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Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
101–110 of 156 posts
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#102I've made just a couple of simple changes, and I'm slimming down.
One, I now walk for a long time (1-2 hours) every few days. I go around the neighborhood, up hills and such, so it's not a huge strain but not trivial either. I find a 2 hour walk all at once is much better than, say, 4 days of 30 minute walks, because your body only has to "ramp up" once and spends most of the time at a higher metabolic rate.
Two, I reduced, but did not eliminate, the "bad" things from my diet, permanently. For example, I like soda; but I drink mini-bar cans (100 calories) instead of bottles. I'm slimming anyway; soda is fine, as long as you don't drink so much that there's no calories left for real food. Sure, maybe I could slim down a week or two faster without it, but I wouldn't be happy, so why go through that? :)
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#103I've lost nearly 60 pounds in 7 months. I did that by making sure I walk for atleast 1 hour a day and changing my diet. Yes, just regular walking - no running because 15-20 minutes of running kicks my ass whereas I can walk for 1-1.5 hours without getting too tired.
Aside from that I've made sure I'm comfortable with my diet throughout the initial weight loss. To maintain the loss I've realized that I need to decide to change my lifestyle and my diet permanently. So that excludes diets that deprive my body off essential nutrients and which I can not maintain long-term. I've started to eat more salads for my meals - the salads always include protein (grilled chicken or grilled steak) and sometimes carbs too (sweet fruits). I always make sure my meal contains some form of veggies. I try to avoid fat and greasy things totally (but not always). For desert or just increasing my sugar level when I'm feeling lethargic I take sugar in the form of fruits - mostly apples, oranges or anything else that is sitting in the fridge. I've developed a new appreciation for fruits and veggies during the last 6 months. For breakfast I've shifted to having boiled egg whites and recently have started to include brown bread too.
I think the first comment hit the nail on the head - to maintain the loss you need to change your habits permanently. You should pick a routine _now_ that you are comfortable with and plan to carry it with you long term. You can keep tweaking the routine to suit your needs as you go along but anything that you can not carry with you long term should be avoided.
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#104Bet your friends $500 that you can lose more than they can.
A morning after a booze and pizza filled night, my buddy and I were feeling particularly fat. So we placed a bet, the one who loses most will win a bet. He invited another fat friend. So three of us each put $500 into a envelope ($1,500 all in), and we had 6 weeks to lose as much as possible. We weighed in immediately (3 times each, taking the average, very anal about the details). 6 weeks later one had lost 8lbs, one 20lbs and I lost 23lbs (I was completely dehydrated!), but we were skinny and I was rich. It was the easiest way of losing weight ever.
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#105Joe Hruska (one of my co-founders at RescueTime, YC08) has lost 42 pounds in the last 3.5 months with approximately zero exercise. He pretty much did the South Beach Diet. It's kinda faddy, but it really is approximately what humans were designed to eat. You should pick up the book, but approximately: no white flour, no white sugar, no rice, no potatoes. First two weeks are pure carb-free (painful) but the rest of th…
"approximately what humans were designed to eat"
and humans weren't approximately designed to sit in chairs for 10-12 hours day typing away staring at a computer screen.
the diet matched the activity.
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#106First of all, exercise. You can't get in good shape through diet alone. Exercise is more than just cardio; strength training increases the amount of muscle mass you have, which allows you to burn more calories. "Diets" don't work because the word implies a temporary change in your eating habits. In order to maintain weight loss, you need to change your eating habits for the rest of your life . Further, in order to be…
"diet" implies your normal eating habits, not a change in eating habits.
go to a nutritionist and they will ask you "what's your diet like?"
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#107AAAGH, the hacker diet is really really stupid, there are a lot better ways than that torture! If you want to go nerdy with your diet, try a CRON lifestyle (Calorie Reduced, Optimal Nutrition) and use CRON-o-Meter to track your eating. (http://www.optimal.org/peter/cron.htm)
Why cant you do it the normal way of increased exercise and moderated eating, while you avoid eating junk food and rich desserts? And if you eat desserts & junk, you'll only eat it during weekends or something.
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#108I am not overweight and not a specialist for diets. However, recently I read one book about nutrition that made a big impression on me: The China Study by Colin Campbell. It doesn't give you a specific diet plan, except for the recommendation to avoid all animal proteins. But if that sounds hard, the book provides ample motivation, because it summarizes lots and lots of studies that show that most "civilization disea…
That's interesting. Do you know how accurate the calories to weight conversion is?
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#109The problem is more complicated then given credit to. Basically, we don't know. We do have hundreds of diets, but if you go to a doctor and ask the question you're not going to get a nice, uniform and consistent answer. From what I read and experienced over time there are some conclusions to be drawn: 1. Most diets are short-medium term, and for long term they're inefficient or (if at least one study is to be believe…
Making my own meals helps me. I try to start from scratch as much as possible and avoid fatty meats. Plus, cooking my own food makes it more enjoyable to eat, which means its easier to eat healthily. The inventive aspect is also fun.
Re: Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing an hour of cardio every day might be too much. (I'm talking about something which is higher intensity than fast walking... That would be great.) Half an hour three times a week would be fine. The issue is with adherence, and also the body's negative response to this much exercise. In many people (including me for sure) it triggers an adaptation that makes them try to conserve calories by making them feel sluggi…
Don't buy into the "genetic limit" line of thinking. The limit on the amount of muscle mass you can pack onto your body is much higher than most people have the will to achieve. My issue is not length, but intensity. I understood "not doing too much in the gym" to mean "don't work too hard." If instead you meant use your time in the gym wisely, then that I agree with. But if you want to see continued improvement, the…
Increasing the speed throughout the extent of a treadmill run takes my mind off the pain, cuz I'm trying to appreciate the slower speeds before I have to go faster:)