13 ms·

A personal anecdote: I'm seriously obese and all diets and habitual changes to cut calorie intake failed except doing strict OMAD (one meal a day, 23:1). For m

by rmoriz 6y ago

A personal anecdote: I'm seriously obese and all diets and habitual changes to cut calorie intake failed except doing strict OMAD (one meal a day, 23:1). For me dealing with food in just one (1) meal/sitting a day is way easier than cutting meal sizes and incredients 5+ times a day. I also "know" that I will be sated 1 time per day, so no prolonged hunger phase anxiety. "Opportunity makes the thief" so just limit the opportunities. So to speak "marshmallows are secured" in any case, except that over time I learned that high carb foods/sweets will make me hungry much earlier again. I'm sticking to this for 374 days as of today and lost ~44kgs/97lbs with regular medical support of my GP (recent blood work was really great).

arkitaip 6y ago
That's great to hear. Really wishing you the best on this.
medymed 6y ago
Also strongly agree with this. Never used to skip a meal, rarely used to exercise. Now most days I only eat dinner and often exercise beforehand. Would not have thought such a metabolic schedule would be realistic. On days when I have to eat breakfast/brunch/lunch for social reason I notice a 'food is around, I better eat it' urge afterward all day long.
- smabie 6y ago
  Also maybe I'm weird, but eating one meal a day makes me feel really great. I feel like being slightly hungry (or at least not full) throughout the day makes me more productive and mentally sharper. Only after I've finished my work for the day at around 7-9pm do I then eat a big meal. It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. The meal is also a great way of demarcating work. Before I eat, I'm working. After, I'm chilling. Simple as that.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    > It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. That’s the large meal effect. Small meals work better for me and I get sluggish and mentally slow when I’m hungry. As soon as I eat, I perk up and have lots of energy. But I’m also at 11% or so of bodyfat so maybe my body is just less willing to dip into reserve energy stores.
  - christoph 6y ago
    I grew up in a family where life was basically based around meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all sitting down together for an hour. Since I’ve basically ditched routine eating a few years ago I feel much better. I don’t have any specific approach other than eating whatever I feel like eating, when I actually feel hungry. It’s a huge mental shift to make initially to really listening to your body about what hungry really is. There are lots of cues around food which have no basis in hunger at all. Sometimes my body screams for quick carbs, other times protein or just a good all round meal. But I’ve just learnt to listen to it. I’ve gone from 100kg+ to a steady 78kg for 2 years. I quite often do a 1hr power ride on Zwift at around midday on an empty stomach and feel less hungry than when I started now. Before I would have felt that I deserved a high calorie meal and eaten more than I should of. Now I listen to if my body is actually, really hungry. Quite often I feel less hungry after a workout, so I might go through till dinner without any food if that’s what I feel like. Sometimes I might have deep hunger pangs, so I’ll eat straight away after in that case. Something that shifted my approach to food dramatically was a 7 day fast two years ago. My approach to food has never been the same since.
- afterburner 6y ago
  > Would not have thought such a metabolic schedule would be realistic I mean it might not be. There might be long term consequences.
  - medymed 6y ago
    I often wonder metabolic switching between e.g. fat vs carbs as energy sources would be a good way to force cells to perform some acrobatics and die if they have a distribution of mutations that make them metabolically inflexible. Might be easy to test in a lab with radiation and different feeding cycles for cells/mice, look for rates of cancer development. May be negligible, hard to say.
    - rmoriz 6y ago
      There are many claims regarding "autophagy" out there, some say it helps the body to remove cancerous cells. But there are cancer types that can circumvent or even take advantage of this. As with everything it depends and is no silver bullet.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Awesome to hear. Keep up the good work!
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
absolutely incredible. I've been doing on intermittent fasting with a 18/6 schedule ... even I got used to it quickly maintaining it as strictly as you is really hard (in fact I failed by your standards many times). you should be immensley proud of yourself for having this amount of self control. I imagine you feel like a million bucks. wish you all the best. this is seriously hard ass and immensely a strong will.
- jacobush 6y ago
  But he said it for him requires less willpower to do it his way.
sbilstein 6y ago
Not in the same boat as you (20/50 lbs) lost but I too had to find the right method for my personality quirks. For me, I need only the healthiest, least calorie dense snacks around and a full fridge. I reduce the situations where I decide to order takeout and if I indulge a snack, it’s something either delicious but low calorie or something I’ll get tired of real fAst like baby carrots. Power on and I’m sure you will hit your goal!
lemonberry 6y ago
Congrats on your success!! This is great to hear.
bitL 6y ago
Waterfasting + electrolytes for a month would probably get you to -20kg. It's just the first few days until you start burning fat that are a bit weird.
- olingern 6y ago
  I hope I don't need to say this, but don't do this. Have you done this? Water fasting is something you just "do for a month" nor should you casually recommend it. I've done a three day water fast and it was rough and nearly fainted on day three. Quick wins make for quick failures. OP has found something sustainable and doesn't need a 40kg trick.
  - alashley 6y ago
    > I've done a three day water fast and it was rough and nearly fainted on day three. More electrolytes would help with this, specifically salt. And if you drink plain water, it depletes your electrolytes pretty quickly through urination. But YMMV, as always.
    - bitL 6y ago
