Of course it's a ton of food, but for someone like me (and certainly for people much bigger than me), it's relatively easy to do. I'm 6'1 and 210 right now (and on the heavier side of where I normally am), so it's not like I'm a giant. I'd eat the same meal (minus the beer) when I was 16 and 6'1 and 135. I guess that's why I'm 75 lbs heavier.

Easily. I'm fairly stuffed after something like that, but I really enjoy being stuffed so full it hurts. I'm a bit surprised it was only 4350 calories, though.

You are assuming way too healthy for the other meals. Something like 6 Krispy Kreme donuts = 1200 calories for breakfast. Add in a pint of milk, that's another 300 to get you to 1500.

1200 calories for lunch is certainly within reason.

Liquid calories are the easiest way to really add it up. I was under the assumption that my worst meals out + drinks was around 5-6000 calories, so getting to 8000 is a lot easier then, but I overestimated how bad the bad meals were.

If you have a night of heavy drinking, that's easy to hit 2000 calories there. It's actually gotten a lot harder for me to eat enormous amounts of food. I used to be able to handle 60 wings before, but eating 20 will fill me up now with sides and drinks. I have a lot of pretty big relatives, uncles well over 300 (who have yo-yo dieted down and up), my dad was 240ish most his adult life, but got down to 190 before he died. Grandfather is probably about 240. It's easy for us to eat big.

My grandmothers breakfasts easily would be over 1500 calories though. Pretty much consists of:

1 glass OJ
1 glass milk
4 eggs
4 pieces bacon
4 sausage links
8 small slices of bread w/ butter and jam

I eat that, and literally don't have to eat until 6pm.

GOMAD + protein powder = pro weight gain diet. Think I had like 1500 calories for breakfast per day with eggs or breakfast tacos + 2 servings protein powder w/ milk. Breakfast of champions. Also, very good way to go from 190 to 230 in 4 months.

i did the protein powder too, i probably just needed to work out more while doing it. i havent weighed myself in years but could tell i gained a bit in the arms and chest, but as i said most went straight to my stomach which is notagoodlook

and on the topic of eating pig out spots: japanese steakhouse for me. love everything the serve.

Yeah, super easy to feel stuffed there.

The weird thing with me was I went from 190 to 230, and I had severe skinny-fat at 190. I got up to 230, saw people I hadn't seen in a while, they literally would come up to me and say "did you lose weight? you look a lot thinner!" LOL @ them. Was heaviest I ever was. But shoulders broadened out a ton, chest got a lot bigger. Belly was a small amount bigger, waist was smaller tho. But havent worked out as much since then, and its drifting back to my belly. But don't look as skinny fat as before at least, just well proportioned semi-overweight guy now.

Was it a lack of mental fortitude? Is there no other possibility?

I'm guessing you have no experience dropping 80 pounds and still being 100+ pounds overweight, so let me tell you what it's like--there's more to it than meets the eye.

First, it takes constant, round-the-clock dedication to get this far. It's a never ending battle. Now, if we're all supposed to weigh the same, how come I need to battle for what comes easily to others? Doesn't that, all by itself, suggest the notion that we're all supposed to weigh the same is nuts?

Second, here comes the plateau. None of you diet and calorie know-it-alls have addressed that yet. Suddenly, at a certain point, the pounds stop coming off. Why? I'm still doing exactly what I did to get to this point--why did the progress stop?

"Oh, he must be sneaking in a candy bar!" Please take me at my word when I say that's not it. Again, I'm doing exactly what I did to drop the first 80. Why did the pounds stop coming off? Why do these meals feel less satisfying? Again, when I use the world "satisfying", I don't mean "as delicious as a cheeseburger", but rather I mean, "Wow, I just ate the whole thing and I'm still hungry." What changed? I promise you, it's a PHYSICAL change, not a mental one. My BODY is resisting my efforts to lose this weight, to burn this fat.

After a while, if this "constant dedication", this "never-ending battle" gets you nowhere, you know what? You stop fighting it. Sure, I could keep battling to stay on that plateau, but I'm still fatter than anyone you know, so why bother? If I'm going to be the fattest guy you know, then I'm taking the bacon that goes with it!

Thanks, but everyone I've ever seen get it, puts the weight back on. And many of them run into complications. It seems like a dangerous way to get nowhere.

