The Diet Topic

Everything else
1

There seem to be other threads (which are interesting) but maybe one with a simple title might better serve as a catchall.

As the years pile on so to do the pounds or stones or kilos – sometimes it seems like all three!

Do you wage battle or try to maintain or hope for anti-grav stuff like Baron Harkonen used? Do you want to be one of those workout wonders like Jack LaLane who can tow 70 boats at age 70 while swimming, or is a department store Santa your goal? Share tips and success stories and difficulties.

2

I will start something.

I would love the anti-grav stuff. At 61 I mostly don’t worry about cosmetics too much. A way of relieving weight-stress on my body would be great if it meant I didn’t actually have to diet the weight off! Alas, science fiction is fiction until it’s not. Currently it still is.

My big frustration with weight loss is beer. I like beer. It’s a habit. I like knocking back some beer while I peruse the internet, especially this place. It doesn’t take that much beer to kill any weight loss scheme.

I also feel that at my age, 61, I need a moderate approach. I don’t know if I could do 1500 calories.

I’ve also seen that my appetite is reduced these days. I don’t eat as much as I used to. I guess this is a good thing but I think it speaks of the effects of aging. I am sure I have less muscle mass than I used to. I need to work on that.

One other aspect of dieting is the people you live with. The GF and her daughter love beef and pork, so we eat a lot of that. I’ve been with the GF 10+ years and in that time I’ve probably eaten more beef than I did in the 30 years previous. She only gets high quality stuff, but I’d like to eat more plant food and chicken and fish.

Oh well. I’ll do better soon. As Macbeth said, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”

3

I’ll take a shot and get this battledance started(/continued from about here)

Edit:
If forgot an intro. My partner and I live pretty healthily, eating well and keeping active. My partner has done lots of research into (and tried) different fasts, diets, exercise things, etc etc and I’ve done a couple of them with her, to see what they’re about and keep meal prep easy. I’m a developer so I spend most of my days in the chair, not moving much. I used to play a ton of soccer, surfing and rock climbing but haven’t had much time for those lately. I’ve replaced that with getting to the gym 5 to 6 times a week to gain strength and keep my cardio up.

Sustainability

In my experience and what I’ve seen from people around me, “diets” don’t work in the long run.

What you want to do is (as mentioned in the scattered posts in the link above) a lifestyle change, something sustainable and that works for you. Some people may feel good eating more carbs than fats, others prefer more fats with less carbs, and some prefer a nice balance of both.

Calories Out > Calories In = weight loss

If you consume less than you use then you will lose weight. To figure out what you need you use something like https://tdeecalculator.net/ with https://nutritionix.com/ (what I personally use) or an all in one tracker https://www.myfitnesspal.com/ (I’ve heard many good things about them) and if you want something incredibly easy with instacart integration then try https://www.eatthismuch.com/

If you’re starting out and are serious about this then buy a kitchen scale and weight everything you eat and calculate the calories. Over time you will get used to the amounts and be able to easily eyeball 20g of cheddar, 120g of cooked chicken breast and (the more challenging) 80g of peeled and pipped pawpaw.

Personally I’ve found that having a meal plan and prepping to some degree for the next 3 days helps a lot. Some people are very happy to cook up all their food for the next 3 days and eat it cold when they need it (saves them time), others like to make it all fresh at the time. Find what works for you.

Flexibility

Be flexible, you still want to enjoy life and share a pizza and some beers with friends. That’s fine, go ahead and do it but remember to trade it in for something else. If you blow 3000 calories in a day then don’t starve yourself the next day, eat and go for a 3 or 4 day average.

To lose weight you don’t need to excercise.

It does help for a variety of reasons, but if you’re eating less than what you’re exerting then you will lose weight. If you want to get stronger or have a certain physique then exercise is required, but to lose weight, just control what you’re consuming and you’ll get there.

It’s not overnight

If it was then we wouldn’t have this thread.
Remember that it took a while to gain that extra weight, don’t expect it to be magically gone in a week or 2. Some women retain water when they come onto their period, so if you are weighing yourself regularly then remember to take that into account and not be disheartened, it’ll be gone in a couple of days.

4

If there was a magic pill then we wouldn’t have this thread :/

This is a tough one - obviously it helps if the people you live with are “on the same bus” and everyone is happy eating similar items. Cooking 2 dinners isn’t much fun.

Have you ever calculated how much you are currently eating and seeing if you are in fact over or under where you should be?

If you have looked at calories before and your maintenance is 2000 calories then you don’t “have” to be doing 1500 to lose weight, try go for 1800 at first and see how comfortable you feel there. I’m sure there will be some discomfort/hunger then eat a little more and see where you end up. Maybe you end up at 2500 and then can try for 2300 and spend the next month dropping it slightly till you get to maintenance.

It all starts with making the effort of figuring out where you’re currently at.

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CICO is like saying CO2 emitted > CO2 absorbed = climate change. Easy to say, really fucking hard not just to do, but even to quantify properly, to account for all the factors, to make a plan to attack. All the parts affect all the other parts.

