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Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

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31–40 of 135 posts

Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#31
After watching the documentary Forks Over Knives and reading The China Study, I switched to a whole food plant based diet two years ago. The experimental, clinical, and epidemiological evidence convinced me of the danger of eating animal products. I dropped 20 pounds without even trying and my weight is stable. I walk for 20 minutes at lunch on weekdays. My cholesterol is under 150. I feel more energetic and my mood is slightly better. I occasionally eat animal products, for example when I eat at my mother’s house.

Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#32
post #14

One personal observation I can make about my own journey... there are foods that I never would have touched 10 years ago that today I find enjoyable and foods that have become more palatable and even decent over time. I was never a “salad person”. Now there are several salads that I enjoy. I would never touch beans, now I recently found I can sub them for rice in some dishes and still enjoy it. This is something that…

I'm curious, when you say "Just find something else to drink, ideally which isn’t fizzy", do you include fizzy water?

I only ask as I bought a sodastream machine after realising what I liked most about soda was the fizz - I actively disliked the sweetness. Now I drink around 3 litres of fizzed water a day and haven't looked back.

Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#36
post #32
post #14

One personal observation I can make about my own journey... there are foods that I never would have touched 10 years ago that today I find enjoyable and foods that have become more palatable and even decent over time. I was never a “salad person”. Now there are several salads that I enjoy. I would never touch beans, now I recently found I can sub them for rice in some dishes and still enjoy it. This is something that…

I'm curious, when you say "Just find something else to drink, ideally which isn’t fizzy", do you include fizzy water? I only ask as I bought a sodastream machine after realising what I liked most about soda was the fizz - I actively disliked the sweetness. Now I drink around 3 litres of fizzed water a day and haven't looked back.

It might be different for a person who was drinking a liter of soda daily. As someone who never drank a lot of soda, I switched to carbonated water when I wanted something more, but didn't want sugar. My significant other (who regularly drinks soda) says carbonated water just tastes "bitter".

Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#37

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Grains are a plant, and people on average eat far too many processed grains, and too few fruits and vegetables. I like the simplicity in this statement, but it leaves too much open to interpretation. Let's not have people feeling good about themselves because everything in a PopTart comes from a plant, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#39
post #30

--READ-- Reading all the comments on this thread is pretty funny. I was a trainer for many years and the strategy (note that it’s a strategy rather than a diet) that was most successful takes years to complete with the goal of never doing too much at once. Take the worst thing in your diet. Over the next few weeks, replace it with something slightly better. When your body starts accepting it, move on to the next wors…

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Re: Ask HN: Most sustainable diet long term?

#40

Intermittent fasting is, for the most part, just skipping breakfast. I do that in combination with a mostly low carb/high fat thing, but I'm not too strict with anything. I also don't track my calorie intake. More importantly, I believe that cutting sugar is the key to weight loss and maintenance. I mostly drink water, black tea, and black coffee. You should make sustainable changes that fit your lifestyle, not follo…

Skipping breakfast is wrong, in any context.

The result of not eating anything for breakfast is that the body reduces consumption ("metabolism"); this is exactly what one wants to avoid in diets.

This can be tested very simply. Compare the time of the morning when you start feeling hunger between when you have a breakfast (even a relatively light one, which is what one would do in a weight-loss diet), and when you don't have it.

Most people will paradoxically feel hunger earlier when they have a breakfast compared to when they don't.

This is the major paradox of weight loss: eating less by itself is not necessarily more productive (diet-wise) than eating more.

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