I really like the main idea: it's a willpower management issue, not a diet issue. A lot of stuff is approached differently if you think about it this way, especially in the light of studies who found out willpower is a finite resource, which is replenished easiest by... eating.
How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
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Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#12Hacker's Diet Online has a nice graphing utility. It's much easier to see progress on the average than with daily fluctuations.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#13> My breakfast would involve stuffing myself with as much food as I could fit in my morning stomach. I followed that with a light lunch around 2-3pm, and then almost no dinner (or a low-calorie snack if I was hungry – examples in the appendix). I wonder how this plays into a more muscle-building oriented plan. Doesn't seem like being calorie deficient all evening into next morning would be good for building muscle.
Probably not. This is a weight loss method, not a muscle gain method. In fact, you will probably lose some muscle along with the fat. Whether that's something you're willing to accept is up to you. Personally, I don't think putting the muscle back on is all that hard - but losing the fat was almost impossible previously.
You can do exercise on the "big breakfast" approach - but you'll find it much easier to do so in the morning. I doubt you'd gain much muscle while in a 500-1000 daily calorie deficit, but you could certainly help maintain it, and after a nice big breakfast you wouldn't be short of energy to lift weights.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#14I didn’t try the crazy diets like Atkins or the Maple Syrup diet. Anything that requires eating crazy stuff is probably bad for your health.
Now I'm starting to feel like an Atkins Zeolot, I've been defending low-carb on HN so much lately, but I can't let a statement like that sit on itself! There's tons of scientific evidence for Atkins and everybody I talked to that investigated it, agrees.
Furthermore "eating less" will not work, if you're eating mostly carbs. There's a high probability your body will just go into starvation mode. Meaning you'll store about the same amount of fat, while there's less energy to be spend for your body, making you sleepy and lightheaded. Graphing your weight won't change anything about that.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#15He says, as I've heard, that those body fat scales are wildly inaccurate. But it looks like the variance is less than a percentage point, which seems really good to me. I guess it's more of an issue of a constant error? EDIT: Yea, I guess it is probably a constant (person-specific) error. The first google result said >Use [the scales] to measure your progress only. Don't compare your body fat percentage to tables or…
Worth noting that I did the measurements at the same time each morning. When I tried measuring my weight at various times of the day, I easily got several percentage points of difference.
Other things that influenced the percentage included:
* eating some very salty stuff the previous day (drives down the percentage)
* getting drunk the previous day (same, weirdly enough)
* eating something late the previous day (same)
You can get decent progress tracking so long as you keep your diet relatively steady and weigh yourself at the same time each day. Even so, there will be odd variations of up to 1.5% in a day, but as you can see from the graphs they usually melt back into an average trend.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#16i think he discounted a step: exercise. if you don't, you'll lose some weight, sure, but if you remain sedentary, you won't see that big of a difference. it doesn't even have to be much to start, just walk more. i also would discourage the "skip dinner" plan. i think you'll find you'll have better results if you do eat SOMEthing for dinner. it could just be some of the low calorie foods he mentions, but just to have…
There is a _long_ discussion about how much exercise helps weight loss, what kind of exercise is better (aerobic vs anaerobic, burning calories vs building muscle, priming the metabolism vs getting hungry), how much is enough etc. It's much safer to skip it altogether.
Well, overall the goal is to burn more calories than you take in. I wouldn't recommended "skip exercise" to anybody, but tell them that it's not necessary if they can control their intake enough. But, if you don't change your intake and also add exercise, it'll certainly speed things up.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#17Most people want to lose too much weight too quickly. Patience is a virtue. I lost 55 pounds with what I considered minimal effort, but it took one year.
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#18I didn’t try the crazy diets like Atkins or the Maple Syrup diet. Anything that requires eating crazy stuff is probably bad for your health. Now I'm starting to feel like an Atkins Zeolot, I've been defending low-carb on HN so much lately, but I can't let a statement like that sit on itself! There's tons of scientific evidence for Atkins and everybody I talked to that investigated it, agrees. Furthermore "eating less…
If you read the appendix, you'll see that I do recommend staying away from processed sugars and other assorted white-bread-and-white-rice.
In my third iteration, I'm also tending to avoid the starchy stuff most of the time (not always though). In the first two, though, I happily ate a sandwich for lunch and potatoes for breakfast, and still lost plenty of both weight and fat.
I won't get into a debate about Atkins. I am naturally dubious of extreme diets (and Atkins is extreme, no matter which way you slice it), but it's worth pointing out that "what you eat" is only one third of this method. The first 2/3rds are all about motivation, and they're the important part. The third part merely suggests one way to "eat less".
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#19How does one determine body fat percentage? This seems like a really hard problem to me. How do body fat percentage scales work?
Re: How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs
#20I really like the main idea: it's a willpower management issue, not a diet issue. A lot of stuff is approached differently if you think about it this way, especially in the light of studies who found out willpower is a finite resource, which is replenished easiest by... eating.
I actually completely disagree with this main idea. Everybody eventually gives up, no one has 100% steel willpower, we're all human. I would be very interested to see and update in a year or so, to see if the author has managed to keep the weight off.
A much better idea is to change your diet completely, so your taste buds change and you stop craving unhealthy things.
A wrote a similar article 3 years ago, and took a completely different method. I lost 40 lbs in 4 months, and has kept it off since (ok, I may have gained 5-10 lbs since the peak). Not adding a "shameless plug" since I've stopped updating this site a long time ago, but I think it's still useful: http://www.alexanderkharlamov.com/2007/07/22/how-to-lose-wei...