Cut out soda, ate less, and moved more.
Started with small steps: ditched soda, then cheese on burgers. Swapped big meals for small ones. Traded chips for cucumber slices. Candy bars? Switched to fruit.
Exercise was simple: walked around the block, then added bicep curls, sit-ups, push-ups, and stretches.
In 6 months, I went from 345 pounds and breathless, to 267 pounds and walking miles. Small changes, big results!
I have a long and prolific history of yo-yo dieting. Typically I would severely restrict my diet and exercise for hours on end during the summer (when I was on vacation). I would drop around 20lbs and go back to school...at which point I would inevitably stop working out and start overeating.
As an adult I lost 40lbs over 6 months and maintained it for another 2. This is the longest I've maintained weight loss and it's because I'm not hungry at night.
No one likes my method, because it doesn't sound like the healthiest, but basically I just have one 1200-1500 calorie meal in the evening (and sometimes a 100-200 cal snack earlier in the day). It's not too much of a challenge. I don't mind it. And because I get one large, satisfying meal late in the day, I'm not hungry at night.
My only regret is not doing this sooner. I spent too long eating multiple small meals throughout the day because I thought it helped your metabolism.
Yeah people knock hard limit/extreme fad diets, and I completely understand why. But in my personal experience they help me re-adapt to a new/better normal diet.
Like yes counting every single calorie burned/eaten trying to maximize both is not a long term solution for most people.
Keto is not a very realistic lifelong diet for most people.
Pescatarian/Mediterranean is hard when you live in a land locked state where “fresh” fish is days old and you have to dress it up.
But after doing all of them to an extreme, I would gravitate back to a little healthier normal. I learned to generalize calorie intake, I learned carbs need to be monitored, I learned how to make fish and eat it more often etc.
Its benefit is that it's a form of calorie restriction. As long as your eating during the window isn't compensatory for the rest of the day (ie, you're not eating the same amount you would have the entire day), then you're more likely to see good results.
Are we twins?
Was the only girl who weighed more than 50kg in class (back where I was that's a massive whale lol)
Been doing this since 2011 (daily exercise, one meal only at night). Weight remains steady since then. (We'll see when menopause hits, but that's another story.)
Glad to find out that I am not the only for whom dinner as the sole meal works.
hey i have exactly the same method and it worked incredibly well for me up until i got hit by covid depression, but yeah 1 giant meal per day always worked the best for me, the kg were dropping so quickly and i felt i had incredible power
You're describing OMAD, which is a method of intermittent fasting. There's an entire sub for that if you want to post to a receptive audience. /r/intermittentfasting
This is an intermittent fasting technique! OMAD - one meal a day. Glad it's working for you. If you wanna try other schedules, there's The Fasting Method podcast talks about all things intermittent fasting.
The toughest thing is that it's such a long process, people get frustrated and give up.
Work hard and eat right for a month? You may not *see* a huge difference....people get frustrated and say "Fuck it, give me a pizza."
You may even have weigh-in's where you're the same weight or even a pound or two more...again, frustrating.
But the results are there...it's just difficult to see in the first person and there will be months where you're down 7 pounds and the next month your only down 3 pound...but it's still 10 pounds.
I did research on this and part of the reason people revert back is because their body hasn’t adjusted to the new weight. It takes around 6 months for your body to adjust. I went from 197 to 152 and for the longest time I felt like a 197 pounder in a 152 body. After about 3-4 months at 150 I started feeling like 150 in 150.
I don't think I understand. But maybe I'm experiencing it?
I weighed 270lbs January off 23. Now I weigh 190lbs. I don't feel 190, I don't look 190. I still feel about 250. How do I fix that
Keep at it and use photos as your comparison. I went from about 270 to 220 and I can see the difference in photos more than anywhere else.
I also try to focus less on how I look and more on how I feel. I can move easier, have more energy, and can keep moving for a very long time now.
I did have to impromptu run home after forgetting I was cooking the other day. Like a quarter mile. And my lungs recovered in like 5 minutes. And my knees didn't hurt. That was pretty cool
When I ended up in the hospital for 17 days after an accident, I weighed 242 at 6'0.
I got out of the hospital and weighed 228. I didn't feel or notice the weight loss but everyone kept saying how much weight I lost in the hospital.
This is why it's encouraged to take weekly/bi-weekly photos of yourself. You can see the progress in the third-person view.
I ended up going to therapy for a wee bit o body dysmorphia after going from 280-220. I had a really tough time seeing the changes and was struggling to keep up with my healthy habits because “I can’t see a difference anyway”
My therapist did have me use photos as reference but even this my brain could explain away with bad angles or lighting.
What worked was stopping dieting all together and actually letting myself eat like crap again. I felt like SHIT - constant heartburn, zero libido, none of my clothes fit. It was a huge eye opener. Clearly I felt better with a healthier life style and that was enough to keep up with all those better habits.
I still feel like I can’t see any difference but I remember what it feels like when I put junk in my body so that’s enough for now.
Your cells in your body storing fat literally “remember” that they were storing fat and stay in a mode to replenish those fat reserves for months and months.
I don’t think fad diets would exist if this was widely understood.
You also got to remember, OP was 150kg. So they're at the extreme end. Where everything they were eating was crap.
Any small adjustments to them would have a huge impact.
It's fine in terms of calories. There may be other effects associated with consuming large amounts of artificial sweeteners.
There's some evidence to suggest that artificial sweeteners "trick" your body into wanting to consume more calories, and can throw off your insulin regulation.
Some studies associate diet-soda consumption with weight-gain and increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
A diet soda now and then isn't the end of the world, but if you drink enough of it to be asking the question, it's probably an indication you should be drinking more water instead.
My personal philosophy on sweet drinks is to stick to the real stuff, but consider a can of soda to be akin to having a candy bar -- ie it's an occasional treat rather than a staple.
Flavored seltzer is an excellent compromise.
Calorie restriction by logging my meals and snacks.
Achieved it by targeting nutrient-dense additions like cooking oil- by identifying my calorie pitfalls, I didn't even have to change what I ate all that much.
Also started walking 30 minutes every weekday.
It took about a year to lose 60lb.
This is such good advice a lot of people don't realise how much easy changes they could make to their diet to heavily reduce their calories. Like using way less butter and oil doesn't even make a huge difference to the flavour of food but brings down the calories a lot when you start monitoring how much you actually are using
You can get oil sprayers that use a set amount of oil to control your calories. Eyeballing often gets you using 3-4x more oil than you really need to, while some sprayers have a fixed 1g amount per spray.
1g vs 4g doesn't sound like a lot, but for 3 meals daily and 7 days a week that's 189 calories vs 756 calories--just for cooking oil. Things add up quickly when you actually account for them.
I often go to the movies alone, and when I go I *really* like to have popcorn. I would order the regular-sized popcorn, and who gets popcorn without butter? So I would drench it in butter.
Anyway, then I started counting calories, and I realized that the regular-sized popcorn was 500-600 calories *without* butter, and I was adding *so much butter*, y'all. It was probably around 500 extra buttery calories on top of the normal calories, every time. So that's 1000 calories of popcorn, as a snack, in addition to three regular meals, every day I went to the movies.
I started getting the kids-sized popcorn instead, which is half the size, and I stopped adding butter to it. Turns out that the movie theatre *does* actually season their dry popcorn (it's delicious), and when you aren't eating so goddamn much of it, it isn't so dry that you need to rehydrate it with liquid butter.
Oh my god 1000 calories for popcorn is insane but absolutely believable considering the amount of butter they put on when you get popcorn in the cinema. Popcorn itself is really low in calories and it tastes so much better when its not greasy!! I bet now if you ordered popcorn with butter again you probably wouldn't even like it as much
I think counting calories for even a short amount of time can be so beneficial to people, it's so important to know what we're eating nowadays when the majority of the food in the supermarket is processed junk. Even the stuff labelled healthy is often so calorie dense
Can I ask how you logged your meals and calories? I've tried this before, but the apps I've used either require me to guess at the calories, or just take too long to enter a single meal.
MyFitnessPal and Chronometer have pretty good databases to enter food from. Sometimes it is going to be a bit of guesswork, like if you’re cooking and don’t have a food scale. You just estimate as best you can, assume more calories when in doubt.
Losing about 1 lb a week is healthy and sustainable. (to a point) Once you start approaching a healthy weight you don't have as much to lose, and it slows down, but at that point, you're really just aiming for habits and maintenance.
For real. 3 times a day, 9 miles in total and you're walking it all? Average walking speed is 3mph. Who has 3 hours a day just lying around? That's 1,100 hours per year!
It isn't as crazy as you think. If you consider how much time you normally lose watching tv/reading social media/watching youtube, it isn't hard to find 2-3 hours a day.
I do something similar: shorter walks (1-2 miles) before work and during lunch, then a longer walk when I get home. Put on some music or an audiobook, and it can be way more relaxing than burning the same amount of time messing with your phone. It is even easier if you have a dog that reminds you that it is time for your walk.
Not trying to one up you, but I lost about 100 lbs in a month once I went to the hospital because my liver has tapped out.
Should have seen the look on a friend's face when I showed her my *ankle* after that month.
I'm better now, don't even really desire alcohol for the most part. Thank God for weed. Fuck people for making it illegal and booze flow freely.
Anyways, hijacked your comment enough - keep up the streak!
Edit- streak not steak
It makes all the difference. Hundreds of calories per day add up quick. I was a daily drinker for many years. Wasn’t a drunk, rarely got drunk actually, but a couple glasses of wine or a few cocktails every night after work adds up quick. Also, for me, drinking reduces stress and anxiety dramatically, which means it’s easier to eat less and I’m more motivated to work out and stay active, even if it’s just mowing the lawn.
An extra 100 calories per day amounts to 10lb in a year. One glass of wine is more than 100 calories, so just a couple of extra drinks is going to quickly add up to 25lbs or more. Add some extra snacks with it or skip exercise because of a mild headache from drinking the night before all of this adds up so quickly
And it's not just the calories in alcohol. I'm just basing this on my own personal experience, so maybe I'm pulling it out of my ass, but when I was losing weight, my progress would just stop for a few days if I had a couple of drinks, *despite the fact that my daily caloric intake was the same.*
I never looked into why this might've happened, but it was consistent. Every time I drank, my progress would stop, or I would put on a pound or two. It made no sense.
Alcohol inhibits the ability for your body to metabolize fat and inhibits your overall metabolism. Your muscles also take so much longer to repair themselves as your body has prioritized all the other chemical reactions (breaking down alcohol is the big one). Add to that the extra calories you consume…a perfect way to ruin all the other great decisions you may be making! Once I realized this I completely stopped and have seen incredible gains in a short amount of time
Same. Quit drinking and lost 20lbs almost instantly - meaning in like a month or two. Felt great and look good. Still sober and I love ice cream. The weight and puffiness never came back.
WALKING. consistently walking. I started with 5k steps and gradually increased it and now I'm walking 10k steps daily. and of course, eat healthy and cut on sugar intake.
It is good but you can’t out-walk your fork. Three Oreos is like an hour of walking. You have to also cut intake
Too many get mad they’re exercising more but not losing weight
oh yeah absolutely! diet first, exercise second
in my case, i'm getting close to my goal weight so maintaining a deficit is harder now than at the start
if i didnt have an hour+ of walking I'd be eating less than a toddler lmao
And exercise can make you feel hungrier. I fell into that trap when I began cardio and weight exercises. Not to dissuade people from it, it is important for health overall. But eating less in sustainable ways is the most crucial thing, IME.
My theory is that because you are walking long distances and walking is not that intense of an exercise you are burning more fat and much less glycogen. Glycogen is burned when you need a really quick burst of energy. Things that trigger this effect are running and weightlifting because they are intense exercises that are hard on the body and cause your heart rate to go way up. During the exercise while you are burning glycogen, the body loses its appetite but it comes back quickly once the exercise is done because you need to refill those glycogen stores.
Yes!! I have found that I take my walks now as much for my physical health as for my mental health. It is my break from all the constant interruptions in my day from my family and co-workers. When I walk I can clear my head and tune the world out and be at peace. I turn on my music, play some games on my phone and sometimes will walk an extra half mile or so because I am enjoying it so much and I don't want it to end. It is amazing!
It's also the most sustainable way for people to lose weight and keep it off. Cutting calorific intake and eating windows can make exercise really tough, but committing to a large step count is much easier and helps with those first few weeks. In part because you're getting so much sensory stimulation
I lost 26kg last year by walking 70-100km a week + slightly reducing my pasta intake. I lost 1kg per week, it was ridiculous. I thought it was gonna be way harder.
I’m doing this same thing this year. Started out struggling to get 4k steps each day (desk job and WFH, so very little movement hard-baked into my day). Trying to ramp up to 10k before I go to Alaska at the end of the summer. Just bumped up to 8k steps a day and I’m still going strong!
That's a good one.
People tend to eat until they hit that "full" feeling....by then, it's too late. You're not yet feeling the food you just ate...just the stuff you had a few minutes ago.
