the hardest part about weight loss is keeping it off. you have limited will power and unless you are willing to change the way you live your efforts are in vain. Sure it may make you feel good about yourself and your journey but it's doomed to fail.
i'm going to repeat this: if you are not willing to adjust your lifestyle and consistently make the better choices when it comes to diet you will fail.
also, weight loss in 90% kitchen, 10% gym. Do go to the gym, but if you are eating unhealthy it's not going to matter.
LE: while we're on this subject. If there is one thing you can do today that will have a positive impact on you for the rest of your life is to stop eating sugar and refined carbs. If you only do one change to how you eat and you do this, in the long run, you'll be most successful than 95% of "dieters". Also keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint.
In the back of your mind, you want to think that the diet is temporary. Once you have lost the weight, you can go back to eating all the great tasting foods that you ate before.
True success is the acceptance that, no, your life will be worse in very real ways. You will no longer be able to just eat whenever you feel like it. You will no longer be able to eat until you are full, ever again. And you have to accept that this trade-off is worth it.
You don't "go on a diet", you HAVE a diet. And if your diet is what is making you fat, then to not be fat, you have to change your diet, permanently.
None of these things are true. With a good diet and exercise, you will feel better and be happier, with way more energy. That makes your life better, not worse.
As another commenter mentioned, abstaining from sweets increases your sensitivity to sweetness. If you go long enough, you'll find most candy cloying rather than addictive. So throw away those cheap, mass market candy bars. By some expensive dark chocolate candy from a reputable chocolatier. Eat one piece instead of a whole bunch and just take your time to enjoy the flavours. It is sooooo much better!
The way I see people (including myself at times) eat candy bars and potato chips bears more resemblance to a starving dog than a human who really enjoys good food. Stop being a dog! Take your time and enjoy something really good instead of swallowing a whole bunch of junk in front of Netflix.
Wrong. I just ate and I'm very full. I could even fuck off and eat like shit more often than I do but I choose not to. I'm 6'0" about ~175lbs/80kg.
And yet I often have people approach me in the gym to ask questions, advice, etc: https://www.instagram.com/adamjmorgan/. It's possible to eat until you're full and still look good.
-Signed, former chubby kid.
This is totally false. Just eat a low-carb diet and you will feel "full" after consuming much less food.
Yes and no. It depends on your goals.
Some form of modification is needed from whatever you did that made you fat in the first place.
Some form of modification is needed from what is currently keeping you fat.
But you could 100% have a diet that is meant to shed weight quickly, and then switch to something to maintain weight. Add in moderate amounts of exercise and you can eat a bit more.
You need a sustainable, long-term, somewhat permanent diet. It doesn't necessarily need to stay the same for forever, because there might be less radical diets for maintaining. This might be a completely different diet than what got you to your target weight.
This sounds a little vague, apologies. I've done many diets (paleo, keto, South Beach, etc.) and nothing worked. So instead, over the course of six months I gradually gave up sugar, I gave up meat, I stopped eating snacks between meals. I still ate delicious foods, but in smaller portions. Only sweets I had were fruit. I kept my exercise the same (3-5x/week).
I lost 15 pounds and have kept it off. Have no intention of gaining it back. I can't imagine reincorporating old ways, they are an older me. I cringe at the thought of eating a full pint of ice cream after dinner, which I used to do on a near weekly basis.
Tl;dr: as your body and habits change, so too do your desires and preferences.
Why would that be? To lose why your are taking a net negative mass balance, once the weight is lost you probably can't go back to the exact diet you had (otherwise you wouldn't need to lose weight) but an mass neutral one should suffice to keep you at the same weight.
I'm going to reverse this. For me, the idea of having to eat what an obese person consumes every day to maintain their weight is an exhausting one. I think it's actually fairly easy to be a normal weight and only consume the amount of food necessary to maintain that weight and much harder to consume the amount of food required to be obese.
But that's all anecdotal. It wouldn't be practical to codify "hitting bottom" experiences in a clinical study since they're so individualized.
While broadly true, specific things such as sugar seem to be addictive in similar ways to drugs.
