What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

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Alphaville
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

gettingfired wrote:
Mon Jan 11, 2021 2:32 pm
Dr. Michael Greger
thanks. i looked up the guy's name, saw his website, checked a video. will explore more.

if: im doing a bit of if right now but in the evening. big breakfast around 9, moderate lunch, last snack around 5. no dinner helps drink less wine :lol:

horsewoman
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by horsewoman »

Yeah, what @gettingfired said! Don't know this Dr. Greger but personal experience says vegetarian/vegan diet + intermittent fasting = slim person.
Every body is different if course, but it works for me. Plus, I don't believe I've ever seen a fat vegan :)

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Alphaville
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

horsewoman wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:10 pm
Plus, I don't believe I've ever seen a fat vegan :)
really? ive known plenty.

and i don't know this person but eg. https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/13/im-not-j ... -10221031/

here, a vegan reports seeing many fat vegans

https://veganmd.blogspot.com/2008/09/ho ... eight.html

here's a long ramble about "skinnyfat" vegans.
https://jackedonthebeanstalk.com/blogs/ ... skinny-fat

the only way i've ever losT weight is high protein/low carb regimes ($$$), and my previous attempts at veganism have only resulted in weight gain (no junk food) but i'm willing to stick to this for a while, till i find the formula

horsewoman
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by horsewoman »

Ok, let me rephrase - all the vegans I know are slim :) better?

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Alphaville
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

horsewoman wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:38 pm
Ok, let me rephrase - all the vegans I know are slim :) better?
i believe that :)

but im still stuck with the problem of gaining weight after cutting out meat :(

so i broke down and bought some chicken :mrgreen:

but yeah im trying, gradually... no more beef though.

chicago81
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by chicago81 »

In my experience, what I eat has a much bigger impact on weight-loss-efforts, than the amount of exercise.

What has worked well for me, diet-wise, is to severely restrict carbohydrates, and consume more healthy fats. The fats have a satiating effect that reduces hunger. Carbohydrate consumption causes the production of the insulin hormone -- which is essentially a signal to your body to store fat in your body.

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Lemur
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Lemur »

I found this useful

https://youtu.be/wJ0QXCTqjUs

These days I’m getting less neurotic about calorie counting (my diets are failing because I’m getting too rigid) and I was looking for a easy rule of thumb to follow. This was useful. The TLDW is to have a frame of mind for long-term sustainability if you will - not a “diet” but a nutrition plan. Basically create a plate that is roughly 40% protein (meat, beans, legumes, yogurt, etc), 40% fibrous carbs (veggies), and 20% starchy carbs (potatoes, pasta, rice, etc). Can adjust as needed obviously. Key is really finding something you can stick too.

I like this method too because I could fit in to ERE style food spending.

boomly
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by boomly »

For a few years I skipped breakfast, and for the first time in my life, started developing a visible six-pack.
Then, lifestyle changed, and I went back to three meals a day, slowly developing more padding over my midsection.

Not sure whether this was because of the claimed metabolic benefits of fasting, or because I was simply consuming fewer calories, but the "fewer meals a day" method seems to work.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by mango »

Here's what I eat for weight maintenance (formerly for weight loss) - no highly processed foods. I have a more rules that I follow, but that's the most important. Highly processed foods are designed to be addictive. They're extremely convenient. That makes them really bad for maintaining a healthy weight. It's easiest to just never eat them.

I wrote up my thoughts on weight loss and weight maintenance in this book - https://www.amazon.com/Weigh-Every-Day- ... 1734166312. One of the keys to weight loss is understanding why the majority of people in the US are overweight or obese. Once you understand how our current food environment is making people obese, it's easier to figure out what to do.

