Losing 100 pounds in 276 days | Hacker News Reader

Losing 100 pounds in 276 days

posts.alexgr.in

502 pointsagrinman472 comments

First of all, congrats - that is amazing and really shows true commitment. As somebody that lost 30+ pounds (I am 5ft 65 and went from 205lbs to 172lbs), I definitely understand can sympathize with the work it takes.

For anyone else embarking on the journey, I would add a few things:

- When you are in caloric deficit and thus loosing weight, you can choose not to go to the gym, but you will lose muscle mass faster. If you want to maintain muscle mass as much as possible you are better off doing some weight lifting instead of running. You won't gain muscle mass, but you'll reduce the loss.

- Ghrelin is the hormone that you will need to control. It is what makes you hungry and ultimately ruins your diet. Funny enough, you control it by constantly eating low caloric foods. You want to eat a lot of veggies, fats (avocado will be your friend) and protein throughout the day in low amounts. Just stay under your target caloric intake.

- The most difficult part is not eating out. Meal preparation is key, and this takes time. When you eat out, you just don't know how people prepared the meal you are eating. Sadly, meals that you eat outside have a huge amount of oil and counting calories will be next to impossible most of the time. Even in the cases where a restaurant lists caloric numbers with their plates, you can be certain that the cook is less interested in your caloric intake and more in getting your order out the door. Six tablespoons of olive oil instead of the one you are counting and you are off for the day already. The best you can hope when eating out is maintaining weight.

- Your body is designed for homeostasis and will fight you back to get you to regain it (through Ghrelin, mood swings, etc). After loosing the target weight, increase your caloric intake to stabilize it. If you can keep your weight for a year, it will be easy to remain at that weight later on.

Good luck!

I would also add to your points:

- If you are lifting weights at a decent intensity, as in squatting 80% of your bodyweight for an example, you WILL gain muscle mass if you are new to it despite a calorie deficit. Noob gains are a powerful thing. Most people just curl 5 lb dumbbells or do some other motion with a weight that is barely noticable.

- This guy was eating at a very unhealthy calorie deficit (1000). You should never go over 500 kcal deficit if you don't want to lose loads of muscle in the process. A calorie deficit as high as his is comparable to a crash diet, and is prone to result in a quick upswing in weight once the diet ends, as you will have been starving yourself.

100% agree with your two, much needed, comments.

Losing muscle mass is something you should always try to avoid (tolerable calories deficit+right amount of proteins+exercise). Muscle mass is hard to gain and serves a purpose in everyday life.

The next step on the author's journey to a healthy lifestyle should be to focus on macros and on the kinds of food he eats too, since both have implications on his body composition and general health.

> Most people just curl 5 lb dumbbells or do some other motion with a weight that is barely noticable.

Are you recommending this as an approach to avoid noob gains?

EDIT: Why the downvotes? I'm asking this as a legitimate question. The OP's tone sounds neutral and I can't tell if he is recommending low weight for muscle maintenance, or disparaging folks who do so for thinking they will gain muscle mass.

"Noob gains" is a reference to the spike in strength gains when a person first starts working out.

Which one wouldn't, presumably, experience if only doing 5lb weights? I'm not making judgment on whether "noob gains" are good or bad, just trying to understand why the OP even made the comment about 5lb weights in the first place.

Lifting 5lb weights -- unless you're starting out not strong at all -- won't do much to increase strength. You know how, say, a crane can lift a 20,000-pound rock 10,000 times before it breaks, but lifting a 20-pound rock doesn't stress the crane one thousandth as much? Your muscles work the same way: lifting a 5-pound weight is not going to make you stronger at all. If you want to get stronger, you need to lift something your body thinks is heavy.

The post was in the context of dieting and maintaining muscle mass. If you don't care about increasing strength but you just want to maintain muscle mass while decreasing calorie count, could you do that by just exercising with small weights, or would that be approximately the same as not weight lifting at all?

The latter

Exercising with small weights just means you will burn through calories. To gain muscle mass you literally need to tear muscle fibers so your body rebuilds with stronger ones.

You may want to see some evidence on those claims. For example:

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/if-you-want-build...

> “Lift to the point of exhaustion and it doesn’t matter whether the weights are heavy or light.”

I would like to see this study on muscle gains supplemented by others showing the effects of these different exercise regiments on bone density and ligaments.

OP here, apologies for the lack of clarity.

I mean to say that a lot of people will go to the gym to do "weight training" but will only use dumbells or machines, etc, at such low weights that the effort is mostly futile in terms of developing your muscles.

A good rule of thumb to go by is to use the maximum weight which you can successfully complete 8 - 12 repetitions of the motion without sacrificing good form (bad form will lead to injuries).

edit:

in response to a query of yours below, don't worry about accidently gaining strength if it is not your goal, it takes focused training to go up in strength. If you just want to maintain current muscle you just need to keep doing lifts with the weight you can manage 12 reps with. if you don't push to increase the weight from that point you will plateau at that point

> - This guy was eating at a very unhealthy calorie deficit (1000). You should never go over 500 kcal deficit if you don't want to lose loads of muscle in the process.

It is not absolute that the "unhealthy" caloric deficit is daily basis. There are some researches[1] saying that you can lose fat mass while preserving (or even gaining) lean mass while fasting and doing workout.

1. https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...

> - This guy was eating at a very unhealthy calorie deficit (1000). You should never go over 500 kcal deficit if you don't want to lose loads of muscle in the process. A calorie deficit as high as his is comparable to a crash diet, and is prone to result in a quick upswing in weight once the diet ends, as you will have been starving yourself.

Funnily enough, that is not true. A meta-analysis of 29 studies on the topic [1] has shown that:

    "Successful very-low-energy diets (VLEDs) were associated with significantly greater weight-loss maintenance than were successful hypoenergetic balanced diets (HBDs) at all years of follow-up. The percentage of individuals at 4 or 5 y of follow-up for VLEDs and HBDs were 55.4% and 79.7%, respectively. The results for VLEDs and HBDs, respectively, were as follows: weight-loss maintenance, 7.1 kg (95% CI: 6.1, 8.1 kg) and 2.0 (1.5, 2.5) kg; percentage weight-loss maintenance, 29% (25%, 33%) and 17% (13%, 22%); and reduced weight, 6.6% (5.7%, 7.5%) and 2.1% (1.6%, 2.7%)."

Having a plan of what do do/how to eat post-diet (and avoiding binging back to your original weight) is more important than the way you lost your weight. The muscle mass loss is also not as dramatic as people might think, since less time spent in caloric deficit (because of the aggressive dieting) means that more time can then be spent in an anabolic state, and the muscle lost during the dieting phase can be regained very fast. Bearded wonder, powerlifter and now science-person Greg Nuckols had a small blog post on the topic five years ago: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/a-bit-of-everything/

[1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/5/579/4737391

From the quote:

> "Successful very-low-energy diets (VLEDs) were associated with significantly greater weight-loss maintenance than were successful hypoenergetic balanced diets (HBDs) at all years of follow-up. The percentage of individuals at 4 or 5 y of follow-up for VLEDs and HBDs were 55.4% and 79.7%, respectively. The results for VLEDs and HBDs, respectively, were as follows: weight-loss maintenance, 7.1 kg (95% CI: 6.1, 8.1 kg) and 2.0 (1.5, 2.5) kg; percentage weight-loss maintenance, 29% (25%, 33%) and 17% (13%, 22%); and reduced weight, 6.6% (5.7%, 7.5%) and 2.1% (1.6%, 2.7%)."

That's a remarkable degree of loss to follow-up in the VLED group compared to the HBD group. Without further information, I would take great care in trying to interpret the results of the study - the 20% of VLED participants who did not show up could conceivably widen the confidence intervals, if not change the conclusions.

You are right, and in case you don't have access to it, I posted the paper at http://ge.tt/3d5wVJq2 for further detail. It's a fairly short meta analysis but they do point out its shortcomings.

My point wasn't that VLED are superior to HBD, but that the "VLED necessarily causes rebound to original weight" is a myth. It can work and has worked for many people, provided a behaviour change is performed after the end of the dieting period.

There are a few important things to consider with your first lifting efforts. Learn the big lifts. Deadlift, Squat, Overhead Press, (Benchpress, if you have an environment to do it). To min/max your workout, all you have to do is work the biggest muscles. That gains you the most benefit for the least amount of time. I would also point out there is a bit of a misconception about "noob gains". When starting out, and or, especially losing weight it definitely helps prevent the loss of muscle mass. But, and this is a big but, a huge amount of your initial gains in the amount of weight you can move around are not from gained muscle mass. They are from central nervous system (CNS) adaptation. Your muscles simply don't know how to fire at maximum intensity. Much of your first 6-12 months gains in terms of weight moved around are just CNS adaptation. Your body recruits more muscle fiber for activities. Folks can move a startlingly larger amount of weight without gaining virtually any amount of muscle. Once you have reached a local maximum for this sort of adaptation you start gaining more muscle mass. Of course, if you lift weights and eat at a surplus you do build some muscle mass, but not nearly as much as after a decent period of lifting. Finally, if you are eating in a calorie deficit you will not be adding muscle mass without a very carefully controlled diet that most fitness and diet novices don't have the knowledge and discipline to pull off. To actually live at a calorie deficit (lose body fat), preserve and or gain muscle mass, you have to move your calories around constantly (deficit weeks, surplus days with focused intense lifting, etc.). It is incredibly hard for someone just embarking on a fitness journey to adhere to a diet that includes surplus weeks in my experience. It just leads to a general lack of adherence and a slide back to old habits.

Also, 1000 calories (per day) is definitely at the edge, but not crazy (7k / week, about 2lbs per week). I would say that is at the limit of what is medically advisable, but not crazy. Especially if you are above 250 lbs, that is not a crazy percentage of your weight. If you have enough body fat to lose, aim for something like a 1% reduction in body fat (assuming you are around 200 lbs, start at a lower percentage if you are heavier, no more than 2lbs / week no matter what). Then every few weeks you have to crank the dial down. Fat burns some calories to maintain itself and your body adapts and tries a little harder to hang onto energy stores. Dialing down the calorie deficit over a 18-12 month period in a very controlled fashion almost assures you will never "stall out" over the long run. Final random tidbit to share, use weight trend, not actual weight, to measure progress. Without an extremely consistent diet the amount of water your body caries can vary by several pounds, but trending the weight over a 1-2 week period almost assures you will measure actual progress and not how much water your body is holding a given day.

edit: clarity on deficit amounts.

> if you are eating in a calorie deficit you will not be adding muscle mass without a very carefully controlled diet that most fitness and diet novices don't have the knowledge and discipline to pull off

Do you happen to know any more resources to tackle this? I'm trying to gain muscle and lose body fat, and it's been difficult diet wise. I even think I'm not eating enough sometimes.

https://completehumanperformance.com is a good resource. I have used them in the past for ultra and nutrition coaching. They have very good people. Check through their articles and podcasts. They publish a ton of good stuff (aimed at selling you their services, of course!), but what they publish is (generally) great all on its own.

Healthy calorie deficit is depends on one's weight. There is a rule of thumb: it is considered healthy to lose about 1% of weight per week. This gives us 40% per year. This guy lost 41% in a bit less than 11 months and his progress is quite linear, so I beleive he is basically okay, maybe a little on the rough side, but far from the extreme fasting.

>>You want to eat a lot of veggies, fats (avocado will be your friend) and protein throughout the day in low amounts.

Low carbohydrate/sugar diet seems to be at the core of all health advice today.

Not sure why this was not advised even in latest history.

Not sure what you mean by latest history. It's been a thing on and off for years. [0] Like all things in the diet world it goes in and out of style in the constant churn of the diet industry.

As for why it's not in the article their focus was that whatever you do calories burned > calories eaten is the king and most diets are just ways to get people to restrict calorie intake without having to count.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet#Modern_l...

It’s interesting that you mention homeostasis, as this was actually something I used when I went on a big weight loss kick (70 lbs in five months) eight years ago. For what it’s worth I’m the same weight now as when I finished.

How I used homeostasis: I set myself a very rigid fixed diet and regimen - 1200kcal/day, almost all protein and green leaf vegetables, tiny portion of complex carbs (rice or potato), 45 minute run, 15 minutes of core training. Same routine, every day, same heart rate target (130) for the run.

The upshot was that my graph followed a really beautiful curve - to start with, weight fell off at a crazy rate - and as time went on it slowed, and slowed, and stopped. I then increased my calorific intake slowly over the same period I’d dieted for, while maintaining the regime.

I found the weight my body wants to be, which is pretty much smack in the middle of the healthy BMI range, 14% fat, and now maintain that without any real effort beyond noting when my weight starts to rise because I’ve been junking out on sugary crap, and cutting out the crap until I’m back to normal.

Agreed re: eating out - and the thing that had the biggest effect for me I think was cutting out booze. So many calories in a pint it’s not funny.

Leptin, and Insulin are also important as well. Insulin is "relatively" easy to lower by reducing carb intake, especially simple sugars.

When I started dieting, I used to spend hours cooking every week. Now, I buy a rotisserie chicken from the store, buy a bag of veggies, pull the chicken and microwave the veggies.

That's my emergency meal for lunch and dinner. I'm on a low carb diet, usually only have carbs in the morning (oatmeal), and fruit throughout the day.

You should look into the ingredients for those rotisserie chickens. Not something I would consider as part of a healthy diet.

I've done a search, and don't find anything objectionable in rotisserie chicken. Can you be more specific?

They quite often pump them up with saline to make them plumper, at the very least - so they can be pretty high in salt.

Apart from that, I’m not sure what’s terribly bad about them.

Most people would have to have a whole crap ton of salt before it becomes a dietary issue

Which pretty much every single processed food contains, therefor raising most people's daily intake to a "whole crap ton".

I looked into it. Those rotisserie chickens you get at the supermarket... they're made from chicken!

In addition to being loaded with salt (despite the current trend of handwaving salt issues away, salt is a problem), they are often tenderized beyond recognition, have added preservatives, flavor enhancers, fat, and sugar. You might be OK with those things but it is absolutely not the same thing as a regular chicken you buy and cook yourself -- THOSE are the ones that contain just chicken.

The chicken you buy in the store is likely plumped up with a salt water solution.

And they are labeled on the package that way and you can choose to buy ones that aren’t.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with flavour enhancers. As for the other things, you are varying degrees of correct (for example, it is easy to eat too much salt but not if what you eat in a day is made by you otherwise). The sugar is obviously not ideal if you're going for low carb, but thankfully you can check this by reading the ingredients list and nutritional info. There are no mysterious things going on here.

How the chicken is processed depends on the supermarket. At many places you can just ask them what they do and they’ll be glad to tell you.

That said, brining chicken prior to roasting is very common. I do it myself and it is almost essential for free range chicken which tends to have more blood near the bones, brining helps mitigate that. The other stuff is more or less just spice rubs. YMMV, depending on your supermarket. Roast chicken tends to go fast so I would be surprised if they need to use preservatives.

That really made me laugh out loud ! Thanks !

I used to live on things I cooked in a frying pan.say, lightly fry some carrots on one side of the pan in a bit of oil while browning sliced chicken breast on the other side. Add some broccoli, add a bit of water and let the broccoli steam. While waiting for that to happen, add whatever spices you like. If you're avoiding carbs, use something other than carrots, and add some fats, e.g. nuts. Takes about 15 minutes, is pretty good.

With good planning is easy to cook good and fast.

Is possible to cook for 4 in 15 minutes or less.

We start cooking at 12am for example, without know what exactly to do. Decide what to do is what consuming our time! After we start, only the most complex meal (traditional cooking) take more than 1 hour. When we wanna run, we run.

We try keto this few months and several of that things can be done faster than I expected:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/

Things that help:

- Knife(s) in good condition

- Anything that help you to slice veggies faster, like A ninja mixer (https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-System-Blender-Processor-BL77...) I never imagine a gadget to be THIS good.

This help in make super fast condiments (like tomatoes + onions) that help in make things tasting.

Build a cache of condiments and things that give flavour is key to be faster the rest of the week. Put it in the freezer.

- Meat can be done in 6 minutes * 4 portions easily (BBQ style).

- Work in parallel. Plan the order of things:

- Juice first, so you can put it in the freezer.

- Then, veggies. Choping and mixing.

- Last proteins. Depending in what you is doing you need 15-6 minutes. If using oil, let it be hot! then put the protein.

With practique, is not uncommon to meet or exced the goal.

> The most difficult part is not eating out.

And when you do, make the best choices you can.

Whenever I get that feeling of "I can't eat my healthy lunch one more day" I order Chipotle tacos, no sour cream, no cheese, no soda, and no chips.

By ordering ahead I'm never tempted to say "yes" to chips and salsa, and I never get distracted and go to Sonic for a burger and tots instead.

It also helps that most "lunch" places put calories up (at least near where I work). You can at least figure what the "best choices" are. Ordering ahead is neat trick!

That's the real kicker - be aware of what you're eatings calories. A Big Mac from McDonald's can be less calories than a 6" from Subway, depending on the choices you make as far as toppings. Just because it looks healthy doesn't mean it's a better choice for weight loss.

Eating out isn't nearly as difficult as you're making it out to be. There are plenty of foods you can order where you can fairly accurately assess the calories, once you you get good at it. Once you weigh enough food you can start judging portion size, e.g., that looks like 200g of rice and 100g of pork. And you can taste how oily or how sweet something is.

You can definitely taste if a chef is adding 5 extra Tbsp of olive oil to 1 portion.

As long as you're weighing yourself and tracking calories, you'll know how accurate your estimates have been and you can adjust accordingly.

For restaurants that are listing calories, they might not always be accurate, but over time they should average out.

Also with fast food and fast casual restaurants, food assembly is so regulated, you be even more confident in the calorie count.

From my experience, eating it is even more difficult than was made out to be. Not if you are eating out alone - then you can to to whatever keto or vegan restaurant you choose. The issue is if you are eating out with others - which is usually the case. Then you are first faced with filtering out 90% of all restaurants, and getting everyone who had planned to go to accept that filtering.

If you're only worried about calorie counting (the method discussed in the article) most restaurants are going to have dishes for which you can fairly accurately estimate the calories (with some experience). Tricks like ordering dressing/sauce on the side can make it easier.

Fat has the highest calorie density of any ingredient with 9 calories per gram (sugar has 4). If you're really unsure, you can use that as an upper limit.

I've found that intermittent fasting was easies to implement in 12, 14, 16 hour increments. I do "cheat" just a bit with a coffee in the morning, and 14 hour cheat days on the weekends. Intermittent fasting, allegedly, has numerous benefits. Stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system. Improved dopamine levels in the brain. Increased growth hormone production.

I personally have found that I do feel "run down" which turned out to be lower blood pressure. I attributed this to low sodium intake. So, I drink two very low sugar (6g) recovery drinks for my first caloric intake around noon.

One thing that wasn't covered, and likely isn't in many of these weight loss recaps, is not just caloric deficit; but also food content. Sugar's (and carbs) relationship to fat and our bodies cannot be understated. There's plenty of reading on how high sugar diets are detrimental. Here's an interesting listen: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/refined-sugar

This image alone scares the snot out of me: http://reachingutopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sugar-i...

I think most people are aware of this in principle, but don't often associate normal foods as being high in sugar. Orange juice is probably the worst offender. All the sugar, none of the fiber.

Ive been hearing more and more about IF. Curious how you manage it - for lets say 16 hours? Do you have a "dinner cutoff time" that works well? Does it mean you're skipping breakfast?

I never believed that breakfast was "the most important meal of the day". IF success sort of supports this & the fact that it was mostly marketing.

I basically eat during work. That's it. Not before office hours and not after. Makes it very simple to track and routine-ize.

I do the opposite: dinner time to a bit before bed-time. Easy routine, no gross co-worker lunch smells, and I'm always eating planned meals I prepare. Better a hot steak than something reheated at work, IME.

Yeah I always joke that "intermittent fasting" is really just fancy jargon for "skipping breakfast" - at least it is for me. Don't eat till noon, don't eat after 8pm - congrats, you're part of the IF crowd.

And yes, it does seem to help burn a bit more fat than before - though I wouldn't call it life-changing.

Huh, I've been doing this for years without realizing it. I'm never hungry in the morning except for coffee (maybe that ruins this). To add more to discussion I also lift 4-5 times a week. Besides obvious physical benefits of muscle mass lifting improves life in many other ways. I notice if I ever skip or don't stick to my regular gym regimen I mentally feel unfit. Going to the gym actually increases energy and allows more productivity at work, social outings, etc.

These are the basics, yes, but it's not that simple. To me, IF means: from 8PM to noon next day drink only water and (if you like) one black coffee in the morning. Then, from noon until 4PM eat just proteins, healthy oils & fats and raw vegetables - this is crucial, absoultely no carbs! Finally, from 4PM until 8PM eat everything.

That way you keep insulin under control for the 20 hours (out of 24). Your concentration and focus will increase very soon.

Why only one cup of coffee? Is it the caffiene? Does decaf apply here too? (I work in coffee and often skip breakfast.)

Good question! I'm sorry I left out the details. Yes, it is the caffeine and the book I followed (The Renegade Diet by Jason Ferrugia) recommends 1 cup about 30-45 mins before the workout to burn fat even faster.

Even though I now rarely work out before going to work, I still start my day by drinking a glass of water and then a cup of coffee and it still feels good :) If you drink decaf, I think it would have no positive (but probably also no negative) effect.

