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Just don't try to lose weight primarily through increasing activity. Activity is great for other reasons, but the human body is just too damn efficient and it w

• kiba 3y ago
  Caloric deficit is definitely true. The hard part is the implementation. For example, I was supposed to meal prep ingredient for taco for this week so that I can have lunch, but I procrastinated and instead had noodle and ate out for a family occasion. It used to be worse. For example, I had an expensive addiction to all you can eat hotpot.
  • hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
    Amen. I've tried more-or-less starving myself just by not having any food in the house other than healthy food ingredients that require significant time and attention to cook. I also went for 3 weeks without eating once, other than drinking 0 calorie hydration beverages, multivitamin, and fish oil to keep the gallbladder moving. My current strategy involves avoidance of food whenever possible.
    • paulpauper 3y ago
      I did the same. One afternoon I cleaned out the fridge. Food that was still 'good'. All gone. Never bought it again even though I was highly tempted at times and caved once. I knew I was wasting money by throwing away perfectly good but unhealthy food, but it was hurting my goals.
      • hackerlight 3y ago
        Self-control fluctuates with tiredness level and mood. You want to build systems to protect yourself when those things dip and you're not thinking properly, by adding some artificial friction.
    • alfiedotwtf 3y ago
      Interesting. How long until you get over the hard part? I did meal replacement for a while (ALL meals replaced by essentially Soylent) but I just dreamt of food whenever I went to bed - which was super weird because I never dream!
      • hi-v-rocknroll 3y ago
        For near total caloric restriction, the hump is ~3-4 days. The downside with this method is causes lose of muscle mass. It's not a safe or sustainable weight loss method in most cases.
        • alfiedotwtf 3y ago
          I’m fine with losing muscle, but not being sustainable is a downer :(
  • euroderf 3y ago
    I knew I'd have to feel full once in a while, so my rule was, only foods with 1 kcal or less per gram. This pretty much meant sauerkraut, pickles, raw veggies. Lemon water. Long walks. Two weeks of this worked great.
• coffeebeqn 3y ago
  Absolutely. Unless you do some very vigorous exercise for many hours per week it’s not going to make much of a dent. I remember jogging for an hour (I’m out of shape) and it was very difficult - I felt like getting a pizza afterwards as a reward. That would have been something like -500 calories from the jog, +2000 from the whole pizza == +1500 net. After many years of doing it wrong - now I go with low calorie and high protein meals until dinner. ~150 calories for breakfast for example and no snacking. Once I got used to being hungry most of the day, weight loss actually became realistic.
  • paulpauper 3y ago
    it is even worse than that. the energy constrained model suggests it is impossible to ever work off a pizza. you just simply burn fewer calories later to negate exercise, such as lowed BMR or less NEAT. As you lose weight, your constraint is lowered and any calories above it will produce weight gain regardless of exercise. The constraint throws off all the calorie math in regard to exercise. You find that no amount of exercise helps at producing lasting weight loss even if the meter/app says you burned 700 or whatever, which is .2 lbs. If you do this for 10 days you should lose 2 pounds of fat , keeping diet constant, but you don't. Either you lose less or just water.
    • rale00 3y ago
      If only we could find some way to harness the power of these thermodynamics-violating pizzas.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • kiba 3y ago
      I don't think your basal metabolic rate goes down to zero as you increase exercise. There's probably at some point in which your daily total expenditure must increase, but it's unsustainable.
    • apsurd 3y ago
• morkalork 3y ago
  How do you go to work and think and function under a calorie deficit? Brains need calories and mine feels crippled without, like I am forced to choose between diet and productivity.
  • boppo1 3y ago
    Start slow. First eat what you normally would to feel full, and merely measure it. Use a spreadsheet and the nutrition labels to see how many calories you're getting as well as macro %s. Leave nothing out! First, start with obvious cuts: alcohol and candy/desserts. You don't need beer or ice cream and you will function better without them. Then, cut 100 calories a week. Cut from fat and carbs, make sure to keep your protein and fiber up.
