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I’m not convinced by the low carb theory
There's a bundle of research suggesting that it's no better than any traditional diet, but that's largely because (like most diets) folks find it hard to stick to them, and as carbs are found in a huge variety of meals and foods, it particularly hard for lots for folks to maintain it.
Where the science to say low carb is not healthy?
This report is mostly to do with the effect of low-carbohydrate diets on T2 diabetes patients, but it's relevant to folks trying to loose weight as well . It's at least reasonably rigorous and written without outside influence form the food industries.
"What even is “processing”. Quorn (or other meat free mince) is processed from either soybeans or mycelium into something completely unrecognisable. Yet you’d have to really throw the blinkers on to say it’s in any way unhealthy."
Just because your interpretation of the advertising is "healthy", it doesn't make it so. Quorn may be stuffed with all manner of shite. Lynda McCartney's sossies , also "healthy" were until recently stuffed with hydrogenated fats. They may still be...
As a treat you can make banana bread with no sugar, add some dried fruit and cover with nuts and seeds. Freezes well, toasted with natural yoghurt, diced fruit and maple syrup. About the healthiest snack that tastes good too.
The Zoe podcasts are good, lots of interesting tips.
Timely thread this one. I always thought fat people were lazy and had no control. Last week during my yearly checkout I was told that I've slipped into the obese category. Obese in my head is ' I eat babies ' territory, so it was a bit of a shock. Mrs CD has recently gone in the the catogory above obese but she's not bothered. I most definitely am.
I've always had a sweet tooth which I could control by only having the occasional bar of dark chocolate in the house. Now, with primary school kids the cupboards a full of unhealthy snacks and 'treats'. When I have a bad day I just can't resist.
Main meals are OK. Nearly all cooked from scratch although portion sizes need to be reduced.
Snacking though...
Mmm babies 😅
Its not that low carb is particularly inhealthy. Its that often people end up with high fat and salt diets which is unhealthy
I always thought fat people were lazy and had no control
Maybe not lazy but...
When I have a bad day I just can’t resist.
Sounds like you were spot on with the no control aspect 😉
Sounds like you were spot on with the no control aspect
This is an interesting, if somewhat short, overview of the modern diet and ultra processed foods. The really interesting thing at the end isn't that eh gained weight, but the changes in hormones that control hunger and fullness as well as the new neural pathways created in the brain.
I got to 46 and found I my weight had crept up to 76kg (just under 12 stone) that doesn't sound much but I am only 165cm (5ft 5).
Using my fitness pal and doing more road cycling, it took me around three years to get down to under 62kg (around 9 and a half stone), as others have said it isn't really a diet as if you stop and revert the weight will come back, and bring some friends, you need to view it as a change in lifestyle.
I'm nearly 54 now and my weight swings around 64kg +/- 2.5kg depending on time of year/alcohol and or ice cream consumption/amount of exercise - riding I do. But overall I feel healthier and fitter.
Its mainly down to will power and self control and it's easy to 'reward' yourself with something nice. You can, but you have to balance it with the consequences of too much is a bad thing.
MSP Interesting. I've seen similar before.
The point remains - you have lost control of your eating. The causal effect has changed though - you are maybe less responsible for how much you are eating, but responsible instead for what you are eating which in turn is messing with your hormones and making over-eating almost impossible to avoid. Once informed of the connection, you need to be self aware enough to know how much of your diet is ultra processed and do something about that first. An arguably more interesting video would have been seeing him going cold turkey (twizzler obvs) and switching back to his old diet and how hard he found it - how much those hormonal changes drag you back in....
