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> people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think. Absolutely. For instance only counting the calor

> people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think. Absolutely. For instance only counting the calories of their scheduled meals, but "snacks don't count because its just a snack". Or counting a heaping plateful of spaghetti as a single serving because they put it on a single plate. Underestimating calorie counts is much more common than estimating it accurately. Eat a few meals with a huge person who "just can't lose weight" and it will usually become obvious that they eat a huge amount of food.

idontwantthis 4y ago
I thought this too until I actually tried to lose weight. You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses. Yes, some of it is willpower, and probably for lots of people it's entirely willpower, but there is definitely a metabolic component to it. If you eat less than you expend you must lose weight, but it's naive to discount a decrease in the expenditure part as well. Keep in mind that just living requires the vast majority of your calories, and any exercise is a blip covered by a couple cookies.
- Hammershaft 4y ago
  Fasting makes the process easier.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- what-the-grump 4y ago
  Cut your food intake by 50% and start drinking water / coffee to combat hunger. I know I am losing weight when I am hungry between meals, most of the time I eat because it’s time to eat. Down 10 pounds in two weeks. It’s nothing special just eating what I should be eating in terms of quantity. Eating sweets? Skip a meal, etc.
  - moron4hire 4y ago
    2 weeks is a laugh
  - TylerE 4y ago
    2 weeks is easy. 2 months is hard. 2 years is really hard
    - treeman79 4y ago
      If you have kids it’s beyond hard.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      > 2 years is really hard Yeah, loosing 2 kg/week for two years is physically impossible for almost all obese people.
      - imtringued 4y ago
        My body weight would be negative before the first year ended.
  - taneq 4y ago
    People area focusing on the 2 weeks thing but your approach is right, and I did something similar for about 6-8 months in order to lose 10kg and keep it off. I kept eating my regular food, just cut my portion sizes in half. It sucked… but it worked.
  - jotm 4y ago
    This is more or less what I do for a loss of ~3kg/month. At least for me, we're talking massive amounts of water, by the way. ~500ml every 2-3 hours, all day for the whole time. Ayran/yoghurt with more salt and water works better, likely because of the salt, but I've gotten too many small kidney stones that way - 100% sure, because I had to painfully piss them out and cut my urethra several times. And, well, yeah, bring a portaloo everywhere. The hunger gets to me every week, though, in which case I found it's OK to eat a lot of protein/fat (eggs, cheese, meat) for a day. Well, by a lot I mean maybe 3 times the normal food intake.
- taneq 4y ago
  > You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses. You’re not losing a meaningful amount of fat in the first week. You’re just getting dehydrated. I’ve seen this process up close multiple times. It usually starts with a dramatic weight loss goal like “I’m going to lose 2kg/week for a month.” The first few days of crash dieting seem to be working, then the rapid progress stops and it becomes clear that the original target is impossible. This makes it easy to justify quitting the diet altogether to oneself, which was always subconsciously the goal of this approach.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    When I read "2kg/week", I almost jumped. That is a big number! Google tells me that 7,700 calories must be cut from your "normal diet" to lose 1kg of body weight. It would be an incredible feat of willpower to consistently cut 15,000+ calories per week from your "normal diet"!
    - dx034 4y ago
      It's not easy but certainly possible. For a reasonably tall male (higher calorie burn), being active (>15k steps a day) while eating around 1500 calories a day will lead to a deficit of up to 15,000 calories a week. Eating 1,500 calories per day is restricting but not starving, and burning 3,500 calories per day is a very active lifestyle but not some extreme sports or so. But as others have noted, it often doesn't seem to be sustainable as your body will react to that kind of calorie deficit.
    - anothernewdude 4y ago
      That 7700 per 1kg figure is for Fat. However what you burn through first are Glycogen stores [1] which store about as half as much energy in the same weight as a more readily available form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen
    - namibj 4y ago
      Cutting down to just essential amino acids and other essential nutrients like some select fatty acids, cushions, and minerals, isn't that hard if you can avoid carbs from getting advertised to you. Even a non-optimized protein source like eggs easily offers ~500kcal/day at sufficient protein levels, and sustained keto doesn't really include hunger feelings. It's not particularly healthy, but if the only way to keep up a significant caloric deficit is to see the rapid results of this kind of diet, it should still be healthier than morbid obesity.
- sn9 4y ago
  People underestimate the variation in NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Often on prolonged diets, your NEAT can unconsciously decrease from a series of small decisions like choosing to take the elevator when you usually take the stairs, parking nearer to your destination, etc. and even things like fidgeting less. You can kinda get around this with things like step counters so you can track how many steps per day you normally walk, and then if you notice you're suddenly walking fewer steps, you can consciously choose to walk more to keep your activity level at your baseline. For example, you might average 8,000 steps per day but after a few months on a diet, you find yourself walking 4,000 steps per day naturally so you can just choose to go out for a walk after dinner to maintain or increase your baseline level of activity. When people talk about changes in metabolism, this is normally the culprit.
  - feet 4y ago
    This is the answer. NEAT is generally the biggest lever you have to modulate caloric burn

idontwantthis 4y ago

I thought this too until I actually tried to lose weight. You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses. Yes, some of it is willpower, and probably for lots of people it's entirely willpower, but there is definitely a metabolic component to it. If you eat less than you expend you must lose weight, but it's naive to discount a decrease in the expenditure part as well. Keep in mind that just living requires the vast majority of your calories, and any exercise is a blip covered by a couple cookies.

