours of weights lifting - 3 hours of swimming - 2 hours of table tennis 1 BIG lunch, no other meal for the day, TONS of water. Apps, books and all are completely overrated. Just be motivated and listen to your body, stop exercise when you reach your limit, rest, repeat.. The other 55+ pounds were lost over 2 years and a half without much exercise, just find the arrangement of fruits, lightweight cheese and vegetables + tuna that you love and eat it as often as possible.
- Bedon292 8y agoWere you working full time for those three weeks? How did you manage to find the time? That is over 10 hours of exercise a day, plus work, and commute, and everything else you need to do. Seems like there would be no time for sleep, which I would expect to need to sleep for a long time after 10 hours of exercising. I guess the real question is, what was the rest of your day like?
- nassyweazy 8y agoAs mentioned, I took 3 weeks off. When you exercise 10hrs/day, even if you pick sports that you love (what I did), you don't want to work or do any "forced" commute. Take some time for yourself and your health, this is investment too.
- l5870uoo9y 8y agoOver 10 hours of daily exercise sounds harsh…
- nassyweazy 8y agoJust commit for a short period of time, this helps. I'm the kind of person that makes tradeoff with its own brain. Deal was: exercise A LOT but not for an extended period of time, eat less (once a day) but eat food that I like in quantities that I enjoy.
- Bedon292 8y agoI definitely need to lose some weight myself. Unfortunately I can never stick with anything. Including this simple method. I have done MyFitnessPal for weeks, and then fall out of the habit. Just never manage to stick with it, and not sure how to keep myself motivated for it. Of course its always hard, half the time I eat at the salad bar at work, and I may not be able to estimate the amounts right. I always worry about underestimating how much I ate. I have even considered eating pre-packaged meals, but those always leave me hungry, and seem like a less healthy sodium filled alternative. Not sure what my point is, but I guess I am wondering if anyone has managed to keep themselves motivated after years of failing to stay motivated? And if so, how?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoYou have to really want it, to have a reason to do it that is more important to you than your comfort because your body is going to have to eat itself and that's just never going to be a pleasant experience. Additionally, weight loss has permanent metabolic effects, so you'll have to keep doing it for the rest of your life. I found an athletic hobby I really enjoy, so that works for me, but everyone has to find their own reason or come to the rational conclusion that it just isn't worth it.
- swah 8y agoNot yet. I'm still falling for the trap that after a few days "doing well" I'll award myself a binge (I'm not very overweight but would like to lose 5-10kg).
- alistairSH 8y ago1358 kcal/day? Is that sustainable/healthy for an average sized male? That sounds really low - low enough that I feel like I'd be missing other components of my diet (vitamins). Simple online BMR calculators put my BMR at >1500 kcal/day. Add life on top of that, plus some exercise, and that value needs to be 2000+, sometimes much higher.
- ksahin 8y agoNot healthy at all, every nutrition professionnal will tell you. 90% of people using this "diet" will gain all the weight back; if not more, for lots of reason. There are direct simple reasons like, by eating much less than your BMR, you are going to loose a ton of muscle mass, even though you eat "enough" protein. The lost of this muscle mass will make your BMR even lower, make your testosterone level lower, and lots of other bad consequences for your hormones. There are lots of studies about weight loss, comparing every diet, and almost all diets don't work in the long run. The only thing that works in the long run is eating slightly less calories than needed, with healthy food, with good macros/micros, and building muscle mass, to keep the metabolism rate high. The thing is, with this type of diet it could take years to achieve your target weight, and not a lot of people are able to accept that, even though it's the healthiest thing to do.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago> Not healthy at all, every nutrition professionnal will tell you. Given the track record of nutritional professionals that's practically an endorsement.
- hrnnnnnn 8y agoWhat has happened in my experience, and as the author mentions, is that to keep yourself from feeling hungry all the time on a low-calorie diet you will automatically start eating low-calorie-density food. The most obvious choice here are things with lots of mass that are readily available and suitable for snacking on. For me that's cherry tomatoes and carrots dipped in hummous. While low in calories, these foods (vegetables) tend to have a high density of nutrients, so I believe what happens is you end up getting more or the same amount of nutrients for fewer overall calories.
