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No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

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Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#91

Post by yeureka »

This insistence in demonizing food groups or finding quick fixes by eliminating some sort of magic food stuff is fascinating to me.

Isn't it obvious this is incorrect?

I mean, go to Japan, where people live on white rice and wheat noodles and count how many obese people you see on the street.

You will also notice that consumption of bacon, butter, eggs and dairy is very low compared to western diets and even though they consume fatty fish they don't eat it in the portions westerners consume meat.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#92

Post by alexPetrov »

I've lost a little over 40 pounds (272 to 230-ish) since February (and I'm still losing weight pretty steadily). Here's what I do:

1. Bike to work (~5 there plus ~5 miles back for a total of ~10 miles per work day)

2. Stopped drinking soda (and most sugary drinks)

3. Switched to a standing desk at work (I pace when I think so it's almost like walking all day)

4. Do minor exercise during down time at work (push ups, dips mostly)

5. Regularly asking myself if I have time to go to the gym and actually going when I find I don't have a good excuse (I got this idea from that lucid dreaming trick).

6. Consistently trying to eat less in general (based on rough calorie counts) by asking myself if I need to eat more or cook that much.

7. Continually improving balance in diet (more fruits/veggies is usually what I need to do)

8. Cooking as much as I would eat in one sitting, but saving half for lunch the next day (no more seconds)

I've always been pretty physically active, but I've also always had a tendency to eat as much as I wanted constantly. This led to rapid weight gain whenever circumstances had me exercising less. Restraining myself was a steady process, but now I actually can't eat as much as I used to, and I find I actually eat less when exercising less, which is good.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#93

Post by waynecochran »

jaggederest wrote: post #65
ja30278 wrote: post #36

Exercise is wonderful, and (particularly strength training) can dramatically change how you look and feel. If you just want to lose weight though, just stop eating carbs. It really is that simple. There are many ways to lose weight, but dropping sugar (in all it's forms) is the most straightforward. It's the closest thing to a 'weight hack' I've ever seen. If you are currently overweight, just cut out carbs completel…

Elimination diets work because people fail to replace the missing calories, not because there's something magical about the thing you choose to eliminate. You can do this with colors of food, textures, anything that eliminates ~30-40% of the available food options.

There is indeed something magical about what you eliminate. By eliminating carbs you stabilize your blood sugar. Thats the magic. Sleep, drink water, don't eat (white) bread and its ilk. I lost 100 lbs in 2003 and 10 years later I have a very low body fat (low carbs and weight training). Body builders know their stuff.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#94

Post by kaybe »

lena wrote: post #74
stcredzero wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Finnish study where they had some people try to control salt intake and others just eat as much salt as they want. The "as much salt as they want" group actually had better health outcomes. Their conclusion was that for most people, the body's salt regulation is actually very good.

Link? Studies about salt are notoriously difficult, because hardly anyone actually adheres to a truly low-salt diet, so you get the equivalent of a study that tries to discern whether smoking 1.5 pack of cigarettes (which takes lots of restrain) is any better than 2. Personally, it took 2 months for my blood pressure to start coming down on a high-vegetable low-sodium diet, and I notice that many people already think…

During the Mars-500 experiment they ran a low-salt-diet test.

They found that the body cycle for salt is more complicated that thought before and "It is not only worthwhile reducing the amount of salt added to food for those who are ill - even the blood pressure in healthy individuals such as the Mars500 test subjects was reduced." [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500

[1] http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/4329/lessons-from-mars-...