Every word of this is wrong. Or, at least it was at the Presidio of Monterey in 1992:

--I never failed a PT test. On the day I was discharged, I had the highest PT score in my platoon, out of the kids who had similar time in service. Back then, a score of 300 points (100 each in pushups, situps, and 2-mile run) was a "max". Our company had a policy that anyone scoring 270 or better (average 90+ in each) was excused from mandatory PT, and had their name posted on a big display near the CO's office. My last PT test I scored a 269 (and my scores were rising with each monthly diagnostic test).

--The extra PT I mention was "Overweight PT". While the other kids were doing an hour of stretching and pushups on Mon-Wed-Fri, the Overweight PT'ers went off separately, and here's how I spent my year in Monterey:

Mon-Wed-Fri: Six mile run
Tue-Thr: 30 mins of pushups and situps (can't ignore those in the army), 30 minutes at the fitness center doing something aerobic (I played racquetball with my friends, usually staying 90 minutes, my friends tag-teaming me, keeping me on the court the full 90).

That was the mandatory stuff. On Saturdays, I'd get on my bicycle and pedal Monterey's famous 17-mile Drive. Tack on a couple of miles each way to get there and back, and we're over 20 miles on the bike each week.

Sundays I'd rest. I'd have to--I couldn't get out of bed! "Extra stretching", indeed!

Guys, I know it goes counter to everything you've been told your whole life, and it's hard to accept such ideas, but look at that workout schedule, and tell me how anybody who trained like that could be kicked out? Not only for failing to make weight, but for not even coming CLOSE to the number! I was 25 years old, I should have been able to eat pizza and milkshakes every night and STILL made weight with that sort of workout schedule!

--Yes, the NCO in charge of the Overweight PT program was there, watching what his charges were eating, every meal. Just like boot camp. Remember, this was AIT, we weren't free and clear of that boot camp mentality just yet (yes, AIT lasts a year or more at the foreign language school in Monterey).

--There were no fast food outlets on base in Monterey when I was there. There may have been a no-name pizza or burger joint in the tiny PX, but I swear on my mother, I never ate there, not once. I will allow that near the end, when I could take no more crying myself to sleep, I was calling out for pizza or Chinese delivery, but the die had already been cast by that point, were already one year+ into this nonsense.

I don't know why I need to type all this. This entire discussion should have went like this:

I don't know how you can read what I've written today, and conclude that I lack the will.

I can only imagine that either you're not listening to what I'm saying (eating doesn't relieve my hunger the way it relieves yours), or that we have different definitions of "will".

To me, "will" is wanting a candy bar or a cupcake, and saying no to it.

It seems to me that you guys define will as: "Even though you feel like you haven't eaten in three days, you should try not eat right now." If that's will, then you're right, I don't have that. I don't WANT that. But I can't believe that any of you live like that, either. If I'm wrong about that, tell me. I'll be shocked, but I'll believe you.

I'm done posting about this, it's all stuff I've written before, any way.

Oh, one last thing:

You'd lose that bet. He's always been more active than the other two combined.

Now the three of them are hitting their teen years, and he's starting to eat more than the others. His mother and grandmother are horrified by it. He's not weak--he's just got what I've got, an abnormal appetite that isn't satiated by normal eating.

Maybe "choose to be gay" was a bad example earlier, but the word "abnormal" has me thinking: You guys wouldn't go to the nuthouse and chide the patients for not trying hard enough to be like everybody else. You'd realize that there's something abnormal about their physical makeup. It's completely illogical to think that NOBODY IN THE WORLD could have something abnormal about their metabolism, or appetite, or whatever the root cause happens to be.

(I had so much to do today, and I didn't get to any of it, I got so sucked into this.)

I get you ytf

ytf's plight is not that unreasonable- different people have different urges for food. Fat people, on average, have a much different brain chemistry when it comes to reacting to food. He very likely is on the high side of it being really hard to not eat or at least get satisfaction from food. The amount of effort he has to put in would be much higher than your typical person. There is plenty of science that backs this up and makes it not just lack of will power.

But there it still comes down to a calories in/calories out. There are extra steps someone like him can take to not have those urges. Eating slower, eating more filling but low calorie meals, etc... are all things that can be done to counteract it. And in the worst cases, gastric bypass or something similar that will actually change the signals that go to the brain.

He deserves some slack. He admits to just craving the food in ways that are really tough to stop. It's most likely a brain chemistry issue that is out of his control (for his desires), but not completely out of control to cope with.

Ytf,

As you lose weight, you need to eat less if you want to keep losing weight.