6

Also this:

Adam uses lots of words and pictures here to emphasize that exercise is ineffective for weight loss (though for overall health and weight maintenance it’s important) and that if you want to lose weight you have to eat less.

I really struggle with appetite. I feel hungry pretty much all the time. And my willpower for ignoring hunger cues varies considerably with time of day, mood, sleep, etc. That’s my major block to losing weight. I’m relatively healthy. I exercise. But weight loss is really difficult.

7

That was tough, even to skim.

I think we can both agree that for the purpose of this forum (and probably everyone that isn’t a professional body builder / athlete):

  • if you consume more than you need then you will pick up weight
  • If you consume less than you need then you will lose weight
  • an easy and most practical way to track this is via calories
  • you’re not going to gain weight by consuming less than you use
8

I full agree with you here :)

Have you tried multiple meals a day instead of the “traditional 3”?

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Re-skimming this he’s basically saying: " – people don’t lose exactly the amount of weight predicted."

I agree that people are complex but what I have still stands: “Calories Out > Calories in = weight loss”

I’m not saying that a 500 cal deficit will result in losing 1 lbs of fat, that is a far too simplistic view of things.

10

I agree with the third bullet. The other three (particularly the phrases “than you need” and “than you use”) are weighted down by so many contingent factors they’re useless. The only realistic weight-loss advice is simply “eat less.” And I agree that counting food calories is a practical (though imprecise) way to establish a baseline and help figure out what “less” means. I don’t do it. I control my eating through portion control and fasting. It works for weight loss.

The problem with CICO isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s that by simplifying a complex metabolic process to a soundbyte it opens the door for thin people to moralize to fat people about why they can’t lose weight. (“Duh, it’s simple. Just consume less calories than you expend. You’re a failure if you can’t figure that out.”)

11

I think the emphasis on diets is overblown (to some extent). I’ve lost 25lbs in the last year (down from a 7 day average of 235 to a 7 day average of 210 right now) without changing my eating habits. I am also down to all my shorts requiring belts, all my shirts look too big, etc… I still eat too many desserts, I snack more often than I should (though I have started incorporating carrots and vegetables in some of those snacks), I eat pasta and bread etc… I don’t eat ridiculously unhealthy but it’s not the most healthy thing ever.

That being said, what worked for me was to do small exercises throughout the day instead of trying to burst it all at one time. So after I eat breakfast I go for a 0.7 mile walk around the neighborhood and I do another after I eat lunch. I try to do 5-10 minute rounds around the house every 1-2 hours. I did discover a love for biking so half of the week I’ll go for an hour of biking around some side streets and areas here. Other times I might go for an hour long walk.

This constant movement has helped me slowly but consistently lose weight in what seems like a healthy manner, without drastic changes to diet. My unscientific theory is that I’m encouraging my body to keep it’s metabolism up more often throughout the day, rather than just in the bursting period.

YMMV obviously.

12

There are no magic pills to make you lose weight. But there are magic pills that will make you gain weight.

13

I started eating better and exercising last September. But it wasn’t really doing anything for me. Around January I started slowly cutting out carbs, going full Keto around March. Since then I’ve lost 55 lbs. (232 -> 177).

There have been many plateaus along the way. 208 was a big one. I was stuck at 182 for a while and I had to take extreme measures.

I quit drinking.

I immediately started losing weight again but I’ve been around 177-178 for a while now and I’m not so sure quitting drinking is worth 5 lbs.

My goal weight was originally 175 but I quickly realized that wasn’t low enough so I set it to 165. Now, 12 lbs. away, 165 might be too high as well. I still have quite a belly that I’m not at all happy about. Though with a height of 5’11", <= 178 lbs. means I’m no longer overweight, so that’s nice. But 165 lbs. is almost certainly still too heavy.

I really enjoy Keto and I think I could stick with it permanently. Having type 2 diabetes gives me extra incentive to remove the carbs. I miss pizza and tortilla chips most, but I can fake them if I really want to. I haven’t had a single cheat day, though there have certainly been times I’ve eaten more than I should have. I look forward to stepping on that scale every morning to see where I’m at. That’s more important to me than a cheat day.

COVID has been a big help. We never go out to dinner and rarely order out, so I’m not tempted. But if we went out for Mexican and the waitress slapped down a big bowl of tortilla chips and delicious salsa in front me? That would be the end of that.

I actually stopped exercising because it didn’t seem to be doing anything for me. I bike for 45 minutes, sweat my ass off and only burn 200 calories? What’s the point? But I realize it’s more than just the calories, it’s about heart health, overall fitness, and kicking your metabolism into a higher gear.

14

I won’t pass it off as anything more than anecdote, but I’ve had really good fat loss experiences by shifting my diet primarily (though not exclusively) to protein and fat, even though on paper it was a net increase in caloric intake. Steak, hardboiled eggs, beans (black and/or pinto), and whey protein.

15

You may not pass it off as more than anecdote, but I will. We have been told for years that fat is bad, but this isn’t how it actually works.

Excess carbs get converted to fat. Excess carbs make you fat (with or without fat intake). Full stop. If you look at CICO strictly from the standpoint of carbs, I think it gets closer to the truth. If people want to avoid fat, fine (though I don’t see the point), but doing so without moderating carbohydrate intake will get you nowhere.

