Why YSK: many countries have issues with weight, such as mine with 74% of US adults being overweight or obese. The global weight loss industry is over $200 billion yearly, with many influencers, pills, and surgeries promising quick results with little effort. These often come with side effects, or don’t work long term.
Studies suggest filling yourself with foods low in caloric density and high in fiber, like fruits and vegetables, can help reach and maintain a healthy weight. It’s good to have these foods available in our living spaces to make the choice easy. Your taste buds will likely adapt to love them if you’re not there yet.
Better: just learn to live with not feeling satiated all the time.
Not that you shouldn’t make vegies a significant part of your diet, just that a big part of the lifestyle change is learning to be hungry between meals as a normal and non-distressing thing.
That’s a more complicated topic. Not everyone’s endocrine system is wired the same way, and you can’t always just willpower your way through it.
Insistence that willpower is sufficient for weight regulation is a big cause of people going on diet after diet that just doesn’t work. They’re fighting against the system that has a disproportionate influence on what you want in the first place, and if you push it too far you find yourself not giving a shit about your diet, and then being filled with a slew of complex feelings coming from your “lack of self control”.
It’s better to direct that energy towards getting your diet compositionally right than trying to be okay just being hungry.
You can’t get your body to stop insisting it needs food, but you can get it to insist less often. You can teach it that it doesn’t need “SUGAR”, it needs water and maybe an apple or banana. You can give it a little solid protein between meals to keep it from asking for a continuous stream of carbs.
You can learn to identify the difference between eating because you’re bored or want a little dopamine, and eating because you’re hungry. The first one is your brain and you can willpower through it to eventually unlearn the habit.You can choose to make good choices at the store instead of failing to make them in the kitchen.
Willpower is critical, but it’s important to know what you can or cannot actually solve with it and work within that framework.
You’re in control of your body, but that doesn’t mean that you need to pick the harder path.And, for some people, their endocrine system is a lot more forgiving. Those usually aren’t the people who have a lot of trouble loosing or keeping off weight because they try to just “eat less” and it works.
I am all about keeping it sustainable; nobody has willpower longterm. Any fool can come up with a diet of rabbit food and have amazing results for a month before their brain goes postal on them and they start inhaling cheeseburgers nonstop. Trust me, I totally get that. We always attribute vast reserves of motivation and discipline to ourselves that we just don’t have, and the results aren’t pretty.
But on the other side of the coin, your brain can get stuck in a short-term reward loop, and it howls blue murder when you first try to break out of it.
I’m an stress-eater and a boredom-eater, and if the loop gets out of control, not constantly snacking becomes stressful in and of itself, and yeah that’s a complete trainwreck.
But what I’ve found is that after a surprisingly short time of acclimating yourself to controlled amounts of hunger, you can break that loop. Your brain re-learns the difference between not-full and actually-need-calories, and only sees the latter as a problem.
What started out feeling like a catastrophe that you had to white-knuckle through just turns into a boring fact that takes little to no willpower at all to put up with at all.
It’s a really good investment of effort, and makes the whole process a lot easier.
Yup, I would definitely agree more with what you’re saying here than what I understood from above.
It definitely takes willpower to lose weight, and you definitely need to learn to identify why you’re eating and break those habits you don’t want, which also takes willpower.
I would characterize boredom/stress/comfort eating differently than hunger, since there’s the distinction between “want to eat” and “feel hungry”.Whatever your reason is for wanting to eat, you need to handle it. If it’s boredom, you can use willpower to push through chips being more interesting than the show you’re watching, ideally by doing something else.
If you want to eat because you’re hungry, there isn’t a way to handle that beyond eating. So the smart move is to make choices about what and how you eat so that feeling stays away longer, which goes a long way towards helping to break the habit of feeling like you’re “supposed” to eat more often than you need to.I think you’re initial comment came across much stronger than I see it is now, and we’re actually very close in terms opinion. :)
Thank you so much for both your posts I’m actually literally going through the exact same thing right now - Also a boredom and stress eater trying to get used to being hungry and honestly I enjoy the process of being hungry and denying myself bullshit food because I know it’s bullshit and a big part of my brain seems to agree and kick in just as you said. It’s a very freeing feeling!!!
I do most of my dieting at the store, I dislike spending money, so it’s really easy to avoid the crap there.
For me it’s all about the list. I’m opposed to spending money in general, but I also enjoy, and am pretty good at, cooking.
