The Obesity Era

I gained maybe a pound a month during 2010 and 2011. Finally 12/2011 I had enough. I didn't like how I felt. What worked for me is this:

1. No depravation. I ate dessert every day. Period.

2. A large dinner (followed by that dessert) every day. Large as in, feeling totally full but not like so-full-it-hurts full.

3. Three 90 minute visits to the Gym every week.

4. A dramatic reduction in what I eat during the day. Dramatic. I went from free startup catered lunch every day (which is essentially like eating 2 dinners a day) to eating only raw during the day. That was my commitment: Nothing processed or cooked until dinner. But gorge myself at dinner if I wanted.

I started this 12/2011 and eat like this to this very day. It's easy now. In fact I hate it when I have to eat a big lunch. Today my lunch is 1 large apple, grapes, 5 strawberries, 1 small "Babybel Light" cheese and 3 water crackers. (I only added the cheese and crackers once I got down to under 170 and needed to eat more to stabilize my weight). I ate more fruit and veg the first 6+ months after I started this, I've just acclimated now to the smaller intake.

I cannot stress how important the big dinner was to me. Because I tried dieting before. Deprevation is very very hard to make work I think. And most importantly, what I've done was change my diet, not go on a diet. I can literally eat like this for the rest of my life. But a more conventional "diet" diet? No way. I'd hit some goal, then drop that misery like a bad habit, and probably slowly go back to the gaining 1 pound a month.

For me, at the gym, I was 28 but I'd never really done much time in the Gym. All i did for the first 8-10 months was cardio. The Elliptical. I'd just get on there for a full hour. The computer attached (as unreliable as it is) would usually indicate 800+ calories burnt. I had a handfull of 1000+. In one hour at the gym.

i morphed that later to 35 mins cardio, the rest alternating between isolating muscles (the machines) and free weights.

I mention all this not because I think I've discovered "the way." But your comments reminded me of how I felt before I did this. And now I'm so so happy I did. And here's what I really would hope, if I could pick the best outcome of my spending this 10 mins writing this:

People would read this and realize that they can innovate their own solution, borrowing a little from one diet, a little from another, weaving together a solution that works for them. What I do -- no breakfast, small lunch, huge dinner -- is basically 180* from what the conventional wisdom is. But it works for me. I iterated and found what works for me. To hell with the "experts." What I learned reading Pollan, etc, is that the science of nutrition is hardly a science at all and is full of contradictions and confusions.

I eat some junk on the weekends myself, that's how I get perspective on drastic changes in my energy levels.

Or, instead you can switch into fat-burning mode and have a constant blood sugar and not feel hungry nor have to skip meals. Lots of good stuff too, eggs, spinach, olive oil, flax, etc. Doc says my bloodtest numbers some of the best he's seen.

Fad diets are suspect, but this isn't one of them. When was the last time in the wild you saw a chimpanzee or early human eating a loaf of bread, pasta, or cookies? Never, because they are man-made creations. The fad diet is the empty-carb diet pushed by the modern world, the results of which are obvious.

Humans have evolved over millions of years eating veggies, fruit, nuts, meat, etc.

I'm forming an idea, that there is nothing wrong with these two approaches. Rather there is a choice. Perhaps some of us prefer trading off in favor of tasty sweets, while some of us prefer stable blood sugar. You can live much longer than our poor ancestors with either approach. So, let's not bash the A- students on the other side because they're not perfect.

In the absence of cheap, tasty food, obesity is rare.

When cheap, tasty food is abundant, so too are overweight and obesity.

On a population level it looks very much like cheap, tasty food is both necessary and sufficient. Without an increase in per-capita calories, there can't be an increase in population BMI.

The reason we call all these other phenomena strange is because we've never had tens of millions of overweight and obese subjects before. Sample sizes of tens of millions throw up new and interesting outliers. It's only going to get weirder.

I've met these people myself. They call themselves "women".

> The viruses don't need to destroy or create energy, they just need modify the set point.

"Set points" assumes that we are dealing with an automatic system. This is true only if people do not pay attention to what they are eating.

Given that the first and indeed only step in dieting is to observe and control your eating ...