When I was a teenager I went on an extreme fast, down to one meal a day, for a 6 week period. Problem is, I struggled to eat a normal amount again after the time I set for myself. I had to go to a food therapist after becoming a twig to try and get my calories up again. Even now, years later, I can easily slip back into eating a bag of crisps and then forgetting to eat the rest of the day.
What made you struggle to eat more again? Your fasting sounds like my normal diet.
For weight, yeah. It’s still unhealthy for many reasons but if you only care about weight that’the thing that matters
It’s far better for your health to be a healthy weight and unfit than to be overweight and unfit.
OTOH, if you eat a lot of shitty food, it can very well be the case, that you just get enough essential nutrients by the sheer amount of food you’re eating. That would mean that by cutting the amount without changing what you eat, you’d get into malnutrition.
TBH a single Big Mac meal is 1350 Cal, so if you’re an adult 5’9" male and dieting then that’s already your daily limit.
It sucks but you’ve basically gotta choose between taste quality and quantity.
If you’re dieting you’re probably overweight so the limit might be a couple hundred calories up.
Also if you skip out on the soda you can lower it a bit too.
Yes, switching to water can drastically reduce the calories in my example.
Daily Calorie use starts at around 2100 for a male 35 y/o at 5’9" and only goes up with physical activity. The number I cited for a big mac meal, 1350, is basically a consumption limit for dieting. Extreme diets go as low as 850 or even fasting. You can in theory still lose weight by consuming any number less than 2100 but the effectiveness will be hard to see and there will be a margin of error in nutritional labeling for calories.
I’ve personally found lower deficits to be more maintainable over time, with a big deficit you can see the effects really fast but I also find that my weight was more prone to rubberband very quickly after stopping the diet.
If you can maintain a super low deficit and then keep the weight that way after that’s great, I just don’t think it’s really universally applicable.
Lower deficits and exercising are much more effective to lose weight long term instead of doing the yo-yo like the majority of people who believe in diets.
I didn’t have much money, and my doctor told me I was eating twice as much as I should so I figured I’d cut my grocery bills in half. One trick I learned was that if I was hungry I’d drink a big glass of water and wait fifteen minutes. If I was still hungry I’d have more water and wait another fifteen minutes. If I was still hungry I’d have a small bowl of pasta or rice with vegetables.
Got down to my ideal weight in about six months, alongside a lot of manual labor getting and keeping a house ready for sale. It also helped that I didn’t have a significant other, so mealtimes weren’t social.
1 pound of body fat = 3500 calories, so if your normal caloric requirement is 2500 calories a day and you instead eat 2000 calories a day, you will lose one pound a week. Which doesn’t sound like a lot but if you keep that up for one year you can lose 52 pounds - which is a lot.
Alright, but the daily expenditure will go down alongside your current weight. The average* 35 y/o 5’9" man, who exercises at least 30min a day 5 days a week, who weighs 217 will maintain weight at 2,871 while at 165 lbs will maintain at 2,452.
*average is emphasized to help explain why the calorie number is larger than in previous comments, which were a minimum estimate.
A 420 calorie drop from a 52-pound weight loss implies a resting metabolic requirement for body fat tissue of about 8 calories per pound, which I think is a serious overestimate but I’m not sure. I’ve seen some sources claim 2 calories per pound for fat and 6 calories per pound for muscle, but other sources have claimed significantly higher amounts.
Goes up with physical activity AND weight no matter the source (muscle or fat).
You need to keep eating way more than 2200 calories a day in order to be stable at a weight of 300lbs even if you don’t do any exercise.
I wouldn’t say way more. If you cut your weight in half then you can expect to cut your calorie requirements by at most a third.
https://www.livestrong.com/article/360894-weight-loss-plans-for-a-300-pound-man/
4200 for a 300lbs man that doesn’t exercise.
That doesn’t seem related to my comment, are you sure that you can read English?
Me: You need to keep eating way more than 2200 calories in order to be stable at 300lbs
You: I wouldn’t say way more, you’ll cut your calories by a third of you lose half your weight
Me: 300lbs sustenance is 4200 calories for someone who’s inactive
Do you think a 150lbs man needs 2800 (2/3rd of 4200) calories a day to sustain that weight if it’s not someone that’s active?
They have smaller calorie options on the menu. A mcdouble is like 400 calories.
If you think a McDouble is a considerable replacement for a big mac then you’re in the wrong neighborhood.
It is if your goal is to eat fast food while cutting calories. It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper
You can have nutritious, filling meals that taste really good without excessive calories, you just need to learn to cook. It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper than eating fast food all the time.
