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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

#111

Post by eof »

papito wrote: post #64

After 30, one should seriously evaluate breakfast. Three meals per day becomes just too many calories to burn. Two meals for an adult is plenty. Coffee in the morning suppresses hunger, so one can go until 12-12:30 before getting woozy. At some point I noticed that I was force-feeding myself lunch if I ate breakfast. Hunger is a normal feeling - embrace it.

I agree about the hunger part. There seems to be this idea imparted by parents into children that hunger is “bad” and should be avoided.

Of course we evolved with hunger being a regular part of our experience and only in modern times can the gnawing feeling of hunger be avoided almost entirely by many people, or addressed immediately with a convenient food.

I am no biologist but my own experience and some reasonable assumptions would point to the idea that there are biological processes taking place during hunger pangs which are part of our overall energy systems.

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

#112

Post by partialrecall »

vl wrote: post #47
Swizec wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But you can't ride 6 hours on the single tank of gas?

You can quite easily if you're going at the right speed. I recently drove across Canada where the speed limits are absurdly slow and I was getting 8 hours on a tank easily.

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

#113

Post by RandallBrown »

trophycase wrote: post #107
RandallBrown wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you eat 500 calories and burn 600 calories, the energy has to come from somewhere . So in a sense it is actually a pretty simple physics problem. It gets tricky because calculating calorie consumption is really hard (how much of what you ate was actually turned into energy) and calculating calorie expenditure is probably even harder.

The point is that the body adapts to burn more or fewer calories depending on how much you eat. Restricting calories can possibly have the side effect of just lowering your metabolism, rather than just losing weight.

Yeah, that's true, but it doesn't change the calories in calories out equation.

If your metabolism goes down, so do the calories out. That's one of many reasons that counting the calories out is extremely difficult.

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

#114

Post by omginternets »

RandallBrown wrote: post #101
omginternets wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics I assume you're referring to the "energy in" vs "energy out" meme in weight-loss. The body is not a closed system. While you _do_ have to balance your chemical equations for glucose catabolysis (or whatever), weight loss is far from a "simple physics" problem.

If you eat 500 calories and burn 600 calories, the energy has to come from somewhere . So in a sense it is actually a pretty simple physics problem. It gets tricky because calculating calorie consumption is really hard (how much of what you ate was actually turned into energy) and calculating calorie expenditure is probably even harder.

>If you eat 500 calories and burn 600 calories, the energy has to come from somewhere.

Yes, hence "you have to balance your chemical equations", but we need to agree on what we're calling "eat" and "burn", here.

Burning 600 calories can just as well "work up an appetite" as it can "draw upon fat reserves".

We're used to thinking of weight loss as a behavioral problem withy metabolic symptoms ("he eats too much, so he got fat") whereas there's reason to consider it as a metabolic problem with behavioral symptoms ("the kind of food he eats signals to the body that fat should be created, so his body signals for him to eat more").

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

#115

Post by taurath »

RandallBrown wrote: post #101
omginternets wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics I assume you're referring to the "energy in" vs "energy out" meme in weight-loss. The body is not a closed system. While you _do_ have to balance your chemical equations for glucose catabolysis (or whatever), weight loss is far from a "simple physics" problem.

If you eat 500 calories and burn 600 calories, the energy has to come from somewhere . So in a sense it is actually a pretty simple physics problem. It gets tricky because calculating calorie consumption is really hard (how much of what you ate was actually turned into energy) and calculating calorie expenditure is probably even harder.

Your bodies absorbsion of nutrients and yes calories is not a system in a vacuum. Nor it’s decision to store excess calories as fat. There’s a wide range of how much different types of foods affect different people. I had a friend who would eat (we counted) 4000 calories a day and couldn’t get over 120lb. Turns out they had a soy allergy and their bodies didn’t absorb the food.

Simplifying it to calories in calories out is a generalism of a generalism.

