Losing weight when you don't have time to lose it

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I think it's all be said in this thread but I'll add my two bits from experience.

1) You can't loose weight with exercise. Exercise is a must for good health. It will reinforce weight loss and establish a long term baseline. But you won't loose weight without changing diet. You can run for three hours and a single Snicker bars will replace the calories you burned.

2) Cutting calories and going on a starvation diet will take off weight. It's also very unhealthy, miserable and unsustainable. It never lasts.

3) Cutting out Carbohydrates (to 30 grams or less a day) from your diet will result in healthy weight loss. No need to count calories or ever be hungry. Eat as much chicken, cheese, greens, meat, as you like. Snack on beef jerky or a good cheese. Your blood pressure, cholesterol, and tri-glycerides (blood sugar levels) will all improve. After you hit a goal weight you can add back good carbs like brown rice in moderation.

4) Just say no to Sugar or Potatoes forever with the exception of a little Birthday Cake a couple times a year.

Around a dozen years ago I lost about 40 pounds this way (3) and kept most of it off since then. I picked up about 10 pounds this last year with Covid disrupting things and am doing some fine tuning again now. Funny thing is that I used to walk 2 miles every morning 7 days a week for the last dozen years. Starting in March last year, staying at home and not working I had more time and upped it to 4-5 miles a day. I still put on weight as I slipped up on the Sugar and Potato rule...
 
1) You can't loose weight with exercise. Exercise is a must for good health. It will reinforce weight loss and establish a long term baseline. But you won't loose weight without changing diet. You can run for three hours and a single Snicker bars will replace the calories you burned.
I agree with much of your post, but this isn't true. Especially the last sentence. Yes, for moderate amounts of exercise, increased hunger will drive your caloric intake to match what you've burned.

But there is a cap to this. Once you reach around 5 hours and 2500 calories a week more than you are currently doing, exercise alone will lead to weight loss. But it requires a big commitment. 20 years ago, I lost 50 pounds of fat (and gained 20 pounds of muscle) by using a rowing machine and averaging the caloric equivalent of a 6 to 7 mile run every day. It took 6 months to lose the weight. I kept it going for 7 years, until my son was born.

There's a recent study on this at Exercise for Weight Loss: Further Evaluating Energy... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise . A more readable summary is here: To Lose Weight With Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week
 
I agree with much of your post, but this isn't true. Especially the last sentence. Yes, for moderate amounts of exercise, increased hunger will drive your caloric intake to match what you've burned.

But there is a cap to this. Once you reach around 5 hours and 2500 calories a week more than you are currently doing, exercise alone will lead to weight loss. But it requires a big commitment. 20 years ago, I lost 50 pounds of fat (and gained 20 pounds of muscle) by using a rowing machine and averaging the caloric equivalent of a 6 to 7 mile run every day. It took 6 months to lose the weight. I kept it going for 7 years, until my son was born.

There's a recent study on this at Exercise for Weight Loss: Further Evaluating Energy... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise . A more readable summary is here: To Lose Weight With Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

Except you say nothing about your dietary intake. There are plenty of linemen who work out a lot more than you did and weigh 350 pounds and have a big gut.

The OP here specifically outlined how she does not have that kind of time or commitment to exercise. I agree it is helpful, but for MOST humans it is not a winning strategy.

I can assure you that last year I consistently burned way over 3000 calories a week walking in hilly terrain for 8-10 hours a week, plus weightlifting and cold water shore diving with 100lbs of gear a few times a week. I put on weight because I got a bit loose with my diet and corona-stress ate tortilla chips too many times.
 
Eat as much chicken, cheese, greens, meat, as you like. Snack on beef jerky or a good cheese. Your blood pressure, cholesterol, and tri-glycerides (blood sugar levels) will all improve.
Are you sure?? I am not a dietician, but eating as much cheese and/or meat (especially red/fatty one) as one would like sounds like a disaster for one's cholesterol and weight. Those foods, apart from a lot of proteins, are also full of fat and hence should be eaten in moderation if one's goal is good health and fat loss.

As for :
4) Just say no to Sugar or Potatoes forever
As we all know this is easier said than done. Just restrain from eating sugars (eg sweets and/or unhealthy snacks) most of the time doesn't work in the long term. It is a matter of time that we fall back to our old habits and usually within minutes, hours or days we eat again more than the sweets we haven't eaten since we started the "diet" - been there done that.
The reason for all these is quite simple: our brains are addicted to high sugar (and fat) foods, a fact that is also reinforced by very common behavioral habits (from infants we are constantly rewarded with sweets - hence our brain is trained to think sweets equal to good).
The solution is to train our brain how to handle carvings and how to get out of this behavioral habit/trap so that we don't fall back to them again.
An excellent program/guide that teaches exactly this is this program Heal Your Relationship with Food | Eat Right Now . I started with that program exactly one year ago (6 months subscription was enough for me). By summer I had lost about 20 kg (1/5th of my weight). That is just by behavior training without doing any regular exercise and without ever measuring calories/carbs/proteins amounts. Following that, I started exercising regularly and my weight is still (slowly) decreasing. For example Christmas/New Year holidays just passed and I effortlessly "survived" with eating less than 3-4 servings of sweets in total. For comparison, in the past, 3-4 servings of sweets was my typical daily intake especially for holiday periods.
All the best
 
Are you sure?? I am not a dietician, but eating as much cheese and/or meat (especially red/fatty one) as one would like sounds like a disaster for one's cholesterol and weight. Those foods, apart from a lot of proteins, are also full of fat and hence should be eaten in moderation if one's goal is good health and fat loss.

