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People took some potassium and lost some weight

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Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#141

Post by nonameiguess »

ck2 wrote: post #79

It's water weight loss. Potassium competes with sodium. You take enough potassium and it becomes a diuretic.

This badly needs to be the top answer, not languishing down at the bottom of the page like it is right now.

It never stops amazing me when weight manipulation curious people just ignore the entire history of bodybuilding and weight class sports. A standard American diet, especially if you ever eat out, is very high in sodium, and a high sodium:potassium ratio is one of the chief reasons people retain excess water. Either reducing sodium or increasing potassium is a time-honored way to quickly lose water weight that people in sports have been practicing for decades.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#142

Post by bumby »

hnfong wrote: post #118
suprfnk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I lost 50 pounds in 2020 with this one trick: I counted calories and stayed under 2100 per day. Yes, I don't think there's anyone that will dispute this. Weight loss is pretty simple. However, it's definitely not easy. "Just keep your calories below X" is way easier said than done. It's like saying: "Everyone can run an ultramarathon, just keep putting your foot in front of the other until you're there. It's really…

It's not even that simple. The problem is that the body will compensate for the lower calorie intake. The intensity of this effect differs from person to person though. At extreme cases you'll basically have to keep running a marathon on a starvation diet before you can get your body to burn the fat. As an anecdote, my weight doesn't change much regardless whether I eat 1500 or 3000 calories a day. I'm overweight, bu…

>The problem is that the body will compensate for the lower calorie intake.

For the most part, this is a myth, just like the idea that one's metabolism slows as you age.

What can happen is your behavior modifies. E.g., if you eat more, you unconsciously fidget more and burn more calories.

Most people (even dietitians) are not good at gauging their calorie intake. Unless you are weighing all your portions, it's more likely that measuring error is the culprit, not that you can double your calories consistently and not gain weight.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#143

Post by weird-eye-issue »

spirit557 wrote: post #128
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah just this week I've been eating only once per day in the morning. Plus a small protein shake if I got really hungry later. But the key is to get plenty of magnesium and potassium. If you fast (no carbs specifically) and don't supplement with electrolytes you can go from feeling fine to suddenly feeling like you just need to lay down and have no energy. It's kind of scary

Yes - Honestly i think most people on any given day have no idea what it's like to go 24 hours with zero carbs or zero calories, most are just not aware of this whole paradigm. It's the complete opposite to the last 50+ years of official guidelines. The keto diet, avoiding ALL manufactured vegetable seed oils (canola, cottonseed etc) ,rejecting ancel keys and the last 50+ years of completely horrible dietary guidelin…

> calories in/out is nonsense

Purely for weight loss it is still sound though right?

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

wrp wrote: post #137
TeMPOraL wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes. I drink a lot of black tea and use nicotine gums, and my hunger is... enough to keep my weight way higher than I'd like. So either I'm doing it wrong - perhaps it needs to be actual coffee and cigarettes[0] - or... I should never stop, because my baseline hunger must be off the charts. ---- [0] - Wouldn't be…

Yeah, you must be doing it wrong. :-) The appetite-suppressant effect of nicotine is enhanced by caffeine ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/ ) Conclusion: Caffeine added to nicotine chewing gum appears to amplify its attenuating effects on appetite and the combinations of 1-mg of nicotine with caffeine seem to be well tolerated. BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite…

Thanks for the tips :).

> BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.

I wonder what the mechanism of action is for most people. For me, black coffee hardly does anything stimulation-wise, but is an excellent laxative, and half the time makes me feel generally unwell. I suppose these effects do suppress appetite.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#145

Post by oaktrout »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #91
oaktrout wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are born with 12 fingers. 1700 per day is close the basal metabolic rate (laying in bed all day) for a thin adult male. It is less than 3 hot pockets per day, very few people gain weight eating that much.