This statement applies to anything in life you want to get better at.
The problem with people doing hardcore diet is that they will lose a high % of muscle, and after their weight loss their basal metabolism will be really low.
The gym itself doesn't burn that many calories, but increases your muscle mass, leading to a much higher basal metabolic rate, which in the long run, help you not to gain fat easily.
The only way to control your weight is to control your diet. It doesn't matter what your basal metabolic rate is. Will it play a role? absolutely, but it's not what you adjust to keep your weight in check. If you can manage your weight with a low metabolic rate, you can manage it with a high metabolic rate. Gaining muscle mass will make your body signal for more food, so it can be counter productive if you want to lose fat.
Source: it me.
Yes, perhaps in the short term you will experience cravings/withdrawal, but this is temporary.
People struggle getting of cigarettes multiple times even after a year long break. So sure you fail at weightless, but you can try again.
The only issue I have with the view is that losing and gaining weight over and over again can place a toll on your body.
it's telling you in compressed form what you need to do to be successful
I decided to change that. I went through all the food I bought during the week and decided to do some culling.
I removed anything with sugar and replaced it with Stevia. Removed the soft drinks, alcohol, and carbs.
I follow this diet 6 days a week. One day a week, I indulge myself: a pizza or burrito or have a few beers.
I also go to the gym 5 times a week. Run 5k in 25 minutes plus one hour of weight lifting. Nothing to intense mind you.
I have lost nearly 80lbs with the last 24 months. The trick is to do it slow and steady.
I always cringe when I read about the latest fad diet: Lose 5 lbs in one week or some crap like that!
In the end, it takes time and will to achieve results but once you get into a routine, if very easy to keep going.
During my holidays, I usually drink, smoke and eat whatever I want but as soon as I get back home, I go back to my routine.
Some people think that this is boring but honestly, unless you are an athlete competing at a high level, you don't need to eat carbs every day.
This is just my experience. Results may vary.
After I graduated I cut how much I was eating and stopped snacking between meals. Lost 80lb in 6months... it was crazy and scary.
You consider running 5 kilometers a day, and doing one hour of weight lifting to be non intense? wow.
Oh and if you find that your food is a bit boring for some reason, you can add some spicy sauce(without sugar) on your meal.
I think for perspective it's good to consider how long it took you to gain the weight in the first place. Say if you slowly went up 80 pounds over the course of 5 years, then remember that time frame. Expecting it to be gone in a month is crazy. Even losing it in a year is 5 times faster than you gained it.
He glosses over amphetamines. They are highly effective at weight loss. So much so that ADHD patients have the stereotypical "Adderall skinniness" after 1-2 years of use. Addiction is a problem with stimulants, but psychiatrist routinely assess for addiction in the ADHD population. Why not prescribe Adderall for weight loss and similarly monitor those patients?
Which is better? A BMI of 40+ or a BMI of 25 and taking a daily stimulant?
The FDA agrees with the latter in at least one case. In 2015, the FDA approved the amphetamine lisdexamfetamine (brand name Vyvanse) for the treatment of binge-eating disorder.
That's a false dilemma. You would have to be certain that "A BMI of 25 without taking a daily stimulant" cannot be achieved. Otherwise, that's the third option to consider.
Even after half a year, it has barely changed at all. I usually don't really feel hungry until I'm at the point where I get a bit lightheaded because I haven't eaten for too long.
The most annoying part isn't even the inhibited hunger impulse, it's that even if I take that into account, and plan my meals accordingly, I don't really feel like eating much, and I'll eat like you would if you were daydreaming about a potential lover.
The most effective solution I've seen so far is to not chain the doses like it's usually advised, ie, one pill every four hours, but to plan your meals and your pill timings such that you'll eat when the medication is wearing off. It's annoying, because of course this half-hour to hour period after medication wears off is very annoying, but it's the better alternative, especially if you take into account that Ritalin has a more stable and gentle impact if you take it on a full stomach.