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Alphaville
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

i disagree on the highly processed foods. of course they're bad, of course they cause obesity, but processed food and addiction doesn't explain all overweight.

i easily gain weight with healthy, whole grain, unprocessed, full fiber, non-addictive... grains and beans and vegetables.

i do that because that's my genetic makeup, and i'm not a farm laborer toiling in the fields from sunup to sundown, burning 6000kcal/day

but you can exercise constantly and still be overweight from eating "whole grains". eg read grant petersen's account if his weight struggles in spite of his bicycling career and spotless eating:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KLDEKZC/

he writes:
grant petersen wrote:For thirty years I’d avoided junk food, eating mostly oat bran, whole grains, egg whites, lean meat, fresh fruit, nonfat dairy, salads with no dressing. For thirty years I beat myself up and got all sweaty for one to three hours a day. I rode my bike hard every day, wore out a NordicTrack, and got frustrated on a rowing machine because I couldn’t get my heart rate high enough. And I was still gaining weight. I wasn’t fat by American standards, but I wasn’t as lean as I should have been with all that “ideal” food and obsessive cardio. It got to the point that I was exercising just to avoid gaining weight faster, and no matter what, I was always the hungriest person within a hundred yards.
unfortunately his carnivore prescription is not sustainable for a global population of 11 billion humans which is where we're heading. plus he's got a dog, and i think a cat too? so add that to the predator footprint. our biosphere will go bankrupt.

---

re: this thread, the dr greger prescription of innumerable servings of plant matter doesn't work on me for "weight loss," and it turns me into a trombone orchestra. just add up the cups of beans and grains and cruciferous vegs and this and that and you end up with a bucket of compost each day. i can't eat such volumes of methane-generating stuff.

---

so i have to dialectically continue experimenting with something like this:
https://www.ruled.me/comprehensive-guid ... enic-diet/

...which is where i'm currently trying to get to. but it's not so simple.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

i'm hereby ditching "whole grains" and tubers and beans as main staples.

they're ok for weekend fun, but not for daily dosage, for me--much less multiple times a day.

my digestive system can't take any more beans & whole grains at this rate. if greger can compost whole buckets of roughage in his intestines, more power to him, but i'm just not equipped that way.

a further examination of vegan keto (see here: https://www.ruled.me/comprehensive-guid ... enic-diet/) shows me that basically one is confined to vegan fake meats, eg tofu and seitan, for protein.

i'll definitely maintain some fake meats in rotation, but i got me today a chicken, a bunch of eggs, more milk for fermentation, pastured butter, cheese, and other goodies to help me regain digestive sanity.

looking forward to a filling and nutritious cheese and spinach omelette for lunch... i looked at the tofu in my fridge and said not today, see you next week.

white belt
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by white belt »

Alphaville wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:46 am
i'm hereby ditching "whole grains" and tubers and beans as main staples.

they're ok for weekend fun, but not for daily dosage, for me--much less multiple times a day.

my digestive system can't take any more beans & whole grains at this rate. if greger can compost whole buckets of roughage in his intestines, more power to him, but i'm just not equipped that way.
What about regular grains? I also don’t eat whole grains often but do eat things like white rice, regular pasta, and tortillas frequently. I think for pure weight loss whole grains are slightly less palatable and slower digesting which may make them useful tools, but for maintenance I’m not a huge fan of eating them with every meal for the reasons you point out.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

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white belt wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:59 am
What about regular grains?
you mean refined? they're higher glycemic and make me hungry. e.g. an hour after eating white rice i want more white rice.

higher protein stuff like durum pasta cooked al dente is marginally better, but not for "weight loss" for me.

hulled barley is the slowest carb i've found, but still keeps me burning glucose.

i've never in my life lost weight while on carbs. intense training will turn me into a refrigerator-sized beast, but i can't "cut" while eating oatmeal and bananas.

everyone's genetics are different though.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by white belt »

@Alphaville

Sounds like you might benefit from going to the “dark side” and tracking/weighing portions. It’s a more extreme step, but I think is useful for folks who still struggle with weight when they’ve exhausted the “simpler” diet advice like don’t eat x, eat more y, etc.