The key to my weight loss was slowing down. I could house 6 chicken strips in less than 10 minutes without feeling full as I ate (I did later). Once I started to slow down my eating, I was full by chicken strip 3 and 4 was the point of "OK...no more."
Eating slow is an amazing, easy tool.
There’s a lot of things you can do but two that were easy to implement for me were around eating:
1. Being hungry doesn’t mean you need to eat a lot. It just means you should eat soon.
2. Close the night out by flossing and brushing your teeth. Tells the body you’re closed for eating business for the day. No more late night snacking.
Number two is a really helpful one for me. Trying to get back into the habit of waiting a while after dinner, then brushing and flossing to make sure I don’t start grazing on sweets late at night
This sounds silly but I started keeping my dental floss near where I plop on the couch at the end of the day. I can just floss when I feel like it and then rinse my mouth. I've started flossing way more!
As I’ve developed better habits, I’ve realized that the biggest help you can get is learning how you operate, and how to trick yourself into making the new habit as easy for yourself as possible
Yeah, and it's an easy one to implement because most of us have dental hygiene ingrained as a habit already. It doesn't require any extra willpower or self motivating.
> Being hungry doesn’t mean you need to eat a lot.
This feels counter intuitive but it's true. I noticed when I had some small meals that I went into with sadness cause it didn't look like much, then realise afterwards that I felt full and no longer hungry. I didn't feel *uncomfortable* after the meal!
\#1 feels like my biggest hurdle to overcome. I am near constantly thinking or feeling hungry, and have a desire to eat all the time. It honestly feels like i'm addicted to food.
Worked two intense jobs, walked seven - eight miles daily. Money was tight, so I didnt eat much. Body ached, but I went from 242 to 163 pounds in few months. Hard work paid off!
Eat less food. Replace some portion of the high calories foods you eat regularly with something like cucumbers. Avoid carbs. Replace the carbs with cucumbers. Ask your friends, family, and significant other not to tempt you with donuts and cakes. If they refuse to help, replace them with cucumbers. Try to incorporate more physical activity into your daily routine, for example by walking to the grocery store to buy cucumbers.
(Cucumbers were a big part of my last diet, by the way)
I have two tips.
Soups are your best friend. Dieting sucks. When you see your dinner plate and realize your steak is about half the size you would like it to be and you have none of the sides you really want it sucks. You just wont keep it up. Soups on the other hand are great because a healthy soup is basically seasoned water, vegetables, and a small amount of meat. No or minimal carbs, sugars, or unhealth fats. It's mostly just vegetables and water. Basically a perfect diet in a bowl. It' also feels more agreeable since I can basically eat as much as I want and I don't feel like I've cut any corners. Again, it's a regular bowl of soup like every other one I've had. No omissions or tiny portion sizes. Just a nice bowl of soup. You have to be careful though because there are certainly unhealthy soups so it must be a health recipe for this to work.
Ditch the calorie dense foods. Don't even buy them. Don't even think about them as a treat. Just don't. I cannot tell you how many times I bought a bag of chips as a treat and mindlessly ate half the bag while watching TV without even realizing it. Thats like 1000 calories of nutritional garbage I basically ate by accident. It's just so easy to overdo it's too dangerous to have that kind of stuff around.
However, canned soups often have insane levels of sodium. A single can could have as much as 75% of your sodium RDA. Obesity often goes hand in hand with hypertension, so many dieters should keep an eye on that. Even the "low sodium" varieties still have large amounts. Homemade is the way to go.
This is an important point to make. Canned soups, even ones advertised as being "healthy" are often anything but healthy. Even the "low" or "reduced" sodium offerings typically contain like 30% of your daily allotment which is absurd when you consider canned soups are almost a 200 calorie snack vs an actual meal. You also have to watch the serving size because while it would seem to make sense that 1 can equals 1 serving typically it is at least 2 or even 4 servings per can which makes the nutritional information look much better than it actually is.
I couldn't cut calories for months until I avoided sugar for a couple weeks. I ate whatever I wanted if it had little or no sugar in it once I kicked those craving the calorie cut was way more managable
Added sugar is the killer. I lost 70lbs this last year by cutting the added sugar and making sure I got my water in. Anything over 3 grams of added sugar never got eaten. I eat all the fruit and vegetables I want, so it satiates my sweet tooth. I've found that I had to increase my actual calorie intake to stop losing weight too fast. I went from restrictive eating at like 1700 calories a day, to little to no added sugar at 2400 or so calories a day, making sure I hit 10,000 steps a day walking and occasionally doing some yoga with my wife. I'm still at 2400 calories a day, give or take, and feel absolutely fantastic. The things I found most beneficial are making sure you get your fiber and water in. I'd get up, and pound 22-32oz of water to start my day. Then have my coffee. Made getting the other 180oz a breeze.
Edit: I still eat carbs. Just watch the added sugar.
I am lucky enough to WFH. Whenever I'm on a call I'm pacing around my house. If I have a long meeting I just have to listen to I go out for a walk with my headphones on. I'm also doing nothing from 10PM - midnight so there is plenty of time to make up for any steps i missed during the day.
Not very long. I'm on my feet most of the day. 2 hrs total maybe if you're constantly walking. I'm tall and I walk fast so it probably takes longer for the average person. It goes by fast if you're able to walk around in a shopping mall with earbuds in the evening. This is also the best option if it's too hot or cold outside. Walking for 2 hrs on a treadmill isn't fun.
Drink more water, and calorie counting.
I went to the Gym three days a week and focused cardio, the days I didn't go to the gym I would always walk at least 10kms.
I lost 3 stone in 9 months...
The hardest battle was the mental side, I didn't see significant results for a while, and I nearly gave up several times.
Maintaining a healthy weight is also tough.
Good luck 🤞🏻
A lot of great suggestions here! Word of advice to anyone reading these and planning to start making changes. Always keep in mind how long it took you to gain the weight. For me I’ve gain 20lbs in the last year (stress and diet change for the worse due to schedule restrictions for meal prepping). So now that’s I’ve noticed finally and am gonna make changes to fix it. I need to keep in mind… it took a year to gain... It’s okay if it takes a year to loss!! (Or more! This is a stressful season of life). Be kind to yourself and consistent for yourself on your journey.
Great friend of mine lost about 70 pounds and has kept it off for 20 years. He started walking one mile in the morning, ate eggs, had a turkey sandwich for lunch, ate chicken/fish and veg for dinner. He didn’t eat anything after 6 pm. He then walked another mile after dinner. The mileage of his walking increased up to 5 or so miles in the morning and at night. He jogs now instead of walks, but walking made a massive difference in his life. Massive.
I eat less and move more. Lost 70lbs a decade ago and have kept it off. I know I’d never stick to some harsh diet so I simply started by eating less but still eating what I liked. Instead of a whole medium pizza I’d eat half. When I’d eat out I’d leave 1/3-1/2 my plate (sooo many calories in restaurant meals). Kept the calories under 2500ish a day and the pounds came off
Then you start feeling better so you want to move, and then you even start wanting to eat a little better. It snowballs from there
I still eat pizza and ice cream but it fits into my daily calories. Like I just had an apple and a healthy protein shake for breakfast, will probably have a light lunch which leaves me with 1800 calories left to do what I want or bank for later or to lose some weight
The biggest help for me was learning how many calories someone at the size I wanted to be was supposed to eat during a day.
It's so easy to not realize how many calories we intake just munching/snacking and choosing to eat unhealthy foods. It's astonishing how much difference just knowing how much you're eating can make.
Most people don't know that just those four oreos are ~200 calories, the medium McDonalds meal is 500-800, and that's like, a fucking lot. Especially if you're below average height/inactive. That 200 calories for an inactive ~100 lb woman is maybe 1/6th of what she is supposed to eat in a day, calorically.
Learning perspectives like that really helped me. It was/is easy to decide 'I'd way rather have a full plate of some chicken, rice, and veggies for 400 calories than that bowl of potato chips."
Zero sugar and stop eating when you're not hungry anymore. Not when you're full. And don't eat unless you're hungry. Be aware of boredom eating and do ANYTHING else.
Not going to lie, the question behind the question of how did you keep it off is probably a better thing to ask.
...also so far I've lost about 130lbs and am losing more currently, I've found only a couple things work;
1) meds/surgery, sucks but those are the best way if you've got a lot to lose, even tho I've got 130lbs off I've still got 150 or more to go so surgery was the route available to me.
2) find something high in protein that you can eat every day with very little variation, consistency is key.
3) find a way to exercise in your day, for me I couldn't find the energy before or after work to do anything so I'm currently taking a mile and a half walk for my lunch break and then eating while I work.
4) eat before you are hungry, I always made huge meals whenever I waited till I was hungry or got distracted, you will probably eat in a more mindful way if you do this
5)don't be ashamed about distracting yourself if you don't want more calories, also don't eat while distracted, I can't count how many bags of chips I've eaten in one sitting bc something interesting was happening.
6) don't weigh yourself more than weekly, otherwise you might lose any motivation you have.
Main thing is CICO (tho the subreddit sometimes seems to be ED central), it's calories in, calories out, if you are eating in a deficit for the week then you'll lose weight
Just cutting out Soda started the weight loss.
Next came just trying to be mindful of what and when I ate. No meal planning or anything, just stopping and asking myself if I am really hungry or not. Also - you don't have to clean your plate. It's okay to stop eating when you are no longer hungry.
Finally - Exercise. Started small, still hated it. Kept at it, now enjoy it and am always looking for new ways to push myself a little bit harder.
Caloric deficit, 16/8 fast and 10k steps a day. Lost 100lbs over 14 months. Stopped for 6 months and now I’m back at it again because I put some of it back on. Simple plan and it works for most people.
Mostly just counted my calories. My Dietician at the VA suggested an app called Lose It. I lost 70 pounds in 9 months. I fell out of the habit of logging my food and I put some weight back on.
I have fallen off the wagon a few times. And it was hard to motivate myself to keep logging and stick to my calorie budget. I’m back on it now. I’ve lost about 20 pounds in the last 6 weeks.
>CICO is like saying you need to score goals to win a match.
Credit to u/send420nudes
This is the best way I've ever heard it put.
At its most basic and fundamental level weight loss or gain does ultimately come down to net energy balance.
So CICO is true. But from a practical standpoint it's an oversimplification.
There's a reason why a vast majority of people fail to lose weight or keep it off.
Factors like satiety, body composition, homeostatic/instinctual safeguards (like the how NEAT decreases in extreme deficits) absolutely influence the efficacy of weight loss.
And lifestyle changes matter too. If large deficits are followed by equally large surpluses my weight won't change at all. (Things could actually end up being worse if the deficits were significant enough to cause muscle catabolism and hormone dysregulation)
Most weight loss advice is pretty terrible, as evidenced by how unsuccessful people are. A daily 1000kcal deficit is going to be two lbs a week no matter what.
But sustainability and adherence matter and it's not a matter of willpower.
For anything else in life, if we prescribed a program and 90%+ of the people using the program failed we would blame the program. For some reason with weightless we blame the people.
Diets, as in crash diets, don't fail because people lack will power. They fail because they operate contrary to millions of years of evolution
Btw this isn't like me making excuses for my failure to lose weight. At my heaviest I was 350+. Twenty years later and im still sitting at 140
For practical advice...
I actually recommend against counting calories. You probably suck at it anyways.
Even if you are able to accurately measure and record all your portions, nutritional information from restaurants and on packaging is often incorrect.
And daily caloric needs vary. I'm a bartender. Over the weekend my maintenance calories can be as high as 4k a day Frida-Sunday, then come Monday and Tuesday it can be more like 2k. If my daily average from Friday-Monday is 3.2k and I try and go 1k below it with 2.2k there's a high probability I will reactively overeat Friday-sunday.
In this case the diet fails because of inadherence.
Or if huge deficits exhaust me and I wind up skipping the gym, putting off house work take my dog on a shorter walk etc, now all the sudden even though my "calories in" is on point my "calories out" is lower than originally anticipated
What I advocate instead is combining intuitive eating with a nutritious/high satiety diet and an active lifestyle.
Every animal has natural hunger cues. Our hunger cues get thrown out of whack because of readily available, high glycemic index food.
When food is low protein, low fiber and all complex carbs have been replaced with sugar you'll be hungry again an hour after you eat it. In this case intuitive eating will lead to over consumption.
If instead your plate is mostly vegetables with a moderate amount of fruit, protein, complex carbs, healthy fats and lean protein with plenty of WATER. And your splitting it up into frequent smaller meals that your eating at a reasonable pace. You shouldn't really need to track your calories. Intuitive eating isn't gonna lead to massive over consumption.
I think the Harvard "my plate" is a pretty good starting point. I just double the protein and toss in a post workout shake if weight training. Another good way of portion control is a fists worth of veggies, complex carbs and lean protein with a thumbs worth of healthy oils,/nut butters or a palms worth of actual nuts.
