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If your goal is "weight loss" then eating less is far easier and more effective than trying to burn it off at the gym. Going to the gym often makes you eat more when you get home - making it a waste of time.

(Yeah, I know it's heresy in the USA to say gym isn't the answer to everything...)

Not to be nasty or anything, but that is just total bullocks, and is typically used by the willingly uninformed as an excuse to be lazy. How can anyone seriously claim exercise is not beneficial? People can and do go to the gym and watch their diet and maintain great physiques. They're not genetic mutants, they just have a little freakin' willpower.
There's also the point that -given High Intensity training, or good ol' fashioned weight lifting, as opposed to the treadmill- most of your calories aren't burnt in the gym during the workout, but are burnt for many hours afterward because the metabolism is ratcheted up. Actually, it gives me trouble sleeping some nights after a workout. And the HIIT thing can actually suppress appetite.
http://www.burnthefat.com/high_intensity_interval_training.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0801/is_2_69/ai_n24220136/

It's not as cut and dry as I made it sound. There are camps that negative food measurements are crediting too much to the digestion of the food and camps that claim the bunkers aren't counting enough.

But here is the idea:

http://www.burnthefat.com/negative_calorie_food.html

I wouldn't go out and do the negative calorie diet regardless of which camp you fall in with though. It is a starvation diet and starvation diets are bad.

You can find plenty of links for both camps:

http://www.google.com/search?q=negative+calorie+foods&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I haven't been in a situation quite as extreme as yours, but I was in a long-hours and high-stress job with a long commute last year. My only workout was bicycling long miles on weekends. I held my weight steady, until at the end the craziness hit its peak and I put on ten pounds in two months. (And I don't mean ten pounds of muscle.)

Like other posters, I urge you to change something if you can. Get a better job, move closer, something. What you are doing is crazy. If the pay is golden, do it for a while. If it is a stepping stone to something better, make sure you actually get there; don't burn yourself out forever waiting for an opportunity that isn't coming.

All that said, if you must do this, be sure to eat a healthy diet. It's a pain, but you probably need to bring your own food, so you know what you are eating. You need to eat lots of protein, and high-quality carbs (not white flour, white sugar, white rice...).

A book called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is my bible for this stuff. It's sold as a PDF over the Internet; see the web site for details. Here's an old Slashdot posting where I summarize the ideas of the book.

That book tells you how to measure your body fat percentage, then use that information to calculate how many calories you should eat of what foods. One of his testimonials is from someone who said he is paralyzed and cannot exercise; by following the diet recommendations of the book, he was able to lose some body fat and improve his health.

By the way, I changed jobs and I now am in a lower-stress job. I still bicycle on weekends but now I'm working out at a gym two nights a week; and I've lost all the extra weight I put on in my previous job. I can tell you: it's easier to keep it off than to lose it again after you gain it. If your job is making you fat, that is a very good reason to get a different one.

steveha

Those style websites like that one or this with the large screaming letters, so-called testimonials, and long, long single page have all the class and allure of a used car salesman in a plaid blazer.

The Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program has worked for me. I wrote a long summary of it a while back, and I'll just link it:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226411&cid=18343433

steveha

Here is a model of how the human body works with respect to fat gain and fat loss. This is my summary of my understanding of the material in a book called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by a pro bodybuilder named Tom Venuto.

Your body is designed to keep you alive, even in hard times when it's difficult to get enough food. Thus, if you simply cut your calories back (say, to 1200 kCal per day) your body will store fat at every chance it gets. If you are really only eating 1200 kCal per day, yet burning more than that, you must burn fat (and perhaps some good stuff like muscle) so you will lose weight. However, your body will store fat any chance it can, so if you eat extra you can gain fat, and once you stop the 1200 kCal per day regimen you are almost certain to gain fat. Worse, it is likely you lost muscle during the 1200 kCal per day regimen.

So, the goal is for you to lose fat, without your keep-you-alive tricks kicking in and making your body stubbornly try to store fat. BFFM recommends multiple, smaller meals each day, rather than a few big ones. If you are eating every 3 hours, how can you be starving to death? Everything must be okay, so your body will let go of the fat. Also you need to get enough sleep, and try to avoid stress in general; stress is a signal that you are in hard times.

Muscle is your friend for fat loss. Muscle burns calories 24/7, so having more muscle means your daily base calorie burn goes up. This paragraph is important, so feel free to read it again.

The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.

