I had a similar result, although without having to go to quite the same lengths on calorie counting - all I had to do was fix lunch.
There was a time when I had a flat stomach etc., but it was in my twenties when I rowing 3-5 times a week. You need plenty of calories to sustain that and I never got out of the habit. That combined with 20 year old metabolism and a free canteen at work meant that in addition to a big dinner, I was having a full hot lunch with dessert. This habit of a big lunch (although maybe not with dessert) carried on into my thirties and after I stopped rowing.
I'd tried to 'just have less lunch' and proved to be bad at resisting the options in the canteen. I took the opportunity of starting to work from home a couple of years ago to set a habit of having Huel for lunch. It meant that it was a very consistent amount of food and I just cheat by having a larger portion. I didn't have any problem with patience as long as I saw the weight continuing to trend down, which it did from 95Kg to the low eighties.
While I still have Huel sometimes, I've stopped using it consistently as I'm pretty sure I was experiencing the testosterone depressing effect of all the flax seed. A year of it reset my expectations over lunch portions that I can cope without it though.
In terms of variations on weight measurements, I've found that weighing myself first thing in the morning, after shower and visit to the toilet (but before breakfast) reduced the noise significantly to the extent it was rarely more than +/1 1kg
Decreasing portion size tends to make your stomach smaller which will reduce the amount of false sensation of hunger felt when the stomach empties itself. Smaller portions more evenly distributed might be beneficial. The change should be gradual.
I agree.
IF helped, though, by reducing the time window where I need to preocuppy myself with food/eating topics.
Basically outside of my eating interval I don't think/worry about food at all, I can focus on something else.
IF does require some getting used to, though.
I've done basically the same thing a couple times over the last 10 years. First time I lost 40 pounds or so over a period of 6 months. After a few years, my weight slowly started to rise up a bit, so I had another period of caloric restriction. I lost 25 pounds over two months.
I think the most important part is simply counting your calories. You can't manage what you can't measure. You'd be surprised just how quickly you can get to your daily caloric limit with a few snacks and one large meal.
Now days I don't stress too much about my eating. I still try to keep a caloric balance, but I also know exactly how to lose the weight again if it starts to go up too much.
Sounds about right. Calories in, calories out. I have $7 digital scale that I measure food with. With consistency you eventually get to the point where you can eyeball 50g of rice, 125g of chicken, roughly a 250 calorie meal. There’s zero tricks to it, just measure and aim for 1500-1800 calories a day.
Oh, and it’s going to suck, because it’s hard. I did 180 to 138 in 5ish months. Started with the Keto until I realized it’s just a trick to reduce calories, so eventually just cut the Keto framework out so I could eat some bread/rice.
Keto I found also seems to trick you into feeling less hungry even with reduced caloric intake.
A lot of dietary advice treats the sensation of hunger as some taboo thing to be avoided at all cost. But the body will fight HARD to maintain current balances and hunger is a clear signal that you’ve ingested less calories recently than your norm.
We’re so used to never going hungry that the sensation feels like a serious anomaly, but hunger is not harmful unless it goes on for a protracted period (at least days), it’s just unpleasant.
I’m not advocating for starvation, but I think successful dieting that doesn’t rely on some trickery necessarily involves enduring the sensation of hunger until the body adjusts to a new baseline.
Fronting up in advice to dieters and normalising the idea that it’s ok to feel hungry when adjusting your diet downwards would be hugely beneficial to people’s success in weight management I think.
This part doesn't get emphasized enough. People start down this road and at first it looks like losing weight is easy because they shed a few pounds right away, but most of it is water so they hit a wall and things get hard and they think they must be doing something wrong. They're not: it just sucks and there's no way out of that, not that it stops people from trying to sell them an easy way.
> First principles suggested I stop faffing around with diets that operate on clever narratives, assumptions and "magic" rules, and just look at what the science said. And the science was pretty consistent - calories matter above all else.
I don't believe 'the science' is consistent about this at all.
Tim Ferris cites lots of science when writing 'The Four Hour Body' a decade ago, and decades before that Atkins had a fair amount of science to back up similar observations & claims -- not all calories are equal.
Eschewing carbohydrates (a word that doesn't appear in TFA) and filling up on proteins (appears once in relation to a supplement) and fats (appears only twice - once referring to being fat as a child, the other as an adjective for yogurt) will get you most of the way 'there', if 'there' is gentle weight loss / management that's easier to maintain than calorie counting.
From my experience, progress is a good motivator to keep pushing it. When you start on low carb or something like Keto, you’ll get progress for sure. If you want more progress beyond that, you will simply not be able to deny that a calorie is a calorie. You have to reduce calories, period.