If I don’t have a good list, my weakness is to start designing meals based on random ingredients I see at the store, and then I buy the stuff, go home and cook the food, and enjoy too much of it. Beyond eating too much of it, it’s just tricky to design a good dish that’s tasty and also not silly unhealthy while standing in the grocery store.Took a bit to learn to make a note of the idea in my phone, and then design it at home. Then it can go on the list.
Thanks for saying this. I think the idea that it is just willpower causes so much unnecessary suffering. As someone suffering from an eating disorder and thyroid disease, I was getting a bit down reading all the “it’s just calories in vs calories out” remarks. It is so much more complicated than that.
For many, many folk, it is simply cal in vs out.
If you’ve some condition that affects metabolism, then yes, that sort of advice is not the best.
It’s calorie in/out in the thermodynamics sense, but humans are far too complicated to meaningfully model as a thermodynamic system.
Just doing calorie in/out dieting really doesn’t work for most people. That’s why you need to combine it with behavioral changes, strategies to change habits and attitudes towards food, which usually also involves changing what you eat and when so the downsides of eating less are less bothersome.
I think for most people it is not the best advice. In most cases, there are many other factors at play than just willpower and “calories in vs calories out”. Obesity should be viewed and treated more like a disease, because it is. If you are interested, I can link you some interesting papers on this.
Maybe I’ll just fill up on rice cakes
Aren’t those low-fiber and high carb?
Ones that do not add flavoring with calories, ones seasoned with salt, and some garlic, or herbs, for example, only have 35 calories. White rice cakes are similar to white rice in glycemic index, however they create a lot of bulk, help sate cravings for snack foods, and likely won’t harm you unless you have a predisposition to blood sugar regulation issues. Brown rice cakes are much lower in glycemic index, and have more nutrients. So, if you like the taste go with brown, though white rice cakes are better than the vast majority of foods that can give you a replacement for salty, crunchy, snack foods.
As mentioned in a handful of other comments, it’s all about choices. Rice cakes are usually all carbs, low fiber, but they’re also close to puffed nothing.
So if you know that you’re gonna snack despite doing everything else right, choosing salted rice cakes over chips is a good choice, and if a snack option keeps you from feeling miserable while loosing weight, you’re more likely to stick with it and get to your goals.
Maybe not as fast as if you hadn’t snacked at all, but an attainable goal is better.Ok, a pro-ricecake comment from an actual rice cake. Sounds suspicious! 😄
Everybody is different so advice varies. For instance, some people do very well with carbs and grains. Other people’s bodies scavenge every carb and store it as fat so a high fiber, high fat diet works better for them since fat is satiating and a source of energy, Contrary to popular opinion fat does not make you fat unless it is combined with carbs, like a hamburger bun, fries and large Coke. Then again this only applies to good fats like salmon, sardines, olive oil and grass-fed meat, not the rancid vegetable oil that are pushed on us today - they actually cause allergy problems that contribute to weight gain. The 350 pound lady is starving because her system stored all the carbs she ate - your body needs about a teaspoon of sugar in its system to run and she doesn’t have enough in her system to run her body.
Good fats moderate a lot of metabolism problems for a certain groups of people. Our whole food industry is based on selling carbs. Try to buy food that aren’t carbed up - it isn’t easy. No wonder we have a weight problem in this country. Hungry? Try cutting carbs way back, increasing fiber and good fats - don’t forget potatoes, carrots and most fall crops in general tend to be high carb foods so eat salads, cabbage and leafy greens with olive oil and vinegar dressing, for instance. Carb addiction is real so give your diet change some time. Oh yeah, stay away from processed foods - they contribute to weight gain too. Again, this may not apply to you in the least, but forget the old carbs in, carbs burned shit. It simply doesn’t apply to some people.This is a joke, right?
Insistence that willpower is sufficient for weight regulation is a big cause of people going on diet after diet that just doesn’t work.
No, that’s caused by a specific lack of willpower. Going on diet after diet is exactly why focusing on being ok with being hungry is so important.
Get a clue.
And people should just “choose to be happy” too, right?
Learn how biology works. Willpower helps you execute a a desire even when it’s uncomfortable. Your hormonal systems control what you desire in the first place. If you’re just trying to ignore your body, it will eventually inform you that you no longer care about weight loss.
Willpower based diets and weigh loss strategies are mostly driven by people who sell them who take advantage of the “intuitive” nature of what boils down to “don’t eat even if you’re hungry”.
