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Hacking Weight Loss: What I Learned Losing 30 Pounds
reifman writes The CDC reports that 69% of adult Americans are overweight or obese. Techies like us are at increased risk because of our sedentary lifestyles. Perhaps you even scoffed at Neilsen's recent finding that some Americans spend only 11 hours daily of screen time. Over the last nine months, I've lost 30 pounds and learned a lot about hacking weight loss and I did it without fad diets, step trackers, running or going paleo. No such discussion is complete without a link to the Hacker Diet.
Eat well.
Exercice
Everything else is plain wishful thinking.
I realize that randomized, controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals may not be the whole, final truth, but this is a nice catalog of everything that you can argue over.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity
Krista Casazza, Kevin R. Fontaine, Arne Astrup, et al.
N Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454. January 31, 2013. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1208051 [FREE]
Results. We identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.
"How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?"
Followed by a huge, complicated, wall of text.
I suppose it's THAT complicated!
Here's an easier alternative:
1. Eliminate all sugar (read labels... do not eat anything over 2g of sugar)
2. Eat vegetables (brussel sprouts, celery, broccoli, peppers, onions)
3. Eat fish
4. Eat nuts
5. Eat salad
6. Eggs and bacon for breakfast
7. Drink lots of water, and eat salt as you crave it
Fat is good, protein is good, carbs should be avoided, but if you must eat carbs, eat fresh potatoes.
Not everyone puts the *exact* right amount of calories on their plate. Apparently that's not obvious to you.
This helps you feel fuller before all the food is gone & not finish everything on your plate.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
you make it sound like its hard to maintain. Not to belittle a 30lb loss in 9mos, but after 9mos of my lifestyle change (including a shift to paleo nutrition) I had lost ALL of my excess body fat. That turned out to be about 100lb from my heaviest. But, had I been heavier, I have no doubt I still would have shed every bit of excess weight, whatever that number has been. I often encourage people to take up the paleo diet because its fairly simple to maintain (avoid grains, starchy foods, legumes, and the oils derived from them for the most part) and, due to the nature of protein having a high satiation effect, effectively also reduces your consumption of food in general. If someone wants to burn fat they first have to train their body to actually USE fat. That's never going to happen if you continue to eat a lot of carbs. Carbs are the low hanging fruit of fuel for your body. As long as there is plenty of that sort of fuel laying around your body is going to use it and never use fat. In an absence of glycogen, your body will begin converting a 9cal fat gram into a 7cal ketone; which, once converted, cannot be re-absorbed as fat. You either use it or piss it away. So before you've made any other lifestyle change, you're already getting a 25% bonus to your BMR out of basic inefficiencies.
Compound this by training your muscles to burn more fat for fuel instead of carbs and you accelerate the weight loss significantly. White, fast-twitch, muscle fibers burn glucose and cannot oxidize during use, resulting in tired sore muscles after a short stent of activity. Whereas red muscle fibers of both fast and slow twitch burn fat directly and can self-oxidize during use. The calves of an Olympic sprinter are majority white muscle fibers, whereas a Olympic marathon runner re quite the opposite where 80% of the muscles in their calves are red fibers. This can be achieved by structuring your workouts to focus more on endurance and increasing workout times than trying to first increase resistance. Enough resistance to keep your HR within the cardio/peak ranges, but once there, focus on endurance building.
THIS is my problem. I tend to rarely eat pre-packaged processed food, or simple things. I cook from scratch, large batches of things, to eat as leftovers for most of the week.
Let's say since greens are in season now, I cook a HUGE 6-7QT pot of greens, Basically the only fat in the thing is 1lb of Andouille sausage. This pot will easily be 6-10 portions/meals. Granted this is a simple dish with few ingredients, but what about the same size pot of mushroom chili? Or something else that is complex and has a lot of ingredients and I don't really know how many meals will come put of it, or maybe it is something I'd combine with other leftovers into a different dish, for example I might grill out a bunch of eggplant, onions and zucchini...I might eat some in a salad, or maybe some as a wrap with yogurt sauce..etc.
The thing is...I rarely cook anything simple with an easy to find and read ingredients list, It would take forever to figure what the calories and all were from what I cook since so much of it is fresh vegetable and meat based, etc.
I dunno what a portion would be in so many cases...although it is largely healthy food.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
First off - congrats on losing the weight. 30lbs is nothing to scoff at.
Not to be too much of a dick about it, but I never congratulate someone for losing weight. If pushed, I'll tell them I'll congratulate them in 5 years, if they've managed to KEEP it off.
Losing weight is actually not that hard. Some of us have done it many, many, many times. It's keeping it off in the years that follow that's really tough.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.