In 2012 I followed the Four Hour Body approach - eat enough to never feel hungry after a meal, reduce carbs (beans & pulses, mainly) so it's not keto, drink more, avoid 'white things' (rice, flour, sugar), bump up your meal size to compensate for the absence of carbs, have one cheat day a week to keep you sane (eat as much as you like or whatever you like for lunch & dinner on that one day). Jot down everything you eat - it helps motivate you to not eat poorly.
Measure everything - well, as much as you can. I used some Omron body composition scales - probably not hugely accurate in the absolute, but more than sufficiently accurate in the relative.
So I have a google spreadsheet that over the space of 18 months has daily weigh-in data, and very detailed descriptions of everything I ate each day. (It was quite the adventure, though I'd be unlikely do it again.)
I reiterate -- this graph shows changes in my mass during a period where I was never calorie-counting, never felt hungry, wasn't in keto, and felt the approach could be sustained long-term without threatening sanity. My modest amount of exercise - the occasional bicycle ride - did not change during this period.
I did the slow carb diet too when the book came out, didn't work for me. Made me sick and lethargic. And I didn't lose any weight. To each his own, I guess
Exactly. And to add, it may be easier to achieve a caloric deficit with some foods than with others. When I am on a ketogenic diet, I always eat to satiation but still manage to lose bodyfat.
Irrelevant. You can eat nothing but twinkies and still lose weight as long as you maintain a caloric deficit. Certain foods are going to make that easier and healthier, but that's orthogonal to the actual weight loss.
You can but you will be hungry and it will be very difficult. You want to avoid carbs and sugar because carbs get turned into sugar and they spike your sugar levels, causing your pancreas to produce insulin to tell your body to store the excess sugar in your fat cells. Then when the excess sugar is all stored, you get the crash and you're hungry again. This is why people want to snack between meals.
Instead, avoid carbs and eat proteins and healthy fats. You won't get the sugar spike and crash, and will last hours without getting hungry. It is easy to eat only twice a day this way.
My point is that not all calories are equal as far as the consumer is concerned.
As others have noted, eating RDI (or just under) with only carbs - eg the twinkies diet - would be tiring and soul-destroying, likely very difficult to sustain.
Eating the same amount (calories) of proteins and fats would keep you much happier and healthier.
Eating a lot more (calories) of proteins and fats, and avoiding as many carbs as possible, and you're probably lose weight without having to track & maintain a 'caloric deficit' state.
My 'trick' is to use a smaller plate than everyone else and resist the temptation to pile it high. I'm not losing weight quickly but keeping it down and dropping slowly without any stress.
I did some calorie counting at the beginning but dropped it once I had convinced myself that I was indeed eating fewer calories.
One other thing I do is to delay breakfast until after I have done my morning walk. Experience tells me that my appetite will be sharpened by the exercise so I will be tempted to eat again. So getting dressed and walking straight out of the house for an hour of brisk walking saves me that temptation or perhaps puts it to good use.
The problem with these types of posts is that while there's a grain of truth in there (burn more calories than you take in), we're still not able to easily determine a number of key pieces of information that would allow us to really understand how to be successful:
1) How many calories do you need at your target weight?
2) What is your basal metabolic rate?
3) As you cut out calories and lose weight, how much is your basal metabolic rate changing?
The problem is that for people who are predisposed to store excess energy as fat rather than burning it off, as we cut back on our calories, our body reacts by becoming more efficient to try to avoid emptying out our fat stores.
This means that for some people losing a pound a week could require cutting out anywhere from 500-1000 calories per day. --So when people suggest cutting out 500 calories per day, and you either don't see any loss or you see a much lower loss than the pound per week, that can be even more demoralizing than trying to cut out 1000 calories per day if you knew that would allow you to average that pound a week of loss.
The various studies done also show that most people regain the weight back 6 months to a year down the line. Right now the only thing we can be sure of is that weight loss only works for the minority in the long term and the only way to be slim is to always be that way.
We did at least work out why processed foods appeared to be more calories, turns out we spend about 20% more energy digesting food that isn't highly processed. Which also goes to show that calories in calories out is far over simplified when people are suggesting deficits that could easily be less than 20% of daily intake.
It is a chemical process and a very complex one at that and right now food science is basically garbage tier with very little in the way of good studies, most of the better end is on mice and rats.
Well, to give another point of view: I think it is pretty much understood, what is healthy and what is not and also what leads to weight loss and what doesn't.