Then you have to throw in the fact that very large portions of western society have lost the ability to actually cook (vs warming something up 'cooked' in a factory) - making their journey away from ultra processed foods even harder to achieve.
many "food" manufacturers deliberately make their foods addicitve with sugar, salt and fats in them that are unneeded but make the food more addictive - see subway bread for an example. Its the jackpot if they can get all 3 into one dish in large quantities
you must be self aware enough to know how much of your diet is ultra processed and do something about that first
I guess the issue for lots of folks is multi faceted though. Just what precisely is a UPF? Have you got time, knowledge, ability, facility to cook regular foods from scratch, can you afford it, can you obtain ingredients rather than meals. For lots of people the reason they don't have a healthy diet is not becasue they don't want to, it's that they don't know what one is. For much of the population the connection with food, getting fat, and health isn't as clear cut as many folks on here would probably think.
can you afford it
I think there is a mindset shift needed with that too. Could someone who can just about afford a chicken nugget based meal afford to replace the chicken nuggets with a healthier version of chicken cooked at home - almost certainly not. At that point you could throw your hands in the air and say you have no choice and chuck the nuggets in your trolley as usual. Or.......you could say avoiding the UPF is a higher priority to you than having 'chicken' on your family's plates and pickup plant based ingredients instead. Not a vegan UPF equivalent of the nuggets (there's loads of that) but pulses, beans, lentils etc. That I appreciate is a huge mindset change for many many people and I have no answers as to how you make that happen.
If you are brought up by busy working parents (as I was with 4 kids and both parents working) then the convenience of ultra processed food is an easy choice and often marketed as healthy. The lifelong impacts that has in hormone levels and brain chemistry is hard to undo, a lot of people are addicted before they even get to make their own decisions.
At a societal level it is very hard to educate and enable people to eat a healthy diet when there are so many obstacles and marketing telling society lies. It really needs to be tackled at a policy level to give people a fighting chance, we have seen in just the past few years the government bottling the food labelling issue, and even those proposals were behind the latest nutritional research findings.
The food manufactures are powerful lobbies, and maybe it is time to start treating them like the tobacco industry in the impact they are having.
I guess the point remains – you have lost control of your eating. The causal effect has changed though – you are maybe less responsible for how much you are eating, but responsible instead for what you are eating which in turn is messing with your hormones and making over eating almost impossible. Once informed of the connection, you must be self aware enough to know how much of your diet is ultra processed and do something about that first. An arguably more interesting video would have been seeing him going cold turkey (twizzler) and switching back to his old diet and how hard he found it – how much those hormonal changes drag you back in….
The Biggest Loser TV show in the US was followed up with a serious diet study - bleak reading. Most people back to being large years later, but more interestingly their resting metabolic rates (which had dropped substantially on initial weight loss) never bounced back up to compensate. Obese people with RMRs sub 2K which is just an impossible situation for weight loss.
Very extreme cohort, obv - absolute units who had crashed weight off quickly. You would hopefully see much milder metabolic adjustments with more sustainable weight loss, but the hormonal regulation of dieting is brutal strong.
There's always semaglutide (which is only the first of its class, others are following). Fight fire with fire.
If you are brought up by busy working parents (as I was with 4 kids and both parents working) then the convenience of ultra processed food is an easy choice and often marketed as healthy.
I agree with everything you've just typed. But I'll just highlight the word "choice". I totally get how we make that choice and empathised with being busy. But.......I strongly believe our 2023 idea of busy is sometimes a bit skewed. I get a bit conflicted with this one because I'm a firm believer in work/life balance but statistics don't lie - we collectively spend more time watching telly or playing with our phones than at any time in history. I think we've almost got to the point of feeling entitled to that time as a counter balance to a busy day. What gets squeezed is things like time to actually cook. For a lot of people it's still a choice - the alternatives might be unpalatable (literally and figuratively) but they are still there.
Both my parents worked full time. We had a cooked dinner each night. At least in part there was little alternative back then but we did have chips on Friday.
Lack of time is more an excuse than a reason imo
Its no coincidence that there is a decent correlation between countries with low food regulation and obesity and also richer countries are more obese
At least in part there was little alternative back then
Exactly, I think my mum used Smash and Angel delight growing up in the 70's along with making dinner from scratch but I can remember when things like Ski yoghurt entered our diet, and my mum was happy because all of a sudden both me and my brother were happy to eat something that was 'healthy' for dessert, becasue it was (of course) sweeter than yoghurt had any right being,
Yeah, but the food industry has changed a lot since you were a kid, the dinosaurs died out for a start.