If you do lose some weight, which you likely will at first, it’s because the diet works. If you don’t or you fall out of adherence, it’s because you’re not good enough.That’s why essentially all research on the topic says you should use your willpower to change what you eat and your activity level, and let those drive the weight loss.
It’s easier and more effective to use your willpower to make positive choices than it is to enforce restrictions on yourself.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10015774/
Next time you need to get more done, just try sleeping less and you’ll have a whole six or seven more hours a day to work.
You definitely won’t spend your time being distracted by how tired your are, or spending more time thinking about sleep than if you had spent less effort and willpower on making a schedule that made better time management choices.You had a distinct lack of willpower, you lacked the willpower to be nice to someone.
He’s saying what you’re attributing to “a specific lack of willpower” now has scientific backing that disagrees. Your take is old school and misinformed if the current science is correct. I personally haven’t done research on the subject or read many studies but Adam Ragusea, a YouTube food science journalist covers this concept in one of his vids and several podcasts surrounding food science and (in my case) the drugs coming down the pipeline to regulate body weight touch on the research as well.
Precisely. And to be entirely clear: it will always take willpower and motivation to lose weight. Your body is thought to have a sort of target weight that it wants you to be at all else being equal. If it were effortless to maintain a healthy weight, it would be because that’s where your body was pushing you to be.
The key is not to be stronger than your body, but to work with it. Use your finite supply of willpower on things like “making a healthy shopping list and not deviating from it”.
Instead of insisting you need to “not be lazy” and always cook a healthy meal at home, be realistic and accept that sometimes you’ll be tired and have a lazy dinner option that’s a better choice than pizza.
Buy apples instead of Oreos, so that when you feel hungry between meals it isn’t a choice between feeling hungry and eating a sleeve of Oreos, but just eating an apple. You’ll feel more full after the apple than after 20 times more calories in Oreos. If you choose to be hungry, you’ll be aware of being hungry and food in general until you eat, which will likely either make you fail hard, or eat more at the next meal because food is more appealing when you’re hungry.
It can also take a lot of motivation to work through which desires to eat are hunger, which are boredom and which are, of all things, thirst. Eating is a source of dopamine, and so if you’re bored “food” is an easy source of entertainment (your body is so dumb that just chewing is often enough for it, hence “gum” is pleasant). Sometimes your body asks for sugar when what it needs is water.“You” don’t control what “you” want, you just get to figure out how to get it. A deeper, vastly stupider, part just shouts vague demands you get to act on. “WATER. FOOD. <GENDER> SEX. SLEEP. SCARED. BORED.” it doesn’t stop shouting if you ignore it. So use your willpower to give it what it wants in the healthier but more difficult way, and to make doing so a habit that it won’t veto.
And that’s before you get to things that need a medical intervention in addition to behavioral.
If your pancreas or hypothalamus have decided to be shits, there’s absolutely no amount of willpower that can regulate things.
Learning to cope with discomfort is a very important, and very often disregarded, life skill.
Not really. Especially when talking about physical pain.
You should not be in discomfort all the time. This is the kind of thinking that prevents people from going to the doctor. Pain isn’t normal.
Part of it is identifying differences between discomforts. Feel a little hungry? No big deal.
Feel sharp stabbing pains? See a doctor, dummy.
Pain isn’t normal.
I get the point of your post but also, pain is normal. And not every pain requires medical intervention.
And it’s also good to remember in our modern lives, it’s often just a feeling more than a state of being.
It’ll tell you you’re hungry just because it’s the time of day you normally eat. It’ll tell you you’re hungry when you really just need a drink of water.
Also, it can take up to a year for your brain to adjust to a lower calorie diet.
I’d argue we should be ‘grazing’ more. Not just accept feeling bad.
I think we eat too much in one sitting. It should be spread out more.
Every couple hours we should be adding energy to our reserves not waiting 6+ hours.
Plus the feeeling of being hungry between meals goes away after a few months if you are still getting what you body needs.
This. Really. If it actually hurts to get hungry perhaps you have Helicobacter pylori. Let that get sorted out.
GERD can also cause nausea when the stomach is empty. If I wait too long to eat, I become too nauseous to want to eat.
Mentally swapping the urge to be hydrated for the urge to be full was a game changer for me, and I wish there was one cool trick I could share but it was trial and error for me.
I’m pretty skinny, but I hate being hungry. I wish I were better about tolerating hunger, and it’s something I could work on, but it’s not a requisite skill. Just in case that’s useful info for somebody.
