SuperJunior

WOW- now that I remember this thread (cf the Chicken and Waffles Thread from March 2018) it’s difficult to believe I posted it 3-1/2 years ago. I would have thought it was much more recent.
 
I also can’t believe no one alerted me to the misspelling I made in the title “A Defining Question For Our Era-Crunchy Or Smootth?.”
 
Well I’ve corrected the mistake. Now this thread will be able live on into the future and can hold its title high among the best of Forum Thread Titles!!!
 
Gman

Yep

Is that you in your avatar? #askingforafriend

Not to mention RentMen wont allow trans men to show our hard-ons (strap-ons) in public. Considering it’s STANDARD for CIS men to be allowed to show theirs I find it pretty crippling and wish we had another ad venue to work with. I’m pretty much going to stop advertising on RentMen after my six month ad subscription expires because I find it useless without being allowed to show the tool that I actually top guys with. Trans men do need an ad venue that doesn’t discriminate against us. I hear A4A is banning trans men on the grounds that we are not men too.

My whoredom is perfectly legal...

A lot of good comments here. I'll add mine:
 
I think that what @Eric Hassan said is very important: counting not only calories but also macronutrient ratios (protein, carbs, and fat) is very important for two reasons:
 
1. Not all foods have the same number of calories. There are some foods of which you can eat a lot and not eat that many calories; however, other foods, even "healthy" foods, can be very high in calories. For example, if you Google the nutrition information for 100 gram servings of foods, you will see that per 100 grams:
 
Tomato: 18 calories
Apple: 52 calories
Banana: 89 calories
 
 
As you can see, for the same amount of food (as weighed in grams), you can eat a lot more tomato and apple than banana. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat bananas if you want to lose weight: you definitely can (they are a good source of potassium, inexpensive, always in-season, etc.), you just have to be aware that they are more calorific than almost all other fruits and vegetables.
 
2. Even though a lot of people have had success with low-carb diets, the scientific research actually suggests that your body more easily stores a fat surplus than a carbohydrate surplus. In fact, there is a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showing that in a 14-day study in which people were purposefully overfed calories, one group overfed with carbohydrates and the other overfed with fat, the group overfed with fat gained MORE bodyfat than the carbohydrate group. The difference was especially pronounced in the beginning of the study since humans have to fill up their muscle glyocgen stores in order to convert a significant amount of carbohydrates to body fat. Here is a link to the study: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Fat-and-carbohydrate-overfeeding-in-humans%3A-differ-Horton-Drougas/cfd2e37527960bd37f0e011c7e0e3aca55eee9ee
 
Research into de novo lipogenesis, the conversation of carbohydrates to body fat, suggests that most of the body fat on a person's body likely comes from dietary fat and not dietary carbohydrates, so the results of the study aren't surprising.
 
Also, if you look at the issue from an anthropological perspective, high-carb, low-fat cultures (ie. Japan and other Asian cultures) have much lower rates of obesity than Western countries in which many people eat diets combining a lot of carbs with a lot of fat (pizza, pasta with cheese, hamburgers, cake, etc.).
 
 
 
Once again, I'm not saying that a low-carb diet won't work: it definitely can. However, the scientific research indicates that carbs may not actually be the enemy: the enemy may actually be COMBINING high-carb WITH high-fat.

I've had a similar good experience with IF, but it's true there is some luck in that I haven't had any of the negative side effects (headaches, lethargy) that many people do report. One of the great things about it is how flexible it is as a strategy, there are so many variations and you can make your own if you don't find one that suits you. So people should do their research and ease into it.
 
Metabolic adaptation is a real phenomenon. It seems like some people experience it and some people don't, so it's important to find out for yourself, so you can plan a strategy that takes it into account. If you live near a college or university that has an athletic program, they usually have a human performance lab that usually offers testing to the public for a reasonable fee. I went to a university here in DC last summer, and got a DEXA body composition scan and a test of my resting metabolic rate. It turned out my metabolism was running 6% 'slower' than expected, so I was armed with that knowledge and could adjust my expectations to be more realistic. I'm planning to go back this summer, so see how it compares. The whole thing was like $220.
 
Another thing I understand is that as a person loses weight, they require fewer calories to maintain their body weight. The very rough estimate is 10 calories, per pound, per day, so if a person is 250 pounds, that is 2,500 calories a day just to maintain. so if they cut their calories down to 2,250 a day, they typically will lose weight, but as they get closer to 225 pounds, they will reach equilibrium and plateau. And that's not taking metabolic adaptation into account, if that happens to them. So it pays to know your body, so you don't get frustrated.

YES! Intermittent fasting is incredible, even when you don't need to lose weight. I use a daily method, so I eat only during an 8 hour window each day - typically 1pm to 9pm. It's made me think more carefully about what I eat, and helped to reduce the amount of donuts and cake and cookies and such that I eat. There's research that shows it helps normalize blood pressure, improve the body's response to insulin, support testosterone production, and reduce inflammation.
 
I also count my macros daily so I know that I'm eating the amount and ratio of foods to support my goals. That's key - knowing what your body requires and knowing that you've consumed it. I know a lot of people who complain about not losing weight and they can't figure out why, and it's often because they're not eating enough. If our bodies don't get enough calories for a few days, we'll lose weight, but chronically underfeeding yourself will convince your body that you're in a famine. Then, it starts shutting down things that are non-essential and eventually running essential tasks on reduced power. The one thing it does really well in that state is hang on to fat, because that's a good energy source for when things get really bad in that famine that you've made for yourself.

NO ONE!!!!!

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Christian Bordin