People not sticking with it is really an added point to the reality that calories in/out is a very poor model for losing weight, even if it is completely correct at a physical level.
It depends. Do you see losing weight as a purely physical phenomenon, or do you see it as one that's heavily influenced by psychology and other such factors? The actual physical act of losing weight i.e. reducing one's mass needs to be distinguished, in my opinion, from all the factors that actually go into that. If it turns out that in response to hunger that your brain secretes a hormone that makes you much more hungry than the average, the psychological aspect of losing weight has been compromised, even while the physical laws stay the same.
Of course psychology comes into play. I'd know, that's what kept me from making progress with this for years. But that does not subtract from the fact that to lose weight you need to consume less calories.
> If it turns out that in response to hunger that your brain secretes a hormone that makes you much more hungry than the average, the psychological aspect of losing weight has been compromised, even while the physical laws stay the same.
I don't agree. You lose weight by eating less calories. If you need to manage your implementation of that technique because you have some condition that deviates from the norm, sure, that's something you have to deal with.
To return to my exercise analogy, I have a medical condition that makes exercise difficult. So I have to work around my unique limitation. But I don't go around saying that doing cardio and working out is not the correct way of getting fit.
My point isn't that 'cardio and working out' are not how one gets fit, it's that achieving 'fitness' is more than 'cardio and working out'. The words are overloaded, and I think your very last sentence illustrates that well. I also tossed up between physiological and psychological, but reasoned for my purposes they were similar enough to get the point across - i.e. that despite the physical laws being simple, the actual process is not.
Yes, keeping weight off over the long haul is extremely difficult, and only gets harder the more weight you lose. I know that for myself, beyond having to try and watch what I'm eating, I also have to stay much more active than the average person because I know that I have a slow metabolism - my body wants to hang on to every bit of energy it can.
I think there is proper research going on when it comes to food science, and weight loss, but finding the good studies among the junk is difficult. We do know that there are some drugs and supplements that have moderate effects, but mostly by acting as an appetite suppressant.
It is highly unlikely that you really have a "slow metabolism". Outside of a few rare medical conditions, metabolic rates only vary by a few percent for a given height, weight, and sex. It's more likely that you're underestimating calorie consumption. I recommend getting a resting metabolic rate test to accurately quantify your baseline.
That's mostly wrong. Everyone is predisposed to store excess energy as fat. Cutting back calories doesn't cause a significant increase in metabolic efficiency (unless you're really suffering from starvation which wouldn't apply to anyone on a regular calorie restriction diet). The reason that weight loss tends to slow down for most people on diets is that it simply takes less energy to maintain a lower body mass. So to sustain the same rate of weight loss they would have to keep decreasing calorie intake.
Resting metabolic rate tests are widely available for about $75. You just sit in a chair for a few minutes while a machine measures your exhalations. This is worth doing occasionally if you can afford it to establish an accurate baseline. A lot of people blame their failure to lose weight on a "slow metabolism" which is almost never correct: metabolic rates for individuals with a given height, weight, and sex differ by only a few percent.
I don’t know why people subscribe to arbitrary numbers on the internet vs just experimenting. If you want to lose weight, you eat less and burn more and that is it. Not losing enough weight? Don’t quit. Just run more and eat even less. Or run even more and maintain your diet.
There is no human that won’t shed weight like water off a roof if given energy expenditure coupled with restricted intake. And its easy to overwhelm yourself with energy expenditure if you wanted to still eat like a pig: start running up and down bleachers until you are on the verge of puking and watch the pounds fly off.
The reason why so many people are overweight is because they spend their life sitting in bed, sitting at work, sitting in their car, burning tens of calories. Then they try cutting out a 300 cal muffin from their daily intake and wonder why it takes 6 months to lose 5 lbs. You need activity, especially if you don’t have activity in your life. It’s who we are as animals. Early humans would walk game down until it was exhausted and sitting down no longer able to even stand. Then our ancestors would calmly walk up to the delirious antelope on the verge of death and poke it with a stick or beat it with a rock. Today, no one bothers making time to burn those calories, and that’s ultimately why people get fat. Modern suburban living has coddled us from physical activity, such as walking.
I'm 58 and I've lost over 30 lbs (180 - 149) in the last 5 months. I've used basically the same technique you describe. I've tracked every calorie and learned how to prepare mostly plant-based (raw, whole food) meals. However, I exercised more than you describe. I like to walk so I've been walking 25-40 miles/week. When I walk I can eat more and stay within my calorie deficit goal It became a virtuous motivational feedback loop for me. The other benefit of the exercise is that I haven't seen any indication of muscle or strength loss while losing the fat.
