Weight loss

[Deadlift1]

pasta made from chick peas

[+ Eric Hassan]

Intermittent Fasting - there are various methods - it focuses not on what you eat as when you eat. The one I like is the Eat-Stop-Eat ----> fasting from dinner one day, to dinner the next, basically a 24-hour fast. I do it once a week.

I-F is not only good for losing weight but has been shown to improve overall body metabolism. There's lots of info online about fasting.

 

I also walk on the treadmill 3 miles a day - or in the park during nice weather.

 

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.

[+ Axiom2001]

i joined Weight Watchers and the pounds are coming off.....slowly. Anyone with interesting weight loss tips beside cutting off a leg? Your input would be appreciated. My goal is a 40 pound loss

 

The new Weight Watchers' program is simply great. One can virtually eat normally and many, many foods if he keeps track of what he eats while at home as well as out. I've been on the new program and have done reasonably well if I keep track of the points per day which is not difficult. One can do this on his cell/smart phone.

 

[...have to take my jackets and pants to have altered; ...have to purchase new shirts, for the neck size is gaping!]

[+ oldNbusted]

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.

 

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.

[MikeyGMin]

There is a great little calculator that takes into account your sex, age, height, current weight and activity level. I checked and it does match the calories listed in the app I use.

 

www.calculator.net

[GasparJohnson]

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.

[YOUNG_LA_DOM]

I will say

Diet diet diet strictly

 

Self discipline

Self determination

Self motivation

[+ OliverSaks]

A friend of mine lost 150 pounds of fat in 3 years. First he cut out caffeine. The following year, he started going to the gym religiously 3 days a week, and still does. Last year, he removed meat from his diet. Nothing stood in his way, and I applaud his determination. It's astonishing how much different and healthy he looks compared to 2015. Discipline can be amazing over time.

Know why he cut out caffeine?

[Stormy]

Thank you for all the ideas on weight loss in this thread that I started. I've lost 9.4 pounds in 8 weeks by following the weight watchers tracking program. I'm going to just continue this program. Small losses every week but happy the extra weight is leaving me. Hopefully I can accelerate the weight loss with more frequent exercise

[+ oldNbusted]

nytimes.com: How to Stop Eating Sugar

 

Mostly good advice, even if it's not specific to weight management.

[LoveNDino]

This one is an interesting read...

[MichBoyBlake]

I gained quite a bit of weight over the course of my last relationship, but I've managed to take it off and I've started to get back into better shape again.

I didn't read everything in this thread so sorry if I'm repeating something, but for me the best advice I can give is: count calories (at least at first), try to be a bit more active... but most importantly look at it as a change into a new, healthier life-style. It's a slow process, so focus more on being healthy than on losing weight. Also try to enjoy yourself and be comfortable with how you look now.

A lot of the reason people have trouble losing weight and getting healthier is because it's generally a long-term game. You want to still be healthy too once you hit your target number. It's totally ok to indulge yourself a little bit here and there.. just generally focus on being healthier and having better self-control, but don't beat yourself up if you have a bad day or even a bad week! Just keep moving forward.

That's the best advice I can give.

[+ FreshFluff]

BTW: when I started this journey, I deleted my WW subscription (which I had maintained off and on for nearly a decade) and switched to LoseIt for tracking, which I found very clarifying. Some of those old WW tricks do come in handy -- yay dill pickles -- but I've found the macro-nutrient approach as simple and even more portable than "points"...

 

+1 on the Lose It app, helped me immensely when I lost my weight. I was able to program in my protein drinks and vitamins as “custom foods” in the app, it was a great reminder of what I had to take every day

 

The bar code scan of packaged foods almost makes it fun

 

I used LoseIt it pretty faithfully for a few months last spring and am starting it again. The bar codes are fun,and being able to find nutritional info for similar foods was very helpful given how often I go out.

 

I'm considering trying the premium app to see the trends but I hesitate to pay for another subscription.

Edited April 7, 2018 by FreshFluff

[MichBoyBlake]

I used LoseIt it pretty faithfully for a few months last spring and am starting it again. The bar codes are fun,and being able to find nutritional info for similar foods was very helpful given how often I go out.

 

I'm considering trying the premium app to see the trends but I hesitate to pay for another subscription.