The rise of ultra processed foods was really through the 80's, I remember my mum would mainly cook meals from ingredients at the start of the decade, and by then end of the decade UPF had become a much bigger part of our diets. Plus despite what boomers claim, modern families are actually working longer hours, and spending more time commuting.
Also you can only make a choice if you are informed, someone higher in the thread thought quorn and dolmio was healthy. Add dolmio sauce, to quorn mince and supermarket spaghetti and that is pretty much a 100% UPF meal. It might be a choice but it isn't an informed choice.
It isn't like I am against taking personal responsibility, but legislators should do much more to help people make the right choices, and not just side with the food industry marketing machine all the time.
Both my parents worked full time. We had a cooked dinner each night.
It always bugs me when people take their personal experience and then imply it can be extrapolated to the general population.
Some people have angelic kids who will go with the flow and will eat whatever is put on their plates. Others have absolute arseholes where every meal will be a battle if you try to nudge them towards eating something they aren't entirely sure of.
Lots of boomers and gen-Xers on here who had a comparatively easy ride compared to what young families are going through these days. Don't assume what worked for you and your family is in any way applicable to everyone.
but more interestingly their resting metabolic rates (which had dropped substantially on initial weight loss) never bounced back up to compensate
This is why you need to reduce the amount of food you eat gently rather than crash dieting. I think if you drop more than about 500cals/day which is 1/2kg per week then you risk getting to the point where your bmr drops long term which is horrible as then you are always eating less than you want to once off the diet.
"Its not that low carb is particularly inhealthy. Its that often people end up with high fat and salt diets which is unhealthy "
A high fat diet is not inherently unhealthy - I mean, babies are raised on a high fat diet in the womb. It becomes problematic when a) the wrong fats like polyunsaturated and trans are in the mix or b) when high fat diets also include sugars from carbs to excess (remember, all carbs are essentially just sugar).
And high salt - again not inherently bad. The link between high salt and high blood pressure is subject to the same legitimate concern as the work of Ancell Keys and the flawed assumptions he drew about fat.
In my own experience as someone suffering with chronic migraine - radically increasing my salt intake is having a real and positive impact. I have also found success in the past with high fat diets for migraine and I'm heading back that way again.
Carbs are not essential for life - they're nice and lovely, but not essential. Fat and protein are essential.
The obvious issue with diets made of lots of high fat foods is that fatty foods are calorie dense - i.e. 9 calories for every 1 gram of fat consumed instead of the 4 calories for a gram of protein or carbs. We are programmed to be calorie hunting heat seeking missiles - so not only does high fat food have a lot of calories relative to mass/volume, it also tastes great too. In a western 21st century society where calories are relatively plentiful and daily physical labour is at an all time low, the consumption of a fat heavy diet without ballooning in weight takes pretty massive level of self control.
I was chatting to a woman at work who was in the kitchen preparing her 10am break food. I mentioned that I'd not seen mini shredded wheat in years and recounted how much I liked the honey nut ones. "Oh I don't eat nuts as they're fattening!" She exclaims, whilst she sprinkles sugar on a large bowl of processed breakfast cereal.
The calorie count on the M&S mini flapjack tubs put me off buying them, they're 57 calories per bite, similar amount of calories as a boiled egg.
So now I only buy cakes with their pesky calorie content well hidden. I don't want to be reminded how much a glutten I am.
Reluctantlondoner
Sorry but both high fat and high salt are inherently unhealthy. Fat is not seen to be as bad now as it was but a high fat diet is stll not good for you.
High salt is very damaging. Plenty of research on it. One big mac will give a sugnificant rise in bp
Sure the paradigm has shifted and sugar particularly fructose is now public enemy number one rather than fat but that does not mean a diet of pure lard is healthy
What we need is a balanced diet of all the major food groups with little sugar and salt. And plenty of fibre
Any diet high in anything is not good for you
There is a hige amount of bolloxs talked about diet by unqualified chaletans.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/support/healthy-living/healthy-eating/salt
This is based on proper data.