16

I think some of this is very body composition dependent. I’m 6’ tall, and when I weigh less than 165 my wife thinks I look too thin, and other friends (in the before times) have said I look almost gaunt. But I add 5 lbs to 170 and things “fill out”. It’s surprising how a few pounds can make a big difference once you hit an inflection point. There’s an area around 5-10lb of flex that completely changes the way my clothing fits, too. You’ll see when you get there.

Due to sickness a few years after my initial weight loss, I went down to 140 lb. A month of nausea and being unable to eat will make you lose weight fast, even if you’re bound to your bed. At that point, I looked like I was cosplaying a broad shouldered skeleton.

17

The opposite problem is though, having known several overweight people, that they convince themselves that calories don’t matter and only metabolism matters, and therefore things like salad “goes right to their waist” while things like, dunno, pizza, “settles” their stomach or whatever. Or, worse, when they get a “salad” it’s like 1/2 lb of sliced salami and 4 eggs smothered in dressing with some “green things” trying with futility to pop out from the bottom.

The real benefit of the keto diets is that it gives people with irrepressible appetites a way to satiate their otherwise irresistible hunger with lots and lots of fatty, salty, tasty foods. And most people crave proteins anyway. But, imo, keto really isn’t a long term healthy diet, and it being (as far as i can tell) the really only legitimate dietary “trick” has trickled out into the broader diet world as a bit of war on carbs in general.

Counting calories may no be the whole story, but i’ve never met anyone on a 1500 calorie diet gaining weight while that 3000 calorie guy is losing weight. Though i suppose if one is working out 24/7 and the other is doing nothing all day long you might just sneak that by.

I think the real dichotomy isn’t between gut-feeling diets and scientifically minded diets, but some kind of Dave Ramsey-like psychology where some people, either on behalf of others or themselves, really, really really can’t control what they eat, for whatever reasons, and so diets that rely on daily, constant discipline are a bridge too far for them. I went for years, like 15+ years, on one meal a day, and i finally realized that the dull pain in my lower regions was just a low, constant hunger. For some people feeling hungry all day, every day, is something like torture. Of course there’s been a lot of research on the origins of overeating and the hormonal triggers ect about it which are very interesting.

18

I’m 5’10.5ish" and just popped up to 170 again, which is about 20 lbs too much for me. But i haven’t really been in the 150s since… oh about 6 years ago. I haven’t really had the discipline like i used to and tend to get more snacks or meals than i need. Even a bag of “healthy” pita chips isn’t really if you eat the whole bag. I also just don’t run as much as i used to, though with the seasons finally cooling off i’ll be out running again more as fall and winter get on.

19

At 5’10", I’ve ranged from 230 lbs in the mid 1990s to 160 a couple of years ago, with a happy medium being around 175. I’ve been pretty fanatical about going to the gym to lift weights since 1990 (I even worked in a gym back in the 90s), and I switched from a high-meat diet to veganism in 2003. My personal experience as far as dieting is that all-or-nothing works the best. When I switched to veganism, I switched. I had about a month of being vegetarian before I read about the dairy cows, and that was the end of that. I haven’t knowingly cheated since. I find it’s much easier to simply say, “I don’t eat that,” than it is to control myself and eat only a “little” cake or whatever. And there’s plenty of “junk” on any diet.

Several years ago, I started with MyFitnessPal, measuring and weighing everything. I cut down to eating 1800 calories a day and got my weight down to 160, which was very unpleasant. I was hungry all the time. I do credit MyFitnessPal for being able to track everything (really everything, at least in the US), and it does plug into that kind of “tracking” personality. And, as Belasarius said, you can’t lose weight with exercise. When you see how long it takes to burn a hundred calories and you’ve just seen the caloric value of a bag of chips, you really start to question your desires and hunger and, really, choices in life (or maybe that’s just me).

With the beginning of this virus quarantine (mid March), I’ve been doing intermittent fasting, where I only eat between one o’clock and seven. I’ve lost about ten pounds without doing any tracking, and I think it’s due to simply eating less. I have a couple of glasses of water in the morning and drink a lot of coffee, but I don’t ever feel overly hungry.

As for the carbs/keto thing. I think that has a lot to do with glycemic index and the processed carbs triggering a desire for more carbs, rather than triggering the full sensation that comes with fat. I know eating cake or chips will open me up to wanting a whole cake or a whole bag, while a bowl of fruit doesn’t make me so crazy.

Finally, with the exercise, as I said above, cardio is a really slow way to burn calories. If you’re looking in the mirror, a better workout might be something that builds muscle (and muscle burns more calories, and it weighs more, which may throw off your weight loss as you undergo body recomposition). Right now, with gyms being so risky, I’d suggest a kettlebell, and watching the videos of Mark Wildman, who does a pretty good job of explaining how to do some basic lifts. (The NYT 7-minute workout is also pretty good for a beginner.) But if cardio’s your thing, do it. Exercise is better than none.

And remember that if it’s working for you, don’t change it.

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Weight lifting and resistance training in general is the best lifestyle change I made since cutting soda. Highly recommend it!