I’ve said it before, but weight loss only happens when energy intake is less than energy expenditure. There are a million ideas of how to make this equation work from a behavior perspective, but there is no magic about certain foods. You could eat a diet of exclusively twinkies (or Big Macs, or whatever) and lose weight if you were tracking calories and controlling the intake to be less than expenditures. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend doing that since you’re likely to have all sorts of micronutrient deficiencies and feel terrible, but it is possible.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Lemur »

@White Belt

+1 White Belt. All "diets" out there whether they're from marketers like Greger, Taubes, Jason Fung or broad-based carnivore diets, keto, low-carb / high-carb, low-fat / high-fat, all manipulate the person to do one thing subconsciously - trick the user into reducing calorie intake overtime. The latter is the only way weight & fat loss happens. The means to that end is insurmountable with many paths, roads, preferences, genetic variations, and marketing tricks mixed between. How to diet is confusing due to weird online nutritional cultural wars....its a weird rabbit hole if one wants to go down it.

This of course is not a hill I want to die on arguing lol. I've been there and done that before. I'll point to my favorite subject matter experts instead ... Alan Aragon, Lyle McDonald, Stephan Guyenet. True experts in the field.
Last edited by Lemur on Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Alphaville
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

white belt wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:18 am
@Alphaville

Sounds like you might benefit from going to the “dark side” and tracking/weighing portions. It’s a more extreme step, but I think is useful for folks who still struggle with weight when they’ve exhausted the “simpler” diet advice like don’t eat x, eat more y, etc.
i've done that before, but it stops working after a while. then i'll be sitting around looking at the clock waiting for my next carb snack, ever more desperately. it's not s good way of life for me.

then only way i can achieve weight loss stability with no hunger or suffering is via no sugar /no starches.

once i lose the weight it's easy to maintain weight with some carbs-- e.g. before the pandemic i'd come home from an intense bike ride and have a beer, and no problem. i'd eat bread on weekends too. but day in/day out starches mess with my insulin and promote hunger. starch is very moreish.
white belt wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:18 am
I’ve said it before, but weight loss only happens when energy intake is less than energy expenditure. There are a million ideas of how to make this equation work from a behavior perspective, but there is no magic about certain foods. You could eat a diet of exclusively twinkies (or Big Macs, or whatever) and lose weight if you were tracking calories and controlling the intake to be less than expenditures. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend doing that since you’re likely to have all sorts of micronutrient deficiencies and feel terrible, but it is possible.
i'm familiar with that school of thought, but i've found it to be an oversimplification in my experience. of course calories matter, but the whole system includes hormones: insulin and cortisol and human growth hormone and so forth. we're complex animals not reducible to a a simple numeral.

maybe calories in calories out works for some people regardless of calorie sources, but it's not universal. definitely does not work for me. starch makes me want starch.

given limited starches, sufficient protein, and enough micronutrients, i will burn fat no problem.

the difficult part here is doing this with less meat. but meat and starches are not interchangeable. 20 bananas can't replace the nutritional gold mine that is a piece of liver.

plant protein and meat yes, to an extent, but i gotta take out the starches for a time. e.g. gluten over bread, and tofu over peas, but not so often that i get sick of them.

i've never grown sick of eggs though, particularly the nice pastured ones with the bright egg yolk.
Last edited by Alphaville on Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Lemur
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Lemur »

@Alphaville

With that being said to my post above...I still agree with you to this extent. Calories in / out is not the whole picture but it is to me like a law of physics.

But we all know physics can get weird.

Tracking and weighing is useful for short-term. It may surprise you "wow how am I eating so much" but not sustainable long-term.

Can attest to tough to diet personally on beans and rice....I too am still experimenting on how to mix ERE type food spending with optimized diet for my own personal behavioral preferences.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Alphaville »

Lemur wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:47 am
With that being said to my post above...I still agree with you to this extent. Calories in / out is not the whole picture but it is to me like a law of physics.