Yes, and there are many studies and clinical trails to back it up. Our old school Dietary guidelines have a long and sad history of failure that led to an epidemic of obesity.

A recent report on this: TLDR; Not a recipe for heart attack, heart health improves in participants in low carb trails.

Low-carb diets: An easy way to lose weight or recipe for heart attack?
 
Except you say nothing about your dietary intake.
That's the point. I ate what I wanted. If you read the referenced journal article, they found that the 6 times a week exercise group had changes in the hormones that regulate hunger.

The OP here specifically outlined how she does not have that kind of time or commitment to exercise. I agree it is helpful, but for MOST humans it is not a winning strategy.
Which is why I did not mention it in my earlier posts directed to the OP. I only brought it up in response to the specific part of your previous post that I quoted. I also made clear that is not easy. I was a competitive swimmer and water polo player, so I knew I could physically handle long workouts and I had the time to do them. Until my kids were born and I didn't.

I can assure you that last year I consistently burned way over 3000 calories a week walking in hilly terrain for 8-10 hours a week, plus weightlifting and cold water shore diving with 100lbs of gear a few times a week. I put on weight because I got a bit loose with my diet and corona-stress ate tortilla chips too many times.
I said the weight loss starts around 2500 calories a week "more than you are currently doing". You can reach an equilibrium at any level of exercise. But greatly increase or decrease your caloric expenditure and it will take months before your appetite changes to match.

I've seen this from both sides. After my last water polo game in college, it took a long time before my appetite decreased enough for me to stop gaining weight. This was despite my taking up judo and triathlons, I simply wasn't doing anything like the caloric effort of daily hours of hard pool workouts.
 
Yes, and there are many studies and clinical trails to back it up. Our old school Dietary guidelines have a long and sad history of failure that led to an epidemic of obesity.

A recent report on this: TLDR; Not a recipe for heart attack, heart health improves in participants in low carb trails.

Low-carb diets: An easy way to lose weight or recipe for heart attack?

Sorry article is behind a paywall, but as far as I could read it was talking mostly about low-carb diets and not high fat ones as the ones you suggest. As I said I am not an expert, but I find it very strange that by eating (among others) as much meat and cheese one likes (while reducing carbs) one can expects great health benefits. Of course as always I can be wrong.

All the best
 
Sorry article is behind a paywall, but as far as I could read it was talking mostly about low-carb diets and not high fat ones as the ones you suggest. As I said I am not an expert, but I find it very strange that by eating (among others) as much meat and cheese one likes (while reducing carbs) one can expects great health benefits. Of course as always I can be wrong.

All the best

Here is a classic article on this topic. It is a good starting place if you are interested in this approach.

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? (Published 2002)
 
Sorry article is behind a paywall, but as far as I could read it was talking mostly about low-carb diets and not high fat ones as the ones you suggest. As I said I am not an expert, but I find it very strange that by eating (among others) as much meat and cheese one likes (while reducing carbs) one can expects great health benefits. Of course as always I can be wrong.

All the best

The bigger question here is about blood sugar spikes and how the body handles it. If I eat a bowl of mashed potatoes or a bowl of mashed avocados, which is healthier? Yes, this is a trick question because everyone knows that a person following a low blood sugar diet will always choose the avocados, but the question remains the same. The avocados are super high in healthy fats, but extremely low in carbohydrate.

A person thinking that a low fat, high fiber, good carbs diet is healthy is applying this to everyone without consideration of existing health conditions, specifically type 2 diabetes.

A diet of beef, pork, chicken, fish, seafood, fatty dairy and non-starchy vegetables is the best diet for a type 2 diabetic. Carbohydrate converts 100% to glucose, protein 50% and fats 10%. If you are diabetic, which is best? If you aren't diabetic, which is likely best if you are "pre" diabetic?

Ingestion of cholesterol is not an end game for overall cholesterol readings. Look at eggs. Poo-pooed by doctors for nearly a decade, when it is now considered a perfect food. Cholesterol readings are a reflection of liver function and when following a diabetic, low carb, higher healthy fat diet, cholesterol and triglyceride levels fall to normal levels within a couple of months of initiating the dietary change.

The reality is whether a person adopts the dietary change as a lifestyle change or a temporary diet. Everyone that craps on a low carb diet points to the failures when a person binges on cookies, cake and ice cream instead of looking at the people that actually changed their lifestyle of eating. We focus on the failures and not the massive successes.

The medical industry is heavily influenced by money from other industries. Doctors are following existing "science", which are studies funded by industry and will flip flop from decade to decade. Funny how some of our newer "scientific data" is starting to reflect what we saw in the 60's and 70's. The data from 80's and 90's is starting to be reversed, especially as it pertains to cardiac care and dietary issues....
 
You are wrong.
I can certainly be as I said, but please help me to understand what exactly I am wrong about???

I never proposed ANY diet if you see my posts. I have never and I will never count calories and exact amount of protein or carbs or whatever in MY diet. The only thing I proposed for those interested was to consider the method "eat right now" that worked wonders for me. FYI 6 months in that program I was never asked to count calories or fat or protein content or adjust what to eat accordingly. Such dietary info was there for those interested (I was not) but it is complementary.

Apart from this, I questioned (honestly) the proposal by @davehicks about "Eat as much chicken, cheese, greens, meat, as you like" (his words, my bold for emphasis). And he was talking about general public - not diabetics or whatever.

BTW in general I agree with you, I just find recipes like: "cut this, cut that, eat as much as you like of this and that and you will be healthy" hard to believe (and implement).

All the best
 

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