      You should have tried the 4th day, usually the first 3 days are the worst, then the body completely switches to burning fat and learns how to do it efficiently. 6th day is for me usually the worst sudden crisis, then from 7th to 21st day I have absolute mental clarity, I can finish very demanding mental projects quickly and require only around 4 hours of sleep, then up to 30th I feel normal and slowly start to get hungry. After the fast I feel like after a great sauna session, but it lasts around a week. It feels like having a superpower. However, physical exercise ability goes away very quickly (I actually measured it every day and even went mountain-biking to steep hills to see how much my performance degrades and it was downhill literally and figuratively).
      - labawi 6y ago
        YMMV, but yes, with full supplies it usually takes about 3 days to deplete sugars and switch to fat. If you're not used to keto, switching may be physiologically hard. Gradually transitioning from carbs to fat, and then or later to fasting may be easier on the body, though a prolonged hardship for the mind. Once you get used to it, switching is a normal thing to do, though again YMMV.
olingern 6y ago
Congrats on the progress! 20/4 IF'er (intermittent fasting) here. Thought I'd offer a few of my own tricks in case anyone finds them useful: Coffee and seltzer water get me through the more difficult hunger pangs. Doing any sort of cardio also makes me not hungry (YMMV). Pairing IF and ketosis has been great to treat hypoglycemia and not feel hungry in general. I wasn't obese, but I was ~20lbs / 9kg overweight at one point. IF + keto has changed my body composition in a really profound way. I'm still a similar weight, but with ~10% less body fat (25% -> %15, not exact, no dexa scan). Keep going OP!
- Daynil 6y ago
  Keto is absolutely the missing ingredient in most dieters' arsenal. I'm sure most IF'ers end up keto intermittently anyway, but you'd be more efficient at it if you develop the full metabolic machinery for it by specifically targeting it. Would you believe you can avoid feeling hungry without eating all day if you're keto? I never thought it was possible until I tried it. Now when I "forget" to eat when I'm in the middle of a coding spurt during lunch I don't subsequently feel like shit the rest of the day. In fact, I feel great. It's kind of a superpower.
  - Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
    This is a major aside, and maybe I'm alone here, but I really dislike this common trend usage of the term 'keto.' Real ketosis is almost impossible to achieve in adults; virtually no one who thinks they are in ketosis actually are. What people don't seem to realize is that real keto diets have strict limitations on protein intake, as your body just breaks protein down into glucose. I believe it's something like 85% of your calories each day need to come from fat, not protein. Luckily, it's actually a good thing that people aren't actually in ketosis. It's an extreme diet developed as a treatment for epilepsy, and it can be very hard on your body's systems. The circulating ketones turn your blood acidic, which starts leeching out calcium from your bones. A lot of people get their fat from sources high in saturated fat (animal fat), which is bad for your body long-term. And with no real fiber intake, your gut flora will suffer. I don't believe a single nutritionist recommends real keto for adults trying to lose weight. For sure most of us could stand to reduce our carb intakes a bit, but our bodies literally run on glucose. We have evolved to survive on carbs, it's okay to eat them! The healthiest countries in the world eat LOTS of carbs. [edit: 'lots' meaning, a high percent of their macros each day, not lots as in large portions] I in general dislike HuffPo as a source, but a quick google found this which I thought was an interesting read: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/japan-healthiest-people-in-the-world-carbs-high-grain-diet_n_56f08cc4e4b084c6722139ca https://www.huffpost.com/entry/japan-healthiest-people-in-th... Now on the otherhand, I love IF. I used it without knowing it had a name to lose ~65 lbs at the end of highschool. I think it's super effective and what I recommend to others who ask for advice.
HighlandSpring 6y ago
> recent blood work was really great Creating an environment where you're triggering only one insulin secretion per day will help do exactly that. Eating unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods in that meal helps too, of course. Congratulations, you're eating more optimally than the vast majority of the world, keep it up!
wtmt 6y ago
How do you manage minerals and micronutrients that are better consumed a few times a day (because the body cannot absorb larger quantities within a short window)? Do you take specific supplements for that?
- ddorian43 6y ago
  Many things break your fast, including some supplements. For better absortion, eat at night.
Seasonwreckage 6y ago
This is great. I read on James Clear's Atomic Habit to make these tough habits easy and convenient so you don't constantly think about it.
Bellamy 6y ago
Best advice I ever had was to install the Habinator app and start executing my plan.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Congratulations! I did exactly this to go from ~105kg to ~80. I slipped occasionally, but knowing that tomorrow I'd get all the food I craved got me through so many moments, while stopping in the middle of a meal has never worked more than sporadically. I'd also note that not having any food in the house was a major help in this as well. Even if I had a non-stop mini-market 2 minutes walk away, the small friction of having to go there stopped many a cheat meal.
- rmoriz 6y ago
  You are absolutely right on the "availability". Most of the time I've ordered groceries online which requires me to place orders days before delivery. Due to the minimums (90€) I had to bulk purchase and somewhat plan meals. This reduced my grocery shopping occasions to 2 occasions per months and there was no instant gratification (sweets, fast food, "bad stuff") possible. That said, after the first couple of weeks my taste buds somewhat changed and I taste sugar in raw cooked vegetables (carrots, brokkoli, brussel sprouts). I now love raw, frozen vegetables without any additions steamed in the microwave or steam cooker. Great vitamin and fibre source and one can add even a high-fat dipping sauce or some cheese without screwing up the calories.