Yeah, the best bread I’ve ever had was the one I made last week. I use a focaccia recipe season with rosemary, sage, dried onion, dried garlic, and parsley. I sometimes stuff it with mozzerella with a touch of asiago and parmesian cheeses and Jalapenos, but alternatively I can make it into 2 slender loaves rolled in the cheese and jalapeno for sandwich bread. For soft crust it’s a wash made of egg and water applied every 11 minutes until the cheese on the outside starts to darken, but for hard crust it’s water or oil applied at the start and halfway through. It’s important to make sure every ingredient is room temperature at the start, including the egg.
That aside, we’re discussing anon getting to eat McDonalds by only adjusting the amount, so please try your best to remain on topic.
This is exactly the kind of mood I’m in today
In the past I’ve been able to lose weight by limiting myself to 1 meal a day + exercising but its really terrible that all is what it takes to stop gaining weight. The human body is too goddamn efficient to the point it’s fucking everyone over.
Have you considered changing DNA expression so you produce the correct beta-metabolites and develop fast-firing neurons? /s
Yeah, that is why vegetables especially are good for dieting. Low on calories, but full of fibre, which makes you feel full for a much longer time. A burger meal is full of carbohydrates and fat, and you will soon feel hungry again a short while after eating it, regardless of its high caloric content, simply because it lacks fibre.
Some veggies are actually calorie negative.
source? as far as I’ve heard, this isn’t actually true
It’s sort of a scientific grey area. Lots of studies say there is evidence both ways, and magazines take those and run with it to say whatever they want. Another factor is heat creation, particular with cold food and drink. Measurements have shown a varied diet could have a Daytime DIT anywhere between 5% and 50% of energy expenditure, not to mention energy expended on ATP production and various stages of digestion.
Another big factor is nutrient content, such as protein vs carbohydrates.
If you think about it, getting up and walking to the fridge is like 2 calories right there so if celery has 14 then it’s not hard to imagine a deficit.
The Mac alone is 563 kcal, and that easily fits. Ditch the fries and soda.
I wish I could just eat a pill once a day marked with desired bmi and forget about eating and focus on real stuff instead. I can barely hit 17.7 bmi even with some huel powder in a cup that is a hassle to wash. I want like 20 bmi to not look like a stick but it is hard to remember to eat that much
The part of this that sucks is that one day this shit just stops. Went from skinny stick figure constantly being told to eat more and put on weight while eating SO much, then I hit 35 and all of a sudden I’m 15kg overweight and sporting a nice double chin.
I’m going to look good forever
- a 33 year old
Keep fit, watch your diet and look after your skin and teeth and you’ll get it right. I’m a bit chubby now but I’m feeling better now that I’m doing these things.
Thank you I was making fun of myself mostly.
I’m legitimately not worried, I make a point to chase after my siblings and climb up things I shouldn’t for exercise.
But should I still be worried?
Exercise gets harder to keep up when you get older and everything starts hurting.
Barely ever eating and still gaining weight must’ve been amazing a million years ago when there was no food but it’s the bane of my existence now.
Sorry if this comes off as a aggressive, but ive yet to see any of the “changes in an instant” things people say actually happen. For example, before you know it 10 years has gone by! Or yours, suddenly your belly just pops out!
When I gained 80 weight like that, it was very easy to point to the steps along the way. Its also important to realize how long it took to gain weight, as it can affect how quick you think you can lose it.
I’m almost positive its just people not paying attention. If its important to you then pay attention to it. If it was so unimportant that it seemed sudden, was it really that important to begin with?
Is it just people suddenly caring about something that they didnt for their whole lives and having to deal with all of it at once?
I don’t think it’s about caring.
When you slowly boil the frog in water, does it care that it’s being boiled? Yes. Does it notice? Not initially no, it becomes apparent later on when it impacts it’s life.
I was stuck inside for almost 2 years alone, I didn’t have friends and I felt shit about myself altogether. I didn’t look in the mirror and I didn’t notice.
Until a friend sent me a photo of me at the park and I realised how bad it was and that I felt disgusting.
Did I care? Yeah, but I didn’t notice the gradual change. I can identify the behavior and I can say the average time span, but I have no idea when it actually started or when it started to plateau.
I don’t have a scale, I don’t weigh myself, I actively avoid mirrors to stop me from hating myself even more…
I also think you’re taking the saying too literally.
Thats a bad analogy, the frog constantly wants to live, and has essentially been tricked.