Taking Ritalin on an empty stomach is like drinking two double-espressos on an empty stomach after a bad night's sleep, right after you wake up. :c
I've had people tell me that getting exercise is not a good way to lose weight, but my experience tells me that if you're doing the right kind of exercise, then, yes it a good way. Maybe there's just no reasonable expectation that most people will do enough cardio at a high enough level to activate fat burning.
I can eat what I want as long as I keep up my daily 7km walk which takes me about an hour or so. I've always found walking easy but I've never been able to run more than 500m probably due to being a somewhat sickly kid with annual bronchitis and a limited lung capacity.
The handful of times I've stopped walking for various reasons over the last twenty years I've quickly got up to about 120kg (I'm 6'7") but as soon as I start walking again the excess 20kg falls off pretty quickly in a month or two and maintaining 100kg is simple.
I've never had any luck modifying my diet.
I think that resting insulin levels should be part of annual exams for everyone. It's much easier to explain, hey you're heading towards diabetes clinically when people still feel relatively well and healthy.
My own advice to younger people, and to those who aren't very overweight is to limit meals to 2-3 a day, don't snack between meals, and don't drink anything sweetened or containing calories during the day outside of meal time. Limit sugars to around 20-30g/day, and if having more, limit it to a single treat/dessert every other week.
If you're more overweight, or "pre-diabetic", then I suggest reducing total carbs to 100g/day, and limiting to 1-2 meals a day.
If you're obese/diabetic, omad (one meal a day) and ketogenic macros.
If you're on higher doses of insulin, add a 3-7 day fast once a month. And a 48hr fast at least once a week.
The worse off you are starting the harder it is... fortunately, you can work your way up the scale/advice above as you reach closer to an ideal weight.
After you get used to not snacking and reducing sugar/sweetened things between meals, it gets easier. The first week or two can be grueling and if you're a social eater, it can be very hard too.
That may sound like a lot, but each piece helps you out a little to keep the other pieces in check. Having a full night of sleep keeps your impulses in check. Excercise helps you sleep, keep muscle mass and fat at desirable levels. Eating healthy makes sleep easier etc. And they reinforce each other.
So keeping yourself in this healthy steady state is actually quite easy, as long as you take a holistic apriach and not over specialize in each area.
This is a hunch of mine though I havent really found any studies that take all of those things into account, just the specific interactions between those things.
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583
[2] http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/718265/effect-low-car...
>"During the test phase, high, moderate, and low carbohydrate diets varied in carbohydrate (60%, 40%, and 20% of total energy, respectively[...]We randomly assigned participants who achieved the target weight loss to high, moderate, or low carbohydrate test diets for a 20 week test phase.)"
Second study:
>"14 days of a low-carbohydrate diet (21 g of carbohydrates per day)"
So the first study went for 5 months but didn't include an actual low-carb diet:
100 g -> ~400 cal -> ~20% of 2k cal/day
21g -> ~84 cal -> ~4% of 2k cal/day
“20% of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least 1 y.” Things get much worse in terms of 5+ year weight loss.
It's getting better, with restaurants especially. But it's still a large hurdle to any diet and/or healthy lifestyle. I'm sure it's better in some areas of the country than others.
When would you need to follow a diet for 5 years if most people can reach their goal weight in 1-2 years? Once people reach their goal weight, they'll transition off to something else, which usually isn't a specific diet, but "eat more veggies" or whatever.
Given that long term diets are quite niche, I think limiting the study to 1 year makes a lot of sense.
Yes sometimes i would like to eat a cake. I did it once. there was too much sugar, and it made me sick off it, i'm vaccinated!
Convincing myself a particular food is disgusting has been an effective way to cut it from my diet.
Started with donuts. Horrible greasy dough blobs, dripping with artificially colored sticky, bug-collecting sugar slime. Blehhhh. (Unless it’s hot out of the fat at Bob’s or Leonard’s, then it’s something completely different.)
Next up was fries/chips. Horrid frozen potatoes coated in preservatives, sugar and salt, then boiled in rancid grease. (Unless it’s the Anstruther or Fochabers chipper, local potatoes, barely fried, mashed potato insides.)
Sweetened drinks are on the block now. May as well inject that lab-made carb goo straight into my pancreas, let those guys fight it out.
