101–110 of 134 posts
I have a theory that being overweight is mostly caused by lack of walking. Everyone seems to get heavier as they get older, and most people seem to be slim when they're students. Regardless of how 'healthy' their lifestyle is (ie. if they eat junk food, or go jogging). So basically my theory is that when you're a student, you're probably walking a long way to get to university each day, and then when you're there you…
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The advice is sound. You get fat from the stuff that goes in your piehole. Stop putting so much stuff in there. The flaw is not in the argument. The flaw is in the people. THAT's thinking like an Engineer.
> THAT's thinking like an Engineer. I don't know what sort of shitty engineers you hang out with. Blaming users is not an option for engineers who design cars or airplanes or buildings. If 75% of pilots push the wrong button, the pilots aren't shitty, your cockpit design is shitty.
I think there's certain axioms one has to accept when it comes to weight loss. First of which is to lose weight, you will feel hungry. There is no diet that can avoid this. Billions of years of evolution have worked to ensure that we feel hungry when we're losing weight.
Diets fail because humans are supposed to feel hungry when they're dieting. No matter what the constraints of the diet are, no matter how much they advertise "you can feel satisfied as long you stick with foods X, Y, and Z", your body cannot be tricked into thinking it's satiated when it's not.
At some point, trying to think of this from an engineering standpoint breaks down, because you're solving an intractable problem. Humans really are the issue here.
I think we need to redefine diets as not a list of foods to eat or rules to follow, but instead a state of mind you have to have. An acceptance that you'll feel hungry, but it's worth it to be healthy or look good. It's actually kind of obvious when you think about it.
This article goes to a lot of effort to make calorie-counting diets seem futile due to human nature, and there's certainly some truth to it. But I still think "pure" calorie counting (and by that I mean not changing much of what you eat, just how much you eat) can work for the average person. It's just that, to "just eat less", you actually have to log everything you eat so that you can't lie to yourself and blow you…
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>Potato-chips or fries or a sugary snack? Forget about it! Well, it's supposed to be a diet after all :) I think that one should remove snacks/sweets/junk foods from their life before even considering what kind of a diet one should do. After all, those are probably 50%+ of the intake (at least, they are of mine... I'm trying to stop ) and there are very few foods with so many calories/carbs. Sodas are particularly na…
> Sodas are particularly nasty, because one drink them all the day without realizing how much (my suggestion: switch to water, I've done it years ago and I couldn't be happier. Now I can't bring myself to drink a soda while eating, way too sweet). Ha, I don't understand people who say this. I've also cut sodas out of my life in exchange for water, and my weight has thanked me (a little), but I still find them delicio…
Really, there are pretty much two things that I can manage to drink while eating, water and beer. And the second one usually only with pizza.
This article goes to a lot of effort to make calorie-counting diets seem futile due to human nature, and there's certainly some truth to it. But I still think "pure" calorie counting (and by that I mean not changing much of what you eat, just how much you eat) can work for the average person. It's just that, to "just eat less", you actually have to log everything you eat so that you can't lie to yourself and blow you…
You have to constrain calories somewhat while making sure not to lower the metabolic rate. You can do this by tracking resting body temperature and pulse rate. If you wake up in the morning and have a body temperature much below 98F, you need to eat more. You also want to maintain a resting pulse rate over 70 bpm. If these measures dip, you are probably going too low in carbs or protein.
The fact is, only quite slow fat loss is safe and sustainable. All the more reason to not get fat in the first place.
This article goes to a lot of effort to make calorie-counting diets seem futile due to human nature, and there's certainly some truth to it. But I still think "pure" calorie counting (and by that I mean not changing much of what you eat, just how much you eat) can work for the average person. It's just that, to "just eat less", you actually have to log everything you eat so that you can't lie to yourself and blow you…
The main reason people fail in dieting is they go too low in calories or protein, which drops the metabolic rate. This makes the diet seem futile because fat loss pretty much stops, and also you tend to feel lousy with a lower metabolism. You have to constrain calories somewhat while making sure not to lower the metabolic rate. You can do this by tracking resting body temperature and pulse rate. If you wake up in the…
It is a bit hard though, when you look at your goals and see that it'll take you 50 weeks to get to your goal weight at your current rate.
But then you realize: even when you hit your goal weight, you're not done, so there should be no hurry to get there. Keeping track of what I eat is a lifestyle for me now, not just a diet.
He has also written about how low carb diets work by reducing the variety and the reward factor of the diet (http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...)
some other counterarguments are: 1. Protein digestion also raises insulin, so why doesn't a high protein diet result in weight gain? 2. There are plenty of cultures around the world whose diet is primarily starch based (eg. Kitavans). Why isn't obesity prevalent in these cultures (http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/kitavans-wisdo...). 3. More recently, someone lost weight while eating only potatoes for 60 days (http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-potato-die...). It'd be interesting to see the effects of just eating nuts (high fat, low carb) for 60 days.
tldr: it's not insulin that causes us to eat more than we need, it's the high reward factor and low satiety of the diet. A simple diet comprised of foods with low reward factor and high satiety makes it very easy to stay within the caloric budget.
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ultra-low to no carb on a daily basis has severe issues with it as well. Things like carb-cycling, or low (but not ultra-low) attempt to address those issues. The main points being (1) brain needs glucose, can't fuel any other way (2) glucose is needed for maximum muscle response so if you are fit/athletic in any way you can be short-changing your performance if you have no glycogen stores to tap for "burst fuel"
>brain needs glucose, can't fuel any other way Not so: the brain can be fueled by ketone bodies, which the liver can create from fat. P.S. I agree with your larger point that avoiding all carbs for many days at a time should only be done by people who have informed themselves of the risks (acidosis and kidney stones).
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Informative: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htm http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-high-satiation-3799.ht... Imho the easiest way by far to lose weight is eat foods that combine low carb + high satiation index.
Thanks for the suggestion It's not about satiation for me. It's about quantity. My point was until I've eaten a plate of food where plate of food equals pretty much any "standard" picture of a plate of food ( https://www.google.com/search?q=plate+of+food&tbm=isch ) my brain thinks "Dang, you haven't really eaten yet" and yet pretty much every picture in that link is over >1000 calories. Note, I'm not saying satiating…
Just a random "obvious" comment but.. I've lost some weight recently by cutting my intake. My inspiration was my sister who used to be 5'2" and 260lbs but is now ~130lbs. She got her stomach stapled and for some number of months was on a 500 calorie a day diet. (I don't recommend that) Anyway, seeing that and reading things here on HN about how calorie restriction has an order of magnitude more effect than exercise (…
I agree that 1500 calories are hard to stick to though, I did this for a while and lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time (19 pounds in 3 months). Once the initial, rapid weight loss was over, it felt like too much of a sacrifice for very little gain. Unfortunately that let me abandoning calorie counting altogether and putting some of the weight back on.
Now I'm on a 1800 calorie limit per day and find it perfectly manageable. I often even have 100-200 calories left at the end of a day for a snack. Around 500 calories for breakfast, 600-700 for lunch (which fell often like copious amounts of food. A bowl of pasta with marinara sauce and cheese or such) and another 400-500 for dinner, which leaves just enough room for snacks. I also make a point of eating dinner fairly early, about 12 hours before I'll have breakfast.
What I'm trying to get at is that if you eat the right food (and ideally prepare it yourself) 2000 calories (which should still lead to a significant weight loss) can go a long way without leaving you hungry at the end of the day.