Hacking Weight Loss: What I Learned Losing 30 Pounds 496
reifman writes The CDC reports that 69% of adult Americans are overweight or obese. Techies like us are at increased risk because of our sedentary lifestyles. Perhaps you even scoffed at Neilsen's recent finding that some Americans spend only 11 hours daily of screen time. Over the last nine months, I've lost 30 pounds and learned a lot about hacking weight loss and I did it without fad diets, step trackers, running or going paleo. No such discussion is complete without a link to the Hacker Diet.
eliminate extra sugar (Score:5, Interesting)
I did it by eliminating extra sugar. Doc warned me I was pushing hte pre-diabetic stage with my morning blood sugar.
No more sweet tea, coke, or adding sugar to my coffee. Sucked for about a week, after that, no problems, and I've dropped 30lbs with no real effort other than breaking the sugar habit in that first week.
Quit smoking 2 weeks ago, we'll see how that part goes and if I end up gaining weight back ('cause food will taste better, supposedly, or maybe just noshing as a replacement for having a smoke ... so far hasn't happened)
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
So there is also an issue of food availability. When I was young I split all entrees at restaurants with the person I was with. I don't do that anymore and it has become an increasing issue. Also, one does not burn off calories and fat as easily when one gets older
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Informative)
THIS is my problem. I tend to rarely eat pre-packaged processed food, or simple things. I cook from scratch, large batches of things, to eat as leftovers for most of the week.
Let's say since greens are in season now, I cook a HUGE 6-7QT pot of greens, Basically the only fat in the thing is 1lb of Andouille sausage. This pot will easily be 6-10 portions/meals. Granted this is a simple dish with few ingredients, but what about the same size pot of mushroom chili? Or something else that is complex and has a lot of ingredients and I don't really know how many meals will come put of it, or maybe it is something I'd combine with other leftovers into a different dish, for example I might grill out a bunch of eggplant, onions and zucchini...I might eat some in a salad, or maybe some as a wrap with yogurt sauce..etc.
The thing is...I rarely cook anything simple with an easy to find and read ingredients list, It would take forever to figure what the calories and all were from what I cook since so much of it is fresh vegetable and meat based, etc.
I dunno what a portion would be in so many cases...although it is largely healthy food.
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It's not that hard, just weigh everything as you are putting it in. Chances are you are using the same ingredients over and over and all you need is a list of the calories, fat, carbs in those ingredients and with how much is in a pot and how much you consume, it should not be hard to figure out. This is slashdot so I assume we can all do basic math.
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is, you don't really need to all OCD on the calories, just get it ballpark right.
Veggies and fruit? Mostly <50 kcal/100g
Lean food? 100 kcal/100g.
Average food? 200 kcal/100g.
Fatty food? 300 kcal/100g
Sweets? 400 kcal/100g
Snacks? 500 kcal/100g
Oh and beer 200kcal/0.5L... partying is hard on your weight :/ particularly since it makes me hungry for late night supersized junk food too, which is as stupid as it gets. Volume is also a big thing, when I wanted to binge I could make myself 300 grams of pasta, add 400 grams of sausage and pour a glass of 500 ml sauce over it. That's a 3*350 (uncooked, ~100 cooked)+4*200+5*40 = 2000 kcal dish. I knew it was too much, but I guess I just didn't want to know how much. These days I make about 40% of that and it's still a slightly oversized dinner. So I'd say weighing it is the main thing, you can mostly ballpark how healthy it is.
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh my ... and oure starge is digested and pulled into the blood stream and likely already on the way to be converted into fat after how many minutes?
How does the same question look for unrefined whole grain?
Why do people who have no clue about nutrition and are likely fat themselves try to give advice to other fat people?
How much starch does a pound refined grain contain? How much starch does a pound of whole grain contain? Oh? You did not think there was a difference?
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Glycemic index is the immediate response, glycemic load is how much sugar you took in. Sorry, I confused your responses with Tablizer's who mentioned he was still plump.
Yes, beer does contain carbs and should also be eliminated. Your tone makes it sound as if eliminating that is out of the question or beyond the pale.
I am pretty close to zero carbs, it is not impossible but it does require work and discipline, like anything that is worth doing in life. Any extra calories from carbs that are not needed im
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I used to have 2 sugars in my tea or coffee. After I quit smoking, I found it disgusting because my taste buds started working again. Now I have tea with no sugar, and coffee with half a sugar.
