7 ms·

I didn’t even count calories and lost 30 pounds last year. Eat less food. Stopped snacking between meals, and ate a salad for dinner a few nights a week. Also

I didn’t even count calories and lost 30 pounds last year. Eat less food. Stopped snacking between meals, and ate a salad for dinner a few nights a week. Also, tried to reduce my meal size, in general. Getting that hungry feeling between meals that I would always satisfy meant I was creating a deficit.

eitland 4y ago
Exactly. Find something that works for oneself. Keto works for some people. Just reducing plate size helps for some. Personally I skip breakfasts (I love breakfast, but it is not worth the brain fog that I personally get later in the day) and most workdays I just drink 1/2L of whole milk, preferably cold. I get plenty enough energy from dinner and now I can also enjoy some snack in the evening together with my family.
- vram22 4y ago
  Do you eat lunch?
  - eitland 4y ago
    No, I usually skip breakfast and the usual lunch. Typically I just drink 0.5L of milk and walk 2-4 km during the lunch break although I do make exceptions once a week or something. For me personally this works well, I don't get hungry either as long as I know I am not going to eat.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
This worked beautifully for me when I was in my 20s. Now that I’m in the second half of my 40s it doesn’t work well at all. My body requires a starvation diet before I see even a little weight loss, and I can’t keep it up while remaining productive in my job. This is one of the useful lessons of age: you essentially get to experience living in more than one body within your lifetime. Younger-me would have posted the same confident advice as you did, and it would have seemed just as intuitively obvious - how could it be wrong when I experienced it myself! But in practice for someone with a different metabolism (at any age) it’s deeply unhelpful, even demoralizing.
- melling 4y ago
  I’m more than a decade older than you. that’s what my girlfriend said: “Can’t lose weight after a certain age” She looked at me one day when I was down around 25 pounds and declared “It does work” Next thing I know, she lost 15 pounds.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    I think people feel hunger very differently. When I want to lose wait I just stop eating lunch until I start to feel it makes me sluggish. I can tell I should probably eat but that’s an easy to ignore signal. My ex girlfriend felt hunger as an all consuming normal activity ending feeling.
    - Analogbullfrog 4y ago
      Women react differently to things like intermittent fasting given the vastly different hormonal profile to men. I’m much like your ex (I can’t think properly until I feel full, which means a significant breakfast) and anecdotally I have noticed that men seem more likely to go for longer fasting periods. Women’s bodies really don’t like to think they’re starving.
wrp 4y ago
As we get into middle age, our hunger sensations grow more out of alignment with our body's caloric needs. I think the focus of most diet strategies is to find ways of minimizing hunger pains while keeping caloric input at or below maintenance level. Aside from calorie counting, which is very effective, the most important thing I found for avoiding discomfort is to go short on calories earlier rather than later in the day. I've read surveys on how French women stay thinner on average and it boils down to having just a coffee and cigarette for breakfast and maybe even lunch. Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes.
- Steve44 4y ago
  I'm fat and well into my 50s and agree. I can fairly easily not eat until lunchtime, it's later in the day when it becomes much harder to manage it all. And yes, the famous "breakfast of champions" as it used to be known. I don't smoke either but do need several mugs of tea to get me through.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes. I drink a lot of black tea and use nicotine gums, and my hunger is... enough to keep my weight way higher than I'd like. So either I'm doing it wrong - perhaps it needs to be actual coffee and cigarettes[0] - or... I should never stop, because my baseline hunger must be off the charts. ---- [0] - Wouldn't be the first time people, including scientists, confuse tobacco (a processed product whose consumption involves smoke and complex chemical reactions releasing a lot of biologically active substances) with nicotine (a single chemical that is one of the many things you ingest when smoking).
  - wrp 4y ago
    Yeah, you must be doing it wrong. :-) The appetite-suppressant effect of nicotine is enhanced by caffeine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/) Conclusion: Caffeine added to nicotine chewing gum appears to amplify its attenuating effects on appetite and the combinations of 1-mg of nicotine with caffeine seem to be well tolerated. BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.
elzbardico 4y ago
This. Our generation was conditioned to abhor any feeling of hunger absolutely. But feeling hungry from time to time is normal.

