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The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

dberkholz.com

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Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#51

Post by m2mdas2 »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #4
sprite wrote: post #2

Moderate drinking is good for you?

Simply not true, no amount of alcohol is good for you. See: https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-86-what-alcoho... Not saying everyone should be sober 100% all the time (I drink occasionally myself), but there are much safer and more fun alternatives (med dose psilocybin etc.)

Then surely millions people in east asian countries like Japan or Korea sitting at top of highest life expectency table having drinking rooted in their culture are anamoly.

Edit: Billions if you add China to that list.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#52

Post by SebFender »

Cheers on loosing weight. But so many things are wrong in this approach, guaranteed weight gain in the next months/years. Always focus on calories and muscle mass. Writing training doesn't account for much is such a lack of understanding it's troubling. And BMI? a complete waist of time.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#53

Post by nradov »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #28

> At this point, I knew I needed to eat 1000 calories/day less than I burned. I used this calculator to identify that, as a sedentary person, I burned about 2450 calories/day. I've seen plenty of calculators like this around the web, and even seen calculators that estimate how many pounds per time you'll gain/lose depending on the activity level and food intake, but they never show their formulae or cite sources that…

On an individual basis it doesn't really matter. Those calculators can only ever provide a rough estimate as a starting point. People who want to lose weight will have to weigh themselves on at least a weekly basis and then titrate their calorie intake up or down to hit their target.

If you do want to know how many calories you burn as a sedentary person, then just go get a resting metabolic rate (RMR) test. This is a cheap, non-invasive test where they measure how much oxygen you metabolize and use that to directly calculate baseline daily calorie consumption. Any physical activity will then be additive to that baseline.

Effects on body fat or body composition vary tremendously based on dietary macronutrients, exercise, genetics, gut microbiome, and other factors so I don't think we know enough to construct an accurate probabilistic model of that. In general, to avoid loss of muscle tissue the recommendation is to maintain a high protein intake and do resistance (weight) training.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#54

Post by poncho_romero »

If you don’t mind paying for a subscription, I’d strongly recommend MacroFactor over MyFitnessPal’s free version. As a fellow developer and gym devotee, I am continually impressed by how dang good that app is. The developers clearly use their product and it’s full of little loving touches that make it genuinely enjoyable to use (no affiliation, just a big fan)

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#55

Post by medo-bear »

kurts_mustache wrote: post #29
grudg3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why that is? While I'm not doing keto right now, it has had some really good effects when I did it. Wife's also doing it for over 2 years now and reversed her pre-diabetic diagnosis and also lost close to 40kgs since she started it. Is it just too preachy and is causing people to be tired from hearing about it?

Wow, 40kbs is fantastic progress! Congrats to your wife. I've lost around 15 lbs by run/walking on the treadmill every day. I started at around 20 minutes/day, now I'm up 30-45 minutes per day 5x/week and just watching my calories, especially the sugar intake. Haha, yeah I think it's the "fanbase" around it (don't want to offend anyone). It's like that old joke, how do you know someone is (a vegan, doing keto, plays…

For what it is worth I managed to lose 15kgs in less than 3 months with 20,000 steps per day and not eating over 2,000 cals in a day. I also did keto and 6-18 intermittent fasting at the time but I think it was mainly a boost. Key thing for me was cooking my own food and keeping a full callorie count.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#56

Post by metadat »

cheald wrote: post #46
metadat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a kcal here? It doesn't seem plausible to me that a pound of muscle only takes 10 kcal (aka 1 Calorie, with a capital "C") per day to maintain. Are you saying, for example, maintaining 20 pounds of muscle only requires consuming 200 Calories per day more of food? Edit: According to the Internet, this is actually approximately correct, 20kcal/lb/day. I must just have high metabolism, because I must consume more…

"kilogram calorie" - it's the unit that we colloquially refer to as a "calorie" in the US for nutrition purposes. That maintenance requirement is just "keeping the cells alive when you're laying in bed in a coma" - actually using those muscles obviously requires more energy than that. Maintaining muscle mass is more than just a function of calories, though - in part because it's more expensive tissue, the body will t…

Ah, thank you @cheald so much for this explanation! This makes a lot more sense.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#57

Post by testless »

agubelu wrote: post #5

> Moderate alcohol intake (vs none, occasional, or heavy) I thought it had already been shown that the only healthy amount of alcohol is zero. I'm also surprised that "moderate" is better than "occasional".

Correlation vs. causation maybe: Moderate drinking often correlates with socializing. Social connections are key for longevity.

Non-drinkers might have reasons not to drink. Like taking medicaments, health issues, etc.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#58

Post by danielovichdk »

macmac wrote: post #45

I have no idea if this will work for anyone else and I don't have any data on which components are more important than others or how they interact, but the following is how I lost 35 kgs down to my target of 79 kg. from 1st of January 2023 to 15th May 2023, a weight which I retain +/- 2 kg. as of today. I walk 10 km every day, no exceptions. (I still do this) I had a banana + coffee w. skimmed milk for breakfast. I h…

What you claim here is too easy for people to accept. They need apps, clocks, shakes and fads for their weight loss to make sense.

Most people don't want to put in the work it takes. That is primarily the reason why the sports and food industry is so big.

But you can't cheat your way into a healthy living. It is hard work.

As a long time amateur bike rider, the advice and habits you dictate here are very much in line with how simple it really is to have some good habits around ones life.

You can go easy on yourself after a while doing your routine. Your body will remember and adjust faster than previously, so you can easily start adjusting if you want and learn more about how your body reacts to certain things.

Sounds like you have dialed it in pretty good. Be proud. Good job!

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#59

Post by 303uru »

miggol wrote: post #49

I think the author's take on the role of exercise is kind of harsh compared to my own experiences and of those around me. > An hour of intense exercise might burn 500 calories, and it’s very hard to keep up that level of effort for even one full hour — especially if you’ve been sitting in a chair all day for years on end. This is probably true, though it doesn't factor in the effect of muscle mass and "afterburn" on…

Ya, I dunno. I spend 3-5 hours lifting and 12-20+ hours a week on my bike training. I can still quickly gain weight and you don't present the ultimate difficulty, training makes you really fucking hungry. I burn 1000 KJ/hour average on the bike and I can undo that real quick, 150kcal/day is a small handful of chips.

I'm extremely dubious of any answer to weight loss which isn't get your diet in line.

Re: The lazy technologist's guide to weight loss

#60

Post by jitl »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #28

> At this point, I knew I needed to eat 1000 calories/day less than I burned. I used this calculator to identify that, as a sedentary person, I burned about 2450 calories/day. I've seen plenty of calculators like this around the web, and even seen calculators that estimate how many pounds per time you'll gain/lose depending on the activity level and food intake, but they never show their formulae or cite sources that…

Really all the complicated algorithm here is estimating basal metabolic rate - the "amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment, and in a post-absorptive state (meaning that the digestive system is inactive, which requires about 12 hours of fasting)". That quote comes from the BMR calculator I use, which also explains clearly the different estimation methods and their variables [1]. Their calculator takes sex, weight, height, age, and body fat percent.

Other than your BMR, you can compute (weight loss / day) with 3 more variables, the activity calories per day (just added to your BMR), the number of calories in a pound of fat (most round to 3500kcal because it makes mental math easier), and the calorie intake per day. Then:

NET_DAILY_KCAL = (BMR + ACTIVE_CALS) - INTAKE

WEIGHT_CHANGE_RATE = NET_DAILY_KCAL * FAT_PER_KCAL

[1]: https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html

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