Fat burns calories. Generally, to maintain X pounds of weight loss you must consume ~10X fewer calories every day. In order to more quickly reach a new weight most people exceed that difference, but they can’t go back to old eating habits without regaining their original weight. PS: Metabolism and exercise have real impact, but you can easily out eat any reasonable exercise plan.
Fat burns calories. Only brown fat (BAT) does, and humans have very little.
All cells require energy to survive.
On top of that strapping an extra 10+ pounds to your body and walking around would require extra energy for the same movements.
There goes that simplicity then. How do you pick one? How do you stay on it? How do you decide whether to switch, when to switch and what to switch to? How do you motivate yourself to try again once you've failed? And on it goes.
How do you pick any activity that encourages you to burn more calories than usual? I would expect that comes down to finding something you enjoy doing. Exercise and eating well is a way of life. If your life dictates you do neither, you will get fat. I don't really understand how its complicated. You just do it for the benefits. Personally I eat chicken and veg 5 days a week (with occasional carbs when I train), trai…
I mean this respectfully. Think about it this way:
If there's an obvious solution that so many people are having trouble implementing, what is more likely?
1. That all those people are stupid or have no willpower, or
2. that the obvious solution doesn't work for everyone?
I think you're correct assuming you're eating a healthy diet made of stuff like oatmeal, beans, and chicken. It's hard to keep enough of that on hand and hard to fit it all in your stomach. It's easy to consume 3500 calories in a day in cheese curls or going out to eat ribs.
Good luck eating 3500 calories of ribs. Easy calories come from carbs so unless you drink the sauce the ribs are glazed with you’re not gonna make it.
That isn't addressing the underlying problem of eating too much. There was quite a study at Odense University Hospital where they enrolled women that had tried everything to lose weight. They was asked to meticulously write down everything single thing they ate. They they was admitted to the hospital and they was fed exactly what they had written for the past month. Every single woman lost a significant amount of wei…
Maybe it does. People eat too much because they have cravings, low pleasure response to food (so they need to more to feel the same as healthy people) and maybe low dopamine levels (that's my hypothesis based on my problems and some experiments). I think eating too much is a symptom of an underlying problem and drugs may help with it. This is also why I think regular exercise is very important for weightloss. Not bec…
> The problem is controlling yourself and constant cravings you have to fight. It's just way more difficult for some people than others
And that is the problem people should be focusing on. It's easier to take a pill from the doctor, but that's a last resort when your health dictates that you must lose weight right now. You will have to somehow control your eating one way or another at some point if you want to control your weight.
In German, they're still separate words, I think "diet" made its way into German and became "Diät".
Ironically, the wages of government representatives are also called "diets" in German. I'd say "diet" for "Ernährung" just fell out of use at some point and was reintroduced when diet fads became a thing.
The Vietnamese parliament is called the Diet but I don’t think it’s etymologically related.
A couple of years ago I found myself weighing 250lbs. Basically morbidly obese. I decided to change that. I went through all the food I bought during the week and decided to do some culling. I removed anything with sugar and replaced it with Stevia. Removed the soft drinks, alcohol, and carbs. I follow this diet 6 days a week. One day a week, I indulge myself: a pizza or burrito or have a few beers. I also go to the…
I lost 30lbs just removing sugary drinks and side dishes. In other words instead of burger + fries + coke it changed to burger + diet coke. Went from 210 to 180. No other changes, no exercise. Just my results. I don't remember how long it took but I don't remember it being more than a year.
I gained maybe 100lb over a 4 year period while in college. I went from 200lb to 300lb. I drank nothing but water that whole time.
After I graduated I cut how much I was eating and stopped snacking between meals. Lost 80lb in 6months... it was crazy and scary.
I had read somewhere that after about 45 minutes of cardio your body will start using it's fat stores, and continue burning fat for 6 to 8 hours afterwards. So when I found myself overweight I started doing long trail runs or bike rides, about 2 hours long, 3 times a week. Insomuch as I looked forward to doing the exercise, losing 3-5 pounds a week was nearly effortless. My appetite actually goes down during these pe…
What was your starting weight? Losing 3-5 pounds a week sounds like a lot, unless you were starting from a high weight to begin with. Also, most people trying to lose weight aren't fit enough to run/ride for 10 minutes long, let alone 2 hours.
The first time I had 20 pounds to lose, from 195 down to 175. Last fall I lost 15 pounds using the same method. I've been active enough through most of my adult life that I can snap myself back into good fitness pretty fast presuming I haven't been on my ass for more than a few months, and it wasn't until my mid-30s or so that I would start to gain weight during sedentary phases if I wasn't being careful. Throughout my 20s my weight didn't change much at all. So my weight issues have been minor, and I dealt with them handily before they had a chance to become not-minor.
Fasting is the ultimate weight loss tool. It also facilitates (muscle) growth and healing.
I've read that fasting can increase GH levels. Do you know of any studies that directly link fasting to muscle growth? Intuitively I would guess that increased GH in the absence of a calorie surplus might lead to good muscle maintenance but poor muscle growth , particularly in people who already have a decent amount of muscle.
I do not know of studies, other than anecdotes such as this one:
> So, during the FMD I lost approximately 4.2 lbs of body fat, while GAINING nearly a pound of muscle! There was also a nice muscle building “rebound” effect once my fast ended and I began to exercise again.
Fasting is the ultimate weight loss tool. It also facilitates (muscle) growth and healing.
I did a water fast for 2 weeks. It was...kind of amazing actually, recommend to try it at least once if you can. One tip: when you are done and are ready to break it, introduce food very slowly, I didn't and it was unpleasant to say the least.
> One tip: when you are done and are ready to break it, introduce food very slowly