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Whereas it is correct that you COULD lose weight on White Castle alone, it definitely won't be healthy and it definitely won't build up the necessary habits. T

Whereas it is correct that you COULD lose weight on White Castle alone, it definitely won't be healthy and it definitely won't build up the necessary habits. The goal should never be the number on the scale. The goal should always be fitness. With good fitness you will see body composition changes and, likely, weight changes.

mattmight 15y ago
I agree that there could be negative side effects to living on White Castle alone. I'm certainly not advocating a deliberately unhealthy diet either. But, I've noticed among friends and relatives trying to lose weight that when they start, they focus so much on nutrition (% carbs, % protein, % fat, supplements, etc.) that the complexity of the diet overwhelms and derails them. The calories-only (or calories-first) approach requires you to track only two variables: calories consumed, and calories burned. The mental load is manageable. It was relatively straightforward to modify my diet into a more nutritious one once I'd lost the weight. (I also didn't have to run a 1000/cal deficit each day too.) That's why my advice is focus on weight loss first, and nutrition once you feel that you're at a healthy weight that feels right for you.
- ffumarola 15y ago
  The white castle was hyperbole, of course :) I understand what you are talking about as I have lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of muscle mass in the past few months. I used MyFitnessPal to keep track of my diet for the first month or so. It's great because you can scan the bar code and 9 times out of 10 the nutrition facts are already there. I go back and track my food one day every other week or so to make sure I'm still sticking to good eating habits. However, starting with only the concept of calories in - calories out actually winds up being more difficult. If you have a candy bar and a soda today, you just wasted 400 of your calories. You mentioned a 1,000 calorie deficit, which is where I was at and I was eating 1,200-1,400 per day. So, you essentially just ate 30% of your calories on items that will not make you feel satiated at all. In fact, they often times will make you feel more hungry and lead to sugar spikes. Now, compare that to someone who cares about healthy eating. You could eat: 6 ounces of chicken with salsa on it, grilled bell peppers, a piece of whole grain bread, a handful of almonds, and more broccoli and spinach then you could feasibly eat in one sitting. Eating healthy makes you more full (which makes the 16 hour fasts very easy to follow through on) and gives you better macros for fat/carbs/protein. I eat more now than I have ever eaten before, and all I had to do was change the contents of my meals a bit.

mattmight 15y ago

I agree that there could be negative side effects to living on White Castle alone. I'm certainly not advocating a deliberately unhealthy diet either. But, I've noticed among friends and relatives trying to lose weight that when they start, they focus so much on nutrition (% carbs, % protein, % fat, supplements, etc.) that the complexity of the diet overwhelms and derails them. The calories-only (or calories-first) approach requires you to track only two variables: calories consumed, and calories burned. The mental load is manageable. It was relatively straightforward to modify my diet into a more nutritious one once I'd lost the weight. (I also didn't have to run a 1000/cal deficit each day too.) That's why my advice is focus on weight loss first, and nutrition once you feel that you're at a healthy weight that feels right for you.

ffumarola 15y ago
The white castle was hyperbole, of course :) I understand what you are talking about as I have lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of muscle mass in the past few months. I used MyFitnessPal to keep track of my diet for the first month or so. It's great because you can scan the bar code and 9 times out of 10 the nutrition facts are already there. I go back and track my food one day every other week or so to make sure I'm still sticking to good eating habits. However, starting with only the concept of calories in - calories out actually winds up being more difficult. If you have a candy bar and a soda today, you just wasted 400 of your calories. You mentioned a 1,000 calorie deficit, which is where I was at and I was eating 1,200-1,400 per day. So, you essentially just ate 30% of your calories on items that will not make you feel satiated at all. In fact, they often times will make you feel more hungry and lead to sugar spikes. Now, compare that to someone who cares about healthy eating. You could eat: 6 ounces of chicken with salsa on it, grilled bell peppers, a piece of whole grain bread, a handful of almonds, and more broccoli and spinach then you could feasibly eat in one sitting. Eating healthy makes you more full (which makes the 16 hour fasts very easy to follow through on) and gives you better macros for fat/carbs/protein. I eat more now than I have ever eaten before, and all I had to do was change the contents of my meals a bit.