And high salt – again not inherently bad. The link between high salt and high blood pressure is subject to the same legitimate concern
There was a widely read and shared article in the Lancet recently that suggested that "average salt intake" wasn't something to worry about, but that report was also criticised for its methodology (measured salt in urine) as not being particularly accurate. I think the general consensus is that increased salt intake is v bad for your heath and can result in heart issues, T2 diabetes, and increases in blood pressure.
I think at one point the UK was pretty much an outlier in enforcing reductions of levels of salt in foods, but recently govts have allowed the industry to self-regulate. I don't think anyone is going to be massively surprised to learn that slat levels in foods are now much patchier than they were before
Sugar is the issue in my opinion. It's very easy to overconsume on sugary processed foods.
Try something like the No S diet, but treat it as a lifestyle change rather than a diet. So only two or three meals a day, no snacking and reduce the processed foods.
Snacking has always been my problem, so I'm on two meals a day now over winter to reduce my fat percentage! It takes willpower to change an ingrained habit, such as hard day at work = Mars bar, walkers crisp and can of coke treat = 550calories. Over a year this is worth 57lb.
There is a hige amount of bolloxs talked about diet by unqualified chaletans.
And yet how many times have you posted on this thread? 😂
Just because your interpretation of the advertising is “healthy”, it doesn’t make it so. Quorn may be stuffed with all manner of shite. Lynda McCartney’s sossies , also “healthy” were until recently stuffed with hydrogenated fats. They may still be…
And therein lies the problem.
Quorn has 0.5g Saturated fat per 100g
Bog standard 20% fat beef mince is 8.5g/100g (or even the "lean" 5% fat mince is still 2.3g/100)
Hydrogenated fat is (chemically) saturated fat, the reason one is done and the other is viewed as naturally bad is they don't break down so easily (either in your body or in the packet). So which is worse "processed" quorn, or beef? The point is moot anyway for the mince, there is no added fat, the fat comes from the egg white. The fattiest thing I can think of are the sausages at 11% fat (about 1.5% saturated).
There's loads of weird tribalism around veggie stuff, look on any gym/sports forum and there'll be hardcore carnivores shouting down anyone who suggests pea/soy/wheat/rice based protein shakes, whilst claiming whey is the only option (despite, being ....... * fake dramatic gasp* vegetarian!). 99%* of it is utter bollocks.
*the true bits is some are "incomplete" proteins, which means the ratio between the amino acids doesn't match meat. Which is why almost all products are a blend to get it close enough. The reason this is still utter bollocks is for example a soy-mince based curry would be seen s "incomplete". Despite soy + rice giving you a full range. Yet a meat based curry + rice would by the technical definition be incomplete as the rice pushes it out of balance 🤷♂️
2
MSP
Full Member
If you are brought up by busy working parents (as I was with 4 kids and both parents working) then the convenience of ultra processed food is an easy choice and often marketed as healthy. The lifelong impacts that has in hormone levels and brain chemistry is hard to undo, a lot of people are addicted before they even get to make their own decisions.At a societal level it is very hard to educate and enable people to eat a healthy diet when there are so many obstacles and marketing telling society lies. It really needs to be tackled at a policy level to give people a fighting chance, we have seen in just the past few years the government bottling the food labelling issue, and even those proposals were behind the latest nutritional research findings.
The food manufactures are powerful lobbies, and maybe it is time to start treating them like the tobacco industry in the impact they are having.