Fruit juices have been tough. I’ve been doing a trick I saw in Zurich, which is serve the only the best, fresh squeezed juice, but in a shot glass.
Damn though, I like a bowl of cereal (unsweetened, whole grain) at midnight. Will back it off to a small glass.
If you’re on a calorie controlled diet, then calories in calories out holds. But most speciality diets (I’m on something pretty similar to slow carb) are targeting adherence, a factor that’s removed if you’re only measuring calories in and calories out.
Without white carbs I find it much much easier to reduce my calorific intake. To compare my diet with any other — if you’re enforcing the same number of calories — is kind of pointless, as I specifically don’t want to count calories, nor do I want to feel hungry.
For me, low carb works like magic and with limited aggravation once past the first week. The problem is, if I never learn to be (sometimes) hungry, it all comes apart when I go off the diet and back to living in the land of infinite crap carbs.
There's a huge difference between "a bit hungry" and actually properly hungry. Most people with weight problems probably never let themselves feel more than peckish, and so their perception of hunger adjusts to amplify that feeling. When I'm below my target weight (sitting at a fairly low body fat percentage) and I try to maintain a calorie deficit, the hunger I start feeling is insanely more intense than when I'm a bit chubby and losing weight.
Overeating without white carbs just feels uncomfortable and I rarely do it. The rush I get from pizza or fries (which I hadn’t identified until I stopped) masks that discomfort.
Finally she went to a clinic. The Dr. gave her a prescription to phentermine and she had to show up every week for evaluation. It worked great, the pounds melted off her, and she has kept it off. She lost something like 35 lbs in a few months (from 160). It basically made her not want to eat, her daily calorie count was stupid low, but it never really affected her energy levels - she didn't have any health issues.
The doctor said her body would get used to the drug in about 3 months and it would be less effective, and that was true. So you can't really stay on it continuously, I guess..
Every single woman lost a significant amount of weight.
So if your friend have counted calorie counting without losing weight she didn't count correctly or truthfully.
I think eating too much is a symptom of an underlying problem and drugs may help with it. This is also why I think regular exercise is very important for weightloss. Not because calories burnt but because neurotransmitters levels and their impact on mood and impulse control.
>>So if your friend have counted calorie counting without losing weight she didn't count correctly or truthfully.
She very likely knew she is eating too much. It's not rocket science and calorie counting won't help unless you are in very deep denial. The problem is controlling yourself and constant cravings you have to fight. It's just way more difficult for some people than others the same way some get easily addicted to drugs and some use them recreationally for years without problems or sign of addiction.
I have tried limiting calories, intermittent fasting, and keto. The only thing worked long term was loving exercise and setting challenges (cycling 20 miles a day, running 10k .. etc). Exercise will allow me to eat the food I like (within limits) and not caring if I will gain some weight as I will lose it potentially with exercise.
* I lost 20% of my body weight in 8 months doing strictly 1500 calories a day for 8 months with moderate exercise then gained 10% of it back and since then I will lose/gain 5% every now and then.
According to this article there are a few genes which will alter your success with either any excercise cersus only high intensity exercise, and low carb versus low fat being a better weight loss diet.
https://rockstarresearch.com/these-5-genes-predict-what-kind...
The most important thing for me is seeing it as a game. Being able to see daily results even if they are fractions of pounds a day or week. Knowing exactly what I'm aiming for at the end of the week and how I'm getting there.
The most difficult party is meticulously counting calories and ratios when making things. A kitchen scale is essential.
Anyway I was 50 lbs lighter when I quit. It has come back over the course of 6 or 7 years but I'm a pig and I will just lose it again when the time comes.
https://www.active.com/fitness/calculators/calories for example.
The amount of calories lost per day = the metabolic rate from the calculator - the amount of calories you eat that day.
The amount of pounds lost per day is: burned calories (above) / 3500 (number of calories in a pound of fat).
After a couple months of measuring my weight daily and knowing exactly what my caloric intake was, I calculated my real average metabolic rate by doing the reverse.
total calories lost in a period = lbs lost * 3500
calorie burn (metabolic rate) = total calories burned + total calories eaten
The above is per period so I calculated the average values for the days in a month and used them.
