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Being fatter than Homer Simpson
- ivvve 4y agoKeep it up! Absolutely smashing it so far mate.
- nickybearblog 4y agoCreated an account just to say thanks for the comment, and thanks for reading! A little taken aback by both - was not expecting 1000 reads overnight haha.
- ume 4y agoEchoing @ivvve. Keep it up and thanks for sharing.
- nickybearblog 4y agoThanks so much, really appreciate it. I didn't go into how I'm doing it in the post, because that's in flux at the minute, but I've largely kept to 1) Calorie counting - tried focusing on macros but that just adds another thing to manage when realistically, I just need the scale to go lower. Making it simple makes it sustainable. 2) Feel good exercise - enjoying yoga was a big surprise, but Sean Vigue Fitness over on YouTube really warmed me to it. I love free weights, I love rowing, I love running (although don't do it too much because of my knees). It's a relatively new blog, but I'm posting more of the same every Sunday. Next one is about how SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is hitting me at the minute.
- nirimda 4y agoFor metric folk, Homer Simpson gains 34 kg from his normal weight of 109 kg to 143 kg. The author of the blogpost also reached that peak, but is down now to about 120 kg.
- nickybearblog 4y agoThanks, I'll remember to add the conversion next time.
- gryf 4y agoDang I started at 109Kg and went down to 65Kg. Feel amazing now. Best thing I ever did.
- nickybearblog 4y agoGreat work! How's it been keeping the weight off?
- gryf 4y agoTerribly difficult. I keep oscillating around 65 and 69Kg.
- formerly_proven 4y agoSimilar story here. Weight crept up from around 90 kilos (already a bit much for my height) to 110 kilos over COVID. I didn't even realize how little I liked being in my body until I lost the first 25 kilos or so. It's unfortunate that some of the damage is permanent :(
- gryf 4y agoYes definitely permanent damage here too. The interesting thing is that things that were wrong with me stopped getting worse. Was worth it just for that.
- Lio 4y agoThank you. Although I'm British I have no feel for weights in anything but metric units. Keep it up Nicky. Only bit of advice I have from giving up smoking about 20 years ago is, don't beat yourself up if slip up occasionally. Trying to take control of your situation is always useful in itself. Even if you fall off the wagon multiple times just attempting to get back on again gives you more control and makes things easier the next time. Try. Fail. Try again and fail again but better.
- _0j9w 4y agoSo, you lost around 2kg of weight every month? That is very impressive considering the weight and size you're started out from! Most people aim for less than that and don't even lose the 0.5kg of water weight. Great job, keep it up man!
- pjerem 4y agoIn fact, 2kg per month is pretty reasonable. I know it's possible to achieve this goal without starving yourself and by eating tasty and satiating food. I already did it in the past and it worked. You "just" need to eat better food. It's that easy. Well, here I'm not telling lessons, because I fail to "just" eat better food. In fact eating it is the easy part. Getting good food in your plate everyday is what is hard because it means making a lot of changes in your habits because, well, food is not going to cook itself and you always have "better" things to do.
- k__ 4y agoThat's around 500kcal deficit a day, which is the recommended deficit when losing weight. So, yeah, you can lose more than that, but it's probably not sustainable by someone who loves to eat.
- endominus 4y agoWell, depends on the person. Angus Barbieri was able to maintain a 0-calorie diet for over a year, losing 125 kg in the process. Not, perhaps, a feat to be emulated, but obviously physically possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
- itsthejb 4y agoBetter food, yes. But also LESS food. I know it’s controversial to say so, but getting fat is a result of _eating too much!_. Yes, calorie dense food sure speeds up the process, but at the end of the day it’s a deficit between calories in, and calories burnt. Source: experimented a fair amount with dieting/fasting in my 30s. When you talk about this with people, it’s startling how many believe that skipping some meals is dicing with death. Hardly surprising people struggle to lose weight, when they refuse to try changing the key variables
- kerrsclyde 4y agoI was very overweight until my late 30's, something clicked and I lost the weight and almost 10 years later I am lighter than I have ever been during my adult life. I have found that it is possible to change. Becoming lighter has encouraged me to exercise but what I eat has always been the main factor in what I weigh.
- nickybearblog 4y ago> Becoming lighter has encouraged me to exercise but what I eat has always been the main factor in what I weigh. That's exactly what I've found. I can exercise two or three hours a day; means nothing if I'm not watching my calories. Congrats on the weight loss!
- apelapan 4y agoThis seems to be the most common situation, but it is not the only one. Plenty of people have lost significant weight by taking up exercise and not doing any active, concious changes to their diet. I myself have lost 15kg over the past couple of years, after going from zero high-intensity physical activity on a normal week to a few hours of running and swimming every week. I'm sure there are some unconscious changes to my eating, in particular afternoon/evening snacking. But that just happened without me trying or planning for it. I still eat at the same lunch restaurants and it is still my wife making me dinner most evenings.
- bowsamic 4y agoThat's why it's sometimes better, especially for people with low muscle mass and not currently obese, to concentrate on liftings weights instead. If you do cardio to lose weight then eating just undoes any benefit, since the body is not very damaged and doesn't need to repair much. If you lift weights using a progressive overloading regime, you actually need a lot of calories over time to actually repair your body. Also, if you lose weight with only cardio, then you will end up quite skinny and have to be really careful not to put it back on pretty quickly. As a bonus, lifting weights is often more fun for most than doing steady cardio, which is often extremely boring
- sparrigan 4y agoYou got this! So great to hear about your impressive progress.
- nickybearblog 4y agoThanks! I'll be posting updates as I go. I'm hoping that by March/April I'll be able to post 'Finally weighing LESS than Homer Simpson'.
- saw-lau 4y agoI'm around 310 lbs (a smidge over 22 stone for UK people). Like yourself, I always thought when I was younger 'how do people let themselves get that way?'. It just kind of happened for me. I know I eat unhealthy food; I know I drink too much; I know I don't do enough (as in, any) exercise... I look at my face in the mirror and think 'that's not too bad!' but then catch my side profile at some point and think 'eek!'. It's all a bit miserable, really. :-( You should be so proud of yourself for your weight loss!!! I really hope things continue on the right path for you.