This is key imo and yes things are very different for todays families than when TJ was a kid. Advertising and global food companies are so much much bigger these days. The amount of takeaways and aps like just eat etc!. Yes there's choice but if you grow up knowing no better and are already hooked it's not going to go well. Our government is strongly resisting making the policy changes that are needed and have ignored the recommendations from the very people they appointed to advise them on this.
convert
Full Member
The obvious issue with diets made of lots of high fat foods is that fatty foods are calorie dense – i.e. 9 calories for every 1 gram of fat consumed instead of the 4 calories for a gram of protein or carbs
This is not a useful way to think and the calorie is really an outdated method of determining how a food is going to effect you. A calorie worth of fat or protein is now believed to effect your hunger level/satiety very differently than a calorie worth of sugar or carbs and the nutrients in the food will effect things too. So a higher fat or protein diet could potentially be a better way for someone to get themselves healthier by losing weight but it is very individual so what works for one might not work for another.
I would really recommend everyone to listen to this recent look at calories because it really could help in understanding how different foods could effect you despite having the same calorie count.
https://zoe.com/learn/podcast-calorie-deception-food-labels
Pretty much been said but limit carbs suger and booze.
Plus don’t snack and limit portion size.
If I don’t feel hungry before each meal I am eating too much. This also makes me look forward to food and really enjoy it.
johncoventry ⤴️ is pretty much spot on.
This is not a useful way to think and the calorie is really an outdated method of determining how a food is going to effect you. A calorie worth of fat or protein is now believed to effect your hunger level/satiety very differently than a calorie worth of sugar or carbs and the nutrients in the food will effect things too. So a higher fat or protein diet could potentially be a better way for someone to get themselves healthier by losing weight but it is very individual so what works for one might not work for another.
Agree 100% here. I've mentioned this loads of times on this site before. A calorie is a measurement of the 'reaction' of burning food in a bomb calorimeter. Its the energy required to heat water by 1 degree
"the actual amount of energy produced by food if oxidized (burned) completely can be measured"
You body doesn't work the same way. Essentially most of the processes are to do with hormones and feedback systems. THings like insulin, grehlin (hunger) leptin (appetite regulation).
The reason why favouring low carb or low glycemic foods is they have a metabolic advantage (there are other reasons). Often people quote oh it's impossible it breaks the laws of thermodynamics (of which there are 4). Often people quote the first law. - conservations of energy
6 Reasons Why a Calorie Is Not a Calorie: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-reasons-why-a-calorie-is-not-a-calorie
And more technical papers:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC543577/
https://europepmc.org/article/MED/15282028
"In this review, we show that there is no such violation of thermodynamic laws. Energy utilization of different diets depends on the chemical pathway taken and a metabolic analysis of the efficiency of different pathways reveals large differences. Likewise, thermogenesis produced by diets of different macronutrient composition varies widely. We present a plausible mechanism that depends on the inefficiency of metabolic cycles and, in particular, protein turnover. A low carbohydrate diet makes demands on protein turnover for gluconeogenesis"
Glucogenesis is a very expensive and from an energy POV inefficent
An energy system can never be 100% efficient and the same goes for how your body works and this is where the 2nd law of thermodynamics comes into place
And yes this has been done to death here
I also replied to TJ's comments 3 years ago
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/exercise-and-fat-use/page/5/#post-11327273
here https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/talk-to-me-about-keto/page/7/#post-11055184
and https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/exercise-and-fat-use/page/5/#post-11327273
A point made on the zoe podcast posted above also points out... 1, a gram of raw nuts and a gram of chopped nuts have the same calorie count according to the current system, but the chopped nuts actually digest differently and more energy is absorbed into the body as a result. 2, Genetic differences between people can cause massive amounts of difference between the amount of energy also absorbed into the body by two people eating exactly the same food.
Also we are walking science experiments. People can try these things. Try low carb, try reducing calories, favour protein, Exercise. See what the results are. Take into account why those results have occured. Has your body adapted to things. Are you eating by habit. Change your lifestyle
i know i try out strict low carb for 2 weeks and it worked wonders ('m very much not now). The everlasting change for me was to favour protein for breakfast. This kept things very stable. I also recommended some friends try it out for a few weeks and it also worked very well for them. (1 friend lost 10kg!).It changed their relationship with food and honed in on certain aspects. For many ppl low carb isn't a long term thing. It's to shift how you eat or make you focus on what was bad and how your body reacts to a different types of foods.
