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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.
I did it by eliminating extra sugar. Doc warned me I was pushing hte pre-diabetic stage with my morning blood sugar.
No more sweet tea, coke, or adding sugar to my coffee. Sucked for about a week, after that, no problems, and I've dropped 30lbs with no real effort other than breaking the sugar habit in that first week.
Quit smoking 2 weeks ago, we'll see how that part goes and if I end up gaining weight back ('cause food will taste better, supposedly, or maybe just noshing as a replacement for having a smoke ... so far hasn't happened)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
You can do it without either of those, I dropped from 215 pounds to 170 pounds and have held it off for years with almost no exercise and a pretty poor diet. I really didn't change what I ate at all, I just strictly regulated how much of it I did. Smaller portions for everything to keep myself averaging around 1,500 kcal a day.
Not sure why you're down voted, but this is how I reduced my caloric intake. A drink between every single bite. Slows down intake, makes you feel fuller, satiety sets in sooner.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
My Fitness Pay is a great "Food log" which was told I should use 25 years ago when I first started noticing the "behind the desk" effect. I still play sports constantly but the weight gain was huge.
I lost 50+ lbs on MyfitnessPal. I didn't need to eat the crappy "whey" and other tasteless stuff. I chose to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, low cal lunch (100-200 cals from a frozen quick meal) and I would eat a big dinner. Big dinner? Steak and Potato with a Salad at Outback. All that under the calorie limit to sit sedentary and lose 1.5 lbs a week.
When I stopped Myfitnesspal, I gained weight. Its a simple equation: Get a real Food Diary and use it.
Now, to get that my fitness pal back on track.
Oh, and avoid Diet Drinks. This guy mentions he ate high protein to make sure he burned FAT but diet drinks just make you crave food. I really think high protein foods = less sugar = less cravings. Thus the steaks are much better than burgers effect for losing weight. They stay in you longer and are half the calories.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
This is spot on and should be modded up.
Enter personal anecdote...
About fifteen years ago I was starting to struggle with sciatic nerve pain due to years spent driving a car with a heavy racing clutch in traffic, and a lack of exercise. I considered my options and decided to start practicing tai chi. I caught a bit of a break and found a legitimate sifu. After a couple years of tai chi, I started training kung fu as well. It has been over a decade and I train on a daily basis. I can eat whatever I want because I burn it off.
None the less, it is a struggle. Despite all of the benefits, there are plenty of days when I would rather go home after work and play video games instead of heading over to the temple to train or teach classes. I still have not overcome the "exercise sucks" mentality. Sure, the endorphins are great and being able to defend myself is great, and have a strong and healthy body is great... but it is still work for me, not fun.
Want to change your life for the good? Watch Fathead the movie below to learn how we have been eating all wrong for a long time. Then watch the followup below to the original 2009 movie for important updates.
Since the movie came out 5 years ago, the government has changed its guidance against high saturated fat/high cholesterol diets, saying there is no link to cardiovascular disease. The real cause of cardio-vascular disease is diets of high processed carbs/sugars and wheat. Change to a diet of high natural fats from animals, nuts and vegetables, and you will be happier, healthier and slimmer.
I've lost 20 pounds in 1 month by cutting the sugar/starch, high carbs and wheat. No more pasta, rice, cereal, bread, potatoes, sodas,fast food, etc. Instead, I eat natural fat from grass fed animals, nuts, and vegetables like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, asparagus, and spinach. My very low testosterone I've had for the past 8 years is now back to normal and no more insulin spikes. My blood sugar is low and steady. I'm not sick and tired anymore. I am full of energy all day long. No more acne, etc, the list goes on.
Original movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evcNPfZlrZs
Update to movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRkcSI9P1_I&feature=youtu.be
Ayup. If there's one thing I've learned from hearing all of the success stories from real people (as opposed to people selling a product or service), it's that it always boils down to eating well and exercising, and that those two things look different for different people.
Whether it means engaging in better portion control*, cutting back on specific food groups that your gut metabolizes better than the majority of the population, or simply exercising more so that you burn more calories, the only constant between everyone I've talked to who lost the weight and kept it off is that they found the right balance of eating well and exercising that worked for them.
