I've struggled with food my whole life. It wasn't until the Clean program completely shut me off from things (no hand-holding, no exceptions) that I finally got it.

Its different for everyone. But I'd argue that just cutting soda off cold turkey is better for this project than allowing him to ease his way off. He needs some mental fortitude, not baby steps towards mental fortitude.

Because you take it step-by-step. Maybe some people struggle with artificial sugar cravings. I certainly never did. I didn't see much utility to cutting diet soda, and I lost 70 pounds. I also never struggled with sugar cravings, but I don't really have a sweet tooth.

I'm also under the impression from some things I've read that the science on that assertion is... murky at best.

Our primary goal is calorie restriction and setting basic macros. Figure out the rest once you've mastered the above.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...ts-part-1.html


That quote is from part 1 of a 4 part article discussing the 3 main types of diets, and how to choose which one is correct for you and your circumstances.

The link is for part 1. The other 3 parts are linked from there.

Re: Lyle McDonald

While the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook is a guide to crash dieting, many of the nutritional lessons in there are very useful concepts. I found it a helpful read.

I'd like to +1 whoever suggested starting a log in H&F (or a comparable forum on another site). Being part of a community, learning from people more experienced than you, and getting support will be vital to your success. A lot of the logs on H&F deal with lifting weights to gain weight or do a recomp (and another +1 to whoever suggested incorporating strength training into YTF's new routine), but a number of them deal with lifting weights and losing weight at the same time (at least one person with such a log has posted quite recently in this thread, for example). Being able to maintain your lean body mass (LBM) instead of losing it while dieting will have gigantic quality of life implications.

Being accountable to a group of people that know their **** and won't tolerate your lame excuses for why you can't will be a big part of whether or not you're successful. Whether or not it's on this site or not, some form of external support and accountability is key. Good luck.

ITT, terrible and contradictory advice is given in 45 different directions.

Yeah, this thread isn't the place for jokes. It's the place for hundreds of posts of conflicting dietary advice.

Clare's joke was definitely funny

Bolded is what I was getting at. Ultimately, you're doing this for yourself, but others will want to see your success. Being held accountable by them is just another incentive to get after it.

There are a lot of techniques you can try, but I'd just be very basic at the start.

Keep a log of what you eat, count your calories, and weigh your food. I think a food scale is mandatory for people that seriously want to lose weight. Most healthy foods don't come in prepackaged proportions.

I made it through the first few pages of this thread, so I'm grunching a bit here:

Total amount of calories in certainly matters. However, I think people are definitely discounting the effects that different types of food have on your body.

If I was overweight, here are the things I would try:

1. Immediately go to the doc and request a thyroid and hormone test. If your endocrine system is out of whack you are going to have all kinds of problems.

2. Watch your caloric intake from alcohol. Most people forget to count the beer they drink or mixed drinks at night.

3. Try eating more fat & protein and less carbs and sugar. Why? Carbs spike blood glucose levels, which triggers insulin. This results in your body storing that sugar as a fat in your adipose tissue.

The other major factor is satiety. If you're eating a modest amount of calories (< 2000), you're going to be starving all day long if you only eat carbs. The rise and crash of your blood glucose is what makes you hungry. Fatty foods tend to keep people satiated for a long time.

Another reason to consider limiting carbs, especially wheat:
a. Modern wheat contains gliadin, which has proven to be a huge appetite stimulant
b. Wheat may cause leptin resistance, which is another protein hormone that affects appetite

I've found it insanely tough to constantly avoid bread, but I feel better doing so. I'm never hungry and can eat as low as 2000 calories a day.

I think the science around most of this stuff is still relatively new and not very well tested, but it's worth a shot to try it and see how your body reacts. While most people blame overweight people for eating too much, we should probably be looking at WHY overweight people are so hungry. Self control only goes so far if you feel like you are in total starvation mode.

I see very little conflicting advice aside from some nit picking. The 2+2 H&F hive mind agrees on nearly all basic dietary concepts.

It would have been if it came 2 days ago and wasn't rehashed 4,654 different ways already.

It's like the guy running into the Super Bowl party 30 seconds after the game ended cheering for his team to win the coinflip.

Just to be clear, I recommended that he look into The Ketogenic Diet, and not The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook.

(I think Rapid Fat Loss Handbook is a crash diet based on a ketogenic diet plan, but not really sure.)

In any case, YTF needs to do research based on his own circumstances to find out what is likely correct for him.

This is an advantage of being a fatty, also a bonus for smokers. Can the more 'health conscious'pay a fee to keep you away?

but just regarding airplane seats, it is extremely annoying that I cant pay extra for more space.

Maybe you can lose those pesky twenty pounds by lightening the **** up a little

Karak has some very good points about how habits relate to your eating. Boredom, stress, etc. are frequently the cues that we use to begin an unconscious, automatic routine of snacking on ****ty food. You will need to recognize when those cues occur, catch yourself before you enter the routine, and replace it with a better routine and reward.

Also, as Montecore pointed out, joining a community helps keep you on track immensely.

(All this advice is stolen from The Power of Habit.)

you'll be hard pressed to find a less serious bizz poster than me on most topics, but perhaps i was biased but having to read your already... humorous jokes in the main scame thread.