I've been practicing IF for over 3 years now.

It hasn't been life changing in itself, but I found it to be beneficial for keeping my body weight stable, which in turn improves a bunch of other health outcomes. It could just be placebo, but I feel much better with IF.

Does it really work? I don't know, the scientific evidence isn't that strong at the moment.

But it has convex outcomes: if it works, the upside is tangible... and if it doesn't, the downside is negligible.

Going on two years of 16/8 IF myself, but I'd say that it absolutely was life-changing for me.

I initially lost about 45 lbs (217 – 172) in about 10 months, but have since leveled out between 170-175. Beyond the weight loss, I noticed marked improvements in general energy levels, sleep quality, and chronic issues such as heartburn. More importantly though, I think the biggest adjustment that IF enabled me to make was transitioning into _wanting_ to eat healthy/whole foods and cut out foods with processed carbs and added sugar.

But I totally agree, there definitely is a psychological aspect of it, whether the improvements are quantifiable or not. Maybe the results are placebo, maybe it's confirmation bias, but I definitely think that IF allowed me to reframe the way I approach my diet, and eat in a way that is more attuned to being healthy.

Breakfast isn't that important. Nutrient timing is mostly made up junk science. Eating some carbs after cardio is important. But, generally, it just doesn't matter too much. IF, I do still like to eat before or after a workout and then fast. Or just do regular old 24h fasts. It's 100% mentality once you get used to it.

> Eating some carbs after cardio is important.

Why?

Your body is replenishing glycogen stores in your muscles and that happens much faster if carbs are consumed shortly after exercise.

I've read that high level body builders will actually eat candy after a workout for the same effect. Also, ultra marathons will have mountain dew at aid stations for that immediate boost.

If I understand completely, glycogen depletion is "the wall" that is referred to by cyclists as well.

Yeah there is interesting "math" you can do. But, for most people, your liver stores about 1200-1500 calories of glycogen. You have some in all of your muscles, etc. Marathon is right at the distance you can run and stay under "the wall". In fact, that is a key part of pacing. Finding your race pace to basically operate on glycogen for all but the last bit of it (1-2 miles) where you can just push/suffer through on will power. If you go out too hard, you burn glycogen too fast, hit the wall at 6 miles out... that is the suck. 6 miles can be an actual eternity when you hit the wall.

If you're in ketosis before exercising, your body doesn't have those glycogen stores to begin with, right?

That's right. You basically won't be able to do a cardio effort to your body's capabilities. Anyone that has ever run an ultra marathon is essentially operating in ketosis like state. You just burn more energy than your body can absorb so it is a combination of stored fat and incoming carbs/fat/protein that keep you moving.

edit: Your body also slows down its nutrient absorption rate during any exercise as it diverts blood to your extremities and core body functions. So digestion is more of a challenge.

Carbs are absolutely /not/ required for long-duration cardio. There are high-performing, low-carb, cardio athletes. For example: (first link off a google esarch) https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/zach-bitter-100-m...

Studies that show a drop in cardio performance from low-carb have been measuring in the adaptation period, before the body adapts to low-carb performance.

This is covered pretty thoroughly and with a much higher level of detail in Lore of Running (Noakes). Down to the biochemical level of what is actually going on as you adapt to a low / no-carb state. You have to be precise with what you mean by "long-duration" cardio. Up to Marathon level you simply won't be able to go as fast as a runner that has muscle glycogen. You won't find any examples of elite marathon runners performing at their peak on a no-carb diet. Somewhere right at, or shortly after, marathon distance for most runners you have used up your glycogen stores anyway, so a great portion of your ultra is going to be executed without a lot of carbs / easy glycogen anyway. I don't think anyone will dispute some runners can operate with no carbs, etc. So, it just makes sense to train your body to burn fats / body fat efficiently because that is where a big portion of your fuel comes from in an ultra.

I can't remember the exact time period, but it only takes a few weeks to fully adapt to low/no carb diet where your body gets good at making energy from fat. The actual chemical process is really cool.

You definitely lose your ability to do high performance shorter events at the peak of your body's capability (5K/10K, etc.). It is simply a less efficient process of creating the primary fuel your cells use to do their thing.

You also have to be precise about what you mean by "elite". Definitely "most runners" don't fit that category, so saying "you simply won't be able to go as fast" is probably overgeneralizing.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/20...

“If you’re going to run a marathon under two hours and 10 minutes, then yes, you probably need lots of carbohydrate to be able to perform to such an intense level of activity, but once you’re slower than two and a half hours, I’m not really convinced you do.”

Adaptation periods are probably 6 weeks, possibly longer to fully adapt, though adaptation appears progressive.

And training low-carb can have benefits even if racing carb-loaded.

My understanding, barring real genetic outliers, is that the human body just can't go as fast in a fat adapted state. I would say "any runner". Meaning anyone with a few months of real training under their belt is going to run sub marathon efforts slower. The article you linked pointed that out. This isn't just for elites, but everyone. Most recreational/non-professional runners run sub marathon races. This implies some important things about how you train and eat. 1.) When doing max effort running, to push your body to it's limit you need some carbs. 2.) To run your fastest race you need some carbs. You can still train and do well without them, of course. I think for most runners it's fine and the difference doesn't amount to much in practical sense.

Here's an article that talks about the process of fat adaptation. https://medium.com/@davidludwigmd/adapting-to-fat-on-a-low-c... Note the graphs showing ketone levels continuing to rise through 38 days of complete fasting. If you are ingesting some carbohydrates or protein, this would slow the adaptation process beyond that.

There are lots of studies showing a performance decrease during within those early few weeks of the adapatation process, but they aren't really showing the fully adapted, optimized state.

Only if you feel you need to "replenish glycogen stores". If you intend to remain in ketosis, you don't need to re-stock with carbs.

However, when your glycogen stores are depleted, your body is more able to make effective use of consumed carbohydrates (storing them in muscles), so shortly after exercise is probably the best time to eat carbs.

But it's really easy to go overboard.

Another approach that some people might prefer is a 24h once a week fast, which I've found much easier than 12-16h daily.

I don't eat breakfast per se, just a protein shake but I found it difficult to cut out for a number of reasons.

A couple of months ago my wife and I started doing a weekly 24h fast on Sundays from breakfast Sunday to breakfast Monday. The first couple of times it was a bit of struggle but now we don't really notice anymore.

Whatever fits your lifestyle is the way to go, otherwise it's always going to be a struggle to maintain.

So you don't eat anything at all for the whole day? Or is it something like nuts?

What about dairy products (like milk) etc?

No calories at all, just drink water when we're thirsty.

I've found it has worked wonders for resetting my relationship with hunger; I feel I'm far less susceptible to boredom hunger in the few days immediately after the fast, something I'm hoping will progressively improve further.

Honestly, we haven't found it that hard at all. The first two weeks were a bit of a struggle just because you aren't used to going that long without food, but now it's just the day we don't eat and we don't really pay it much attention past that.

I've been doing 16 hour IF for years completely unintentionally. I skip breakfast, lunch at 1pm, dinner at 8pm.

So I guess it's a habit thing. Once you make a habit of it, you just stick to it.

I only eat from 4pm to midnight (wife hates it if we don't have dinner together), and it's not a problem to last till 4 on back coffee alone if you tend to sleep late

I started experimenting with IF about a month ago. My experience has been:

- No obvious impact on rate of weight loss.

- I do seem to be getting better sleep at night.

If you look at Rhonda Patrick's work, she does the reverse: time restricted eating. It's the same thing, you give yourself 8-9 hour time window to eat (instead of having a 16 hour fasting window). I think she recommends skipping dinner though because she's all about the circadian rhythm and eating only when it's light out. But I don't think she has any scientific reasoning behind that.

She's also not a fan of drinking coffee during your fasting period, and she believes that breaks the fast because the liver metabolizes the caffeine. So that starts the metabolic process in the body, taking you out of the fasted state.

Most people skip breakfast, like I do. It's easier for busy people to skip breakfast. I think it depends on the person's schedule. I skipped breakfast before and tried skipping dinner. Both methods work well. Skipping dinner does make me bored at night. I had all this free time not having to cook or eat. That could be an advantage for some people.

Drinking coffee is not cheating, as it does not spike your insulin and does not put your body in metabolic state. No sugar and no cream. You’re all good! :)

I guess it depends on your goals. For weight loss benefits I think you're right. But coffee does contain caffeine which has to be metabolized so it apparently interferes with other health benefits of IF, eg autophagy.

I mean, we're quickly getting into "somebody once told me" territory here, but: word on the street is coffee triggers / speeds up autophagy, not slow it down?

Oh you know what, maybe you're right. I was basing my comment on this reddit post and the timestamped video it links to: https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/788v15... If you rewind that video a bit turns out she's talking about something else, circadian rhythm/time restricted eating, no idea. I happened on this post just the other day, that's why I replied to your comment in the first place. It's funny my wife and I were going to start trying out IF and I've been railing on her about how it's gotta just be water until we eat or we lose all the benefits..haha I gotta loosen up. Too much information out there, easy to get lost in the weeds.

No worries man, I feel you 100% on the low entropy problem of nutritional info out there. It’s a travesty. How anyone without at least a bio minor is supposed to make heads or tails of this is completely beyond me. Not to mention all the actual research is locked up behind paywalls, so if you don’t know about scihub you’re just sorely SOL.

Madness, I tell you.

Good luck and have fun with the intermittent fasting :)

Even if you've studied something like biology or nutrition it's incredibly difficult to judge what is good and what is bad advice, as your average school (and professor) is just as full of dogma that has only the most tenuous basis of evidence.

Far and wide the best ground advice you can give yourself and others is to work out - that'll do good things to you, even if you can do it a little. Other than that, eat a moderately varied set of foods. Anything further than that is usually just something someone came up with in the shower and that other people thought sounded real good.

I listened to a super interesting podcast about fasting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-eqJDQ2nU

Dr. Panda goes into detail about fasting and coffee. Great podcast about fasting.

Intermittent Fasting Confers Protection in CNS Autoimmunity by Altering the Gut Microbiota

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(18)...

Once you survive the first 24 hours of fasting (given you replenish electrolytes with salty water), i.e. some headache after 16-20 hours, then you can easily add another 48 hours, making it 3-in-a-row, and you can happily do high-intensity training as usually, without any effect on your performance. After 3 days you either start eating again or stop training. 3 days are recommended for "rebooting" the immune system; I try to do it once 1-2 months, not sure if it helps but I don't see any bad effects either, and it strengthens the will.

> "rebooting" the immune system

doesn't sound like a real thing...

I have no idea, it was just a series of articles and papers like this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/fasting-for-t...

I recently started 5:2 fasting, on five days I try to eat roughly maintenance, I also eat a slice of my coworkers birthday cake. On two days, I limit my intake to 600kcal which I eat at lunchtime (I prepare a bento box with rice, vegetables and meat). You do the math, and it boils down to a caloric reduction diet roughly. The difference is, that I am only hungry on two days during the week, and I feel like going a day with almost no food is not harder than doing a constant deficit every day.

> going a day with almost no food is not harder than doing a constant deficit every day

A high fat diet will do a lot to make a caloric deficit a matter of habit, and not iron-strong will :)

Intermittent Fasting and low-carb high-fat food can readily sustain 16-20 hour fasts without the hunger or cravings. It's also really satiating when you do start eating.

I embarked on a similar course as the author - just after Christmas I realised my BMI was well into the overweight category - and the same strategy of calorie counting worked for me. I can especially recommend using an app, this really helped me too. Turns it into a game almost - where can I cut out the unnecessary calories? Whereas before you might help yourself to a biscuit with a coffee now you know it is going to blow your budget right open. Makes it a lot easier to resist.

And it was easier than I thought - a piece of fruit for breakfast, a small lunch (single sandwich, down from two with crisps and chocolate bar on top some days), and a normal evening meal. That would come to around 1500 calories or less a day, easily enough to lose a few pounds a week. It becomes easier as time goes on - your body expects less, I guess. And you do gravitate towards healthier food, simply because you can eat so much more of it.

I've lost two and a half stone since then (I don't follow the diet at weekends so I could have lost more) and am back in the green. Not as much as the article's author - his loss was spectacular!

Alas I did not take a before and after picture, though others have commented, which feels good.

So yeah, great article that I can fully endorse, and encourage others to follow. Just set realistic targets, change will come eventually.

Downloaded the app, immediately deleted it because it asked me to create an account.

Are there any similar apps which store the data locally?

I used the Samsung Health fitness app, you can use it without an account I think. Seems to offer pretty much the same functionality (definitely does the calorie counting and targetting).

You don't need to create any accounts with Samsung, they already have all your data anyway, linked to your device Id. Your data is safe in their cloud, don't worry. /s

For people who are downvoting, these apps have a history of leaking personal data.

For example: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17177848/under-armour-myf...

That is one instance of one app leaking data which is "not particularly sensitive." I bet you've had e.g. your email leaked many times by now by many companies. Are calorie counting apps _more_ likely to leak data as you are implying?

I agree it's not that sensitive...but I guess that's because I'm biased and released all my own data willingly :)

We have an app called Bitesnap that doesn't have an account and works offline.

We are working on syncing across devices though so at some point we'll add a way to create an optinal account.

Excel

If you just want to build your own iOS app you can fork mine (change the part the sends email to me as a back up):

https://github.com/wcochran/calfoo

I just create my own "refrigerator" by manually adding foods I eat (no bar code scanner or online database).

BTW, someone actually took forked my code and placed a version in the App store without ever asking me. I was sort of dumbfounded that someone would do this.

Looks like you don’t have a license so I think you could get it taken down if you wanted to.

I should have thrown a license on this, but it was really just a personal project and never meant it to be released into the wild (GitHub was just a place to store the code)... I suppose I should go back and update this, add a README, and a license.

GP is saying that since there is no license, the code is copyrighted and there is no allowable use anyone could put it to. Therefore, since you own the copyright, and did not license the code to a third party, you could have the app using your code taken down from the App Store.

In contrast, if you had put an open source license on it, then anyone would be well within their rights (assuming the license allows it) to compile and release a version to whatever app store they want.

> In contrast, if you had put an open source license on it, then anyone would be well within their rights (assuming the license allows it) to compile and release a version to whatever app store they want.

This is actually potentially untrue, as some versions of the GPL require that the end user must not be restricted wrt the app they download, and that's not compatible with the Apple's store requirements. See e.g. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6109/is-it-possibl...

I use mynetdiary. It's not perfect but it's free and doesn't require an account. And most importantly for me it's effective (lost about 17 lbs in four months).

I’ve downloaded this and am trying it out. Seems pretty good so far, thanks!

I just use an excel spreadsheet that /u/3suns (I believe is his handle) from reddit put together. You just put in your current weight, target weight and a couple other metrics then fill in your current weight and calories consumed each day. It's supposed to have a pretty good estimate of your true TDEE after about three weeks assuming the information you input is good.

Besides that, I wrote a small JS script that allows me to input various foods along with their respective protein/fat/carb macro ratios that I then combine into meals along with a few helper functions that print the total calories based off the macros. It's nothing special but it gets the job done and I don't have to worry about signing up for yet another app or getting bogged down by a bunch of features I don't care about. I'd be happy to push it and a link to the spreadsheet up to a repo if anyone else would be interested in using them.

App looks like Waistline from f-droid

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.waist.line/

BMI is a fairly bullshit metric. I’m 12% bodyfat and am on the cusp of “obese” sporting a six pack.

Yep, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is also obese based on BMI numbers alone.

A world-class athlete with a near superhuman physique may be the perfect definition of an edge case in this situation.

I’m neither of those and fall into the same “edge case”.

12% body fat with enough muscle to almost be considered obese by BMI standards is quite a few standard deviations outside of the mean. Anyone with that kind of body is well aware of that BMI shortcoming. For most of the population, it’s still a pretty good rule of thumb.

There's a very good chance you're not testing your body fat correctly. I've gotten several friends, including bodybuilders and various athletes to get DXA scans done... pretty much every one underestimated their BF% by 5-10%. Including the ones who swore up and down by their personal trainer's caliper measurements, the BF testing machine (the electric handles one) at their local supplement store, etc.

I'm 14% BF and a BMI of 20... looks to be right on point.

Edit: Nevermind, stupid question. Thanks for the corrections!

BMI isn't a percent, but based on your height/muscle mass you can have an overweight BMI with very low body fat.

BMI = kg/m^2. (Weight divided by height). It doesn’t account for the composition of the person whatsoever.

The 12 was body fat percentage, not BMI.

BMI is not a percentage. The unit for BMI is kg * m^-2.

Ancestor post was referring to either percentage of total body mass as fat, or percentage of lean mass. Both are dimensionless, as kg/kg cancels out.

As such, if the 12% was % of lean mass, that would be 10.7% of total body weight. If it was 12% of total body mass (more likely), that would be 13.6% of lean mass. Either way, that's classified as "very lean".

It is a useful guideline for the general public. If it says you're overweight and are sporting a beer belly, you likely aren't an edge case.

Better measurements exist, but for most collecting the data needed is complex (and the impedance measuring ones aren't reliable). If you have a suggested alternative I'd welcome reading about it.

It is only used for historical reasons. It's really bad science, made popular by Ancel Keys whose reputation for bad science is impeccable.

Waist to Height ratio is AFAIK the best "simple but data supported" measure: https://qz.com/1002707/bmi-calculators-arent-accurate-but-ou...

It's not, if you understand what BMI actually means.

BMI is an aggregate metric that has been misapplied to individuals.

Due to the averaging effect, it's a pretty decent predictor for groups, but due to variation within groups, it's not going to predict that well for all individuals (except for individuals who are close to the average of the group).

He's right - the BMI formula penalizes very muscular people and tall people. The height issue comes from the square term in the formula, and obviously it cant distinguish muscle from fat.

Nick Trefethen from Oxford:

https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html

How are you measuring bodyfat? I'm interested in tracking it, but seems tricky to do accurately.

DXA scan is pretty much the only way to do it accurately. Calipers, "smart" digital scales, and comparing yourself to diagrams online are all very poor methods of checking bodyfat and should be considered to have somewhere around a +-10% error range.

I found a guy in my city doing DXA scans for $80, I usually go get one done every six months or so.

Someone with 12% bodyfat is not going to be in any danger of confusing themselves for being overweight. For average people it is a good rule of thumb.

Obviously there are better tools, but none of them are so easy to measure.

Really great data! Thank you for sharing.

The hard part for me is mindset and willpower. Unfortunately, knowing the physics* behind weight loss doesn't make it any easier, and perhaps might make it more stressful. Why can't I do this simple thing that logically is as complex as 2+2. Our minds have their own prerogatives.

I wonder then what did you tell yourself? How many times did you have a bad day? What was your mood like throughout? I'd love to know so much more about the psychology. Great article though and thanks again for sharing!

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE

I think daily tracking in combination with a long term goal is key here, because it allows you some wiggle room when it comes to progress while having a strong rubber band effect (that gets stronger the more you sway) to get you back on track.

Having lost and kept off half my body weight, yeah, the math is really, really, really stupidly easy part of weight loss.

I envy people who don't know what it is like to feel compelled to gorge themselves. It's an unstoppable force sometimes. You'd be amazed at what your mind will do to make you ingest more calories.

And then you get on the internet and, in addition to all the "it's really simple, just eat fewer calories" idiots, there's a thousand know-it-all fucks trying to tell you that if you just follow their fad diet you'll never feel hungry again and your dick will grow three sizes and you'll win the lottery.

The thing I've heard is that "weight loss is simple, not easy".

Kinda like "avoiding technical debt" :)

Easy to prescribe, tricky to implement judging from the state of the world.

This

There is a part of my brain that, usually around 1030 at night, says, right eat everything in the immediate vicinity because it might vanish / get eaten by sabre-tooth tigers, just be taken away from you.

It's so deeply wired in me i actually resent (no deeply hate) the food industries that take advantage of my biology.

I think the only hope for health care costs to be brought back to earth is to treat most foods like we treat alcohol or tobacco - chocolate bars that cost the same as a bottle of whiskey, sugar eating areas away from other parts of restaurants, cities that revolve around walking not driving,

It's wholesale chnage - and no please don't throw the nanny state argument at me - look at the Libertarian party (Their presidential candidate suggested it would be a good idea to have a driving license ... got crucified) We live in a nanny state and most people don't think it's sane to leave

That's generally how I am. I can't be around food because as soon as I know it is there a part of my mind spends all its time thinking about it. I'll eventually cave and eat it. All of it. People sometimes say things like "no one can eat all that X" and I can tell you from personal experience they are almost always wrong.

Even keeping just enough food in my house for a week's worth of meals (I only eat one, lunch) only works in combination with an appetite suppressant, otherwise I'll find excuses to bake bread or elaborate confections or something. And attending any social function where food might be present is extremely dangerous and to be avoided if at all possible.

> I'll eventually cave and eat it. All of it. People sometimes say things like "no one can eat all that X" and I can tell you from personal experience they are almost always wrong.

100% true for me as well. If it's there I can and will eat it, sometimes past the point of feeling sick. "You ate that whole pint of ice cream in one sitting??" No, you don't know about the other pint of ice cream that I ate a few hours ago and didn't say anything about because of guilt.

Unrestrainable appetite has a natural answer: dietary fat.

