Comment by rob74
3 years ago
Congratulations! I would be happy to lose "only" 10 kg (hell, 5 kg would be good for a start), but since Covid and home office my weight has been (slowly, but steadily) going in the wrong direction. Yeah, you can and do burn calories by exercising, but it's depressing how little it is. And it's also depressing if I look at the graph that some 40 to 50 year olds seem to still have the metabolism of a toddler - I'm definitely not one of those! OTOH, you can feel superior by thinking these people would be in big trouble if there was a famine, but that's (fortunately) not the world we live in (although it's pretty fucked up if you consider that we are complaining about these first world problems while in other countries people are starving)...
My advise: (as someone who does a lot of working out and calorie control)
Write down what you eat for a while and its calories. Weigh yourself daily as well and write that down too. If after a week your weight went up: Your calories are above your TDEE. If it went down: Your calories are under your TDEE.
And that's basically it, once you know what your TDEE is, eat under it to create a caloric deficit and you will lose weight. Even if you don't exercise at all and just sit at home.
Sure exercise will help putting your caloric deficit lower by burning some, but in the end it's always calories vs TDEE. Understanding that makes it very easy to go in either direction (gain weight vs lose weight), no matter what your metabolism is
(The easy solution is of course to just eat less, like skipping a meal or reducing the amount. Since your average daily food is already what dictates your current weight, reducing it means you will lose weight)
> Write down what you eat for a while and its calories. Weigh yourself daily as well and write that down too. If after a week your weight went up: Your calories are above your TDEE. If it went down: Your calories are under your TDEE.
Not necessarily. It is important to remember that water weighs ~1lb/pt and there are a lot of things that affect how much water your body is carrying at any given moment. Depending on your body mass, it is not unrealistic to see 5lbs of fluctuation in a single day. On a calorie restricted diet your body will tend to retain water (because it does this for pretty much any stressor), so you may actually see a slight increase in body weight at first even though your TDEE is above your caloric intake.
A more reliable approach, in my opinion, is to do the TDEE calculation for your target weight and set that as your calorie limit.
That's why they are telling you (as is common) to compare the results on a weekly basis which reduces the variance. TDEE calculations from scratch are much much more unreliable than empirically finding out and mostly good for a starting point.
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I'd love to count calories. I'm just too lazy to measure and research everything I eat, and the alternative is to have only processed foods that are labeled.
It's too bad that we can't just live on Soylent (the actual beverage, not the thing from the book)
With a 10 dollar scale and an App like Lose It, it is pretty easy. They have both things with UPC codes for easy look up and standard foods, for example brown rice or salmon. I keep track and probably spend less than 5 minutes a day getting everything down. Obviously it will be difficult at a restaurant unless you want to bring a scale with you or beg the wait staff but largely they won't mind and if you're order grilled chicken and veg most likely they won't mind measuring the chicken for you. Anyways, the stuff on labels are estimates so the whole process has some moderate error so as long as you estimate fairly you don't have to worry about being crazy accurate.
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If you eat a lot of similar stuff, after looking up things periodically over time you'll get to be able to ballpark calorie counts. Calories aren't really hidden that well.
I was very excited about Soylent years ago...until I tried it. I really disliked the flavor, so wouldn't have stuck with it regardless, but what really surprised me was how much I enjoy the act of sitting down and eating a meal. Soylent filled me up, but it never satiated me. Regardless of the time savings and predictability, I missed the act of eating, if that makes sense.
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MyFitnessPal does a pretty good job. You can scan barcodes and it'll (usually) have the calories and macros. Also just having a set of scales on hand makes it a lot more accurate!
When you cook for yourself it's pretty easy. After a month you remember kcal per 100g for each common ingredient and the weight is on the box or on the receipt anyway.
TDEE = Total Daily Energy Expenditure
For me at least it's not that simple. My weight (healthy to low BMI) has been very stable over many years with vastly different amounts of exercising and quality of eating habits within that period. Fat to muscle ratio does move but total weight is stuck even with long runs of lots of junk food.
Hmm I have trouble believing that. If you eat less and put yourself into a caloric deficit, your body is going to start using up fat and to a certain degree muscle, that's just how it works and your body is no exception. If you work out during a deficit, your body will try to retain muscle and use more fat instead. Gaining muscle in a deficit is possible, but only in small amounts, if at all.
> quality of eating habits within that period
To me this sounds like you aren't actually changing the amount of calories that you eat, just the quality of them. Eating 2000 calories of McDonalds or 2000 calories of high quality food does not matter (or barely matters) for losing/gaining weight. If 2000 calories is under your TDEE, you can eat 2000 calories of cheesecake and would still lose weight (but very unhealthy).
What I see often is people claiming stuff like "I can't lose weight" or "I have a slow metabolism", but they never actually bother counting how much they eat, and because of that have no understanding of what high-calorie and low-calorie food is. (For example if I'd ask how much calories an average hamburger or a glass of cola has, you'd likely have no idea if you haven't counted calories before).