by rmoriz 6y ago

arkitaip 6y ago

That's great to hear. Really wishing you the best on this.

medymed 6y ago

Also strongly agree with this. Never used to skip a meal, rarely used to exercise. Now most days I only eat dinner and often exercise beforehand. Would not have thought such a metabolic schedule would be realistic. On days when I have to eat breakfast/brunch/lunch for social reason I notice a 'food is around, I better eat it' urge afterward all day long.

smabie 6y ago
Also maybe I'm weird, but eating one meal a day makes me feel really great. I feel like being slightly hungry (or at least not full) throughout the day makes me more productive and mentally sharper. Only after I've finished my work for the day at around 7-9pm do I then eat a big meal. It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. The meal is also a great way of demarcating work. Before I eat, I'm working. After, I'm chilling. Simple as that.
- Swizec 6y ago
  > It feels like I just lost 15 IQ points right after a meal. I also get kind of sleepy and unmotivated after. That’s the large meal effect. Small meals work better for me and I get sluggish and mentally slow when I’m hungry. As soon as I eat, I perk up and have lots of energy. But I’m also at 11% or so of bodyfat so maybe my body is just less willing to dip into reserve energy stores.
- christoph 6y ago
  I grew up in a family where life was basically based around meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all sitting down together for an hour. Since I’ve basically ditched routine eating a few years ago I feel much better. I don’t have any specific approach other than eating whatever I feel like eating, when I actually feel hungry. It’s a huge mental shift to make initially to really listening to your body about what hungry really is. There are lots of cues around food which have no basis in hunger at all. Sometimes my body screams for quick carbs, other times protein or just a good all round meal. But I’ve just learnt to listen to it. I’ve gone from 100kg+ to a steady 78kg for 2 years. I quite often do a 1hr power ride on Zwift at around midday on an empty stomach and feel less hungry than when I started now. Before I would have felt that I deserved a high calorie meal and eaten more than I should of. Now I listen to if my body is actually, really hungry. Quite often I feel less hungry after a workout, so I might go through till dinner without any food if that’s what I feel like. Sometimes I might have deep hunger pangs, so I’ll eat straight away after in that case. Something that shifted my approach to food dramatically was a 7 day fast two years ago. My approach to food has never been the same since.
afterburner 6y ago
> Would not have thought such a metabolic schedule would be realistic I mean it might not be. There might be long term consequences.
- medymed 6y ago
  I often wonder metabolic switching between e.g. fat vs carbs as energy sources would be a good way to force cells to perform some acrobatics and die if they have a distribution of mutations that make them metabolically inflexible. Might be easy to test in a lab with radiation and different feeding cycles for cells/mice, look for rates of cancer development. May be negligible, hard to say.
  - rmoriz 6y ago
    There are many claims regarding "autophagy" out there, some say it helps the body to remove cancerous cells. But there are cancer types that can circumvent or even take advantage of this. As with everything it depends and is no silver bullet.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Awesome to hear. Keep up the good work!