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#95

Post by angersock »

swanson wrote: post #13

I dropped around 60lbs (5'10" SW: 285) in first half of 2012 and have roughly maintained since (crept back to 235 - down to 230 again, still aiming for 200!). I made two small habit changes that I feel made a drastic difference: * Bring lunch to work everyday (brown bag, leftovers) * If I want to watch TV, I must be moving on the treadmill I would still go out to eat at work about once every two weeks and I would som…

Hah, awesome! I started in a similar build, and am down about 35 pounds mostly just through dietary changes (and stress, sadly). I've been biking everywhere this month and I can pretty clearly feel a difference. Congrats man.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#96

Post by saurik »

grecy wrote: post #89
glaugh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this thinking is tempting and reasonable, but it misses the role of hormones. As an example, women gain weight during menopause because of hormones, not because they eat more.[1] So thinking of the body and losing weight as being purely calories in/out misses some important factors; namely, the hormone response to different kinds of foods. It's uncontroversial that the body responds to carbohydrates with insu…

See, you're doing it. You're making it too complicated, which makes people give up. It's physically impossible for a body to gain weight if it's burning more calories than it's using. That's like saying my gas tank will overflow if I burn 10 gallons a day and put in 9 gallons a day... that makes no sense. I'm using more than I'm putting in, so it must go down over time. Keep it simple, stick to the basics, play the l…

I think it's more like saying that "putting in fewer calories than you burn" is not actionable advice as the things you eat affect what is burned and what it does, and why you do anything at all. If you want to contribute to less air pollution: wear a jacket and a hat on cold days, and wear a thin t-shirt and shorts on warm ones; this is simple advice that will cause you to not keep messing with thermostats to feel comfortable, using less electricity and gas. In contrast, the "simplest" advice to "use less fuel" is going to cause you to sit there cold and sad while you try to force yourself to not mess with the thermostat; maybe you figure out the jacket thing, maybe you don't: it wasn't really useful advice, and it required willpower. If I want to burn more calories than I metabolize, I can either force myself to be hungry all the time (which might have negative ramifications), or I can eat foods that are more likely to provide bioavailable energy over longer periods of time that are less likely to turn rapidly into fat due to resulting insulin spikes: I will then be less hungry, and I will eat less without even realizing it <- that's "more complex", sure, but it is in another way "much easier", as changing what you eat can be easier than insisting that you have to eat less and go without something your body is demanding.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#97

Post by quadlock »

grecy wrote: post #3

After attending hundreds of weight watchers meetings, and being involved with hundreds and hundreds of people losing a ton of weight, I still genuinely believe too many people make weight loss too complicated, which leads them to give up. Keep it simple (as the article did) If you burn more calories (energy) than you eat, you will lose weight . Obviously, you have choices. You can cut down on all the really high calo…

All calories are not translated to weight equally, the efficiency your body uses them matters greatly.

Sure dieting couch-potatoes will lose weight, but it will include losing a lot of muscle.

I believe the most well researched book on fat control is Carb-Back Loading by John Kiefer, the references chapter is 50 pages, it's terribly fascinating.

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#98

Post by pyrocat »

yeureka wrote: post #91

This insistence in demonizing food groups or finding quick fixes by eliminating some sort of magic food stuff is fascinating to me. Isn't it obvious this is incorrect? I mean, go to Japan, where people live on white rice and wheat noodles and count how many obese people you see on the street. You will also notice that consumption of bacon, butter, eggs and dairy is very low compared to western diets and even though t…

So you're saying, don't demonize or eliminate food groups, but cut out the bacon, butter, eggs and dairy?

Re: No Bread, Beer or Biscuits: How I Lost 63lbs in 100 Days

#100

Post by pyrocat »

adamnemecek wrote: post #9
staunch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you start rapidly losing (or gaining) weight with no obvious explanation that is a cause for concern. If you start eating much less, and exercising much more, you probably don't need to ask a doctor why you're losing weight.

I believe that the healthy rate is around 1 lbs per week with 2 lbs pushing it.

I dropped 40 lbs in 5 weeks when I changed my diet to solely fruits and vegetables (no gluten or dairy). Dropped from 185 to 145 with no exercise. The point wasn't to lose weight but to eliminate most of the possible food allergies (and later slowly add them back, to figure out what you're allergic to), and as a side effect I lost 40 lbs. I felt perfectly healthy and I've managed to stick around 150 lbs since then, after switching back to a mostly normal diet (minus gluten). No idea why "2 lbs a week" would be the "safe" rate.
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