A few months ago I started to notice that my clothes were all getting too tight. I was only slightly overweight, with a 26 BMI, but it was still embarrassing, uncomfortable, and unhealthy. I’ve been exercising all my life but for some reason no matter how hard I ran or walked or worked out, I was really having a lot of trouble burning off all that body fat.
I did a little research and tried some new techniques. In the last month, I’ve lost about 14 pounds, and my BMI is now in the green at 23, the lowest it’s been in years. This is what I did.
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I counted calories. For someone my age, I burn about 1800 calories a day just by sitting on my ass. In order to lose weight sustainably, I learned that I should probably eat about 1300 calories per day. That basically amounts to three modest meals per day. At first I just googled the food I was eating and listed the calorie amounts on a spreadsheet. Then I started using MyFitnessPal. (I also learned that I had some vitamin deficiencies thanks to this app.)
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I stopped eating seconds. After eating a modest meal, I immediately down a huge cup of water and then chew some gum. This instantly gets rid of my hunger. It can take up to twenty minutes for your body to figure out that it’s full, which is one reason people overeat. I've never been a heavy drinker but I lose any desire to consume alcohol when I do this.
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For exercise, I switched entirely to daily walking, setting my goal as ten thousand steps per day. This equates to about 500 calories. I mostly listened to Red Library during these walks and learned so much. If you’re lucky enough to have a good walking partner (as well as the time, energy, and privilege to walk), you can walk almost forever without even noticing.
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Sometimes when I feel hungry, I just drink water and then chew some gum. This does actually sometimes work. The body can confuse thirst for hunger. If I was starving and it wasn’t the right time to have a meal, I would just eat a shitload of baby carrots. These little fuckers have practically no calories but they take forever to chew and fill you right the fuck up. They also taste great and are healthy. Decaf coffee also works really well to suppress hunger.
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I started by trying to do a low-carb diet, but that was just way too hard and I gave up after a few days. I try to focus now on foods that are filling (with plenty of fiber) but low-calorie. I also noticed that I was slowing down as a runner when I cut out the carbs. I don't know enough about running and nutrition, but I've noticed with my own body that eating something packed with carbs (like a burrito) makes running faster, easier, and more pleasant.
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edit: I forgot! Weigh yourself once a week. No more, no less. Your body can fluctuate in its weight by several pounds each day, so it takes a little longer to discover an overall trend.
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I think that’s it. Others feel free to add more techniques, question, or criticism.
The water and gum tip is really good.
For me j started brushing my teeth after dinner, helped me alot with night time cravings
The little fatty in my head: "Hey lets get a snackums before bed"
The health conscious part of my brain, being backed up by the lazy part of my brain: "But then I'd have to brush and floss again and guh, that's like, 5 minutes of work I'd have to redo."
it's a bit of a pain but counting calories also helped me a lot
This is good advice, all of it. I’ve lost 12 lbs in the last 6 weeks or so counting calories. I already work a physical job so I haven’t added an exercise routine, but I feel better and it’s been pretty easy.
It’s also helped me drink less. Hard to drink more than one beer when each one is 200+ calories.
ten thousand steps per day
How much is that in km? Or locomotives per square elephant if you will
If going off of the average length of the entire locomotive train thats about 5 U.S. Locomotives as they range between 4,900 - 7,500 ft on the average and a mile is 5,280 feet, and as the comments below said that 10k steps is about 5 miles or so. Not sure how to translate that to locomotives per square elephant though. As this is a purely distance measurement.
Now that being said if you are only concerned with the locomotive engine itself it would be appropriately 347 of the "AC6000CE" 6000 horse powered engines, with a length of 76 feet.
Just make sure you aren't getting pistachios from The Wonderful Company. They literally attempted to bribe the US government into invading Iran over pistachios. The Dollop has a great episode on them:
https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/356--the-resnicks-water-monsters
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewart-resnick-california-water/
Pfff, pistachios in ultra hot sauce? I will keep eating these until I keel over or die.
If you don't have time to walk, try running or jogging. Not only is it faster but it's a lot better for improving cardio. I went from jogging and walking on/off to damn near jogging the whole time in the span of just a few weeks.
There's an app called Couch to 5K by the UK NHS, made exactly for this.
Yeah, I used that for a while. It's shocking how fast the progress it for what's about 1 hour a day.
In line with your "daily walking" point, I lost about 15 pounds in just a couple of months by riding my bike to work instead of driving, which is something I'm fortunate enough to be able to do.