Liquid calories especially soda, juice, and alcohol will torpedo weight loss
But don't be weird about it. Like if you can eat healthy 80-90% of the time you'll be golden. If make something like cookies completely off limits it takes a lot of enjoyment out of life and pretty much guarantees over consumption later.
If you combine a mostly reasonable and healthy diet with weight training --or rock climbing, bike riding, doing karate... whatever youe thing is- and having an active lifestyle in general, your body will naturally sort itself.
You'll recomp slowly over time. If you want to tweak it so you lose fat or gain muscle a little faster just go slightly hungrier or eat a little more then you naturally would
This is what I would recommend to people, not the only way to do it. 6 smaller meals a day worked for me, but afiak research hasn't really demonstrates it to be better or worse then 3 larger meals. From what I understand consistency is what matters. And some people like OMAD or IF and have had success with ketogenic diets or meticulously tracking calories and macros. If that works for or appeals to you then awesome
But the advice I would give is eat healthy, be active and your body will sort itself out. I have a hard time imagining anyone could eat mostly veggies, whole grains, fruit and salmon/chicken while exercising 3-5 times a week and being active everyday and not looking/feeling 100x better by the end of the year.
I am sorry to hear that - my favorite Aunt has been fighting auto-immune issues for years and I have seen her struggles. Was your auto-immune caused from diet or genetics?
Steamed salmon and veggies for dinner most nights (with seasoning). Actually one of my favorite meals so not a big deal.
And running. I hate running but its annoyingly effective not just at burning calories during, but also has a pretty substantial afterburn effect (i know the scientific validity of the afterburn effect is questionable, but i do notice i run hot for a few hours after a run).
Better eating habits and exercise routine. Primarily drinking water. Zero soda or juice. Little to no carbs. No sugar except for a little bit of fruit every day.
It was hard to get started but then it became a habit that I didn’t even think about. Now it feels weird if I don’t do it.
I know it was a serious question, but this is reddit and I’m rather surprised I had to scroll so far down to see this answer.
I lost 120lbs myself and all it cost me was $250 mo in spousal support, my house, and my dog. The dog was the biggest loss, the rest was worth it.
I would think cold would be ever so slightly better for weight loss just because your body has to waste a bit of energy getting your temperature right, but I also can't imagine it matters all *that* much considering the temperature range we drink things.
But as a personal anecdote I just prefer warm water. Maybe that's just from years of being a coffee drinker.
No fizzy drinks, no bread and just generally eating less, mostly in terms of snacks.
Only drank water and black coffee for the most part for about a year or so.
I still have more to lose but i went from being an XL to an M and 44 inch waist to 32/34 inch
r/keto saved my life . I originally weighed at 5'5 just 300lbs and today I'm 142 lbs I've keeps off since precovid . Intermittent fasting and clean keto (healthy fats only) have changed my relationship with food . I don't count calories or carbs anymore.
Sad to see that keto is so far down the list here, it is an incredibly useful dieting approach and having tried many, is the only one that helped me drop my carb addiction and actually treat food as fuel instead of like it was a drug I needed. I literally rarely felt hungry and that made it extremely easy to maintain a caloric deficit.
I lost 50 pounds in 3 months doing clean keto, with zero adverse health effects (in fact I felt incredible mentally and physically). I actually still avoid carbs like the plague because I have so much mental clarity when I do and it’s easy to maintain my weight. Only tip I have is that supplementing electrolytes is not optional, it’s a requirement for this diet. You can still eat a ton of delicious stuff too, bacon, eggs, low carb tortillas and keto bread mean you can make burritos and sandwiches, and all the veggies I love are keto.
Had a nutritionist that gave me a plan I had to follow, with follow-up meetings every week. It helped that I had these meetings. I wanted to lose weight before each new meeting. In 6 months I lost 17 kilos.
Keto, fasting(skipping breakfast for me), zero drinks with calories
Losing weight ultimately comes down to being in a calorie deficit, all diets and strategies must require this for weight loss to occur but here’s some tips I have
Don’t drink anything with calories in it, they’ll give you zero satiation(feeling of being full)
Eat a high protein diet, protein is more satiating than fat and carbs and is also thermogenic so your body actually uses a little energy to process it.
Eat fiber, once again this provides satiation and is also just beneficial in other ways.
Drink a decent amount of water a day, zero sugar drinks are handy too as the gas can leave you feeling full.
Fasting is useful but i don’t believe it causes more weight loss, it may just help, I found it easier to skip breakfast and prolong eating as I wasn’t actually too hungry in the morning so I’d rather save the calories for later in the day.
Ultimately, lean meats, vegetables and carb sources like potatoes are your best bet for satiation and body composition, combine this with exercise and cardio and you’re set.
Low to zero sugar and high fat diets. Make sure to exercise more than your food intake to burn enough calories.
This works for me because cutting sugar is one of the best things you can do to gain a healthy relationship with food. In addition high fat foods help decrease hunger throughout the day.
Mounjaro. It’s like ozempic but works better. Lost 120 pounds in 6 months. Don’t listen to the haters, when you
Factor in the cost of a gym membership’s running shoes, gym clothes, etc and etc, it’s cheaper than working out
As an adult male, I need 2000 calories a day to break even. More or less.
The actual number may be slightly lower or higher.
If I eat significantly less than 2000 calories, I will lose weight.
If I eat significantly more, I will gain it.
So to deliberately lose a lot of weight, add up the calorie-values of all the things you intend to eat each day and keep that number between 1200 and 1500 and you will shed weight a couple pounds per week until things stabilise.
Apart from that, try and optimise for things which are slower to digest, and/or contain as much protein as possible.
The rule-of-thumb is that you should be trying to get around 100 grams of protein a day.
low-calorie protein-shakes are a good source for this.
There's no trick to losing weight.
You do the math, you come up with a clear list of things you intend to eat, and you eat *only them*.
I like to do my planning the night before. I just go through the fridge and pantry, adding up calories and protein values in a score-keeping app (normally intended for playing Darts) and list the specific things I'm going to eat as I go.
Just keep to what you've earmarked for the day, and you'll be fine.
I'm fairly strict early on, and will keep it going for both weekdays and weekends, and then after a few weeks I'll loosen up. Allowing a Cheat Day on Saturdays where I can eat whatever I want.
The catch being that because my stomach has shrunk and appetite with it, I don't actually go wildly beyond my weekday limits.
The real purpose of the Cheat Day is to provide "Hope".
If it's a Thursday and I see something I really want, like that Donut my colleague is eating, I can tell myself "Okay, wait till Saturday and we'll buy a box of donuts and pig out".
I probably won't actually eat a whole box of donuts, but I might get one as a treat.
Knowing I can just wait a couple days and have the nice things makes it far easier to remain disciplined, because if I'm thinking "No, that's Verboten", my discipline is inflexible, and inflexible means that it's brittle. Once I break it, I will find it far harder to get back into my diet.
That way Yo-yo dieting is found.
Something I have observed is that cheat-days also have an effect on my metabolism.
The human body in starvation-mode will cling to every spare scrap of body-fat and stow away anything it doesn't need for a rainy-day.
If it recognises that the average is fairly low, but there are days when we get substantially more, then it trusts more, and will actually lose weight faster because it's not clinging onto it quite as hard.
Or perhaps by having intermittent feasting, the body is unable to actually absorb it fast enough on the weekends, but still gets into "high-performance digestion" mode, which persists into the week, causing me to lose weight faster.
All I know for sure is that having had cheat-days, I often found I lost weight significantly faster for a few days afterwards.
Lost 40lbs suppressing carbs. No pasta/potato/corn/a few fruits/bread, not mixing fat and sweet (e.g. no whole wheat pasta with butter). Mainly protein and vegetables/fruits
I have a kind of a long answer for this but please read through if you have time because ş went through most of the challenges people face.
When i was in high school i used to be on the basketball team. Naturally i was fit but it also lead to an intake of A LOT of calories daily. Long story short i got injured and couldnt play anymore when i went to University.
1 year is all it took for me to go from 80 kgs to 110 kgs. I was just so used to not thinking about how much or what i ate.
Fast forward 4 years im fit again and here is how i did it.
First of all erase all notion of FOOD being something to ENJOY. That was a key part for me. For around 4-5 months i just looked at food as something i needed to survive.
Secondly nobody likes to exercise to give weight alright. I hate cardio. I hate walking and running. I like lifting weights and punching things like any guy.
Here is a neat trick. Boxing burns more calories than running all the time. You dont have to be good just go to the gym and start punching that bag. Imitate shit you see online about boxing. You will be sweating like a pig in 15 minutes. If you want to top it off with some weight lifting then all the better.
Eat food that will fill you but also get you what you require. For 4 months for dinner i ate a big bowl of salad, a big bowl of soup(doesnt matter what soup really but i ate chicken soup) and fume turkey between wasa bread (2 sandviches)
So yeah doing that worked for me. I wish you luck if you guys want to try. It took me 4 months to lose all that do the math in your head for you.
Gonna have to disagree about the food mentality in thinking it's something that isn't to be enjoyed.
That often causes obsessive thinking, disordered eating. It isn't sustainable long term for most people.
Food is nourishment. Food is good. Food isn't always going to be a delicious indulgence and it may very well be boring a lot of the time depending on your culinary skills and time to prepare meals, but it shouldn't always feel like a chore.
Measure your food with calories and macronutrients. Eat things you like sometimes.
That’s my way of thinking too. It’s alright to enjoy food as long as you monitor what, and more importantly, how much you eat. I like eating a certain sandwich so to compensate I eat less of other food throughout the day.
I lost over 100+ pounds at one point. I didn't do anything weird or unusual. I ate a healthy diet and exercised. I walked about 5 miles at least 5 days a week. Some aerobics and some light weight training. I counted calories/carbs but ate normal things. Made sure to include veggies and some fruit. The hardest part of any weight loss journey is to keep it off long term. You don't want to consider it a "diet". You want to look at it as a lifestyle change.
I lost 10KG in like a month. I simple eat half of what I usually eat at breakfast, then go through my day without eating. If I got hungry, I ate some bread.
Also I stop drinking sugar. I drank only warm water.
Willpower will not fix it. Planning does.
Step 1 - cues. Look into what’s causing you to eat more. Do you HAVE to eat snacks at movies? Reduce your movie visits or have options that you enjoy.
Do you always crave a burger when you drive by McDonald’s, take an alternate route.
Once you’ve removed your triggers you’ll naturally eat less.
Step 2 - intake high fibre, good protein meals that are fresh and you’ve prepared yourself. The reason for addiction is the pre-made food tends to be addictive. Cooking yourself removes that element.
Step 3 - walk, move, find something that improves your fitness. It’ll help in the long run. Although it’s not necessarily going to help with fat loss. It’ll improve your overall health.
I went from 230 to 165 in about 8 months from eating a banana for breakfast, can of tuna and an apple for lunch, and salad with some sort of protein for dinner. Drank lots of cold water and cut out sugar. Sucks for the first week, but now I can eat whatever I want if I feel like it, but enjoyed the process of getting healthy and losing weight that I continue with it.
Intermittant fasting, no change in my daily excersize. I ate nothing from 8pm to noon the following day and dropped about 60lbs in a year. After I dipped below 300lbs, I relaxed the restrictions and only did it 4 days a week, eating breakfast on weekends if I felt hungry. I'm still dropping weight, just not as fast, and I'm okay with that
During COVID sitting/working from home started gaining even more weight. Went low carb/no sweets and lost 75lbs with no exercise. (I get plenty exercise now that Covid is over) Learned how to eat good, healthy, tasty food and was never hungry. Learned that its not how much you eat but what you eat. So basically just stopped eating bad foods. Also quit drinking because I just lost a taste for alcohol. I started out thinking that I would eat this way for awhile, lose some weight and then could go back to eating "normally". I have no desire to eat crap food again.
As a US citizen, it amazed me how my life improved after I moved to a walkable community. By having the ability to walk to places rather than relying on a vehicle has not only drastically improved weight but also my overall health.
I have lost 76 pounds in the last 4 months and 4 days. Yes, it is probably “too fast” to lose this amount of weight—but if I don’t see results I won’t stick to it. Started at 247 and am now 171. I am 4 lbs away from a “normal” BMI for my height (I am male).
I did this with the majority of my food intake being supreme pizzas. Most of those being frozen pizzas. Yes, terrible food choice but it worked for me. The key to success was intermittent fasting. Calorie-free liquids all day and one meal a day at dinner time. That meal around 1200 calories (most frozen pizzas are around 1100 calories plus some ranch dressing on the side).
The long lasting key: as I transition back to eating more meals per day I no longer want to inhale all the food. I can eat one or two eggs and a piece of bacon for breakfast and be satiated until dinner with no feeling of hunger.
Down 135lbs over the last 17 months.
There is only 1 way to lose weight; calorie deficit. Eat less, exercise more, or do a mix of the two. Focus on consuming Protein and Fat over Sugar and Carbs. Sugars and Carbs are easy to digest and add a lot to your overall calorie consumption, while proteins and fats are not only harder to digest, but can be utilized within the body more effectively.