I believe my experience isn't the norm, however.
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Think of sugar as "teeth rotting granules", because that is what it is and it should be easier to cut out.
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By not eating or drinking a lot of sugar or sweeteners all the time, you will also rather quickly remove your "resistance" to sweetness, so you'll automatically start to avoid a lot of food simply because it tastes horrible due to being way to sweet.
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First off - congrats on losing the weight. 30lbs is nothing to scoff at.
Here's my take on it....
There are three pilers to good health - nutrition, exercise and rest. A lot of people forget about the rest part but it's important. Exercise will make you feel better, and probably look better.
For me nutrition is the most important factor. It's the fuel your body uses and the first line of defense on disease prevention. Eating the right foods can prevent things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabete
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:5, Informative)
First off - congrats on losing the weight. 30lbs is nothing to scoff at.
Not to be too much of a dick about it, but I never congratulate someone for losing weight. If pushed, I'll tell them I'll congratulate them in 5 years, if they've managed to KEEP it off.
Losing weight is actually not that hard. Some of us have done it many, many, many times. It's keeping it off in the years that follow that's really tough.
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Fiber provides zero nutrition so it does not stave off hunger, bloated is not the same as energized. 4 teaspoons of sugar is four teaspoons of sugar.
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Worry beads also help. I used to have a hand mouth habit, but kept getting sick. Substituted worry beads (something to fiddle with) and I stopped getting sick. Do not underestimate the power of keeping your fingers away from your mouth.
Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score:5, Insightful)
I would note that the guy who dies at 65 with a Bic Mac in hand appears to be happier than the guy who dies at 82 on a treadmill sweating his bloody ass off.
Really? Some fat guy with high cholesterol, a non-functioning penis, out of breath from walking from his car to McDonalds looks happier than the 82 year old who has a fully functioning body and still wears out his old lady? Besides, he's likely to die instead while running outside on a bright sunshiny day or harvesting in his garden. Even if he is in the gym, he died while doing what he wanted to do and outlived the 65 year old fattie by almost 20 years, win!
Move more, eat less (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing is to eat slower. Put your knife and fork down between mouthfulls.
Re:Move more, eat less (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure why you're down voted, but this is how I reduced my caloric intake. A drink between every single bite. Slows down intake, makes you feel fuller, satiety sets in sooner.
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Unless you have more on your plate than you need (in which case there's a better obvious solution to the problem), I don't see where this gets you in terms of calorific intake; eating slowly doesn't change the number of calories on the plate. It might make a difference to the rate of increase of blood glucose, which has its own benefits, but I doubt it will make much difference to that, because its the rate of digestion that's going to determine blood glucose levels.
Re:Move more, eat less (Score:4, Informative)
Not everyone puts the *exact* right amount of calories on their plate. Apparently that's not obvious to you.
This helps you feel fuller before all the food is gone & not finish everything on your plate.
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It takes a while for the body to feel full. If you eat slowly, there's more chance you'll actually feel full at the end of the plate/meal, and not go back for seconds.
Re:Move more, eat less (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned this is the real problem. Most meals come with way, way more calories than you should have, particularly if you're eating any form of take-out. To the point where you may be eating two days of food in one sitting, and not really even realize it. I looked at one meal at a restaurant my wife likes, and calculated 4500 calories. We like to laugh at the imgur photos with the fat person and 5 buckets of KFC, but this particular meal did not look nearly so gluttonous.
Eat slowly, take drinks, but if you clean your plate like mom asked then you just ate 2 days worth of food in one sitting and probably didn't even realize it (and will be hungry in a few hours, depending on how starchy it all was). I've lost 50 lbs by just packing my own food 19/21 meals a week (and actually eating 3x a day, which goes to OPs point about spacing things out a bit, which does help). Not only does it save a ton of money, it takes the pounds off.
Take-out has a dilemma, in that labor and rent is a high cost to them, so they tend to give you too much food which is relatively cheap in the US to make you feel like you got your money's worth. But what we really need is half that amount of food, spaced better through the day.
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No one is forcing you or anyone else to eat the whole plate full of food at a restaurant. Split the meal in half, eat one side and take home the rest. It's not that hard, folks.
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I... I cannot do this. I joke with my family that I have a food-waste neurosis. It is incredibly difficult for me to toss out viable food. I used "viable" specifically because I eat a lot of leftovers and will eat food that's bordering on expired rather than throw it out.