In your case, you tricked yourself by not looking at yourself, despite the fact that you do in fact care how you look.
I’d say that’s more of a conscious decision to not deal with something than akin to being boiled alive.
In my opinion, ignoring something is an action, not inaction.
What does that even matter?
Maybe I don’t want to be alive? Maybe being alive was something that was done to me? Maybe being born into the family and body I have is the trick?
Like, you sound so pedantic, bitter and quite angry about something people say to express something happening slowly without necessarily noticing how bad it is until something brings it to their attention.
Believe it or not, and this may be hard to grasp, but not everyone experiences life the way you do in your head.
I’m not saying everyone experiences things the same way. Everyone has their own perspective, and most importantly, is capable of changing it. I think the perspective displayed in the “life rushing by” memes, is negative and toxic. I think if that meme resonates with you, then it might be helpful to think about why.
If you didnt want to discuss your perspective compared to mine, I’m not sure why we are talking.
If you really wanted to know my feeling when I saw this post, since you made quite a few guesses, I felt hopeful that I could share my perspective with others and learn more about theres, using the meme as a vehicle.
For me it was pretty rapid after covid hit, I didn’t change what I was eating by much, but I was no longer in office walking around or I had a habit of going up and down stairs for breaks and such.
Though similarly everyone said I look more healthy now lmao
Went from about 128-132 to 158-162
I had to argue with family members that I was in fact still at a very healthy bmi at 130 pounds. They started making comments about losing too much when I was still in the overweight category. Not sure what that’s all about.
Not to contradict your point, but I thought it was interesting you moved around more in office, where I move far more at home where I can work on chores or cook in little bursts.
Skinnies rise up. For me I just don’t take the same kind of pleasure in food that friends do, even my slim friends will fight to finish every meal where I’m like nah bro I’m full why would I force myself to finish it.
So often think about how cool it would be to just get a food pill.
Same for me dude
Or we are permanently depressed or smh and not enjoy simple things as much as we could that’s a thought that is in the back of my head sometimes.
Feel called out there. Although I’d say I’m less depressed now, but I wouldn’t say I’m happy but never feel like I will be happy I’ll just plod along you know.
I think I know
After being depressed for the last 20+ years, I tried RTMS and I have to say I think it has worked. I don’t feel so fucking down all the time. I don’t know if it’s a placebo, but even if it is, I am using this opportunity to completely turn my life around. Started eating healthy, working out and looking after myself and I’m feeling great.
Hey I am glad you’ve found something that it working.
RTMS?
If you’re able to you should try working out. It increases your appetite. I went from ~18 bmi to ~23 after I started weight lifting and look a lot healthier now. It also took care of a lot of the random aches and pains I had.
Yeah I really need to. I spent a year trying to keep some working out routine. It’s so easy to slip and forget about it. I usually wake up and like wtf I had this healthy routine everything was nice but then some activity/project/idea absorbed me 24/7 for few days and it just evaporated like it never existed
There’s no constant things ever for me but just a repeated cycle of relearning the same thing again and again. I keep enormous collection of tabs on my… developments but forget to come back to them too. I hope they stay somewhere in my subconsciousness
Doesn’t matter if you forgot to work out for a bit. The trick is to just start again when you realise you’ve stopped.
I need to pin that comment somewhere and remember it, thanks
Try taking up climbing, if you can meet friends that way, you’ll have them to keep you accountable. Also it’s way more fun than being at a normal gym.
I found having to actually go to the gym was a huge hurdle for me so I bought a 200lb set of adjustable dumbbells and a foldable weight bench for at home. It’s nice because if I get lost in something and forget to work out until later I can still do something on the spot. If I had room I’d buy a full weight set but I’d need a house for that. If you don’t want to spend money or don’t have space there’s also a lot of bodyweight stuff you can do at home.
Could you provide more info? Any specific workout routine?
Apparently Lemmy uses ~ as a markup symbol, so by sure to escape it by putting a slash in front like this ~!
Fucking hell I can’t get it to format right…
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Something goes wonky if you have two in one paragraph…
That’s strange what is it doing? My comment looks normal to me.
~Strikethrough~
StrikethroughYeah but a pair of single tildes makes for subscript for some reason.
I reasonate with this. Giving up smoking also helped my appetite.