Caloric restriction worked great pre-1980's. If you could stick to 'simple foods', like the author advocates, it still works.
The reason why so many people dismiss it is that from the 1980's onward food was starting to get designed for overeating, and labeling requirements were starting to be gamed so the calories listed on these designed foods (and that includes nearly everything today) no longer have as high straightforward correlation with the 'calories' measured in 'simple' foods of old.
It has more to do with the glycemic index of the food, that is now satient it is. 300kcal of rye bread (low GI) keeps your blood sugar much more even much longer than 300kcal candy bar (high GI). Both are "processed foods" but one is much more healthy than the other. Whole foods like fruits, vegetables etc. have almost always low GI: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
It goes back a lot further than that. The moment we started tinning food and making long life carbohydrates the equation completely changed. They take so much less energy to digest than their counterparts but its even deeper. Have a read into the difference in flour making over the past century and how industrial processes and wheat variants have gone hand in hand to remove all the fiber from bread. We have been adjusting our food to increase calory density and reduce the cost of digestion for thousands of years but it really accelerated in the past 120.
A Kilo Calory is the energy extracted in burning it, our body doesn't burn fuel it chemically converts it into different substances, the processes are so different since one conserves mass and the other does not. It is a terrible measure given plant fibre burns well and produces lots of energy and hence has lots of calories but plant fibre generally goes right through us since we can't digest a lot of it. The entire thing is a bit rotten from a science point of view. Reducing how much we eat sort of works, for some people, changing to more natural foods works for others, changing to fats and protein exclusively for others etc etc. Few studies show the majority of people loosing fat long term. All this to me points to the fact we don't have this figured out at all yet.
Nobody wants to calculate everything from scratch again and again. Thus I wrote a program that does 99% of heavy lifting. It contains a database of ingredients I commonly use and their nutritional values. I have a set of recipes that I tend to make mostly the same way, the only thing that differs is the relative amount of ingredients that go into the sauce for example. I measure those when I meal prep, and then I only need to weigh the ~homogenic components of each portion. The program does everything else including macro tracking, daily weight loss estimates etc. This is extremely sustainable and it removes all of the guess work. So far it's been scarily accurate which in turn has kept motivation high.
With practice you do get better at understanding the cost of the food you are processing. To me, using technical tools is very expensive in this process. It helps to begin with, but as soon as I have aquired necessary knowledge tech just gets in the way unless it is fully automated.
Several years ago I dropped 25-30 pounds in 3 months without exercise. I drastically dropped my carbs and increased my fat in take and Saturdays were my cheat days. This was bad for my cardio but I really trimmed up and it required a tremendous amount of discipline.
I have found that long distance running also resulted in some weight loss. After 3 months of running on a treadmill I gradually increased my distance until I was running an 8 minute mile pace for 50 minutes, which is about a 10K. This was much healthier than dieting. Even though it required extensive time and effort it felt like less discipline than dieting and I wasn't so limited on what I could eat. The exercise allowed me to trim up, but I only lost a little bit of weight. The running resulted in a low resting pulse rate of about 42bpm.
What initially worked for me was the 5:2 "diet". Eat for 5 days fast for 2, and i followed it for a couple of years, and in the first 3 months i lost 15kg. After that things kinda "flattened" out, i still stuck to it, but eventually i caved.
With 5:2 i would be miserable on fast days. The lack of food didn't bother me, but concentration, feeling cold, and trying to fit into a world that eats dinner at nights eventually got too much.
These days i'm more or less doing the sunrise-sunset routine, which seems more natural to me. I've never been a big breakfast person, and for most of my life i've skipped breakfast. The only thing i've added is skipping lunch, which is also easy in the "work from home" world we currently live in.
My family and i also have different rituals in the morning, so we're usually not up at the same time anyway. So i eat a normal size dinner with the family in the evening, and my "social life" is mostly intact while at the same time cutting calories by 1/4 or more.
The thing is, when you're used to "overeating" you're hungry all the time. Stuffing less food in your stomach causes it to shrink, meaning you'll feel full earlier, so contrary to what many people believe, you don't just consume a full days worth of calories in the evening (assuming you're not eating at McDonalds, which makes it very easy to consume 2500 kcal in one sitting).
In the end, calories is all that matters in weight loss. The less you eat the skinnier you get. There are healthy and unhealthy ways of doing calorie restriction, but if you eat less than your body consumes, you lose weight.
Edit: I should add that another thing i changed was that i'm not "religious" about it. If somebody invites me out for dinner, or the family just gathers for dinner during the weekend, i eat.