The upside is that for places that pack in two meals' worth in one order I get two meals out of it (usually dinner the day I ordered and lunch at work the next). I also
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Common sense (Score:5, Informative)
Exercice
Everything else is plain wishful thinking.
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Personally, I have had some success recently by simply going with healthier starches. I could probably eat a pound of potatoes in a sitting, my body just loves that stuff, so for weeknight meals we do things like barley instead. Sub black or brown rice for white rice, etc...
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Funny)
Don't eat anything that wasn't alive.
For instance, there is not a creature called a "Dorito"
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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But there was a Tofudebeest... [theguiltyvegetarian.com]
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Tofu is processed soy, so I'm not a fan of it. But salad is just a bowl of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, etc., all of which were alive.
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And sugar is just processed sugar cane (or sugar beets), which was also alive.
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Don't eat anything that wasn't alive.
For instance, there is not a creature called a "Dorito"
Because your body can make more fat with 200kcal of Doritos than with 200kcal of chicken. By the powers of fat summoning from Dorito dimension.
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"Don't anythng that wasn't alive" is a poor way of putting it.
It's more like, don't buy anything ready made. Buy only agricultural commodities. Buy only components.
You avoid most of the junk that way.
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Re:Common sense (Score:4, Interesting)
You can do it without either of those, I dropped from 215 pounds to 170 pounds and have held it off for years with almost no exercise and a pretty poor diet. I really didn't change what I ate at all, I just strictly regulated how much of it I did. Smaller portions for everything to keep myself averaging around 1,500 kcal a day.
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Why is this modded at zero?
The answer to weight loss is consuming fewer calories.
Exercise is beneficial for reasons other than weight loss.
I can choose to walk on a treadmill for an hour and burn 140 calories or simply decline to eat two (2) slices of bread.
Leave the remark at 2, for crying out loud.
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Not necessarily ...
While it has long been thought that exercise diminishes appetite, this is not a universal truth. Some individuals find that hard exercise can increase their appetite. Scientists have confirmed that some people have an increased level of appetite hormones that drives eating after exercise. [mayoclinic.org]
Re:Common sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Ayup. If there's one thing I've learned from hearing all of the success stories from real people (as opposed to people selling a product or service), it's that it always boils down to eating well and exercising, and that those two things look different for different people.
Whether it means engaging in better portion control*, cutting back on specific food groups that your gut metabolizes better than the majority of the population, or simply exercising more so that you burn more calories, the only constant between everyone I've talked to who lost the weight and kept it off is that they found the right balance of eating well and exercising that worked for them.
* I saw an article a few months ago that was talking about how doctors have been seeing a disturbing number of people coming in complaining of abdominal pain. Upon further investigation, it's turning out that these people are suffering from nothing more than hunger pangs because they've forgotten how they feel. That's when I realized it was time for me to do better portion control, since I couldn't remember having had a hunger pang in at least six months. That plus a budget that I needed to tighten led to less junk food in the house and less eating out. End result? I dunno, but I've been consistently losing weight (about 20 lbs. so far) at a slow but steady rate that's producing visible improvements, without making any other changes to my lifestyle. It won't work for everyone, but it is working for me.
Eat less than you burn (Score:2, Insightful)
How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?
Calories and Macros [bodybuilding.com]
Basic Terminology
1/ BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate): The amount of calories you need to consume to maintain if you were comatose (base level).
2/ NEAT (Non-Exercise Associated Thermogenesis): The calorie of daily activity that is NOT exercise (eg: washing, walking, talking, shopping, working). ie: INCIDENTAL EXERCISE! It is something that everyone has a good amount of control over.
3/ EAT (Exercise Associated Thermogenesis): The calorie re
Re:Eat less than you burn (Score:4, Informative)
"How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?"
Followed by a huge, complicated, wall of text.
I suppose it's THAT complicated!
Here's an easier alternative:
1. Eliminate all sugar (read labels... do not eat anything over 2g of sugar)
2. Eat vegetables (brussel sprouts, celery, broccoli, peppers, onions)
3. Eat fish
4. Eat nuts
5. Eat salad
6. Eggs and bacon for breakfast
7. Drink lots of water, and eat salt as you crave it
Fat is good, protein is good, carbs should be avoided, but if you must eat carbs, eat fresh potatoes.