Food cravings, hunger pangs, insatiable demands to scarf things: that's often the dark side of an insulin cycle where carbohydrates play a determinative role. But barring issues better treated with psychiatry, most people aren't going to feel the urge to snack after eating a soup-bowl worth of butter...

Its mildly nauseating to eat too much fat. Eliminating insulin spikes makes appetite control 100 times easier. Every body is different, but if you might want to consider a (low carb) high-fat diet for a while.

Also: eating once a day is a bad habit unless you're working things correctly. Maybe check out the "OMAD" (one meal a day), types to see how they're eating? High fat generally plays a role there, too, for satiation and energy reserves.

Ugh. Internet know-it-all parrots some keto bullshit, film at 11.

I have eaten entire 24 ounce jars of peanut butter in one sitting, blocks of cheese, cans of nuts, whatever. It doesn't matter what I'm eating at all. It is endlessly irritating that people like you keep insisting you know more about how my body works than I do.

The reason "people" keep telling you the same thing for the same problem is because you're either describing a treatable mental condition unrelated to nutrition or totally talking out your neck...

Dietary fat causing satiation is hardly "internet know-it-all" and has anything to do with keto in an of itself. The keto diet does encourage other dietary habits that enhance and strengthen the satiation of those goods fats to control and mollify the specific appetite problem you are discussing. It's a system of effects that specifically addresses that urge (https://paleoleap.com/dietary-fat-and-satiety/).

Not a single example you have retorted with points to anything other than poor blood sugar regulation, poor dietary habits, and insufficient fat in your standard diet (which is totally different than binging on something fatty, in the presence of your admittedly poor diet). You are Doing It Wrong.

A whole thing of peanut butter is not going to avoid the insulin spikes. A whole thing of nuts is not sufficient by itself and likely were nuts with the wrong macros. Cheese is nice, but single source foods are not how you should be eating as a grown up, and that habit is causing the problems (says you).

"It doesn't matter what I'm eating at all" contradicts observable research in every aspect of medicine, basic biology, and the standard model. You're whining from ignorance.

> a part of my brain that, usually around 1030 at night, says, right eat everything in the immediate vicinity

Late night snacking has always been my personal achilles heel...

A high-fat diet -- say, steak tacos with avocado sauce in cheese-tortillas -- can do a lot to mitigate snackiness. So instead of a late night chocolate bar, maybe try eating half a pack of bacon and see how you feel... Or an extra half-pack of bacon with your last meal so your appetite calls it quits for a few hours extra...

Within the same caloric footprint, and the hard suffering of eating bacon, I think it's possible to radically reshape your appetite towards more satiating foods that don't leave you snacky. And if you're like me, cutting out the snacking is most of the caloric control you need.

Cons: have to cut carbs so you don't balloon, natural progression towards keto. Pros: less snacky; red wine, whiskey, and bacon as part of a 'weight loss' regimen.

In my experience, one of the easiest ways is to make the process enjoyable. Try and find some sort of exercise you enjoy, or let yourself listen to your favourite podcasts / music whilst you're exercising.

At the end of the day, if you're hating every minute of it, there's very little likelihood you'll keep with your programme. So do whatever you need to do in order that you enjoy yourself whilst doing it, and results will follow :)

I like this idea. I have also been bad about picking podcasts that I like, though. I think laziness and procrastination might be a huge factor for me. :-?

Note that TFA did not exercise (much), instead they used numbers tracking as motivators, think RPG min/maxing. It also works great with laziness and procrastination because all it requires is tracking and optimising a counter or two.

If you're struggling to start, there's a couple of things that might help.

1 - Arrange a regular workout with friends / a personal trainer. Once you're in the habit of exercising regularly, it gets much easier. And putting it off becomes harder thanks to someone else expecting you to turn up.

2 - Take something you really like (food, movies, etc.) and commit to yourself that you'll only do that thing after you've exercised to make it more appealing.

My approach is that I can only watch an episode of a show if I spend the first 30 minutes of it on my stationary bike. (I am currently following Westworld Season 2 and The Expanse Season 3.) Tying my motivation to do cardio to my motivation to see what happens next has worked well for me. Getting motivated to lift 2x a week is another issue...

> Getting motivated to lift 2x a week is another issue...

Was in the same boat until I started doing group classes. Used that to build accountability, motivation, and a "vocabulary" of how the gym works. Now I could spend hours at the gym by myself and love it. Find what works for you, cuz lifting is a blast!

> In my experience, one of the easiest ways is to make the process enjoyable. Try and find some sort of exercise you enjoy, or let yourself listen to your favourite podcasts / music whilst you're exercising.

TFA notes that they didn't exercise (that they tried but didn't stick).

Ideally you'd combine exercise and calorie counting, but for nerds calorie-counting makes the diet into a numbers game which can be a great motivator on its own.

Exercise is ideal, but most people* don't burn enough calories exercising to enter a calorie deficit. Worse still: appetite spikes after exercise make most people eat more. All that really matters is eating below your maintenance calories. Exercise is the cherry on top for making your body actually look good.

*If you're weightlifting HEAVY 2-3 hours a day 6 days a week or running marathons every weekend, then you are burning enough calories to enter a deficit. Otherwise: your workout is burning fewer calories than there are in a banana.

for me exercise has to be fun. I can easily do a 2 hour mountain bike ride and just have fun. I can kitesurf for 3 hours and still want more. Same with ultimate frisbee and hockey. Cycling, running, weightlifting are mind numbing.

The problem I have with exercising is that it makes me really hungry causing me to overeat. If Im exercising 4 days a week, it isnt a problem. But if Im only doing 2 times a week, it is better to not exercise at all.

Skipping dinner works for me (I eat breakfast around 8, lunch at 2, and late snack around 6) except my family wont let me skip dinner. When I used to travel for business it worked and I was able to get down to 165.

Ive been stuck at 175 (5' 9") for a long time, I just downloaded myfitnesspal and will try that. I do like low carb because it reduces the hunger I feel making it much easier to follow reduced calories.

Beat Saber (Oculus Rift) + fitness watch (Vivosmart HR+) + My Fitness Pal is working great for me.

I'd been counting calories for a couple months and dropped about 8 pounds (which is good), but slow. My self-control was 'meh'.

Got Beat Saber two weeks ago. I love music, and apparently I love dancing. Kept tracking calories. Down another 8 pounds in those two weeks. I've been playing about 30-60 minutes a day, and with my average heart rate (at a safe level) and weight, I should be burning ~400-1000 calories in those sessions.

I understand a lot of that is water weight from working out, but I'm also keeping my calories in check WAY more easily. My graph from those two months of calories consumed was spiky with missing days (out of shame, not willing to enter them in). After starting with Beat Saber, my graph is incredibly consistent within ~200 calories, and always at or below my goal.

Having an understanding of what 500 calories actually means in terms of effort helps me mentally connect that with the value of eating that extra 500 calories. It's some kind of connection that doesn't exist when I'm not physically active and tracking calories.

Side note, I only keep track of my calories "burned" out of curiosity. Fitness trackers are notoriously unreliable overall, but it's motivating. I do NOT eat more calories based on activity done, which is a recipe for disaster IMO.

> The hard part for me is mindset and willpower. Our minds have their own prerogatives.

Exactly right. Losing weight by counting calories is an almost entirely mental activity, not physical. We have a physiology that wants food and abhors not eating enough.

> I wonder then what did you tell yourself?

Like the author, I discovered counting calories a couple of years ago, after trying and failing to lose weight through exercise for 20 years.

I do have some mental tricks that worked for me.

Number one: the reason I got overweight is because I’m mis-calibrated. When I feel full, it’s because I already ate too much. What I need to do is re-calibrate to understand what “enough” is. By assigning a negative judgement to feeling full, and seeking the feeling of enough, it helps remove the idea that I just need willpower to overcome any hunger. A little bit of hunger (but not a lot) is a good thing, so I want to stay there.

Number two: I set my calorie budget to my future weight, not my current weight with minus a thousand. This is a “set it and forget it” plan. I want to calibrate my normal eating for the rest of my life, not diet for a month or two and then regress. I also don’t want to make adjustments when I’m done, I want to act like I’m already done. If I want to be 180lbs, and I should be eating 2k calories when I’m 180lbs, then I just start doing that and my weight will trend toward 180lbs. This takes longer than having a larger deficit, but mentally I don’t need to care how long it takes. I spent decades overweight despite trying, a couple extra months losing weight more slowly is nothing, it’s way ahead of where I was before.

Third, I also save some budget in my day for a treat at the end of the day. It leaves me just a tiny bit hungrier, but then when I get my treat it feels like I’m splurging.

Fourth, I still exercise. To lose weight fast I don’t count my exercise as calories burned. In maintenance mode, I use my exercise as a way to earn more calories. Now I’m actually going to the gym not to lose weight, but so I can eat more!

I had days where I went over, but I didn’t really have “bad” days or bad moods, it was never severe. It was more like go to a party when I’m not counting, and whoops, I’m 400 calories over my budget.

The hardest part about counting calories is the first few days. That’s when hunger is worst. After the first week, my body adjusts and my appetite goes down.

Yep, it’s all in the mind.

I had my “come to Jesus” moment about 3 months ago, at the green age of 39. I’ve since lost 10kg (1.5st or 22lb) and counting.

I am never hungry, I removed all starches and cheese from my diet and the stomach is now silent 100% of the time. I still have the occasional “fuck it, the world hates me, I want a pizza so bad”, but I learnt to manage it: when I feel angry or bored (my triggers), I get my mind busy with something else, anything really (from sudoku to programming, going for a walk with a podcast, or painting miniatures). After a few minutes the impulse is gone. I cheat once or twice a day, in small quantities and in a controlled fashion: knowing the worst time is right after a cheat, I make sure to be very busy and plan follow-up snacks with nuts, to slowly ease off the starch-induced crave.

Another trick is to metabolise the concept that the corporate world tries really really hard to sell you food; when you really start to see that it’s all a way to screw you out of your money, it gets easier to say “no thanks”.

*cheat once or twice a week, derp.

I speak about what worked for myself about the psychological part (I lost 20kg in 2 years).

First it was to not enter in a willpower fight. I did accept that I will fail, and I did fail many times (sorry did not count, often in the beginning and I was still failing from time to time until the end). But every time i failed, instead of giving up i was telling to myself "ok you failed, but it worked for X days, you trained your body to eat less, let's start again, it will be more easy this time." And it was true. With time your body require less food to fill "full" even when you fail.

Also a lot of ppl here are talking about fasting. I'm not sure about it at all. Your brain may try to prevent the next "fasting time" and may try to trick you to eat more. I would advise to eat at very regular times so your brain "knows" when you will eat (for me: 6:00/12:00/19:00 +/-30mins). Take time to eat, move in another place, etc ... so you appreciate it more.

I liked the cheat days principle because it gives you short term goals, and it helps to keep some pleasure eating food. It also helps to not bring your diet with you when you go to lunch with friends/family. I also noticed that with time I was cheating less during these days.

Preparing food for myself also saved money, sometimes it helped for motivation.

> I'm not sure [fasting] at all. Your brain may try to prevent the next "fasting time"

There are a lot of varieties of 'fasting'.

Intermittent Feeding or 'Time Restricted Eating' involve upping dietary fat to control hunger feelings and ensuring daily caloric needs are met within a shorter timespan. This leaves the body enjoying 'fasting' benefits for longer while enjoying a normal diet.

>"The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. The magnitude of the caloric difference will regulate how quickly or slowly you lose the weight. [...] I naturally started eating healthy foods because I could eat more of them. If you eat a chocolate bar, you will still be hungry. For the same amount of calories, you could eat a few bowls of vegetables and be full. [...] Somewhere along the journey I picked up intermittent fasting. I like it but it’s also not necessary. I found that it helped reduce my appetite which means I can eat fewer calories."

I don't really think this is consistent. Basically yes if you eat less calories than are used you must lose weight, but the ease of doing this depends on what you are eating.

This.

The devil is in the details.

Sure the rule is simple: Calories in == Calories out

But you need to find out rather exactly how much you really burn, it's often less than you think.

And then you have to eat stuff that doesn't fill your daily calories with one meal, or else you will crave more later that day.

Not only is it less than you think, but it changes with consumption! CICO is true but only trivially so, the variables are dependent. You can run 3mi to burn more calories, but you get more hungry as a result.

The biggest challenges I've observed with people trying to lose weight with CICO (calories in, calories out) it getting a reliable estimate of how much your eating and how many calories your body is truly burning. Being off by 100 calories translates into roughly 12 pounds per year.

I know you can use a food scale to get a more accurate estimate of calories in but I'm still at a loss to determine an accurate estimate of calories out.

You don't need extreme precision with counting calories. 500-1000 calories is a lot of food each day as long as your rounding up you can get good enough.

The trick IMO is to simply eat the same thing every day. That way you can remove things as needed to maintain weight loss. But, also adjust based on what you actually eat not just your goals.

>simply eat the same thing every day //

And die from boredom removing the problem of obesity completely ...

Losing weight is not without cost. Be it hunger, time/effort, boredom, or unmet cravings.

Everyone has the right to choose which kind of cost they are willing to endure in order to lose weight - this includes refusing to pay any cost at all (and not losing weight).

Nothing comes for free.

You don't have to eat the same thing every day, but you DO have to cook food yourself. You cannot trust the cooking practices of restaurants.

It's really not that complicated. If after some amount of time you're not losing/gaining what you expect per your numbers you tweak said numbers a bit. That's all. You don't need to be accurate to the calorie, or even to ~100. If you're on a deficit most days you will absolutely lose weight.

Calorie counting works and eating fewer calories than you burn is the only way to lose weight. Far too many people start exercising a bit, continue to eat in the manner they've become accustomed to, and wonder why they don't lose weight. It's not rocket science; you just need to eat less and (probably) eat better.

It's not so simple. What you eat and your hormones determine the fat storage on your body. 1 calorie of carbs is different to 1 calorie of fat and 1 calorie of protein. Just because they give the same amount of energy, your body uses them in different ways and required different hormones (like insulin) to regulate the consumption of them. It's like saying electric energy is the same as mechanical energy, they produce energy but we consume them in different ways.

Counting calories doesn't really work. What's working is restricting insulin in your system which allows your body to burn fat. When you have insulin it's impossible to burn fat.

Suggest having a ready of some of Gary Taubes and something like https://www.dietdoctor.com/first-law-thermodynamics-utterly-...

>It's not so simple. What you eat and your hormones determine the fat storage on your body.

It is, for the most part, but you're right; insulin spikes are a problem and you should not be gorging yourself on simple carbohydrates when on a diet. Of course, protein and fats can also contribute (ask any keto fan), so you have to eat in moderation and be mindful of your macros.

>Counting calories doesn't really work

Utter and complete nonsense. I have been actively monitoring and modifying my weight via calorie counting for more than two decades. I started boxing at 10, playing football and wrestling at 13, and to this day I still count calories and strength train at an intermediate competitive level ('competitive' in terms of what I lift in the big three at my weight, not to imply that I actually compete.)

I have helped many other people lose weight via calorie counting. It works, and to claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Of course quality of food is the next subject you broach with anyone trying to lose weight. No one should expect to lose weight and be healthy by eating 1200 calories of cake and another 500 in potato chips each day.

When you eat good food (increase your fat and protein as a % of your macros, stay away from processed sugars/carbs, increase your intake of vegetables, etc.) and limit calorie intake you lose weight. Speaking to most people in terms of insulin is a waste of time. They have no simple way to measure that, but if they eat under maintenance and eat generally good food they _will_ lose fat, and that's the goal.

Well we agree that eating the right food makes the biggest difference. If you eat the right food you don't need to count calories though. The thinking that counting calories matter might help you, but ultimately it's wrong. But just like thinking the earth was flat, maps still worked.

It works though. I don't think we disagree much on the principles, but the two concepts are intertwined. If you sit down and stuff your face with e.g. sausage and cheese you will still get an insulin response and you will absolutely gain weight. If you eat well beyond your daily maintenance, I don't care what you're eating, you're going to gain weight.

It's simply a lot easier to tell someone to watch their calorie count and eat good food than it is to tell them to monitor their insulin levels. They get the second bit right if they do the first.

Sorry, out of my depth here. Why would you get an insulin spike from sausages and cheese?

Perhaps "spike" was a poor choice due to connotation, but proteins and, to a lesser degree, fats, do in fact provoke an insulin response (certainly less so than carbohydrates) via gluconeogenesis[1]. I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that this is why it is important to not exceed a certain % daily intake of protein when on keto and to keep fats high (aside from fats being your primary energy source.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

AFAIK, the primary issue with too much protein on keto (gluconeogenisis) isn't the change in blood glucose, but rather that GNG blocks ketosis.

That's the opposite of the diets goals, is an easy issue for people to incur while thinking they're on track, and keto can make you more susceptible to GNG :)

Sausage and cheese is totally kosher: in moderation, ideally beside some leafy greens.

I've tested eating 3lbs of meat and cheese, and had no change in blood sugar or ketones. I don't have the ability to check my insulin, but blood sugar is a good proxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogenesis

That is why it is important to keep protein under a certain threshold when on keto.

A glucose monitor and strips are $12-30 dollars on Amazon.

I’ve had the same issue and how I approached it was to watch the scale. If I wasn’t losing weight, knock another 100 calories off my diet each day. Eventually you’ll find the sweet spot.

The other challenge is estimating how many calories you burn each day. There can be a large variation in resting metabolic rate let alone how many calories you burn with exercise.

A good quality fitness tracker with a built-in heart rate monitor like a Garmin Forerunner will give you a reasonably accurate estimate of calories out. Your can also get an occasional DXA scan (low dosage x-ray) to measure body composition; the report will include an estimate of your baseline resting calorie consumption per day. Remember that as you lose weight your daily calorie consumption will also drop because you have less fat to carry around and keep alive.

> A good quality fitness tracker with a built-in heart rate monitor like a Garmin Forerunner will give you a reasonably accurate estimate of calories out.

These aren't accurate at all. How would they be? All they have to work with is height, weight, and BPM.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-fitness-tracker-ac...

That's why I specified a good quality fitness tracker like a Garmin Forerunner. If you use something cheap like a Fitbit then of course it won't be accurate.

Got a cite for Garmin having more accurate HR than Fitbit? All I could find was someone on Garmin forums opining that cheap Fitbit did better - https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-the-trail/wrist-worn/feni...

Disclosure: I work for Fitbit, but don't speak for Fitbit.

I concede that Garmin integrates with chest straps that are more accurate, but who's going to wear one of those for around-the-clock calorie counting?

I still don't see how it can be accurate for tracking calories.

I've done calorie counting a while back. It does not have to be very accurate. Getting more accurate is easier and more efficient after you do it for a while.

I realized that what I eat is fairly stable. There may be 20 different things I eat regularly. Eventually, I started memorizing the most often used ones.

I noticed that there is a pattern to which types of foods have what amounts of calories. For example, fresh fruit and many non-starchy veggies tend to be at around 50kcal/100gr. Starchy veggies got for about 100kcal/100gr. Meats are at around 250kcal/100gr. And so on. Using this, I was able to get estimates for things I don't eat often without needing to Google everything. I did look up things I ate a few times in order to test my estimates.

It is not super-accurate. However, writing it down is more important that writing it down accurately to the last calories.

Many parts of this process were not accurate. I weighed things roughly using an analog scale. I often estimated portion size by eye, as I got a sense of how much 200grams of meat is. I counted the calories using estimates a lot of time. It worked nonetheless.

After 6 months, my weight loss vs. estimated weight loss from calories spreadsheet was within 1kg! I was blown away by how close this was. It makes sense since things like your base metabolic rate and actual calories expenditure also varies, so super-accurate record keeping of food-in was not necessary.

You're right that being off by 100 calories systematically will force a bias. The trick is to be off in one direction one day, and in the other the other day. This way, the error mostly cancels out.

I think people who try to lose weight be serious about CICO. They do need to get a food scale and log everything they eat. It at least opens their eyes on how much they are eating and how quickly little snacks and calories can add up.

Calories out can't be directly measured, BUT you can compute it pretty accurately anyway.

Measure your weight. Track your calorie consumption for N days, then measure your weight again. Then use the 3500 calories per pound conversion to figure out what calories out must have been to cause that.

For example, if over 30 days you ate 2000 calories per day and lost 3 pounds, then you must have burned 3500 * 3 excess calories total. That averages out to 350 calorie deficit per day, so your calories out must have been 2350.

Or if you ate 2000 calories per day for 30 days and your weight remained the same, then your calories out was 2000 as well.

I've been calorie counting for a long time (initially to lose weight, now just habit), and I do this sort of calculation every month or two in order to maintain my weight within a ~5 pound range.

Yep. He even mentions fasting: "Somewhere along the journey I picked up intermittent fasting. I like it but it’s also not necessary. I found that it helped reduce my appetite which means I can eat fewer calories."

I tried that too. Lost 7lbs in 7 days and then a few more. I regularly skip breakfast, but to really make it work skipping lunch and keeping eating to a 4-hour window was really effective. I need to do some more of that. And it does reduce your appetite after a few days.

I’ve been doing intermittent fasting (4h eating) for two months now and I’m struggling not to lose weight. It never was my goal, but now I’m actively trying to curb it, yet still shedding pounds like crazy. Especially if you try to get fibre and carbohydrates in.

I can completely believe that helped in his endeavour.

Why are you doing it? What benefits to you expect to make up for the struggle?