For me, the key thing has been to find sustainable exercise. I don't enjoy running so that's not sustainable.
Walking, or indoor exercise bike works for me, together with not keeping myself feeling full all day. Learning to live with a mild occasional feeling of "I'm a little hungry and I could eat something" without eating immediately is not that hard.
I’ve made a SaaS app that essentially automated what the author is describing. In most circles it’s referred to as “flexible eating”.
My wife struggled with keeping weight off and counting macros has been the only effective way to do it, but it’s insanely exhausting, especially with kids who you need to feed too. We worked from a spreadsheet for about a year until I automated everything and now we (and others!) get automated meal plans once a week with genuine, easy recipes that hit your calorie requirement. It’s like EatThisMuch but specifically for Australians and generates much more realistic meal plans. Of course, nothing is ever perfect for everyone, but it’s a great foundation.
My tip is be comfortable with eating MORE sometimes. Going out for dinner with mates? It’s fine, as long as it’s not a regular thing. Movies with popcorn and coke? That’s okay too! “Flexible eating” works well when it becomes a lifestyle, not just an 8 week plan.
I agree, 1 month is nothing in the weight management game. I lost about half my body weight (>150lbs) years ago and have been up and down in a 40lb range around there ever since. It's a constant fight against the parts of your mind that are concerned about starving to death and/or are addicted to food. It doesn't take much for them to start winning either, some extra stress and a slightly more relaxed approach to eating will sneak up on you.
I think that the reason OP is excited is not the weight loss per se, but because of the realisation that it happened in a way that feels sustainable long term.
>Most studies suggested that for most people, the amount of calories consumed determines your weight. Hormonal factor exist, but they're either negligible or for a very, very, VERY small part of the population. You're likely not it.
And the correlary: "Tons of people will nevertheless protest that that's it their case even when it isn't". It's the "It's not my program, it's a compiler bug" of dieting...
I'll tell you a simple trick that works for me and should work for most people who can afford this (considering possible health concerns): Don't eat anything after 4PM, basically skip the 3rd meal of the day. Go for a 5-7km walk every other day. Just make sure to have all the necessary vitamins and minerals throughout the day.
What worked for me, was when I changed my mentality to treat weight loss and keeping weight off as part of my identity and not as a goal I have to work hard towards to. My identity is that I want a healthy life. It is something that I will do for the rest of my life, so falling off the wagon every now and then is not much of a problem, it's normal, I'm human!
Did I overeat one or two days? No regrets. I don't have a goal that now moved further. It is what it is. Today is a new day and I'll do what I normally do. Did I hit a plateau? Well, what can I do? My identity still says I should eat sensibly. I stayed off processed foods this week? Check. Did I consume excess sugar or soda? No. Ate my greens? Yip! So, my lifestyle is healthy no matter what the scale says. Did I go out with friends and overindulged? Hey, that's a healthy lifestyle too! Just don't do it very often.
Sure, I can give more practical advice and do think that OP is way too early to announce victory after just one month, but it's a journey, you have to experience some things on your own.
I'll just comment on calorie counting. Once upon a time I used to count calories to single digit accuracy. It's not needed. Keep a rough track of your macros as some people say (protein and carbs are aroung 4KCal/gram, fat is around 9KCal/gram) and you will be fine.
I have a simple system that works for ME. Basically I eat once a day. I have a full lunch and that's it for the day. I do not fell hungry,specially in the morning where for some reason I just can't eat.
I did the inverse - just stopped having lunch - and that works for me. I also don't feel hungry.
For me, lunch was usually some low quality food grabbed in a hurry, and so it was the easiest meal to cut out. But the main reason to cut lunch was that I always got sleepy mid afternoon, and falling asleep in meetings isn't really acceptable. Not having lunch makes my afternoons much more effective, which is great as I'm not really a morning person.
So the "secret" is to take diet seriously? Not to dismiss his great achievements, but when I did read that he had tried every diet under the sun, I would have expected that calorie counting would have been part of it.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadIt will serve you better in life than telling other people to write less.
There was a time when I had a flat stomach etc., but it was in my twenties when I rowing 3-5 times a week. You need plenty of calories to sustain that and I never got out of the habit. That combined with 20 year old metabolism and a free canteen at work meant that in addition to a big dinner, I was having a full hot lunch with dessert. This habit of a big lunch (although maybe not with dessert) carried on into my thirties and after I stopped rowing.