Literally did this last year and lost like 50 lbs doing nothing and being lazier
Felt like an exploit
you should eat better food though. you will feel better
I envy the people who can diet by just eating less. That for me is a path to intolerable hunger
Only limiting carbohydrates has worked for me, and I had to increase my meat intake just to ensure I have enough nutrition, with the little you want to eat on low carb
Low carb diets have been consistently shown to only cause short-term weight loss, followed by even greater weight gain if the person even bothers to adhere to the diet long term in the first place. This is in addition to the fact that low carb diets lead to a lower lifespan.
Calories per 1 gram of macros- Carbs: 4 Protein: 4 Fat: 9
https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/the-carbohydrate-advantage
Indeed. Atkins made me thin, then fat again. I think the problem was that it was too easy to eat too little, making it hard to stick to long term
More meat has fixed that for me. I have been successfully losing fat over the last two years just by making what I eat mostly meat
Also, what does it matter that there’s more energy per gram of fat versus carrots? Your body knows when it has enough energy* and you stop being hungry. Consider 19th century explorers eating pemmican (made of 50/50 fat and dried meat - they avoided the versions with berries and sugar) they would eat tiny amounts - less than the meat in a McDonald’s cheeseburger as a days food, despite the fact it hardly filled their stomachs
*Though on high carb your body will say it wants
moreall of it, since carbs are only available briefly in summer in history so you want to eat as much as you can. As a bonus, carbs from plants are half fructose and the fructose is turned to fat directly. You want to save some summer energy for winter
I could never sustain a restriction like this without modifying what I ate. It would have a profound effect of how soon and how much I was compelled to eat next. Once this was very clear to me after dozens of attempts at weight loss, I began to cook and eat for satiety. A low-glycemic, minimally processed diet free of added sugar is what worked best for me long-term. I lost 115 lbs, resolved diabetes, hypertension and non alcoholic fatty liver disease. Also vastly improved some other chronic problems. I’ve remained at a healthy weight now for 23 years with little variation. A lot of effort really and likely not possible for everyone -especially now. I can say it was worthwhile for me.
The steely resolve of CICO will only take a person so far. In my view that’s why it’s so unsustainable for most.
Why do you think it is especially difficult to follow this diet now? I keep trying to implement it myself but find the high effort required difficult to sustain, given other demands on my attention and will power.
Do you mean a general calorie restriction to lose weight or compositional change in diet to maximize satiety? Either is difficult without a strong impetus. For me the latter is far easier than the former. It seems to me that both are made a lot more difficult now than 24 years ago by the level of distraction and focus disrupting technologies we have to use on the daily. Not to mention economic material conditions are broadly worse for most people than they were two decades ago. Folks seem more harried and stressed with less discretionary time. Additionally, to my eye, food culture is getting worse. What is regarded as staple food is junkier and seemingly designed to circumvent the “fixed stomach problem”.
I hit a wall with my health and felt I could either break my problem into manageable pieces I could maybe find a way to live with and possibly enjoy sustainably, or else suffer a declining quality of life that was already unacceptable. At that point it was worth it for me to do all kinds of trial and error about what worked personally. And it still is. I have no super willpower. Just an understanding of what is at stake. And a willingness to sorta game my drives.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I agree that so much is at stake with diet. It all changed for me when I hit 40. I’m going to have to think about the manageable pieces of diet you mentioned. That appeals to me as practical.
I replaced meat with a protein shake
I don’t think a protein shake will have the nutrients actual meat has though. It’s really hard to get the nutrition you need on a serious weight loss diet and any food substitute isn’t going to cut it. To add, I’m over 40 with a history of dieting (I have tried all them), so I doubt I started this with full reserves of a well fed 20 year old
I think it’s that he had 150 lbs to lose. If he’d had 20 lbs to lose, it wouldn’t have mattered as much.
Dude lost a whole girl in weight.
I dunno man. My neighbor is a big ass boi and his wife is a smoke show.
Maybe try getting a personality
Alternatively, having a lot of money also works.
Fun story. 12 years ago I lost 80 lbs with keto. 4 years ago I quit keto for convenience because grad school. Gain 10 lb/yr since.
January this year I started keto, didn’t lose an ounce in 2 weeks. Eat less via IF and portion control but still keto, start losing. Eat a carb meal but still IF and portion control, still losing. Now I am on a standard ish diet (more emphasis on protein, more restriction on simple carbs) with portion control and gradually losing weight.
I tried dieting like this in 2010 but it “didn’t work”. In 2012 keto worked great but in hindsight it was likely the forced restriction and eventually calorie counting. Now that I’m good at calorie counting, CICO works great.
That’s the thing with keto though. Being in ketosis doesn’t make you lose weight on it’s own. It just makes it way easier to eat less because you don’t spend all day feeling hungry.