- dkdbejwi383 4y agoAs a person from the UK in their mid-30s I have no idea what a stone or a lb is. I did the conversion and 310 lbs is approx. 140 kg.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoWeird, I'm also mid-30s in the UK and stone is my native person weight. As well as pounds and ounces for babies. That said, I have a reasonable intuition for the conversion factors. Enough that I wouldn't have to run to Google to understand the jist of the story.
- smcl 4y agoAh that is a bit unusual. We're roughly the same age, and I only switched to kg after going abroad - otherwise bodyweight was always stone for me.
- nickybearblog 4y agoI know it's an overused line, but this kinda blew up overnight! I did not expect to wake up to over 1k visitors. Really appreciate you all reading and commenting. I've only recently started, but I'm going to be posting more of the same every Sunday, talking about mental health, physical health, and stuff I've learned along the way. If you like this and want more, you can subscribe to my mailing list here - https://nicky.bearblog.dev/subscribe/ https://nicky.bearblog.dev/subscribe/ I'll be sending out an extra post by email every Wednesday. Have a great day!
- morgango 4y agoHey, congrats on starting your journey. One thing that has really helped me was just walking and watching my very basic macros (Protein, Fat, Carbs). MyFitnessPal is great for that. Also, consider that you need to take care of yourself and activities that allow you to recover and be successful over the long term. The best thing I have found is walking. I was inspired by Paul Revelia - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+revelia+walking+ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+revelia+wa... - a body builder in his late 40's who does all his cardio with simple walking. I have lost about 25 pounds myself with just eating sanely and walking my dogs.
- hardlianotion 4y agoGreat to read your account. Impressed by your achievement so far with such a constraint, and your second footnote actually made me laugh - life is a cosmic joke sometimes. I hope the feedback you get hear spurs you through the winter months. You write well, so I will definitely follow your story.
- nickybearblog 4y agoReally appreciate your comment, thank you. I'm going to be posting more about this and my mental health as I go on, and would love your feedback as I go. To his credit, the GP did apologise after he laughed at me.
- tonguetrainer 4y agoA refreshingly honest read Nicky (and yes, I'm trying to lose weight too). Just remember that a person's worth with God doesn't depend on how good looking, thin or tall they are. He doesn't see as humans see, but looks into the heart instead (1 Samuel 16:7). There are people on HN that need to know this. Good luck with your weight loss!
- nickybearblog 4y agoAppreciate that, thank you! Honesty is what I'm aiming for with this blog; a space to be frank about my issues, myself, where I'm going, and how I'll get there. I'll be saving the Bible quote to Obsidian for encouragement.
- ilyt 4y agoHe also gives cancer at random, remember it's not because God hates you, it's because God needs some entertainment in his world-sized sims game
- exolymph 4y agoIf you actually care about understanding the religious perspective on this, read the Book of Job.
- ilyt 4y agoEvery answer I saw to that points out to God not being as loving and holy as portrayed. The whole premise of "God decided to show Satan (why God thinks he need to prove anything to Satan in the first place?) his point by tormenting some mortal is... sadistic at best ?". And doesn't really touch topic of "why someone is allowed to be tortured by disease from birth and dies due to no action of their own will".
- xboxnolifes 4y agoMy personal head canon is that God is actually the devil, and all of the books are his propaganda. "Satan" wasn't banished from heaven, he is the true God who escaped from Heaven after "God" invaded. The warning to not fall for the devil's temptation is just the perfect irony of the situation. Though, in just a non-religious who grew up Christian, so this is all for fun and games.
- staccatomeasure 4y agoThis comment section is a great reminder about how crazy it is we have so many different global weight units of measure.
- turing_complete 4y agoCrazy == different cultures use different units of measure
- ilyt 4y agowell there are kilograms and there are wrong
- afroisalreadyin 4y agoThere was a time when I got used to eating a big plate of fries with my normal lunch (the student canteen at the university where I studied was just phenomenal), and after a couple of months, I had put on considerable weight. The problem was, I was thin my whole life, and I just couldn't imagine being overweight, so I didn't ever get on a scale, and had no idea how much I had put on. It was my mother telling me "my son, you've become properly fat" that made me realize that something significant had changed. The scale was now showing 90 kg, closer to 100 than my to my normal weight. After a couple of months of eating properly and running, everything was back to normal, but that was a stark reminder of how anyone can become obese given the right (or rather wrong) conditions.
- yodsanklai 4y agoUsually, it happens insidiously. After 30-40, metabolism slows down and it's easy to very slowly gain weight, even for people who didn't have weight issues before. Losing weight can be quite hard. To me the solution is to monitor my weight and avoid junk food as much as possible. I never drink soda, avoid fries. Sometimes you have no choice (e.g. traveling and no easy healthy options), then I try to only eat once or twice a day.
- devaler 4y agoGood luck with the mirtazapine taper, and I mean that with all sincerity. I recently finished mine, and it’s been fascinating to watch the weight drop along with it. I’m glad that mirtazapine helps some people, but for me it was a poison that shocked my central nervous system with brutal discontinuation symptoms.
- nickybearblog 4y agoThanks. It's a really difficult balance, isn't it? It's not kept me relapse free, but at the same time I've never been closer to ending it all since before I started them, and they absolutely calmed my mood impulses (at the cost of more or less knocking me out). I'd previously had discussions around changing meds only to be told I can't cross taper, so I just resigned myself to them. The difference is night and day though. My wife has really helped keep me on an even keel, but already I'm starting feel more awake and eat a little less. Glad you made it off them, though, and hope that means things are looking better your end.
- andrelaszlo 4y agoThank you for sharing. I often have the feeling that something that, to me, seems like a complex of issues around emotional regulation, impulse control, sensation seeking, etc is seen by most people as something much simpler. "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. Well, perhaps, but it's not the core of the issue. The widespread lack of empathy for people in the high BMI ranges freaks me out. The absolute majority of people WANTS to be healthy, happy and safe. This post really did a great job breaking through the stigma and humanizing this condition.
