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.
Yes, you can eat the same shit. Only way less, though.
Yeah, it is not easy.
We seem to have primarily high calorie foods. The reason people change diets to get some low calorie ones that keep them feeling full.
Another thing, but perhaps not as much related to losing weight is that food doesn’t exactly work like most people think i.e. it isn’t that we consume something then we get energy from it and then we excrement it. In reality our body absorbes the food and uses it for other functions. So unhealthy food still affects us negatively.
Or the same quantity and start being active, much more likely to keep up with it long term as well.
You can’t outrun your fork. If OOP had 150lbs to lose, it’s unlikely he could’ve continued eating the same amount and burnt that weight off.
If you’re at maintenance at 2500 and start doing more physical activities you’re burning more calories.
“You can’t outrun your fork” doesn’t mean you can’t increase how much you’re burning without increasing how much you’re eating, the result is the same, in that case you’re not depriving yourself and for this reason the results tend to stick.
Source: GF is a dietitian
The problem about being active, is that the moment you stop you’ll put the weight right back on. Most people don’t take up going to the gym for decades, it’ll last a few months, maybe a few years. Long term weight management needs to be about food intake.
You’re correct in that you need to stay active, but I don’t think that’s as unachievable as you make out.
Going to the gym sucks. Exercise for the sake of exercise will get boring unless you’re one of the few who actually enjoys being at the gym.
Most people can find some kind of exercise they actually enjoy. For me it’s cycling. I started when I was 30 and I’ll admit there’s been a few patches where I haven’t been on the bike but it’s built up to something I truly enjoy 12 years later. This month I’m on track for more than an hour on the bike every day with no gaps.
Physical activity make you generate hormones that push you to continue doing it, weight management through food intake does the contrary, weight management through increased activity has much better long term results than going on a diet.
I almost literally lost forty pounds eating nothing but buffalo wings
And then I turned into a vegetarian
Sorry chickens, ty for your lean protein (before they Buffalo’d it), I put it to good use
I figured out I was less interested in the meat than I was in what made the meat actually taste good, your buffalo sauces, barbeque, etc, and just did the same thing I was doing but with tofu and broccoli.
When I first started I was all about these weirdo “secret tricks” to get tofu to “taste like meat” but I quickly figured out it just wasn’t worth the effort for my tastes and stuck to pan frying or raw tofu afterwards.
Someone I look up to more convincingly said the same thing. I scoffed but he knows what he’s talking about.
I lost so much weight so fast—during the beginning of the pandemic no less—by only staying beneath the magical number everyday.
2200 is about expected maintenance level for a man that does normal daily activities (going on walks, cleaning around the house and so on).
If you currently maintain your weight with whatever you’re eating and drinking then calculate how much calories there is in what you’re currently eating and drinking (average for the week) and cut that by 500 a day to lose 1 pound a week.
If you’re increasing your physical activity as well then take that into consideration, it’s much more healthy and effective in the long run (in most situations) to just continue eating the same but to start being active, this way you’re not taking anything away, you’re adding something to your life.
It doesn’t much matter how accurate your calorie estimates are. If you estimate that your daily caloric requirement is 2500 and you’re eating 2000 calories a day, then you should be losing about one pound a week (1 pound of fat = 3500 calories). If you find instead that your weight is remaining constant, then either your caloric requirement estimate or your caloric intake estimate is wrong (or both are). In either case, your only option is to eat even less, per your measurements.
I used the same awful but free (with option to upgrade but no need) app the guy I look up to used (and it also knows how many calories I burn in activity during a day). It even has an awful name, but the results are amazing and it already has a ton of the foods I eat in it and it gets easier to use with time.
MyFitnessPal: https://myfitnesspal.com
I used to use that as well until I got good enough at tracking to just do it in my head. It was a decent app just annoying that it didn’t really seem to have any moderation on people submitting foods and a lot were way off and sometimes 6 or 7 of the exact same thing. Still the best app for it I found.
Don’t bother with apps, many website even certain official healthcare sites will have info about food calories, even some calculators and the intake for your age/weight/gender/etc. It seems that if you’re biologically female you’re kinda screwed though, my partner had much harder time getting 1/10th of result I was getting.
When it comes to counting food calories, you don’t necessarily need exact numbers for raw ingredients and that info is out there, for anything else check out packaging and add it all up per day.
You kind of can’t. Caloric intake from food varies by person, as does energy use. You can use a calculator for a ballpark measure and then see how it works out for your weight.
Type of food can also matter, because depending on your stomach bacteria, you will also get different energy value from different foods. I thought an easy way for me to lose weight would be to stop eating sweets (since i prob averaged around 500kcal nominal value per day), but nope I ended up gaining weight, probably from eating slightly more normal food. What I found works for me was delaying each meal for longer so I end up eating one large and one smaller meal per day. Going to bed slightly hungry then I usually wake up not hungry and it takes a few hours before I feel the need to eat something, etc.
I even once lost weight drinking about 2 liters of choccy milk per day but eating a lot less regular food, though I wouldn’t recommend that because that much sugar is terrible for you anyway. Far worse than being a bit overweight, probably.
The answer to your question is to calculate your BMR, or basal metabolic rate. It’s an approximate calculation based on your sex, age, height, and weight. Your BMR is the amount of calories you need to maintain life when completely sedentary. If you only eat that number of calories, and do ANY physical activity, you will begin to lose weight as your body taps into your reserves for energy.
There is more nuance, but the simple math is calories in vs calories out. If you have a deficit, your weight will decrease. People counting calories to lose weight generally target their BMR minus 200 to 500 calories daily, though 500 is a bit much in my experience.
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.