Ricecake’s comment is great. Wanting to eat is also often not actually hunger, and being able to distinguish between sensations is a skill. For example, I always think I’m really hungry the days before menstruating, and I do eat more, but often it’s stomach cramps and hormonal changes that food does not satisfy. You’d be surprised at how long it’s taken to see that pattern.
I find that when food just isn’t working to abate hunger, what I actually need is salt.
Couple of fingers of jalapeno brine, the relief is incredible.
You’re saying people should just deal with hunger and fight against everything evolution wants, instead of just eating high fiber food and not being hungry…
How is that “better”?
Evolution’s impact on our hunger was driven by scarcity. Most humans don’t experience the levels of scarcity that drove that evolution.
So, yes, you should work against evolution. This is true for a lot of aspects of the human condition.
Except, and this is what I think they were saying, your body is wired to demand food even if it doesn’t strictly need it. You can’t win that battle long term.
Instead you work with your dumb meat sack and eat healthy foods that keep you from feeling hungry for a longer time.
If your diet strategy involves almost everyone who tries it failing, and those who succeed almost always have their progress backslide in a few years, then maybe the problem is with the strategy rather than an intrinsic character flaw in the people trying it.
Evolution isn’t divine, it’s random mutation that generally benefits it’s current environment. Considering most of our evolutionary traits emerged thousands, if not millions, of years ago… I’d say we can safely conclude that a lot of our evolutionary instincts aren’t especially relevant to our current circumstances.
The eating issue is less evolution and more societal.
Society is the one who says we should eat 3 meals a day, not evolution.
Evolution would rather we ate more often throughout the day.
Think of it like a gas tank. Currently people fill it up and wait for it to get empty before filling up again.
When the reality is its better to always keep a half a tank for emergencies.
Evolution would rather we eat as much as possible, cause who knows when our next meal will be.
Just drinking more water helps a lot to feel full.
Staying active also, is not just good for increasing your caloric needs, it’s also a great way to be busy, and substitute eating out of boredom.
Have you ever… Considered the disadvantages of drinking too much water all the time?
Peeing?
Drinking too much water is pretty difficult. You must be talking about the consequence of drinking a healthy amount of water, which is peeing every hour or so. On the one hand, yes, it’s really annoying to be in the middle of something and have to go take a piss. On the other hand,
My boss makes a dollar, I make a dime
That’s why I piss on company time
Excuse me, fruit are NOT in GENERAL low caloric density with the exception of strawberries.
This is part of the danger of getting your nutrition advice from some internet randos.
What are you talking about? What’s more filling, an apple or one of those “100-calorie-packs” of hyperprocessed sugar?
The apple is less calories too.
This thread is generally filled with completely pants-on-head dietary advice.
Don’t get this type of information from randoms on Lemmy, contact a professional instead. I’ve noticed that Lemmy is exceptionally bad as a source for this.
is that a term you absorbed from zero punctuation?
Not consciously, it’s been a long while since I watched zero punctuation.
No internet rando. The information is out there, but people don’t want it.
That little clicker in the brain that goes off when you’ve had enough doesn’t really work for me. I have to feel physically full or I still feel hungry. Even worse, my dopamine levels are garbage and eating makes me feel good.
Not saying this doesn’t work. Only that I’m far from the only one where it is this simple.
I’m like you, and no it’s not simple. As others said, calories in, calories out. Nothing else matters, you need to find your own way to keep it. And no, exercise does not help much with weight, only if paired with a good diet. You would need to work out for hours continuously just to lose the calories from a random extra dessert.
But, you can do it. Two things I wish I had known:
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For example, my body was able to keep my weight instead of losing it if I kept calories intake where it should be and had a “cheat day” once a week at most. No cheat days for me, my body is too smart for that.
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Sometimes you feel you are on track, and then you get stuck at a certain weight. Even if you keep your diet, you might get stuck at a certain weight despite losing it well beforehand. Keep at it. You will break through at one point, closer than you think. But you have to keep at it.
It is not as simple as just calories in vs calories out. Your body has a setting point for what weight it thinks it should be. Once you are overweight, your setting point will be higher and your body wants to get back to that higher weight. It will start working actively against you. This might mean your appetite will increase and your metabolism will slow down. I think that is what you are describing here.