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I've been on low carb for more than two years now and lost 40# without having to count calories. I am not going to say it would work for anyone but as I got older my blood sugar would swing wildly after eat starch or sugar- now I don't have to worry about it.
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It usually isn't so bad, unless you lower the filters to read ACs.
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I used to eat carbs but the goddam gasoline aftertaste was just too much.
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Like I stated above, having an office job and not exercising, one would only need ~1300 calories for equilibrium. Eating under that, let alone 300-500 calories less than that to start shedding fat is not only HARD, it may be damn well impossible for some people
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So you weigh only like 45 kg/100 lbs? Do you even lift, bro?
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Like I stated above, having an office job and not exercising, one would only need ~1300 calories for equilibrium.
Let's see:
1300 = 370 + (21.6 x LBM) Where LBM = [total weight (kg) x (100 - bodyfat %)]/100
With an average BF% of about 25%, this gets us :
(1300 -370) / 21.6 = total weight (kg) x 0.75
So, you're talking about the "average" 57kg American?
And, even if that was true, a person that small would need 57~85g of protein and ~57g fat per day, which is 741 kcal per day to which that person could perfectly well add 300 kcal of carbs, some vitamins and minerals.
Re:Eat less than you burn (Score:5, Insightful)
How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?
It's not complicated, just hard.
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How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?
Obviously it is more involved or you wouldn't have felt the need to go into a damn-near novel length dissertation that included (GASP!) numbers and talk about such concepts as protein intake...
Seriously, if you think you have it all figured out with a simple sentence then good on you. Some of us know that it's not as simple as taking in less than you expel. The point isn't just to lose weight but to do it in a controlled fashion that
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Ugh, one of the things that I hate about BMR calculations is that they always seem to think that you're going to have an active job AND be an athlete when you get to high activity levels. I've got a sedentary job, but I'm an active competitive swimmer.
And then not all exercise is created equal. I burn more calories training 6 hours a week as a swimmer than I did training 10-12 hours a week as a cyclist. Part of it is just biomechanical efficiency--bikes make everything easier--but there's actually an effect
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How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?
Somewhat complicated, for most people this involves calorie tracking. Additionally, if all you do is pure calorie restriction you're going to end up with metabolic syndrome and fail.
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Yup. That's why you need to EXERCISE. Excercise will increase your metabolic rate for about 18 hours afterwards. This will help counteract your body's tendency to go into panic shutdown mode due to lack of food.
Diet and exercise.
They go together like a horse and carriage.
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Goddam ...
Tl;dr
It's way to fucking complicated.
Re:Eat less than you burn (Score:5, Insightful)
How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?
It's way more complicated than you make it out to be. You're offering the very best advice 1983 had to offer.
Until you factor in the rates of digestion, the enzyme production rate of the individual, the hormone response of the individual, and the freaking liver and pancreas, not to mention the brain which mediates the whole thing, the very best you can offer is an order-of-magnitude estimate. There aren't seven billion different metabolisms out there, but there is at least an n-by-m matrix of them for every variability in the human metabolic system.
This is why so many people fail even at strict calorie-counting diets. Humans are NOT bomb calorimeters! Say it again and again until it sinks in.
For Pete's sake, there are leptin-resistent people who can put weight on at 500 calories a day.
Until we have mastered DNA analysis on this to genotype individuals, cutting out simple and refined carbohydrates is at least a way to claw back the worst of the modern diet, and avoid big swings in the leptin/ghrelin/insulin feedback systems - most people eat because they are hungry.
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Every other animal on this planet eats about as much as it can, whenever it can get it, because it doesn't know when the next meal will come by.
We evolved to do that too and so our brain (or at least the lizard part of it) is screaming at us to "EAT THAT ALL NOW!!!" and that is the problem.
Not a diet, but a lifestyle change (Score:5, Insightful)
.
If you want to lose weight, you have to go into the process with the goal of changing your lifestyle permanently, otherwise the weight will return when you finish the diet.
Go into the weight loss process with the right mindset - a permanent change of what and how you eat, along with any changes in your activity regimen.
The reason most people regain the wieght they lose on a diet is that they view a diet as something temporary, which it is.
Don't go on a diet (Hacker's Diet or otherwise), but do make a permanent change to your lifestyle.
Re:Not a diet, but a lifestyle change (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't go on a diet (Hacker's Diet or otherwise), but do make a permanent change to your lifestyle.