  • dieselgate 3y ago
    For me it’s best to eat filling whole foods that are inherently lower calorie - potato, rice, beans etc. If you’re stuffed it won’t feel like calorie restriction.
  • spudlyo 3y ago
    Your brain needs glucose, not calories to function. Yes, we can get glucose from the calories we eat, but that's not the only way. Thanks to insulin, extra glucose can be stored in the liver and muscle tissues as glycogen. When those stores are full, it gets converted to fat and stored in your adipose tissue. This is lipogenesis. When you're in a deficit, your body keeps blood glucose levels stable (and your ability to think and work constant) by tapping into glycogen stores from the liver. When your liver is out of glycogen, the body can convert glycerol, a component of fat molecules stored in your adipose tissue, into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. While this process works, it's not always comfortable. However you can become more adapted to it and get to the point where your comfortable doing light exercise and heavy thinking in a fasted state.
• oh_sigh 3y ago
  Activity might not be a directly efficient way to lose weight, but (imo) increased activity leads to increased willpower to make healthy eating choices.
  • switchbak 3y ago
    Inactivity (not our human default) comes with such a host of health issues, that even if activity had no bearing on weight, it would still be a no brainer to do it.
• strken 3y ago
  I find this kind of attitude frustrating because it likely discourages people from exercising, when they could benefit a great deal from doing both exercise and caloric restriction. Exercise is so connected to everything else in life, like mental health and (per the article) metabolism, that the benefits to be reaped from even just walking a few thousand extra steps a day might easily make the difference between sticking to a caloric deficit or exceeding it.
  • DangitBobby 3y ago
    By bogging down the concept of weightloss with an exercise requirement, you lose a lot of people who would otherwise be willing to diet to lose weight. Is exercise good for you? Yes, very. But you can lose weight without it.
    • maxglute 3y ago
      >By bogging down the concept of weightloss with an exercise requirement Conceptually weightloss for genpop is really get skinnier to fit into things. Body recomposition with more muscle and less fat can get you there faster and more muscle makes long terms maintaining higher weight at same waist size easier. In my experience the people who lost weight and kept it are the ones who got more muscular or have exercise goals that regulates their caloric intake. People who just diet tend to yoyo.
    • strken 3y ago
      This feels to me like saying "hey, you don't need to buy a fire extinguisher to keep your house safe from bushfires, the primary way of protecting it is clearing vegetation away from the walls." While technically true, it presents the two methods as if they were in opposition to each other, when they are in fact complimentary. You can do both! If you absolutely have to prioritise one, then I guess you could pick one, but why bother? It also assumes you'll "lose" people if you even mention exercising in a positive way unless someone comes along to tell them how pointless exercising is. I think the exact opposite is true: people get burnt out on weight loss because they aren't able to make it stick, and the solution is to incorporate exercise as well as educate them about concepts like losing your weight in stages then stabilising before metabolic adaptation hits, how your BMR needs to be recalculated as the weight comes off, water retention and weight loss plateaus, calorie tracking, satiation, and everything else that's been learnt through trial and error over the years.
• taeric 3y ago
  As a contrary take, start doing weights. Go for walks. Not short ones. Adjust eating, but largely do so to give yourself more time for the activity. If it motivates you, jog or run. Bike, if you can and that motivates you. What never worked for me, was just changing diet. No matter what the food, I can eat a lot of it. Unreasonably so. After a run of most any length, eating is just not something I want to do. Same for a long bike ride. So, yeah, don't expect that exercise can lead to weight loss on its own. But also don't be surprised if you can't eat the same while doing exercise. Of course, I think that is a related trap. High level athletes have a lot of calories they need. A lot of energy bars and such are necessary for long hikes, but complete overkill for walks. So, odds are you should avoid athletic food until you are an athlete...