Trying to push yourself to lose more weight despite your body working against you can cause rebound weight gain if you are not able to keep the diet (which might become increasingly difficult due to increasing appetite). The most important thing is to keep a healthy diet that does not reduce your quality of life too much and is doable on the long term, I think. If you are struggling everyday, then it might be better to eat a little bit more and stay on a higher weight a bit longer to ensure that you will maintain the weight loss.
Maybe this is already what you meant. But the phrase “calories in vs calories out” and stating that nothing else matters made me want to respond. I think it is a popular oversimplification that causes a lot of unnecessary suffering for people trying to lose weight.
This is not true.
It’s just not true.
Very solid argumentation…
You said words that weren’t factually accurate.
I’m not going to argue with you about it but straight up the notion that your body has some “set point” and the idea of needing to keep your metabolism in the right area so calories work is … it’s bullshit.
It’s wrong.
The real problem with CICO is people don’t measure properly and our bodies have a varying requirement day to day based on a myriad of factors but that doesn’t invalidate the simple truth that is CICO.
Despite what others are saying, I think you are right in a lot of ways.
There definitely is a set point where your body feels comfortable. You can get above and below a few kilos, and your body will return to that set point if you return to what you eat normally. That’s why it’s hard, to move the set point, you have to get around 5 under and keep at it. So when you are 5 under and your weight loss suddenly stops, that’s when you really started to push the kilos down, that’s why it suddenly gets harder. And you should go that 5 kilos past your set point because you will gain it back when you stop eating less.
With me, with a resting consumption of around 1800 kcal, how it went is that I did 6 months of trying to keep it below 1500 kcal, targeting 1400 if I can - but no less, and more or less kept it. My results have been going from 124 kg to 110 then rebounding to 114, then another round of doing the same got me from 114 to 100 then rebound to 104. After the ~4 kg rebound, it stabilized. Just now, a month after finishing, I just ate nothing but shitty McDonalds for 3 days (have been on the road a lot) and my weight went from 104.2 to 103.9.
I guess what I’m saying is that your only real way of affecting the system is cals in vs cals out, but as you say, the inside of the system is not simple. Also, don’t crash diet, and even if you feel like eating less on one day for some reason, keep your diet from the other side as well. Every time I ate less than 1400, the next day I fucked it up and went to 1800-ish, every single time. It makes it much harder.
Thanks! I think you are describing what a lot of people experience. Weight loss is highly complex and by oversimplifying it, lots of people do not get the help they need and are made to feel bad about themselves.
There is actually quite some scientific work supporting what I am saying. For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.
This is propaganda from companies that want you to keep gorging on their slop instead of natural portions of food.
It is not. I am not saying people should not eat healthy or should not try to lose weight. I am just saying that pushing the oversimplification that for everyone it is just calories in vs calories out and that it is only about willpower is not correct. People should get the right help with losing weight and the factors that cause the weight gain or makes people not losing the weight should be addressed.
There is lots of scientific work on this. I copied some links from another comment I made.
For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
If you disagree, please provide some substantiation. I would be interested in reading it.
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Feeling full is about volume of food. With high calorie dense foods like fast food, that’s going to be a ton of calories. With low calorie dense foods you can eat the same amount of food, and eat substantially less calories.
The only thing that matters in weight loss is calories in, calories out.
I get that it’s harder for some people, but finding less calorie dense foods that you enjoy will go a long way towards helping lose weight. Also, don’t drink pop unless it’s diet.
or maybe stop eating for feeling full, and start eating for satiety.
I fucked my “clicker” up with too large portions, which expanded my stomach over the years. i was NEVER satiated, because i had no way of filling my stomach up. I was always hungry. In the end and after many years of fighting my massive overweight i went for an stomach bypass. If someone tells you that this is the easy way out: they are full of shit. You have to relearn eating, and 1) that really sucks and 2) that was exactly what i needed, No more feeling hungry is a blessing.
Same here. I use popcorn to get there. We probably go through three air poppers a year.
It doesn’t work for me when it comes to any sort of fried potato variation (fries, tots, crispy crows, etc). No matter how full I am, I can keep eating those.
If you would accept a suggestion: Just fast for a few days. Your stomach will shrink and you can go back to eating normal portions after. Plus it’s good for the soul, there’s a reason so many religions recommend it.
A few days? Depending on the person’s condition, it might turn out badly.
First, start with one day. Second, and most importantly, consult with a medical professional to make sure you don’t have any counter-indications.
Certain fruits can be very high in sugars, also not a great idea. Focus more on veggies
Not to say avoid fruits. It’s okay, and even encouraged, to eat whole servings of fruit each day.