In other words: go on a diet, but never quit.
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Re:Not a diet, but a lifestyle change (Score:5, Interesting)
This is spot on and should be modded up.
Enter personal anecdote...
About fifteen years ago I was starting to struggle with sciatic nerve pain due to years spent driving a car with a heavy racing clutch in traffic, and a lack of exercise. I considered my options and decided to start practicing tai chi. I caught a bit of a break and found a legitimate sifu. After a couple years of tai chi, I started training kung fu as well. It has been over a decade and I train on a daily basis. I can eat whatever I want because I burn it off.
None the less, it is a struggle. Despite all of the benefits, there are plenty of days when I would rather go home after work and play video games instead of heading over to the temple to train or teach classes. I still have not overcome the "exercise sucks" mentality. Sure, the endorphins are great and being able to defend myself is great, and have a strong and healthy body is great... but it is still work for me, not fun.
Amazing post (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! The guy ate less calories, and he lost weight!
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Apparently you missed the part where he worked out as well.
I think the thing that many of us have trouble with is wanting to change the overall processes to how we live. Sure, I can live without a computer for a day, but that second day I am going to want to have a all day gaming session.
Strangely enough, I seem to be open to some of these changes now that I am older. I don't care to game as much anymore and I do enjoy going for a walk every night when the weather doesn't completely suck.
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True, I was simplifying. But basically he just said he ate less and exercised. Why would this be a hack? It's just common sense. A hack implies some kind of clever nerdy invention.
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Show me the obese Tour de France cyclist? These guys consume around 10,000 calories a day. The only and I repeat ONLY way these guys are not obese is because they are exercising. Sure this is an extreme example but the point is that even at 10,000 calories a day sufficient exercise will burn it all off, and myths about exercise and weight loss are proved false.
The exercising does nothing for weight loss is an excuse for lazy obese people not to exercise.
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That they need to eat 10,000 calories a day to sustain them doesn't mean they could eat 2000 kcal and net a -8000 loss. The most strenuous one day event I've done burns 5-6000 kcal, anything less than 3-4000 kcal in and you're likely to run into a proverbial brick wall. It's common to try overdoing it on exercise while cutting the intake and the result is a body with no power at all, that engine needs fuel to work and pure body fat won't do.
But over to the obese people, when I started out I could do maybe 3
dyson mod (Score:5, Funny)
Was I the only one who went to his site hoping for an Arduino mod for my dyson that will turn it into a liposuction machine?
Hack your coffee cup ... (Score:2)
... by heating it in hot water before pressing the Brew button on your Keurig 2.0.
Cold cups suck the heat out of your Sumatra dark roast just like TFS/TFA sucks time out of your day..
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Here's the scientific evidence (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that randomized, controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals may not be the whole, final truth, but this is a nice catalog of everything that you can argue over.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... [nejm.org]
Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity
Krista Casazza, Kevin R. Fontaine, Arne Astrup, et al.
N Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454. January 31, 2013. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1208051 [FREE]
Results. We identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.
Brain Over Brawn (Score:2)
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The bro-science book that says you should eat 6 meals a day? It has some good ideas on lifting at home if you are poor and can't afford weights or a gym membership, but that's about it. Later, the author went to jail for transporting loaded assault rifles across state lines.
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You can lose weight on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6+ meals a day. Whatever you feel comfortable with.
Eat less, move more. (Score:2)
Losing weight is simple (Score:2)
Cut Calories and Increase Exercise. My god! (Score:5, Interesting)
My Fitness Pay is a great "Food log" which was told I should use 25 years ago when I first started noticing the "behind the desk" effect. I still play sports constantly but the weight gain was huge.
I lost 50+ lbs on MyfitnessPal. I didn't need to eat the crappy "whey" and other tasteless stuff. I chose to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, low cal lunch (100-200 cals from a frozen quick meal) and I would eat a big dinner. Big dinner? Steak and Potato with a Salad at Outback. All that under the calorie limit to sit sedentary and lose 1.5 lbs a week.
When I stopped Myfitnesspal, I gained weight. Its a simple equation: Get a real Food Diary and use it.
Now, to get that my fitness pal back on track.
Oh, and avoid Diet Drinks. This guy mentions he ate high protein to make sure he burned FAT but diet drinks just make you crave food. I really think high protein foods = less sugar = less cravings. Thus the steaks are much better than burgers effect for losing weight. They stay in you longer and are half the calories.
