I completely agree.

Victor/suzzer,

Here's the next paragraph from wiki: "Thus there are differences in BMR even when comparing two subjects with the same lean body mass. The top 5% of people are metabolizing energy 28-32% faster than individuals with the lowest 5% BMR.[9] For instance, one study reported an extreme case where two individuals with the same lean body mass of 43 kg had BMRs of 1075 kcal/day (4.5 MJ) and 1790 kcal/day (7.5 MJ). This difference of 715 kcal (67%) is equivalent to one of the individuals completing a 10 kilometer run every day.[9]"

So, yes, there's clearly a significant range, but it simply doesn't matter here, especially at this point. What's very clear is that there is PLENTY of room to easily reduce ytf's caloric intake by a lot. And that will lead to weight loss. Will his weight loss be a little slower pace than some other people would see at the same caloric deficit? Perhaps. But if he loses 15 lbs when someone else might have lost 20, whatever.

This sums up my interaction and experience with doctors and the medical establishment very well. No one knows your body better than you. We have been conditioned to defer to supposed professionals, but that is really just a load of bull****.

Your first mission should be to unlearn everything you think you know about nutrition and health. Google, wiki, medscape, and H&F at 2+2 are your friends. Listen to your body. Write in a journal everything you physically and mentally experience. What time you get up, what you eat, drink, and smoke, including quantities. Weigh your food. Rate your general mental well being or mood on a scale from 1-10. Include notes for potential triggers or symptoms for depression, anxiety, or self destructive thoughts. If you are having gastro problems keep a log of bowel movements including frequency and consistency. Weigh yourself once a week.

Gather the data and look for patterns. Physical and mental health are directly related to diet. Stop listening to the people who got you to where you are today and start owning your own life. It starts with unlearning what you think you know and getting to know your body and mind.

suzzer,

"Talk to a boby builder about losing weight. You hit plateaus. Sometimes you can eat too little and your body goes into shutdown mode. Sometimes you need to carb-load. Etc. Yeota had already dieted so hard it's very possible he hit one of those plateaus."

Please don't respond to my posts with random generalizations. I know about all of that stuff, but that is largely irrelevant wrt yeota. I said yeota was completely delusional about his tracking because he was completely delusional about his tracking. Based on some of the specific numbers he has cited, anything he has written about his caloric intake and associated weight loss/gain should be treated as pure fiction.

or just eat less

Well I tend to believe him more or less. Occam's razor to me says he's closer to accurate (with some water weight, and slip ups not cataloged) vs. the alternative that some guy feels it's really important to lie on the internet about this, or is just crazy. Does Yeota have a history of fanciful stories on 2p2?

I just think there might have been a lot of water weight involved in the 25 lbs in a month thing. I watched my friend gain 30 lbs in a month in freaking high school eating a tube of cookie dough every day.

Dude he claimed to have literally generated 5 pounds of mass from thin air.

I think that diet suggested may have been a bit limiting, although there is a pretty big variety of ways to mix and cook such things such that they will be enjoyable. But it does take a while to really change your palette. Just work on the palette changing at a different time than trying to worry about cutting the calories so it's not all at once. Learn to enjoy those foods in addition right now, then when you cut, it's not a huge change all at once and you aren't as miserable. Like seriously, go to a bowl of oatmeal with syrup and bananas and nuts in it, and it will be really tasty and fill you up with a few weeks. If you need to, have a bagel on the side. The point is to open up your palette to be able to enjoy those foods. You need to be able to fill your stomach up to curb the hunger pains without taking in as many calories. Practice eating slower. Drink a lot more water. Try waiting a little bit of time before eating. Doing it gradually will make it less bad.


Doctors are going to generally deal with much more wide range of things. But it really takes no knowledge for them to act like they have expertise and pass some really basic exam to become a trainer. And sometimes not even then. You need to talk to a nutritionist, not a trainer. Your army experiences with weight loss were so bad. Army food by its nature is designed to be calorically dense and designed more for helping people get energy than lose weight. The "weight loss experts" there were clowns that didn't understand anything other than herp-derp eat less and run. So of course it sucked for you.

So while your experiences in the past have been unnecessarily difficult, there are better ways to do things. And it's super easy to resign yourselves toward "too much effort", but you don't need to go that far if you don't want. You don't need to take the extreme super-fast system with an abrupt lifestyle change. Work on small things until you feel comfortable, and then work on a new thing. But you have to want it and have to be able to deal with a little bit of discomfort. If you don't want it, then there's nothing anyone here can help with. And I understand not wanting to suffer too much for it. There's a level where every one of us just says "it's not really worth it to put more than X effort into it." That's why everyone here could be a bit more healthier or a bit stronger or better looking. But you aren't beyond help, and it won't be as bad as you are making it out to be.

You really want to make sustainable lifestyle changes, and any of the suggestions that will result in you hating life will at best be only temporary, which is why so many fatties put back the weight on, plus more. So set a modest goal that is attainable, then set a new one. Maybe work on just making breakfast healthier and enjoyable. Or get a gym membership and start on weight training. Get a good trainer to show you the proper techniques for barbell training. Something small to get you going and prove to yourself that you can handle it and start improving your life. Taking a few minor steps and succeeding can give you a lot of confidence and make the rest a lot easier. Hell, even if you did something like lost 10lbs for the year, which would not take a severe lifestyle change could be a good first step.