If I’m being totally honest: probably because I like trying new things and this is fun. I could retroactively justify this with stories about HGH, general alertness, longevity, health, improved eating patterns, but I’d probably be lying to myself. It’s a challenge that’s nicely orthogonal to the rest of my routine, so it’s fun.

Plus some people I trust said it was “good for your health”, so I didn’t bother to look further and just took their word for it.

If you're eating carbs and fasting it will be a struggle -- worth it or not, who knows.

Most of the intermittent fasters I've been following aren't going through some masochistic daily hunger-torture. They're just eating more "paleo" or "keto" so their diet is ripe with dietary fat. That makes going from three smaller, to two larger, or even a single huge meal a matter of habit that can be changed in a couple weeks.

It's also unproblematic to "cheat" on the fast when need arises. The idea is just to clock as much 'fasted' time as pragmatic.

Unless you were morbidly obese, 7 pounds in 7 days isn't a sustainable rate and was probably mostly water weight rather than fat. In order to burn a pound of fat you have to expend about 3500kcal more than you consume; not really possible in a day for most people.

This. If you're overweight enough to worry about weight loss, don't draw any conclusions first 5 pounds you lose - it's going to be mostly water.

It's way to easy to lose those 5 pounds, get "stuck", and get frustrated.

Great progress and tips! We're developing a "MyFitnessPal + UberEats" food delivery service that automatically counts calories and macros here in Shanghai, where ~16 million people order their food instead of cooking or eating out. I wonder why nobody did this in the Bay Area at least? Is it generally lower penetration of food delivery? Or gathering the data is just too much work? It's easier here with Chinese food: orders naturally consist of 2-3 dishes at least, and for 2-3 people it can be 5-6 dishes, making it possible for us to pick a right "combo" for the right macros. I think with Western food, most people would stick to one dish with a side, which is much harder to "configure" and meet the right target.

Also, of course, even a modest amount of exercise will kick off metabolic processes that speed up weight loss, not mentioning that increasing muscle mass will naturally increase the basal metabolic rate. Weight lifting routines like 5x5 or Greyskull LP can be squeezed into 20-30 minutes every other day, and provide lasting benefits almost immediately.

> [...] you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday

and

> I never understood how simple it was before starting this.

Sounds so trivial, but sadly true for a lot of things in life. You read and hear something multiple times, but you have to make the experience yourself to get your eyes opened.

Don't cheat, lie or harm any other human being in any way. Sounds simple enough. If all would be heeding this rules, we would have paradise on this planet. Every sane person must realize this when reaching adulthood. Rest should be treated by professionals.

Yet somehow, billions failed, fail and will fail spectacularly.

It's also massively dependent on the person. People like me, yes it really is that simple. I naturally don't even care about eating, and my metabolism seems quite active, as it's hard for me to even gain weight. My wife on the other hand, even just mentally, is another ball game. Food is a big part of her life, even just speaking emotionally. Then of course you have her cycle, which causes her normal urges to ramp up to 7->10.

Also, eating.. pickiness too. I don't mind leftovers, hell I don't even mind eating the same thing for a week, two, etc. She hates leftovers and always wants freshly cooked. Also rotating food types, as it can't be too similar to what she ate recently.

All combined it means that finding hearty meals (and now keto for us) are more effort for her than for someone like me. To no surprise, I have no weight to lose (I need to workout to even maintain weight), but it really frustrates her at how different our bodies are.

She considers her food habits to be an "addiction" in large part due to how different her and my reactions are to food. Her struggles are far more than mine on this front.

Simple is not the same thing as easy. Mostly "diet plans" are basically psychological tools to help you do a difficult but simple thing.

Yes, I did not say easy. I guess my point was, for my wife it's not that simple.

For me, it is that simple. My point was that for my wife, there are a ton of other considerations she deals with. Sure, they're mainly in her head (though possibly other factors such as gut biome play a role), but large she has more details to factor in when she thinks about "will I be able to do this?". I on the other hand don't. For me, it's exactly as the author described, simple.

Yes, simple does not mean easy, but saying quitting smoking is simple to a smoker is not an honest assessment of their situation.

Most things in life are simple if you ignore reality and speak of life from a bubble.

I would disagree on that. Quitting smoking is a fairly simple thing, but it can also be a very hard thing to do. Such is the nature of addiction. So as such I find it very honest to say it is simple but hard, and focus on what makes it hard.

Somebodies reaction to a hard thing may be complex, but that is more about them than the thing. Although as you note, there is a risk of oversimplifying (e.g. your example of possible implications of gut biome, but that doesn't really shift the fundamentals).

The reason I think this distinction is a good one to make is the problem with the converse. If something being hard implies it is complex, it will lead often to people generating extraneous complexity around it which makes it actually more difficult for the people involved, and can lead to very convoluted thinking and errors in that thinking. You need only look at the massive industries built around things like weight loss and quitting smoking to see examples of this (not that everything in those industries is nonsense, but they do contain a lot of profitable nonsense).

This had nothing to do with bubbles. The risk is that instead of supporting people in doing a hard thing, we raise false hope of making it easy.

Aren't most things "simple" by that definition though? It's all about specificity, right? Quitting smoking is simple, if you don't talk about ways to overcome addiction. Becoming rich is simple, just get lots of money - simple if you ignore all the complexities of the underlying problem.

That's why I felt my situation and my wife's differed. Mine was simple because there wasn't an underlying pile of complexity. Her underlying "addiction" and etc are noteworthy items in her list of things she needs to do. It's simple if you ignore the problems, but if she wants to actually implement that simple instruction she needs to figure out the little details that affect her.

So yes, it is simple if we're not talking about her situation with context and reality. Mine is simple in all contexts, in my opinion.

Smoking is a good example imo on where our opinions differ. Smoking is super far simple in my mind, because many people can't just stop smoking (or rather, lack the willpower). So they need additional data, the simple instruction was.. imo, not so simple.

Many things are not simple by that definition or any other, and it is not about specificity. Some problems are inherently complex, some are not. It is often true that hard problems are hard because they are complicated but some things are just hard even if they are simple.

You are basically promoting the idea that I am rejecting, that because people find things difficult and have a lot of complicated reactions to it, that means the underlying problem is itself must be complex. I don't believe that is either true or useful, and argue that it can often make the problems themselves worse by muddying the water.

Some problems are complicated but relatively easy. In this case, if you just find "the right trick" you can solve it without much difficultly. We do people a disservice when we pretend that simple-but-hard problems are actually complicated-but-easy. This is something that is often done, for commercial gain, in industries like weight loss and smoking cessation. At core, I am arguing that this is a bad thing.

At any rate, we've probably reached diminishing returns here.

Appreciate your input regardless. Challenging my understanding is appreciated :)

Likewise!

When I was a bicycle messenger I had to eat stupid amounts of food. I needed 4-5000 calories a day. I had to eat two dinners every evening, one after work and one before bed. If I didn't get enough calories down during the day I would wake up in the middle of the night with my body screaming at me to EAT!, and like a zombie I would head into the kitchen and make a box of Kraft Dinner with a cup of butter and inhale it.

I did that for 2 years, and afterwards I developed an aversion to eating, I just got so sick of having to gorge myself at every meal, and never being able to go more than a few hours without thinking about food.

A bit off topic; I'd actively not eat two or three meals a day if I could. I don't find it enjoyable generally, just a waste of time. I love food, but I don't always eat the food I love, so the ones I'm not loving I'd just rather not eat lol. Generally it's not worth the time or money to me.

I'm the type of person Soylent advertises to. I even made my own for a ~year. Keto (mostly low carb for me, not keto) has been a massive boon though. Fats just leave me so much more sated and stable. I highly recommend it if you don't like to eat or want to eat more dense meals.

>You read and hear something multiple times, but you have to make the experience yourself to get your eyes opened.

"You can't tell people anything" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384703

Well, this is another one of those weight loss articles that tries to say "calories in, calories out" and then laughs at the research that refutes that. I'm referring to this:

>There’s a lot of “science” that say low insulin levels in the fasted state lead to more fat burning.

That "science" he smirks at is the research primarily of Dr. Jason Fung, who specializes in diabetes and obesity. He wrote a book called the obesity code that advocates for intermittent fasting. I think I'll take the word of a man who has spent hours researching and analyzing over the snarky comments of some software engineer.

Some more examples: > If you’re in a caloric deficit this will happen anyways.

That's not true. I could eat a reduced caloric deficit of bread every day and still not burn fat. The basis of intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet is to force your body to break fat for energy as opposed to carbs. They take different approaches, but the end result is the same - to lower the amount of insulin. Keto is bit more restrictive in food because so much of the carbs in out food is sugar.

So, why did achieve results? Easy:

> I naturally started eating healthy foods because I could eat more of them. If you eat a chocolate bar, you will still be hungry. For the same amount of calories, you could eat a few bowls of vegetables and be full. That said, the best part about this overall approach is that you can still eat whatever you want – just count the calories.

There's a wide difference between how your body reacts to 100 calories of chocolate bars (sugar) and 100 calories of broccoli (fiber).

This is more junk science and using anecdotal data as opposed to research and science. If you want to lose weight, what you eat is just as important as how much you eat. End of story; caloric restriction alone isn't enough. However, this article is also incredibly short sighted. Losing weight is very much like getting married. People focus on the event and not the afterwards. You can't modify your diet, hit your target weight, and then stop. You need to keep going; fighting obesity is life long battle. I believe the majority of people who lose weight will regain that weight within 7 years. There's horror stories from the biggest loser.

My story, by the way, is that when I got married, I was 280 lbs. One night, I remember coming home from my in-laws house and deciding I was tired of being fat. I changed my diet. I cut out chips and soda at lunch and put in carrots and water. I stopped eating white bread and pasta in favor of whole grain foods. I cut the number of nights I had dessert to 1 to 2 a week. I picked up regular exercise. I tracked and measured my food. It worked. At my lowest, I was ~170 lbs. It's gone back up to 203 right now, but that's because I'm currently focusing on strength training. I will say that eating less is not enough. You have to pick the right food. As a friend of mine once wisely said, you simply cannot outwork a crappy diet.

I recently read The Obesity Code and it has completely shifted my understanding of weight gain. The bit that got me was diabetic patients being given insulin, which has a known symptom of weight gain - the very thing contributing to type 2 diabetes.

So the same calorie diet and the same amount burned can behave differently at storing fat because of a small pill. This for me flies in the face of calories in/calories out. A pill, or insulin can really screw that up.

That book changed my view as well. The section that got to me was the part where he refuted "calories in, calories out". Most machines have some sort of regulator that detects when power is low and will adjust accordingly; my laptop, for example, will reduce the brightness of the screen. On the human side, if a factory manager hears there will be reduced power, he doesn't keep going at full steam, he shuts off none vital operations. I think most of us would agree the human body is a complex machine that with a myriad of regulation mechanism. If it detects lower caloric intact, it's not going to go one as if nothing changed. It's going to adapt to preserve energy.

Yes, I really enjoyed that analogy. It's important to bear in mind that analogies don't prove things, they are just illustrations. What I particularly liked is how he did a very good job at backing it up with different studies that support it. As I was listening to the book, pretty much all the questions I had he answered in a very methodical way.

I've started trying intermittent fasting and low carb/high fat so far I'm amazed at how much energy I have. Still early days and I have a few old habits to kick. But it's definitely going in the right direction.

You said a lot of things but in the end you ate less calories than you "burned". That is all it takes.

No I didn't; I said I changed my diet. I swapped out high carb food like chips and soda for water and carrots. I reduced my sugar intake by cutting down the number of desserts. But hey, if you want to believe that, you do you.

So you are disputing the fact that you lost weight by consuming less calories than you burned? I'm doing me , thanks for the concern!

I'm disputing your claim that was the sole reason I lost weight and that I've kept it off for close to a decade. Keep trying, though.

  That "science" he smirks at is the research
  primarily of Dr. Jason Fung

Don't about 50% of diet books follow the diet-advice-from-a-doctor cliche?

Like the books you can get from Dr Rupy Aujla, Charlotte Markey PhD, Dr Arthur Agatston, Dr Clare Bailey, Dr Xand van Tulleken, Dr Michael Mosley, and Dr Aseem Malhotra?

I hope you read the last line of the article too :-

> "Everything I wrote above is what worked for me – that is not to say it will work for everyone. I am also not a doctor, I’m an engineer, so none of this is medical advice – please consult your doctor."

This is just a person who wants to show HOW they did it. You can read all the scientific papers you want, but ultimately you have to put that knowledge into practice. You'll find that people have lost weight in various ways, including what you call "unscientific" or bro-science.

We have a very fuzzy understanding of human metabolic pathways, and an incomplete knowledge of their interactions with each other. If you want to dismiss somebody's data you have to first understand and explain the data, and then add your point of view.

Its a bit like telling Usain bolt hes doing it wrong because he has technical imperfections in his form, but meanwhile hes still winning races.

I've lost weight at separate times in my life doing:

1) Low carb 2) Caloric restriction (CICO)

On both I lost weight. On CICO I still ate "less healthy" foods (processed, breads, fast food, desserts) quite often but kept within a certain calorie range. Neither weight loss involved exercise. I'm convinced #1 was just a fancy way to acheive #2. Were there separate benefits to #2? Yes (less cravings) but not enough to convince me to go back to it. Low carb is too difficult to stick to for me personally, have tried it numerous times (no need to give me advice on how to make it work for me, I'm losing weight on CICO right now and fine with that!)

Why would both work if CICO is bunk?

You answered your own question, the cravings. People who only do CICO with junk food will lose some weight, but a good number of people who do that don't have the will power to overcome the cravings and they regain all their weight.

However, if I'm not mistaken, you've lost weight, gained, and lost it back again, right? The so-called yo-yo effect, another harbinger of people who only do CICO. The vast majority of people who lose weight regain it back within 5 years. As someone who kept it off for a decade and only started gaining it back when I start taking my resistance training a lot more seriously, I can say that if I only did CICO, I would not have kept it off. The only way to take off weight and keep it off for long periods of time is to change what you eat, get regular exercise, and know this is something you will be doing for the rest of your life.

I have yo-yo'd, but I've done low carb more than I have CICO, and low carb is not sustainable at all for me- while day to day cravings went down, overall "hunger" feeling went up. Low carb made almost every meal feel unsatisfying. I have meals with more carbs now that are much more satisfying, while still losing weight. Low carb caused me to want to cheat, eat carbs again, etc.

CICO has been the easiest to "stick with", I can fulfill my cravings without regaining, because I'm not truly cutting anything out, just having less. When I want unhealthy snacks, instead of eating a bag of doritos, a fudge round, and a swiss roll, I have just the doritos and that's it. Moderation is key. I got to the point where I was basically bingeing food and not caring, which is a bad spot to be in.

The only reason I fell off of CICO once before was absolutely a decision on my part to "screw it, gonna eat what I want and however much I want because I love food, life is short" and really had nothing to do with regular here-and-there cravings. It was a conscious choice of food over health, as bad as that is. Before I made that choice, under CICO, I lost 40 pounds and kept that 40 pounds off with no problem, super easy to maintain.

Yes, I will admit that CICO causes me occasionally to choose a healthier food, because they're much less calorie dense- but day-to-day I still have bread, pasta, fruit, and sometimes dessert. I just add in some good, less dense things along the way, and overall eat less, while still enjoying it all. Seems to work. I guess time will tell, eh? :)

This also happens with me. I'm definitely capable (and have a couple of times in the past) of losing weight long-term (longer than a few years) by continuing to eat less healthy food, but less. I've eaten those foods all my life, in fact, and never been at all overweight. You can achieve significant, sustainable weight loss on a less healthy diet.

The trick that gets people, I imagine, is that you really can't eat very much of it all, especially as I've gotten older. You have to be willing to eat rather small portions, and rather infrequently.

I do imagine it will get harder to deal with the "density" of processed food as I get more fit and closer to ideal weight, because calorie dense foods will hit the limit rather quickly.

Thankfully, I like plenty of non-dense foods too and can adjust the balance without cutting any desirable foods completely

> Sounds so trivial, but sadly true for a lot of things in life

It's often not that trivial, nor true. There's a ton of litterature on the subject, here is an articla I like:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/28/why-t...

A good quote:

> The much bigger mistake Wishnofsky made was misunderstanding how our bodies react to weight loss. As soon as we start cutting calories from our diet, the number of calories our body expends begins to fall. "It literally starts happening on the first day," said Hall. "And it continues to mount as you lose weight."

> The reason Wishnofsky, and so many others since, have botched this biological fact is that it's fairly counterintuitive

Basically our bodies are not simple in any way, in particular when it comes to how it handles energy, which is core to our survival. There is a good amount of survivor bias in all the "that's how I lost weight" tales floating around.

Yes, rigorous fasting might also lead to muscle loss, additionally slowing down the weight loss.

All of the people I know who did reasonable carb counting, stuck to a 8 to 16 hours feeding/fasting period and picked up physical activity (n ~= 5) lost weight in the 5-10kg area.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that there are other simple life rules that feel like an epiphany while sounding trivial, e.g. "How I got rid of my debt by spending less than I earn."

> As soon as we start cutting calories from our diet, the number of calories our body expends begins to fall. "It literally starts happening on the first day," said Hall. "And it continues to mount as you lose weight."

This is also discussed in the Hacker's Diet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker's_Diet / https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/, free ebook and accompanying software). There seems to be a plateau around your "normal" lifestyle on which the body adjusts to small differences in calories in and out. You have to push the difference beyond a certain threshold to actually make a difference:

"If you eat a little too much, the body cranks up the burn rate a little: you feel warmer and more inclined to run up a flight of stairs rather than walk. If you eat a tad less than ideal, you may feel chilly and inclined to curl up with a book under the blankets and get a little extra sleep. [...] To achieve weight loss, you have to reduce what goes in below your capacity to adjust by banking the metabolic fires, forcing your body to tap its reserves[.]"

Yea you are right, for every pound you lose, your base calorie burn for the next 24 hours does drop, by like 3 to 5 calories. Got to cut back half a celery stalk or you might get fat??? You can see that with any estimator tool online to see your base rate. Your body ain’t magical. Plus, metabolic rate increases over time with exercise and diet. It’s obvious especially after an earned cheat day. That article sounds like either a fat guy or a magic pill salesman talking. I don’t know anyone that eats relatively healthy and works out a little bit with an ever slowing metabolism. That’s flat out stupid. Guess 2+2=22 then. But hey, people also think if they don’t eat for a few hours, starvation mode kicks in and they magically get fatter by not eating.

Only part I agree with that article, 3500 calories per pound wasn’t accurate for me. 3800 was about right, for me. But it’s not like 3500 is far off. I used it as a base rate until a month of data told me otherwise.

Here’s the reason why people think the simple rule of physics doesn’t work on their body, they are lying to themselves.

Some people think they burn 6000 calories like Michael Phelps because they bobbed in a pool for half an hour. Walked 20 min outside? I “hiked uphill” for 30 min then, I burned 300 calories. A serving of potato chips is 150 calories for 12 chips? Half a family bag is only 300 calories then! My body won’t notice a few cookies.

This is the bullshit people tell themselves regularly. I’ve heard it from MYSELF and from other obese folks who bitch about their problems.

Accurately count every single calorie you take in with a spreadsheet and you’ll see just how much of a fatass you are. That’s what I did for my once fat booty. Even count that cookie and candy bar. No excuses. Count every exercise accurately as well.

Human bodies are amazingly efficient. Scary efficient when you start to think that a slice of bread can walk your sack of meat about a mile. But physics and math will ALWAYS prevail. Energy is never created, only transfered. Fat is stored energy. Real basic high school stuff here people. That bow flex can’t bend the laws of physics.

And quit acting like survivorship bias is an excuse for laziness. So tired of everyone saying survivorship bias so they can complain about their problems these days. Sure, not everyone will succeed through hard work. But I also admit, I won’t put in the same effort as The Rock. That man earns his glorious cheat days. Earned, not whined. Hell, do you see any relatively decent athlete eating ice cream all day “oh I don’t work at anything, I just take this secret pill that all failures don’t take”.

Seriously, enough already. Do the work and quit with the excuses. Once I quit giving myself reasons why “oh I’m fat because...”, I started losing weight. I stopped eating fast food. Dropped simple carbs. Haven’t had soda since I started. What’s fun, I literally have to eat more steak to make calories and protein everyday. Fantastic perk to all of this. Props to OP for 2.7 average per week. Mine is 1.5 a week. But I’ve also been weight lifting so I’m assuming the muscle mass is slightly offsetting that.

Moral of the story, your comment is hurting people that are on the edge of making a positive change in their life. Stop hurting people for your own crocodile tears.

Sorry if it was misinterpreted, my global point was that there’s a lot going on.

The article I picked was about the body compensating calory loss, but there is also other mechanism like increasing stress that boost up appetite in some people.

For a lot of people decreasing the amount of calories will be a psychological hell and can’t be done without dramatic changes to compensate. Telling them “reduce your calory intake, it’s not magical” will just be cruel and unhelpful, when they need structural rethinking of basicaly their life.

Some other will lose mostly water non-fat stuff and think their diet is working and not understand the ups and downs in their weight, and it’s not simple to manage if you don’t follow your muscle ratio.

Other people need to realize they actually don’t suffer much by reducing food intake, but never tried to because of social stigma or all the “influencers” shouting that diet is hard.

