Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to lose weight. No, really.

renatovaldes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#11

Post by BigZaphod »

I did this same technique myself starting about a year before my wedding. I lost a lot of weight and became a lot stronger and it was pretty awesome. I didn't pay for a gym, but got some weights and a bench at home and did things that way.

Several years and one kid later, I'm back to being fat. Somewhere along the line the calorie counting became less disciplined and then faded away entirely - I don't even know when or why that happened. It just did. The weight lifting time got shorter and shorter to make room for other aspects of life and schedule changes, etc. And eventually, it was gone too. So now I'm back where I started.

Sigh.

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#12

Post by dboyd »

gamble wrote: post #3

Good advice, though I think he overemphasizes the gym. The point of exercise is to emphasize how much overeating costs you. It's harder to justify that candy bar when it equates to an hour of hard exercise.

He uses the guilt of owning a gym membership to make himself more disciplined. I think if he did better on being disciplined and super-disciplined, the gym membership wouldn't be necessary.

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#14

Post by dboyd »

dschobel wrote: post #10

Building up muscle tissue also helps you burn calories faster when not working out. Cool little details I learned at the gym. This is a very common myth. To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study peri…

Except that adding lean body mass increases your Basal Metabolic Rate, which increases the amount of calories you burn when you are not exercising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_rate

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#15

Post by fnid »

dschobel wrote: post #10

Building up muscle tissue also helps you burn calories faster when not working out. Cool little details I learned at the gym. This is a very common myth. To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study peri…

I'm not sure they are talking about the same kind of exercise. One is about building muscle mass, the other is cardio. Increased muscle mass does increase resting metabolism.

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#16

Post by jseifer »

BigZaphod wrote: post #11

I did this same technique myself starting about a year before my wedding. I lost a lot of weight and became a lot stronger and it was pretty awesome. I didn't pay for a gym, but got some weights and a bench at home and did things that way. Several years and one kid later, I'm back to being fat. Somewhere along the line the calorie counting became less disciplined and then faded away entirely - I don't even know when…

I can't recommend this book highly enough: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583870067. Get an exercise ball (duraball is the best) and you can do a ton of work outs from your house. The dieting recommendations in the book are a bit out-dated but it's really a great book.

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#17

Post by jpr »

dschobel wrote: post #10

Building up muscle tissue also helps you burn calories faster when not working out. Cool little details I learned at the gym. This is a very common myth. To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study peri…

So, you are saying that a woman weighing 100 pounds with 20% bodyfat will burn the same amount of calories as a male weighing 200 pounds with 10% bodyfat? Do you realize how little sense that makes?

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#18

Post by ruby_roo »

The Shangri-La diet is the lifehack of the century (not a diet in the traditional sense):

http://www.sethroberts.net/

Seriously. You simply won't want to eat, and if you think you want to eat, you'll be surprised at how untasty that delicious looking candy bar or pasta is once it hits your lips. It's almost as if your body conspires against your best efforts to gain weight, which is a nice reversal for once.

In conjunction, take a high-quality multivitamin like SuperNutrition or Alive and you'll also find yourself with enough energy that you'll go crazy if you don't exercise. Yeah, it helps you want to exercise. That is key for me.

It's so much easier to take your daily olive oil and find yourself automatically disgusted at the sight of heavy food than to rely on sheer discipline, which is probably why you're overweight to begin with. And besides, olive oil is good for preventing disease.

It also helps that you'll feel the effects working on the same day you start, and you should see an encouraging difference on the scale a week later (I lost 5 pounds on the first week with no exercise - almost scary).

You win, like, 3 times on Shangri-La + high-quality multivitamin, and you don't have to have much discipline to get started.

Re: How to lose weight. No, really.

#19

Post by sumeno »

gamble wrote: post #3

Good advice, though I think he overemphasizes the gym. The point of exercise is to emphasize how much overeating costs you. It's harder to justify that candy bar when it equates to an hour of hard exercise.

The point of exercise is so that when you do lose weight you don't still look like crap.

Losing weight is all about diet.

Looking good is about diet and exercise.

Post reply on HN