I'd tried to 'just have less lunch' and proved to be bad at resisting the options in the canteen. I took the opportunity of starting to work from home a couple of years ago to set a habit of having Huel for lunch. It meant that it was a very consistent amount of food and I just cheat by having a larger portion. I didn't have any problem with patience as long as I saw the weight continuing to trend down, which it did from 95Kg to the low eighties.
While I still have Huel sometimes, I've stopped using it consistently as I'm pretty sure I was experiencing the testosterone depressing effect of all the flax seed. A year of it reset my expectations over lunch portions that I can cope without it though.
In terms of variations on weight measurements, I've found that weighing myself first thing in the morning, after shower and visit to the toilet (but before breakfast) reduced the noise significantly to the extent it was rarely more than +/1 1kg
IF is just a hack to help me keep my meals large enough to be satisfying.
I started working overnight, sleeping till 2-3pm.
So I skipped breakfast and launch.
I'd eat some lightly salted crackers to keep the mouth busy.
And the eat dinner with everyone.
Midnight, ate a single small noodle pack. This was necessary because without it, I'd wake up early and hungry.
I think the most important part is simply counting your calories. You can't manage what you can't measure. You'd be surprised just how quickly you can get to your daily caloric limit with a few snacks and one large meal.
Now days I don't stress too much about my eating. I still try to keep a caloric balance, but I also know exactly how to lose the weight again if it starts to go up too much.
Oh, and it’s going to suck, because it’s hard. I did 180 to 138 in 5ish months. Started with the Keto until I realized it’s just a trick to reduce calories, so eventually just cut the Keto framework out so I could eat some bread/rice.
A lot of dietary advice treats the sensation of hunger as some taboo thing to be avoided at all cost. But the body will fight HARD to maintain current balances and hunger is a clear signal that you’ve ingested less calories recently than your norm.
We’re so used to never going hungry that the sensation feels like a serious anomaly, but hunger is not harmful unless it goes on for a protracted period (at least days), it’s just unpleasant.
I’m not advocating for starvation, but I think successful dieting that doesn’t rely on some trickery necessarily involves enduring the sensation of hunger until the body adjusts to a new baseline.
Fronting up in advice to dieters and normalising the idea that it’s ok to feel hungry when adjusting your diet downwards would be hugely beneficial to people’s success in weight management I think.
This part doesn't get emphasized enough. People start down this road and at first it looks like losing weight is easy because they shed a few pounds right away, but most of it is water so they hit a wall and things get hard and they think they must be doing something wrong. They're not: it just sucks and there's no way out of that, not that it stops people from trying to sell them an easy way.
I don't believe 'the science' is consistent about this at all.
Tim Ferris cites lots of science when writing 'The Four Hour Body' a decade ago, and decades before that Atkins had a fair amount of science to back up similar observations & claims -- not all calories are equal.
Eschewing carbohydrates (a word that doesn't appear in TFA) and filling up on proteins (appears once in relation to a supplement) and fats (appears only twice - once referring to being fat as a child, the other as an adjective for yogurt) will get you most of the way 'there', if 'there' is gentle weight loss / management that's easier to maintain than calorie counting.
In 2012 I followed the Four Hour Body approach - eat enough to never feel hungry after a meal, reduce carbs (beans & pulses, mainly) so it's not keto, drink more, avoid 'white things' (rice, flour, sugar), bump up your meal size to compensate for the absence of carbs, have one cheat day a week to keep you sane (eat as much as you like or whatever you like for lunch & dinner on that one day). Jot down everything you eat - it helps motivate you to not eat poorly.
Measure everything - well, as much as you can. I used some Omron body composition scales - probably not hugely accurate in the absolute, but more than sufficiently accurate in the relative.
So I have a google spreadsheet that over the space of 18 months has daily weigh-in data, and very detailed descriptions of everything I ate each day. (It was quite the adventure, though I'd be unlikely do it again.)
I reiterate -- this graph shows changes in my mass during a period where I was never calorie-counting, never felt hungry, wasn't in keto, and felt the approach could be sustained long-term without threatening sanity. My modest amount of exercise - the occasional bicycle ride - did not change during this period.
Viz. https://jeddi.org/c/2013-01-01-4hb-mass.png
I did the slow carb diet too when the book came out, didn't work for me. Made me sick and lethargic. And I didn't lose any weight. To each his own, I guess
Irrelevant. You can eat nothing but twinkies and still lose weight as long as you maintain a caloric deficit. Certain foods are going to make that easier and healthier, but that's orthogonal to the actual weight loss.
Instead, avoid carbs and eat proteins and healthy fats. You won't get the sugar spike and crash, and will last hours without getting hungry. It is easy to eat only twice a day this way.