I’m not kin of the “Just do it” mantra thrown around to large swaths of people. As you point out some people might be on the edge of something, I just think they’ll eventually find what they need to do, while the rest of the people hearing the same message also have a chance of getting deeper in their hole by believing simplistic cheerleading.

My message would be “if you care about your health, talk to your doctor to know the actual stakes and see by yourself what you’re comfortable with”

I think we need to start treating obesity like we would mental illness.

We've finally, as a general society, grown out of telling people with clinical depression to just cheer up.

Yet we tell obese people to "just eat less". I think most obese people realise that if they want to lose weight they need to eat less.

I totally agree!

You know, for morbidly obese people there is the possibility of stomach stapling. This physically prohibits over eating and lowers how much hunger you feel. The intervention is covered by the public health insurance in my country. And it comes with psychological supervision.

The background is that to a lot of obese people, eating is a coping mechanism and it turns out they get depressed when they no longer can eat as much as they used to.

Stomach stapling only limits food consumption, it is very easy to maintain an obese body weight with liquid calories alone (soda for one example).

I've know people personally who had the surgery and are still obese.

Did they also have psychological guidance? I guess you can still destroy yourself, even with a smaller stomach.

The long-term results of various "stomach shrinking surgeries" are not actually that great. People experience a ton of weight loss quickly, yes, but tend to gain a lot of it back over time as they never really adjusted their habits.

Arguably, if we had better policies and handling of mental health we'd see a lot less people eating their pain away...

A simple illustration that things are more complicated is that most people go roughly from weighing nothing much at conception, 8 or so lbs at birth and 150lbs or so at 18 regardless of calorie counting. It's mostly under genetic and hormonal control at those stages and identical twins come out much the same weight. As adults it's more a mix of factors.

You should really exercise, no matter what people tell you, or how difficult it feels.

Controlling your diet seems like the easy way, and I don't think it's really healthy because you will lack energy, and it's easy to slip.

You should already stop drinking sodas and eating unnecessary snacks, but I'll never believe that it's the only thing you can do.

Remember that exercise gets easier over time, so just hang in there and take the pain. Sweating is good, all your body will be restarting if you exercise. All existing biology reacts to simulation, and dies if it stops moving. Just imagine your cells getting reorganized, cheese particles bring breathed out, and toxins getting filtered out.

Exercise will counter the problems created by bad diets but not only vascular. It will rebalance a lot of things. You will also sleep better.

There is truth in people living longer because they keep asking their body for more even when they age. All life forms thrived around biological movement. Sedentary lifestyle is the antithesis of living.

I lost 15 pounds over a period of 3 months. Just want to share the following,

a. remove sugar from all diet including coffee etc.

b. double protein intake and halve carbs. One way to do is make your dinners protein only. Find Greek yogurt with low sugar content (or its easy to make at home too). This is especially important if you are above 35.

c. Read about the difference between fat and carbs. Till the time you reach target weight, eat carbs as little as possible.

d. If exercising try things like HIIT or weights that make you 'exert' yourself. Even if its just 5 minutes per day.

Regarding motivation to avoid over eating, make sure your diets includes periodic snacks. There are lot of benefits of eating frequent but light meals (trail mixes with nuts, boiled eggs, green tea, fruits are good examples). Trail mixes with little bit of sugar are ok as they help stop the sugar craving if you have one.

Personally, I found it much easier to not focus on my diet and instead focus on my exercise. Using a fitness tracking watch meant not changing many of my eating habits. (I gave up the small soda I would have at lunch and limited alcohol to only on the weekends, and not more than 1-2 drinks per weekend night.)

Changing what you eat is very hard for many people and can be the main thing stopping them from even trying.

Damn dude, that's awesome progress! I love the consistency.

    On average, it takes about 3,500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat.
    Suppose you eat 1,000 fewer calories than your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).
    After a week your body will burn 7,000 calories or 2 lbs of fat.

I'm almost surprised that the weight curve dropped off linearly -- I always thought weight fell off quickly at the beginning, before plateauing towards the end. Great personal "myth" to have dispelled.

Can I also compliment the site design? It's very clean, and presented the information well.

It most likely follows a non-linear pattern in individuals who are consuming an extreme amount of calories. As the author notes, your calorie intake needs to drop as you lose weight to maintain that progress. If you're consuming 4000 calories a day it's really easy to cut to 2000 in the beginning by just not eating sugary crap, but getting down to say 1250 calories a day is a lot harder, which often requires meticulous management.

The consistency is hard to achieve because he had to regularly adjust his calorie intake as he lost weight. If you don't do that, it will work the way you thought - the weight loss slows over time. That's also one of the reasons people feel the last pounds are always the hardest to lose

It may have helped that he became more proficient at dieting and using the app as well as intermittent fasting.

> I'm almost surprised that the weight curve dropped off linearly -- I always thought weight fell off quickly at the beginning, before plateauing towards the end. Great personal "myth" to have dispelled.

I think that this is due to people not modifying behavior as they lose weight. A person weighing 250 lbs has a higher BMR than when they weigh 200 lbs. So if you lose weight and don't adjust your daily calorie goal, you're no longer eating as far under your BMR as you used to.

Commonly there's a sharp initial weight loss due to "water weight" loss: changing to a diet with lower sugars (simple sugar and carbs) and salt leads to retaining less water, which in turn yields a sharp initial weight loss. That doesn't keep going.

However as the essay notes you have to either keep cutting calories and/or start exercising[0]: as weight drops so will BMR, carrying less weight means making less effort (for the same result) and fatty tissues are still living tissue so they do burn some energy. And since "weight change" is a factor of calorie intake / metabolic rate, if BMR drops you have to drop calorie intake for it to remain below BMR (and sustain a ratio < 1).

In the Data chart you can see that TFA's calorie intake drops by ~500 after the initial cut. They do note this issue in the conclusion, and that they attempted the exercise route but didn't care for it so stopped after 3 months.

[0] sustained exercise builds up muscle mass, and muscle increases BMR counteracting the BMR drop from the diet

I lost 50 pounds in under 200 days, and then another 20 over the next year.

Here's what worked for me:

  * Calorie counting to work out baselines
  * Accept the feeling of being hungry and learn to relish it ("I'm losing weight if I'm hungry")
  * Do light weightlifting at home
  * Exercise naked in front of a mirror for positive and negative reinforcement

I've been struggling with weight problems and my self-image for as long as I can remember. I've tried the Dukan diet ten years ago, which was a total disaster. At my heaviest I was 84kg for 174cm. That's a BMI of 27.

Two years ago, I had a minor motorcycle crash, and at the hospital the doctor was scared about my heart rate. It was fast and it was loud, around 100 bpm at rest. I always had a heart with a fast beat so I didn't really care about it. Then, my son was born. At that moment I decided that I needed to take care of myself and started going to the gym. Alas, being a new parent takes a lot of time and energy, and I had to cancel my membership last year.

So I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting since then, and it's been the best thing I've done in a long time.

I started doing the usual "16/8", that is fast for 16 hours and eat during the following 8 hours window. Basically it meant skipping breakfast and having lunch at around 1pm, which is extremely easy to do.

The past two months, I cranked the notch a bit and I've been doing OMAD (One Meal A Day). I eat from 7pm to 9pm and the rest of the time I only drink water or black coffee. It just changed my life.

In the past two months I've lost 9kg, so now I'm at 73kg, and I've never felt so good in my life.

My mind feels sharper throughout the day, and I've developed a completely different relationship with food. I now consider it to be fuel, and I've started thinking about the quality of fuel I'm putting in my body. So now I cook and I try to chose good meat and vegetables, and I'm trying to cut on sugar and pasta. I still eat lunch sometimes (when I'm visiting my parents or I'm having lunch with a client) but I don't really care as I know that my weight is going to regulate itself in the few following days.

And my heart rate is now normal. At rest, it's beating at around 65 bpm.

If anyone's interested, I highly recommend watching Jason Fung on Youtube. His talks about fasting have been an eye opener for me. His approach on obesity through hormonal regulation is amazing.

> I tried running – about 30m, every morning, for 3 months.

For a few seconds I was confused as to how much running 30 meters would help :D But I guess he means 30 minutes.

I'm always amazed at the people who can drop a hundred lbs in a year. "I just changed my diet to 1500 calories and bam, the weight fell off."

Not that it isn't that simple, because it is. But, because for most people who are 100lbs overweight, they have a very unhealthy relationship with food. They stress eat, binge eat, binge drink, purge...

I guess it's kind of like the people who can just all of a sudden quit smoking, cold-turkey one day. Maybe they weren't addicted to nicotine in the first place?

> Not that it isn't that simple, because it is. But, because for most people who are 100lbs overweight, they have a very unhealthy relationship with food. They stress eat, binge eat, binge drink, purge...

I've tried explaining this to people who claim, "But X barely eats and doesn't lose any weight.". While there may be some variation in body efficiency and metabolism, if a person isn't losing weight over an extended period of time then they're eating more than they're burning and they're probably doing it when you can't see them.

Saw a video about two women, one overweight and one skinny. They ate together regularly and the skinny woman would always eat much more food. They followed both around and while it was true that the skinny woman ate more at meals, that was also pretty much the only time she ate anything. The overweight woman was snacking all day long.

When I was working on losing weight, I very loosely did the calorie counting thing and realized that the milk and cookies I would occasionally make after dinner was like 700 calories. Before I would just think about my meals with almost no thought about the extras.

I think a lot of it comes down to what made you decide to change. 10-12 years ago I decided to get in shape, and I calorie counted and exercised every day for the next 2 years, and stuck to the gym for a decade. Now I'm struggling to get back into it again after letting my weight creep up.

What made me start the first time was a really scary moment of getting up and nearly blacking out (not getting up to fast and getting dizzy; I'm talking things just went properly black in a way I've not experienced before or since) and having distorted vision for 20 seconds or so after I sat back down.

Couple that with persistent knee pain that made my doctor look at me for about 10 seconds before giving me an exercise sheet for old people (when you're in your 30's and get handed a sheet of exercises where the pictures are of people 60+ it's not a good sign).

Get the right motivation and it gets a lot easier to stick with it.

Different life events made me start to slip a couple of years back, and at the moment I find it hard to be motivated in part because I still feel healthier than I did last time, and I'm far stronger than I was, and feeling like I'm in a better position makes it so easy to justify that one extra helping of food.

I'm not saying that to diminish the effort it takes to stick with it, but just to point out that even for the same person, the right catalyst (or lack of one) can mean the difference between sticking through it all the way through and not even getting started.

Also keep in mind survivor bias - not many of us will write about how we hoped to drop a hundred lbs but failed 5 lbs in. 10 times in a row.

> But, because for most people who are 100lbs overweight, they have a very unhealthy relationship with food. They stress eat, binge eat, binge drink, purge...

One of the points of tracking calories/ gamifying the process of loosing weight is specifically to break those associations and reward mechanisms. If you're counting the calories you consume and constantly have a reminder of what your sacrifice of not eating will get you (eg measurable progress toward weight loss), then it is easier to alter your relationship with food.

In my case you're 100% spot on with the unhealthy relationship part. I lost around 45kg in slightly less than a year and gained most of it back in the 2 years after. For the most part, it's due to really bad habits built up over years.

Addictions are interesting things to break - I suspect they're also very different based on the person. I smoked for close to 10 years before going cold-turkey from 3 packs a day yet the nicotine cravings I had doesn't come close to how badly I crave sweet stuff most of the time.

I definitely need to lose some weight myself. Unfortunately I can never stick with anything. Including this simple method. I have done MyFitnessPal for weeks, and then fall out of the habit. Just never manage to stick with it, and not sure how to keep myself motivated for it.

Of course its always hard, half the time I eat at the salad bar at work, and I may not be able to estimate the amounts right. I always worry about underestimating how much I ate. I have even considered eating pre-packaged meals, but those always leave me hungry, and seem like a less healthy sodium filled alternative.

Not sure what my point is, but I guess I am wondering if anyone has managed to keep themselves motivated after years of failing to stay motivated? And if so, how?

You have to really want it, to have a reason to do it that is more important to you than your comfort because your body is going to have to eat itself and that's just never going to be a pleasant experience. Additionally, weight loss has permanent metabolic effects, so you'll have to keep doing it for the rest of your life.

I found an athletic hobby I really enjoy, so that works for me, but everyone has to find their own reason or come to the rational conclusion that it just isn't worth it.

Not yet. I'm still falling for the trap that after a few days "doing well" I'll award myself a binge (I'm not very overweight but would like to lose 5-10kg).

A friend was telling me about her latest date.

The guy refused to eat at dinner because he gets his energy from the sun using photosynthesis.

As laughable as it sounds, it's not out-of-line compared to all the dietary marketing myths and superstitions that somehow persist.

He eats plants.

Congrats! I have started a similar approach for the last 2 months using LoseIt as my app to count calories, and the goal to loose around 64 pounds by end of the year (going from 244 to 180 pounds).

I did join a gym, and this weekend decided to get a personal trainer for a couple months to be sure that I build some muscle mass too: my core is definitely weak, and gaining some muscle will not hurt to strengthen my body: had a few injuries (ankle/knee) where having muscles will probably avoid it.

So far on track, with almost 20 pounds lost (19.4 as of yesterday), and going to the gym 4 to 5 times a week 45 minutes to 1 hour at a time...

Losing weight is all about triggering the body's mechanisms to convert fat into energy, and not triggering its mechanisms to turn food into fat. Counting calories or exercising more are the most basic attempts to do this. If you want to add a bit of nuance you can play around with what you eat, how you exercise, when you do each. But the key thing is this:

  We're all different.

I've decided to lose weight a couple of times, on the order of 20-40 pounds each time. What has worked for me has been a combination of generally eating/drinking less, concentrating almost all of that into a small time window, and a fair bit of running. But the reason it works for me is very specific to what it takes to kick my body into fat-burning mode, how fast and how long my body sustains that, how this affects my energy levels, my physical ability to perform various kinds of exercise or tolerate various kinds of discomfort (e.g. I don't mind running on an empty stomach but I hate sleeping that way), and so on.

Something vaguely similar to what I do might work for a lot of people, but the devil's in the details. My specific formula won't work for you. Experiment and find your own. The best thing about the recent IF/TRF/OMAD/whatever fad is not that it provides a specific blueprint but that it encourages people to experiment with different variations to find their own balance points.

Welcome to middle age ;-). I had a stern talking to a few years ago by my doctor and was forced to take measures as well or face the prospect of likely complications.

This stuff is hard because we people are not very rational. So, here's a few simple practical things.

- Get a scale, put it in your bathroom, and use it as often as you can. Step 0 is simply knowing how you are doing. I know down to a few hundred grams what I weigh most of the time and I've learned the impact of my behavior on the scale. A big dinner, excessive drinking, etc. has a measurable impact that peters out over several days before I'm back to "normal". Simply knowing, has a moderating effect on what I do.

- Make changes in your behavior that you can turn into habits. Starving yourself definitely works short term but you'll bounce right back as soon as you resume your old habits. Kind of pointless. Regular fasting is great though because it becomes a habit and you don't have to take decisions.

- Try not to set your self up for being tempted to eat too much. In my case, going shopping after work when I'm tired and hungry leads to predictably bad decision making. Make sure you eat before you shop.

- Be honest about alcohol. I actually quit drinking completely for a while. Turns out that going for after work beers multiple times per week has a insanely huge caloric impact. I identified it as the single biggest thing that was impacting my weight and duly eliminated it for two years. These days I drink but much less than I used to. In my case I found it easier to not drink than to drink a little. One of the side-effects of alcohol is bad decision making. 1 Beer always leads to more beers. If this is hard for you, that's a good sign of being addicted. All the more reason to try to change things.

Counting calories in/out is a way to lose weight that works for a lot of people. It also works well in clinical & research settings, where control mechanisms are strong. That said:

"The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss"

This may be one of the most harmful statements about diet. It's mostly true, but in a fairly banal sense. A baby will have a caloric surpluss as it grow. So will a potato. Without the calories, growth will stunt. This is the trivial fact.

The growth trajectory of a potato or baby is not trivially determined by caloric surplusses. One big factor is genetics, which tell babies and potatoes to grow. There are environmental factors, many of which are calorie related.

"This is a scientific fact" is in the context it's used, an empty tautology. Caloric surplusses can be used in exactly the same way to "explain" why an elephant is bigger than a mouse, why there are 6 billion people on the planet, how a bodybuilder got his biceps or why you got fat. This makes it a nonexplanation.

A less abstract hint that we're dealing with a nonexplanation is apples. Add one apple a day to your diet, and calorie counting will tell you that amounts to 5kg fat per year.

We know from experience that people do not gain/lose 10 lbs per year by adding an apple a day to their diet. Your apetite or metabolism (these are related) will compensate for the apple.

That doesn't mean that intentional caloric restriction isn't a good method. It works well for some. Other things work well for others. We don't have perfect knowledge about what works "in the wild" or even in the lab.

All calories are equal, but some are more equal than others.

After all that you typed out it still doesn't matter, the only way to loose weight is to consume less calories than you "burn". Everything else you talk about is either different ways to accomplish this or excuses. There is no beating conservation of energy.

Depends on how you define consume[1].

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093802-stomach-tap-to-...

That is disgusting.

This is one of those inconvenient truths that no one likes talking about. Keto works, ultimately, because you're consuming fewer calories than you're burning. Low carb works, ultimately, because you're consuming fewer calories than you're burning. Exercising more works, ultimately, because you're consuming fewer calories than you're burning. Counting calories works, ultimately, because you're consuming fewer calories than you're burning.

Yes people will jump in and say "but but but but macros" and "but but but ketosis" but ultimately it's calories in < calories out.

Much like programming, everything eventually gets translated to machine code. Putting Assembly on that, and C on that, and then using Python just makes programming easier. But it doesn't change the fact that ultimately, it's all machine code. The Atkins diet is just syntactic sugar on top of the machine code of your body.

That's not to say it's a useless abstraction... there are plenty of programmers who wouldn't be doing the job, and plenty of jobs that wouldn't get done, if everyone had to program in machine code. Making it more accessible is a good thing, as long as you understand that Python ultimately becomes machine code, and your diet plan ultimately becomes calories in < calories out.

It's not an inconvenient truth, it's a trivial truth.

"You can make this program in any Turing complete language" is true. That truth is interesting to a computer science class. It's completeky useless and meaningless to a person writing a program. Say you want a program that does something with a relational database. The right advice is "you can do this with SQL."

The fact that human bodies follow the laws of physics ads no information. It is a logical red herring.

I wouldn't say it's trivial at all. I'd consider it the most important piece of knowledge there is on the subject.

You can be on a keto diet and gain weight. You can be on a low carb diet and gain weight. And if you don't understand the basic principles of why that is, you'll think that losing weight is impossible. If you believe that keto is the only way to lose weight and you gained weight while following it, you're going to quit.

You need to understand why various diet plans work. Ultimately, they all work because they help you eat fewer calories than you're burning. If you follow the diet exactly but still consume more calories than you're burning, you will gain weight. If you don't understand that fact, you've already lost.

I can't think of a single more important fact to understand than that.

> You can be on a keto diet and gain weight.

Yes, but is it fat or protein? If an adult human male weights 203 lbs at 25% body fat undergoes a transformation and goes to 250 lbs at 10% body fat, I think you'd be hard pressed to call him overweight. I think the NFL would like to have a talk with him.

If you manage to gain 50lbs of muscle just from keto and nothing else, yes you should be in the NFL.

But you should realize gaining muscle is actually difficult, and you should realize that it's basically impossible to lose weight and add substantial muscle at the same time since one requires a calorie deficit and the other requires a calorie surplus. Possible, but extremely extremely difficult and time consuming.

There's a reason professional athletes go through bulking/cutting cycles. No one is accidentally putting on 50lbs of muscle just by switching to keto.

Lots of people don't believe that bodies follow the laws of physics. I have friends that have told me with a straight face that it's possible to gain weight while having a caloric deficit if you're not eating the "right" food.

There are people in this thread saying the same thing, it is very confusing why people think this.

Everything (most things) that accomplishes weight loss will involve caloric deficits. This is true in the same way that "eat your dinner or you won't grow" is a true statement.

It's true in some uninteresting abstract sense. Growing up involves caloric surpluses. Death involves an end to caloric intake. Did that corpse rot because it stopped ingesting calories?

I don't understand how your comment is relevant.

Sure. So theoretically you can accomplish calories in < calories out by eating nothing but sugar. In practice, this doesn't work very well because sugar a) isn't filling; and b) trains your body to crave more sugar; and c) eating nothing but will leave you with deficits in pretty much every nutrient your body needs to thrive, which will in turn cause cravings. Nobody I've ever met has enough willpower to sustain a diet under those conditions.

The difficulty of weight loss isn't the math. It's how to hack your mind and body to minimize the willpower needed to maintain a caloric deficit that millions of years of evolution have optimized your system to avoid.

You will still loose weight if you are in a caloric deficit but you will have other problems.

No need for hacks. 1) Don't eat things in a box or bag, real food only, 2) Caloric deficit.

It's actually very easy, people are just lazy or addicted to poor habits.

Ok, so if you eat as much as you want of home-cooked bacon, eggs, and fresh-sliced potatoes fried in lard you'll lose weight? Or is that not "real food"?

No, it's not as simple as avoiding packaged food. And even if it were, avoiding consuming all that crap may be simple but it's not easy. It takes a lot of willpower. If that's easy for you, you're in a tiny and fortunate minority.