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

absolutely incredible. I've been doing on intermittent fasting with a 18/6 schedule ... even I got used to it quickly maintaining it as strictly as you is really hard (in fact I failed by your standards many times). you should be immensley proud of yourself for having this amount of self control. I imagine you feel like a million bucks. wish you all the best. this is seriously hard ass and immensely a strong will.

jacobush 6y ago
But he said it for him requires less willpower to do it his way.

sbilstein 6y ago

Not in the same boat as you (20/50 lbs) lost but I too had to find the right method for my personality quirks. For me, I need only the healthiest, least calorie dense snacks around and a full fridge. I reduce the situations where I decide to order takeout and if I indulge a snack, it’s something either delicious but low calorie or something I’ll get tired of real fAst like baby carrots. Power on and I’m sure you will hit your goal!

lemonberry 6y ago

Congrats on your success!! This is great to hear.

bitL 6y ago

Waterfasting + electrolytes for a month would probably get you to -20kg. It's just the first few days until you start burning fat that are a bit weird.

olingern 6y ago
I hope I don't need to say this, but don't do this. Have you done this? Water fasting is something you just "do for a month" nor should you casually recommend it. I've done a three day water fast and it was rough and nearly fainted on day three. Quick wins make for quick failures. OP has found something sustainable and doesn't need a 40kg trick.
- alashley 6y ago
  > I've done a three day water fast and it was rough and nearly fainted on day three. More electrolytes would help with this, specifically salt. And if you drink plain water, it depletes your electrolytes pretty quickly through urination. But YMMV, as always.
  - bitL 6y ago
    You should have tried the 4th day, usually the first 3 days are the worst, then the body completely switches to burning fat and learns how to do it efficiently. 6th day is for me usually the worst sudden crisis, then from 7th to 21st day I have absolute mental clarity, I can finish very demanding mental projects quickly and require only around 4 hours of sleep, then up to 30th I feel normal and slowly start to get hungry. After the fast I feel like after a great sauna session, but it lasts around a week. It feels like having a superpower. However, physical exercise ability goes away very quickly (I actually measured it every day and even went mountain-biking to steep hills to see how much my performance degrades and it was downhill literally and figuratively).
    - labawi 6y ago
      YMMV, but yes, with full supplies it usually takes about 3 days to deplete sugars and switch to fat. If you're not used to keto, switching may be physiologically hard. Gradually transitioning from carbs to fat, and then or later to fasting may be easier on the body, though a prolonged hardship for the mind. Once you get used to it, switching is a normal thing to do, though again YMMV.

olingern 6y ago

Congrats on the progress! 20/4 IF'er (intermittent fasting) here. Thought I'd offer a few of my own tricks in case anyone finds them useful: Coffee and seltzer water get me through the more difficult hunger pangs. Doing any sort of cardio also makes me not hungry (YMMV). Pairing IF and ketosis has been great to treat hypoglycemia and not feel hungry in general. I wasn't obese, but I was ~20lbs / 9kg overweight at one point. IF + keto has changed my body composition in a really profound way. I'm still a similar weight, but with ~10% less body fat (25% -> %15, not exact, no dexa scan). Keep going OP!