As for will, yes, will is not eating when you're hungry.

youtalkfunny I think what everybody is saying is this:

Tom,

I agree with what you wrote there. But what I said before still holds. Unlikely JP OSU, LFS and others got to how big they were without similar physical and psychological challenges. They managed to do it and so can ytf. Nobody is saying it's easy.

I agree. But I think ytf also suffers from a lack of proper education on weight loss. For example, his super active days from Army days seem like barely anything. Based on how terrible a lot of military fitness programs are, it's not surprising if that's where he gets his knowledge of this. Army food is also going to be fairly caloricly dense (I'm sure his NCO was nowhere close to properly trained on how to actually help people).

There are things he could actually do to make it a lot easier. But a lot is lack of will power and a nature to make excuses to remove responsibility. It's within reason to expect to be able to drop enough. Add some muscle mass and walk an hour a day and it's actually quite hard to eat enough to maintain that much weight. I wouldn't expect him to get down to 180 or anything, but it should be something within his reach. Unless, of course, he wants to. And it doesn't involve "feeling like I'm going to die of starvation". Whenever I need to lose weight, I will feel pretty terrible, and eventually the pain goes away and I get used to eating smaller amounts, and it's easier with time.

All,

You can make up whatever pseuso-nonsense you want about just being fat or your body wanting to say at a weight, or just having to eat more than other people. You can't hide from the laws of thermodynamics.

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy is never created or destroyed. Simply put, if you consume more calories than you burn the excess energy will be stored as fat. If you you consume fewer calories fat will be burned to balance the equation out.

The laws of physics are not your mommy or your camp counselor, they are just there and they treat everyone the same.

For the last 2 months eating less than I wanted (I'm 6'2") and slowly losing weight. Actual weight lost matches up with my (calories in - calories out)/3500 almost perfectly

Something else that should be pointed out is he doesn't need to get down to 180 to be healthy. I read a study showing losing 7% of your body mass helps a ton (i.e. going from 300 to 280)

The whole "body adjusting to the diet, not letting me lose weight" thing is ******ed, a lie, and an excuse. As long as you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight.

Damn son, good work, keep it up.

As an aside, he has no chance at losing that weight. Willpower is exactly what he knows it is, the choice to not eat when you are "hungry". He just isn't willing to do it. I wasn't trying to be a dick earlier but WOW at crying over being hungry after having eaten. You were crying in basic training over being hungry, that would have sucked if you actually had to go to war, Jesus Christ... LOLOLOL. You need to force yourself to consume fewer and fewer calories if you are trying to lose weight. Obviously you plateau when you do the same thing, that's basic logic. That graph shows it perfectly imo. Thanks for the post.

I'm on keto and have lost about 30 lbs since starting it in Feb. (check my post in H&F for progress pics).

Keto is a godsend for people who want to lose fat and still eat fulfilling foods.

youtalkfunny,

Definitely this. What you need to do to lose weight is simple, but not easy. And I don't know why you keep bringing up the notion that "we all should weigh the same." No one is saying that. But there is clearly a healthy weight for a body type and an unhealthy weight. That varies for different people. But I think we can all agree that 300+ lbs is almost never a healthy weight except for very extreme circumstances.

You are also putting a lot of emphasis on exercise, when exercise really doesn't accomplish that much when it comes to the calories in/calories out equation. Diet is 90%+ of the battle. It's just way easier to not eat 100 calories then it is to burn it off. In fact, it's insane how hard it is to burn off 100 calories when you think about it. That's why so many people start going to the gym, but don't change their diet, then wonder why they aren't losing weight.

And I know plenty of people who have had gastric bypass and lost weight and kept it off. Are they model thin? No, but they've lost 100+ lbs and gotten themselves out of the morbidly obese range and on track to a healthy lifestyle.

It's not easy ytf. I understand. But the main problem in this thread has been people spreading misinformation and misunderstanding how calories work. As long as people are truly believing that they are eating 1600 calories and gaining that much weight, people are just going to give up on trying to lose weight at all cuz clearly it's impossible in that scenario! My mom went to doctors and swore up and down she was counting and weighing everything that went in her mouth and not exceeding 1500 calories a day. She was prescribed diet pills ffs. What finally worked for her was weight watchers which, at its core, is just calorie counting. And now she's down to what she weighed when she was 30. Good luck ytf.

This.

ytf, have you ever done a serious weight training program?