The human body is a complex system with all sorts of feedback loops on inputs and outputs that can make it extremely difficult to change its equilibrium.

Calling people lazy when in fact they're losing a fight against every instinct of their biology (plus all sorts of societal ills like long work hours and food deserts and advertising) is unproductive.

If you ask the Keto people, they will say you can. But the point being made is to eat healthy real food. Sure you can be dumb about it, but it's a good starting place.

Yes, the human body is very complex and metabolisms and people are all different, but you can't really do too much about that. So just eat healthy, eat less, burn more calories. What else can you do?

The point is that the reason that there's so much diet advice out there beyond calories in < calories out is that accomplishing calories in < calories out on an ongoing basis is HARD.

The advice (aside from the scams and a little bit of idiocy) is on how to achieve that deficit in a way that minimizes the willpower required - because humans suck at willpower and one's biology is constantly trying to undermine that willpower in order to achieve the "store more reserves" imperative.

>>Ok, so if you eat as much as you want of home-cooked bacon, eggs, and fresh-sliced potatoes fried in lard you'll lose weight? Or is that not "real food"?

Yes, if "as much as you want" means you maintain a caloric deficit.

You keep saying that as if human bodies are batteries and we perfectly break down all calories and nutrients in all food.

Eating two oranges vs. drinking a glass of those two oranges' juice will yield very different results on the body, both in terms of how hungry you are, and how the nutrients are broken down.

Edit: I recommend giving "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" a watch. It's an excellent talk and should be available freely on youtube.

Edit 2: Furthermore, we don't burn calories at equal pace every day, even given the same amount of effort/exercise. Metabolism change means even passively you burn calories at different intensities on different days. These mechanisms result in significant differences between people.

People often promote energy restriction without mentioning the key fact - you will be hungry.

The human body has an amazing set of machinery that's dedicated to making you eat when your metabolism needs certain kinds of materials and would rather not break down tissue to get them.

> People often promote energy restriction without mentioning the key fact - you will be hungry.

People won’t simply omit that fact. They’ll often actively argue that it’s untrue, that “you shouldn’t be hungry” when losing weight. This is only true if you simply don’t ever experience hunger normally (in which case you probably don’t need to lose weight).

Losing weight is hard. It doesn’t become easy because we pretend it is.

How dare you be hungry!

There is nothing specific about energy restriction there. To a first approximation, if you are losing weight you will be hungry, full stop.

Happy this is not quite true. There is one therapy which reduces intake without making people physiologically hungry (addiction to food is a different matter) - gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy.

True, I wasn't thinking of surgical techniques. Sometimes that works without physiological hunger (or at least much). However, it also typically comes with a host of other problems and should only ever be considered in extreme circumstances, in my opinion.

What's your definition of extreme in this context? Interested what your basing you opinion on.

I have known several people who have gone through this process, and each of them have chronic health issues related to it. Some of those seem pretty miserable.

I'm not sure how this relates to the overall statistics of long-term success, and I suspect all but one of the people I mention would still choose to do it again.

So I guess by extreme I mean something like: a) a significant amount of weight loss, the need for which is (b) driven by existing and worsening medical problems due to the weight and, importantly (c) for someone who has been seriously trying to lose the weight for some time now and repeatedly failed.

If you aren't in that sort of scenario I am unconvinced the surgical risk and risk of ongoing issues will outweigh the benefits...

For those who do calorie counting - how do you deal with all the work? E.g. if I want to make a sandwich, the process is

1. Find the nutritional information on the back of the bread bag. Enter that into the app.

2. Put slice of bread on the scale. Record weight, put into app.

3. Zero out scale with slice of bread still on it.

4. Put slice of ham on slice of bread, record weight. Enter into app... that brand of ham is not on the app.

5. Enter ham nutritional information into app. Enter ham slice weight into app.

6. Put a big amount of green salad on the sandwich. We're not counting the calories in that, but we need it to zero out the scale.

7. Put a second slice of ham on the sandwich, measure its weight, enter into app.

8. Put a second slice of bread, measure its weight, enter into app.

9. You have now spent 20 minutes making a sandwich and wrestling with an infuriating mobile interface for entering information.

And this is the most basic of foods. If I decide to actually cook something, things get super hairy, because I have to first measure the raw ingredients, then measure the weight of the cooked food, then divide the amount of calories in the ingredients by the weight of the cooked food to obtain calories/gram, then use that to calculate portion size. The ingredients I use are constrained in variety and quantity by what's available in my local stores, so I can't even make the exact same thing every time, so I have to repeat this process every day.

It also meant I couldn't eat out at most restaurants, because there was no nutritional information available, which is the point when I gave up trying to count calories, because having to make everything from scratch myself, while also measuring and entering ingredients in the app means spending 2-3 hours per day on just making food, which is time I don't really have.

Set the complete sandwich up as a single food in your app. Every time you make one, tell it you made that sandwich. Make it the same way and don't sweat the tiny differences in how thick your slice of bread is each time.

> The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss. The magnitude of the caloric difference will regulate how quickly or slowly you lose the weight.

One important point to note is that past a certain level, usually around a 500kcal per day deficit, it becomes extremely hard to maintain. Performance physically + mentally will start dropping off quickly. If you do want / need a larger deficit, do more low-intensity exercise rather than reducing caloric intake, and make sure you have a reasonably varied diet (or at least take a multivitamin).

(I used to do competitive sport with weight classes, and messing up your weight plan was never fun ...). Standard disclaimer: I am not a doctor or nutritionist etc.

Low-intensity exercise burns such a remarkably tiny amount of calories that it basically worthless. A 200lb person running will burn about 150kcal/mile, which is a single can of soda, a third of a donut, 1.5 apples, 2 eggs, or 1.5 slices of bread.

>"A 200lb person running will burn about 150kcal/mile, which is a single can of soda, a third of a donut, 1.5 apples, 2 eggs, or 1.5 slices of bread."

The error is to think that 1 mile is a long distance. That takes like 7-20 minutes.

>The error is to think that 1 mile is a long distance. That takes like 7-20 minutes.

That time frame represents a big range of abilities.

The person doing it in 7 minutes is probably in good shape. The person doing it in 20 minutes is probably walking it, and not fast.

Even walking is going to be ~100 kcal/mile, so I'd say even walking 5 miles in 1.5 hrs is substantial calorie-wise.

Even high-intensity exercise burns very little energy in the grand scheme of things. The value of exercise for weight loss is building muscle mass which increases BMR.

Why is that low? One mile is very little. But running at least 3-4 miles it is about 500kcal for that person. Is that little? Even 150-200kcal daily will make big difference in a year. And that is not even accounting for health benefits beside weight.

I doubt an overweight person is running 3-4 miles per day, that would be incredibly strenuous amounts of exercise.

Sure, but they can probably walk at least that. And (not) surprisingly walking is comparable (usually about 1/2 from jogging) as energy expenditure. Low intensity exercise (cardio) is the biggest burner of energy, since you can sustain it for long periods of time. Try burning 500 Kcal with weight lifting. You will quickly see that an hour long walk is much easier thing to do.

It's still easier to just not eat that 500kcal.

Is it?

When you are losing weight for more than a month, I guarantee you, if you are a reasonable person, you wouldn't be losing a donut with those 500 Kcal. You'd instead be giving up 500grams (almost 2 pounds) of tomatoes + 80 grams of cheese + slice of wholegrain bread. That's a meal right there.

BTW, training during weight loss (by caloric restriction, at least) is mostly done to keep your existing muscle mass + keep metabolic rate up. You wouldn't train to create a bigger deficiency. So every calorie you burn through training (even low-intensity) you should intake back as food.

I will be walking for about an 1.5h tonight to "gather" some calories for dinner. I spend my rations for a bit more caloric lunch and now I will have to pay for it. :)

Yeah, I lost and kept off half my body weight so clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about random internet know-it-all.

Correction: 500 grams -> ~ 1.1 pounds, not 2.

I've also done a substantial weight loss, while staying healthy (you can check my 1st-level comment in this same discussion).

I guess the "random internet know-it-all" is supposed to be me. I am in no way anonymous, btw (you can check my profile for links, in case you want to learn more about me), so maybe you can search for something that I have EVER posted that you are 100% sure was a lie and then try to label me? I find your comment rude and your username appropriate, Ms./Mr. AnIdiotOnTheNet.

Half my bodyweight was roughly 160lbs, that's nearly 4 times what you seem to consider "substantial" so you'll forgive me if I think I have a somewhat different perspective on weight loss than you do.

Besides which, here's what you've missed in your calculations: Precisely because there are lower calorie foods that you can eat, choosing not to eat 500 extra calories is much easier than 500 calories of walking. You can eat three of the meals you described every day (assuming your math is correct, I didn't check) and only consume 1500kcal, right? Since that's bound to be a deficit for pretty much anybody who actually needs this advice, you don't even need to walk at all. You probably should, just don't kid yourself into thinking that it makes up for poor dietary choices.

160 lbs loss and that being half of your weight is a huge accomplishment. Congrats! I hope you did it in a healthy and sustainable way and now feel much better than before. If you don't mind me asking - how tall are you, how long did the weight loss last and for how long have you kept the new weight?

44 lbs is about 1/4 of what you needed to do, yes, but that doesn't mean that my accomplishment is not significant. I wouldn't call a 6-month-long starvation insignificant effort. And 1/4 from a billion dollars is still a lot of money, isn't it? In my case it was 19% of my body weight that I trimmed, I am 6ft 1 and I am about 6 lbs above that previous mark, 6 months after I finished my weight-loss sprint (and this year I will continue to go down).

As I said - I wouldn't exercise to create a deficit. I would do it after I have achieved a big-enough deficit, and would replenish any calories expended through it with food.

So I don't try to argue you should "work" instead of "starve" - I am arguing that you should "starve" to get that deficit in and then "work to preserve muscle; continue burning on a good rate; eat more". Does that make sense?

It's the "eat more" that I don't agree with. That is seriously bad advice for food addicts because your brain will convince you of crazy things in its desire to eat and my experience is that you should never give it any room for excuses.

I'm 5'11". I achieved my lowest weight about 2 years ago and have managed to keep off all but 10lbs of it, much of which I'm confident is muscle. It took me 4-5 years to hit the low mark.

I didn't mean to imply that 44lbs was insubstantial, rather that I've had to operate at a different scale and so have a different perspective on what works and what doesn't.

> I achieved my lowest weight about 2 years ago and have managed to keep off all but 10lbs of it, much of which I'm confident is muscle. It took me 4-5 years to hit the low mark.

Good job.

It’s not all about the immediate caloric burn though - that run will boost your metabolism for the next several hours and will cause you to continue to burn calories at an elevated rate.

It's true, there were a lot of 60-90 min sessions sitting on an exercise bike. High intensity can work for lots of people, but depends quite heavily on your weight / health condition. There's also a heightened risk of illness and injury if you're combining lots of high intensity training with a significant caloric deficit.

I'd suggest talking to a PT and /or your doctor before jumping into doing high-intensity work if you haven't before.

That's not that low. 3 miles is a fairly short run and about 500 kcal burned.

Do that 3 times a week and you'll burn a pound every second week or 25 pounds a year.

I also find that I tend to eat less if I exercise. No idea why, but it just seems to work that way for me.

IMO one of the key values of exercise (when it comes to losing weight, at least) is mental. Sure, maybe I can eat more calories in a spoonful of peanut butter than I can burn in an hour of exercise ... but the exercise makes me feel healthier and more willing to stick to my dietary goals.

And let's face it, losing weight only comes down to calories in vs calories out when you look at it biologically. In reality it's 100% a psychological problem.

I used the same approach explained in the article and it also worked very very fast for me. The most pain to me was using MyFitnesPal, that is really annoying because of its usability. It was a pain to use it. I will try to use pencil and paper, and one time a day, type it all on the app.

Myfitnesspal and and fatsecret (the two most popular apps) are annoying as hell in the same way. They make it very difficult to just add calories because they want you to help fill in their food database.

Anyone know of an app that only tracks calories? I personally don't care about my "macros" and salt etc . There's almost no chance of going over recommended values at 1600 calories a day anyways unless you only eat gas station food

Yes, and one of the things that makes me sad is when the screen delays to update. When you touch on the screen to add a food, it goes to a blog post (the slow UI update make you do mistake several times each use). I wish to have time to develop a better app, but I already busy with another. There is a big opportunity for solving this problem.

PS: I reported the bugs but I always was ignored, even being a paid user.

The fun here is that the app gave me more pain than changing my eating habits.

Not trying to push our app too much here but we made Bitesnap for this reason. I was overweight as a kid and tried really hard to use MFP but it was the biggest chore of the whole weight loss process. With Bitesnap we're trying to automate things using computer vision.

This is old, but MFP does have the quick add at the bottom of each add food page where you just stick in the calories.

Agreed, MyFitnessPal is really aggravating to use and if that wasn't bad enough their food database is full of inaccuracies and mis-spellings.

The app keeps on the phone a very small fraction of the total food database, that is only the food which you have already entered. Trying to use it in the Paris metro, where for the most part I don't get any signal, was very frustrating and I ended up uninstalling it and deleting my account.

Here is what I recently started doing after fits and starts to get into better shape over the years. Losing weight is relatively easy. Keeping it off long term is hard.

So instead of trying to be small, I've started to embrace the fact that I am a larger person whose body wants to be on the larger side. I started lifting really heavy weights, focusing more on adding muscle and gaining strength and a lot less on weight. I'm doing the Starting Strength program, which is a basic power lifting program.

I started in early May at around 240 at 6'1. I'm now about 236, so a little bit of gradual weight loss, but I've dropped a lot of fat and added on muscle.

I am trying to make sure I eat healthy and clean, but don't do calories counting or anything like that.

The other benefit of power lifting is that it requires you to take care of yourself in other parts of your life. You must get good sleep. The more, the better. Otherwise, your body can't require from all of the stress. You also need to eat good foods to help your body recover from muscle tears and add on new muscle.

I can understand the allure of mostly focusing on calorie counting as technically just eating less doesn't require additional time, but I have found the 3x 1-1.5 hour lifting sessions well worth it. I feel and look a lot better. Also, the focus and commitment required to do power lifting well spills over to the rest of your life. I'll provide an update after six months.

This is great! Congratulations.

I recently lost a little less than 50 pounds doing Whole30 (for 30 days, followed by a lighter version with occasional exceptions). I liked it because I didn't really need to count calories. Yes, it technically falls into the "fancy diet" category since you're eliminating food groups. It had a few advantages that I think straight calorie counting didn't, though.

Its restriction from any added sugar or sweetener both naturally reduces calorie intake massively and tends to stabilize energy levels throughout the day, while eliminating cravings over time. I've found that I don't really want to eat many of the things I used to.

The foods that Whole30 eliminates tend to be emptier calories than others. There is some science behind the choices but admittedly it's not peer reviewed or anything. That said, again, I don't really miss toast, bread, or cereal that much. Dairy was hard at first but easy now (and again, swapping for water eliminates a bunch of calories). I think not drinking Diet Coke helped my health, but I have a harder time identifying why.

Also, I don't really have to try on this plan. My weight just tends to drop off without thinking about it.

I did Weight Watchers before, which kinda worked but left me both hungry fairly constantly and frustrated by the constant food lookups and logging.

Some consider Whole30 woo or unhealthy, which is fine, but it works pretty well for me.

The most critical part of this story is that he was consistent. When it comes to health, diet and exercise consistency is the most important factor.

Nutrition and weight regulation is not as simple as a direct function of calorie intake. The storage of fat in our bodies does not follow the "laws of physics" like someone down in the comments mentioned. This field is actively being studied (and heavily lobbied/backed by some food companies).

I'm glad this strategy worked for you, but I hope people don't take this as advice that is easily generalized.

The only wait to loose weight is to consume less calories than you burn.

Yes, duh. You keep saying this like it's a revelation to people who're discussing which mechanisms are available to a) control how many calories consumed and b) control how many calories are burned, and c) what feedback loops exists between a) and b).

For a lot of people here, I suspect, it's like getting a lecture on if statements when discussing multi-threaded control flow.

> The second greatest feature is the food database. MyFitnessPal has fairly accurate calorie estimates for almost anything you’d ever eat. I recorded what I ate, every single meal and snack, every single day, and even now I still do it. I’ll probably do it for many years to come. It’s amazingly helpful to stay on track.

I did this for about 6 months to a year, and yes, it absolutely works. But it is soooo tedious as to be almost impossible to keep up with.

I found that using my fitness tracking watch to measure how many calories I burn while taking daily walks and going to the gym 2x a week was far easier and more rewarding than the calorie counting.

I find the calorie counting apps often have a limited database of foods, and if you're eating healthy, and not buying packaged foods as much, you have to enter tons more data, and it's much less accurate because you don't know how much of a given food you're eating unless you measure everything before cooking it (which is also tedious). It works, but not without a lot of effort, which is what turns most people off from losing weight.

I would wager that hackernews is probably one of the worst places for misinformation in terms of discussing health/fitness/weight loss.

I am seeing a lot of disregard for exercise and in particular heavy weightlifting which has a ton of benefits to daily life.

The original post itself shows a guy who goes for 1000 kcal deficit which is widely known as being twice as much as the healthy maximum.

For losing weight, diet is much more important than exercise.

Studies have shown that very few people can successfully lose weight through exercise alone, and that dieting is much more effective.

Which is easier, cutting out soda and sweets or running every day? Keep in mind that running one mile burns about 100 calories. Dessert can easily be upwards of 500 calories. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/running-b...

Also, exercise stimulates hunger and you will naturally eat more to compensate for the lost calories.

Sorry if I was unclear. I know that it's all about diet for losing weight. But lifting weights is necessary to prevent yourself ending losing lots of muscle during calorie deficits. Especially in the case of the OP - having a calorie deficit as high as his is likely to cause the body to burn muscle mass at a much higher rate than a lower deficit would - so lifting helps to prevent this among other clear benefits

> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss. The only thing you really need to know is that you should be eating fewer calories than your body burns everyday. If you do this, you will lose weight – it’s science. Nothing else matters for weight loss.

True but completely disingenuous. If you normally eat 3,000 calories/day, and cut it to 2,000 calories/day, you won't necessarily lose weight -- many people's metabolisms will simply slow down equivalently.

Happy for this guy that it worked, but not all of us are so lucky. Turns out there are a lot of different factors that affect our metabolism, which can be just as important (if not more).

Edit: see Gary Taubes' work on this, extremely detailed stuff on what regulates metabolism and fat storage, there's nothing simple about it -- e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scien...

This is NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE AT ALL.

I don't know who to believe --- are there good, definitive references for either of you?

No matter what: if you eat below your BMR (basal metabolic rate), you WILL lose weight. The problem is that most people wildly miscalculate their BMR.

Your BMR is all the calories your body burns simply by existing. Throw a caloric deficit on top of that and you will lose weight.

Some people have ridiculously low BMR's that don't match their appetites. Some people with hormonal or thyroid issues might have a BMR of 1,000 calories. It sucks but it's true. Those people will be stuck overweight for life because it's pretty damn hard to eat under 1,000 calories for the rest of your life.

Other people have ridiculously high BMR's and really struggle to gain weight.

The key is finding your BMR through trial and error, and eating below that calorie rate or exercising yourself into a deficit.

>If you normally eat 3,000 calories/day, and cut it to 2,000 calories/day, you won't necessarily lose weight -- many people's metabolisms will simply slow down equivalently.

Kinda, sorta, not really. It's about eating under maintenance. What you "normally eat" is irrelevant; what matters is that you are eating less than you burn and that you're eating quality food. I have been in and around this stuff for decades and I have yet to see a person who counts calories (correctly) and eats the right stuff fail to lose weight. Typically your sort of attitude comes from those who only partially follow a diet and then complain that "nothing works" and "it must be genetic".

This is nonsense and you're doing more harm than good if you repeat this to people honestly trying to get healthy.

The issue isn't temporary weight loss. Pretty much anyone can have success with that -- it's long term maintenance.

Biggest Loser contestants were very good at short-term weight loss. But many completely destroyed their metabolisms, causing them to burn hundreds of calories less than expected. It's very hard for many of them not to gain a lot of weight back because their bodies are burning so few calories.

People need to be really careful not to crush their metabolisms when dieting, otherwise all you will do is yo-yo diet, making yourself fatter in the end.

Doing a more moderate caloric deficit with heavy weight training is probably your best path forward. It'll take some time, but you won't crush your metabolism.

No professional would recommend a crash diet for a typical person, so I'm not sure what your point is. You're right; moderate deficit is best, but I don't see anyone recommending anything else and you implied that calorie accounting in general doesn't work, which is nonsense.

Also, one big issue yo-yo dieters encounter is that, once they reach their goal, they go back to their old habits. You can eat more once you hit your goal, but you can _never_ go back to your old, unhealthy diet if you want to maintain what you accomplished.

What? He's 100% right.

You will lose weight, it's just not in the areas you want. I've followed a similar path and have slowly but surely lost weight all over (~100lbs at this point): abdomen, chest, arms, legs, face, and neck.

It really is as simple as a calorie deficit. Good nutrition mixed in with that and exercise can help to bolster results but you don't need them. The first 6 months all I did was watch calories—no exercise—and lost a good 50-60 lbs.