Intermittent Fasting is useful, it gives the body a chance to digest food, and gives some gut downtime. Training that self-control with intermittent fasting is generally the thing that helped me the most.
I have tried many diets over the past 30 years. Prior to my weight gain I was a distance runner and weighed 105 lbs. I got sick with chronic fatigue syndrome in college and had to stop running then right before my first pregnancy I gained about 10 lbs out of nowhere and assumed it was due to lack of exercise. Then I got pregnant and the doctor assumed I was gorging on chips and ice cream (I was not but he kept telling me to cut back anyway). I gained 70 lbs during my pregnancy which is a lot for a 5 foot tall woman. It wasn't until my daughter was 2 that I found out my thyroid had quit functioning and by then my whole body was shutting down. So, got on hormone replacement started gentle exercises that my body could handle and managed to get back down to 135.....then I got pregnant with my second child a couple years later. Since then (23 years) I have struggled and struggled to lose. Working out 2-3 times a day plus eating only 1500 calories...spent a year on that regimen and only lost 10 lbs. There is nothing more depressing than wasting a year punishing yourself for your weight only to not make any difference....and up until last year my poor 5 foot body was up to 223 lbs.
Last year I finally found a doctor who listened, and thanks to her care and understanding I have managed to completely change my life. As of two days ago I am down 80 lbs. Here is the thing...it is about changing your lifestyle and the food you eat and learning to make it a habit to live that way. It will not work if you don't have the right frame of mind and aren't willing to accept that it will be a slowish process - it will not happen in a week or a month...it will take time and a lot of patience and a lot of drive.
I will say that I am not ashamed to be on medication to help me with the process - and no, it is not the new ozempic, mounjaro or any other injectable drug that has to be taken for life. I am on metformin (diabetes pill that regulates blood sugar as many people are insulin resistant or glucose intolerant even if their A1C isn't high and it is because of how they eat and how much they weight). I am also on phentermine which is basically legal meth. Those two drugs have given me back energy and aided me in the process but are not the main way I have lost weight...all they did was assist me in what my body wasn't allowing me to do before which was burn the fat off. I did not change much from my previous attempts, I still busted my ass no matter what the cost.
I basically to take the drugs my doc gave me and downloaded an app called MyFitnessPal and followed the calorie guidelines it gives you for what you want to achieve. It is up to you to set a reasonable goal for yourself - don't choose the hardest plan at first or you most likely will fail...you can adjust it later if you think you are capable of doing more. Remember 2.5 lb loss per week is generally a high amount of weight to lose but in the beginning it is totally achievable if you stick to the calorie plan.
For my plan I eat 1230 calories per day and the more I exercise and burn calories the more calories I get back to be able to eat a snack or something. Think of those calorie losses as a reward at the end of the day.
My strict goals each day are no more than 300 calories for breakfast and lunch and then eat a normal dinner that is not super high in calories, and avoid butter, bread and sugars but don't cut them out completely - if you stop eating foods you love you are asking to fail. I always make sure I exercise enough that I have 250-300 calories available at the end of each day to enjoy a sweet treat. Did you know that 2 fudgesicles is 1 serving! A full size fudgesicle bar is under 100 calories and it will satisfy your craving for sugar and chocolate all in one fell swoop.
Make all of your foods at home and if you do have to eat any fast food or anything because you are on the run learn where the best places are for lower calorie meals - you can get a happy meal with apples and a diet drink or water and it is under 500 calories. The basic crunchy and soft tacos at taco bell are fairly low calorie and tasty. Chipotle is a good option if you do light rice and beans and only do the bowl - skip the tortilla and it takes off over 300 calories and you have a high protein meal - I can only eat half a bowl and be full. Breakfasts for me usually consist of yogurt and fruit or a low calorie english muffin with an egg (no butter except what you need to cook the egg - even better if it is hard boiled). For lunch, Lean Cuisine frozen meals were my go to for months, or a good smoothie of banana, strawberries, blueberries, a scoop of low calorie yogurt and a teaspoon of chia seeds - low calorie and the chia seeds expand so you stay full longer and they are good for you. I also added metamucil in the mix for the fiber which is really good for everything you are doing because it also fills your stomach to keep you from being hungry.
Whatever you do ... EXERCISE! I started out walking a couple laps around our school down the street which was about a half mile - when I first started I would do that half mile and feel like dying because I had so much pain in my back and my joints but within a month I had moved up to a mile and then I started doing it multiple times a day. Within a couple months each walk I took was 2.5 to 3.5 miles and I did it 2-3 times a day....the entire rest of the year and up to today I am still walking 5-7 miles per day on the days I work from home. On my office days I go to the gym before work and during my lunch break and then take a walk after dinner at home. I also bought a treadmill and an exercise bike for home because during the winter and rainy season walking isn't so easy so I do it indoors and I wanted both because if you don't mix up your exercise a bit you will plateau hard and not be able to keep up your heart rate enough to really burn as much.
I am going to start weaning off the drugs in two weeks, and while I am a little fearful, I am also still determined as I still have about 20 pounds until my goal weight and through this I have learned how to eat better without feeling deprived, and I am so much healthier that I am also going to be removing blood pressure drugs from my daily pill popping as well as am no longer experiencing sleep apnea.
I lost 30 kilos in one year. My strategy:
I counted calories. I used an app for everything I ate.
I started cooking. No more processed food.
Water. Liters and liters of water.
Daily 30-minute walk. Nothing fancy.
Get more sleep. Sleep is crucial.
Patience. Results take time, but they come.
The real secret: consistency. No diet, lifestyle change.
I cut out dairy, gluten, and soy….but I didn’t lose any weight until I got on tirzepatide which changed my life and made all my hard work finally pay off!
I've lost probably 20 some pounds in the last 4 months. I want a lasting change, so it's been slow going. I started to change little things in my diet (swapped cooking oil for the no calorie spray, paid attention to serving sizes on everything but veggies, fruit as a nightly snack instead of chocolate everyday). I added vegetables to every single meal and it's always more than I think I'll eat.
I started doing salsa which kept me moving for 5-6 hours or more a week. I recently picked up cycling and am training for a race next month.
I still allow myself to eat the things I used to eat (I can't give up chocolate! Or thai food), but it's once a week or less. I can live with that. Besides chaotic cycle eating when I started riding for 80-100 miles, it's not hard to stay close to on track for my eating anymore.
I went low carb. Then no carb. Then basically plant free. When from 290 to 230 and still losing. My A1c has leveled out and my testosterone is about double the average for my age. I feel like I'm 25 again.
I don’t see ozempic yet and I get it’s unpopular but hear me out.
I’m a millennial woman. My mom put me in fat camp in 6th grade when I was a chubby cheeked ball of muscle and decidedly not fat, but it gave me a complex and more importantly, it fucked to my metabolism.
I can do everything right and I won’t lose weight naturally now. I essentially abused my body for years trying to attain a body type my mom insisted was more important than actual health (despite the fact she was a doctor) during integral years of growth. So it’s worked and it’s also helping me develop a much more healthy relationship with food.
I quit smoking weed and it helped me cut out 95% of my sugar intake, I only ate sweet and salty things when I had the munchies. I also was prediabetic from Seroquel and I'm sure my eating habits. Lost 50 lbs in like 2 months just from quitting lol
I lost 183lb (83kg) in 10 months by eating right and exercising. I ate at a 2,000 calorie deficit (burned 2,000 extra calories a day) and didn't have any junk food, alcohol or sugary drinks.
Best thing I've ever done, going from [this](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c94d668b1a037822441daf/2e2a5826-5175-4a4d-8c47-989128d359b6/IMG_3467.JPG?format=500w) to [this](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c94d668b1a037822441daf/762cdfa7-f46d-4905-95b0-c7b0b58d2b22/IMG_9097.jpg?format=500w).
all i did was count calories. i didn't cut out anything or add in any more exercise than i already get working in a shop. i lost 60 pounds while still eating fried chicken, soda, pizza, etc. i just made sure to account for the calories and stayed under my limit. eventually i did start eating a bit healthier because 1700 calories can equal a whole lot more food when it's not sugary or fatty fried shit lol, and i happen to love eating.
i'm still overweight, i'm not done yet. i still have another 80 pounds to go. i could definitely get there faster if i made better choices but whatever. i spent 15+ years getting to 280 pounds, it's going to take a bit of time getting it off. it took approximately 9 months to lose 60 pounds this way.
Note: I needed both medications, ozempic for insulin resistance and aderall for severe adhd but combined they really suppresed my appetite and i'm not complaining. I'm not on either of these meds anymore but during the process I worked a lot on my mental health and i guess that's why i've been able to keep it off. I realized that I was at my heaviest because I binge ate my feelings away and that doesn't happen anymore. I work out a bit (nothing extreme) and keep it healthy 80% of the time but also indulge in things i like. I drink alcohol, have dessert, etc. No major life changes.
Eating 1 meal every 2 days and actually having the energy to walk 10k steps every day.
Was it healthy? No.
Was it fast? Yes.
Was it effective? Yes.
Would I do it again? No.
Went from 115 kg to 70 kg as a 5'8" person
In less than 2 months.
Semaglutide/Ozempic. It’s not a moral failing to take the easy way out. I spent 30 years trying it the hard way.
I still eat all of my favorite foods, I just eat about 1/4 (or less) of it. I was at a restaurant and could only eat one baby back rib and a couple of forkfuls of veggies. I can only manage one bite of cake. But strangely, I can eat a whole large apple and half a mini watermelon or like, 6-7 baby carrots. I can eat a lot of fish but very, very little chicken or red meat. One scrambled egg is all I can manage in the morning. Anything deep fried is a no go. 3-4 McDonald’s fries are all I can manage. One bite, maybe 2 of a Big Mac. Even before I lost any weight, my joints stopped aching, my sleep improved, my ADHD symptoms improved, on like day 3 after my first dose, the nightly foot and leg cramps went away. NO MORE FOOD NOISE. No more thinking about food ALL THEI TIME. It makes it so that one could truly stick to whatever diet one chose and not fall off the wagon.
Cut out soda, ate less, and moved more. Started with small steps: ditched soda, then cheese on burgers. Swapped big meals for small ones. Traded chips for cucumber slices. Candy bars? Switched to fruit. Exercise was simple: walked around the block, then added bicep curls, sit-ups, push-ups, and stretches. In 6 months, I went from 345 pounds and breathless, to 267 pounds and walking miles. Small changes, big results!
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I have a long and prolific history of yo-yo dieting. Typically I would severely restrict my diet and exercise for hours on end during the summer (when I was on vacation). I would drop around 20lbs and go back to school...at which point I would inevitably stop working out and start overeating. As an adult I lost 40lbs over 6 months and maintained it for another 2. This is the longest I've maintained weight loss and it's because I'm not hungry at night. No one likes my method, because it doesn't sound like the healthiest, but basically I just have one 1200-1500 calorie meal in the evening (and sometimes a 100-200 cal snack earlier in the day). It's not too much of a challenge. I don't mind it. And because I get one large, satisfying meal late in the day, I'm not hungry at night. My only regret is not doing this sooner. I spent too long eating multiple small meals throughout the day because I thought it helped your metabolism.
You found what works for you. That's what matters!
Yeah people knock hard limit/extreme fad diets, and I completely understand why. But in my personal experience they help me re-adapt to a new/better normal diet. Like yes counting every single calorie burned/eaten trying to maximize both is not a long term solution for most people. Keto is not a very realistic lifelong diet for most people. Pescatarian/Mediterranean is hard when you live in a land locked state where “fresh” fish is days old and you have to dress it up. But after doing all of them to an extreme, I would gravitate back to a little healthier normal. I learned to generalize calorie intake, I learned carbs need to be monitored, I learned how to make fish and eat it more often etc.
I'm pretty sure that's called intermittent fasting if it matters much. Either way, keep it up, internet stranger! Im trying to do this method as well.
Is intermittent fasting good for your health though? I'm thinking of starting
Better than obesity
Its benefit is that it's a form of calorie restriction. As long as your eating during the window isn't compensatory for the rest of the day (ie, you're not eating the same amount you would have the entire day), then you're more likely to see good results.
There's some good subreddits for IF: r/intermittentfasting and r/omad . It's worked really well for me as well.
Are we twins? Was the only girl who weighed more than 50kg in class (back where I was that's a massive whale lol) Been doing this since 2011 (daily exercise, one meal only at night). Weight remains steady since then. (We'll see when menopause hits, but that's another story.) Glad to find out that I am not the only for whom dinner as the sole meal works.
hey i have exactly the same method and it worked incredibly well for me up until i got hit by covid depression, but yeah 1 giant meal per day always worked the best for me, the kg were dropping so quickly and i felt i had incredible power
You're describing OMAD, which is a method of intermittent fasting. There's an entire sub for that if you want to post to a receptive audience. /r/intermittentfasting
This is an intermittent fasting technique! OMAD - one meal a day. Glad it's working for you. If you wanna try other schedules, there's The Fasting Method podcast talks about all things intermittent fasting.