A point made on the zoe podcast posted above also points out… 1, a gram of raw nuts and a gram of chopped nuts have the same calorie count according to the current system, but the chopped nuts actually digest differently and more energy is absorbed into the body as a result. 2, Genetic differences between people can cause massive amounts of difference between the amount of energy also absorbed into the body by two people eating exactly the same food.
Yes, I listened to it after the recommend. I've got to confess I thought it was all a bit science for idiots! Not science by idiots, but for those without common sense. Did people not appreciate that way that the nuts were chopped makes a difference, or they different people absorb the energy in foods with different efficiency already?
Did people not appreciate that way that the nuts were chopped makes a difference, or they different people absorb the energy in foods with different efficiency already?
Oh man, I used to run a group for patients who'd been recently diagnosed with T2D at my last practice to go through diet choices and healthier options and so on. The idea that folks are clued up at all about the effect food has on them is way off the mark I'd start with things like the Eatwell plate and just talking about the difference between Carbs and say; Proteins was enough to confuse folks, the idea that fruit or milk contains sugar would blow their minds.
Did people not appreciate that way that the nuts were chopped makes a difference,
Does it make a difference if you chew nuts carefully, or just drink them out of the bag? I'm a drinker so I assume that I can consume twice the quantity of butter roasted nuts as a chewer for the same end result.
Does it make a difference if you chew nuts carefully, or just drink them out of the bag? I’m a drinker so I assume that I can consume twice the quantity of butter roasted nuts as a chewer for the same end result.
I guess it will. The podcast talked about masticating them to about 1.4mm pieces. It also said (in audio small print by the expert aside from the presenters big bold over simplified overviews) that the gut does the bulk of the work in energy release and the difference closes up quite substantially all up - 95% energy retrieval to 66% or thereabouts between chewed whole almonds and machine ground almonds.
I'm a tight arse though - I want as much energy as possible from the food I buy rather that buying more and consuming badly to reduce the impact!
There's some pretty convincing recent research that suggests that the role of exercise in weight loss is marginal at best. The only way to lose weight is to eat less.
The reason being that the body compensates well both for exercise and for lack of exercise. If you exercise a lot, you will (generally speaking) sleep better, recover better and rest better. If you don't exercise at all (and bear in mind we evolved as hunter-gatherers and endurance hunters so our bodies are expecting to exercise A LOT) then your body also compensates through things like fidgeting, poor sleep, over-active immune system, inflammation, etc. IANAD, I may well have mis-stated some of those mechanisms. Therefore, while going out for an hour's ride may well burn 600 "exercise" calories, the idea that this means you have now burned 3100 calories for the day instead of a sedentary 2500 is flawed. Yes, you have a spike of calorie burning, but it evens out substantially over the other 23 hours of the day. Averaged out over any significant time-scale, active people and sedentary people burn more or less the same amount of calories. The study which really nailed this down was a study done on a tribe of present-day hunter-gatheries who are still covering many miles each day in seach of food. Averaged over a month or so, they burned about 2500 cals a day, the same as sedentary western office workers.
In short, you should exercise for the myriad other health benefits that it brings, but if you want to lose weight, the only answer is to eat less.
I came across this initially via the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast on a nutrition-themed episode back in May this year or thereabouts. It seemed so unbelievable that I did a lot of reading and googling and even read some of the research papers involved. The science does seem to be solid.
This has totally blown me away. I have a ridiculously active job, but I do like cake and the odd beer. We had a baby this year and I put on a couple of kg of dad-bod which took me up to my "do something about it number". Based on the above, I ignored all the exercise that I do and just watched what I ate properly, including REALLY cutting the cake. Also recognising that it's OK to have a blowout sometimes (e.g. go to Italy riding and eat pizza and ice cream), but don't then, for example, compound it by having a big dinner after. On days like that now, I just have some fruit in the evening. I dropped 10kg in 3 months. 3 months on from that, it's still off. I haven't been this light since I was a teenager. I feel amazing for it.