It was the same for me, once I started counting I realized that I was not eating according to the goals I had set at that time, and that the food I ate was actually much much less in calories than I thought it was.
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Of course, eating less is the ideal solution if you can muster the willpower to actually do it - but that's a big "if" for many people...
Counting calories is still very useful, because you learn what's "worth it".
For example there are protein bars that are supposedly healthy, but they have 150-250 kcal per 50g bar.
On the other hand there are these watery ice creams that have about 65 kcal per piece and feel just as indulgent if not more.
Other things that are very much "not worth it" on the enjoyement/kcal scale is bread and other pastries.
2 buns with ham is 500 kcal and feels like nothing. A whole pan of hot vegetables with some meat is +- the same and feels like a proper dinner.
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Just do keto diet or carnivore then. Will be a lot easier. You have to give up the cake.
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You might try an other diet that‘s more filling and creates less cravings. So less carbs and more protein and fat. I don‘t think that willpower really works in this regard long term. It only creates frustrations.
The big trick is figuring out mentally how to eat less without requiring willpower. It is possible. Depending on willpower is setting up for likely failure, IMO.
> I would be happy to lose "only" 10 kg (hell, 5 kg would be good for a start), but since Covid and home office my weight has been (slowly, but steadily) going in the wrong direction. Yeah, you can and do burn calories by exercising, but it's depressing how little it is.
Had the same problem. Then switched to intermittent fasting. First two months, nothing happened. Then within a month dropped 10 kg, which got me back to my pre-covid weight. I'm doing 8/16 IF by the way, and eating more than I did before, so I think the CICO theory is stupid :)
Isn’t 2.5kg / week weight loss extreme, and unhealthy or bordering impossible? It seems to be usually recommended to stay below 1kg per week, a healthy rate seems to be closer to 0.5kg/week. I’d assume that something might have been happening the first two months. Could be a measurement problem as well, that you were catching water-weight highs and then maybe changed the timing of your measurements? If you were actually losing closer to 0.8kg / week without knowing it for three months, that’d be about 10kg.
How much more are you eating exactly? Have you changed your exercise routine or physical habits? The problem with calling CICO stupid is that it’s two-thirds physics. The only way to gain mass is to eat it, and the only way to lose mass is to burn it off through RMR and exercise. There’s mountains of data demonstrating that humans gain weight when eating more than they burn, and lose it when burning more than they eat. The people who seem to lose/gain weight abnormally are just people who’s bodies burn calories in unusual ways. That’s rare and statistically unlikely, but even that still follows CICO.
An important thing to keep in mind is that a substantial amount of calories can be burned outside of formal exercise. Incorporating more walking into your day, general activities that involve movement rather than sitting at a desk, etc
I've struggled with this a lot over the past 10 years. I was 60lbs (27kg) over my weight from leaving university 25 years earlier, I sit a lot, and am late forties. The last few years have been harder, and I've been bouncing between a small range, and couldn't 'break out'.
Others have suggested 'writing it down' - not going to argue with that. I don't 'write down' every food I eat, but I do make mental notes every day. What's helped me more though...
2 years ago I bought a fitbit - basic model, nothing fancy, but got serious about tracking my movements. It helped create some easier external documentation about what I was doing. I then moved to an Apple Watch last May, and have been following the '3 circles'. It gave me a target 'move X calories per day' target, do X minutes of 'exercise' every day (exercise seemingly defined as 'get your heart rate above Xbpm').
I've hit those targets ALMOST every day (I missed one calorie target 1 day by 13!). I'm on day ... 206 of my movement streak.
For me, the visual reminders on my wrist help keep me motivated/focused. I 'compete' against a couple of friends with the watch now and then, but just being connected and getting a thumbs up from a friend now and then is motivating.
As others said, track weight daily - I track morning and night. I put it in my iphone. I look at the graphs. I see the downward trend. THIS HELPS A LOT when it bounces back up a bit now and then. I'm up ... around 1.5 lbs from earlier this week. JUST seeing that uptick used to demotivate me. But looking at the downward trend of the last 7 months, I can see the larger direction is down, and I don't stress as much about small upticks. I'm down 25lbs (11kg) from last June, and at this pace will probably be down another 15 or so by this year.
I used to go to a gym, but ... it's a 'process'. I now often just go outside and jog around. There's a run club once per week, and weather permitting, I'll do it, but... I hit those targets every day. Even if it's just running in place, or getting on an exercise bike, or jumping rope. I tell myself "every little bit helps", and tracking every one of those 'little bits' has been the motivating factor for me. May be different for others, but keep going till you find something that works for you.
Took me years to find some 'thing' that clicked for me, but I'm closing in on one year of losing weight based on 'more movement' and 'fewer snacks' and 'better eating'. But it took weeks before there was a trendline to see a downward line.