A family member was eating nothing but fruit and really messed himself up. I forget exactly what happened but he lost muscle control on one side of his body.
Never go full Jobs
I am always teetering on the edge of doing this, not because I think it’s a good idea, but just because I really, truly love fruit…
Holy fuck we hit 74%? Goddamn
Percent of adolescents ages 12–19 years with obesity: 22.2% (2017-March 2020)
Percent of children ages 6–11 years with obesity: 20.7% (2017-March 2020)
Percent of children ages 2–5 years with obesity: 12.7% (2017-March 2020)
This shit is child abuse people. Not ok.
Go for 100%…I know you can do it.
Would you be satisfied with 100% minus 1 person?
Minus 2 people. I’m back at a healthy weight and steady for a year now. Amazing what cutting out all the crap does.
Despite all the interesting advice in this thread the thing that helped me the most was accepting and getting used to the fact that if you’re going to lose weight you’re going to be hungry.
You’re not starving to death, you’re not dying, but there are times where you’re going to just have to be hungry and deal with it. Our bodies are very good at doing their best to keep us alive, and hunger is our bodies way of saying “we need to look for food”. The problem is we didn’t evolve that skill at a time when looking for food only takes a few minutes and can involve thousands of calories.
If you’re overweight your body is going to sound alarm bells that it’s eating into the reserves, but you need to acknowledge that and let the reserves get used so you can lose weight.
If I eat lower glycemic index foods, I can eat reduced calories without feeling like I’m starving or having hunger cravings. I also consume psyllium husk after a meal, which slows digestion of simple carbs and makes me feel fuller. This helps maintain an even blood sugar and avoid spikes which lead to cravings.
But I have experience with diet and fitness. Other people though aren’t so lucky. Some people feel such intense cravings who have no idea what to do and can’t maintain a proper diet for shit. I remember taking a medication that jacked up my food cravings like crazy and that reminded me how hard other people have it with dieting.
thats plain wrong. you dont have to go hungry to loose weight. thats ONE method, yes. but there are others. the human body is not a car you put petrol into.
Fruits are high in sugar, how are they considered low calorie foods?
It doesn’t say low calories but low caloric density and high in fibre. It’s a combo that matters. Though one can definitely overdo on fruit.
Like the other commenter said, it’s about the calorie density, not the calories.
An apple makes you satisfied longer than an equivalent number of calories of Oreos, so if you get to snack as much as you want on either, you’ll eat fewer calories of apple than of Oreo over a given timeframe.
You can over eat either of them, it’s just easier with one than the other.Similarly, something like a steak can fill you up a lot, for a very long time, but has enough calories in it that it’s still better to not eat for every meal.
Fruits have plenty of fiber, which helps increase satiety, which is what’s important here. Also check the difference between a candy bar and a piece of friut, and then think about which fills you up better with fewer calories. Density matters too, it’s much easier to snarf down a bunch of candy than to eat the same caloric value in fruit.
Most fruits are low calorie with a lot of them having less than 100 kcal per 100g. There are some exceptions such as Avocado (due to fat content actually) and dates as well dried fruit (prunes at 300/100g vs plums at 45/100g).
Strawberries, cherries, apples, figs, bananas all are below 100kcal/100g. Obviously some are better at filing you up than others.
One apple (223 g) is supposed to be 116 calories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiety_value
It’s not just fruits and vegetables, but getting the right components.
A high sugar low fiber fruit won’t do as much as a higher fiber fruit, so apple > blackberry, for example.You can also take advantage of your bodies insatiable love for protein and make that a key part of the meal as well, and it’ll signal that it’s full sooner and for longer.
Food that physically takes longer to eat also help because you can eat faster than you can “realize” you’re full.
A trick of mine, that I don’t know if there’s any general basis for it but it helps me, is to not take a plate with as much food as I think I want, but to instead take a plate with about half that. That way I get to feel like I’m having two servings, and the gap between finishing the first and starting the second usually means that the second is less than the first.
My own advice:
The diet I’m on, which has lost me 36 pounds (196 to 160) and counting since early April, is simple calorie restriction - I try my best not to go over 1500 calories/day, and if I do go over, I try to make up for it by going under on following days until things average out.
Every time I’ve tried this diet or similar diets, I’ve had great success, as long as I’ve meticulously tracked and wrote down how many calories I ate each day. The times I’ve tried this diet without tracking have all ended up failing, even when I “tried” sticking to it for months. The moment I start writing numbers down, things just fall into place. So for me at least, that’s the key.