- tsenkov 8y agoLast year I lost 44 pounds (20kg) by counting calories (I also used MyFitnessPal to count and record everything). My advice to people who want to be successful into this, would be: 1. Be realistic with the calories you consume. Use an app to track everything down. Eat more raw vegetables and lean protein-source foods that are easy to account for and will fill you up (so you will not feel hungry all of the time). Measure everything to the gram. Buy a scale and try preparing most of your food yourself. 2. Don't have cheat-days. Get to your goal and then, you add a few hundred calories a day to equalize intake/expenditure (so you stop losing weight), so you will have a few hundred more calories a day to eat - now you can (hopefully) have what you want and would not be cheating. 3. Be realistic with the calories you spend. Get an armband to measure your movement throughout the day, measure yourself on the scale every week and if things don't add-up - correct for the error. 4. Don't go for more than 0.5kg loss per week. Having such a huge deficit to make 1kg of fat go away within a week can render you in a very unproductive state where you barely can get anything done during the day (that's ~1285 Kcal deficit a day, which is half of your normal calories per day if you are 30 yo male, not gaining or loosing weight and you weigh-in at 220 punds / 100kg, you would usually be expending about 2600 Kcal if you have at least some activity during the day like an hour of walking). 5. Don't listen to people's stories about weight loss and "what worked for them", if they are in their early 20's (I am 30 yo). Younger bodies (and minds) are more susceptible to magic. If at the start of your journey you maintain some muscle through training - you will have to continue training during this period of weight loss, or that is the first thing you will lose. Even then, you have to know you will lose some muscle. I personally don't care about looks (I run and I train in Boxing) and losing some of that muscle doesn't bother me, since at the end I feel lighter, quicker and (compared to my new weight-class) stronger. Good luck! P.S. - Even if you weren't training when you started and you are not trying to maintain gained muscle - doing some interval training during the weight loss will help keep your metabolic rate from falling. Your body will (partially) adjust to the weight loss by lowering your metabolism and this will solve part of the hunger, but you will feel sleepy, slow and tired and you will be burning less fat overall. Pushing yourself for just a few minutes a day with some HIIT or something similar, can offset this.
- notacoward 8y ago> Don't listen to people's stories about weight loss and "what worked for them", if they are in their early 20's Especially if they're much younger, but not only then. We're all different - in our bodies' responses to different stimuli, in our schedules and other constraints, in our tolerance for different kinds of privation or discomfort. Even among people of similar ages and life circumstances, results will vary widely. The important thing is to experiment with different kinds of diet and exercise, different schedules of when to do which, and observe what's working vs. what's not.
- roevhat 8y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13413725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13413725. Here using closed-loop feedback for weight loss.
- mstaoru 8y agoGreat progress and tips! We're developing a "MyFitnessPal + UberEats" food delivery service that automatically counts calories and macros here in Shanghai, where ~16 million people order their food instead of cooking or eating out. I wonder why nobody did this in the Bay Area at least? Is it generally lower penetration of food delivery? Or gathering the data is just too much work? It's easier here with Chinese food: orders naturally consist of 2-3 dishes at least, and for 2-3 people it can be 5-6 dishes, making it possible for us to pick a right "combo" for the right macros. I think with Western food, most people would stick to one dish with a side, which is much harder to "configure" and meet the right target. Also, of course, even a modest amount of exercise will kick off metabolic processes that speed up weight loss, not mentioning that increasing muscle mass will naturally increase the basal metabolic rate. Weight lifting routines like 5x5 or Greyskull LP can be squeezed into 20-30 minutes every other day, and provide lasting benefits almost immediately.
- manuw 8y agocongrats! You can find here[0] a lot of progress pics from ppl, who lost a lot of weight with simple cico[1]. I do PSMF[2] sometimes for 1-2 Weeks when I feel to lose 1-4kg. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/progresspics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/progresspics/ [1] calories in, calories out [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein-sparing_modified_fast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein-sparing_modified_fast
- Spoom 8y agoThis is great! Congratulations. I recently lost a little less than 50 pounds doing Whole30 (for 30 days, followed by a lighter version with occasional exceptions). I liked it because I didn't really need to count calories. Yes, it technically falls into the "fancy diet" category since you're eliminating food groups. It had a few advantages that I think straight calorie counting didn't, though. Its restriction from any added sugar or sweetener both naturally reduces calorie intake massively and tends to stabilize energy levels throughout the day, while eliminating cravings over time. I've found that I don't really want to eat many of the things I used to. The foods that Whole30 eliminates tend to be emptier calories than others. There is some science behind the choices but admittedly it's not peer reviewed or anything. That said, again, I don't really miss toast, bread, or cereal that much. Dairy was hard at first but easy now (and again, swapping for water eliminates a bunch of calories). I think not drinking Diet Coke helped my health, but I have a harder time identifying why. Also, I don't really have to try on this plan. My weight just tends to drop off without thinking about it. I did Weight Watchers before, which kinda worked but left me both hungry fairly constantly and frustrated by the constant food lookups and logging. Some consider Whole30 woo or unhealthy, which is fine, but it works pretty well for me.
- yoda_sl 8y agoCongrats! I have started a similar approach for the last 2 months using LoseIt as my app to count calories, and the goal to loose around 64 pounds by end of the year (going from 244 to 180 pounds). I did join a gym, and this weekend decided to get a personal trainer for a couple months to be sure that I build some muscle mass too: my core is definitely weak, and gaining some muscle will not hurt to strengthen my body: had a few injuries (ankle/knee) where having muscles will probably avoid it. So far on track, with almost 20 pounds lost (19.4 as of yesterday), and going to the gym 4 to 5 times a week 45 minutes to 1 hour at a time...