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago> The absolute majority of people WANTS to be healthy, happy and safe. "Wanting" something is completely meaningless, if you want other conflicting things more. I can say I want to lose weight, but if I also "want" to eat a whole pizza every night after eating my normal meals that's probably not going to happen. For me and probably a lot of people, the first step towards getting my weight in control was to decide that losing weight was one of my top priorities, and not just something I think about once in a while.
- kangda123 4y agoWhile I don't think that wanting is completely meaningless, the last bit rings very true. Ultimately you have to reshape your life and environment a little bit.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y agoFor significant weight loss it’s more than a little bit. You have to reshape your life and environment drastically.
- JshWright 4y agoI guarantee you there are many, many people who think about their weight way more often than "once in a while" (more like "every waking moment"), but still struggle massively with disordered eating due to a variety of factors that make it far less simple than you're making it out to be.
- piterdevries 4y agoJust wondering what he finds so delicious to eat that he couldn't stop. I find the food in UK absolutlety disgusting, fast food, desserts, breakfast, all of it.
- stuaxo 4y agoGo further upscale and there's some pretty good food.
- nordsieck 4y ago> Just wondering what he finds so delicious to eat that he couldn't stop. Sometimes it's more about the person and less about the food. For example, I know some people who simply can't stand to feel even a tiny bit hungry.
- nickybearblog 4y agoOh boy, have a I got a list for you. - Custard Creams - Bramley apple turnovers - Sausage rolls - Walkers crisps - Magnum ice cream bars - Breakfast cereals - Pork pies - Pizza (Domino's is my favourite big chain, but there is a local chain that do a decent 12 inch pizza for a lot cheaper) - McDonald's double cheeseburgers - McDonald's double sausage and egg McMuffin - Doughnuts - Cakes in general, but Mr Kipling's slices are very binge worthy - Dairy Milk chocolate - Full fat milk - Cheese of most varieties All just off the top of my head.
- ilyt 4y agoI love how the answer to complaint about british food is basically "well, not british food"
- extra88 4y agoA) The comment was about "food in the UK" not "British food." He's eating food in the UK so his list is of food in the UK. B) Domino's and McDonald's are not British foods but sausage rolls and pork pies are. Even the American chain food will taste different in the UK vs. the US.
- dutchCourage 4y agoThis isn't weight loss advice but I've been eating unhealthy for most of my 20s. I felt alright for the most part with some very occasional stomach ache or acid reflux if I didn't sleep enough. In the past couple of years I put some effort in learning how to cook. Nothing fancy, just following simple recipes and some occasional Hello Fresh boxes. At first, 30min recipes were taking me an hour to make and it was a hassle. Now I'm at a point where I can cook a lot of things without having to focus on it and can improvise some dishes with what's left in my fridge. The benefits have been huge. I'm eating a lot healthier, spending way less on takeaway and feeling generally lighter and a lot less bloated. I'm sleeping better and have less of a post lunch energy dip. I can't recommend it enough. Even cooking twice a week can already be 4 healthy meals if you make two portions each time.
- vintermann 4y agoI don't feel like this works for everyone. If I cook only for myself, and I mostly do, then it's very hard to not make more than one meal's worth. And I know most of the effort I put into that cooking will be wasted for the part I eat as leftovers. It just doesn't taste as good.
- batiudrami 4y agoThe modest reduction in quality from leftovers is easily made up for in the time and money savings; at least for me.
- rcarr 4y agoObviously, there are a lot of complex reasons why someone ends up overweight. I would just like to share a few hacks for anyone struggling with this issue that they may not be aware of: - Try rucking. This is the name for walking with weight in a backpack. You may hear it referred to as 'tabbing' in the UK. You will burn almost as much calories as jogging but without the strain on your knees and it doesn't suck half as much. You can get dedicated rucksacks and weight plates for it or you can just sling some bricks or sandbags in a regular backpack. Try and get one with well padded straps. If you have a dog, just stick the backpack on whilst you are taking it for a walk and you are now essentially, in terms of calories burned, doing a run every day. - Try meal shakes. There are quite a few of these available now. Huel is probably the most globally available. The problem with the whole philosophy of 'just track your macros and run a calorie deficit' is that it takes a lot of work. If you are overweight, you are likely already feeling tired and worn out. Adding on exercise AND meal prep AND calorie tracking on top is a pretty big jump. It is far easier to buy a meal replacement shake, have it for breakfast and lunch and then be relatively relaxed about what you have for dinner. - Rather than tracking ALL the food you eat which is time consuming, boring and can lead to an unhealthy obsessive mindset in some individuals, try tracking just the junk food. Then aim to reduce it each week until you get to a reasonable level. If you ate 20 bad things this week, aim for 19 next week. Personally, I wouldn't aim for this to ever be zero. Moderation in all things. - Lift weights a few times a week. The more muscle mass you have the more calories you'll burn without having to do any work. Find a plan with an app and stick to it. - Reduce your risk of injury. If you injure yourself, you lose all momentum and end up back at square one. If you're overweight you're already at higher risk of injuring yourself so you have to train smart. If you keep doing the same exercise every day, you increase the chances of injuring yourself. So if you run on Monday, cycle on Tuesday. Utilise low impact cardio. Find the two or three options you like most from the following list and keep rotating: row, ruck, swim, cycle, ski-erg, roller blading, elliptical, stepper, aqua jogging. Try to stretch every day for at least 15 minutes. - If you've got the time, do lots of zone 2. If you have a heart rate tracker, you can separate heart rate into zones. Zone 2 is where you can go for hours on end. You will hear a lot at the minute about how HIIT 'can burn as much calories as endurance training'. I'm sorry, but it's bullshit. I've seen plenty of people doing Crossfit consistently for a couple of years that are still carrying extra body fat. It is unlikely you will see someone who has been at a local triathlon or cycling club for the same period of time carrying that weight. No matter how hard you exercise, if you're only doing it for 20 minutes a day you will not burn as many calories as someone doing cardio for 2 hours a day, 6 days a week. And if you are exercising for a couple of hours a day it is very hard to eat enough calories to stay fat. - Reduce friction for desired behaviours, increase friction for undesired behaviours. Junk food lives on the top shelf at the back of the cupboard where it's harder to reach. Pack your gym bag the night before so all you have to do is grab it and go in the morning. Make your protein shake the night before etc. - Attach a negative emotional response to food you don't want to eat. This one may be more controversial but I remember reading it in a Tony Robbins book and it does make sense. If you can't stop eating chocolate, eat nothing but chocolate for the next 2 or 3 days. Literally nothing else. You will start to feel sick of it and attach a physical repulsion to it which will lesson your chances of wanting to eat it in the future the same way you probably have an alcoholic drink you can't stand anymore if you threw up after having it when you were first trying out drinking. You can do the same the other way and attach a positive emotion for foods you don't like but are healthy. Prepare whatever it is in advance then go without food until you are absolutely ravenous and then eat it. If you only drink fizzy drinks and don't like plain water, stay in a steam room or sauna until you feel uncomfortable and make sure you have a bottle of cold water outside waiting for you. You may have to repeat it a few times when you're trying to build a positive association. You probably won't with the negative associations. - Most of all, find something you enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you're not going to stick with it in the long term.
