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For those struggling, controlling your diet is the single most effective thing you can do to make progress on obesity. Much easier to say no to a 300 cal donut

For those struggling, controlling your diet is the single most effective thing you can do to make progress on obesity. Much easier to say no to a 300 cal donut than to run 30 minutes. Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat. Maybe we need a “just say no” to junk food campaign like we had in the 90s. Lean meat, tofu, tempeh, seitan, veggies, low calorie sauces, limited fruits, protein smoothies (watching the sugar/fat) Do a few pushups, a light run, increase slowly. Make it sustainable, not a flash crash.

taeric 4y ago
True, but don't feel like you have to run for 30 minutes. Walking for that long will go a long way for a lot of folks. Really, walking should probably be looked at far more closely for many folks.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  Walking for 30 minutes will go a long way to promote general health, but it's not a lot of calories burned.
  - exfatloss 4y ago
    In my experiments wearing a glucose monitor, even 5 minutes of walking has a massive effect on blood sugar. Might not make you slim, but might prevent your diabetes if you're borderline. I counted the steps. Under 600 steps. Not even around the block, and a ~20mg/dL reduction in blood glucose.
  - Fricken 4y ago
    On a day to day basis it usually isn't a lot of excess calories eaten either, but over a year or 10 those small discrepencies can add up.
  - taeric 4y ago
    This is an area where calories is scary misleading. The 30 minutes walking is indeed low in the direct impact. For some reason, it punches well above expectations, though. Probably something about base metabolism and such, but whatever it is, you will lose more weight from walking than you'd expect. Similarly, people probably walk way way less than you would expect. It is kind of scary to see how few steps I can get on a standard day.
    - exfatloss 4y ago
      Yea, I suspect it has a pretty low effect in terms of calories, but it helps immediately bring your blood sugar back under control within <5 minutes of walking or so. At least that's what my experience is wearing a CGM for a few weeks now. That's maybe the magic of "walkable neighborhoods." You just walk over to the store/the cafe/the restaurant real quick, and then you walk back. It was only maybe a few hundreds steps, but that's enough to put away a ton of the glucose you just dumped into your bloodstream. It is shocking how little walking is necessary to have a massive impact on glucose. 500 steps or so is easily enough for me.
      - vkazanov 4y ago
        I started walking on my way to work and back (London, UK). It's about 5k + 5k steps. Plus a 4k step walk after lunch. Together with a limited calorie intake (2k cal a day) it made wonders. It was crazy to watch the first 5kg just vaporize in 2 weeks. I went down to 1800 calories and the remaining 10kg were gone in 6 weeks.
        exfatloss 4y ago
        You mind sharing your before/after weight and roughly how lean you were? If your metabolism is already dialed in (i.e. you were not obese) this might totally work and be very effective for fat loss.
        vkazanov 4y ago
        93kg to 78kg, 180 cm. Did not look fat, but my face got round and belly was forming. Haven't seen my abs for years and years by then. Surprisingly, 80 kg was like no abs at all and 77.8kg was a 4-pack already. I wrote earlier that reforming my diet to protein-centric, 1800-2000cal a day + 15k steps walking + some lightweight kettlebell work was enough to get things going. I used myfitnespal, really useful. It wasn't too hard, to be honest, as I am relatively used to training. For some ppl even walking 10k a day is a challenge.
JamesBarney 4y ago
Studies don't really support that. They show that rapid weight loss is more effective, but slightly worse for body composition. And slower weight loss is of course the opposite. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702468/
- exfatloss 4y ago
  +1 for the rapid fat loss. It's just that we don't even really know how to do one or the other reliably :)
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    Haha that's true.
crazygringo 4y ago
> Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat. For many people, no it's not. Becuse their metabolism just decreases by the exact same amount they cut calories. They cut out the daily donut, and they find themselves fidgeting less and wearing a sweater because they're suddenly a little chilly a lot of the day. And the scale doesn't budge. For many people, losing weight is a whole lot more complex than reducing by x calories per day. Getting your body to burn fat rather than slow its metabolism can be maddeningly difficult.
- tjohns 4y ago
  Metabolism does slow down, but there is a lower limit. The exact numbers and rate will change, but the fact is that sufficient caloric restriction will cause weight loss. That said, as someone who struggles with weight loss, it's still hard. There are both physioloical and psychological issues that make it challenging. As an aside, keto is the only thing thats worked reliably for me so far - largely because of the caloric restriction it inherently forces. I stopped following it because people kept telling me they were concerned it was unhealthy, but I'm sure the weight is worse than anything else.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    > but the fact is that sufficient caloric restriction will cause weight loss. Yes, but at the cost of your immune system severely degrading so you suddenly get colds all the time. At the cost of extreme fatigue and brain fog. At least that's what's made weight loss difficult for me at times. Because for some people (like me), your body drops its metabolism to well below what's healthy before it even thinks about burning fat. It's not any question at all of willpower or psychology, it's purely physiological.
  - c22 4y ago
    Keto was the only thing that worked for me too. I found it a lot easier to just pick some days and say "I'm not eating anything on these days" than it was to constantly track and procure a perfect diet day after day without lapses. Not sure who told you it was bad for you, I've predominantly heard it being touted as beneficial and longevity-increasing.
Semaphor 4y ago
That's what I always felt like why keto helped me. Instead of just eating, I was now looking into everything. Almost 10 years ago, I went from 115kg to 86, and I had no issues keeping the weight.
thorio 4y ago
"Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat." While I'm completely behind your post in general, unfortunately it's much more complicated. It comes down to calories in vs energy consumption. If you oversupply your buddy with calories however most science I read states 7.000 calories of surplus to be one kilo in fat in the average human. Highly recommend the Huberman episode about nutrition.

taeric 4y ago

True, but don't feel like you have to run for 30 minutes. Walking for that long will go a long way for a lot of folks. Really, walking should probably be looked at far more closely for many folks.