- nigelk 8y agoI lost 50 pounds in under 200 days, and then another 20 over the next year. Here's what worked for me: * Calorie counting to work out baselines * Accept the feeling of being hungry and learn to relish it ("I'm losing weight if I'm hungry") * Do light weightlifting at home * Exercise naked in front of a mirror for positive and negative reinforcement
- toomanybeersies 8y agoTo prove a point once, I lost a few kg while eating a diet that consisted solely of pizza. Upon saying that, I wouldn't recommend it. The best weight management methods are holistic, the different facets of healthy weight management: exercise, meal composition, and serving size, all play into each other. You want to exercise more, eat less, and eat healthier. If you eat healthier; whole grains instead of refined carbs, lots of leafy greens, legumes to replace carbs, and avoid processed foods; then you'll feel satiated while eating less, both in calories and in just bulk amount of food. You'll have more energy from a diet consisting of whole foods instead of refined carbs, which will allow you to exercise more and exercise harder. There's no reason why you can't burn 800 calories in an hour of hard exercise with the right diet and motivation. It might be different for other people, but for me, exercising also makes me want to eat healthier. I've found that group classes (crossfit, spin, etc.) are a great motivator to exercise too. If you see the same people every time you go, you form a group and it becomes a social activity. Obviously that's not for all of us, but I always struggled with motivation to go to the gym solo. When I started doing functional fitness group sessions, I couldn't stop. I went to every session (3 times a week) for 8 months, the only sessions I missed were when I was out of town. Otherwise I'd turn up no matter how I felt, whether tired, sick, or hungover, I'd drag my arse out. The big thing is really motivation. Going solo, it's really easy to lose motivation. If you have friends who are also eating healthy and working out with you, it really helps. For me, it was other people in my coworking space. The space was really big into healthy lifestyles, so there were a bunch of us who would bring healthy food to work and go to the gym together. Another great tip is to avoid buying any packaged food. Only eat food you've prepared yourself, that way you don't accidentally eat a bunch of food you don't need to as you need to physically go out of your way to make food to eat. That may include cutting bread out of your diet, it's too easy to make a piece of toast if you're peckish, it's a lot more work to cook a potato. I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted to because alcohol was a major food group, but I toned up a whole lot and felt a lot healthier in general. It also had a positive mental health effect. Unfortunately I moved overseas and lost my momentum. It's been 8 months since I've gone to a gym and I've managed to pick up most of my old bad habits again. At least I can still run 5 km (3 miles) in 30 minutes, so it's not all gone. Anyway, my point is: technically, yes, simply counting calories will work for weight loss. But that's the hard way. You'll feel like shit, constantly hunger and lacking energy. Take a holistic approach to your health. And if you don't exercise and eat healthy food, you might get skinny, but you'll still be unfit and unhealthy, you just won't get a heart attack at 30.
- fbnlsr 8y agoI've been struggling with weight problems and my self-image for as long as I can remember. I've tried the Dukan diet ten years ago, which was a total disaster. At my heaviest I was 84kg for 174cm. That's a BMI of 27. Two years ago, I had a minor motorcycle crash, and at the hospital the doctor was scared about my heart rate. It was fast and it was loud, around 100 bpm at rest. I always had a heart with a fast beat so I didn't really care about it. Then, my son was born. At that moment I decided that I needed to take care of myself and started going to the gym. Alas, being a new parent takes a lot of time and energy, and I had to cancel my membership last year. So I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting since then, and it's been the best thing I've done in a long time. I started doing the usual "16/8", that is fast for 16 hours and eat during the following 8 hours window. Basically it meant skipping breakfast and having lunch at around 1pm, which is extremely easy to do. The past two months, I cranked the notch a bit and I've been doing OMAD (One Meal A Day). I eat from 7pm to 9pm and the rest of the time I only drink water or black coffee. It just changed my life. In the past two months I've lost 9kg, so now I'm at 73kg, and I've never felt so good in my life. My mind feels sharper throughout the day, and I've developed a completely different relationship with food. I now consider it to be fuel, and I've started thinking about the quality of fuel I'm putting in my body. So now I cook and I try to chose good meat and vegetables, and I'm trying to cut on sugar and pasta. I still eat lunch sometimes (when I'm visiting my parents or I'm having lunch with a client) but I don't really care as I know that my weight is going to regulate itself in the few following days. And my heart rate is now normal. At rest, it's beating at around 65 bpm. If anyone's interested, I highly recommend watching Jason Fung on Youtube. His talks about fasting have been an eye opener for me. His approach on obesity through hormonal regulation is amazing.