 

I use MyFitnessPal. It sounds like LoseIt is about the same thing; I think I'll download LoseIt today and check it out just to see. Before MyFitnessPal I used LiveStrong, which iirc had no app: just a web version. Idk if the LiveStrong website/app/whatever is even still around or not. This was like forever ago when I was still in high school I think and didn't have a smart phone, but LiveStrong was a bit more focused on logging exercise/work-out information than on food/nutrients, although it tracked those as well.

 

MyFitnessPal has a web and app version. I pay $10/mo for the like premium subscription or w/e, but I also use it to track a lot of nutritional information and to like keep track of like exercise/work outs. If you're just looking to use it for basic stuff, then you really don't need the subscription version. The subscription just lets you set specific goals for macros/micros, and lets you generate way more things like charts/graphs so you can see how you're doing with those macros/micros over a longer period of time. Basically the subscription just lets you customize and really make everything very specific to yourself, although I think if you're main goal right now is to just lose weight and get healthier.. that kind of thing isn't really going to be all that useful. For weight loss, with the free version of MyFitnessPal you just enter your: age, sex, height, weight, general level of activity, goal weight, weight you want to lose per week. With just that information it'll give you very generalized calorie, exercise, macro, and some micro goals per day. A plan that general is definitely perfect enough for working on just losing weight and getting healthy, but with nutrition past general weight loss it is important to be aware that due to genetics everyone is quite different. So once you're at your target weight or getting close to it, if you're also looking at being healthier and feeling better, it'd definitely be useful to start seeking out help with determining nutrition/diet that works best for you in the long term.

 

And just to clarify, obviously the web and app version are both under the same username/pw, so you can switch between using them pretty easily. I like to use the app mostly just to log everything, and then the web version to like analyze what I've logged.

 

I don't obsess over calories all THAT much, but unfortunately i'm not the type of person that can just like, roughly judge how much I'm eating/how much I've eaten today/this week/etc. However 1/2 of what I'm typing here is pretty irrelevant to general weight loss, because general weight loss is completely all about calories. Some methods like low-carb, atkins, keto, etc. work for some, but the basis behind those weight-loss methods is that you're setting yourself up with a diet that leaves you satisfied and full on fewer calories, so you don't have to worry too much about manually tracking calories... but it's still just all calories when it comes to weight loss.

I've found I gain weight very easily if I don't keep like a food/exercise journal, and MyFitnessPal is perfect for that. There's also like a scale you can buy and some other equipment that can be synced up with your account I think, but I haven't gotten any of that stuff since it seems unnecessary to buy an expensive scale just so I don't have to manually log it in every time I weigh myself.

 

 

+1 on the Lose It app, helped me immensely when I lost my weight. I was able to program in my protein drinks and vitamins as “custom foods” in the app, it was a great reminder of what I had to take every day

 

The bar code scan of packaged foods almost makes it fun

 

That could be a nice way to remind yourself about protein drinks and vitamins; just remember that vitamins tend to contain a waaayyy larger amount in them than your body actually absorbs, for the purpose of getting your body to absorb as much as possible. So it'd be a good way to remind yourself, but not a good way to actually gauge how much of a specific vitamin you're getting per day... That you sorta have to decide on your own. Like I take quite a bit of vitamin D because school/work (that is to say outside of escorting) keeps me inside a lot of the time, which puts me at pretty high risk for vitamin D deficiency. BUT if I were to actually scan and enter in the supplement I take for vitamin D, the app I use at least would act like I'm getting like 1000% or 2000% or something of what I should be getting, only because it has no way of really calculating how much I'm actually absorbing, since there are soo many different variables to consider when it comes to that. It would also act like I get too much calcium because although I'm not at all close to being calcium deficient, I take a calcium supplement with the vitamin D supplement since that helps my body absorb more of the vitamin D supplement.

 

The bar code thing is super nice; MyFitnessPal lets you scan bar codes as well. Of course not EVERY product's bar code is going to be in the database so sometimes you get things that don't scan, or scan but show up as something completely different, but the big advantage is just not having to manually enter all the nutrition information of what you're eating. I remember a time when I kept a nutrition journal and wrote all of that stuff down everyday! It sounds soo painful now I can't imagine not having the barcode scan haha. I think the times when I used to write it all down in a journal I just ended up have very little variety in my diet like 65% of the time or something, and then having a lot of days where I got more variety but only wrote down calories and maybe macros.

 

There I go again, writing an entire essay in a forum post, lol... Sorry I can't help it; I always end up writing so much.