WillPostForFood 4y ago
Walking for 30 minutes will go a long way to promote general health, but it's not a lot of calories burned.
- exfatloss 4y ago
  In my experiments wearing a glucose monitor, even 5 minutes of walking has a massive effect on blood sugar. Might not make you slim, but might prevent your diabetes if you're borderline. I counted the steps. Under 600 steps. Not even around the block, and a ~20mg/dL reduction in blood glucose.
- Fricken 4y ago
  On a day to day basis it usually isn't a lot of excess calories eaten either, but over a year or 10 those small discrepencies can add up.
- taeric 4y ago
  This is an area where calories is scary misleading. The 30 minutes walking is indeed low in the direct impact. For some reason, it punches well above expectations, though. Probably something about base metabolism and such, but whatever it is, you will lose more weight from walking than you'd expect. Similarly, people probably walk way way less than you would expect. It is kind of scary to see how few steps I can get on a standard day.
  - exfatloss 4y ago
    Yea, I suspect it has a pretty low effect in terms of calories, but it helps immediately bring your blood sugar back under control within <5 minutes of walking or so. At least that's what my experience is wearing a CGM for a few weeks now. That's maybe the magic of "walkable neighborhoods." You just walk over to the store/the cafe/the restaurant real quick, and then you walk back. It was only maybe a few hundreds steps, but that's enough to put away a ton of the glucose you just dumped into your bloodstream. It is shocking how little walking is necessary to have a massive impact on glucose. 500 steps or so is easily enough for me.
    - vkazanov 4y ago
      I started walking on my way to work and back (London, UK). It's about 5k + 5k steps. Plus a 4k step walk after lunch. Together with a limited calorie intake (2k cal a day) it made wonders. It was crazy to watch the first 5kg just vaporize in 2 weeks. I went down to 1800 calories and the remaining 10kg were gone in 6 weeks.
      - exfatloss 4y ago
        You mind sharing your before/after weight and roughly how lean you were? If your metabolism is already dialed in (i.e. you were not obese) this might totally work and be very effective for fat loss.
        vkazanov 4y ago
        93kg to 78kg, 180 cm. Did not look fat, but my face got round and belly was forming. Haven't seen my abs for years and years by then. Surprisingly, 80 kg was like no abs at all and 77.8kg was a 4-pack already. I wrote earlier that reforming my diet to protein-centric, 1800-2000cal a day + 15k steps walking + some lightweight kettlebell work was enough to get things going. I used myfitnespal, really useful. It wasn't too hard, to be honest, as I am relatively used to training. For some ppl even walking 10k a day is a challenge.

JamesBarney 4y ago

Studies don't really support that. They show that rapid weight loss is more effective, but slightly worse for body composition. And slower weight loss is of course the opposite. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702468/

exfatloss 4y ago
+1 for the rapid fat loss. It's just that we don't even really know how to do one or the other reliably :)
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Haha that's true.

crazygringo 4y ago

> Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat. For many people, no it's not. Becuse their metabolism just decreases by the exact same amount they cut calories. They cut out the daily donut, and they find themselves fidgeting less and wearing a sweater because they're suddenly a little chilly a lot of the day. And the scale doesn't budge. For many people, losing weight is a whole lot more complex than reducing by x calories per day. Getting your body to burn fat rather than slow its metabolism can be maddeningly difficult.

tjohns 4y ago
Metabolism does slow down, but there is a lower limit. The exact numbers and rate will change, but the fact is that sufficient caloric restriction will cause weight loss. That said, as someone who struggles with weight loss, it's still hard. There are both physioloical and psychological issues that make it challenging. As an aside, keto is the only thing thats worked reliably for me so far - largely because of the caloric restriction it inherently forces. I stopped following it because people kept telling me they were concerned it was unhealthy, but I'm sure the weight is worse than anything else.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  > but the fact is that sufficient caloric restriction will cause weight loss. Yes, but at the cost of your immune system severely degrading so you suddenly get colds all the time. At the cost of extreme fatigue and brain fog. At least that's what's made weight loss difficult for me at times. Because for some people (like me), your body drops its metabolism to well below what's healthy before it even thinks about burning fat. It's not any question at all of willpower or psychology, it's purely physiological.
- c22 4y ago
  Keto was the only thing that worked for me too. I found it a lot easier to just pick some days and say "I'm not eating anything on these days" than it was to constantly track and procure a perfect diet day after day without lapses. Not sure who told you it was bad for you, I've predominantly heard it being touted as beneficial and longevity-increasing.

Semaphor 4y ago

That's what I always felt like why keto helped me. Instead of just eating, I was now looking into everything. Almost 10 years ago, I went from 115kg to 86, and I had no issues keeping the weight.

thorio 4y ago

"Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat." While I'm completely behind your post in general, unfortunately it's much more complicated. It comes down to calories in vs energy consumption. If you oversupply your buddy with calories however most science I read states 7.000 calories of surplus to be one kilo in fat in the average human. Highly recommend the Huberman episode about nutrition.