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A diet that works, FINALLY

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I started losing weight back in September. At the time I was at least 50 pounds overweight. So far I've lost 34 pounds and downsized two shirt sizes and four pants sizes.

I didn't consult any books or research. I just started running 2.5 miles at least 4 days a week (usually 5-6 now). Two of those days I'd run straight to the gym, lift some weights, and run back. I started eating at regular intervals. I ditched the chips and soda and replaced them with cottage cheese and hummus and crap like that.

I still eat whatever I want, but I watch it and don't overindulge. At the end of the day, as long as I'm at that caloric deficit, I'm happy. The weight hasn't crept back at all.
 
wyvrn said:
That might be the most unhealthy thing said in this entire thread. Your body needs calories and randomly cutting them has nothing to do with health. Good lord!
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I didn't say cut out all calories. No diet should ever put your daily caloric intake below your BMR. However - you have to be in a caloric deficit to continue losing weight. Its the way the body works.

edit: I also never said anything about "randomly" cutting calories. Are you just picking and choosing points from my posts to read? I said you need high protein to maintain muscle mass. I also said that cutting carbs is important to the extent that most American diets have far too much sugar in them. Did you ignore those comments?
 
People gain all the weight back because they go back to their normal foods and eat too many calories.

If I had to drop a lot of weight fast I'd go on a ketonic diet.
 
Don't know how you can cut out all vegetables. They are important for carbs and nutrients (minus corn and patatoes). I eat a paleo diet and love it. I also don't understand the no working out part... that just boggles my mind. How can you be healthy if you're doing only half the equation? Healthy to me is eating well and excersizing well.
 
I love it when someone says the number of calories doesn't matter.

Of all the knowledge humankind has accumulated, if we were to pick a single fact to be the most reliable, best understood, best proven, and most likely to be true for every case at every time no matter what, it's the first law of thermodynamics.
 
wyvrn said:
Nope. Different foods get treated in different ways. You can cut weight by cutting calories and exercising, but you won't keep it off. And your bloodwork will be worse. It is WHAT you eat, and to a lesser extent how much of it that you eat.
Click to expand...

If you expend more calories than you take in and you will lose weight, 100% guaranteed. No matter what. Otherwise you'd turn the laws of physics upside down.
 
Cruisin1 said:
Don't know how you can cut out all vegetables. They are important for carbs and nutrients (minus corn and patatoes). I eat a paleo diet and love it. I also don't understand the no working out part... that just boggles my mind. How can you be healthy if you're doing only half the equation? Healthy to me is eating well and excersizing well.
Click to expand...

Yea veggies are required for a healthy diet, the OP is an idiot for thinking otherwise.

McWatt said:
I love it when someone says the number of calories doesn't matter.

Of all the knowledge humankind has accumulated, if we were to pick a single fact to be the most reliable, best understood, best proven, and most likely to be true for every case at every time no matter what, it's the first law of thermodynamics.
Click to expand...

You took the words right out of my mouth, while some calories are treated different than others, generally this is true.


wyvrn said:
I am 35 years old, currently overweight, and had serious health issues. For years my doctor warned me about being pre-diabetic and at major risk of heart attack. I tried everything he suggested, from lowering fat intake to exercising like a mad man.


I cut out virtually all saturated fats, ate lots of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, with vegetable oils, and it just got worse and worse.

I ran 3 miles 4-5 times a week. I played sports. I lifted weights. I also yo-yo'd up and down with my weight and would gain anything it took me 2 months to lose back in two weeks if I stopped.

After reading the book, I cut carbs by about 80% and sugar by 90%, by my estimate. I ate as much of any kind of meat I wanted, and also green veggies (prevents colon cancer in guys). I cut high sugar fruits such as bananas and grapes, and ate berries instead (higher in antioxidants as well). I avoided starches like potatoes and corn. I shunned bread, and occasionally ate tortillas because I love tacos. I left one day in the week to eat whatever I wanted, within reasonable sizes and calorie limits. I did NOT reduce calories, but increased my total caloric intake by a bit.

It goes against everything that conventional medical teaching tells me to do. Yet it has worked like a charm. My wife will not admit that it is a good idea. At first she warned me that my cholesterol would go higher and I would have a heart attack. And she kept getting me to switch to a rice, wheat, and chicken diet 🙂 Thankfully, however, I stuck with this and got the results. Her response to my blood work was "Hmm...." and nothing else. I haven't talked to my doctor yet, but it should be an interesting conversation.

I know these type of diets have been discussed before, and there is likely to be a lot of argument on this topic. However, I just wanted to point out that I did a shit ton of research on the topic and found no solid SCIENTIFIC refutation for it. I just found lots of opinions, politics, and money trails leading to the grain and vegetable companies.
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This makes no sense at all, if you were truly eating clean before you read the book your carb intake would have tanked then, fruits may have kept the sugar levels up higher if you ate a lot. But I don't for one second believe you ate clean and didn't see results until you stopped eating veggies and cut carbs by whatever %. I could see cutting carbs 80% if you ate fast food every day and got them down to a normal level. If you're doing a slightly modified Atkins diet, those are intended to be temporary and as soon as you go back to eating carbs again you'll rebound. Eat a clean well balanced diet and exercise, works 100% of the time. The only time it doesn't is when people cheat or 1/2 ass diet and go walk on a treadmill for 30 min a day. Really push yourself to eat clean and work out hard and you'll see results.
 