Another good thing is to eat a diet that fires up your metabolism. Imagine for a second that you had an entire mouthful of glucose, and you swallowed it all. That will pass straight out of your stomach and go straight into your blood as blood sugar, so it's just about 100% efficient as a food. For fat loss, this is a bad thing. How about a mouth full of vegetable oil? Pretty darn easy to digest, and it will be easily stored as fat since it's fat to start out. Imagine instead you have a mouthful of lean protein (skinless chicken breast, if you eat meat; non-fat cottage cheese if you are vegetarian, say). First of all you will expend some effort chewing, and then your digestive system has to work very hard to tear apart the proteins and turn them into something that can pass into the blood stream. If I recall correctly, you can burn about 30% of the calories in a serving of lean protein, just in the effort it takes to digest it. So the bottom line rule here is: complex carbs, high fiber, and lean protein are much better than simple carbs, low fiber, and high fat foods. Corollary: if you want seconds of anything, let it be lean protein.

So, BFFM tells you how to calculate a good portion size, so you don't eat too much. (If my instincts were good and I naturally took a good portion size, I'd probably not need a book like BFFM.) BFFM encourages multiple, smaller meals, with a high proportion of lean protein, and as much natural whole foods as possible (eat apples, not apple pie). BFFM encourages working out to increase lean muscle mass, plus cardio exercise to actively burn fat. If you do everything in the book, you will lose fat, unless you are one of the fraction-of-a-percent people who have a medical condition that keeps them fat all the time. (And if you are, you have probably figured that out by now.)

Tom Venuto has nothing good to say about BMI. He points out that bodybuilders with less than six percent body fat might still have a high BMI, because muscle is heavy. Body fat percentage is the best indicator, and it's not that hard to get a useful measurement.

He also has nothing good to say about Atkins. Carbs aren't your enemy; you need some. And the idea that you can eat as much fat as you want is just insane. You don't need to go into ketosis to lose fat, and it's not all t

And if just talking about looks and all, showing fit and lean, non-obese women is a good thing. We've got a horrible obesity problem out there, so, some skinnier role models are a good thing IMHO.

I agree it's a good thing if young people have fit role models. However, young people are constantly bombarded these days with images of people so perfect as to represent a crushingly unattainable standard of perfection, and I don't think that's a good thing.

A fit, attractive young girl might feel ugly in comparison with some Hollywood actresses who started with good genes, work out quite a bit, had plastic surgery to enhance certain bits, and are carefully photographed wearing makeup and amazing clothes. And then the image is edited with Photoshop to improve it even more! Even those actresses don't look that good all the time, but those are the only images the young girl sees, and she feels hopelessly ugly.

A fit, attractive young boy might feel pathetic in comparison with some famous guys who started with good genes, work out quite a bit, and then spent several months preparing for one particular day. (You know those photos where every single muscle stands out through the skin? How bodybuilders look in competition? Yes, those guys spend months to look like that on one particular day. They dehydrate themselves for the last couple of days too, to get the so-called "dry look". More info here.) The famous guys don't look that ripped all the time, but those are the only images the young boy sees, and he feels hopelessly pathetic.

I know I'm smart in general, but that doesn't mean I'm smart all the time about everything. When I was an overweight teen nerd, I just figured I had genetics predisposed towards overweight and the guys with muscles had better genes. I tried dieting and I ran cross-country, but I never for a moment considered that maybe I should lift weights too. It was a shock when, a couple of decades later, I finally figured out that working out a gym would work for me too. Posters with Arnold Schwarzenegger might have reinforced the "I'll never look that good" attitude, but posters of someone with whom I could identify might have convinced me to look into working out at a gym.

As to causes of obesity: I think the worst one is that people don't really know what to do about it. There are so many different books, diet plans, etc. and it's hard to figure out which one works.

But I think I know the secret and I'll give it to you. You need to change your diet, and eat healthy foods in the correct proportions; you need to do aerobic exercise, like running or bicycling or swimming; and you also need to do strength training. If you do all of that together, you will get healthier and lose excess fat. (And the strength training can be as little as three hours per week... actually the hardest part is managing the food, really.) My bible on this subject is the book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. (Disclaimer: I don't get anything for referring you to that link.)

steveha

Here is a model of how the human body works with respect to fat gain and fat loss. This is my summary of my understanding of the material in a book called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by a pro bodybuilder named Tom Venuto.

Your body is designed to keep you alive, even in hard times when it's difficult to get enough food. Thus, if you simply cut your calories back (say, to 1200 kCal per day) your body will store fat at every chance it gets. If you are really only eating 1200 kCal per day, yet burning more than that, you must burn fat (and perhaps some good stuff like muscle) so you will lose weight. However, your body will store fat any chance it can, so if you eat extra you can gain fat, and once you stop the 1200 kCal per day regimen you are almost certain to gain fat. Worse, it is likely you lost muscle during the 1200 kCal per day regimen.