Some notes:
- Over the last 127 days my actual average calories/day has been 1472/day
- I try to avoid meals where counting is very difficult or impractical. That means I try to avoid going to restaurants that don’t post calories and I’m not big on “real” cooking. If I do have a meal where a good count isn’t possible I try my best to overestimate - usually with 2500 or 3000 depending on how full I am since it’s really hard to eat more than that at once. I find it very difficult to go to most restaurants without getting more than 1500 calories, also, so I don’t eat at restaurants all that often anymore. Fast food places like McDonald’s are actually some of the easier options to work with, though.
- I’ve made little to no effort to eat healthier - just less. I can have a blizzard from Dairy Queen if I want, but that’s 1100 calories and then I’ve only got 400 left for something else. I have mastered making delicious ice cream that’s just 300 calories/pint though. In practice I usually eat processed foods from a can, box, or bag that you just need to heat up or follow the instructions on the box for.
- A scale is essential for getting accurate calories out of things like butter, milk, ketchup, ice cream ingredients, etc.
- In general meats are a pretty poor choice - compared to other foods they make me a lot less full compared to how many calories they take up. I can eat 8 hotdogs (without buns) and fill up my daily calories in that one meal, and still be hungry - or I can have two cans of spaghettios (580 calories total), and be so full I almost can’t finish.
- For me at least, after the first week or so I just stop feeling hungry in general most of the time. There are occasionally days where I only eat because I know I should, rather than because I got hungry.
- When I’m on this diet, I basically never get heartburn, even after a day where I eat something that would usually have given it to me badly - probably the nicest part of all this.
- Despite what the post says, I eat basically no fruits or vegetables in my day-to-day life.
- In the past, I’ve incorporated extremely heavy daily exercise into my routine as well - I’m talking multiple hours a day, every day, for at least two months. While it did have some noticeable benefits like a very noticeably lower resting heart rate and increased strength, it had basically no visible effect on my rate of weight loss - looking at the graph, you couldn’t even tell which portions of the diet were subject to heavy exercise vs. heavy leisure. The lesson learned is that diet is far, far more important than exercise - you can offset an entire workout with a single cookie.
- When I’m not making any dieting attempts at all, I’m a huge glutton. I’ve never gotten over 200 pounds, because any time I get close I start doing this diet - but if I ate the way I wanted to all the time, I could easily weigh 350+ pounds. I can very easily eat single 1200-2000 calorie meals multiple times a day. I’ve yo-yo’d a lot in the past few years but I’m hoping to more or less keep things permanently under control this time - once I get to 140ish I plan to raise my daily calorie allowance to the point where I maintain, rather than gain or lose, over time.
An added bonus of writing things down is getting to graph things too!
Note that I’m not claiming this is healthy. Just effective. Anyone can lose weight eating nothing but chocolate cake, as long as they eat sufficiently little. It doesn’t mean you won’t die from it.
I’ve made little to no effort to eat healthier - just less. I can have a blizzard from Dairy Queen if I want, but that’s 1100 calories and then I’ve only got 400 left for something else.
In addition to choosing not to have something in the first place, choosing not to finish something is another great skill. Lowest calorie blizzard is still hundreds of calories, but choosing to eat only half of the smallest size can work.
Definitely a harder habit to change compared to not ordering in the first place when raised to always clean the plate.
While that’s true, and while it’s something I’d definitely recommend for others, I can’t honestly say that’s something I’ve mastered doing myself. To me, not finishing just means I have more work to do when it comes to figuring out how many calories I actually ate. While I could just guesstimate that I had 60% of that blizzard, I find that in practice I’m really not okay with being that wishy-washy with the numbers. The days where I have to just guesstimate kill me inside.
And this situation with the blizzard is something I’ve dealt with. I had a mostly finished blizzard but couldn’t finish it. I had to mark the level of ice cream still remaining, empty the cup, then get weight measurements for the empty cup (c), cup full of water (f), and cup full of water up to the level of remaining ice cream (w) - at which point the total calories eaten were (w-c)/(f-c) * B, where B is the number of calories in the full blizzard. If I could have avoided all of that by finishing the last 28% of that blizzard, you bet I would have.
I either go for about half and call it good or just round it up to the full amount when counting and then not worry too much if some other things are 5-10% higher than they should be.
It isn’t like the menu calories are precise. Heck, for a blizzard it could be up to 15% more when served if it is above the cup line.