Eat less than what? And do you mean eat less calories?
Has anybody mentioned the importance of insulin in trying to lose weight?
The Ultra Processed People book is pretty interesting. Lots of big words though so audio book easier to digest 😜
It agrees that exercise doesn't really contribute to weight loss.
Eat less than what? And do you mean eat less calories?
As simon concisely puts it, less than what you were eating before....
And yes, eat less means eat less calories. The same source was pretty clear that, in weight loss terms, a calorie is a calorie. A calorie of protein is the same as a calorie of carbs, of fat, of whatever. That's in pure physics terms of course. Psychological and other effects of different foods may affect how successful you are in eating fewer calories. You will feel a lot fuller after eating 500 calories worth of salad than after drinking 500 calories worth of coke for example.
My understanding is the way the body lowers its metabolic rate is to reduce its muscle mass, so if you train to counteract that or even raise muscle mass then you can at least maintain your metabolic rate. If you just exercise to burn calories ie cycling, walking and running etc then your body will adapt and over the longer term that will stop having as much of an impact. If you maintain or increase your muscle mass, then doing cardio will continue to add to burning fat.
I think that exercise is often also misunderstood as it frequently isn't the nutritional scientists strong point. I suspect they just group it all together under one heading, where they call on their own experience or maybe just simplify it to a general population who don't or won't stress themselves lifting heavy weights.
So post Christmas, time to revisit this thread discussion and get back on track...
a vote for myfitnesspal - count everything, weigh everything and once you have a couple of weeks of data, you can start to see where you can cut back.
some of its easy (for anyone), some of it will be more subtle based on how you want to live your life. I did a week as a stock check, then targetting 1750cals/day lost the weight i needed to, then a further month monitoring my "normal" intake.
I took a standard set of measurements (chest, waist, hips, bicep, thigh and weight) once per week, logged the lot so i could see progress. Between April and July, i dropped 10cm from my waist, 3 from my hips and added a single cm to biceps and chest.
whats 100cals of roasted peanuts look like? how many calories in that dish of olives? If i chuck a little chorizo into the scrambled eggs, what does that do to my daily total?
If i wanted a beer in the evening, i needed to have spare calories, simple.
if i was willing to take a 330ml @4.5% instead of the pint at 5%......
Once you understand the basics, then you can start to confuse yourself with exercise, macro-nutrients etc etc.
Its horrible - I now have a weight limit, if i hit that, then im cutting back again - unless i can show through the measurements that ive packed on a load of ripped shred for the beach 😉
Have a plan, not a goal, don't just say, I want to lose 10kg, say what you are going to do every day to achieve that.
So for me it is things like.
3 boiled eggs for breakfast, unless I am going running or cycling in the morning when I can have "40g of oats, 20g of seeds and 20g of mixed nuts with yoghurt and kefir"
Keep fruit (mainly apples) available at work so that at the times I fancy a sweet snack I have an alternative.
Lunch at work, eat a side salad first before main course of protein and non starchy veg.
Mealprep for all other meals.
No diet coke
no sweet snacks
no takeaways
etc
I have made a table with those points on, and will put a tick next to each day I succeed at each point.
IMO having some kind of plan is more important than using something like myfitnesspal, which just records what you have done rather than implementing what you need to do. You can do both, but plan first then record.
I found having a 16hr gap between meals (I don't eat after 7 and before 11) made a huge difference. Also, avoid processed stuff and sugar if you can.
IMO having some kind of plan is more important than using something like myfitnesspal
I think the trick is to have something that holds you accountable to yourself. For some that's a plan, for others its faithfully recording your consumption. As long as the result is weight loss, then do the thing that makes most sense to you.
the scales this morning suggest im closing fast on my upper limit.
I can recommend a brisk one hour walk every evening. Get yourself some good music and podcasts and just go. After a few weeks it will be habit. I lost around 20lb over the course of a year and it stayed off. Feel much better too.
And give up bread. Bread makes you fat 😂😂
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