- FriedrichN 4y agoI have a tendency to be heavier rather than lighter, for me exercise absolutely helps, how much I eat with moderate exercise is about the same as without. Once I go above the moderate range I start being more hungry and only applies to cardiovascular conditioning, weight training does not have that effect on me. The problem with losing weight can't be reduced to calories in versus calories out, that's the outcome, not the method. What you need to control is hunger, which can be very difficult for one person and very easy for another. Hormones play a huge role in this (ghrelin and leptin are big players) and that differs from person to person. Combine that with the fact that certain people unconsciously dial down their energy expenditure (fidgeting, bouncing, posture, etc.) when they reduce their calorie intake. You can do a lot with conscious decisions like getting your step count up, doing regular cardio, eating more things that fill you up like vegetables, fruit, potatoes, anything high in fibre. But that only gets you so far until you hit that certain point at which it becomes too hard and that point is different for every person. If you have a tendency to be overweight, you'll never walk around with a permanent sixpack. It's better to weigh 100kg than to weigh 120kg even if it would be better to weigh 80kg, there's no point in losing a lot of weight if you can't maintain it.
- ilyt 4y agoPretty much, the "eat less than you burn" is the way to lose weight but the difficulty is figuring out a way to do it while still staying sane After many bounces (biggest from 92 to 71kg which would be just at "normal" BMI for my height) I ended up aiming for a very little drop, while still eating "normal stuff". The aim is to make it psychologically manageable and not have to will thru the diet every day like I did before, only to eventually run out and get back to the bad habits. Other thing I learned is differentiating between brain hunger and body hunger. Brain just likes to eat, preferably in nice regular intervals, especially once I got used before that the big evening meal is "reward" for hard day at work, and it took some time to figure out "no, your body is just fine, it's still metabolizing stuff, its your brain that's bored" I've swapped the bread and other fast metabolizing stuff to help stave off the hunger and slowly get used to just eating one meal (around midday) per day so I get hungry right near the end of the day. Weirdly enough I don't get that much morning hunger and usually coffee with milk is enough to get me by for few hours before dinner. When I get crave for something sweet I just do it instead of a meal or make meal smaller at later date as snack to stave off hunger till the end of the day. Baked potatoes instead of rice/fries/bread to the meal also work surprisingly well to keep me feeling sated. WFH have been blessing here as I can just cook my meal instead of getting it in the office. Excercise did pretty much nothing to me in terms of weight, sure, getting some to feel better is useful but it just makes me hungrier so calories even out...
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- bitL 4y agoIt's fairly easy to lose weight by not eating anything for a few weeks (only first 1-3 days are tougher) though one risks developing vitamin & electrolyte deficiency that resembles effects of a major viral infection. Another way is to do HIIT but doing that properly is out of reach for most overweight people.
- _def 4y agoThat sounds like pretty much the opposite of an healthy eating behavior.
- bitL 4y agoHealthy eating won't lead you to lose weight without losing your muscles. Radical fasting is the only known way to lose weight and mostly preserve muscles. Also, one could argue that historically people alternated between feast and famine (and you can still see it in some less developed countries these days) and we have the ability to run on our own fat for longer periods of time. Why else would we store fat?
- nunez 4y agoSkipping meals like this is a sign of an eating disorder.
- TechnicolorByte 4y agoIt can be. But could also be a fasting protocol. I’ve been doing rolling fasts for months now and it works great when you’re severely overweight.
- not1ofU 4y agoI cant find the blog post now (its probably 20ish years old now), from the creator of AutoCAD (John Walker, I beleive). Where he details all the issues he had with various diets and weight loss plans. Finally he looked at the issue from a engineers point of view, and eventually came up with a solution that worked for him. I am under-weight all my life, so I cannot speak to the method myself, but he seemed quite logical to me. He more or less stated that the human body could be considered like a rubber bag with a hole in each end and that if the calorie in number exceeded the calorie out number then weight goes up, with the added complication of water retention (as far as I know, most programs recommend that you weight yourself at the same time every day so as to get a more accurate reading, due to water retention), and as such devloped an excel sheet which would show a rolling average of weight (like the way they guess the weather or some stocks). This he found, helped with motivation, instead of seeing big swings from day to day, a steady small reduction is seen via the charts instead. I tried to google the blog, but couldnt find it, however it appears that he has released books and other such materials relating to it since then. This isnt the post I read, however, it looks like some of the tools he created exist here: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ Note, as stated above, my struggle with weight is gaining, not loosing, so I have not delved into this stuff on a deeper level, however, what drew me into the original post, was the amount of research he did in relation to how much calories various activities will burn.
- ilyt 4y agoYeah but that's not the hard part. Figuring out that you need to eat less than you burn to lose weight is nothing substantial (not to slight the method, the advice on keeping the calorie intake it gives is sound). The hard part is doing it without going crazy and figuring it how to fit it inside your lifestyle while still keeping morale high. Like simple act of going to a party, it sucks to have to keep calorie count and skip on this or that. So I just... don't. I got used to doing one meal a day so I just shift the time of it (with maybe a tiny snack if I can't really keep it up, but that's rare) to the party evening, and shift the next day meal to later in the day so I can burn off the party. > and as such devloped an excel sheet which would show a rolling average of weight (like the way they guess the weather or some stocks). This he found, helped with motivation, instead of seeing big swings from day to day, a steady small reduction is seen via the charts instead. I use Libra Weight Manager for like 10+ years now for that. I think I read this article back then too
- derelicta 4y agoI wish there were far less stigma revolving around asking for help regarding nutrition. I feel its like going to the psychologist; its somewhat seen as shameful and a proof you've "given up", where its imo totally the contrary. In my case I think I'd still be flirting with obesity had I not begged to see a specialist.