But the surprising part is that it's a bike with a motor on it. So I do very little pedaling and do not end up even breaking a sweat (which is nice since I do not have to shower or change). So it ends up being closer to a brisk walk. But it was still significant enough to have a massive impact on me.
Preach the gospel of carrots, brother!
I used to snack a lot in the evening, watching movies or some TV show, and it's really easy to underestimate the amount of calories you get from a bag of chips or other industrialized snacks like that. I switched to carrots (I use regular carrots, but chopped into sticks) and a vegetable dip, usually a well-seasoned, low-calorie tofu spread. It satisfies the snacking urge, and is much healthier than any other alternative. It's delicious, too.
Chewing gum after eating sounds smart, I should do that
I lost 80 lbs in my 30s and plateaued at 155 lbs and 5"9. I'm in my 40s now. I lost it by adopting a whole foods plant based diet and sticking to it. The book I read was called the starch solution by Dr. McDougall. The guy himself is a weird boomer but he is right about how to eat. I've stayed trim for 5 years now and I prefer eating this way and no animals need to be killed.
Googling. I am a former vegetarian who eats little meat now, but I live with a bloodmouth family and I do most of the cooking so it's pretty hard for me to make things work for all of us. The recent influx of vegans here along with their excellent memes has made me want to abandon animal products for good in solidarity with our animal comrades.
There is a really good video by a guy named Jeff Novick where he kind of goes into the theory about it. It is kinda long but worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CdwWliv7Hg
The picture book, kind of silly but drives the point home: https://www.drmcdougall.com/pdf/dr-mcdougalls-cpb-english.pdf
10 fast to make recipes: https://eatplant-based.com/10-simple-healthy-plant-based-recipes/
Like anything major and life changing there is a lot of out there stuff. Dr. Greger is popular and goes into extreme detail about micronutrients. None of that stuff is really needed. Jeff Novick has a series of videos called Fast Food where he breaks down how to eat like this without spending your whole life cooking. Personally cooking is my hobby so I go over and beyond but I know no matter what I can eat in 10 minutes because of Jeff.
:sweat: I need to start tracking what I eat. I burn 600 Cals a day on average from my normal routine. but my fat ass grubs so much. And usually bullshit too :swole-chonk:
Omad is great once you get used to it. Works even better on low carb/keto. I lost a fair amount doing that im combo with ellipticalling but my biggest gains/loss came from lifting. Never had i lost fat that fast. It just fell off. I lost overall 32 lbs but an estimated closer to 50 lbs of fat due to muscle gain. Started over lockdown and now none of my pants stay up without a belt. I used to need a size xl jacket and now i can wear my dads old medium sized ones and it feels pretty awesome.
It's actually great for my energy levels through the day. Before i started doing it I'd get "hangry" all the time before meals and my energy levels were all over the place. When I'm in ketosis and my bodies burning fat I just chug on along all day with a constant pace and dont feel tired (unless i slept like shit or something). At the most I'd have a fat bomb 2-3 hours into the day. It jump starts the liver to start pumping out enzymes to get you into far burning mode. Most days i don't realize how long I've been working and then its time to go home. It doesnt just make doing omad bearable it makes it an afterthought because i just don't get hungry until the evening. Fat takes a long time to burn, that's why its so hard to burn off. So when you are in fat burning mode you just go and if you have a good amount of fat stores (like me), you have plenty of fuel to burn.
The biggest downside to it is keeping electrolyte levels balanced. It's much easier to get dehydrated and can make you feel like crap but a few supplements can take care of it. Mix some "no sodium" potassium salt with some water and down a magnesium and calcium supplement and im good to go.
Oh i definitely had that problem at first. Weekends i tend to be bad but through the week it's easier as i don't have to bring a lunch to work and don't like eating out, also I'm cheap. lol. At this point though i just don't get hungry during the day. If i do eat it feels weird and wrong. I listen to my co-workers talking about breakfast and then lunch and about how they are starving after just 3 hours and im like "jesus you all sound diabetic." On the weekend i only eat during the day because "bored snacking." I will say its not for everyone and there's some research that shows it may not be as healthy for women as for men. I'll also say its drastically different when doing it with keto. If I'm not doing keto i do have to fight hunger during the day, especially in the morning, but on keto i really do feel no hunger at all.
The important thing is to find a plan thay works for you. Everybody is different and i probably wont do this forever. Especially keto as im trying to reduce meat intake. Probably never be a vegan or vegetarian but definitely want to not eat as much of it as i am now.
I’ve been stuck at 10 pounds overweight forever. Thanks for this
Cutting back on soda and beer has made the most difference for me