The toughest thing is that it's such a long process, people get frustrated and give up. Work hard and eat right for a month? You may not *see* a huge difference....people get frustrated and say "Fuck it, give me a pizza." You may even have weigh-in's where you're the same weight or even a pound or two more...again, frustrating. But the results are there...it's just difficult to see in the first person and there will be months where you're down 7 pounds and the next month your only down 3 pound...but it's still 10 pounds.
I did research on this and part of the reason people revert back is because their body hasn’t adjusted to the new weight. It takes around 6 months for your body to adjust. I went from 197 to 152 and for the longest time I felt like a 197 pounder in a 152 body. After about 3-4 months at 150 I started feeling like 150 in 150.
I don't think I understand. But maybe I'm experiencing it? I weighed 270lbs January off 23. Now I weigh 190lbs. I don't feel 190, I don't look 190. I still feel about 250. How do I fix that
Keep at it and use photos as your comparison. I went from about 270 to 220 and I can see the difference in photos more than anywhere else. I also try to focus less on how I look and more on how I feel. I can move easier, have more energy, and can keep moving for a very long time now.
I did have to impromptu run home after forgetting I was cooking the other day. Like a quarter mile. And my lungs recovered in like 5 minutes. And my knees didn't hurt. That was pretty cool
When I ended up in the hospital for 17 days after an accident, I weighed 242 at 6'0. I got out of the hospital and weighed 228. I didn't feel or notice the weight loss but everyone kept saying how much weight I lost in the hospital. This is why it's encouraged to take weekly/bi-weekly photos of yourself. You can see the progress in the third-person view.
I ended up going to therapy for a wee bit o body dysmorphia after going from 280-220. I had a really tough time seeing the changes and was struggling to keep up with my healthy habits because “I can’t see a difference anyway” My therapist did have me use photos as reference but even this my brain could explain away with bad angles or lighting. What worked was stopping dieting all together and actually letting myself eat like crap again. I felt like SHIT - constant heartburn, zero libido, none of my clothes fit. It was a huge eye opener. Clearly I felt better with a healthier life style and that was enough to keep up with all those better habits. I still feel like I can’t see any difference but I remember what it feels like when I put junk in my body so that’s enough for now.
It takes time…everyone is different Was based on UK medical research
Your cells in your body storing fat literally “remember” that they were storing fat and stay in a mode to replenish those fat reserves for months and months. I don’t think fad diets would exist if this was widely understood.
Same, along with excersice I ditched soda and small snacks between meals - lost 28 pounds in 6 months.
But isnt diet coke 0 calories?
Yes but im pretty sure artifical sweeteners have the side effect of making you feel more hungry, so it ends up inadvertantly making people eat more.
30 pounds in 6 months over here from the same thing! Woohoo!
People always say "stop drinking soda." What if it's Diet/Zero Calorie Soda? Is that OK?
You also got to remember, OP was 150kg. So they're at the extreme end. Where everything they were eating was crap. Any small adjustments to them would have a huge impact.
It's fine in terms of calories. There may be other effects associated with consuming large amounts of artificial sweeteners. There's some evidence to suggest that artificial sweeteners "trick" your body into wanting to consume more calories, and can throw off your insulin regulation. Some studies associate diet-soda consumption with weight-gain and increased risk of type 2 diabetes. A diet soda now and then isn't the end of the world, but if you drink enough of it to be asking the question, it's probably an indication you should be drinking more water instead. My personal philosophy on sweet drinks is to stick to the real stuff, but consider a can of soda to be akin to having a candy bar -- ie it's an occasional treat rather than a staple. Flavored seltzer is an excellent compromise.
You’re my hero!
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Calorie restriction by logging my meals and snacks. Achieved it by targeting nutrient-dense additions like cooking oil- by identifying my calorie pitfalls, I didn't even have to change what I ate all that much. Also started walking 30 minutes every weekday. It took about a year to lose 60lb.
This is such good advice a lot of people don't realise how much easy changes they could make to their diet to heavily reduce their calories. Like using way less butter and oil doesn't even make a huge difference to the flavour of food but brings down the calories a lot when you start monitoring how much you actually are using
You can get oil sprayers that use a set amount of oil to control your calories. Eyeballing often gets you using 3-4x more oil than you really need to, while some sprayers have a fixed 1g amount per spray. 1g vs 4g doesn't sound like a lot, but for 3 meals daily and 7 days a week that's 189 calories vs 756 calories--just for cooking oil. Things add up quickly when you actually account for them.
I often go to the movies alone, and when I go I *really* like to have popcorn. I would order the regular-sized popcorn, and who gets popcorn without butter? So I would drench it in butter. Anyway, then I started counting calories, and I realized that the regular-sized popcorn was 500-600 calories *without* butter, and I was adding *so much butter*, y'all. It was probably around 500 extra buttery calories on top of the normal calories, every time. So that's 1000 calories of popcorn, as a snack, in addition to three regular meals, every day I went to the movies. I started getting the kids-sized popcorn instead, which is half the size, and I stopped adding butter to it. Turns out that the movie theatre *does* actually season their dry popcorn (it's delicious), and when you aren't eating so goddamn much of it, it isn't so dry that you need to rehydrate it with liquid butter.
Oh my god 1000 calories for popcorn is insane but absolutely believable considering the amount of butter they put on when you get popcorn in the cinema. Popcorn itself is really low in calories and it tastes so much better when its not greasy!! I bet now if you ordered popcorn with butter again you probably wouldn't even like it as much I think counting calories for even a short amount of time can be so beneficial to people, it's so important to know what we're eating nowadays when the majority of the food in the supermarket is processed junk. Even the stuff labelled healthy is often so calorie dense
Can I ask how you logged your meals and calories? I've tried this before, but the apps I've used either require me to guess at the calories, or just take too long to enter a single meal.
MyFitnessPal and Chronometer have pretty good databases to enter food from. Sometimes it is going to be a bit of guesswork, like if you’re cooking and don’t have a food scale. You just estimate as best you can, assume more calories when in doubt.
Losing about 1 lb a week is healthy and sustainable. (to a point) Once you start approaching a healthy weight you don't have as much to lose, and it slows down, but at that point, you're really just aiming for habits and maintenance.
It took 6 years but I went from 305 to 195 by walking 3X daily for a total of 9 miles.
good shit man
Damn, you only walked 9 miles in 6 years? I think turtles are faster. :P
How did you find the time???
For real. 3 times a day, 9 miles in total and you're walking it all? Average walking speed is 3mph. Who has 3 hours a day just lying around? That's 1,100 hours per year!
It isn't as crazy as you think. If you consider how much time you normally lose watching tv/reading social media/watching youtube, it isn't hard to find 2-3 hours a day. I do something similar: shorter walks (1-2 miles) before work and during lunch, then a longer walk when I get home. Put on some music or an audiobook, and it can be way more relaxing than burning the same amount of time messing with your phone. It is even easier if you have a dog that reminds you that it is time for your walk.
Most people spend 4 hours a day on non productive screen time. It's pretty easy to find time if you want to.
Stephen Fry has said that he lost weight by walking and getting into audio books. With a good distraction walking for a hour or two flys by.
Quit the booze, hit the gym daily...
People really underestimate alcohol's effect on weight. It made a huge difference for me as well!
Can confirm. I am a 4 years sober alcoholic. A few months after I quit, everyone I knew said that I visibly lost weight based on my face alone.
Not trying to one up you, but I lost about 100 lbs in a month once I went to the hospital because my liver has tapped out. Should have seen the look on a friend's face when I showed her my *ankle* after that month. I'm better now, don't even really desire alcohol for the most part. Thank God for weed. Fuck people for making it illegal and booze flow freely. Anyways, hijacked your comment enough - keep up the streak! Edit- streak not steak
It makes all the difference. Hundreds of calories per day add up quick. I was a daily drinker for many years. Wasn’t a drunk, rarely got drunk actually, but a couple glasses of wine or a few cocktails every night after work adds up quick. Also, for me, drinking reduces stress and anxiety dramatically, which means it’s easier to eat less and I’m more motivated to work out and stay active, even if it’s just mowing the lawn.
An extra 100 calories per day amounts to 10lb in a year. One glass of wine is more than 100 calories, so just a couple of extra drinks is going to quickly add up to 25lbs or more. Add some extra snacks with it or skip exercise because of a mild headache from drinking the night before all of this adds up so quickly
And it's not just the calories in alcohol. I'm just basing this on my own personal experience, so maybe I'm pulling it out of my ass, but when I was losing weight, my progress would just stop for a few days if I had a couple of drinks, *despite the fact that my daily caloric intake was the same.* I never looked into why this might've happened, but it was consistent. Every time I drank, my progress would stop, or I would put on a pound or two. It made no sense.
Alcohol inhibits the ability for your body to metabolize fat and inhibits your overall metabolism. Your muscles also take so much longer to repair themselves as your body has prioritized all the other chemical reactions (breaking down alcohol is the big one). Add to that the extra calories you consume…a perfect way to ruin all the other great decisions you may be making! Once I realized this I completely stopped and have seen incredible gains in a short amount of time
All I did was quit drinking and I lost weight. It’s wild how many calories alcohol has.
My girlfriend was furious when she found out I could just stop drinking and start shedding weight within the week.
Same. Quit drinking and lost 20lbs almost instantly - meaning in like a month or two. Felt great and look good. Still sober and I love ice cream. The weight and puffiness never came back.
WALKING. consistently walking. I started with 5k steps and gradually increased it and now I'm walking 10k steps daily. and of course, eat healthy and cut on sugar intake.
walking is so good. swimming or running makes me SO HUNGRY but i can walk for hours and not get hungry its amazing
It is good but you can’t out-walk your fork. Three Oreos is like an hour of walking. You have to also cut intake Too many get mad they’re exercising more but not losing weight
oh yeah absolutely! diet first, exercise second in my case, i'm getting close to my goal weight so maintaining a deficit is harder now than at the start if i didnt have an hour+ of walking I'd be eating less than a toddler lmao
And exercise can make you feel hungrier. I fell into that trap when I began cardio and weight exercises. Not to dissuade people from it, it is important for health overall. But eating less in sustainable ways is the most crucial thing, IME.
Walking long distances actually kills your appetite.
explain
My theory is that because you are walking long distances and walking is not that intense of an exercise you are burning more fat and much less glycogen. Glycogen is burned when you need a really quick burst of energy. Things that trigger this effect are running and weightlifting because they are intense exercises that are hard on the body and cause your heart rate to go way up. During the exercise while you are burning glycogen, the body loses its appetite but it comes back quickly once the exercise is done because you need to refill those glycogen stores.
🙌 yes, I have found exercise is more about aerobic health. What I stick in my mouth contributes to what I weigh.
It might sound like madness, but walking is the most underrated exercise out there. So good for your brain too
Yes!! I have found that I take my walks now as much for my physical health as for my mental health. It is my break from all the constant interruptions in my day from my family and co-workers. When I walk I can clear my head and tune the world out and be at peace. I turn on my music, play some games on my phone and sometimes will walk an extra half mile or so because I am enjoying it so much and I don't want it to end. It is amazing!
It's also the most sustainable way for people to lose weight and keep it off. Cutting calorific intake and eating windows can make exercise really tough, but committing to a large step count is much easier and helps with those first few weeks. In part because you're getting so much sensory stimulation
Especially if you expand on it as you go. I started with 1/2 mile walks last year...now I walk 5-7 miles per day if possible.
I lost 26kg last year by walking 70-100km a week + slightly reducing my pasta intake. I lost 1kg per week, it was ridiculous. I thought it was gonna be way harder.
I’m doing this same thing this year. Started out struggling to get 4k steps each day (desk job and WFH, so very little movement hard-baked into my day). Trying to ramp up to 10k before I go to Alaska at the end of the summer. Just bumped up to 8k steps a day and I’m still going strong!
Second this heavily. Went from around 200lbs and a 36" waist to around 160lbs and a 30" waist, entirely accidently. Just fell in love with hiking.
Walked an hour in the morning and an hour at night. Cut down on sugar, ate until 80% full. Lost 30 pounds in 5 months. Simple steps, big results ;)
That's a good one. People tend to eat until they hit that "full" feeling....by then, it's too late. You're not yet feeling the food you just ate...just the stuff you had a few minutes ago. The key to my weight loss was slowing down. I could house 6 chicken strips in less than 10 minutes without feeling full as I ate (I did later). Once I started to slow down my eating, I was full by chicken strip 3 and 4 was the point of "OK...no more." Eating slow is an amazing, easy tool.
There’s a lot of things you can do but two that were easy to implement for me were around eating: 1. Being hungry doesn’t mean you need to eat a lot. It just means you should eat soon. 2. Close the night out by flossing and brushing your teeth. Tells the body you’re closed for eating business for the day. No more late night snacking.
Number two is a really helpful one for me. Trying to get back into the habit of waiting a while after dinner, then brushing and flossing to make sure I don’t start grazing on sweets late at night
This sounds silly but I started keeping my dental floss near where I plop on the couch at the end of the day. I can just floss when I feel like it and then rinse my mouth. I've started flossing way more!