Hacking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep track of what you eat (Score:3)
The best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. One problem is that it is really easy in our society to consume calories. You just ate a plate of whole wheat pasta with veggies. Healthy right? No, because you likely had about 3 servings of pasta.
I used MyFitnessPal [google.com] to help me track my calorie intake. One helpful feature is the bar code scanner. You can scan almost any product and get the nutritional information right into your mobile device. I dropped about 20 pounds while using that.
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One helpful feature is the bar code scanner. You can scan almost any product and get the nutritional information right into your mobile device.
And there's the problem... Good food doesn't have a barcode. Very little of what I bring home from the grocery store has barcodes on it, and what does usually just has the internal store code on it (meat), or is a bulk package (20lb bag of flour, etc...). All these food tracking/diary apps are really built for tracking packaged/prepared foods, and are a pain to use when you make stuff from scratch. As such, unless you're going to weigh and add all the ingredients manually (I'm way too lazy for that), you
Not difficult.... (Score:3)
To (miss)quote Mark Twain: Nothing is easier than loosing 70 pounds, I've done it several times ;-).
Original quote: http://www.goodreads.com/quote... [goodreads.com]
Loosing weight is always easy, not picking it up again is the hard part.
talk to me when you lose 100 and keep it off (Score:2, Insightful)
extreme narcissim (Score:2, Insightful)
What is Subby's Height? (Score:2)
I know I am obese, and way a far bit more than Jeff does, but what what was his initial height because that does factor into weight loss.
Simple to say, hard to do (Score:2)
There are a couple Apps for that (Score:2)
I too had problems losing weight and keeping it off. 2 1/2 years ago I tried loseit.com and lost a pound a week (roughly) for a year and have kept it off. I went from 210 lbs. to 160 lbs. and my knees don't hurt anymore and I don't take glucosamine any longer.
Lose It! is a simple free app that runs in a browser and on IOS and Android devices.
There is also MyFitnessPal.com which is similar.
Either one will get you the weight loss you want if you are serious enough to stick with a weight loss and exercise prog
Sigh (Score:3)
Eat less.
Not losing weight?
Eat less.
Still not losing weight.
Eat less.
Granted, you still want to be having a mix of foods and not just less "burgers and only burgers 24/7", but it's a pretty simple rule to follow.
So long as you're eating a mix, you won't veer into malnutrition like this unless you ACTUALLY have a medical problem that requires constant treatment.
Of every person I ever see who diets, or who over-exercises in order to compensate, etc. I'm always just shocked that - rather than follow some faddy diet that's complicated and expensive and has all sorts of problems with it - they don't think to weigh what they eat over the course of a week and eat less the next week.
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I'm always just shocked that they don't think to weigh what they eat over the course of a week and eat less the next week.
I'm equally shocked that smokers don't count the cigarettes they smoke in a week, and smoke less the next week.
what do you have against a paleo lifestyle? (Score:2, Informative)
you make it sound like its hard to maintain. Not to belittle a 30lb loss in 9mos, but after 9mos of my lifestyle change (including a shift to paleo nutrition) I had lost ALL of my excess body fat. That turned out to be about 100lb from my heaviest. But, had I been heavier, I have no doubt I still would have shed every bit of excess weight, whatever that number has been. I often encourage people to take up the paleo diet because its fairly simple to maintain (avoid grains, starchy foods, legumes, and the oil
How I lost weight (Score:4, Interesting)
I've lost over 45 pounds and kept it off for over three years so far. And best of all, I didn't do it by starving myself.
I've considered myself overweight for most of my adult and childhood life. Oddly enough, I had always been fairly athletic, and exercised regularly throughout my life. I had strong willpower. But I just couldn't seem to keep weight off.
I lost my weight by signing up for weight watchers online. Weight watchers online is a program that allows you to conveniently keep track of the food you eat. All of it. I don't think weight watchers is magic; instead, I think the process of making eating a deliberate and measured action is what helped me. I like numbers. I can do numbers.
What I found by recording everything I ate is that a small number of foods accounted for a large amount of calories. Beef, fries, bread, snacks. I've largely eliminated these foods from my diet. It's not that I can't eat them, I just don't feel that the value is high enough for the calories to eat them a lot. I was able to decrease the number of calories I ate without starving myself by eating smart. The other benefit of recording food is that there are some replacement foods that are significantly healthier. For me, I started snacking more on pretzels, which I found a lot more filling, but contained less calories than many of the other snacks I ate.