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

#116

Post by verbatim »

scarface74 wrote: post #77
EGreg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this point of view. It’s like people who didn’t believe in washing hands until bacteria were discovered. Yes sure calories in calories out. But metabolism has so many variables. It can be revved up and burn a lot of calories. It can become quiescent when you are in starvation mode. What causes it to start using the fat reserves is definitely more than a univariate analysis. If there is a catalyst t…

It is still just calories in and calories out. Some people naturally have a higher metabolism and a higher basal metabolic rate. It still doesn’t change the equation. Yes, it’s a well known fact that if you eat too few calories, that your metabolism slows down - and you burn less calories. That doesn’t make anything that the original poster said scientifically valid. I saw all sorts of crazy crap that people believed…

> It is still just calories in and calories out.

The problem with this line of thinking is the "just".

Sure, physics says it's calories in and out, and we all agree that mostly makes sense.

But -- how do you measure how many calories are going out? Sleep is known to have an impact on weight. How does one translate their sleep quality or sleep issues into a better "out" measure? How do you know how many calories are going out during all of the other things you do during the day? What about the thousands of assorted complex processes going on in your body that you aren't really aware of?

For the "in"... ok, so you studiously track everything you eat. What's the efficiency that your body absorbs all of the calories from the food you ate? How many of those calories pass through and aren't actually consumed? Is eating 1000 calories of lettuce really the same thing as eating 1000 calories of pork?

If fixing this for people was just about "the equation", weight loss would be a lot easier to solve.

"Calories in, calories out" is one of those things that sounds great, but is not nearly as practical for people to actually implement as people like to imagine.

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

#117

Post by berdon »

berdon wrote: post #96
scarface74 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. Nothing about the body is simple. - There is a virus that studies suggest (show correlation) increase weight gain [1] - There is a study that shows water in != water out (unfortunately my googlefu is failing me though). - Empirical: I've lost weight eating 900 calories/day and I've lost weight eating 3500 calories/day with the same level of exercise. The difference…

I want to expand a little bit more: The body can be simplified down into an input/output black-box - almost like a thevenin equivalent. But most people unaccount for lost energy in the output. No two bodies are alike and no two bodies share the same efficiency in breaking down food, absorption, conversion, and excretion.

Yes, you can collect the excrement and analyze the output. But that analysis doesn't tell you much. You don't know how efficient the black body is so you don't know how much of the waste could have been utilized or not. Not only that, you don't know if the body's efficiency is static or dynamic based on inputs and outputs.

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

#118

Post by mattsfrey »

EGreg wrote: post #68
scarface74 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never understood this point of view. It’s like people who didn’t believe in washing hands until bacteria were discovered. Yes sure calories in calories out. But metabolism has so many variables. It can be revved up and burn a lot of calories. It can become quiescent when you are in starvation mode. What causes it to start using the fat reserves is definitely more than a univariate analysis. If there is a catalyst t…

It kind of is actually. Nobody escapes the law of universal conservation of energy. Sure some people due to genetics will store more of the energy they consume as fat than others. But if you have an energy deficit the body will consume itself to the tune of that exact deficit, period, end of. It will be a mixture of fat and muscle, but the body does try to maintain muscle to the extent you are utilizing it given there is sufficient protein to maintain it. So lift weights or do resistance training enough to keep the muscle you wish to retain and maintain a good amount of protein intake to support this as well, and the bulk of your body mass consumed will be fat. Other than that it is just maintaining an energy deficit, and the best technique is the one you personally can adhere to consistently.

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

#119

Post by partialrecall »

berdon wrote: post #117
berdon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. Nothing about the body is simple. - There is a virus that studies suggest (show correlation) increase weight gain [1] - There is a study that shows water in != water out (unfortunately my googlefu is failing me though). - Empirical: I've lost weight eating 900 calories/day and I've lost weight eating 3500 calories/day with the same level of exercise. The difference…

I want to expand a little bit more: The body can be simplified down into an input/output black-box - almost like a thevenin equivalent. But most people unaccount for lost energy in the output. No two bodies are alike and no two bodies share the same efficiency in breaking down food, absorption, conversion, and excretion. Yes, you can collect the excrement and analyze the output. But that analysis doesn't tell you muc…

You're describing difficulties with precise measurement of inputs and outputs, but I don't think the difficulty of making those measurements refutes the core idea of CICO at all.

The difficulty of actually implementing CICO suggests we should have sympathy for those who fail. This doesn't refute CICO.

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