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The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

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Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#51

I did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight") I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much. If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to…

I hate to be blunt. But this is as much pseudoscience as the anti vaxers. Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. There is also a big difference between losing weight based on water weight and losing real body mass.

I sweat like a pig anytime I work out. I use to teach two hour fitness classes and even now after the end of a workout, I’ve “lost 5 pounds” but that’s pure water weight. I’m burning around 1000-1200 calories during that time. If I rehydrate and drink lots of water afterwards, I’ll “gain” 3 pounds.

If you are “losing weight” by being hungry or by limiting when you eat, you are losing weight because you are consuming less calories.

The same was cited in the article. The chess players are forgetting to eat.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of sleep pretty much affects every system in the body. Metabolism being no exception. Mathew Walker covers this in detail in Why we sleep .

Sure, but I found something more specific. I tracked weight loss for a month. Eating only one meal a day. I recorded multiple times a day my weight. Only in the morning did I actually record any "loss". So, I did some tests for this. I stayed up all night to see if I lost weight in the morning like every other day, but I didn't. I slept, woke up in the afternoon, and I had lost .5 pounds from the previous day. Someth…

Did you ever test exercise? Just yesterday, before my workout (squats and bench press, no cardio), I weighed 202. Just after my workout, I weighed 200.

I've seen myself lose up to 5lbs before and after a workout.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more of the effect of not eating or drinking for ~8 hours. 1 pint of water weighs around 500g. Also the average human exhales 1kg of CO2 a day which about a quarter of that is carbon weight. You will lose weight if you do not drink or eat for 8 hours awake. "Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight.

>"Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight. I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.

I'm going to try to reiterate more clearly what your parent comment was saying:

Your experimental methodology is flawed because it fails to control for water loss. This isn't negligible: in the summer when it's hot and I sweat a lot, I can easily drink a 1 liter Nalgene bottle in the morning, about 2 pounds of water. It's likely that what you've measured is simply the slow loss of water through perspiration and exhalation throughout the night.

I guess technically this is weight loss because you do weigh less when dehydrated, but it's not loss of fat weight, which is what I think most people mean when they say weight loss.

Weight fluctuations throughout the day due to water/food intake and waste excretion/water loss dwarf any actual fat loss, so I don't think weighing yourself throughout the day is a viable method of determining when fat weight is lost during the day.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight. I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.

specialp and johnmaguire2013 are correct. 'real' weight loss occurs very slowly in comparison to the ways your body can shed or accumulate water. In a week you're not likely to lose more than a 'real' pound unless you're being pretty extreme about your calorie intake or expenditure, but you can fluctuate by easily 5 pounds of water/food weight in a day. Source: tracking my calories and weight for the better part of a…

Exactly. I “lose weight” every time that I take my blood pressure pill (a diuretic) and “gain weight” when I don’t.

My weight fluctuates 5 pounds in a given day based on how much I eat, drink, workout etc.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of sleep pretty much affects every system in the body. Metabolism being no exception. Mathew Walker covers this in detail in Why we sleep .

Sure, but I found something more specific. I tracked weight loss for a month. Eating only one meal a day. I recorded multiple times a day my weight. Only in the morning did I actually record any "loss". So, I did some tests for this. I stayed up all night to see if I lost weight in the morning like every other day, but I didn't. I slept, woke up in the afternoon, and I had lost .5 pounds from the previous day. Someth…

> I stayed up all night to see if I lost weight in the morning like every other day, but I didn't.

Did you drink water during that time?

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight. I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.

Wait.. Where does the weight go? Apart from water - sweated and breathed out, which you say isn't all that's happening.

Most weight your body actually loses (as in not water) is lost as carbon in the CO2 you exhale.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#57

Eat less, lose weight. I read long ago that if you want to maintain weight, eat until you're a little bit hungry. If you want to lose weight, eat until you're still pretty hungry. I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and settin…

I've found that to be true as well. One thing I do is I eat before dinner (especially when going out for dinner). If I'm really hungry I'll order the largest thing on the menu and overeat. If I have a banana before going out I'll make a wiser choice.

Losing weight is all about hunger management. Eat free foods like fruits and vegetables when you're hungry. Eat 3 balanced meals a day. That's it, that's all it takes.

If you turn losing weight into a job by counting calories and doing meal planning and whatnot you'll quit because you already have a job. So just use some basic common sense judgments and make sure you're never too hungry because that's when you'll make mistakes.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#58

I did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight") I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much. If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to…

I hate to be blunt. But this is as much pseudoscience as the anti vaxers. Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. There is also a big difference between losing weight based on water weight and losing real body mass. I sweat like a pig anytime I work out. I use to teach two hour fitness classes and even now after the end of a workout, I’ve “lost 5 pounds” but that’s pure water weight. I’m burning around 10…

> "The chess players are forgetting to eat. "

This surprises me. I find that being hungry dulls my edge and makes me noticeably less clever. It's easy for me to forget to eat if I'm doing something mindless, but when I'm actively problem solving I find that I become more aware of my hunger (and other forms of general discomfort.)

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#59

I did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight") I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much. If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to…

I hate to be blunt. But this is as much pseudoscience as the anti vaxers. Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. There is also a big difference between losing weight based on water weight and losing real body mass. I sweat like a pig anytime I work out. I use to teach two hour fitness classes and even now after the end of a workout, I’ve “lost 5 pounds” but that’s pure water weight. I’m burning around 10…

This. It's all an input/output ratio.

The quickest way to gain two pounds is drinking 32oz of water.

Re: The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

#60
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in the grandmaster situation is that their extreme focus on chess completely displaces their hunger, hunger which needs real estate in your attention to be effective, just like any other felt sensation. And this focus lasts for the majority of the tournament, months. This is different to most people. When you have an immersive job you can get in the zone for many hours of the day, but you do stop worki…

I used to get this with programming. I still do sometimes but it just isn’t as immersive anymore (probably not enough of a challenge or too many parallel concerns) Once upon a time video games did it. I’d fire up Empire Total War and 20 minutes later it was getting dark and I felt queasy. Oh wait it’s been 12 hours. Nowadays I only get that on my motorcycle. Fire up the engine, find an open road, and you don’t even k…

You just described me and the progression of my exact hobbies as well as eating habits. Weird. Even when I stop to get gas, I rarely get hungry when riding, or I do- and I just forget I was hungry as I'm pre-occupied with the road.
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