This video of Dr. Sarah Hallberg explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ
As others have noted, eating RDI (or just under) with only carbs - eg the twinkies diet - would be tiring and soul-destroying, likely very difficult to sustain.
Eating the same amount (calories) of proteins and fats would keep you much happier and healthier.
Eating a lot more (calories) of proteins and fats, and avoiding as many carbs as possible, and you're probably lose weight without having to track & maintain a 'caloric deficit' state.
I did some calorie counting at the beginning but dropped it once I had convinced myself that I was indeed eating fewer calories.
One other thing I do is to delay breakfast until after I have done my morning walk. Experience tells me that my appetite will be sharpened by the exercise so I will be tempted to eat again. So getting dressed and walking straight out of the house for an hour of brisk walking saves me that temptation or perhaps puts it to good use.
But well done, whatever works is good.
1) How many calories do you need at your target weight? 2) What is your basal metabolic rate? 3) As you cut out calories and lose weight, how much is your basal metabolic rate changing?
The problem is that for people who are predisposed to store excess energy as fat rather than burning it off, as we cut back on our calories, our body reacts by becoming more efficient to try to avoid emptying out our fat stores.
This means that for some people losing a pound a week could require cutting out anywhere from 500-1000 calories per day. --So when people suggest cutting out 500 calories per day, and you either don't see any loss or you see a much lower loss than the pound per week, that can be even more demoralizing than trying to cut out 1000 calories per day if you knew that would allow you to average that pound a week of loss.
We did at least work out why processed foods appeared to be more calories, turns out we spend about 20% more energy digesting food that isn't highly processed. Which also goes to show that calories in calories out is far over simplified when people are suggesting deficits that could easily be less than 20% of daily intake.
It is a chemical process and a very complex one at that and right now food science is basically garbage tier with very little in the way of good studies, most of the better end is on mice and rats.
The problem is that people don't stick with it.
> If it turns out that in response to hunger that your brain secretes a hormone that makes you much more hungry than the average, the psychological aspect of losing weight has been compromised, even while the physical laws stay the same.
I don't agree. You lose weight by eating less calories. If you need to manage your implementation of that technique because you have some condition that deviates from the norm, sure, that's something you have to deal with.
To return to my exercise analogy, I have a medical condition that makes exercise difficult. So I have to work around my unique limitation. But I don't go around saying that doing cardio and working out is not the correct way of getting fit.
I think there is proper research going on when it comes to food science, and weight loss, but finding the good studies among the junk is difficult. We do know that there are some drugs and supplements that have moderate effects, but mostly by acting as an appetite suppressant.
https://www.dexafit.com/services/rmr-metabolic-test
SGLT-2 inhibitors are effective for weight loss and don't suppress appetite.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-019-1057-0
Resting metabolic rate tests are widely available for about $75. You just sit in a chair for a few minutes while a machine measures your exhalations. This is worth doing occasionally if you can afford it to establish an accurate baseline. A lot of people blame their failure to lose weight on a "slow metabolism" which is almost never correct: metabolic rates for individuals with a given height, weight, and sex differ by only a few percent.
There is no human that won’t shed weight like water off a roof if given energy expenditure coupled with restricted intake. And its easy to overwhelm yourself with energy expenditure if you wanted to still eat like a pig: start running up and down bleachers until you are on the verge of puking and watch the pounds fly off.
The reason why so many people are overweight is because they spend their life sitting in bed, sitting at work, sitting in their car, burning tens of calories. Then they try cutting out a 300 cal muffin from their daily intake and wonder why it takes 6 months to lose 5 lbs. You need activity, especially if you don’t have activity in your life. It’s who we are as animals. Early humans would walk game down until it was exhausted and sitting down no longer able to even stand. Then our ancestors would calmly walk up to the delirious antelope on the verge of death and poke it with a stick or beat it with a rock. Today, no one bothers making time to burn those calories, and that’s ultimately why people get fat. Modern suburban living has coddled us from physical activity, such as walking.
I said older because the weight-loss plans I came across usually only referred to case studies where people are in their 20s.
And from what I could gather, most people past 35 really start struggling with their weight.
The reason why so many people dismiss it is that from the 1980's onward food was starting to get designed for overeating, and labeling requirements were starting to be gamed so the calories listed on these designed foods (and that includes nearly everything today) no longer have as high straightforward correlation with the 'calories' measured in 'simple' foods of old.