Hammershaft 4y ago
Fasting makes the process easier.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
what-the-grump 4y ago
Cut your food intake by 50% and start drinking water / coffee to combat hunger. I know I am losing weight when I am hungry between meals, most of the time I eat because it’s time to eat. Down 10 pounds in two weeks. It’s nothing special just eating what I should be eating in terms of quantity. Eating sweets? Skip a meal, etc.
- moron4hire 4y ago
  2 weeks is a laugh
- TylerE 4y ago
  2 weeks is easy. 2 months is hard. 2 years is really hard
  - treeman79 4y ago
    If you have kids it’s beyond hard.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    > 2 years is really hard Yeah, loosing 2 kg/week for two years is physically impossible for almost all obese people.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      My body weight would be negative before the first year ended.
- taneq 4y ago
  People area focusing on the 2 weeks thing but your approach is right, and I did something similar for about 6-8 months in order to lose 10kg and keep it off. I kept eating my regular food, just cut my portion sizes in half. It sucked… but it worked.
- jotm 4y ago
  This is more or less what I do for a loss of ~3kg/month. At least for me, we're talking massive amounts of water, by the way. ~500ml every 2-3 hours, all day for the whole time. Ayran/yoghurt with more salt and water works better, likely because of the salt, but I've gotten too many small kidney stones that way - 100% sure, because I had to painfully piss them out and cut my urethra several times. And, well, yeah, bring a portaloo everywhere. The hunger gets to me every week, though, in which case I found it's OK to eat a lot of protein/fat (eggs, cheese, meat) for a day. Well, by a lot I mean maybe 3 times the normal food intake.
taneq 4y ago
> You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses. You’re not losing a meaningful amount of fat in the first week. You’re just getting dehydrated. I’ve seen this process up close multiple times. It usually starts with a dramatic weight loss goal like “I’m going to lose 2kg/week for a month.” The first few days of crash dieting seem to be working, then the rapid progress stops and it becomes clear that the original target is impossible. This makes it easy to justify quitting the diet altogether to oneself, which was always subconsciously the goal of this approach.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  When I read "2kg/week", I almost jumped. That is a big number! Google tells me that 7,700 calories must be cut from your "normal diet" to lose 1kg of body weight. It would be an incredible feat of willpower to consistently cut 15,000+ calories per week from your "normal diet"!
  - dx034 4y ago
    It's not easy but certainly possible. For a reasonably tall male (higher calorie burn), being active (>15k steps a day) while eating around 1500 calories a day will lead to a deficit of up to 15,000 calories a week. Eating 1,500 calories per day is restricting but not starving, and burning 3,500 calories per day is a very active lifestyle but not some extreme sports or so. But as others have noted, it often doesn't seem to be sustainable as your body will react to that kind of calorie deficit.
  - anothernewdude 4y ago
    That 7700 per 1kg figure is for Fat. However what you burn through first are Glycogen stores [1] which store about as half as much energy in the same weight as a more readily available form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen
  - namibj 4y ago
    Cutting down to just essential amino acids and other essential nutrients like some select fatty acids, cushions, and minerals, isn't that hard if you can avoid carbs from getting advertised to you. Even a non-optimized protein source like eggs easily offers ~500kcal/day at sufficient protein levels, and sustained keto doesn't really include hunger feelings. It's not particularly healthy, but if the only way to keep up a significant caloric deficit is to see the rapid results of this kind of diet, it should still be healthier than morbid obesity.
sn9 4y ago
People underestimate the variation in NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Often on prolonged diets, your NEAT can unconsciously decrease from a series of small decisions like choosing to take the elevator when you usually take the stairs, parking nearer to your destination, etc. and even things like fidgeting less. You can kinda get around this with things like step counters so you can track how many steps per day you normally walk, and then if you notice you're suddenly walking fewer steps, you can consciously choose to walk more to keep your activity level at your baseline. For example, you might average 8,000 steps per day but after a few months on a diet, you find yourself walking 4,000 steps per day naturally so you can just choose to go out for a walk after dinner to maintain or increase your baseline level of activity. When people talk about changes in metabolism, this is normally the culprit.
- feet 4y ago
  This is the answer. NEAT is generally the biggest lever you have to modulate caloric burn