- bmn__ 8y agohttps://fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ The Hacker's Diet – How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition first published 1994, also comes with software tools
- iod 8y agoSo where does all the fat go? I find the answer rather interesting as for 10 units of fat you burn, you breath out about 8.4 units of carbon dioxide and 1.6 units of water. Applying this to imperial pounds means that: 1 lb fat -> 0.84 lbs CO2 and 0.16 lb water. ¹https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.h...
- throw7 8y agoCongrats on weight loss. Now you should integrate exercising into your life. At least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week. Do it.
- jokoon 8y agoYou should really exercise, no matter what people tell you, or how difficult it feels. Controlling your diet seems like the easy way, and I don't think it's really healthy because you will lack energy, and it's easy to slip. You should already stop drinking sodas and eating unnecessary snacks, but I'll never believe that it's the only thing you can do. Remember that exercise gets easier over time, so just hang in there and take the pain. Sweating is good, all your body will be restarting if you exercise. All existing biology reacts to simulation, and dies if it stops moving. Just imagine your cells getting reorganized, cheese particles bring breathed out, and toxins getting filtered out. Exercise will counter the problems created by bad diets but not only vascular. It will rebalance a lot of things. You will also sleep better. There is truth in people living longer because they keep asking their body for more even when they age. All life forms thrived around biological movement. Sedentary lifestyle is the antithesis of living.
- bad_good_guy 8y agoI would wager that hackernews is probably one of the worst places for misinformation in terms of discussing health/fitness/weight loss. I am seeing a lot of disregard for exercise and in particular heavy weightlifting which has a ton of benefits to daily life. The original post itself shows a guy who goes for 1000 kcal deficit which is widely known as being twice as much as the healthy maximum.
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- Pimpus 8y agoFor losing weight, diet is much more important than exercise. Studies have shown that very few people can successfully lose weight through exercise alone, and that dieting is much more effective. Which is easier, cutting out soda and sweets or running every day? Keep in mind that running one mile burns about 100 calories. Dessert can easily be upwards of 500 calories. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/running-burn-calories-per-mile https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/running-b... Also, exercise stimulates hunger and you will naturally eat more to compensate for the lost calories.
- bad_good_guy 8y agoSorry if I was unclear. I know that it's all about diet for losing weight. But lifting weights is necessary to prevent yourself ending losing lots of muscle during calorie deficits. Especially in the case of the OP - having a calorie deficit as high as his is likely to cause the body to burn muscle mass at a much higher rate than a lower deficit would - so lifting helps to prevent this among other clear benefits
- virtuallynathan 8y agoMany people in this thread are talking about CICO (Calories In/Calories Out). While this does "work", I quite like this paper to explain why it's only a proximate cause of weight gain/loss. "How calorie-focused thinking about obesity and related diseases may mislead and harm public health. An alternative" "Abstract: Prevailing thinking about obesity and related diseases holds that quantifying calories should be a principal concern and target for intervention. Part of this thinking is that consumed calories – regardless of their sources – are equivalent; i.e. ‘a calorie is a calorie’. The present commentary discusses various problems with the idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ and with a primarily quantitative focus on food calories. Instead, the authors argue for a greater qualitative focus on the sources of calories consumed (i.e. a greater focus on types of foods) and on the metabolic changes that result from consuming foods of different types. In particular, the authors consider how calorie-focused thinking is inherently biased against high-fat foods, many of which may be protective against obesity and related diseases, and supportive of starchy and sugary replacements, which are likely detrimental. Shifting the focus to qualitative food distinctions, a central argument of the paper is that obesity and related diseases are problems due largely to food-induced physiology (e.g. neurohormonal pathways) not addressable through arithmetic dieting (i.e. calorie counting). The paper considers potential harms of public health initiatives framed around calorie balance sheets – targeting ‘calories in’ and/or ‘calories out’ – that reinforce messages of overeating and inactivity as underlying causes, rather than intermediate effects, of obesity. Finally, the paper concludes that public health should work primarily to support the consumption of whole foods that help protect against obesity-promoting energy imbalance and metabolic dysfunction and not continue to promote calorie directed messages that may create and blame victims and possibly exacerbate epidemics of obesity and related diseases." https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/7203F27BFDE14B828C50F20548BCC49C/S1368980014002559a.pdf/how_caloriefocused_thinking_about_obesity_and_related_diseases_may_mislead_and_harm_public_health_an_alternative.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
- notacoward 8y agoLosing weight is all about triggering the body's mechanisms to convert fat into energy, and not triggering its mechanisms to turn food into fat. Counting calories or exercising more are the most basic attempts to do this. If you want to add a bit of nuance you can play around with what you eat, how you exercise, when you do each. But the key thing is this: We're all different. I've decided to lose weight a couple of times, on the order of 20-40 pounds each time. What has worked for me has been a combination of generally eating/drinking less, concentrating almost all of that into a small time window, and a fair bit of running. But the reason it works for me is very specific to what it takes to kick my body into fat-burning mode, how fast and how long my body sustains that, how this affects my energy levels, my physical ability to perform various kinds of exercise or tolerate various kinds of discomfort (e.g. I don't mind running on an empty stomach but I hate sleeping that way), and so on. Something vaguely similar to what I do might work for a lot of people, but the devil's in the details. My specific formula won't work for you. Experiment and find your own. The best thing about the recent IF/TRF/OMAD/whatever fad is not that it provides a specific blueprint but that it encourages people to experiment with different variations to find their own balance points.