There are a lot of helpful people here, and you just have to be willing to listen and actually desire the change. No one wants to see you suffer, barring a few idiots, and you can do it. That was basically the message from El Diablo- once you commit to this and actually take a sustainable plan, the only thing to stop you is you. Your previous plans sucked. That's not your fault necessarily, so try to work towards one you can change. Like the breakfast example, maybe your goal for the next 30 days is to move to a healthier breakfast and cut out 200 calories a day from that. There's absolutely no reason you can't do that and still have the same level of satisfaction from food.

suzzer,

Nobody's saying he's crazy or a liar. Occam's Razor would say the same thing that many of us said, that he almost certainly simply underestimated portion sizes and/or neglected to log a bunch of stuff.

By the way, I've been skipping meals left and right since this thread exploded. Not a conscious decision to do so, I just haven't been hungry.

That, like every post I've made so far ITT, should be good for another 50 flames.

You don't get to 40+ years of age and > 300lbs without mental baggage and physical manifestations related to the stress of being large. ytf already talked about his knees, I'd wager there is more going on.

Life needs to be treated holistically. Not piecemeal. "eat less" just doesn't cut it. It doesn't address any triggers, any health issues that have manifested themselves in the intervening years, and comes off as aids as your sn. Like telling a depressed person to "be happy". You do that and you've gone full ******.

start logging your calories yet?

I don't know what makes you think we would flame you for not eating if you're not hungry. If you had eaten despite not being hungry, more flaming would ensue, I'm sure.

It is an emotional response. Log it. Data points and analysis solve problems. You've gone from insatiable hunger to skipping meals. Figure out why. Your body is trying to tell you something.

No, it really does cut it.

I have been through serious diet problems on the other end of the scale (~130lb, 5'11 age 22, diet consisting entirely of liquids), went thru of rounds of counselling, CBT, all of it. always ended up back on a self destructive path.

in the end i figured out the solution on my own: eat more. so i did. and by jove it worked.

ytf needs to eat less. its that simple.

Sometimes it's easier to skip meals than to stick to your diet meals/snacks at the planned intervals. But from my experience the latter gets much better results.

OP, just a quick comment that oatmeal is probably not the healthiest option for you:

http://blog.trackyourplaque.com/2010...od-or-bad.html

OP, have you been checked for diabetes or prediabetes?

Go to a doc and ask for:
1. An HbA1c test ( measures your average blood glucose over the last 90 days or so)
2. Fasting glucose test
3. Pick up a glucose meter for $10, and start checking your number 1 hour after every meal.

Something like oatmeal (along with all other grains) is going to spike the hell out of your blood sugar and add fat.

Also, I noticed above that you were talking about cortisone shots. DO NOT USE THESE unless you absolutely have to. Cortisone is very dangerous for diabetics, often pushing them to the 300+ range. I've also seen several reports of it pushing pre-diabetic people into full fledged diabetes.

Seriously. All of YTF's health problems are because of his weight. Low testosterone, bad knees, etc.

Doctors should be telling people are fatasses and need to lose weight rather than give them things like cortisone and testosterone as a temporary fix.


And on the water "issue", there really is no such thing as too much water unless you reaching water intoxication levels. 1-2 gallons of water is what everyone should be drinking everyday.

Low testosterone is caused by fat? Cite?

Pretty sure he said he was tested and his blood work was normal.

What do you suggest for breakfast? The idea is to fill him up and have few calories in him. 1/2 cup serving has 150 calories. If he eats 1 cup, that's 300 calories. Add in a bit of other food for flavor you are talking about maybe a 400-500 calorie breakfast. And that's down from his typical binges of 1200 calories. He is not trying to treat prediabetes. He is trying to reduce caloric intake.

So the process wasn't important to your health at all? You could have saved all that time and trouble if you had only made yourself a sammich. Too bad there was no one there to tell you that.

It might be that simple, but it's not that easy. At least for him.

No, its not easy at all. its the most difficult thing i've ever done in fact, and it doesnt get much easier as time goes on. But I do it because my life is 1000x better than it was a few years ago.

You'll never meet a formerly super fat/super skinny person who has attained a normal, stable weight tell you that the sacrifices were not worth it.

Slow cooked oats for breakfast are the nuts.

Agree about getting the tests. ytf, this is going to cost some money but it is important to shell out the cash and do it. When you get the results do as much research as you can into what the results mean. Don't take the doctor's interpretation at face value. Ask him/her a lot of questions. Don't leave until you feel like you understand what it means to you specifically.

Well, that's not always the cause. Obesity does lead to issues like infertility, but anyway, sources:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11311

http://men.webmd.com/what-low-testos...an-your-health

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/34/7/1669


And low testosterone can lead to things like obesity, so it can go both ways. Bottom line, YTF's health problems are probably all obesity related.