The important thing is paying more attention to what we are eating, how high in calories things are, and whether we actually know what a portion size is.
The worst part is that I know the menu calories aren’t precise at most restaurants, but I still won’t let myself be wishy-washy with them. I actively recognize there’s no point in relying on how many calories Outback Steakhouse says are in a Bloomin’ Onion (1900 btw) when the largest bloomin’ onion I’ve had in the past is close to double the size of the smallest I’ve had. But my entire system relies on precise tracking so I still feel I have to make the effort.
Rounding up to the full amount after eating >85% or so is something I do though. I’m much more okay with it if I know I’m overestimating than if I think I might possibly be underestimating.
Yes! The biggest factor with body weight is calories in vs calories out. Foods with volume and mass but fewer calories displace calorie dense foods. Even as simple as substituting popcorn vs potato chips is huge on calorie savings. Protein and fats (ideally plant based) can also help you feel full longer than say simple carbs like potato chips/white pasta.
I highly recommend Harvard’s Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition info and recipes, the language is very accessible too!
Edit: fixed link
Correcting link https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/
Thanks!
I used to be uninterested in foods like broccoli, apples, oranges, and blueberries, but after a transition period I love them and have them every day. I’d like to hear anyone’s story who’s also been able to integrate more of these foods.
Personally I’m luckyish in having the opposite problem from most, I’ve been entirely unable to gain weight, and before I started working out to put on muscle weight I weighed about 120 lbs
One of the fun parts about rapidly building muscle is your body will start asking for healthier foods. I’ve had a couple of times where I’ll make a big steaming plate of veggies and be all about it until the moment I put some in my mouth and went “oh yeah, I still don’t like steamed broccoli stems”
I also yesterday tried to challenge myself on a new personal record distance in biking, and was biking in the morning rather than the evening like I usually do. I quickly learned that I need a very different fuel in my body first thing in the morning if I’m going to be engaging in physical activity shortly later.
I’ve been eating fruits and vegetables but it’s really difficult to get hard full with them.
With that said, oatmeal helps. I’ve lost around 30 pounds and I hit a wall, I’m finding it hard to lose more, I’m increasing my exercise but I’m not sure if I’m eating too little now for my metabolism to kick in and help me lose more weight or if I’m eating too much and I need to cut down more. It’s all about calories in calories out, up to a certain point.
You are fighting millions of years of evolution. If you are in caloric deficit for too long, your body thinks you don’t have food near you anymore and try to conserve whatever energy you have.
Take a diet break and up your calories slightly daily until you see yourself gaining a little bit of weight. Then cut back the last increase.
Keep that calorie intake for a few weeks and then start a new cut after that. Rinse and repeat until you are at your goal weight.
Ab easy rule of thumb is to do a weight cut for 6-12 weeks, and then do a maintenance weight for the same length of time you did your cut.
Not recommending chest days? I’ve read that a chest day every 4 days helped with that specific issue, I don’t know how accurate that is, as you can find everything and it’s opposite online.
you cant loose weight while your insulin is high. ever. your oatmeal gets turned into fat instead of energy. so you cant loose weight. switch to meat salt and vegtables. try it one week, see what happens. the reason you lost weight is that you were eating even more sugar and carbs before.
I think the reason why I lost so much weight is because I was eating like 3000-4000+ calories a day and didn’t care about my diet at all, and now I’m eating 2000 or less calories per day.
There are tons of sites/articles/etc that say oatmeal is great for weight loss, it lowers your blood sugar, it’s very filling and full of vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. though there’s always going to be conflicting information, which makes part of this more difficult.
This is oddly controversial, but an even more satiating method is to consume more protein. If you hit your goal body weight (lbs) in grams of protein, you won’t be reaching for that end of day snack.
Note drinking the protein instead of eating it doesn’t work nearly as well for this.
Just to parrot you with an example, which would you prefer? A half pound of chicken breast or two apples and a banana? Guarantee you the chicken breast is gonna leave you better off on the whole than the fruits.
I don’t think it is controversial, except when it is an all or nothing thing just like the zero carbs crap. A balanced diet will keep you full and includes proteins, fats, carbs, and everything else as long as they are in the right balance.
Crappy diets like the one based on the food pyramid, which had way to many carbs, are the main problem.
Too much protein can be hard on the kidneys, especially long term. Balance and moderation. Not saying your point is bad. But there are a lot of protein bros out there.
Unless your brain is fucking broken like mine, lol.
