What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

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BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:47 pm
BRUTE, tracking calories doesn't have to mean you aren't doing other stuff like you mentioned. You don't have to miss anything.
if tracking calories is useless and has a non-zero cost, why would brute do it?

Kriegsspiel
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Kriegsspiel »

That was a generic you.

BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

if tracking calories is useless and has a non-zero cost, why would anyone do it?

IlliniDave
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob, it is anecdotal, but I have observations similar to Bankai above. Making up an analogy, I would offer than nutrition optimization is akin skill diversification and expense lowering, and intense exercise akin to a high income in a FIRE context. Both together are optimal in most circumstances.

Another way I tend to look at it (pardon the hyperbole for the sake of illustration): if your eating habits require you to train like a world-class triathlete just to stave off obesity, then probably your eating habits could stand some adjusting. Of course, if being a triathlete ranks high on your priority list anyway then it is not such a big deal perhaps.

IlliniDave
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by IlliniDave »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:47 pm
But GI aside, AFAIK eating the carbs with other stuff slows gastric emptying and insulin response. Either way eating donuts is dumb if you're trying to lose fat.
Yeah, my original mention of KK was meant to be humorous. It is protein that counteracts insulin surges rather than fat, I believe. And I may very well be genetically deficient, but getting my daily slug of carbs via foods from which they are released slowly (along with a somewhat lower proportion of carbs in my overall intake than standard recommendations) makes a stark difference. I can't really talk about successful nutrition for myself without low GI carb sources being the foundation of it.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IlliniDave wrote:Another way I tend to look at it (pardon the hyperbole for the sake of illustration): if your eating habits require you to train like a world-class triathlete just to stave off obesity, then probably your eating habits could stand some adjusting. Of course, if being a triathlete ranks high on your priority list anyway then it is not such a big deal perhaps.
Elite athletes, when compared to cohorts in general population, average 2.9 year increase in longevity. Therefore, if the training lifetime of elite athlete= 30 years and the training work-week of elite athlete is 10 hours greater than average, every hour spent in training translates into just 1 more waking hour of life. IOW, if you enjoy a vigorous workout followed by a raw spinach shake just as much as you enjoy an afternoon engaged in moderate garden work followed by a bowl of spicy tomato fish chowder and a small slice of homemade apple pie with sour cream layer, then that might be a good trade-off, otherwise maybe not so much.
BRUTE wrote:if tracking calories is useless and has a non-zero cost, why would anyone do it?
Because they really like homemade apple pie with sour cream layer. IOW, same reason why some people prefer to not practice total abstention from anything. No different than trying to figure out how you can get some version of every luxury you desire on very small financial budget, rather than just convincing yourself that you don't like those things. Maybe kind of like how you budget some of your overall risk pool for motorcycling.

IlliniDave
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 7:22 am
IOW, if you enjoy a vigorous workout followed by a raw spinach shake just as much as you enjoy an afternoon engaged in moderate garden work followed by a bowl of spicy tomato fish chowder and a small slice of homemade apple pie with sour cream layer, then that might be a good trade-off, otherwise maybe not so much.
That's all true, I'm only addressing the subject question not advocating lifestyles. I find a 20-30 lb difference in body weight (down from my peak weights as an adult) can make a big difference in how enjoyable nearly everything is, including items inherent to a generally moderate-to-low intensity active lifestyle. Gaming my nutrition allows me to maintain a comfortable weight that enhances overall quality of life without adding in the need to beat myself up trying to keep up with 25-year-olds in a Crossfit gym. The cost is that I don't get to eat as much pie as I would like. But nothing is free.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Kriegsspiel »

BRUTE wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 1:38 am
if tracking calories is useless and has a non-zero cost, why would anyone do it?
If it was useless, than everyone should agree with you that nobody should do it. But it's not useless.
IlliniDave wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 5:18 am
Yeah, my original mention of KK was meant to be humorous. It is protein that counteracts insulin surges rather than fat, I believe.
Yea I get that, it was fun to think about anyways. As for protein with carbs, when I was reading up on it it looked like it can increase insulin response more than carbs or protein alone. Protein stimulates insulin without raising blood sugar, probably part of why it is so satiating.

IlliniDave
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by IlliniDave »

Protein's effect on blood glucose is so low/slow they can't even measure a GI for it, and whatever glucose the liver ultimately produces from it is pretty small. It supposedly allows for the low levels of insulin necessary for building lean tissue but I thought it was offset or swamped by glucagon (protein stimulated hormone that gives body go-ahead to release stored energy). If after eating a double burger/supersize fries/supersize Coke meal there is some interaction when insulin is forced high that throws that balance out of whack, well, all the more reason for people like me to stick to the bottom quartile of the GI chart! :D

BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 7:22 am
BRUTE wrote:if tracking calories is useless and has a non-zero cost, why would anyone do it?
Because they really like homemade apple pie with sour cream layer.
brute does not see how this follows. brute's entire argument is the idea that CICO is worse at exactly this than numerous alternatives like fasting or low-carb. unless a human really enjoys counting calories for its own sake (web of goal to the rescue?), it's not the best method to achieve this goal for the majority of humans.
Kriegsspiel wrote:If it was useless, than everyone should agree with you that nobody should do it. But it's not useless.
arguments welcome

herp
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by herp »

Augustus wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 9:34 am
The effects of exercise hit a plateau. I'm definitely not saying don't exercise, you should for many reasons. Exercise does cause you to burn calories, but after a certain amount of exercise it doesn't have much of an effect on burn. Diet is more important. At least that's what I read recently in scientific american, summary below:

https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/ ... rol_weight
Interesting read. Basically, it appears that controlling CI is much more crucial than CO, which goes well along with the notion that diet control is much more important than exercise when it comes to weight loss. Obviously, exercise has many health benefits that should not be ignored.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Kriegsspiel »

BRUTE wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:47 pm
brute's entire argument is the idea that CICO is worse at exactly this than numerous alternatives like fasting or low-carb.
Your wording is "useless" not "worse."