I didn't exercise much so the basal metabolic rate was fairly close to my real burn.
I've recently come across the idea of fasting for weight loss. Turns out most people can safely fast (eat nothing, only drink water that is) for many days, sometimes as long as 40 days if they are overweight. Switching to a diet of eating minimally processed food afterwards - which is what we're used to from an evolutionary standpoint - can apparently be quite sustainable.
I'm young and thankfully don't have weight problems, but if I had I think I'd give it a shot.
If I am not stressed, I can go about my day, eating 2 big meals a day (and a small breakfast), and even slowly loose wight.
But if I am under pressure I can eat another large meal worth of snacks. And I really don't like it, because then I am gaining weight really fast :-/ Anybody in similar situation? What helped you there?
I suggest you give almonds, macadamia nuts and pork rinds a go.
Got a sodastream, keep a couple of bottles in the fridge at all times.
The main success factor in my opinion was becoming single and staying single, as well as restructuring my life in general, especially how/who I socialize with.
It's pretty easy to do what's right for you when you go solo.
The process isn't really different than a drug addict trying to go clean and avoid relapse. It's all about the friends and environment, you have to change it all.
My point was more along the lines of the existing environment being largely responsible for the emergent property of being overweight/unhealthy.
Unless you change the environment, it makes it very difficult to sustainably alter the emergent outputs, which is what we are.
I found it easiest to simply replace and/or eliminate the major environmental problems rather than try modify them in-place. Nobody likes to be forced to live differently, and in my experience, the relationship's happiness was largely derived from the shared unhealthy activities.
After enough time living the healthier life as an individual, access to the healthier environments improves. Healthy members of the opposite sex that have also figured it out become attracted to you, employers who secretly discriminate against unhealthy employees start making offers, same for friend circles. But it's a privileged lifestyle, so it's not the easy/likely default option open to all.
(It also looks like it helps with keeping the weight off once it's lost.)
As in rather than going on a Diet, adopting a different diet, a new habit if you will.
A Diet is a New Years resolution, a diet is for life.
The article says 75% of Americans are overweight. Therefore 25% aren't. What are they doing right? I doubt they're all having liposuction.
So: read more studies and discover DNP. A molecule that once was. Safer than many meds (of course unless you are an idiot and overdose). More effective than anything on Earth. But one that will never come back because guess what, it can’t be patented. So happy research if interested. Just keep in mind there is plenty of misinformation (even on Wikipedia) that doesn’t have any ground in scientific trials.
Personally I find it easy to live on a strict diet and limiting alcohol intake to once every few weeks
Moreover, that people with more weight to lose might likely opt for the more major programs.
When your doctor says "You now have diabetes, and you're going to die young unless you get your weight under control" ... well, that might motivated people.
As opposed to someone who just wants to lose 10 lbs and is otherwise fairly healthy.
I have regular cut periods where I lose more than 5% in a matter of weeks and it's the most trivial thing in the world. What are these people doing?!?
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...
Depends where you start, getting from 50% to 45% is a whole other story than getting from 10% to 5%.
Responding to their metabolic and emotional needs, which are complex beyond comprehension.
Eating too much.
Please, please, please read the Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung: https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight...
He provides all the science behind the current obesity epidemic, backed up with studies done on humans.
Obesity is a hormonal problem... Insulin makes us fat.
Current fads suggest eating ALL THE TIME.
This puts people in a state of high insulin all day, everyday. This is bad.
Intermittent fasting based around a common sense diet (limit sugars and starchy food to special occasions) will lower insulin levels, and cause the body to burn fat instead of insulin.
The keys is not what to eat, but when to eat and how often... and drink Apple Cider Vinegar. :P
My understanding is that we don't know if it's insulin or something else that makes many people wanting to eat less once they are accustomed to regular fasting or low-carb diet. It would be better to focus on a proven fact that it does work for many people and trying to understand the mechanism instead of picking just one possible one (insulin) and staking everything on that being full explanation.