The thing missing for most folks isn't genetics, it's patience. If you start off big, it takes a long time to "get skinny." You lose a ton of weight early on and then as your body adapts, fat loss slows but doesn't stop. That's not disingenuous.

> If you normally eat 3,000 calories/day, and cut it to 2,000 calories/day, you won't necessarily lose weight

You're absolutely correct, because what you said has nothing to do with what the article said.

What the article said: If you normally put 10 gallons in your car every day, but you only burn 5, you need to put in less than 5 every day to make sure you will eventually run out (ie lose weight)

What you said: if you normally put 10 gallons in your car every day, but you only burn 5, cutting down to only 7 gallons a day doesn't mean you'll run out eventually (i.e. lose weight).

In conclusion: It doesn't matter how much you've been eating, it only matters that from now on you eat less than you're burning!

I'm not sure you're understanding.

> What the article said: If you normally put 10 gallons in your car every day, but you only burn 5, you need to put in less than 5 every day to make sure you will eventually run out (ie lose weight)

I'm saying that if you respond by putting 4 in your body, your body may respond by only burning 4 instead of burning its usual 5 -- and you don't lose weight. This is why weight loss can be so much more difficult for some people than others. (In practice, people trying to lose weight can feel a loss of mental energy, get cold easily and start wearing hoodies instead of t-shirts at the office, they no longer fidget, etc. -- there are lots of ways for your body to slow down in response to less fuel, and they don't always include weight loss.)

> your body may respond by only burning 4 instead of burning its usual 5

Absolutely. In fact your body will repsond and burn less (because you weigh less).

So what that means is this is an iterative process. Put 4 in your body and watch how much you're burning. If you're now burning less than 4, put 3 in your body. Now watch how much you're burning. If you're now burning less than 3, put 2 in your body.

It's an ongoing process of re-evaluation and adjustment, and every body is different. But they are very much the same in the one way that science limits to universe.

If you put in less energy than you use, your body can't invent that extra energy it needs to function, and therefore your body must start to consume it's energy reserves. It's not possible for anything else to happen.

Your metabolism is a little bit elastic, it is most definitely not 100% elastic, which is what you argued.

The vast majority of people will definitely lose weight if they cut a third of their intake, all else being equal.

You're arguing about a marginal effect, and arguing against the primary effect. The primary effect is that eating more than burned is what caused the weight gain, and eating less than burned will cause weight loss. That's true regardless of metabolic elasticity, but even so changes in metabolic rate account for only a small fraction of changes in intake.

For anybody interested in accurate monitoring of body weight, I highly recommend checking out a Bod Pod near you. You step in this pod, it vacuum seals, and it uses air displacement to measure your body fat percentage (accuracy usually around 0.5% [1]). Afterwards they print out a sheet that has specific measurements of everything: weight, height, body fat %, non-body fat %, etc.

Last I tried, it cost $30 at a local university and took about 30 minutes. Once you know your current body fat % it is much easier to figure exactly how many lbs you need to lose to reach your target %. When going by BMI much of that is guesswork.

Locations here: http://www.cosmed.com/en/contact-us/test-site-locator

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10487380

That sounds amazing. Too bad the nearest center is 500km away :(

Many people in this thread are talking about CICO (Calories In/Calories Out). While this does "work", I quite like this paper to explain why it's only a proximate cause of weight gain/loss.

"How calorie-focused thinking about obesity and related diseases may mislead and harm public health. An alternative"

"Abstract: Prevailing thinking about obesity and related diseases holds that quantifying calories should be a principal concern and target for intervention. Part of this thinking is that consumed calories – regardless of their sources – are equivalent; i.e. ‘a calorie is a calorie’. The present commentary discusses various problems with the idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ and with a primarily quantitative focus on food calories. Instead, the authors argue for a greater qualitative focus on the sources of calories consumed (i.e. a greater focus on types of foods) and on the metabolic changes that result from consuming foods of different types. In particular, the authors consider how calorie-focused thinking is inherently biased against high-fat foods, many of which may be protective against obesity and related diseases, and supportive of starchy and sugary replacements, which are likely detrimental. Shifting the focus to qualitative food distinctions, a central argument of the paper is that obesity and related diseases are problems due largely to food-induced physiology (e.g. neurohormonal pathways) not addressable through arithmetic dieting (i.e. calorie counting). The paper considers potential harms of public health initiatives framed around calorie balance sheets – targeting ‘calories in’ and/or ‘calories out’ – that reinforce messages of overeating and inactivity as underlying causes, rather than intermediate effects, of obesity. Finally, the paper concludes that public health should work primarily to support the consumption of whole foods that help protect against obesity-promoting energy imbalance and metabolic dysfunction and not continue to promote calorie directed messages that may create and blame victims and possibly exacerbate epidemics of obesity and related diseases."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

I started body weight exercises with a friend who guided me—and is very experienced in the area, and also started being in a slight [1] calories deficit.

I've been at it for about 5 months now and I've dropped 30 kg as of a few days ago (from 118kg), which is 66lbs (from 260lbs).

The added benefit of exercise is that my energy levels are much more stable throughout the day, and my mood is generally better and more positive.

Also, this wasn't so much of a diet as a lifestyle change. I always wanted to get into body weight exercises and gymnastics, but got discouraged by injuries and lack of knowledge/guidance. So, I'm very lucky to have met my friend (in more ways than one) who helped set me on the path I wanted to be!

[1]: The deficit might not be so slight anymore, given I gained strength and increased my intnesity whilst keeping the calories the same. I've started eating a bit more to compensate for that now, but I'm still in a net deficit.

Last year I lost 44 pounds (20kg) by counting calories (I also used MyFitnessPal to count and record everything).

My advice to people who want to be successful into this, would be:

1. Be realistic with the calories you consume. Use an app to track everything down. Eat more raw vegetables and lean protein-source foods that are easy to account for and will fill you up (so you will not feel hungry all of the time). Measure everything to the gram. Buy a scale and try preparing most of your food yourself.

2. Don't have cheat-days. Get to your goal and then, you add a few hundred calories a day to equalize intake/expenditure (so you stop losing weight), so you will have a few hundred more calories a day to eat - now you can (hopefully) have what you want and would not be cheating.

3. Be realistic with the calories you spend. Get an armband to measure your movement throughout the day, measure yourself on the scale every week and if things don't add-up - correct for the error.

4. Don't go for more than 0.5kg loss per week. Having such a huge deficit to make 1kg of fat go away within a week can render you in a very unproductive state where you barely can get anything done during the day (that's ~1285 Kcal deficit a day, which is half of your normal calories per day if you are 30 yo male, not gaining or loosing weight and you weigh-in at 220 punds / 100kg, you would usually be expending about 2600 Kcal if you have at least some activity during the day like an hour of walking).

5. Don't listen to people's stories about weight loss and "what worked for them", if they are in their early 20's (I am 30 yo). Younger bodies (and minds) are more susceptible to magic.

If at the start of your journey you maintain some muscle through training - you will have to continue training during this period of weight loss, or that is the first thing you will lose. Even then, you have to know you will lose some muscle. I personally don't care about looks (I run and I train in Boxing) and losing some of that muscle doesn't bother me, since at the end I feel lighter, quicker and (compared to my new weight-class) stronger.

Good luck!

P.S.

- Even if you weren't training when you started and you are not trying to maintain gained muscle - doing some interval training during the weight loss will help keep your metabolic rate from falling. Your body will (partially) adjust to the weight loss by lowering your metabolism and this will solve part of the hunger, but you will feel sleepy, slow and tired and you will be burning less fat overall. Pushing yourself for just a few minutes a day with some HIIT or something similar, can offset this.

> Don't listen to people's stories about weight loss and "what worked for them", if they are in their early 20's

Especially if they're much younger, but not only then. We're all different - in our bodies' responses to different stimuli, in our schedules and other constraints, in our tolerance for different kinds of privation or discomfort. Even among people of similar ages and life circumstances, results will vary widely. The important thing is to experiment with different kinds of diet and exercise, different schedules of when to do which, and observe what's working vs. what's not.

So the really hard part is not knowing what to do but managing to do it - willpower, feeling hungry, craving sugars, whatever.

I've lost 15kg (so far) following the current (they keep changing it) Weight Watchers plan, which is mostly a series of tricks designed to create a calorific deficit without me feeling hungry and miserable all the time. Works for me. Okay, so I have to pay, but it works and that's important (and I can afford it).

I don't think any one method is going to work for everyone, because so much of effective weight loss is a mental game and you need to find the game that works for you. Research, think, consider yourself and your needs and then go for it. Personally, I tried calorie counting and I just couldn't handle the nitpicking nature of it. WW turn everything into much broader units, which are rather crude but it all seems to work out in the end.

Although that said I'm currently stuck 3kg away from my goal weight because having crossed into the "healthy" BMI category and experienced a huge boost in my energy levels, physical fitness and capability my motivation has faded somewhat. I look better (people have commented, which is nice). I can dance more (I'm a morris dancer, yesterday I danced a solo jig after three other dances in blazing sunshine and I was fine, couldn't have done that last year) and I can do much, much better at aikido training (not only do I have more stamina throwing people around, I can also be thrown much better as I can fall better because I've got less excess mass to worry about when I hit the floor - I've been told it's much more fun to train with me than it was when I was at my heaviest).

So however you do it... it's worth it. But it's impossible to say there's just one method anybody needs, because you have to get over your own mental hurdles first.

Which is not just the system btw... I had to change jobs to give me the mental space to pull it off, as I was miserable and depressed and comfort eating constantly.

You don’t have to exercise.

I tried that last year and lost... 1kg over the course of three months on a decent calorie deficit(or so I thought). Gained that much - and more - in two weeks or so during Christmas. Granted I didn't move at all, because I was working remotely and had no incentive to go out.

I guess when you're obese your diaphragm working to keep you oxygenated is enough "exercise", so that may be sound advice if you're on that end of the scale.

I know my last year's approach led me to lose a significant amount of muscle mass, so I recommend some light exercise - yoga works well because you only need 2m x 2m of real estate, a mat and thirty minutes of your time daily. At this rate you're well within the recommended amount of physical activity.

>or so I thought

That would be your issue. If you're eating a good bit below your maintenance level you'll lose weight. Period. You were not. You likely overestimated maintenance else you simply ate more than you tracked.

I'm not trying to discount your progress, but you likely didn't lose 1kg of fat. If you were actively trying to change your diet, you probably consumed fewer carbs or less salt, which having fewer carbs and less salt causes your body to retain less water. Low carb diets often show a very dramatic weight loss in the first week because as carbs are flushed from your body, the water they're holding onto is flushed as well.

I think you misread the parent comment. 1kg is not much weight and is not presented as if it is. He’s saying he didn’t exercise and essentially lost no weight.

I understand that, the point I was trying to make is the "I gained that back over the holiday" isn't actually gaining the weight back, it's just putting more carbs and salt into your body so the scale goes up, but the fat levels likely didn't change.

I understand they were dancing around saying "I didn't lose anything", I was just trying to make the point that they likely didn't gain much either. Tiny fluctuations like that happen more around water weight than fat weight.

Key paragraph

I naturally started eating healthy foods because I could eat more of them. If you eat a chocolate bar, you will still be hungry. For the same amount of calories, you could eat a few bowls of vegetables and be full. That said, the best part about this overall approach is that you can still eat whatever you want – just count the calories."

That is essential to both taking the weight off and keeping it off. I followed only this rule, which meant avoiding refined carbs and fatty foods,and I didn't even count calories and I took off 50 pounds over about three years, and have kept it off.

I still don't count calories, I eat as much as I want, I just make sure it is mostly high in bulk with a fair amount of protein, and reasonably low in fat.

See also: the hacker's diet, which is basically this plan writ large. https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

What clicked for me with this plan was that you can automatically adjust your caloric intake on the basis of how well you're tracking your goal weight loss rate. You don't even have to count calories well: if you're undercounting, the system corrects for that by telling you to lower your intake goal.

Realizing that it was mathematically impossible not to succeed if I just followed the simple steps was the spark I needed to get started.

https://fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

The Hacker's Diet – How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition

first published 1994, also comes with software tools

You don't have to exercise, but keep in mind that way you'll go from being fat to being skinny fat. I made that mistake myself and to be honest my body looked better before losing weight.

I went from 260 to 160 and I my body looked way better at 160 than it did at 260 so ymmv...

For people who accomplish things like this, I often wonder about how often they tried and failed in the past and what factors changed to make them finally succeed.

The approach I have to lose weight is fasting. One meal a day for a long period of time (3+ months) + daily exercise. The hard part is to get into the diet. Fighting appetite is very hard, it's what drives us to leave our cave to hunt a mammoth. So the hard part is to get into a habit of eating less. After a couple of weeks, appetite has reduced, and it is easy to follow. One way to get into this habit is the Ulysses approach (tying oneself to a mast, i.e. going to a place where you can't snack). Another is to utilize a period of depression or after having catched a bug which results in no appetite for a few days. And then the secret is zero exception. A single weekend of indulgence and the appetite comes back and the diet is dead.

Another secret is also to do that in a period of low stress. High stress will kill any diet.

As with many things in life, it is a matter of persistence and sacrifice. You have to want it bad enough to suffer through your body literally eating itself, and to keep trying things until you find something that allows you to endure that suffering for the rest of your life, because you don't ever get to stop.

All my previous attempts at weight loss had been exercise based, but to be honest I was too damn lazy to stick at it. Eating less on the other hand is actually less effort (only being slightly facetious). But seriously - if you bring in your own lunch to work, you are totally in control of the calories you will eat that day (assuming you leave your wallet behind! Work vending machines are your pernicious enemy.)

Willpower is of course the problem for all strategies, and breaking habits. If you get used to your chocolate bar at 3pm every day, it is hard to suddenly forgo it.

So where does all the fat go?

I find the answer rather interesting as for 10 units of fat you burn, you breath out about 8.4 units of carbon dioxide and 1.6 units of water. Applying this to imperial pounds means that:

1 lb fat -> 0.84 lbs CO2 and 0.16 lb water.

¹https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.h...

Does anyone here have any good science they can point to that would help us understand what the short and longer term effects of prolonged Calorie Deficit are on your Basal Metabolic Rate? I've heard a lot about the BMR going down significantly and staying down, after significant calorie deficit weight loss, leading to people gaining back a lot of weight even if they are eating a lot less than they were before.

This is true, which is one of the reasons why this writeup is misleading.

You almost certainly need to exercise, because your body will adapt to simply eating less. When it can't adapt, you're probably starving yourself, which is unhealthy and ineffective for long term weight loss.

Contestants on the "Biggest Loser" have massive changes to their BMR burn rates making it very difficult to keep weight off long-term. [1]

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weig...

@agrinman On the days where you dipped into really low calories (say <1000) do you recall if that was real consumption or just a lack of tracking?

I find my MFP calories are not good data because somedays I say "screw it" and stop counting or don't try and track because I really don't know how much I'm eating (is it 6oz, 4oz or 8oz of chicken, not sure because its just a pile)

I feel like there are some parralels between understanding how you lose weight and how you retain money / stop yourself living paycheck to paycheck.

The Calories in / Calories out dichotomy is similar to the double accounting Assets = Liabilities + Capital in that it is so simple, but until you start to pay attention you can make that equation massively unbalanced to the point it starts to hurt you.

I have one rule - I eat cake only when I do ~1000kCal aero training on that given day. That's like pushing on a bike for an hour for me (hilly terrain with interval sprints). I've noticed that if I don't do that, I gain weight, if I do that, I keep the weight and when I do only training, I lose weight, given everything else stays the same.

1358 kcal/day? Is that sustainable/healthy for an average sized male? That sounds really low - low enough that I feel like I'd be missing other components of my diet (vitamins).

Simple online BMR calculators put my BMR at >1500 kcal/day. Add life on top of that, plus some exercise, and that value needs to be 2000+, sometimes much higher.

Not healthy at all, every nutrition professionnal will tell you.

90% of people using this "diet" will gain all the weight back; if not more, for lots of reason.

There are direct simple reasons like, by eating much less than your BMR, you are going to loose a ton of muscle mass, even though you eat "enough" protein. The lost of this muscle mass will make your BMR even lower, make your testosterone level lower, and lots of other bad consequences for your hormones.

There are lots of studies about weight loss, comparing every diet, and almost all diets don't work in the long run.

The only thing that works in the long run is eating slightly less calories than needed, with healthy food, with good macros/micros, and building muscle mass, to keep the metabolism rate high.

The thing is, with this type of diet it could take years to achieve your target weight, and not a lot of people are able to accept that, even though it's the healthiest thing to do.

> Not healthy at all, every nutrition professionnal will tell you.

Given the track record of nutritional professionals that's practically an endorsement.

What has happened in my experience, and as the author mentions, is that to keep yourself from feeling hungry all the time on a low-calorie diet you will automatically start eating low-calorie-density food.

The most obvious choice here are things with lots of mass that are readily available and suitable for snacking on. For me that's cherry tomatoes and carrots dipped in hummous.

While low in calories, these foods (vegetables) tend to have a high density of nutrients, so I believe what happens is you end up getting more or the same amount of nutrients for fewer overall calories.

I guess I'm just blown away by the 1300kcal figure maintained for a year.

I frequently consume that before lunch and my dinners are often that large on their own. I'm 5'7" and 150lbs. I do workout regularly, but even without the exercise, I don't see how I could stay -200kcal/day on my BMR without making a mess of my metabolism and supplementing vitamins.

When you add the hummus, vegetables are no longer low-calorie.

There are degrees of hummous.

I'm sure store-bought is made with lots of oil. When I make it at home it's mostly chickpeas with a little tahini, usually about 1tbsp per carton of beans.

Tahini = ~90kcal / tbsp Chickpeas = ~150kcal / carton

= 240kcal / bowl of homemade hummous

If I'm eating it with carrots I'll get about eight servings from a bowl. So say 100g carrots is 40kcal, plus 240/8, equals 70kcal.

Right enough it about doubles the calories from the carrot, but it is a _lot_ tastier, and 70kcal isn't going to break your budget too hard if you're being careful generally.

1358 cals/day would be a 642 cal deficit a day with a 2000 calorie expenditure. That's a loss of about -4500 calories/week or around 1.28 pounds (~3500 cal/lb). A typically suggested healthy weight loss rate is around 1-2 pounds/week so those numbers are pretty reasonable to lose weight.

If you are not trying to lose a ton of weight, it might be a bit drastic and you would certainly want to take in other considerations based on your goals.

Sure, but maintaining that deficit for a year or more sounds unhealthy to me. A few weeks here and there to lose a bit, sure.

I guess I'd rather exercise than starve myself. :)

Why does that 'sound' unhealthy? If you want to actually lose weight and eat healthy you need to change your lifestyle, not do a diet here or there for a week or 2.

The more you exercise the more you can get away with eating!

(Sure if you are 5'7 and weigh 150lbs, that would be unhealthy for a year, you don't need to lose 50lbs. But that would be just fine for someone that is overweight)

A deficit is a deficit whether you get there via exercise or eating less.

Are you sure?

Exercising to the point of burning >1000 calories is not trivial. You're basically committing to run like 8 miles just for that amount. Then you'll still be hungry with the additional food.

Your BMR is far more important to weight loss than what most people can do with exercise.

http://physiqonomics.com/exercise-pointless/

I was thinking the same thing. That is definitely on the low end, probably a bit too low from what I have seen. Regular life doesn't need to be added on top of it, that is included in the minimum, but any exercise should. However most people exercising aren't going to be burning more than a few hundred calories. 1800 is probably a safer place to be. And would probably suggest vitamins even if they aren't that effective just to help out a little when that low.

That's totally believable. My own calorie log for the year shows me at a daily average of just under 1600/day and even with 6+ hours at the gym every week that's still only allowing me to just barely keep my weight from increasing again.

As you lose weight, you cause irreparable damage to your metabolism and for the rest of your life it will burn fewer calories. The more you lose, the slower it gets. It's a bitch and a half.

Congrats! This is a great achievement. It’s not easy. Don’t let up! Maintenance of your current weight can be just as tough.

You don't need to exercise, but you'll lose more muscle if you don't.

But yes, diet is much more important than exercise.

Well, to be fair you will lose it if you had it in first place. People who don't bulk up by training, only cary the muscle that... carries them. As long as you keep your protein intake as recommended, you will keep the muscle you need in your regular physical activity level.

Sure, but doesn't have a person more muscle, when they have more weight to carry?

Yep. As I said: > ... you will keep the muscle you need in your regular physical activity level

> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss

This is actually not so clear cut. It's currently being debated if this model is right or the hormonal model is right. https://peterattiamd.com/do-calories-matter/

What I suspect with the author was that his caloric deficit was also restricting carbs and once the carbs was restricted his body started to burn fat when there was no more insulin in his blood.

Counting carbs and restricting them leads to an easier lifestyle to follow where you don't worry about getting hungry and making sure you're burning more then you eat (Vs counting calories).

Congrats man! Nice write up. I realize this isn’t a good hn reply but wanted to give support!

What about going the other way - gaining weight? Does anyone have tips or reccomendations on how I can gain weight. I'm 6'3" and 160lbs and have always wanted to gain weight but I struggle with consistently eating 5 meals a day.

Eat more calorically dense foods and more of them per meal.