A couple ideas of tracking calories not being useless; Fat Sally wants to know how much she can eat and lose weight. So she tracks calories and weight to establish maintenance calories, then eats less than that. Calorie tracking is useful for Sally because she is aware of the upper limit on how much she should eat if she wants to lose weight. Or Skinny Phil wants to put on some weight, so he establishes maintenance, then gags down a bit more than that. Calorie tracking is useful to Phil because otherwise he rationalizes that since he's so full, he ate enough.

To relate this to 7's argument, if Sally wants to eat apple pie, she could replace some other calories (from fat/carbs if she's a good girl) with it and not feel shitty or think "fuck it, I ate the apple pie, might as well eat the cookies too."

Now, if I'm reading you right, you're saying that doing all that establishing maintenance & tracking & adjusting is useless, not because measuring them is impossible, or that eating fewer calories than you expend is unnecessary, but because eating (the same amount of calories? Without regard for calories? Not sure here) with different tactics will achieve fat loss. Since fasting or low-carb are better, most people should do them. If you want to lose weight, just don't eat anything, the rest of the time, eat whatever/however much you want, but only low carb foods. Accurate?

RealPerson
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by RealPerson »

Years ago I did the induction portion of the Atkins diet. No counting anything, but strictly non-carb. Eggs, bacon, avocado and mayo galore. I have no idea how many calories I ate, but I suspect it was a lot. I was not hungry. I lost weight at a rate of about a pound a day, without exercise. The difficulty is the restrictiveness of the diet. I got very tired of eating bacon every day. My taste had changed so much from the no carb diet that when I finally ate a steamed piece of cauliflower, it tasted like candy to me. I also admit that I felt very lethargic, which I thought was due to the complete absence of carbs. I never had my lipid profile checked during that time, but people in the low fat camp would definitely argue against the saturated fat in the diet. All I can say is that it worked amazingly well.

Also, even Dr. Atkins never suggested this as a permanent diet. This was to induce weight loss.

BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:36 am
Now, if I'm reading you right, you're saying that doing all that establishing maintenance & tracking & adjusting is useless, not because measuring them is impossible, or that eating fewer calories than you expend is unnecessary, but because eating (the same amount of calories? Without regard for calories? Not sure here) with different tactics will achieve fat loss. Since fasting or low-carb are better, most people should do them. If you want to lose weight, just don't eat anything, the rest of the time, eat whatever/however much you want, but only low carb foods. Accurate?
measuring CI is very difficult
measuring CO is impossible without million dollar calorie ward equipment
CI and CO are not indepentent - with certain modes of lowering CI, CO is automatically lowered by the body to adapt (see: biggest loser study)
CI minus CO is neither necessary nor sufficient for fat loss

eating with different tactics might achieve fat loss. brute believe he has said it here - he actually believes diet and exercise are overrated as levers in body composition.
fasting is way easier than counting calories
low-carb is still much easier than counting calories, if not as simple as fasting
brute would not recommend to eat whatever, even within the category of low-carb. low-carb paleo, yes.

more importantly, brute recommends that humans desiring to recompose their body use no alarm clocks or social wakeup calls, sleep 8h+ per day, limit stressors like work/school to 20h/wk or less.

it boils down to fixing the engine that's not running on all cylinders. excess body fat is a symptom of the engine not running on all cylinders. brute recommends not a certain diet or exercise regime, but finding out what makes the engine not run smoothly, and fixing that. this might be a diet or exercise issue, or it might not.

BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 12:10 pm
Protein stimulates insulin without raising blood sugar, probably part of why it is so satiating.
by the way, brute finds the thesis that protein is categorically satiating completely false. whey protein powder has an extreme negative satiating effect on brute.

Nomad
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Nomad »

To get to a healthy weight - eat lots of vegetables, very low carbs and the correct amount of protein.

RealPerson
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by RealPerson »

Nomad wrote:
Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:22 am
To get to a healthy weight - eat lots of vegetables, very low carbs and the correct amount of protein.
No fat?

Nomad
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Nomad »

RealPerson wrote:
Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:19 pm
Nomad wrote:
Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:22 am
To get to a healthy weight - eat lots of vegetables, very low carbs and the correct amount of protein.
No fat?
Oops, yes fat too. However, plant sources are much better for you than animal sources.
Think nuts, hummus, etc.
Fats are essential as your body needs them to make hormones etc.
You want to have a calorific deficit and be mildly ketogenic; then your body will get rid of stored fat and use that for energy.

BRUTE
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by BRUTE »

Nomad wrote:
Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:51 pm
Oops, yes fat too. However, plant sources are much better for you than animal sources.
how's that?

jacob
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by jacob »

Here we go again ...

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