Karak,

Have you ever considered that you might be a turd?

Karak is too humble to go into detail, but he deserves a pass for getting so jimmierustled

he's been moonlighting as the sporting events forum's legal correspondent for the Sandusky case while studying for the bar exam, so it's a stressful time. that news from his bigtime Twitterverse contacts doesn't break itself, you know.

to be honest I'd appreciate it if you eased up off his back about it.

HBO did a documentary on Vince Lombardi a year or two ago. One of the people they interviewed was John Madden, who told this story (I'm paraphrasing):

I don't have the luxury of blaming my hubris on youth, but I swear to God, I thought I knew everything there was to know about nutrition, exercise, and losing weight. Like I said, I had devoted my life to it. But this thread has been my Lombardi seminar. I really don't know the first damned thing, and that's pretty mind-blowing.


Wow, I always thought you were on my side.

I LOL'd.

Yeah, I was surprised that never came up ITT, too.

I have 2-3 Diet Cokes in the morning for the caffeine (and the sweetness, I admit it), nothing but water after breakfast. I almost never drink alcohol, and cutting it out completely when I'm in weight loss mode is no problem.


Oh boy. I've never eaten six of the first seven things you listed--I even had to google two of them. No, I'm not joking.

Oatmeal sounds like punishment. I don't like oatmeal cookies, which are more sugar than oatmeal, so I can't imagine dressing it up any way palatable. And I wish I could enjoy foods like blueberries, strawberries, oranges, grapefruits, but I can't stand 'em. I made myself start eating salads when I joined the army, but they didn't repulse me the way fruit does. Bananas are the only fruit I can stand. I might be able to tough my way through an apple, I'll have to try it again.

The green tea sounds like punishment as well. Can I just have water instead?

Finally, someone asked about weight training: Nope, I've always been told my exercise time would be better spent walking or running or bicycling, working those huge glutes and quads, they're the muscles best at burning fat. I've heard if from so many sources, I'm shocked to hear folks ITT suggest otherwise. Even had this exchange once when my new gym membership entitled me to a one-on-one session with a trainer:

TRAINER: ...you want to focus on those buttocks and thighs--

ME: (interrupting) Yeah yeah, because those larger muscles burn the most fat.

TRAINER: (shocked) You knew that???

ME: Of course! Nobody knows more about losing weight than fat people! We've been trying to beat this our whole lives!

(Like I said, I thought I knew everything.)

Yeah you defo need to go to a psychologist if you respond to these posts like this. The reason this thread started was because you told me that you had done everythinnnngggggg to lose weight and it just wasn't happening through no fault of your own. Then you get berated and kind of come to terms with the facts that you really dont know anything about losing weight.

Anyways, yes, maybe these things will feel like a punishment. But that's the point. The reward comes when you are not a fat slob anymore. The whole getting there part is the work (WORK IS NOT EASY). If you think like that you will never ever have the mental fortitude to do this. As it stands, I feel like you are a huge underdog. You are still deluded into thinking that losing half your body weight is not going to be that tough. Listen, it's gonna suck for you, but if you want to lose weight, food should be used your source of physical energy. You shouldn't look to food as a pleasure thing anymore. I think you will fail because of sentences like "I might be able to tough my way through an apple, I'll have to try it again." Pretty telling imo. You like fattening/sugary food too much, it's become to much a fabric of your life. The only way you'll be able to make a diet work is if you stop looking at food as a pleasure center and as just energy. Anyways I don't have much faith in you succeeding but I hope I'm wrong. GL.

ytf- This is a serious post:

There is an ENORMOUS difference in like how filling different foods are for the same calories. Think about like, a chicken breast vs. a bowl of tortilla chips. Experiment with seasoning and **** like that to trigger satiety after the fewest calories.

For most people, that's gonna come from lightly spiced lean meat and dense green veggies(brussel sprouts, broccoli, etc.). There is a reason they don't serve cheesecake as an appetizer, basically.

One last thing on the weight training vs army pushups and running:

When I was discharged, I was actually pretty ripped from my chest up and from my hips down--but I was still huge around the middle. While home on leave, I was whining about this predicament to the guys in the poolroom. One of the old guys had been a competitive bodybuilder 30 years earlier. He pointed to my gut and asked me, "How long have you been carrying that around?"

"My whole life," I told him.

He made a face. "Aw, then you're screwed. It's all hardened and turned to **** in there, you're never gonna lose that!"

So how could I not think to myself that I'm just stuck with this look?

Grunch.
Idk if anyone mentioned counting calories with a smartphone app. There are many great apps that make it super easy to count calories. You can set how many pounds you want to lose a week and it will give you a calorie budget for each day.

This does many great things for weight loss.

1. goals
2. calorie counts on foods. this gives you an added dimension to choose food as a fuel as opposed to how good it tasted and how much it fills you up or what it costs.
3. exercise calorie values. when you find out how hard you have to work to burn the calories from that extra candy bar you are going to be more likely to decide you don't need it.
4. accountability. at the end of the day when you are wayy over you calorie budget you have no one to blame but yourself.

Is calling me a slob supposed to be motivational? Or do you just toss that word in to be a dick? I swear to God, if you called me that to my face, I'd stretch you right out.