- ilyt 4y agoIs there a stigma around it ? I have never noticed it. I guess fat person might hear someone saying "...yeah, you definitely need it" ....you don't have to tell everyone you're going to the doctor, or to what kind of doctor.
- georgyo 4y agoIs there a stigma around this? Nutrition and weight loss are both constantly advertised and regularly praised. Where is it considered shameful to see a nutritionist?
- derelicta 4y agoMaybe its a very regional issue, but where I grew up in Switzerland, I feel obesity and being overweight is mostly seen as a lack of willpower, a sign of neglect or laziness, and therefore when you see specialists, its seen as giving up, even cheating. I mostly take that from conversations Ive had with ppl. But perhaps it was just my environment that wasnt the most enlightened on those problems
- jeltz 4y agoHere in Stockholm using experts is seen as you working on the issue, especially if you are middle class and up. But we have similar views on obesity.
- nradov 4y agoIn the US at least, many nutritionists are frauds with no formal training who dispense dubious advice. Anyone can call themselves a "nutritionist". Start with a Registered Dietitian instead. https://www.cdrnet.org/certifications/registered-dietitian-rd-certification https://www.cdrnet.org/certifications/registered-dietitian-r...
- pryelluw 4y agoFriendly post to those who might need it. There are support groups out there for people with eating disorders. One is Compulsive Eaters Anonymous [0]. Try it out. [0] https://www.ceahow.org/ https://www.ceahow.org/
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- Psychoshy_bc1q 4y agoloosing weight is easy. got from 72Kg to 61Kg while being 175cm small in about 5 months.
- trashface 4y agoOne trick that might help people is reducing/eliminating seed oils. Safflower, soybean, sunflower oil. They put that in everything nowadays, and it adds a lot of extra calories. Its amazing to pick up stuff in the grocery story and look at the ingredients to see where they randomly show up. Restaurants also use them a lot as a cooking oil, cheaper than butter much of the time. They might also trigger inflammatory disorders but I'm less convinced of that. I eliminated them and lost tons of weight, though I had a pretty restrictive diet and was exercising a lot too so its hard to untangle the effects.
- bowsamic 4y agoOlive oil not less calorific than seed oils, butter is only slightly because it contains water...seed oils are a completely fine form of fat and don't cause weight gain
- jollyllama 4y agoReal olive oil has specific chemical properties which cause it to be anti-inflammatory, rather than inflammatory.
- Elte 4y agoI don't think there's any evidence that they're inflammatory (great video about it here [1]), but obviously oils are almost 100% fat and therefore have a ton of calories. At the same time, some people feel incredibly satiated from eating fats, to the point where they might eat fewer total calories if they include some... Generally, avoiding added high calorie fillers (that includes sugar and oils alike) is almost certainly a good idea if you're trying to lose weight though. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTaAHSFHUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTaAHSFHUU
- vgatherps 4y agoI had been somewhat overweight in the past, but not so heavy. Definitely emphasise with people here noting how it snuck up on them. Something that really was game changing for me was logging everything I ate with relatively legitimate counts of the calories and macros. Before even getting towards goals I realised that those random handfuls of cashews I might grab from the kitchen on the way to the restroom weren't say 60-100 calories, but more like 400!!! Fruit and especially fruit juices are another secret killer. There was just instant change in my calorie intake because so many things I was eating were much denser than I expected. Now, many of these counters aren't perfect, all people are different, and you don't absorb at consistent rates across food. Don't try and optimise down to 10s or even say order of magnitude 100 calories. But you might find some massive surprises in your food intake this way. I also did the whole diet / macro planning. Alongside going out of my way to log all food intake, having the plan added enough mental barriers to get snacking under control. Not everybody has success with these plans, but I'd still recommend the tracking and logging just to see if there's any surprises. edit: You don't even have to keep the tracking up. Just do it for a a few weeks so you at least know. I don't really track calories anymore but it's largely since i have a much better idea of what I'm eating after tracking in the past. edit 2: If you take care to track your macros, you can observe pretty significant differences in strength training results.
- nunez 4y ago100% agree. I've been tracking with MyFitnessPal for 11 years. I've gained and lost weight this way. However, tracking doesn't come easily for everyone.
- civilized 4y agoA big benefit of tracking and logging is that it makes eating annoying enough that you don't want to do it lightly. I guess this is also why I'm not great at keeping up with tracking for more than a couple weeks at a time.
- roland35 4y agoAbsolutely true. For me the secret calories were in cereal. I'd have a bowl as a snack and didn't realize it could be hundreds of calories!
