Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

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I went from 82kg down to 67kg and have kept it off for 4 years.

I'm happier, more mentally stable, and more free in my thoughts.

I agree with the main argument you make - measure what you eat, and decrease it, but not too rapidly, and stick with it.

I agree with your main food recommendation of keeping it natural: "only vegetables, fruit, lean meats, eggs, all seasoned with herbs and salt only - not sauces and very little oils."

Regular big salad lunches keep you feeling full. Learn how to wash and store a whole lettuce and make salad dressing in bulk. With those staples in your fridge, you'll be able to whip up a tasty salad with little preparation time and little effort.

However, I urge caution with this recommendation, which is against your main recommendation and in my experience is not helpful: "Diet drinks and fat free yogurt are fine for those sweet-tooth cravings."

Fat free yogurt is full of sugar and should be strongly avoided. Sugar is the biggest threat to weight loss because the calories from sugar go straight to fat, and the sudden increase in high glycemic index input triggers an insulin response, which makes you feel like a yo-yo merry-go-round of energy/despair.

Diet drinks should also be avoided. Whilst they don't contain sugar, the artificial sweeteners are so unnaturally sweet they will cause your brain to habitually crave sweet things. If you stick to water and natural foods you will lose these cravings after a few weeks and you won't need to revisit them.

Kudos for keeping it off that long, that's incredible.

WRT the diet drinks, I know they're bad. I found I can get some pretty bad migraines if I drink them too often. I try to keep it for once or twice on the weekends though, as a small treat. But I'll try cutting them out completely and see what happens.

Thanks! It is actually no effort, because the change to fresh foods away from processed foods and sugars makes me feel constantly sated, instead of cycling between hungry and full.

>Sugar is the biggest threat to weight loss because the calories from sugar go straight to fat, and the sudden increase in high glycemic index input triggers an insulin response, which makes you feel like a yo-yo merry-go-round of energy/despair.

I've had problems with fatigue/low energy for a while now - I always crash in the afternoon around 2pm, roughly three hours after eating my first meal of the day. After doing some research I decided to cut out sugar and flour in the morning, and the results have been dramatic. My problems with energy and fatigue were getting so bad that I was starting to think I had a chronic illness - nope, just crashing from insulin every day!

AFAIK it's just fructose in the absence of fiber that mostly goes into fat by default. Glucose is mostly stored as glycogen in muscle and liver, but excess glucose is also stored as fat. I fully agree with you wrt sweet foods, they don't make you satient. In general, avoid everything that has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it. It's one of the biggest contributors to the obesity epidemic of the US.

For eating large amounts of lettuce, I found small amount of grated parmigiano reggiano on top makes it incredibly enjoyable.

> I found small amount of grated parmigiano reggiano on top makes it incredibly enjoyable.

Thanks for the tip, maqp. I'll try that!

You're welcome. It looks like it's actually a common use case for the cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiano-Reggiano#Uses

I just discovered it when I threw in some greens on top of my pasta+ragu and forgot to put in the cheese before the greens. Funny.

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