Gaining weight is simple, it's the other way around. You need to eat more calories than you burn. So just like with losing weight, track everything with a scale and a food log (like myfitnesspal). See how many calories you need to start gaining weight and start tracking. Maybe you'll notice you're not eating at a surplus at your age, activity level, etc. And just like losing weight, it will take a while, depending on how much your surplus is. You might gain 1-2 lbs a week.

Averaging 1350 calories for an adult male at over 275 lbs is incredible willpower. I cut 22 lbs in 6 months for a bodybuilding show and the lowest I ever got down to was 1750 calories and that was very, very difficult. Amazing work!

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13413725. Here using closed-loop feedback for weight loss.

congrats!

You can find here[0] a lot of progress pics from ppl, who lost a lot of weight with simple cico[1]. I do PSMF[2] sometimes for 1-2 Weeks when I feel to lose 1-4kg.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/progresspics/ [1] calories in, calories out [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein-sparing_modified_fast

Exercise isn't only great because it burns calories directly. What it does is retain / build up muscle, and that in turn increases your base calories burning rate, each day.

A pound of muscle (which is a lot) needs like 8 calories for maintenance.

As someone who lost over 100 pounds (6"2 and from 279 to 169 pounds), I can honestly say that loosing weight is way easier than it seems, provided you have a good work-life balance.

I lost the first 45 pounds in 3 weeks by doing the following daily routine:

- 4 hours of swimming

- 1.5 hours of weights lifting

- 3 hours of swimming

- 2 hours of table tennis

1 BIG lunch, no other meal for the day, TONS of water.

Apps, books and all are completely overrated. Just be motivated and listen to your body, stop exercise when you reach your limit, rest, repeat..

The other 55+ pounds were lost over 2 years and a half without much exercise, just find the arrangement of fruits, lightweight cheese and vegetables + tuna that you love and eat it as often as possible.

Were you working full time for those three weeks? How did you manage to find the time? That is over 10 hours of exercise a day, plus work, and commute, and everything else you need to do. Seems like there would be no time for sleep, which I would expect to need to sleep for a long time after 10 hours of exercising. I guess the real question is, what was the rest of your day like?

As mentioned, I took 3 weeks off. When you exercise 10hrs/day, even if you pick sports that you love (what I did), you don't want to work or do any "forced" commute. Take some time for yourself and your health, this is investment too.

Over 10 hours of daily exercise sounds harsh…

Just commit for a short period of time, this helps. I'm the kind of person that makes tradeoff with its own brain.

Deal was: exercise A LOT but not for an extended period of time, eat less (once a day) but eat food that I like in quantities that I enjoy.

> good work-life balance

> following daily routine

Honestly curious how you have 10.5 hours to spend at the gym every day, then 8 hours at work, and still have a life? Lost 85 lbs recently myself and have extremely flexible remote developer hours and still don't think I could find 10 hours a week to spend at a gym.

I took 1 month completely off to correct the trajectory of my health. Rest of the time I just do 2 hours of gym/swimming.

I wouldn't consider that easy, scheduling aside 10.5 hours for exercise daily is unfeasible for a lot of us.

It doesn't have to be high-intensity, you can start pretty chill as long as you do something all day long, possibly in water to burn even more calories (beach paddles, surf, bodyboard, waterwalking...).

I may be reading it wrong, but do you perhaps mean the following 'weekly' routine? If you're honestly doing 10.5 hours of exercise per day, then consider me amazed, but 4 hours of swimming per day seems nigh impossible for all but the fittest.

As mentioned that was only during 3 weeks or so that I took off. Short self-commitment is the only thing that works for me.

Also you don't have to go full power mode for 4 hours, the important part is to be in the water and move as much as possible. I preferred on my end to do half-day at the beach and half-day at the swimming pool.

I am not sure I would call a 7500 calorie deficit for three weeks to be 'way easier than it seems.'

You'll just feel some hunger before sleep but all the gym has such a great impact that it becomes pretty easy to support it, then your stomach will get to a normal size again.

I lost quite some weight in the past, not as drastic as the writer, but I was wondering if the writer had any issues with loose skin after losing weight.

that's a great result.

did you find exercise made you hungry? maybe that's why going for a run before bed might be beneficial as you can sleep rather than eat.

I've found exercising right before lunch works really well to avoid this problem.

Of course, not everyone has the luxury to exercise for half an hour, have a shower, and then eat lunch in the middle of the day. Any company that doesn't give their employees adequate time to exercise is just harming itself. Healthy employees are productive employees.

maybe that's why walking desks are a good idea.

Slow carb/4 Hour Body works really well for weight loss. No counting calories. Just follow a few simple rules. Plus you get a cheat day!

Amazing work! I love https://gyrosco.pe for this type of thing.

Congrats on weight loss.

Now you should integrate exercising into your life. At least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week. Do it.

Myfitness Pal should publish some data. I would for example like to know if weather/temp. has a role in appetite.

Congratulations buddy, I can't imagine how hard that must have been. Thanks for sharing what you experienced.

Important to note, that only with metabolism of a young male, it is possible to lose weight without exercise. I am 37 and restricting my calorie intake helps, but not greatly. Exercising daily - helped a lot. Most women of 30+ must exercise to lose weight - metabolism is completely different.

Source on your claim that women over 30 won't lose weight if they are on e.g. a consistent 500 kcal daily deficit?

Why would you bother asking for a source for this?

Because he/she would like to learn more, or potentially dispel a myth? I don't get why you'd ever question curiosity.

It sounded more to me that he/she was being sarcastic than curiosity.

And, of course I can question curiosity. We're in the internet age. If you have a basic question, ask google.

>We're in the internet age. If you have a basic question, ask google.

When somebody presents an opinion that seems to go against the general scientific consensus, no, I won't just google it, I'd rather ask what they base it on.

He didn't say that! It gets harder to maintain that deficit because your metabolism will start to conserve energy, your body gets colder and sleepy and therefore uses less energy. At least if the deficit is chosen too high.

Okay, that makes more sense, that the maximum sustainable deficit would decrease with age.

Can you live a life on a consistent 500 kcal diet? I was saying that with age (and with gender) it is much more difficult to maintain weight with just lowering down the calorie intake.

Of course you can , but if you think living life = pizza, cake, fries, then you will have to make adjustments.

Living life is going to work every day, working 8 hours a day, and then having something for yourself in the evening - walks in the park, or some exercise, or something else that actually requires energy.

I get that it's more difficult to do such changes the older you get just from a psychological standpoint, especially if your body is used to a caloric surplus (which it probably is if you're thinking about going to a 500 kcal deficit). But I'm interested in knowing if the body metabolism really changes so drastically when you get older as to make a -500 kcal diet impractical, and where the cutoff for practicality would then be.

And sorry, no source on this, but a lot of people around fighting gaining weight while restricting calories.

You are mistaken - all life forms including humans obey the laws of physics. If you eat at a caloric deficit you will lose weight no matter your age or if you do exercise.

They are not necessarily mistaken just because we have a hypothesis.

It's a fact that it's harder for women to lose weight than men in certain cases. Their point was that "caloric deficit" is different for each person, and sometimes dramatically so.

No, a caloric deficit is not different for each person.

Every living person that is maintaining their weight can eat 500 kcals a day less than they do now and they'd lose weight.

Now imagine a woman who eats 1000 kcal a day already. How is she supposed to survive and maintain a liveable lifestyle at 500 kcal/day?

If she's eating 1000 kcal a day then she probably isn't overweight so wouldn't need to cut down further.

Pretty sure that would be bordering on anorexia.

I would wager that woman:

a) Doesn't really eat 1000 kcals a day if she's active, and should, instead of building a diet by counting calories (doing which she's prone to miscalculation), simply eat less of whatever she usually eats. b) Doesn't need to lose half a kg of fat every week.

Metabolism is not as impactful as nowadays is though. Simply - you eat more, you gain more weight. If this is not the case, checking out your overall health would be the way to go.

The rule is simple, but finding your real caloric consumption isn't.

Most online calculators are veeery optimistic (off by >500kcal). If you take the general advice and only restrict to a 500kcal deficit, you won't see much happening :/

We aren't talking about physics. We are talking about a complex, open system. Something closer to macroeconomics. There is truth to what you are saying, but the certainty you are saying it with hides an ocean of complexity. Why are people excessively hungry? Does cutting calories linearly affect everyone the same way? What if we looked at the type of weight lost, is purely focusing on calories the best way to lose predominantly fat while maintaining muscle, organ tissue, and bones? Is focusing purely on calories effective for everyone (compliance) or does it set up some potentially disastrous consequences for some people?

That is absolutely correct. However the problem is that human's body needs energy to run - think, work, feel emotions. So if you can imagine someone on the bed 24/hrs a day, then indeed a simple calorie reduction will help. Because calories will be used for simple body functions, and not anything else. Restricting calorie intake for someone who has to go to work daily, work, live a life, will not work beyond certain limit, which actually allows to live that life.

You may not lose weight healthily if your deficit makes consuming proper nutrients impossible.

The body can adjust its usage of calories way down in the event of a perceived famine, making the amount of calories consumed no longer contain a deficit.

The RMR can change during a diet as both fat and muscle require maintenance, and you nearly always lose both during a period of deficit. This can make maintaining a significant deficit very difficult

Finally, there is evidence that people who have lost significant weight have a reduced metabolic weight (and hunger for more calories) even five years after they completed their dieting. This may explain why the failure rate of people >100 lbs overweight losing and maintaining is nearly 95%

Ok, this is true, but what happens is the calories burned part changes dramatically based on hormones. And hormones change quite a bit as you age and or gain weight, and not in favor of weight loss.

The hormone mix basically tells your body to store some percentage of calories in as fat. When young and/or fit, this percentage is low. Calories above your burn rate are stored as glycogen in your muscles, giving you usable energy stores that will be used when you exercise.

When older or fat or both, calories above your burn rate go to fat cells waiting to fill back up. As the weight packs on, the percentage increases and more and more of the calories you consume are going to fat instead of being burned. Your caloric burn alotment goes down. You lose muscle density. Testosterone goes down, and the percentage of calories dedicated to fat stores climbs.

So it is still true, calories in < calories out to lose weight. But perhaps it would be better to say “calories in < (calories out + calories stored)”

Where calories stored will vary and for fat people it’s much higher than fit.

A fat man can eat the same food and calories as a fit person who does not exercise, and gain weight and feel tired while the fit person feels an energy boost.

Your hormone levels and how your body responds to different types of calories can be changed by changing your diet.

There's also the fact that muscles burn fat whereas fat begets fat storage.

I believe metabolism does slow year over year once you get to a certain age, but it's difficult to find data on that.

Exercise does not help weight loss.

Exercise is important, and people should exercise because they get benefits even if they don't lose weight, but you should stop saying it's useful to reduce weight.

We think that people heavily over-estimate the amount of calories burnt by exercise; they under-estimate the amount of calories they eat; and exercising gives people "permission" to eat more calories than they normally would.

http://www.cochrane.org/CD003817/ENDOC_exercise-for-overweig...

Exercise burns calories, so it certainly does help weight loss if done in conjunction with a proper diet.

You are correct that people frequently overestimate how many calories they burn working out, and that they then eat more as a result - both because they think they've earned it, but also because exercise stimulates your appetite. But when you understand these instincts and stick to the diet, exercise will help you lose weight more quickly.

Exercise doesn't burn a lot of calories, but it changes the way your body processes calories (or spends them vs stores them).

Calorie counting apps are great for battling that, after a while I'm like: "Is it worth running 2 hours for this bag of potato chips ?"

Restricting calories sufficiently can create weight loss at any age. Metabolism is not magic but basic chemistry/physics, if output exceeds input this will happen.

Of course each of us is unique, and also changes over time, so efficiency of both inputs and outputs varies.

I believe you meant that its mentally hard to restrict one so much in later age to suffer from hunger enough to lose weight, but technically its doable and happening in millions of instances around the world all the time (ie due to long term illnesses).

Exercise helps tremendously of course, and everybody should do enough of any healthy type every day to get sweaty (and more). But it isn't necessary to lose weight, not at all, at any age.

At 30 photosynthesis starts or what?

I wish - then it would be enough to be in the sun.

This is incorrect. The laws of physics in play are biochemically complex but the net energy differential is straight forward. Calorie Intake > Burn Rate = Weight Gain, and vice-versa. Exercise increases the burn rate, but it doesn't change the formula.

Completely eliminating simple carbs (bread, noodles, rice, pasta, potatoes, and the like) and eating meat and veg and dairy (i.e. a cheese-heavy salad with sugar-less dressing, a big bowl of broccoli with cheese melted on it, as many chicken breasts, steaks, and burgers as I liked, coffee with heavy cream but no sugar, etc.) exclusively worked for me. Weight gradually melted away over the course of the past year and I'm still dropping pounds. Meals like those fill me up quickly and I stay full longer. All while I've exercised very little. And I'm older than you.

You're in ketosis basically. I love keto and think it is the best thing that I can do to actually love weight and still be able to enjoy food.

Oh yeah. And after 40, you start to gain weight by not eating!

It will be very difficult to gain muscle eating a caloric deficit, but you CAN still gain strength.

This is inspiring.

Don't skip logging even if you go over your goal and stay consistent. Very nice points.

All I have to say is WOW and congrats. That takes commitment!

it would be easier to meal prep a few days in advance rather than recording everything you eat.

congrats....but is it healthy to lose 100lb in 276 days? what does that do to your liver?

> Caloric Deficit == Weight Loss

This is generally contested by recent diet and nutrition research, as I understand it.

it can't be. This is physics, not nutrition.

If you have a jar with €100 in it, and you put €9 more in every month but also take out €10 then you will lose €1, no matter what an economist says.

There is still research being done in how the body reacts to different caloric deficits, but the basics hold up.

Not if the jar pays you an interest rate. I'm being facetious.

But my point is calories out will vary depending on calories in. You can eat 2000 calories of carbs 1 day and 2000 calories of protein the next... turns out your calories out will be higher when you eat protein because your metabolism increases. This isn't physics. This is nutrition. And its still not fully understood IMHO.

I think this is the simplest, most straightforward post on this topic I have read. Congratulations.

I'm frustrated reading comments here that repeatedly say "Calories in, calories out", "law of thermodynamics", etc.

Frustrated because, for one thing, this approach is extremely discouraging to people who want to, or are in the process of, losing weight. "Jesus you're so dumb, how can you not understand this one simple thing that you merely have to eat less?"

1. What works/worked for you/your friends/whoever you read about on the internet may not work for everyone. That's because when talking to each other, neither party has the full picture. Neither party knows exactly the level of activity and food habits of the other.

"I simply cut X calories from my diet and it worked!" -- yes, but you also forgot to mention you bike to work and back home every day.

2. Calories in != Calories out. CICO is an approximation, a pretty good one in terms of nutrition, but different foods break down very differently in the body. I recommend watching "Sugar: The Bitter Truth". TLDW: It's a long presentation that talks about how glucose and fructose are broken down by the body.

Furthermore, CICO is super misleading on two levels:

- It completely ignores hunger. Telling someone "Go down to 1400 calories / day" can be a horrible idea if they don't radically change their diet. It's not just about cutting, it's about replacing. There's high-calorie-budget things you can't keep eating/drinking, and low-calorie-budget things that make you feel fuller that have to be introduced.

- Metabolism matters. As I was saying further down in the thread, depending on your metabolism (influenced both by genetics and overall activity level), two people may burn different amounts of energy, both when they're active and even passively by merely existing.

So, for all intents and purposes, yes, calories in == calories out. But that's not the only thing that matters. Get your diet sorted out, get your exercise plan sorted out, find a strategy that works long term (not just a crash diet) and that is and feels comfortable. Anything that is uncomfortable/unpleasant is not something that can be maintained long term.

Also, like the post says, get a digital body scale to start recording your weight. I got a Nokia Health smart scale which gives me graphs of my weight automatically. Being able to see the trends is the most critical tool. Can you imagine getting good performance at load on your servers without instrumentation, merely by just running top once in a while?

PS, if you're downvoting, take the time to leave a comment. All the above is from hard-earned experience.

CICO IS all that matters at the end of the day. Yes, some people may be hungry, some may have a faster metabolism, some may do it better with less carbs, some with less fat, some prefer to only eat within a 4 hour window, others may just want to lift heavy or run far. That's all great, but we can't do much about what works best for each individual and everyone needs to find what works for them. In the end it's all just tricks and moving things around to consume less calories than we use.

This is like saying "cpu instructions is all that matters [to programming] at the end of the day".

CICO is what it breaks down to. But it implies that you can start counting calories, mathing it out against exercise, and be done. The road to get to that equation actually working is a long one, one that involves eating better (not just less), and getting long term strategies in place. (This comment is excellent to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392744)

CICO is more like Python: print 'hello world!'.

It's crazy simple and there is a ton going on beneath the hood, but nobody needs to go that deep to get the job done. If you find some other libraries/tricks that help make your life easier, use them!

If you really want to start optimizing metabolic timings and portioning and macros and micros and all that, that's great too! But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated: eat healthy, eat less, burn calories. Don't over think it.

I'm ok with this analogy, but:

> But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated

This is a failure on your part. Dieting is an extremely hard and complicated thing for many, many people, as you can plainly see in this thread. That you don't see what's so complicated about your suggestion is a hint that you're missing a part of the picture.

Let's start with "Eat healthy": How do you do that? What do you define as healthy? How do you do it when you're strapped for cash? How do you even find healthy food, even if you know what to look for?

"Eat less": How do you determine what to cut? How much of it do you cut? Will cutting something cause you to crave something else?

"Burn calories": This is the hardest one. There's no easy way of checking how many calories you burn every day. "20 minutes of running" is very different from one person to the next, so even timing yourself isn't always enough. At the gym, machines sometimes have estimates for how much you're burning... but that's all they are, and it's a tiny tiny portion of how much you are burning.

"Don't over think it": I like what a poster said elsewhere in the comments: We need to start treating obesity as we treat mental illness. Just as "Just cheer up" is not an appropriate thing to tell someone clinically depressed, your suggestions are not useful to someone who is unable to lose weight. Do you think they haven't tried? What do you think is supposed to happen when people keep telling them "Just eat less" and it's not working, are they not supposed to overthink it?

Yes, it is a hard thing for many people, I don't question that by any means. But it's not technically hard, it's mentally and instinctually hard. We have known how to eat healthy forever, you see something green or meaty that looks appetizing, we eat it. Now that has gotten harder to filter of course, but we all know what fruits and vegetables are and that things like Mc Donalds are bad for you.

Perhaps I am a bit out of touch, but I have never met someone that didn't really know these things or that more calories are bad, sugar is in everything that is processed, and that exercise of any sort will help keep you healthy and lose weight.

Psychologically there is a lot going on with people's relationship with food, but by just putting more barriers and rules and reading material in front of them is just confusing the situation.

Start small, cut back a single pop per day for example. That's 15 pounds a year in calories! Do a couple pushups in the morning. Whatever it takes to get started and build from there. If you just dump all these "what if's" and "how to's" in front of everyone they will get distracted from what they need to do and feel like they failed at something that doesn't need to be that complex.

To prove a point once, I lost a few kg while eating a diet that consisted solely of pizza.

Upon saying that, I wouldn't recommend it. The best weight management methods are holistic, the different facets of healthy weight management: exercise, meal composition, and serving size, all play into each other.

You want to exercise more, eat less, and eat healthier.

If you eat healthier; whole grains instead of refined carbs, lots of leafy greens, legumes to replace carbs, and avoid processed foods; then you'll feel satiated while eating less, both in calories and in just bulk amount of food.

You'll have more energy from a diet consisting of whole foods instead of refined carbs, which will allow you to exercise more and exercise harder. There's no reason why you can't burn 800 calories in an hour of hard exercise with the right diet and motivation. It might be different for other people, but for me, exercising also makes me want to eat healthier.

I've found that group classes (crossfit, spin, etc.) are a great motivator to exercise too. If you see the same people every time you go, you form a group and it becomes a social activity. Obviously that's not for all of us, but I always struggled with motivation to go to the gym solo. When I started doing functional fitness group sessions, I couldn't stop. I went to every session (3 times a week) for 8 months, the only sessions I missed were when I was out of town. Otherwise I'd turn up no matter how I felt, whether tired, sick, or hungover, I'd drag my arse out.

The big thing is really motivation. Going solo, it's really easy to lose motivation. If you have friends who are also eating healthy and working out with you, it really helps. For me, it was other people in my coworking space. The space was really big into healthy lifestyles, so there were a bunch of us who would bring healthy food to work and go to the gym together. Another great tip is to avoid buying any packaged food. Only eat food you've prepared yourself, that way you don't accidentally eat a bunch of food you don't need to as you need to physically go out of your way to make food to eat. That may include cutting bread out of your diet, it's too easy to make a piece of toast if you're peckish, it's a lot more work to cook a potato.

I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted to because alcohol was a major food group, but I toned up a whole lot and felt a lot healthier in general. It also had a positive mental health effect.

Unfortunately I moved overseas and lost my momentum. It's been 8 months since I've gone to a gym and I've managed to pick up most of my old bad habits again. At least I can still run 5 km (3 miles) in 30 minutes, so it's not all gone.

Anyway, my point is: technically, yes, simply counting calories will work for weight loss. But that's the hard way. You'll feel like shit, constantly hunger and lacking energy. Take a holistic approach to your health. And if you don't exercise and eat healthy food, you might get skinny, but you'll still be unfit and unhealthy, you just won't get a heart attack at 30.

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