After about a year, I stopped using weight watchers. I had internalized most of the good behaviors, and no longer needed to record everything I ate. I continued to lose weight, slowly but steadily. Eventually I stopped at a healthy weight, and I feel great. Over time, even though I was never starving myself, I started eating higher calorie foods and exercising more regularly to offset it. On that note, for burning calories, exercising longer and with lower intensity is better than short, intense workouts. I like to use the elliptical; I can exercise for 90 minutes without killing myself, and burn over 1000 calories. I've found that playing video games at the same time really distracts me from the act of exercising, and even makes it enjoyable.
If you're skeptical, and think you know enough about dieting to not record everything, think again. There are simply too many surprises. Go to your favorite restuarant's website and look at the nutrition information. I used to go to Chili's quite often. I haven't been there for a long time. I don't know how they cook their food, but it's insanely high in calories. Even seemingly safe foods like salad can be high in calories depending on the dressing. The opposite is true as well. Some fast food, like KFC, can be very low in calories (although probably bad for other reasons). Over time, you'll learn what fills you up and doesn't have a ton of calories. If you just start "eating less" without any data, you'll still be eating the same inefficient foods, and you'll probably gain your weight back after you can't take it anymore.
Consider the alternative question (Score:5, Interesting)
The flip side of the question is "Why are skinny people not fat?".
It's a more interesting question than you may think. One bit of semi-famous research is the 1970s Vermont 'prisoner overfeeding study' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Rv8JnFgw4). Like bits of Nazi science, this is probably irreproducible, as it'd *never* get past a human subject review committee today.
A number of lifetime-normal-weight prisoners were fed substantially over their basal metabolic needs for an extended period. Their input was rigorously controlled (being prisoners), and their exercise regimen was pretty easy to monitor and control. Most of them gained weight, but almost none of them nearly as much as the standard "3500 kCal is a pound of fat" Standard Model would predict. Several plateaued on weight gain, and a few lucky (?) prisoners were *never* able gain 10% of their body weight when eating nearly 10,000 Calories a day. Simply couldn't do it.
A lot of people are overeating in the western culture. A lot more that, by the numbers, should be in the 300-pound range. And while there are no shortage of very-very-fat people, they're not nearly as common as they should be if you study individual diet patterns. This is part of the problem. People look at their skinny friends' diets, and some of those skinny friends are like the luckier Vermont prisoners.
Temperature regulation for caloric expenditure (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's simple. Eat less and eat less crap (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't so much "too many calories" consumed, but that the sedimentary lifestyle people are accustomed doesn't require even close to the 2000 calorie "standard diet". If you drive to work, sit behind a desk all day, go home and even do mundane, unimpactful chores, like vacuuming and wiping things down, and average person would be lucky to need maybe 1200-1300 calories as their TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Even drinking nothing but water, and consuming mostly calorie empty foods like lettuce/salad, you still need your macronutrients, which when adding carbs and fat now will take you to your quite low TDEE with very little food/effort.
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Yeah, sediment doesn't digest too well. No wonder people are fat.
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Dunno about that. I would think being stuck in the mud would cause you to expend all sorts of calories in an attempt to get out.
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You need very little fat. You can cut most of it out and not have any problems (besides hunger). You can cut most of the carbs too. The real problem is protein rather than fat or carbs.
Carbs and fat are for energy. They're pretty much what you need less of.
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You need very little fat. You can cut most of it out and not have any problems (besides hunger).
Well aside from rabbit starvation if you go too low and the fact that your testosterone production will drop through the floor, but hey who needs to feel good anyways?
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ANY effective weight loss is going to be counter to your instincts. You will have to fight your inner animal. It won't be easy. It WILL be unpleasant.
STARVING is never fun.
Your inner animal is basically holding it's breath for the duration.
If it were easy, anyone could do it and it wouldn't be such a problem.
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Different kinds of fatty acids also also needed as essential building blocks for all kinds of stuff the body needs. Carbs are just for energy.
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Dr Atkins died because he slipped on an icy sidewalk outside of his New York City office. He later died while in a coma. While in the coma he suffered from swelling. His autopsy shows he had heart damage. This is the headline most people have heard. The full story is that he had heart damage as a young man and the corner did note there was heart damage, but did not attribute it to his diet.
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