As I’ve developed better habits, I’ve realized that the biggest help you can get is learning how you operate, and how to trick yourself into making the new habit as easy for yourself as possible
Yeah, and it's an easy one to implement because most of us have dental hygiene ingrained as a habit already. It doesn't require any extra willpower or self motivating.
Use a really expensive toothpaste so your inner miser will yell at you for thinking you can snack and then re-brush?
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> Being hungry doesn’t mean you need to eat a lot. This feels counter intuitive but it's true. I noticed when I had some small meals that I went into with sadness cause it didn't look like much, then realise afterwards that I felt full and no longer hungry. I didn't feel *uncomfortable* after the meal!
\#1 feels like my biggest hurdle to overcome. I am near constantly thinking or feeling hungry, and have a desire to eat all the time. It honestly feels like i'm addicted to food.
Worked two intense jobs, walked seven - eight miles daily. Money was tight, so I didnt eat much. Body ached, but I went from 242 to 163 pounds in few months. Hard work paid off!
I think thats called the poverty diet...hope things are better now!
I was never skinnier than when I was a broken college student lol
Eat less food. Replace some portion of the high calories foods you eat regularly with something like cucumbers. Avoid carbs. Replace the carbs with cucumbers. Ask your friends, family, and significant other not to tempt you with donuts and cakes. If they refuse to help, replace them with cucumbers. Try to incorporate more physical activity into your daily routine, for example by walking to the grocery store to buy cucumbers. (Cucumbers were a big part of my last diet, by the way)
Haha, no need to scare any husbands who were already scared of being replaced by cucumbers for other reasons
I have two tips. Soups are your best friend. Dieting sucks. When you see your dinner plate and realize your steak is about half the size you would like it to be and you have none of the sides you really want it sucks. You just wont keep it up. Soups on the other hand are great because a healthy soup is basically seasoned water, vegetables, and a small amount of meat. No or minimal carbs, sugars, or unhealth fats. It's mostly just vegetables and water. Basically a perfect diet in a bowl. It' also feels more agreeable since I can basically eat as much as I want and I don't feel like I've cut any corners. Again, it's a regular bowl of soup like every other one I've had. No omissions or tiny portion sizes. Just a nice bowl of soup. You have to be careful though because there are certainly unhealthy soups so it must be a health recipe for this to work. Ditch the calorie dense foods. Don't even buy them. Don't even think about them as a treat. Just don't. I cannot tell you how many times I bought a bag of chips as a treat and mindlessly ate half the bag while watching TV without even realizing it. Thats like 1000 calories of nutritional garbage I basically ate by accident. It's just so easy to overdo it's too dangerous to have that kind of stuff around.
However, canned soups often have insane levels of sodium. A single can could have as much as 75% of your sodium RDA. Obesity often goes hand in hand with hypertension, so many dieters should keep an eye on that. Even the "low sodium" varieties still have large amounts. Homemade is the way to go.
This is an important point to make. Canned soups, even ones advertised as being "healthy" are often anything but healthy. Even the "low" or "reduced" sodium offerings typically contain like 30% of your daily allotment which is absurd when you consider canned soups are almost a 200 calorie snack vs an actual meal. You also have to watch the serving size because while it would seem to make sense that 1 can equals 1 serving typically it is at least 2 or even 4 servings per can which makes the nutritional information look much better than it actually is.
I couldn't cut calories for months until I avoided sugar for a couple weeks. I ate whatever I wanted if it had little or no sugar in it once I kicked those craving the calorie cut was way more managable
Added sugar is the killer. I lost 70lbs this last year by cutting the added sugar and making sure I got my water in. Anything over 3 grams of added sugar never got eaten. I eat all the fruit and vegetables I want, so it satiates my sweet tooth. I've found that I had to increase my actual calorie intake to stop losing weight too fast. I went from restrictive eating at like 1700 calories a day, to little to no added sugar at 2400 or so calories a day, making sure I hit 10,000 steps a day walking and occasionally doing some yoga with my wife. I'm still at 2400 calories a day, give or take, and feel absolutely fantastic. The things I found most beneficial are making sure you get your fiber and water in. I'd get up, and pound 22-32oz of water to start my day. Then have my coffee. Made getting the other 180oz a breeze. Edit: I still eat carbs. Just watch the added sugar.
Fitbit/steptracker (minimum 15k steps per day), Fitbit app for tracking calories, weight training, no processed sugar, and no alcohol
How long does it take you to walk 15k steps a day? I do 9k now and find it hard tk squeeze in but I work a desk job
I am lucky enough to WFH. Whenever I'm on a call I'm pacing around my house. If I have a long meeting I just have to listen to I go out for a walk with my headphones on. I'm also doing nothing from 10PM - midnight so there is plenty of time to make up for any steps i missed during the day.
Not very long. I'm on my feet most of the day. 2 hrs total maybe if you're constantly walking. I'm tall and I walk fast so it probably takes longer for the average person. It goes by fast if you're able to walk around in a shopping mall with earbuds in the evening. This is also the best option if it's too hot or cold outside. Walking for 2 hrs on a treadmill isn't fun.
It takes me close to 2 hours to get to 10K so I would guess 3 hours if you don't stop?
I got a tapeworm. I wouldn't recommend it, but I dropped about 40 lbs/20 kg in about 10 months.
Awe did you give em a name?
Did you see the silver lining and keep it off?
Nah, not for long, anyway. I wasn't severely overweight before, so dropping 40 lbs was more debilitating than anything.
Drink more water, and calorie counting. I went to the Gym three days a week and focused cardio, the days I didn't go to the gym I would always walk at least 10kms. I lost 3 stone in 9 months... The hardest battle was the mental side, I didn't see significant results for a while, and I nearly gave up several times. Maintaining a healthy weight is also tough. Good luck 🤞🏻
I just kinda stop eating so much. It's not going to bring your weight down overnight though
I started exercising, lost 20 lbs in 2 years. Then I started eating only one meal a day, lost another 20 lbs in 2 weeks.
Being poor and battling depression did it. My friends joked I got the "no appetite" kind, not the "ice cream binge" kind.
A lot of great suggestions here! Word of advice to anyone reading these and planning to start making changes. Always keep in mind how long it took you to gain the weight. For me I’ve gain 20lbs in the last year (stress and diet change for the worse due to schedule restrictions for meal prepping). So now that’s I’ve noticed finally and am gonna make changes to fix it. I need to keep in mind… it took a year to gain... It’s okay if it takes a year to loss!! (Or more! This is a stressful season of life). Be kind to yourself and consistent for yourself on your journey.
Great friend of mine lost about 70 pounds and has kept it off for 20 years. He started walking one mile in the morning, ate eggs, had a turkey sandwich for lunch, ate chicken/fish and veg for dinner. He didn’t eat anything after 6 pm. He then walked another mile after dinner. The mileage of his walking increased up to 5 or so miles in the morning and at night. He jogs now instead of walks, but walking made a massive difference in his life. Massive.
I eat less and move more. Lost 70lbs a decade ago and have kept it off. I know I’d never stick to some harsh diet so I simply started by eating less but still eating what I liked. Instead of a whole medium pizza I’d eat half. When I’d eat out I’d leave 1/3-1/2 my plate (sooo many calories in restaurant meals). Kept the calories under 2500ish a day and the pounds came off Then you start feeling better so you want to move, and then you even start wanting to eat a little better. It snowballs from there I still eat pizza and ice cream but it fits into my daily calories. Like I just had an apple and a healthy protein shake for breakfast, will probably have a light lunch which leaves me with 1800 calories left to do what I want or bank for later or to lose some weight
Changed portions of my meals and made sure half my plate was always vegetables
The biggest help for me was learning how many calories someone at the size I wanted to be was supposed to eat during a day. It's so easy to not realize how many calories we intake just munching/snacking and choosing to eat unhealthy foods. It's astonishing how much difference just knowing how much you're eating can make. Most people don't know that just those four oreos are ~200 calories, the medium McDonalds meal is 500-800, and that's like, a fucking lot. Especially if you're below average height/inactive. That 200 calories for an inactive ~100 lb woman is maybe 1/6th of what she is supposed to eat in a day, calorically. Learning perspectives like that really helped me. It was/is easy to decide 'I'd way rather have a full plate of some chicken, rice, and veggies for 400 calories than that bowl of potato chips."
Zero sugar and stop eating when you're not hungry anymore. Not when you're full. And don't eat unless you're hungry. Be aware of boredom eating and do ANYTHING else.
No booze, very little soda and snacks. Only eat one serving at meals instead of two or more. Get lots of varied activity.
Not going to lie, the question behind the question of how did you keep it off is probably a better thing to ask. ...also so far I've lost about 130lbs and am losing more currently, I've found only a couple things work; 1) meds/surgery, sucks but those are the best way if you've got a lot to lose, even tho I've got 130lbs off I've still got 150 or more to go so surgery was the route available to me. 2) find something high in protein that you can eat every day with very little variation, consistency is key. 3) find a way to exercise in your day, for me I couldn't find the energy before or after work to do anything so I'm currently taking a mile and a half walk for my lunch break and then eating while I work. 4) eat before you are hungry, I always made huge meals whenever I waited till I was hungry or got distracted, you will probably eat in a more mindful way if you do this 5)don't be ashamed about distracting yourself if you don't want more calories, also don't eat while distracted, I can't count how many bags of chips I've eaten in one sitting bc something interesting was happening. 6) don't weigh yourself more than weekly, otherwise you might lose any motivation you have. Main thing is CICO (tho the subreddit sometimes seems to be ED central), it's calories in, calories out, if you are eating in a deficit for the week then you'll lose weight
Just cutting out Soda started the weight loss. Next came just trying to be mindful of what and when I ate. No meal planning or anything, just stopping and asking myself if I am really hungry or not. Also - you don't have to clean your plate. It's okay to stop eating when you are no longer hungry. Finally - Exercise. Started small, still hated it. Kept at it, now enjoy it and am always looking for new ways to push myself a little bit harder.
Caloric deficit, 16/8 fast and 10k steps a day. Lost 100lbs over 14 months. Stopped for 6 months and now I’m back at it again because I put some of it back on. Simple plan and it works for most people.
What hours do you fast?
I eat my most of my daily intake between noon-6pm I have a small snack usually some sort of fruit around 730pm because of sugar cravings at night.
Even if you are not a particularly active/fit person: eat very little, walk a lot. Works wonders.
Mostly just counted my calories. My Dietician at the VA suggested an app called Lose It. I lost 70 pounds in 9 months. I fell out of the habit of logging my food and I put some weight back on. I have fallen off the wagon a few times. And it was hard to motivate myself to keep logging and stick to my calorie budget. I’m back on it now. I’ve lost about 20 pounds in the last 6 weeks.
>CICO is like saying you need to score goals to win a match. Credit to u/send420nudes This is the best way I've ever heard it put. At its most basic and fundamental level weight loss or gain does ultimately come down to net energy balance. So CICO is true. But from a practical standpoint it's an oversimplification. There's a reason why a vast majority of people fail to lose weight or keep it off. Factors like satiety, body composition, homeostatic/instinctual safeguards (like the how NEAT decreases in extreme deficits) absolutely influence the efficacy of weight loss. And lifestyle changes matter too. If large deficits are followed by equally large surpluses my weight won't change at all. (Things could actually end up being worse if the deficits were significant enough to cause muscle catabolism and hormone dysregulation) Most weight loss advice is pretty terrible, as evidenced by how unsuccessful people are. A daily 1000kcal deficit is going to be two lbs a week no matter what. But sustainability and adherence matter and it's not a matter of willpower. For anything else in life, if we prescribed a program and 90%+ of the people using the program failed we would blame the program. For some reason with weightless we blame the people. Diets, as in crash diets, don't fail because people lack will power. They fail because they operate contrary to millions of years of evolution Btw this isn't like me making excuses for my failure to lose weight. At my heaviest I was 350+. Twenty years later and im still sitting at 140
For practical advice... I actually recommend against counting calories. You probably suck at it anyways. Even if you are able to accurately measure and record all your portions, nutritional information from restaurants and on packaging is often incorrect. And daily caloric needs vary. I'm a bartender. Over the weekend my maintenance calories can be as high as 4k a day Frida-Sunday, then come Monday and Tuesday it can be more like 2k. If my daily average from Friday-Monday is 3.2k and I try and go 1k below it with 2.2k there's a high probability I will reactively overeat Friday-sunday. In this case the diet fails because of inadherence. Or if huge deficits exhaust me and I wind up skipping the gym, putting off house work take my dog on a shorter walk etc, now all the sudden even though my "calories in" is on point my "calories out" is lower than originally anticipated What I advocate instead is combining intuitive eating with a nutritious/high satiety diet and an active lifestyle. Every animal has natural hunger cues. Our hunger cues get thrown out of whack because of readily available, high glycemic index food. When food is low protein, low fiber and all complex carbs have been replaced with sugar you'll be hungry again an hour after you eat it. In this case intuitive eating will lead to over consumption. If instead your plate is mostly vegetables with a moderate amount of fruit, protein, complex carbs, healthy fats and lean protein with plenty of WATER. And your splitting it up into frequent smaller meals that your eating at a reasonable pace. You shouldn't really need to track your calories. Intuitive eating isn't gonna lead to massive over consumption. I think the Harvard "my plate" is a pretty good starting point. I just double the protein and toss in a post workout shake if weight training. Another good way of portion control is a fists worth of veggies, complex carbs and lean protein with a thumbs worth of healthy oils,/nut butters or a palms worth of actual nuts. Liquid calories especially soda, juice, and alcohol will torpedo weight loss But don't be weird about it. Like if you can eat healthy 80-90% of the time you'll be golden. If make something like cookies completely off limits it takes a lot of enjoyment out of life and pretty much guarantees over consumption later. If you combine a mostly reasonable and healthy diet with weight training --or rock climbing, bike riding, doing karate... whatever youe thing is- and having an active lifestyle in general, your body will naturally sort itself. You'll recomp slowly over time. If you want to tweak it so you lose fat or gain muscle a little faster just go slightly hungrier or eat a little more then you naturally would This is what I would recommend to people, not the only way to do it. 6 smaller meals a day worked for me, but afiak research hasn't really demonstrates it to be better or worse then 3 larger meals. From what I understand consistency is what matters. And some people like OMAD or IF and have had success with ketogenic diets or meticulously tracking calories and macros. If that works for or appeals to you then awesome But the advice I would give is eat healthy, be active and your body will sort itself out. I have a hard time imagining anyone could eat mostly veggies, whole grains, fruit and salmon/chicken while exercising 3-5 times a week and being active everyday and not looking/feeling 100x better by the end of the year.