But we all know physics can get weird.
yeah it's physics of course, but it's also chemistry. life is chemical.

my body does not permit me to reduce calories past a certain point while on a starch-heavy diet. i will wake up in the middle of the night to eat something. i will feel "faint" from hunger, obsess waiting for the next meal, etc.

it's a real pain in the ass because instead of using willpower to do some work it's used up counting pieces of whole wheat toast or whatever :D

i'm flex fuel though, so once i start burning fat, starch loses its gravitational pull and consuming fewer callories becomes chemically and neurally a simple matter: i eat my fat reserves. which are there to be eaten.

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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by Lemur »

@Alphaville

I experience the same phenomenon. Just a few weeks ago, I reduced my calories to 1600 a day and measured everything for a week. I lost a good deal of weight/fat in short order but it was not worth the struggle of feeling hungry 24/7...which should be expected of a diet but yeah I was as well psychologically obsessed with food. I also really struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep. I also lose my sex drive...It was pretty much hell lol.

I don't get these issues though when I am more protein/fat heavy with a similar caloric intake. I also experience much less hunger. The diet will get boring long-term though. Meat is also just expensive....so I'm at a crossroads with trying to reconcile dieting with lower food spending.

Generally I think there is something to the idea of carb-cycling. 4 days of of keto (<30 carbs) or just low-carb (<125) like eating followed by one day of higher carbohydrate eating + normal calories to replenish leptin levels and glycogen storage. Keto purists don't like the carb cycle but I believe they're missing a great benefit here from diet variety which is better for long-term behavioral modification and flexible eating attitudes.

It may be possible the former (carb heavy) requires one to be naturally insulin sensitive and physically active. I'm far too sedentary so having glucose all over the place is probably one of the problems I have personally.

white belt
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Re: What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

Post by white belt »

Alphaville wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:43 am
i've done that before, but it stops working after a while. then i'll be sitting around looking at the clock waiting for my next carb snack, ever more desperately. it's not s good way of life for me.

then only way i can achieve weight loss stability with no hunger or suffering is via no sugar /no starches.

once i lose the weight it's easy to maintain weight with some carbs-- e.g. before the pandemic i'd come home from an intense bike ride and have a beer, and no problem. i'd eat bread on weekends too. but day in/day out starches mess with my insulin and promote hunger. starch is very moreish.
Weight loss stability is an oxymoron to me. Weight loss is a temporary process and is by nature not "stable" because you are pushing your body out of homeostasis. It also extremely unlikely that a person is going to be able to lose weight without any hunger unless they are perhaps very high body fat to begin with.

I realized I already posted about some of this stuff earlier in the thread here: viewtopic.php?p=214918#p214918

Tracking food isn't about coming up with an edict for what you eat each day. More like an iterative process where you are continuously tracking results and tweaking things. Calorie (or macronutrient) totals will vary across individuals even with the same size and activity level due to genetics, hormones, and all sorts of other reasons. But you are only comparing results against yourself and you can adjust your caloric intake and composition each week if need be. For example, say you are trying to lose weight and you spend a week tracking calories but the scale stays the same. Here is what you would ask yourself:

-Did I adhere to my diet? If not, then I need to work on adherence (behavioral change, food composition change, etc).
-Did I get good quality sleep?
-Were my calories scaled to my activity level?
-Did I have any other stressors/outside factors that might affect things?

If the answer to the first 3 questions is yes and question 4 is no, then you need to drop daily caloric (or macronutrient) intake going into the next week. Personally I prefer to track macronutrients rather than calories because it gives a more complete picture.

I think the appeal with tracking food is it eliminates the unknown about how you are gaining weight. If the scale is moving the wrong direction, then just reassess those 4 questions at the end of the week. It also tells you exactly what to eat, which eliminates the unknown associated with portion control. I personally found the decision-tree nature quite easy to follow and took the onus off me for having to expend mental energy with decision making, but I understand that personality type may play a role in this as well.

Now, I believe adhering to a plan is easier for some than others. However, given that most users on here have achieved some sort of intellectual/academic/career success by adhering to some kind of plan, I don't think it's an insurmountable task.

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