- COGlory 4y agoThere's lots of back and forth in the comments about calories in, calories out, nutrition, etc. I went to school to become a dietitian, so I thought I'd chime in with my worldview. Losing weight IS as simple as calories in, calories out. A pound of fat has about 3500 calories, so you must deficit slightly more than that (glycogen stores will buffer) to lose a pound. 2nd law of thermodynamics means there's no room for opinions here. It doesn't matter what medications you are on, what hormones you have, what body type you are, you must burn more calories than you consume to lose weight. Now, why are people making this distinction? Well, my best guess is that it's because a few years ago there was a coordinated and highly visible campaign for body positivity, spearheaded by a number of models who were overweight/obese, which kind of went off the rails and claimed that in addition to being OK with their weight, that they were medically healthy and there was no downsides to their weight. They also circulated claims about why they were that weight, a number of which were in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. As for obesity:health correlations? They are all bad, very bad. That said, one thing body weight does not correlate with is self-worth. An overweight or obese person still has precisely the exact same self-worth as anyone else. This gets tricky, because many overweight people feel they should feel bad about their weight. In general, I don't disagree with that. It's your health, and you are responsible for it, so if you aren't taking care of it, feeling bad is a natural and valid response. Again, nothing to do with self-worth. Weight is not tied to self-worth in any way. Just like smoking cigarettes or any other destructive pattern. You should stop because it's bad. You are the only person capable of doing it - no one else can do it for you, stopping will be tricky, feeling bad about not stopping is natural and healthy, your value as a human being is independent of whether you stop or not. All that said, it still leaves a glaring hole that sometimes gets misinterpreted as the root of the issue, which is that humans are complex biological systems, that, when dysfunctional, often get that calorie thing unbalanced. The game is rigged: evolution selected people who want to eat. Eating is pleasurable, mentally and physically. Food has never been this abundant, so we haven't selected much for moderation. Hormonal and other chemical imbalances, as a result of medical conditions or stress can tip the scales unfairly toward eating. Medications can make it hard to exercise, or stimulate appetite. Time, illness, diet, can all affect this complicated balance, and make it difficult or impossible to lose weight. There are certain maxims: eat healthy. Well, if I eat more healthy food than I burn, I will gain weight. But healthy food will probably lead to better hormone balance, that might supress appetite (or not increase appetite), so maybe it's easier to eat less when you eat healthy. Another one is exercise. Exercise is good for your health, but it's a mixed bag for losing weight. For starters, exercise, especially cardio, barely burns any calories. Secondly, exercise is associated with overeating in many people. So exercise can help with calories out, but does little to help with calories in, sometimes even making it worse. It all boils down to something like.... being overweight is bad for you. Feeling bad about being overweight is a normal, healthy response and you shouldn't lie to yourself about it. The only way to lose weight is to eat less than you burn. There is no magic bullet or way to sidestep that, so just accept it. It's not easy to eat less than you burn, so it's worth examining with a fine toothed comb why you might be eating too much, and there's all sorts of little things tht make calorie restriction harder or easier. So it's worth examining those. And regardless of where you are in that process, it has no impact on what you are worth as a person.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoI once weighed somewhere north of 320lbs (145kg), and eventually starved myself down to about 165lb (75kg) and kept it within 15lbs (7kg) of there for many years until COVID happened. I say this so you understand that I believe I speak from a place of authority when it comes to struggling with and losing weight. I think it is impossible for anyone who spent their life not having to pay attention to what they ate to maintain a "normal" BMI to understand precisely what it is like to not be that way. They look down on people like me because they think I must have gone out of my way to eat so much, when the truth is that I experience food in a completely different way from them. It's like I don't have an "off" signal for my compulsion to eat. I have to constantly pay attention to what I'm eating and try to ignore my hunger and non-hunger eating compulsion. Constantly. As in all the fucking time. It frequently makes me wish I were dead rather than have to put up with it. Frankly, I kinda hate people who don't struggle with this. Partially that's because those are the kind of people who made me feel like shit my entire life for being the way I am, and partially it is for making it look so easy that it trivializes my constant war with my own fucking body, but mostly I think it is envy. I have said many times, and I'm not sure it was entirely exaggeration, that would kill and eat such a person if I thought it might grant me their power to simply stop eating when they've had enough calories. I can tell you from experience that doctors and nutritionists don't know shit about this. And neither do you, random Hacker News about to promote a keto diet or intermittent fasting. Any diet will work for about 10lbs, I had to lose 15x that. There is a lot of bullshit science done on behalf of people selling food, selling diets, etc. making it pretty much impossible to separate useful information from marketing. I wish I could offer an answer. I have spent the past 15 years or so of my life constantly looking for one, to no avail. The best I've managed is that if I can put myself in a sufficiently manic state I no longer seem to have an appetite, but that's hardly viable.
- vintermann 4y agoNo hate from me! (But also, please do not eat me, lol) It's not like I don't know what cravings are. I, too, have eaten way more than I should when really trying not to. I'm fully aware that it's just dumb luck that I only experience that sort of thing once in a while, usually in connection with life situations I can somewhat change, rather than all the time. "I'm human, nothing human is alien to me", as they say. > The best I've managed is that if I can put myself in a sufficiently manic state I no longer seem to have an appetite, but that's hardly viable. Yeah, I can relate to that too. I took up foraging for mushrooms some years ago, which was a ton of fun, and thought, "You know what? I could probably live on what I find in the woods for dinner for a while!". So I actually did, and naturally I lost some weight. A year later, next mushroom season, a few kilos back on (I'm still overweight by the BMI definition, though it's nothing to the problems some people in this thread have), thought I'd try that again, and... hell no. Turns out it wasn't the mushrooms, it was the excitement.
- dncornholio 4y agoMyself, I have always weight the same (80kg) for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I eat super healthy, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I eat really shitty and a lot. My weight always stays the same. I also eat complete packages sometimes. Because of this I never judge fat people. Always wondered if lots of obese people are just a victim of society or their own metabolism.
- sershe 4y agoI went on a somewhat difficult conditioning hike (4000ft elevation gain) long time ago with a group of random people. Usually people tend to have poles, bring food, and look like hikers, etc on these kind of trips, but one guy shows up in jeans, sneakers, and half liter bottle of water for sustenance. My first thought was, "great, we have an unprepared noob, this will take twice as long", but the guy is super fast. Turns out he used to weigh a lot (I don't remember exactly, but I think >300lb), and now that he lost the weight a hike like this is super easy for him, it's like he used to do it with a barbell before ;)
- kristjansson 4y agoTangentially, I find people radically over-prepare for day hiking. Most people, on most trails, in most conditions, would be perfectly fine setting off in sneakers with a half liter of water.
- sershe 4y agoNot in PNW. All but the most popular and shortest trails have scree, slippery rock and stream crossings/water on trail except for 1-3 months of a given year. Snow too except 3-4 months of the year. I usually wear approach shoes (sneakers with grippy rubber bottom and also waterproof in the lower inch or so) on basic hikes. Half a liter is also not sufficient for most hikes with 2-3k+ gain, unless you want to be dehydrated, and not great if something happens (it takes a surprisingly long time to get someone not capable of walking off even the most basic trail).