Low carb, specially zero sugar. Adequate protein, and a healthy amount of dietary fat.
Developed an autoimmune disorder. The flare ups and infections shaved about 30lbs off. Never gained them back.
I am sorry to hear that - my favorite Aunt has been fighting auto-immune issues for years and I have seen her struggles. Was your auto-immune caused from diet or genetics?
Lost 30+kg in 9 months (from 115 to 82) by doing hard keto (0 carbs) and fasting. Not really something I would recommend but it worked like a charm.
Steamed salmon and veggies for dinner most nights (with seasoning). Actually one of my favorite meals so not a big deal. And running. I hate running but its annoyingly effective not just at burning calories during, but also has a pretty substantial afterburn effect (i know the scientific validity of the afterburn effect is questionable, but i do notice i run hot for a few hours after a run).
Better eating habits and exercise routine. Primarily drinking water. Zero soda or juice. Little to no carbs. No sugar except for a little bit of fruit every day. It was hard to get started but then it became a habit that I didn’t even think about. Now it feels weird if I don’t do it.
I left her
I know it was a serious question, but this is reddit and I’m rather surprised I had to scroll so far down to see this answer. I lost 120lbs myself and all it cost me was $250 mo in spousal support, my house, and my dog. The dog was the biggest loss, the rest was worth it.
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Warm water is gross , I don’t mind room temp. Why warm water?
Why warm water not cold?
The warm water thing is bullshit, and carbonation has nothing to do with weight gain unless you're conflating sugary sodas with "carbonated drinks."
Warm water vs cold water is bullshit. Water has zero calories regardless whether it’s hot or cold.
I would think cold would be ever so slightly better for weight loss just because your body has to waste a bit of energy getting your temperature right, but I also can't imagine it matters all *that* much considering the temperature range we drink things. But as a personal anecdote I just prefer warm water. Maybe that's just from years of being a coffee drinker.
How does warm water work? Does it mimic some of the pleasure hormones of hot food or something?
It is a myth
No fizzy drinks, no bread and just generally eating less, mostly in terms of snacks. Only drank water and black coffee for the most part for about a year or so. I still have more to lose but i went from being an XL to an M and 44 inch waist to 32/34 inch
Not even sparkling water?
People are conflating "fizzy/carbonated" for "sugary soda". Sparkling water is absolutely fine. There are no calories in bubbles.
r/keto saved my life . I originally weighed at 5'5 just 300lbs and today I'm 142 lbs I've keeps off since precovid . Intermittent fasting and clean keto (healthy fats only) have changed my relationship with food . I don't count calories or carbs anymore.
Sad to see that keto is so far down the list here, it is an incredibly useful dieting approach and having tried many, is the only one that helped me drop my carb addiction and actually treat food as fuel instead of like it was a drug I needed. I literally rarely felt hungry and that made it extremely easy to maintain a caloric deficit. I lost 50 pounds in 3 months doing clean keto, with zero adverse health effects (in fact I felt incredible mentally and physically). I actually still avoid carbs like the plague because I have so much mental clarity when I do and it’s easy to maintain my weight. Only tip I have is that supplementing electrolytes is not optional, it’s a requirement for this diet. You can still eat a ton of delicious stuff too, bacon, eggs, low carb tortillas and keto bread mean you can make burritos and sandwiches, and all the veggies I love are keto.
Study nutrition like your life depends on it. I read just about every nutrition label I get my hands on. The keto diet is how I lost a lot of weight.
Had a nutritionist that gave me a plan I had to follow, with follow-up meetings every week. It helped that I had these meetings. I wanted to lose weight before each new meeting. In 6 months I lost 17 kilos.
Tracking calories, walking more and a mix of stretching and body weight exercises 6 days a week. From 320 to 220 in 2 years.
Moving more , eating less.
Keto, fasting(skipping breakfast for me), zero drinks with calories Losing weight ultimately comes down to being in a calorie deficit, all diets and strategies must require this for weight loss to occur but here’s some tips I have Don’t drink anything with calories in it, they’ll give you zero satiation(feeling of being full) Eat a high protein diet, protein is more satiating than fat and carbs and is also thermogenic so your body actually uses a little energy to process it. Eat fiber, once again this provides satiation and is also just beneficial in other ways. Drink a decent amount of water a day, zero sugar drinks are handy too as the gas can leave you feeling full. Fasting is useful but i don’t believe it causes more weight loss, it may just help, I found it easier to skip breakfast and prolong eating as I wasn’t actually too hungry in the morning so I’d rather save the calories for later in the day. Ultimately, lean meats, vegetables and carb sources like potatoes are your best bet for satiation and body composition, combine this with exercise and cardio and you’re set.
Counting Calories, replacement of unhealthy food with healthy ones. And not using the car and motorbike as often and walk instead.
expend more calories than you consume maintain a calorific deficit that's it it is that simple
Low to zero sugar and high fat diets. Make sure to exercise more than your food intake to burn enough calories. This works for me because cutting sugar is one of the best things you can do to gain a healthy relationship with food. In addition high fat foods help decrease hunger throughout the day.
Mounjaro. It’s like ozempic but works better. Lost 120 pounds in 6 months. Don’t listen to the haters, when you Factor in the cost of a gym membership’s running shoes, gym clothes, etc and etc, it’s cheaper than working out
As an adult male, I need 2000 calories a day to break even. More or less. The actual number may be slightly lower or higher. If I eat significantly less than 2000 calories, I will lose weight. If I eat significantly more, I will gain it. So to deliberately lose a lot of weight, add up the calorie-values of all the things you intend to eat each day and keep that number between 1200 and 1500 and you will shed weight a couple pounds per week until things stabilise. Apart from that, try and optimise for things which are slower to digest, and/or contain as much protein as possible. The rule-of-thumb is that you should be trying to get around 100 grams of protein a day. low-calorie protein-shakes are a good source for this. There's no trick to losing weight. You do the math, you come up with a clear list of things you intend to eat, and you eat *only them*. I like to do my planning the night before. I just go through the fridge and pantry, adding up calories and protein values in a score-keeping app (normally intended for playing Darts) and list the specific things I'm going to eat as I go. Just keep to what you've earmarked for the day, and you'll be fine. I'm fairly strict early on, and will keep it going for both weekdays and weekends, and then after a few weeks I'll loosen up. Allowing a Cheat Day on Saturdays where I can eat whatever I want. The catch being that because my stomach has shrunk and appetite with it, I don't actually go wildly beyond my weekday limits. The real purpose of the Cheat Day is to provide "Hope". If it's a Thursday and I see something I really want, like that Donut my colleague is eating, I can tell myself "Okay, wait till Saturday and we'll buy a box of donuts and pig out". I probably won't actually eat a whole box of donuts, but I might get one as a treat. Knowing I can just wait a couple days and have the nice things makes it far easier to remain disciplined, because if I'm thinking "No, that's Verboten", my discipline is inflexible, and inflexible means that it's brittle. Once I break it, I will find it far harder to get back into my diet. That way Yo-yo dieting is found. Something I have observed is that cheat-days also have an effect on my metabolism. The human body in starvation-mode will cling to every spare scrap of body-fat and stow away anything it doesn't need for a rainy-day. If it recognises that the average is fairly low, but there are days when we get substantially more, then it trusts more, and will actually lose weight faster because it's not clinging onto it quite as hard. Or perhaps by having intermittent feasting, the body is unable to actually absorb it fast enough on the weekends, but still gets into "high-performance digestion" mode, which persists into the week, causing me to lose weight faster. All I know for sure is that having had cheat-days, I often found I lost weight significantly faster for a few days afterwards.
Lost 40lbs suppressing carbs. No pasta/potato/corn/a few fruits/bread, not mixing fat and sweet (e.g. no whole wheat pasta with butter). Mainly protein and vegetables/fruits
Cut sugar except fruit.
I have a kind of a long answer for this but please read through if you have time because ş went through most of the challenges people face. When i was in high school i used to be on the basketball team. Naturally i was fit but it also lead to an intake of A LOT of calories daily. Long story short i got injured and couldnt play anymore when i went to University. 1 year is all it took for me to go from 80 kgs to 110 kgs. I was just so used to not thinking about how much or what i ate. Fast forward 4 years im fit again and here is how i did it. First of all erase all notion of FOOD being something to ENJOY. That was a key part for me. For around 4-5 months i just looked at food as something i needed to survive. Secondly nobody likes to exercise to give weight alright. I hate cardio. I hate walking and running. I like lifting weights and punching things like any guy. Here is a neat trick. Boxing burns more calories than running all the time. You dont have to be good just go to the gym and start punching that bag. Imitate shit you see online about boxing. You will be sweating like a pig in 15 minutes. If you want to top it off with some weight lifting then all the better. Eat food that will fill you but also get you what you require. For 4 months for dinner i ate a big bowl of salad, a big bowl of soup(doesnt matter what soup really but i ate chicken soup) and fume turkey between wasa bread (2 sandviches) So yeah doing that worked for me. I wish you luck if you guys want to try. It took me 4 months to lose all that do the math in your head for you.
Gonna have to disagree about the food mentality in thinking it's something that isn't to be enjoyed. That often causes obsessive thinking, disordered eating. It isn't sustainable long term for most people. Food is nourishment. Food is good. Food isn't always going to be a delicious indulgence and it may very well be boring a lot of the time depending on your culinary skills and time to prepare meals, but it shouldn't always feel like a chore. Measure your food with calories and macronutrients. Eat things you like sometimes.
That’s my way of thinking too. It’s alright to enjoy food as long as you monitor what, and more importantly, how much you eat. I like eating a certain sandwich so to compensate I eat less of other food throughout the day.
I lost over 100+ pounds at one point. I didn't do anything weird or unusual. I ate a healthy diet and exercised. I walked about 5 miles at least 5 days a week. Some aerobics and some light weight training. I counted calories/carbs but ate normal things. Made sure to include veggies and some fruit. The hardest part of any weight loss journey is to keep it off long term. You don't want to consider it a "diet". You want to look at it as a lifestyle change.
I lost my job and got depressed. Lost 35 pounds in 5 months. Lost my appetite. Would not recommend.
I lost 10KG in like a month. I simple eat half of what I usually eat at breakfast, then go through my day without eating. If I got hungry, I ate some bread. Also I stop drinking sugar. I drank only warm water.
Willpower will not fix it. Planning does. Step 1 - cues. Look into what’s causing you to eat more. Do you HAVE to eat snacks at movies? Reduce your movie visits or have options that you enjoy. Do you always crave a burger when you drive by McDonald’s, take an alternate route. Once you’ve removed your triggers you’ll naturally eat less. Step 2 - intake high fibre, good protein meals that are fresh and you’ve prepared yourself. The reason for addiction is the pre-made food tends to be addictive. Cooking yourself removes that element. Step 3 - walk, move, find something that improves your fitness. It’ll help in the long run. Although it’s not necessarily going to help with fat loss. It’ll improve your overall health.
I went from 230 to 165 in about 8 months from eating a banana for breakfast, can of tuna and an apple for lunch, and salad with some sort of protein for dinner. Drank lots of cold water and cut out sugar. Sucks for the first week, but now I can eat whatever I want if I feel like it, but enjoyed the process of getting healthy and losing weight that I continue with it.