- fapi1974 8y agoI think this is the simplest, most straightforward post on this topic I have read. Congratulations.
- AH2mdte8kPnJS 8y agoWhat about going the other way - gaining weight? Does anyone have tips or reccomendations on how I can gain weight. I'm 6'3" and 160lbs and have always wanted to gain weight but I struggle with consistently eating 5 meals a day.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoEat more calorically dense foods and more of them per meal.
- meowzero 8y agoGaining weight is simple, it's the other way around. You need to eat more calories than you burn. So just like with losing weight, track everything with a scale and a food log (like myfitnesspal). See how many calories you need to start gaining weight and start tracking. Maybe you'll notice you're not eating at a surplus at your age, activity level, etc. And just like losing weight, it will take a while, depending on how much your surplus is. You might gain 1-2 lbs a week.
- Asooka 8y agoFor those who do calorie counting - how do you deal with all the work? E.g. if I want to make a sandwich, the process is 1. Find the nutritional information on the back of the bread bag. Enter that into the app. 2. Put slice of bread on the scale. Record weight, put into app. 3. Zero out scale with slice of bread still on it. 4. Put slice of ham on slice of bread, record weight. Enter into app... that brand of ham is not on the app. 5. Enter ham nutritional information into app. Enter ham slice weight into app. 6. Put a big amount of green salad on the sandwich. We're not counting the calories in that, but we need it to zero out the scale. 7. Put a second slice of ham on the sandwich, measure its weight, enter into app. 8. Put a second slice of bread, measure its weight, enter into app. 9. You have now spent 20 minutes making a sandwich and wrestling with an infuriating mobile interface for entering information. And this is the most basic of foods. If I decide to actually cook something, things get super hairy, because I have to first measure the raw ingredients, then measure the weight of the cooked food, then divide the amount of calories in the ingredients by the weight of the cooked food to obtain calories/gram, then use that to calculate portion size. The ingredients I use are constrained in variety and quantity by what's available in my local stores, so I can't even make the exact same thing every time, so I have to repeat this process every day. It also meant I couldn't eat out at most restaurants, because there was no nutritional information available, which is the point when I gave up trying to count calories, because having to make everything from scratch myself, while also measuring and entering ingredients in the app means spending 2-3 hours per day on just making food, which is time I don't really have.
- CNJ7654 8y agoI stick to the lazy approach. Find an app like myfitnesspal that has generic calorie and nutrition info for a given food. Is it going to be accurate to the nearest 10 calories? No, but it's better than giving up on calorie counting entirely :)
- lostapathy 8y agoSet the complete sandwich up as a single food in your app. Every time you make one, tell it you made that sandwich. Make it the same way and don't sweat the tiny differences in how thick your slice of bread is each time.
- acconrad 8y agoAveraging 1350 calories for an adult male at over 275 lbs is incredible willpower. I cut 22 lbs in 6 months for a bodybuilding show and the lowest I ever got down to was 1750 calories and that was very, very difficult. Amazing work!
- justherefortart 8y agoI lost 63lbs in 16 weeks, wasn't even that difficult. Just ate less calories and started exercising. Discipline is the key. When you're overweight the first pounds are really easy, the final 10-20% is what's difficult.
- bitL 8y agoI have one rule - I eat cake only when I do ~1000kCal aero training on that given day. That's like pushing on a bike for an hour for me (hilly terrain with interval sprints). I've noticed that if I don't do that, I gain weight, if I do that, I keep the weight and when I do only training, I lose weight, given everything else stays the same.
- sbr464 8y agoCongrats man! Nice write up. I realize this isn’t a good hn reply but wanted to give support!
- coleifer 8y agoCongratulations buddy, I can't imagine how hard that must have been. Thanks for sharing what you experienced.