That really is the secret sauce of Keto. Of course, good portion control and healthy food choices also help keep you from feeling hungry between meals.
Losing weight is also just more difficult as you age
For me to drop from my high of 205 back to a working weight under 180 it took lots of travel for work where I was away from my munchies for 3 to 4 weeks. The first time I got down to 185 in Brazil and then a trip to India got me down to about 170. I quit drinking soda pop, and started eating more fiber and no sugar for breakfast other than the raisins and dates in my muesli and quit eating bagels for breakfast as much. A T-bone accident on my motorcycle 18 months ago left me with a bad leg/foot so I’m a lot less active and loss a lot of muscle weight. I’m down to 155 now. I was 145 when I got out of the Marines 40 years ago
Losing 25 pounds is vastly different then having to lose 150 pounds.
Absolutely, and 25lbs is half of the 50lbs I lost in 3 years. I’ve never dieted, I just changed the way I eat to get to my healthy weight
Technically this is true, but in practice strict calorie deficit diets don’t work for most people. To be in a calorie deficit state is a state of starvation, and most people’s entire biological drives rail against it. What usually happens with these kinds of diets is the person will do well for a time, but the constant starving will drive them to either start unconsciously sneaking in more sources of calories, or they’ll outright rebound into eating even more than they did before.
Sustainable weight loss ultimately comes down to living healthy by default.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventist_Health_Studies
The problem with losing weight the healthy way is this. Go look up how many calories you burn per hour on various types of exercise. Now look at how much calories different food has. That’s a lot of time you have to give up just for exercise. I have a hard time justifying eating lunch for example if I’m going to have to exercise for 2 hours to burn that off. I don’t doubt there are all kinds of good reasons to not attempt to lose weight via restricting food intake but at least it’s passive and it does sometimes work for some people.
This. It’s an absolute joke to lose weight through exercise. “But you can’t sustain deficit forever” well duh I never said I want to disappear. Lose the weight, then learn a new maintenance normal.
If you burn calories (exercise), and eat the same calories as before, you are in a calorie deficit. (The same as if you just eaten less).
If you eat exactly as much calories as you need to you can tecnically transform fat to muscles, but its really hard and you need to almost count every nutrient.
Most ppl reduce it too much and risk a rebound. Just eat 50/100 calories less than your daily burn rate and you are on the way. (It’s not really fast, but steady)
Yes. People who just cut out anything “bad” are suckers. But exercise certainly helps, too, and gives you some leeway.
Technically yes. But fewer calories can also come from eating different things that just earn you fewer, and adding a little activity can increase your caloric budget.
It’s a lot like saving money, but backwards.
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Eh… Depends what kind of activity and your previous activity level. Just the fact that you’re adding muscle mass means you’re burning more calories even at rest. My maintenance went from 2500 to about 3200 just by starting to lift heavy shit and doing an hour of cardio 5 days a week.
What people don’t realize is that they start eating more because of the activities they do and they end up not losing weight, but in the end it’s still much more beneficial than not doing activities and just cutting calories and contrary to going on a diet the odds of keeping the benefits long term are much higher as it’s something that makes you happy instead of making you feel bad.
I hear this, but don’t think it applies for people who get into sports. My story is not common, but I get annoyed when people talk about how a non athlete could never make a significant difference in their caloric output.
I fell in love with dancing, started doing it fourteen hours a week, lost thirty pounds without really trying, and had to start eating a lot just to maintain.
If you’re young, not overweight enough to seriously tax your joints, and that sounds fun to you, see if there’s a kind of cardio that’s enjoyable for you. If you do end up getting into it, check with your doctor, because heading straight into ten plus hours of cardio a week can cause injury.
Yeah, getting obsessively into some kind of physical activity that gives you dopamine beyond just the basic “after workout” happy chems will absolutely transform your body. I started aerial arts at 33 after 3 years of being almost completely sedentary post-autoimmune-diagnosis and am closing in on 2 years now. I look and feel a million times better and I need to eat way more to keep up with my 8+ hours a week of intense acrobatic and calisthenic workouts xD
Down side is that if I can’t go to class I’m a grumpy bitch, lol.
If you’re going from completely sedentary and low muscle mass to putting on even a fairly modest amount, it’s going to have an impact on your metabolism. Nothing to something is a big step.
With that said, abs are definitely made in the kitchen. It’s not going to fix a poor diet.
Considering the usage of lbs and the picture of MacDonalds, it’s likely OP is American, so he should try eating less ultraprocessed food and sugar next.