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Taubes' book has come up a few times on this forum before. It is highly controversial, but anyone arguing in this thread should probably take the time to read it before displaying their total ignorance on the topic. At the very least, take some time to look through the following:

What if it's all been a big fat lie? (an article by Taubes that contains a very succinct version of his arguments)
My post on GCBC from 2009
A discussion of calories in vs. calories out on the CF messageboards (a TON of relevant studies are referenced on the last few pages)

For the record, Taubes does NOT say that calories in vs. calories out doesn't work - his stance does not in anyway defy laws of physics. Instead, he points out that caloric intake and expenditure are much more complicated than we give them credit for: they are not independent variables (so calories in can affect calories out), how many calories you absorb from your food (calories in) is affected by your genetics and the type of food you eat, your body's ability to store (calories in) and mobilize fat (calories out) is affected by your genetics and the type of food you eat, and so on. So you may think that by simply eating 1000 calories less, you are guaranteed to lose weight, but this isn't always the case: for example, your metabolism might drop in response to the food restriction - so calories out is much lower - and you might not lose an ounce. Calories in vs. calories out still works here, it's just that changing one had an unexpected impact on the other. There are countless such examples where the final calories in and out numbers are highly unintuitive and unpredictable. Taubes also points out that considering only calories ignores other incredibly important aspects of diet, including the effect on hormones, hunger levels, and so on.
 
I knew you'd love this thread 😉 I was going to forward it to you before it got moved to HF from OT.
 
Sounds like a ketogenic diet to me. And it works. It may well be the best option for very obese people with crappy insulin sensitivity. It's like magic in those folks. And before staining anybody with the Atkins label, IMO, to truly be an Atkin-ite, you have to drink their kool-aid about "metabolic advantage", which they can't back up with any science. This fallacy has been crushed by a lot of people, notably Lyle McDonald back when he did his keto book.

wyvrn is obviously consuming fewer calories than he did before. The fact that he seems unaware of that speaks to the "magic" of ketogenic diets. It gets you off the insulin rollercoaster, there's a bit of appetite-blunting that comes with running on ketones, and it essentially knocks out an entire macronutrient group, the food group that has the most potential for abuse by modern American gluttons -- and the one that has made most of them fat.

As a forever diet, it's maybe not so great. At some point, when you decide that being skinny-fat sucks and you need to exercise with some intensity, you will find that having next-to-no glycogen in your body is a major problem. As with most everything else, you eventually need to find balance and moderation for compatibility with your lifestyle.
 
Deeko said:
He isn't unaware, he flatly disagrees:
Click to expand...
Right, I saw that earlier in the thread. Ignorance is bliss. 🙂

EDIT: and that's not a slam on anybody doing keto, it's truly a great thing if you have a diet that works for you, where you don't have to think (much) about what you're eating. But by the same token, if you want to argue that you have some 1st-Law-violating magic going on, you are indeed an ignoramous.
 
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This battle is never won by either side. At the basic level, those who argue calories in < calories out are quite correct. It is a fair rule to apply in general. However, the thermic effect is well-documented and clearly occurs. The thermic effect of food is the amount of calories you burn by digesting a certain food (typically macronutrients matter here too). In typical populations, it's not that big of a deal. It may sway someone's caloric output by 50 calories. However, some people respond much more differently - there are those that are sensitive to certain foods, have high metabolisms when food is present, have pathologies, etc.

Both sides are technically right - the overall equation of calories in < calories out for weight loss is absolutely right. However, the food you eat actually effects your caloric output, thereby modifying that equation itself. It's an independent variable modifying a dependent variable. They're quite related and the relationship goes both ways. On top of that, certain people have different metabolisms and respond to calorie drops much differently. That may be independent of the thermic effect entirely. The body is far too complex to state that one method is how everybody works. It's just not true. Everybody has different genetics (metabolism) and environments (particular foods, high or low calories). It's naive to believe that it's all as simple as can be. Researchers with PhD's and MD's don't understand these things. We shouldn't act like we do.
 
moshquerade said:
got ketosis?
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Just wikied it, on the bottom of the article it says:

"While it is believed by some that exercise requires carbohydrate intake in order to replace depleted glycogen stores, studies have shown that after a period of 2–4 weeks adaptation, physical endurance is unaffected by ketosis<sup id="cite_ref-phinney_9-1" class="reference">[10]</sup>."

Wheww...
 
Very happy for you man!

What was your HR at when running? Over what interval? I lost 80 lbs just by stopping drinking and running. Still eat what I want and it aint disgusting rabbit food.
 
brikis98 said:
Heh, yea. I did a long sigh when I read through some of the responses because I knew I'd have to respond 🙂
Click to expand...

I'm glad it got moved.