A Kilo Calory is the energy extracted in burning it, our body doesn't burn fuel it chemically converts it into different substances, the processes are so different since one conserves mass and the other does not. It is a terrible measure given plant fibre burns well and produces lots of energy and hence has lots of calories but plant fibre generally goes right through us since we can't digest a lot of it. The entire thing is a bit rotten from a science point of view. Reducing how much we eat sort of works, for some people, changing to more natural foods works for others, changing to fats and protein exclusively for others etc etc. Few studies show the majority of people loosing fat long term. All this to me points to the fact we don't have this figured out at all yet.
I think dedication and self discipline is the most important lesson.
Good luck on your journey to stay fit and healthy, I'm on a similar path as yourself but not quite as successful.
I have found that long distance running also resulted in some weight loss. After 3 months of running on a treadmill I gradually increased my distance until I was running an 8 minute mile pace for 50 minutes, which is about a 10K. This was much healthier than dieting. Even though it required extensive time and effort it felt like less discipline than dieting and I wasn't so limited on what I could eat. The exercise allowed me to trim up, but I only lost a little bit of weight. The running resulted in a low resting pulse rate of about 42bpm.
These days i'm more or less doing the sunrise-sunset routine, which seems more natural to me. I've never been a big breakfast person, and for most of my life i've skipped breakfast. The only thing i've added is skipping lunch, which is also easy in the "work from home" world we currently live in.
My family and i also have different rituals in the morning, so we're usually not up at the same time anyway. So i eat a normal size dinner with the family in the evening, and my "social life" is mostly intact while at the same time cutting calories by 1/4 or more.
The thing is, when you're used to "overeating" you're hungry all the time. Stuffing less food in your stomach causes it to shrink, meaning you'll feel full earlier, so contrary to what many people believe, you don't just consume a full days worth of calories in the evening (assuming you're not eating at McDonalds, which makes it very easy to consume 2500 kcal in one sitting).
In the end, calories is all that matters in weight loss. The less you eat the skinnier you get. There are healthy and unhealthy ways of doing calorie restriction, but if you eat less than your body consumes, you lose weight.
Edit: I should add that another thing i changed was that i'm not "religious" about it. If somebody invites me out for dinner, or the family just gathers for dinner during the weekend, i eat.
Walking, or indoor exercise bike works for me, together with not keeping myself feeling full all day. Learning to live with a mild occasional feeling of "I'm a little hungry and I could eat something" without eating immediately is not that hard.
My wife struggled with keeping weight off and counting macros has been the only effective way to do it, but it’s insanely exhausting, especially with kids who you need to feed too. We worked from a spreadsheet for about a year until I automated everything and now we (and others!) get automated meal plans once a week with genuine, easy recipes that hit your calorie requirement. It’s like EatThisMuch but specifically for Australians and generates much more realistic meal plans. Of course, nothing is ever perfect for everyone, but it’s a great foundation.
My tip is be comfortable with eating MORE sometimes. Going out for dinner with mates? It’s fine, as long as it’s not a regular thing. Movies with popcorn and coke? That’s okay too! “Flexible eating” works well when it becomes a lifestyle, not just an 8 week plan.
So far I've lost 10-15kg 4 times before gaining them back. Every single time :)
Keeping it off is another story, I'm sure, but that's lifestyle related, not dieting.
And the correlary: "Tons of people will nevertheless protest that that's it their case even when it isn't". It's the "It's not my program, it's a compiler bug" of dieting...
Did I overeat one or two days? No regrets. I don't have a goal that now moved further. It is what it is. Today is a new day and I'll do what I normally do. Did I hit a plateau? Well, what can I do? My identity still says I should eat sensibly. I stayed off processed foods this week? Check. Did I consume excess sugar or soda? No. Ate my greens? Yip! So, my lifestyle is healthy no matter what the scale says. Did I go out with friends and overindulged? Hey, that's a healthy lifestyle too! Just don't do it very often.
Sure, I can give more practical advice and do think that OP is way too early to announce victory after just one month, but it's a journey, you have to experience some things on your own.
I'll just comment on calorie counting. Once upon a time I used to count calories to single digit accuracy. It's not needed. Keep a rough track of your macros as some people say (protein and carbs are aroung 4KCal/gram, fat is around 9KCal/gram) and you will be fine.
Theravada monks also follow this approach, but not for weight-loss reasons, obviously
For me, lunch was usually some low quality food grabbed in a hurry, and so it was the easiest meal to cut out. But the main reason to cut lunch was that I always got sleepy mid afternoon, and falling asleep in meetings isn't really acceptable. Not having lunch makes my afternoons much more effective, which is great as I'm not really a morning person.
I don't think they carry around little scales anymore, but they "score" everything they eat.
From the folks I know that do it, it works. I think they need to keep it up, though.