So, the goal is for you to lose fat, without your keep-you-alive tricks kicking in and making your body stubbornly try to store fat. BFFM recommends multiple, smaller meals each day, rather than a few big ones. If you are eating every 3 hours, how can you be starving to death? Everything must be okay, so your body will let go of the fat. Also you need to get enough sleep, and try to avoid stress in general; stress is a signal that you are in hard times.

Muscle is your friend for fat loss. Muscle burns calories 24/7, so having more muscle means your daily base calorie burn goes up. This paragraph is important, so feel free to read it again.

The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.

Another good thing is to eat a diet that fires up your metabolism. Imagine for a second that you had an entire mouthful of glucose, and you swallowed it all. That will pass straight out of your stomach and go straight into your blood as blood sugar, so it's just about 100% efficient as a food. For fat loss, this is a bad thing. How about a mouth full of vegetable oil? Pretty darn easy to digest, and it will be easily stored as fat since it's fat to start out. Imagine instead you have a mouthful of lean protein (skinless chicken breast, if you eat meat; non-fat cottage cheese if you are vegetarian, say). First of all you will expend some effort chewing, and then your digestive system has to work very hard to tear apart the proteins and turn them into something that can pass into the blood stream. If I recall correctly, you can burn about 30% of the calories in a serving of lean protein, just in the effort it takes to digest it. So the bottom line rule here is: complex carbs, high fiber, and lean protein are much better than simple carbs, low fiber, and high fat foods. Corollary: if you want seconds of anything, let it be lean protein.

So, BFFM tells you how to calculate a good portion size, so you don't eat too much. (If my instincts were good and I naturally took a good portion size, I'd probably not need a book like BFFM.) BFFM encourages multiple, smaller meals, with a high proportion of lean protein, and as much natural whole foods as possible (eat apples, not apple pie). BFFM encourages working out to increase lean muscle mass, plus cardio exercise to actively burn fat. If you do everything in the book, you will lose fat, unless you are one of the fraction-of-a-percent people who have a medical condition that keeps them fat all the time. (And if you are, you have probably figured that out by now.)

Tom Venuto has nothing good to say about BMI. He points out that bodybuilders with less than six percent body fat might still have a high BMI, because muscle is heavy. Body fat percentage is the best indicator, and it's not that hard to get a useful measurement.

He also has nothing good to say about Atkins. Carbs aren't your enemy; you need some. And the idea that you can eat as much fat as you want is just insane. You don't need t

certainly vegan serf in the 16th century wouldn't have been as healthy.

Protein is made of amino acids. The human body can make some amino acids from other foods, but some amino acids (called the "essential" amino acids) it cannot make. Thus it is essential to eat those amino acids in food.

Meat contains all the essential amino acids, but there are almost no plant foods that contain all of them. Modern-day vegans know about this and work around it by eating multiple plant foods (such as beans and rice) at each meal. Note however that you need to eat a lot of carbs this way to get the protein; people who eat animal protein have a huge advantage over those who insist on being vegan. (Note that vegetarians who eat eggs and/or milk are eating animal protein, and they get that huge advantage. There have been very successful bodybuilders who were vegetarians, and none at all who were vegan.)

Peasants on a subsistance diet probably ate one major staple (e.g. wheat) with not much variation, and thus were impoverished WRT essential amino acids.

Also note that the human body evolved[1] from omnivorous mammals[2], and for the vast majority of our evolutionary history we were hunter/gatherers. Evolution works slowly, and agriculture was invented an eyeblink ago in evolutionary terms, so we are not really evolved for an agricultural society. Our bodies do well with a variety of foods, with lots of fiber, and with a certain amount of very lean meat (the only kind availble to hunter/gatherers). A peasant who eats wheat flatbread every day is getting a diet very different from this.

Also, a person in the modern world is able to eat whatever he/she wants, and tends to eat refined flour (no fiber or vitamins), refined sugar, and lots of fat. As you noted, this sucks.

I just bought an ebook called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and I'm working my way through it. It explains what optimum nutrition is for the human body, and lays out a program to follow if you want to lose fat without losing any lean body mass such as muscle. I am purely an amateur at nutrition stuff, but based on everything I have read, this ebook has it all right and is worth the money. If you want to know exactly what you should eat to be as healthy as possible, that is the book I recommend.

[1] If you are religious and have a problem with evolution, feel free to believe that God created the world 6000 years ago in a way that makes it look like evolution works this way.

[2] Next time a hard-core vegan tells you that "the human body was never meant to eat meat!", point at your incisors (the sharp teeth towards the front of your mouth) and say "why do I have sharp meat-tearing teeth then?" We have flat grinding teeth in the back of the mouth, to help us eat plants, and we also have teeth for meat.