- coryfklein 8y agoFor anybody interested in accurate monitoring of body weight, I highly recommend checking out a Bod Pod near you. You step in this pod, it vacuum seals, and it uses air displacement to measure your body fat percentage (accuracy usually around 0.5% [1]). Afterwards they print out a sheet that has specific measurements of everything: weight, height, body fat %, non-body fat %, etc. Last I tried, it cost $30 at a local university and took about 30 minutes. Once you know your current body fat % it is much easier to figure exactly how many lbs you need to lose to reach your target %. When going by BMI much of that is guesswork. Locations here: http://www.cosmed.com/en/contact-us/test-site-locator http://www.cosmed.com/en/contact-us/test-site-locator [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10487380 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10487380
- fbnlsr 8y agoThat sounds amazing. Too bad the nearest center is 500km away :(
- mathw 8y agoSo the really hard part is not knowing what to do but managing to do it - willpower, feeling hungry, craving sugars, whatever. I've lost 15kg (so far) following the current (they keep changing it) Weight Watchers plan, which is mostly a series of tricks designed to create a calorific deficit without me feeling hungry and miserable all the time. Works for me. Okay, so I have to pay, but it works and that's important (and I can afford it). I don't think any one method is going to work for everyone, because so much of effective weight loss is a mental game and you need to find the game that works for you. Research, think, consider yourself and your needs and then go for it. Personally, I tried calorie counting and I just couldn't handle the nitpicking nature of it. WW turn everything into much broader units, which are rather crude but it all seems to work out in the end. Although that said I'm currently stuck 3kg away from my goal weight because having crossed into the "healthy" BMI category and experienced a huge boost in my energy levels, physical fitness and capability my motivation has faded somewhat. I look better (people have commented, which is nice). I can dance more (I'm a morris dancer, yesterday I danced a solo jig after three other dances in blazing sunshine and I was fine, couldn't have done that last year) and I can do much, much better at aikido training (not only do I have more stamina throwing people around, I can also be thrown much better as I can fall better because I've got less excess mass to worry about when I hit the floor - I've been told it's much more fun to train with me than it was when I was at my heaviest). So however you do it... it's worth it. But it's impossible to say there's just one method anybody needs, because you have to get over your own mental hurdles first. Which is not just the system btw... I had to change jobs to give me the mental space to pull it off, as I was miserable and depressed and comfort eating constantly.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- scrollaway 8y agoI'm frustrated reading comments here that repeatedly say "Calories in, calories out", "law of thermodynamics", etc. Frustrated because, for one thing, this approach is extremely discouraging to people who want to, or are in the process of, losing weight. "Jesus you're so dumb, how can you not understand this one simple thing that you merely have to eat less?" 1. What works/worked for you/your friends/whoever you read about on the internet may not work for everyone. That's because when talking to each other, neither party has the full picture. Neither party knows exactly the level of activity and food habits of the other. "I simply cut X calories from my diet and it worked!" -- yes, but you also forgot to mention you bike to work and back home every day. 2. Calories in != Calories out. CICO is an approximation, a pretty good one in terms of nutrition, but different foods break down very differently in the body. I recommend watching "Sugar: The Bitter Truth". TLDW: It's a long presentation that talks about how glucose and fructose are broken down by the body. Furthermore, CICO is super misleading on two levels: - It completely ignores hunger. Telling someone "Go down to 1400 calories / day" can be a horrible idea if they don't radically change their diet. It's not just about cutting, it's about replacing. There's high-calorie-budget things you can't keep eating/drinking, and low-calorie-budget things that make you feel fuller that have to be introduced. - Metabolism matters. As I was saying further down in the thread, depending on your metabolism (influenced both by genetics and overall activity level), two people may burn different amounts of energy, both when they're active and even passively by merely existing. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, calories in == calories out. But that's not the only thing that matters. Get your diet sorted out, get your exercise plan sorted out, find a strategy that works long term (not just a crash diet) and that is and feels comfortable. Anything that is uncomfortable/unpleasant is not something that can be maintained long term. Also, like the post says, get a digital body scale to start recording your weight. I got a Nokia Health smart scale which gives me graphs of my weight automatically. Being able to see the trends is the most critical tool. Can you imagine getting good performance at load on your servers without instrumentation, merely by just running top once in a while? PS, if you're downvoting, take the time to leave a comment. All the above is from hard-earned experience.
- radix07 8y agoCICO IS all that matters at the end of the day. Yes, some people may be hungry, some may have a faster metabolism, some may do it better with less carbs, some with less fat, some prefer to only eat within a 4 hour window, others may just want to lift heavy or run far. That's all great, but we can't do much about what works best for each individual and everyone needs to find what works for them. In the end it's all just tricks and moving things around to consume less calories than we use.
- crazygringo 8y ago> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss. The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. True but completely disingenuous. If you normally eat 3,000 calories/day, and cut it to 2,000 calories/day, you won't necessarily lose weight -- many people's metabolisms will simply slow down equivalently. Happy for this guy that it worked, but not all of us are so lucky. Turns out there are a lot of different factors that affect our metabolism, which can be just as important (if not more). Edit: see Gary Taubes' work on this, extremely detailed stuff on what regulates metabolism and fat storage, there's nothing simple about it -- e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462 https://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scien...