Daynil 6y ago
Keto is absolutely the missing ingredient in most dieters' arsenal. I'm sure most IF'ers end up keto intermittently anyway, but you'd be more efficient at it if you develop the full metabolic machinery for it by specifically targeting it. Would you believe you can avoid feeling hungry without eating all day if you're keto? I never thought it was possible until I tried it. Now when I "forget" to eat when I'm in the middle of a coding spurt during lunch I don't subsequently feel like shit the rest of the day. In fact, I feel great. It's kind of a superpower.
- Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
  This is a major aside, and maybe I'm alone here, but I really dislike this common trend usage of the term 'keto.' Real ketosis is almost impossible to achieve in adults; virtually no one who thinks they are in ketosis actually are. What people don't seem to realize is that real keto diets have strict limitations on protein intake, as your body just breaks protein down into glucose. I believe it's something like 85% of your calories each day need to come from fat, not protein. Luckily, it's actually a good thing that people aren't actually in ketosis. It's an extreme diet developed as a treatment for epilepsy, and it can be very hard on your body's systems. The circulating ketones turn your blood acidic, which starts leeching out calcium from your bones. A lot of people get their fat from sources high in saturated fat (animal fat), which is bad for your body long-term. And with no real fiber intake, your gut flora will suffer. I don't believe a single nutritionist recommends real keto for adults trying to lose weight. For sure most of us could stand to reduce our carb intakes a bit, but our bodies literally run on glucose. We have evolved to survive on carbs, it's okay to eat them! The healthiest countries in the world eat LOTS of carbs. [edit: 'lots' meaning, a high percent of their macros each day, not lots as in large portions] I in general dislike HuffPo as a source, but a quick google found this which I thought was an interesting read: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/japan-healthiest-people-in-the-world-carbs-high-grain-diet_n_56f08cc4e4b084c6722139ca https://www.huffpost.com/entry/japan-healthiest-people-in-th... Now on the otherhand, I love IF. I used it without knowing it had a name to lose ~65 lbs at the end of highschool. I think it's super effective and what I recommend to others who ask for advice.

HighlandSpring 6y ago

> recent blood work was really great Creating an environment where you're triggering only one insulin secretion per day will help do exactly that. Eating unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods in that meal helps too, of course. Congratulations, you're eating more optimally than the vast majority of the world, keep it up!

wtmt 6y ago

How do you manage minerals and micronutrients that are better consumed a few times a day (because the body cannot absorb larger quantities within a short window)? Do you take specific supplements for that?

ddorian43 6y ago
Many things break your fast, including some supplements. For better absortion, eat at night.

Seasonwreckage 6y ago

This is great. I read on James Clear's Atomic Habit to make these tough habits easy and convenient so you don't constantly think about it.

Bellamy 6y ago

Best advice I ever had was to install the Habinator app and start executing my plan.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Congratulations! I did exactly this to go from ~105kg to ~80. I slipped occasionally, but knowing that tomorrow I'd get all the food I craved got me through so many moments, while stopping in the middle of a meal has never worked more than sporadically. I'd also note that not having any food in the house was a major help in this as well. Even if I had a non-stop mini-market 2 minutes walk away, the small friction of having to go there stopped many a cheat meal.

rmoriz 6y ago
You are absolutely right on the "availability". Most of the time I've ordered groceries online which requires me to place orders days before delivery. Due to the minimums (90€) I had to bulk purchase and somewhat plan meals. This reduced my grocery shopping occasions to 2 occasions per months and there was no instant gratification (sweets, fast food, "bad stuff") possible. That said, after the first couple of weeks my taste buds somewhat changed and I taste sugar in raw cooked vegetables (carrots, brokkoli, brussel sprouts). I now love raw, frozen vegetables without any additions steamed in the microwave or steam cooker. Great vitamin and fibre source and one can add even a high-fat dipping sauce or some cheese without screwing up the calories.