You say "3 hot pockets" as though this were an example of some obviously small thing. I would probably feel overstuffed if I tried to eat 3 hot pockets a day and nothing else. I could do it for a few days but I probably couldn't keep it up for long. I'd throw up probably within a week from gradually basically not being able to keep up. I would still be full from the last one when it came time for the next one, and th…

Maybe a hot pocket isn't the best example (I couldn't eat 3 hot pockets per day either, I would probably feel sick). A hot pocket weights about 8oz, for reference the meat alone in a restaurant burger weighs about 5-8oz typically.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#146

Post by thayne »

Waterluvian wrote: post #9
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Any time you have people start tracking their weight, it’s not surprising that they might start paying attention to their diet and lose some weight. Without a placebo or control group, these numbers aren’t really useful.

I lost 50 pounds in 2020 with this one trick: I counted calories and stayed under 2100 per day. I didn’t even pay attention to what kinds of food I ate. That came automatically as I would look at a treat and think, “130 calories? That’s so expensive.” I naturally learned what foods made me feel full for longer. It was fun. Diet can be complicated, but I have a feeling that for most of us, it really doesn’t need to be…

> It was fun.

Not for me. I tried it for about a month, and it was the opposite of fun. I hated having to keep track of everything I ate. I hated trying to figure out how many calories were in homemade meals. I hated measuring things out to know how many servings I was eating.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#147

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

elzbardico wrote: post #125
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“130 calories? That’s so expensive." That's exactly how I came to lose all the weight I have - I started counting calories which caused me to treat it like a budget. I never deprived myself of what I wanted, but new if I splurged on supper I'd not be able to do as much dessert.

Counting calories helped me with adding more greens to my diet. I found out that I could start lunch (which is my main feeding event) with a healthy portion of lettuce salad and then eat more moderate portions of carbohydrates and meat as my main course and still feel satiated.

Yeah, my personal rule was that fruit and veg were free.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#148

Post by Analogbullfrog »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #122
melling wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m more than a decade older than you. that’s what my girlfriend said: “Can’t lose weight after a certain age” She looked at me one day when I was down around 25 pounds and declared “It does work” Next thing I know, she lost 15 pounds.

I think people feel hunger very differently. When I want to lose wait I just stop eating lunch until I start to feel it makes me sluggish. I can tell I should probably eat but that’s an easy to ignore signal. My ex girlfriend felt hunger as an all consuming normal activity ending feeling.

Women react differently to things like intermittent fasting given the vastly different hormonal profile to men. I’m much like your ex (I can’t think properly until I feel full, which means a significant breakfast) and anecdotally I have noticed that men seem more likely to go for longer fasting periods. Women’s bodies really don’t like to think they’re starving.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#149

Post by notahacker »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #135
notahacker wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, 'why, in the century in which most people had cheap, reliable food sources and motorised transport for the first time in history and many stopped doing manual labour did obesity start going up in many countries where people benefited from these changes?' doesn't seem like a question likely to have an especially counterintuitive answer. Ice cream may have existed in various forms for centuries, but the a…

What changed between the 1970/80s and now though?

In the case of the US, the data shows an increase of a few hundred calories in mean calorie intake, not necessarily distributed evenly...

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#150

Post by SyzygistSix »

Retric wrote: post #140
SyzygistSix wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry. It does but there are degrees of hunger. The hunger I feel in the day before I eat is much easier to deal with than the hunger I feel after I have eaten a meal. The hunger I feel when on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with than if I have had bread/pasta/sweets. I'm pretty sure that for me blood sugar levels, insulin, and hormones play a big part.Th…

> The hunger I feel on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with That’s a short term effect. Low carb diets are no more effective long term (3+ years) than calorie restriction. Most people who lose significant percentage of body weight eventually start dreaming/fantasizing about food etc. It’s possible to push through this and maintain weight loss, but it’s relatively rare.

Short term is what counts when you are trying to avoid snacking. Low carb for some people is what allows them to restrict their calories because they don't feel ravenously hungry.
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