- magic_beans 8y agoThis is NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE AT ALL.
- asafira 8y agoI don't know who to believe --- are there good, definitive references for either of you?
- magic_beans 8y agoNo matter what: if you eat below your BMR (basal metabolic rate), you WILL lose weight. The problem is that most people wildly miscalculate their BMR. Your BMR is all the calories your body burns simply by existing. Throw a caloric deficit on top of that and you will lose weight. Some people have ridiculously low BMR's that don't match their appetites. Some people with hormonal or thyroid issues might have a BMR of 1,000 calories. It sucks but it's true. Those people will be stuck overweight for life because it's pretty damn hard to eat under 1,000 calories for the rest of your life. Other people have ridiculously high BMR's and really struggle to gain weight. The key is finding your BMR through trial and error, and eating below that calorie rate or exercising yourself into a deficit.
- 8y ago
- exabrial 8y agoAll I have to say is WOW and congrats. That takes commitment!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nlavezzo 8y agoDoes anyone here have any good science they can point to that would help us understand what the short and longer term effects of prolonged Calorie Deficit are on your Basal Metabolic Rate? I've heard a lot about the BMR going down significantly and staying down, after significant calorie deficit weight loss, leading to people gaining back a lot of weight even if they are eating a lot less than they were before.
- Aelius 8y agoThis is true, which is one of the reasons why this writeup is misleading. You almost certainly need to exercise, because your body will adapt to simply eating less. When it can't adapt, you're probably starving yourself, which is unhealthy and ineffective for long term weight loss.
- berbec 8y agoContestants on the "Biggest Loser" have massive changes to their BMR burn rates making it very difficult to keep weight off long-term. [1] 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weig...
- fatguy300lb 8y agoHey! Amazing effort. Do you have a detailed meal plan of what you ate? This is the part I have always find hard. Just to have a clear Monday > Sunday, breakfast, lunch and dinner simple food plan with all the measures etc. I have looked at things like Huel for Breakfast + Lunch and then have a real meal (fish / chicken + veg) but in lots of different ways with herbs/spices etc. Tend to do in foil to steam / bake. I like to cook - but that's the problem, I like the good food :) So many diets I find are focused on women, and I think guys just want to keep it simple, healthy and tasty without too much hassle at the end of the day. Also do the 5:2 as well. Monday and Wednesday no eating at all - just water. I find it quite easy, but after a few weeks my health went down hill - was clearly not eating enough and then your body starts getting very upset quickly. 10,000 steps a day and swimming 3x a week 500m I have found to be good. We need an open source meal plan app! or wish there was a simple pill you could take and just not eat at all.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jillesvangurp 8y agoWelcome to middle age ;-). I had a stern talking to a few years ago by my doctor and was forced to take measures as well or face the prospect of likely complications. This stuff is hard because we people are not very rational. So, here's a few simple practical things. - Get a scale, put it in your bathroom, and use it as often as you can. Step 0 is simply knowing how you are doing. I know down to a few hundred grams what I weigh most of the time and I've learned the impact of my behavior on the scale. A big dinner, excessive drinking, etc. has a measurable impact that peters out over several days before I'm back to "normal". Simply knowing, has a moderating effect on what I do. - Make changes in your behavior that you can turn into habits. Starving yourself definitely works short term but you'll bounce right back as soon as you resume your old habits. Kind of pointless. Regular fasting is great though because it becomes a habit and you don't have to take decisions. - Try not to set your self up for being tempted to eat too much. In my case, going shopping after work when I'm tired and hungry leads to predictably bad decision making. Make sure you eat before you shop. - Be honest about alcohol. I actually quit drinking completely for a while. Turns out that going for after work beers multiple times per week has a insanely huge caloric impact. I identified it as the single biggest thing that was impacting my weight and duly eliminated it for two years. These days I drink but much less than I used to. In my case I found it easier to not drink than to drink a little. One of the side-effects of alcohol is bad decision making. 1 Beer always leads to more beers. If this is hard for you, that's a good sign of being addicted. All the more reason to try to change things.
- seshagiric 8y agoI lost 15 pounds over a period of 3 months. Just want to share the following, a. remove sugar from all diet including coffee etc. b. double protein intake and halve carbs. One way to do is make your dinners protein only. Find Greek yogurt with low sugar content (or its easy to make at home too). This is especially important if you are above 35. c. Read about the difference between fat and carbs. Till the time you reach target weight, eat carbs as little as possible. d. If exercising try things like HIIT or weights that make you 'exert' yourself. Even if its just 5 minutes per day. Regarding motivation to avoid over eating, make sure your diets includes periodic snacks. There are lot of benefits of eating frequent but light meals (trail mixes with nuts, boiled eggs, green tea, fruits are good examples). Trail mixes with little bit of sugar are ok as they help stop the sugar craving if you have one.