eitland 4y ago

Exactly. Find something that works for oneself. Keto works for some people. Just reducing plate size helps for some. Personally I skip breakfasts (I love breakfast, but it is not worth the brain fog that I personally get later in the day) and most workdays I just drink 1/2L of whole milk, preferably cold. I get plenty enough energy from dinner and now I can also enjoy some snack in the evening together with my family.

vram22 4y ago
Do you eat lunch?
- eitland 4y ago
  No, I usually skip breakfast and the usual lunch. Typically I just drink 0.5L of milk and walk 2-4 km during the lunch break although I do make exceptions once a week or something. For me personally this works well, I don't get hungry either as long as I know I am not going to eat.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

This worked beautifully for me when I was in my 20s. Now that I’m in the second half of my 40s it doesn’t work well at all. My body requires a starvation diet before I see even a little weight loss, and I can’t keep it up while remaining productive in my job. This is one of the useful lessons of age: you essentially get to experience living in more than one body within your lifetime. Younger-me would have posted the same confident advice as you did, and it would have seemed just as intuitively obvious - how could it be wrong when I experienced it myself! But in practice for someone with a different metabolism (at any age) it’s deeply unhelpful, even demoralizing.

melling 4y ago
I’m more than a decade older than you. that’s what my girlfriend said: “Can’t lose weight after a certain age” She looked at me one day when I was down around 25 pounds and declared “It does work” Next thing I know, she lost 15 pounds.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  I think people feel hunger very differently. When I want to lose wait I just stop eating lunch until I start to feel it makes me sluggish. I can tell I should probably eat but that’s an easy to ignore signal. My ex girlfriend felt hunger as an all consuming normal activity ending feeling.
  - Analogbullfrog 4y ago
    Women react differently to things like intermittent fasting given the vastly different hormonal profile to men. I’m much like your ex (I can’t think properly until I feel full, which means a significant breakfast) and anecdotally I have noticed that men seem more likely to go for longer fasting periods. Women’s bodies really don’t like to think they’re starving.

wrp 4y ago

As we get into middle age, our hunger sensations grow more out of alignment with our body's caloric needs. I think the focus of most diet strategies is to find ways of minimizing hunger pains while keeping caloric input at or below maintenance level. Aside from calorie counting, which is very effective, the most important thing I found for avoiding discomfort is to go short on calories earlier rather than later in the day. I've read surveys on how French women stay thinner on average and it boils down to having just a coffee and cigarette for breakfast and maybe even lunch. Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes.

Steve44 4y ago
I'm fat and well into my 50s and agree. I can fairly easily not eat until lunchtime, it's later in the day when it becomes much harder to manage it all. And yes, the famous "breakfast of champions" as it used to be known. I don't smoke either but do need several mugs of tea to get me through.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes. I drink a lot of black tea and use nicotine gums, and my hunger is... enough to keep my weight way higher than I'd like. So either I'm doing it wrong - perhaps it needs to be actual coffee and cigarettes[0] - or... I should never stop, because my baseline hunger must be off the charts. ---- [0] - Wouldn't be the first time people, including scientists, confuse tobacco (a processed product whose consumption involves smoke and complex chemical reactions releasing a lot of biologically active substances) with nicotine (a single chemical that is one of the many things you ingest when smoking).
- wrp 4y ago
  Yeah, you must be doing it wrong. :-) The appetite-suppressant effect of nicotine is enhanced by caffeine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/) Conclusion: Caffeine added to nicotine chewing gum appears to amplify its attenuating effects on appetite and the combinations of 1-mg of nicotine with caffeine seem to be well tolerated. BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.

elzbardico 4y ago

This. Our generation was conditioned to abhor any feeling of hunger absolutely. But feeling hungry from time to time is normal.