Obviously calories out depend on a lot of factors, including a strong dependence on the nature and quantity of calories in. I get frustrated when I read a New York Times article that leaps from this fact to the conclusion that the balance of caloric intake and output doesn't matter. The byline on half of the nutrition articles I read in major media outlets may as well be "eat 10000 calories of hot dogs and you'll lose weight, but eat 1500 calories of pasta and you'll become obese." It's no worse than the news' poor simplifications of scientific papers published in other fields, but it affects a wider audience of very credulous readers.
 
SociallyChallenged said:
This battle is never won by either side. At the basic level, those who argue calories in < calories out are quite correct. It is a fair rule to apply in general. However, the thermic effect is well-documented and clearly occurs. The thermic effect of food is the amount of calories you burn by digesting a certain food (typically macronutrients matter here too). In typical populations, it's not that big of a deal. It may sway someone's caloric output by 50 calories. However, some people respond much more differently - there are those that are sensitive to certain foods, have high metabolisms when food is present, have pathologies, etc.

Both sides are technically right - the overall equation of calories in < calories out for weight loss is absolutely right. However, the food you eat actually effects your caloric output, thereby modifying that equation itself. It's an independent variable modifying a dependent variable. They're quite related and the relationship goes both ways. On top of that, certain people have different metabolisms and respond to calorie drops much differently. That may be independent of the thermic effect entirely. The body is far too complex to state that one method is how everybody works. It's just not true. Everybody has different genetics (metabolism) and environments (particular foods, high or low calories). It's naive to believe that it's all as simple as can be. Researchers with PhD's and MD's don't understand these things. We shouldn't act like we do.
Click to expand...

Calorie counting has always been dependent on real world results.
Meaning that if you aren't seeing that you are losing weight, you need to increase amount/intensity of exercise and/or decrease your calorie intake.
The "equation" was always supposed to be used as a rough gauge, not an absolute, because we can never be (and have never been) sure exactly how much calories an individual person needs or burns.

When you eat less and exercise more you will lose weight, provided you modify your regimen to suit your needs. It's the only surefire method of weight loss.
 
SludgeFactory said:
Sounds like a ketogenic diet to me. And it works. It may well be the best option for very obese people with crappy insulin sensitivity. It's like magic in those folks. And before staining anybody with the Atkins label, IMO, to truly be an Atkin-ite, you have to drink their kool-aid about "metabolic advantage", which they can't back up with any science. This fallacy has been crushed by a lot of people, notably Lyle McDonald back when he did his keto book.

wyvrn is obviously consuming fewer calories than he did before. The fact that he seems unaware of that speaks to the "magic" of ketogenic diets. It gets you off the insulin rollercoaster, there's a bit of appetite-blunting that comes with running on ketones, and it essentially knocks out an entire macronutrient group, the food group that has the most potential for abuse by modern American gluttons -- and the one that has made most of them fat.

As a forever diet, it's maybe not so great. At some point, when you decide that being skinny-fat sucks and you need to exercise with some intensity, you will find that having next-to-no glycogen in your body is a major problem. As with most everything else, you eventually need to find balance and moderation for compatibility with your lifestyle.
Click to expand...


I agree with your sentiments here... except no one has mentioned carb re-feeds. If you do a day or two a week with a couple of cheat meals and you are adapted to burning fat for energy, then the glycogen stores can be spared for high intensity activity. The trick is to fill them up without them spilling them over into bodyfat.
 
Sigh...I don't understand why people continue to experiment with diets and wonder why they're putting weight back on when they go off of it. Being healthy is a lifestyle change. The attitude you are showing in your post just goes to show the typical mentality people have towards dieting.
 
I burned so much muscle on Atkins, but I also burned a lot of fat. I'm not sure I recommend it to this day. It's a mixed subject for me.. You have to start somewhere and sometimes people need something drastic to break all of their comfort barriers.
 
SludgeFactory said:
Right, I saw that earlier in the thread. Ignorance is bliss. 🙂

EDIT: and that's not a slam on anybody doing keto, it's truly a great thing if you have a diet that works for you, where you don't have to think (much) about what you're eating. But by the same token, if you want to argue that you have some 1st-Law-violating magic going on, you are indeed an ignoramous.
Click to expand...

It's not ignorance. Meats have more calories than carbs. I have increased my caloric intake, as I stated before, according to my estimates.

Calories in does not equal calories out. The body has different metabolic pathways for different foods. Ignorance must really be bliss for you!
 
RagingBITCH said:
Sigh...I don't understand why people continue to experiment with diets and wonder why they're putting weight back on when they go off of it. Being healthy is a lifestyle change. The attitude you are showing in your post just goes to show the typical mentality people have towards dieting.
Click to expand...

I'm not dieting. I am making a lifestyle change. And I am trying to avoid obesity, diabetes, and heart attack. It has actually less to do with weight than it has to do with overall health, though weight is a large part of that.

An article very recently came out in Scientific American (observational study) that showed carbs are more dangerous than fats. I'll link it later when I get to work.

And by the way, I have not yoyo'd on the weight. I have kept my weight off since TG of last year.

My doctor and wife still cannot explain my blood results, but I tell them that is just because they are operating off of flawed information.
 
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