Your Army training seemed really cardio heavy, which doesn't do much for increasing lbm.

let this guy be your inspiration:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=126397703

It can work, and work extremely well. It requires total buy-in, and there is significant risk involved. It's certainly not for everybody and is nothing approaching a silver bullet. It's very possible to eat through the bypass, as I guess you have seen in other people. So if you have thought it over and don't think it's for you, then it probably isn't. Just thought I would throw it out there.

There was an older version of bypass surgery that was extremely effective in achieving weight loss, more so than what is currently used. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people died, so they stopped doing it that way. But if you survived, you were gonna be thin.

Anyway, I'm not going to pile on here, I'm sure you've heard it all before. Best of luck.

I don't think anyone is trying to say that everyone craves/enjoys food the same way. I think there are natural differences we're born with concerning this and habitual differences, meaning that when you are used to eating an excess amount of calories for years and years the feeling of eating at maintenance or a deficit is extremely painful mentally and physically. The feeling of being stuffed regularly and never being hungry really changes your brain. I've been able to quit smoking and drinking fairly easily but food is something that I still crave badly and eating at a slight deficit just sucks.

The thing that is the same though for everyone: net calories = (calories consumed) - (calories burned).

I do hope you find a way to make it work, youtalkfunny.

Also, this is one hell of a thread derail. Did not see this thread taking a turn...

I didn't realize this turned into a pure ************ thread.

I have a real scam (never tried it but am sure it would work at least 5% of the time):

Say you forgot to move your car for street cleaning here in San Francisco. You will probably get a ticket for ~$65 that the kind parking enforcement folks will put on your windshield. Chances are that someone else also forgot to move their car and got a ticket at the same time as you. What you do is take the ticket off of their car and put your ticket under their windshield wipers. If that person forgets to verify that the license plate on the ticket is theirs, they will just pay that ticket (your ticket) and you profit$.

If you get a courtesy notice from parking a few weeks later that the ticket is not paid, you just pay it then. Freeroll.

Of course this is horrible and totally screws over the other person so please never do this.

since karak brought this up to me again and now im mad, i shall add this


ive been dieting again recently.

i went to the beach for 2 weeks. during that 2 weeks, i gained 15 lbs.

this was while being active/swimming/running around the ocean for 3 hrs a day. playing golf 2x. working out 3 times a week in the gym. walking 1 mile a day to and fro the ocean.


i drank heavily ~12 drinks 2 days. I did have around 4-5 drinks a day.


lunch typically consisted of a sandwich or omelet. 2 days i had 1 sausage with peppers. 3 days i had left over salad for lunch.

we ate out often. i had fried seafood 3 times. BBQ half chicken twice. grilled/baked fish/shrimp ~3 times. 2 times grilled chicken salad. 1 time seafood pasta with a cream sauce 1 small piece of stouffers lasagna one night and 2 slices of pizza another night.

i snacked most days. 1 bag of chips and dip, or some nuts, or some chips and salsa. occasionally leftover salad.

i had dessert most nights. light portioned ice cream (~180 calories), shared a slice of cheesecake twice (4 ways). had a slice of coconut cake once. had some oreos.



so, an average lunch for me was probably ~400 calories.

have to figure an average dinner was fairly large, so maybe ~1000 calories

alcohol- ~1000 calories a day

snacks- ~300 calories a day

dessert ~300 calories a day


taking those averages puts me at 3000 calories a day. lets assume i somehow underestimated by 1000 calories. so thats 4k a day.


now for the math geniuses out there, what is 15 lbs over 13 days? well, that leaves me a surplus of ~4000 calories a day. well something doesnt add up.




IM SUCH A FREAK, I BROKE PHYSICS GUYS. ITS NOT EVEN POSSIBLE BUT I DID IT!!!!

someone close this thread or shut up the goddamn non-scam-story posts please. WHO CARES. GODDAMN. TAKE IT TO THE FITNESS FORUM OR SOMETHING.

Yeota,

Thanks for the rundown. Nice job eating 4000 cals a day and only gaining 15 lbs in 2 weeks, your metabolism must've really perked up. Normally eating 1600 cals a day you'd gain nearly the same amount, so well done on your metabolism's part. However, we can solve this riddle using Occam's pretty easily, what's more likely

a) YeotaJMU has defied thermodynamics and/or gets his food from the same guy who sold Jack his Beanstalk Beans

or

b) YeotaJMU is yet another fat person who has no clue how many calories are in food

well im sorry you cant see the difference in a 260lb person and a 215 lb person

im sorry my "roughly 16-1800 calories in about a month" = EXACTLY 1600 calories a day for EXACTLY 30 days



im just a ****ing enigma, man