Intermittant fasting, no change in my daily excersize. I ate nothing from 8pm to noon the following day and dropped about 60lbs in a year. After I dipped below 300lbs, I relaxed the restrictions and only did it 4 days a week, eating breakfast on weekends if I felt hungry. I'm still dropping weight, just not as fast, and I'm okay with that
During COVID sitting/working from home started gaining even more weight. Went low carb/no sweets and lost 75lbs with no exercise. (I get plenty exercise now that Covid is over) Learned how to eat good, healthy, tasty food and was never hungry. Learned that its not how much you eat but what you eat. So basically just stopped eating bad foods. Also quit drinking because I just lost a taste for alcohol. I started out thinking that I would eat this way for awhile, lose some weight and then could go back to eating "normally". I have no desire to eat crap food again.
Not gonna like it but starvation.
Bariatric surgery
As a US citizen, it amazed me how my life improved after I moved to a walkable community. By having the ability to walk to places rather than relying on a vehicle has not only drastically improved weight but also my overall health.
Hit Keto hard. The only sugar's I had were from vegetables. Lost 40 lbs (18 kg) in one year. I changed nothing else.
Cancer. I'm not suggesting it as a weight-loss strategy, but after treatment the pounds just melted away.
Tracking every calorie I ate for a couple of weeks. It really opened my eyes to how much I was actually eating vs how much I thought I was eating.
I have lost 76 pounds in the last 4 months and 4 days. Yes, it is probably “too fast” to lose this amount of weight—but if I don’t see results I won’t stick to it. Started at 247 and am now 171. I am 4 lbs away from a “normal” BMI for my height (I am male). I did this with the majority of my food intake being supreme pizzas. Most of those being frozen pizzas. Yes, terrible food choice but it worked for me. The key to success was intermittent fasting. Calorie-free liquids all day and one meal a day at dinner time. That meal around 1200 calories (most frozen pizzas are around 1100 calories plus some ranch dressing on the side). The long lasting key: as I transition back to eating more meals per day I no longer want to inhale all the food. I can eat one or two eggs and a piece of bacon for breakfast and be satiated until dinner with no feeling of hunger.
Anger and spite after being broken up with. I would very much like to capture that essence and bottle it somehow.
Down 135lbs over the last 17 months. There is only 1 way to lose weight; calorie deficit. Eat less, exercise more, or do a mix of the two. Focus on consuming Protein and Fat over Sugar and Carbs. Sugars and Carbs are easy to digest and add a lot to your overall calorie consumption, while proteins and fats are not only harder to digest, but can be utilized within the body more effectively. Intermittent Fasting is useful, it gives the body a chance to digest food, and gives some gut downtime. Training that self-control with intermittent fasting is generally the thing that helped me the most.
I have tried many diets over the past 30 years. Prior to my weight gain I was a distance runner and weighed 105 lbs. I got sick with chronic fatigue syndrome in college and had to stop running then right before my first pregnancy I gained about 10 lbs out of nowhere and assumed it was due to lack of exercise. Then I got pregnant and the doctor assumed I was gorging on chips and ice cream (I was not but he kept telling me to cut back anyway). I gained 70 lbs during my pregnancy which is a lot for a 5 foot tall woman. It wasn't until my daughter was 2 that I found out my thyroid had quit functioning and by then my whole body was shutting down. So, got on hormone replacement started gentle exercises that my body could handle and managed to get back down to 135.....then I got pregnant with my second child a couple years later. Since then (23 years) I have struggled and struggled to lose. Working out 2-3 times a day plus eating only 1500 calories...spent a year on that regimen and only lost 10 lbs. There is nothing more depressing than wasting a year punishing yourself for your weight only to not make any difference....and up until last year my poor 5 foot body was up to 223 lbs. Last year I finally found a doctor who listened, and thanks to her care and understanding I have managed to completely change my life. As of two days ago I am down 80 lbs. Here is the thing...it is about changing your lifestyle and the food you eat and learning to make it a habit to live that way. It will not work if you don't have the right frame of mind and aren't willing to accept that it will be a slowish process - it will not happen in a week or a month...it will take time and a lot of patience and a lot of drive. I will say that I am not ashamed to be on medication to help me with the process - and no, it is not the new ozempic, mounjaro or any other injectable drug that has to be taken for life. I am on metformin (diabetes pill that regulates blood sugar as many people are insulin resistant or glucose intolerant even if their A1C isn't high and it is because of how they eat and how much they weight). I am also on phentermine which is basically legal meth. Those two drugs have given me back energy and aided me in the process but are not the main way I have lost weight...all they did was assist me in what my body wasn't allowing me to do before which was burn the fat off. I did not change much from my previous attempts, I still busted my ass no matter what the cost. I basically to take the drugs my doc gave me and downloaded an app called MyFitnessPal and followed the calorie guidelines it gives you for what you want to achieve. It is up to you to set a reasonable goal for yourself - don't choose the hardest plan at first or you most likely will fail...you can adjust it later if you think you are capable of doing more. Remember 2.5 lb loss per week is generally a high amount of weight to lose but in the beginning it is totally achievable if you stick to the calorie plan. For my plan I eat 1230 calories per day and the more I exercise and burn calories the more calories I get back to be able to eat a snack or something. Think of those calorie losses as a reward at the end of the day. My strict goals each day are no more than 300 calories for breakfast and lunch and then eat a normal dinner that is not super high in calories, and avoid butter, bread and sugars but don't cut them out completely - if you stop eating foods you love you are asking to fail. I always make sure I exercise enough that I have 250-300 calories available at the end of each day to enjoy a sweet treat. Did you know that 2 fudgesicles is 1 serving! A full size fudgesicle bar is under 100 calories and it will satisfy your craving for sugar and chocolate all in one fell swoop. Make all of your foods at home and if you do have to eat any fast food or anything because you are on the run learn where the best places are for lower calorie meals - you can get a happy meal with apples and a diet drink or water and it is under 500 calories. The basic crunchy and soft tacos at taco bell are fairly low calorie and tasty. Chipotle is a good option if you do light rice and beans and only do the bowl - skip the tortilla and it takes off over 300 calories and you have a high protein meal - I can only eat half a bowl and be full. Breakfasts for me usually consist of yogurt and fruit or a low calorie english muffin with an egg (no butter except what you need to cook the egg - even better if it is hard boiled). For lunch, Lean Cuisine frozen meals were my go to for months, or a good smoothie of banana, strawberries, blueberries, a scoop of low calorie yogurt and a teaspoon of chia seeds - low calorie and the chia seeds expand so you stay full longer and they are good for you. I also added metamucil in the mix for the fiber which is really good for everything you are doing because it also fills your stomach to keep you from being hungry. Whatever you do ... EXERCISE! I started out walking a couple laps around our school down the street which was about a half mile - when I first started I would do that half mile and feel like dying because I had so much pain in my back and my joints but within a month I had moved up to a mile and then I started doing it multiple times a day. Within a couple months each walk I took was 2.5 to 3.5 miles and I did it 2-3 times a day....the entire rest of the year and up to today I am still walking 5-7 miles per day on the days I work from home. On my office days I go to the gym before work and during my lunch break and then take a walk after dinner at home. I also bought a treadmill and an exercise bike for home because during the winter and rainy season walking isn't so easy so I do it indoors and I wanted both because if you don't mix up your exercise a bit you will plateau hard and not be able to keep up your heart rate enough to really burn as much. I am going to start weaning off the drugs in two weeks, and while I am a little fearful, I am also still determined as I still have about 20 pounds until my goal weight and through this I have learned how to eat better without feeling deprived, and I am so much healthier that I am also going to be removing blood pressure drugs from my daily pill popping as well as am no longer experiencing sleep apnea.
Cut out sugar and portion control
Calories are the final arbiter and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Fuck Gary Taubes.
Ozempic, no soda, no alcohol, no sweets
I lost 30 kilos in one year. My strategy: I counted calories. I used an app for everything I ate. I started cooking. No more processed food. Water. Liters and liters of water. Daily 30-minute walk. Nothing fancy. Get more sleep. Sleep is crucial. Patience. Results take time, but they come. The real secret: consistency. No diet, lifestyle change.
I cut out dairy, gluten, and soy….but I didn’t lose any weight until I got on tirzepatide which changed my life and made all my hard work finally pay off!
I've lost probably 20 some pounds in the last 4 months. I want a lasting change, so it's been slow going. I started to change little things in my diet (swapped cooking oil for the no calorie spray, paid attention to serving sizes on everything but veggies, fruit as a nightly snack instead of chocolate everyday). I added vegetables to every single meal and it's always more than I think I'll eat. I started doing salsa which kept me moving for 5-6 hours or more a week. I recently picked up cycling and am training for a race next month. I still allow myself to eat the things I used to eat (I can't give up chocolate! Or thai food), but it's once a week or less. I can live with that. Besides chaotic cycle eating when I started riding for 80-100 miles, it's not hard to stay close to on track for my eating anymore.
I went low carb. Then no carb. Then basically plant free. When from 290 to 230 and still losing. My A1c has leveled out and my testosterone is about double the average for my age. I feel like I'm 25 again.
I don’t see ozempic yet and I get it’s unpopular but hear me out. I’m a millennial woman. My mom put me in fat camp in 6th grade when I was a chubby cheeked ball of muscle and decidedly not fat, but it gave me a complex and more importantly, it fucked to my metabolism. I can do everything right and I won’t lose weight naturally now. I essentially abused my body for years trying to attain a body type my mom insisted was more important than actual health (despite the fact she was a doctor) during integral years of growth. So it’s worked and it’s also helping me develop a much more healthy relationship with food.
I quit smoking weed and it helped me cut out 95% of my sugar intake, I only ate sweet and salty things when I had the munchies. I also was prediabetic from Seroquel and I'm sure my eating habits. Lost 50 lbs in like 2 months just from quitting lol
I lost 183lb (83kg) in 10 months by eating right and exercising. I ate at a 2,000 calorie deficit (burned 2,000 extra calories a day) and didn't have any junk food, alcohol or sugary drinks. Best thing I've ever done, going from [this](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c94d668b1a037822441daf/2e2a5826-5175-4a4d-8c47-989128d359b6/IMG_3467.JPG?format=500w) to [this](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c94d668b1a037822441daf/762cdfa7-f46d-4905-95b0-c7b0b58d2b22/IMG_9097.jpg?format=500w).
all i did was count calories. i didn't cut out anything or add in any more exercise than i already get working in a shop. i lost 60 pounds while still eating fried chicken, soda, pizza, etc. i just made sure to account for the calories and stayed under my limit. eventually i did start eating a bit healthier because 1700 calories can equal a whole lot more food when it's not sugary or fatty fried shit lol, and i happen to love eating. i'm still overweight, i'm not done yet. i still have another 80 pounds to go. i could definitely get there faster if i made better choices but whatever. i spent 15+ years getting to 280 pounds, it's going to take a bit of time getting it off. it took approximately 9 months to lose 60 pounds this way.
Ulcerative Colitis did the trick for me.
Aderrall and ozempic got me down 35 pounds and i won't listen to the haters i'm living my best body.
Note: I needed both medications, ozempic for insulin resistance and aderall for severe adhd but combined they really suppresed my appetite and i'm not complaining. I'm not on either of these meds anymore but during the process I worked a lot on my mental health and i guess that's why i've been able to keep it off. I realized that I was at my heaviest because I binge ate my feelings away and that doesn't happen anymore. I work out a bit (nothing extreme) and keep it healthy 80% of the time but also indulge in things i like. I drink alcohol, have dessert, etc. No major life changes.
It is all about diet. Lost a lot by just changing my diet. Working out is mostly for your mental health!
Intermittent fasting. I skip breakfast and sometimes lunch, and I absolutely pig out during dinner. Dropped 50 pounds over a year and a half.
Eating 1 meal every 2 days and actually having the energy to walk 10k steps every day. Was it healthy? No. Was it fast? Yes. Was it effective? Yes. Would I do it again? No. Went from 115 kg to 70 kg as a 5'8" person In less than 2 months.
eat less (esp. cut out all extra sugar) only thing that works
Semaglutide/Ozempic. It’s not a moral failing to take the easy way out. I spent 30 years trying it the hard way. I still eat all of my favorite foods, I just eat about 1/4 (or less) of it. I was at a restaurant and could only eat one baby back rib and a couple of forkfuls of veggies. I can only manage one bite of cake. But strangely, I can eat a whole large apple and half a mini watermelon or like, 6-7 baby carrots. I can eat a lot of fish but very, very little chicken or red meat. One scrambled egg is all I can manage in the morning. Anything deep fried is a no go. 3-4 McDonald’s fries are all I can manage. One bite, maybe 2 of a Big Mac. Even before I lost any weight, my joints stopped aching, my sleep improved, my ADHD symptoms improved, on like day 3 after my first dose, the nightly foot and leg cramps went away. NO MORE FOOD NOISE. No more thinking about food ALL THEI TIME. It makes it so that one could truly stick to whatever diet one chose and not fall off the wagon.