- htoe8n324nt 8y agoPersonally, I found it much easier to not focus on my diet and instead focus on my exercise. Using a fitness tracking watch meant not changing many of my eating habits. (I gave up the small soda I would have at lunch and limited alcohol to only on the weekends, and not more than 1-2 drinks per weekend night.) Changing what you eat is very hard for many people and can be the main thing stopping them from even trying.
- htoe8n324nt 8y ago> The second greatest feature is the food database. MyFitnessPal has fairly accurate calorie estimates for almost anything you’d ever eat. I recorded what I ate, every single meal and snack, every single day, and even now I still do it. I’ll probably do it for many years to come. It’s amazingly helpful to stay on track. I did this for about 6 months to a year, and yes, it absolutely works. But it is soooo tedious as to be almost impossible to keep up with. I found that using my fitness tracking watch to measure how many calories I burn while taking daily walks and going to the gym 2x a week was far easier and more rewarding than the calorie counting. I find the calorie counting apps often have a limited database of foods, and if you're eating healthy, and not buying packaged foods as much, you have to enter tons more data, and it's much less accurate because you don't know how much of a given food you're eating unless you measure everything before cooking it (which is also tedious). It works, but not without a lot of effort, which is what turns most people off from losing weight.
- pards 8y agoThe most critical part of this story is that he was consistent. When it comes to health, diet and exercise consistency is the most important factor.
- googletron 8y agoAmazing work! I love https://gyrosco.pe https://gyrosco.pe for this type of thing.
- maerF0x0 8y ago@agrinman On the days where you dipped into really low calories (say <1000) do you recall if that was real consumption or just a lack of tracking? I find my MFP calories are not good data because somedays I say "screw it" and stop counting or don't try and track because I really don't know how much I'm eating (is it 6oz, 4oz or 8oz of chicken, not sure because its just a pile)
- weatherlight 8y agocongrats....but is it healthy to lose 100lb in 276 days? what does that do to your liver?
- bscphil 8y agoSee also: the hacker's diet, which is basically this plan writ large. https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ What clicked for me with this plan was that you can automatically adjust your caloric intake on the basis of how well you're tracking your goal weight loss rate. You don't even have to count calories well: if you're undercounting, the system corrects for that by telling you to lower your intake goal. Realizing that it was mathematically impossible not to succeed if I just followed the simple steps was the spark I needed to get started.
- forkLding 8y agoI lost quite some weight in the past, not as drastic as the writer, but I was wondering if the writer had any issues with loose skin after losing weight.
- koreyb 8y agoSlow carb/4 Hour Body works really well for weight loss. No counting calories. Just follow a few simple rules. Plus you get a cheat day!
- pwthornton 8y agoHere is what I recently started doing after fits and starts to get into better shape over the years. Losing weight is relatively easy. Keeping it off long term is hard. So instead of trying to be small, I've started to embrace the fact that I am a larger person whose body wants to be on the larger side. I started lifting really heavy weights, focusing more on adding muscle and gaining strength and a lot less on weight. I'm doing the Starting Strength program, which is a basic power lifting program. I started in early May at around 240 at 6'1. I'm now about 236, so a little bit of gradual weight loss, but I've dropped a lot of fat and added on muscle. I am trying to make sure I eat healthy and clean, but don't do calories counting or anything like that. The other benefit of power lifting is that it requires you to take care of yourself in other parts of your life. You must get good sleep. The more, the better. Otherwise, your body can't require from all of the stress. You also need to eat good foods to help your body recover from muscle tears and add on new muscle. I can understand the allure of mostly focusing on calorie counting as technically just eating less doesn't require additional time, but I have found the 3x 1-1.5 hour lifting sessions well worth it. I feel and look a lot better. Also, the focus and commitment required to do power lifting well spills over to the rest of your life. I'll provide an update after six months.
- 2snakes 8y agoIt will be very difficult to gain muscle eating a caloric deficit, but you CAN still gain strength.
- woodandsteel 8y agoKey paragraph " I naturally started eating healthy foods because I could eat more of them. If you eat a chocolate bar, you will still be hungry. For the same amount of calories, you could eat a few bowls of vegetables and be full. That said, the best part about this overall approach is that you can still eat whatever you want – just count the calories." That is essential to both taking the weight off and keeping it off. I followed only this rule, which meant avoiding refined carbs and fatty foods,and I didn't even count calories and I took off 50 pounds over about three years, and have kept it off. I still don't count calories, I eat as much as I want, I just make sure it is mostly high in bulk with a fair amount of protein, and reasonably low in fat.
- gymshoes 8y agoThis is inspiring. Don't skip logging even if you go over your goal and stay consistent. Very nice points.