* I saw an article a few months ago that was talking about how doctors have been seeing a disturbing number of people coming in complaining of abdominal pain. Upon further investigation, it's turning out that these people are suffering from nothing more than hunger pangs because they've forgotten how they feel. That's when I realized it was time for me to do better portion control, since I couldn't remember having had a hunger pang in at least six months. That plus a budget that I needed to tighten led to less junk food in the house and less eating out. End result? I dunno, but I've been consistently losing weight (about 20 lbs. so far) at a slow but steady rate that's producing visible improvements, without making any other changes to my lifestyle. It won't work for everyone, but it is working for me.
I've lost over 45 pounds and kept it off for over three years so far. And best of all, I didn't do it by starving myself.
I've considered myself overweight for most of my adult and childhood life. Oddly enough, I had always been fairly athletic, and exercised regularly throughout my life. I had strong willpower. But I just couldn't seem to keep weight off.
I lost my weight by signing up for weight watchers online. Weight watchers online is a program that allows you to conveniently keep track of the food you eat. All of it. I don't think weight watchers is magic; instead, I think the process of making eating a deliberate and measured action is what helped me. I like numbers. I can do numbers.
What I found by recording everything I ate is that a small number of foods accounted for a large amount of calories. Beef, fries, bread, snacks. I've largely eliminated these foods from my diet. It's not that I can't eat them, I just don't feel that the value is high enough for the calories to eat them a lot. I was able to decrease the number of calories I ate without starving myself by eating smart. The other benefit of recording food is that there are some replacement foods that are significantly healthier. For me, I started snacking more on pretzels, which I found a lot more filling, but contained less calories than many of the other snacks I ate.
After about a year, I stopped using weight watchers. I had internalized most of the good behaviors, and no longer needed to record everything I ate. I continued to lose weight, slowly but steadily. Eventually I stopped at a healthy weight, and I feel great. Over time, even though I was never starving myself, I started eating higher calorie foods and exercising more regularly to offset it. On that note, for burning calories, exercising longer and with lower intensity is better than short, intense workouts. I like to use the elliptical; I can exercise for 90 minutes without killing myself, and burn over 1000 calories. I've found that playing video games at the same time really distracts me from the act of exercising, and even makes it enjoyable.
If you're skeptical, and think you know enough about dieting to not record everything, think again. There are simply too many surprises. Go to your favorite restuarant's website and look at the nutrition information. I used to go to Chili's quite often. I haven't been there for a long time. I don't know how they cook their food, but it's insanely high in calories. Even seemingly safe foods like salad can be high in calories depending on the dressing. The opposite is true as well. Some fast food, like KFC, can be very low in calories (although probably bad for other reasons). Over time, you'll learn what fills you up and doesn't have a ton of calories. If you just start "eating less" without any data, you'll still be eating the same inefficient foods, and you'll probably gain your weight back after you can't take it anymore.
The flip side of the question is "Why are skinny people not fat?".
It's a more interesting question than you may think. One bit of semi-famous research is the 1970s Vermont 'prisoner overfeeding study' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Rv8JnFgw4). Like bits of Nazi science, this is probably irreproducible, as it'd *never* get past a human subject review committee today.
A number of lifetime-normal-weight prisoners were fed substantially over their basal metabolic needs for an extended period. Their input was rigorously controlled (being prisoners), and their exercise regimen was pretty easy to monitor and control. Most of them gained weight, but almost none of them nearly as much as the standard "3500 kCal is a pound of fat" Standard Model would predict. Several plateaued on weight gain, and a few lucky (?) prisoners were *never* able gain 10% of their body weight when eating nearly 10,000 Calories a day. Simply couldn't do it.
A lot of people are overeating in the western culture. A lot more that, by the numbers, should be in the 300-pound range. And while there are no shortage of very-very-fat people, they're not nearly as common as they should be if you study individual diet patterns. This is part of the problem. People look at their skinny friends' diets, and some of those skinny friends are like the luckier Vermont prisoners.
One way to passively burn more energy that I don't see mentioned enough is to simply lower the ambient temperature (and don't add more clothing). Staying in a cooler room (or not using a heavy blanket when sleeping, etc) can use a significant amount of extra energy. Sleeping humans use between 20 and 80 kCal/hour, depending on ambient temperature, blankets, etc. (80-20)*8=480kCal potential burn, per night of sleep. Over the course of a week that's 3360kCal, or nearly a pound of body fat's worth of energy. Use your basal metabolic rate to burn more energy by staying in cooler environments.
Not a sentence!