- andrewla 4y agoThere are a lot of important ongoing developments in obesity research. At the core, diet (mostly) and exercise (somewhat) are voluntary steps that you can take that will mechanically, thermodynamically, guarantee that you lose weight. But being overweight by itself is bad, and there's more and more research ongoing on how to fix that specific problem, without fixing the underlying causes that stop people from making the kind of lifestyle changes that will result in a healthy weight. Matthew Yglesias has a writeup of his own experiences [1] and his research into the state of the art of obesity research. If you have been trying and failing to lose weight, you don't have to beat yourself up about your failed attempts. Well, you can beat yourself up, it's a free country, but also consider looking into solutions that take your willpower out of the equation. [1] https://www.grid.news/story/science/2022/09/14/why-arent-medical-breakthroughs-in-obesity-a-bigger-deal/ https://www.grid.news/story/science/2022/09/14/why-arent-med...
- noja 4y ago> and more research ongoing on how to fix that specific problem Research for what? If the normal food that people can buy is stuffed full of subsidised HFCS, it becomes the default to gain weight. > that stop people from making the kind of lifestyle changes This is not about individual choice: you can't design a system so that the default is way too many calories, then blame an individual for getting fat. Make the default healthy.
- andrewla 4y agoFirst off, even assuming that your thesis is correct, are overweight people expected to just wait until we can fix our entire food system? Secondly, while I think it is unquestionably true that the composition of our diet has a significant effect on the propensity for obesity, it does remain a propensity. There are innumerable people that maintain a healthy weight, some with dedication and willpower, others with an almost effortless ease, and everything in between. And, we know from very basic science that reducing the inputs and increasing the burn will absolutely cause weight loss. Homeostasis is not necessarily easy to achieve, but it is certainly possible. But practically there's some combination of diet, genetics, psychology, metabolism, gut biome, viral agents, endocrine system and a million other unknown and unmeasured phenomena that feed into it. At least in the USA, there is an overwhelming feeling that if you have the capability to fix things yourself (change your diet, change your lifestyle), then pursuing an alternative that takes it out of your hands (bariatric surgery or non-surgical interventions or weight-loss drugs like semaglutide or liraglutide) is admitting failure. I propose that it is less productive to dwell on failure than it is to actually lose the weight. We should remain skeptical of a "free lunch" -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof -- but it does appear that we are getting closer to having workable solutions to curing obesity.
- weightthrowaway 4y agoUsing a throwaway for the obvious sensitivity. I've struggled with my weight all through adulthood - in my 20s I gained weight just from business travel, stress, eating out all the time, and drinking a lot. This continued through my 30s until around 2018, my wife sat me down and explained that my poor diet and not taking care of myself was stressing her out, especially since my father had died young of heart problems. At the time, I was 290 pounds, which alone stressed me out - I remember having the same realization as the writer of this piece and feeling dejected. So, I gritted my teeth, started seeing a trainer and hired a nutritionist. The nutrionist was useless, I assume I just had the wrong person, but that didn't help. Exercise and cutting back on drinking dropped 10 pounds, cutting out breakfast and switching to lighter lunches cut another 10. After that, though, it got really hard. I had long ago gotten rid of the "easy" adjustments - I never liked sugary soda, never was a big snacker, don't like fruit, and didn't have a big sweet tooth. By cutting out booze entirely and going down to one meal a day I was able to grind out another 5 pounds over a span of months, but it was real work. I tried tracking my macros fanatically and by all measures I should be way below my baseline amount of calories but the weight just didn't want to come off. I stalled out at 265-ish and couldn't get lower. The next level of commitment would have been to do keto or one of the other very low-carb diets combined with one meal a day, but I was already pretty miserable. When covid hit, I backslid, but eventually got back on track, but same problem - I can grind it out to 265, but couldn't get below it. I did find that I could maintain at around 270 and still enjoy a decent quality of life. So I stuck there for a year or two, still felt gross, but less gross than I did previously. I got my blood work done earlier this year, and my a1c showed I was pre-diabetic, which I took hard - it felt like I'd done all this work and I was still losing the battle. My psychiatrist suggested I look at taking Ozempic - I qualified due to my a1c, and thought it might help me lose weight as well. Started taking it about 6 months ago, and I've lost almost 30 pounds. The side effects suck - constipation, nausea, etc., but it's been a game changer. My a1c and cholesterol are back in normal range, and my blood pressure is normal. I'm still losing weight, but more slowly, I don't know when things are going to settle out. All this to say, from my own struggles to lose weight, I think it's more complicated than CICO - obviously that's a huge part of it, but I think everyone has a baseline below which your body starts to make it increasingly difficult to go and stay beneath, and I think everyone has a different tolerance level for fighting that baseline. I don't think it's very helpful to just tell people "CICO". For me, it took 1) finding a good therapist, 2) finding a good trainer, 3) taking an expensive and unpleasant medication, and 4) CICO. I'm incredibly fortunate that I have good insurance and a high-income job in a major city with lots of treatment options. I'm starting to gear myself up that I'm going to have to double down on 1, 2, and 4 to keep moving towards a healthier weight, but Ozempic has at least dialed that hunger sensor down far enough that I feel like I can make headway.
- nomy99 4y agoI got rid of carbs including whole grains and dropped 40 pounds in 3 months. A lot of protein + salads and fruits. I had a lot of diet soda as well :/
- imknewhere 4y agoSo I've never struggled with my weight. I'm the same weight now in my mid-40s that I was in my early 20s. I don't understand why, honestly. I don't really have much in the way of self control. I like junk food and alcohol just as much as the next person. But for some reason, weight is just not an issue for me. It's like my body just self-regulates. Lots of times I just don't feel hungry. It's weird. Just as I cannot explain why I am the way I am, it would be stupid to expect everybody to be the same as me. To look at an overweight person and assume they have no self-discipline. Or the opposite for a thin person. I don't see myself as any different from a fat person. I just somehow don't happen to be fat. One problem that I do suffer from is anxiety and depression. In relating my experiences to others, I get the same sort of "helpful" suggestions. Go outside more. Exercise more. Meditate more. Drink more water. Eat healthier. I can only imagine what my life would feel like, if my mental health were on display the way weight is for fat people. The feeling that even though you're trying so hard, you're obviously not trying hard enough. Everyone giving unsolicited advice - I imagine the advice from former fat people is the worst. At least with mental health issues, I can hide those, or not discuss them with "helpful" people. I have the greatest amount of compassion for fat people. People are so thoughtless and hurtful. Even when they're trying to help.
- ferrumfist 4y ago> assume they have no self-discipline I can't say that every skinny person has a healthy relationship with food, but I can say that almost every overweight person does have an unhealthy relationship with food. Everyone is allowed to make their own choices, but if I smell liquor on your breath every morning, I'm going to assume you don't have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Same goes for food. > I get the same sort of "helpful" suggestions If someone is suffering from a cold and I tell them to "instead of going to work you could try taking the day off to sleep, it should help fight the cold virus", that's objectively true. If someone is suffering from depression and I tell them "try incorporating some exercise in your daily routing, it should help your mental and physical health", that's objectively true. It feels like there's this viewpoint among many depressed folks where they want unconditional support from their friends/family, but only want the communication to go one way. It's incredibly difficult to support someone who is struggling with depression. If they offer suggestions, it's their way of trying to help because there's fuck all they can do outside of that.
- rowillia 4y agoCongratulations! It's a really fucking hard thing to do and you should be very proud of yourself! After a large shift in body composition I really recommend getting some blood work - especially to check testosterone levels. I lost a bunch of weight and everything looked better for me, except my T levels had cratered which made me feel overall lethargic. Since then I've been focused more on maintenance to try to get them to come back up. I recently went through a similar journey - I've lost ~80 lbs since March of 2022 and am now focused on maintaining (Before/After: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjG4AmDvG2w/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CjG4AmDvG2w/ - still technically obese though). I was a college athlete and really struggled after college with "working out". I never "worked out", I always "trained". I couldn't bring myself to go to the gym for a couple hours a day without something to work towards. At one point I got super into CrossFit but all that went out the window when I had my first kid. I wish I could say I found balance, but getting super into Jiu Jitsu has been the latest thing to get me to drop weight. Honestly I find maintaining harder than losing. When I was focused on losing weight I would just think "If I'm a little bit hungry I'm OK", but now focusing on maintenance I had to be much more diligent about tracking calories/macros.
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- coreyp_1 4y agoThis comment will probably get buried, but I'm putting it here anyway. I've always been fat. My entire life. I joke that when I was born, my mother gave birth to a toddler. I've never known what it's like to be skinny, thin, fit, or whatever word you want to use. I wish I did, though. I'm sick of being told how to be healthy by people who have never been fat. Or, even worse, people who have been fit when younger, then put on weight for a few years only to go back to being fit. They have the delusion that their experience is possible for everyone and therefore the fat person is just lazy or lacks self control, and therefore make a moral judgement about the fatso. I cannot stand that type of person. All of the "Just do this..." quips don't help. "Just cut back on the alcohol." I have never drank in my life. Ever. "Just cut back on the sugary drinks." I cut out sodas 3 years ago. I'm heavier now than I was 3 years ago. Since then, I only drink water at restaurants, and I only drink water or 0 calorie flavored water at home. No exceptions. "Just exercise and you'll feel better." I have never felt good exercising. Never. Exercising makes me miserable. I don't mean just while I'm exercising, but I mean that I feel incessantly exhausted during the times in my life when I did exercise regularly. In my 20's I did Tae Kwon Do consistently for several years. I jogged. I rode my bike. I was consistently miserable. And I was still fat. "Stop eating out." I did that with my switch to keto (mentioned below). Not a huge change. It's more expensive to cook "good" food than to eat the McDonald's dollar menu, but I guess I make more $$$ now than I did when I was a poor student. "It's just calories in and calories out." Yeah, and programming is just ones and zeroes. It's not technically wrong, and yet it's obvious that the person doesn't know what they're talking about beyond this rudimentary quip. They don't understand how the gut microbiome can make absorption of nutrients/calories more efficient, or genetic predisposition and the relative strength of those predispositions, or any other nuance. It's like talking to a racist or woke person; neither one sees how their naive and myopic understanding of the world doesn't actually match reality, but they are proud to spout their nonsense and then judge you for not meeting their standard. My blood sugar has never been caught "high" so I had never worried about it much, but in an annual insurance checkup, my A1C was 10.6. That's bad. The insurance person tried to make me go to the ER right at that moment. They were REALLY pushy. I thought that they were overreacting. They were not happy that I didn't panic or react in the same way that they were acting. I didn't go to a doctor. I switched to a keto diet. It's been 4 months, and I've only lost 20 lbs. My A1C is down to 6, though, when I checked it a few days ago. No meds. I want to exercise, but I absolutely hate my life when I do it. I have a bad knee, so it's often painful to exercise. Exercise makes me feel bad in general. I'm currently 6'0" and 269lbs. The only time I guess that I'll actually be skinny is about 10 years after I'm dead.
- elenaferrantes 4y ago"I will be a health(ier) weight, if I continue to put the effort in. And who knows?" Fit and normal people don’t put any effort. As long as you’ll see this as an effort/reward thing you will fail. My advice : focus on eating normally every day. 3 meals / day. Don’t focus on long term goals.
- JshWright 4y agoThis seems like a comment that is very much lacking in empathy (I don't really mean that pejoratively, it's just an observation... I don't think you feel much empathy for OP, likely because of very different experiences). For many people (presumably OP as well), what you are describing is very much "effort". There are many "normal" people who have to put in a lot of effort to just eat three meals a day and nothing else. Food is very often a coping mechanism for handling stress, etc. Eating literally causes their body to release chemicals that make them feel better, and replacing that coping mechanism with something else is something that require a significant amount of ongoing effort. It's (truly) great that this isn't your experience, but that doesn't mean it isn't the reality many other people are living with every day.
- elenaferrantes 4y agoHi, I’m obese and struggling for 25 years. What I mean is life long normal weight people don’t do any effort. An obese who tries to loose or maintain weight make great efforts and is doomed to fail because no one can sustain it on the long run. We have to find a way to do it without effort. The first step is to avoid setting goals and don’t be in "warrior" mindset. Weight is not something to conquer, but a lagging result of your habits. Better to focus on strategies to avoid overeating each day. I’m trying this since few months. Keep the faith guys :-)