The key to losing weight and keeping it off is not a beans and rice diet.


The key is to set up life-long habits that you can live with, not short term weight busters you will throw out of the window because they suck ass.

Moderation and exercise.

Cut soda out entirely and limit sweets in general.

I can't cut the soda...I won't cut the soda.

****...

I drink that shit like its a paying job. Four cans a day...sometimes more.

Brasil approves this post.

I drink coffee, water, tea and beer on weekends.

Soda is like crack to some people though.

My wife hates plain water. She uses that Mio flavoring shit.

I mostly drink plain ole water. I don't mind the taste of it.

I loved the taste of water when I went 2 days without it while cutting weight as a teen.


Nothing beats the taste of cold water when you havent eaten in days, haven't really slept, had nightmares about eating, etc.

Yeah, or Sunday morning dehydration!

The worst is when you sleepwalk out of your dorm and find yourself drinking water like it was going out of fashion. Then you have to run for a few hours. In plastics. In a creepy ****ing tiny ass room with like one treadmill and a bunch of windows at 2am.

Yeah, **** that shit. Think I would have quit right about then. :D

Honestly, the weight lifting at 5am throughout the year was the worst for me mentally. Sure, there were days were you'd break mentally on runs or conditioning but never in my life did I just hate everything on the planet as much as that.

obesity may have a genetic disposition, but it is also a learned response
not over eating , but bad eating is what I would think is usual
cause I suck at that
veggies? do pickles count?
I can afford protein, vegetables and fruit are luxury items, beer , and smokes are a necessity

I think overeating is an American thing that can probabpy be attributed to plate/dish size. Also, quite a few Americans are told since they were little to "finish their plates" and "don't waste food"

I drink mostly water, but do like to cut gatorade with gingerale after a long ride. There's just something about carbonation that I really did. I like tea a lot, but haven't made any in a while. Should do that. Only other thing I drink is almond milk, as part of carnation instant breakfast before my rare early am rides.

Sounds like jail food.

My mother-in-law was raised by parents that barely survived the Great Depression and she can't throw away food. It is so ingrained that I have seen her in the kitchen after dinner finishing off all the leftovers where there isn't really enough to save (spoonful of corn or half a potato, things like that). I try to tell her that it's like she's making herself a human garbage disposal but that mindset is too strong.

When she visits and helps my wife clean up after dinner, she saves the weirdest stuff, like the juice from canned peaches. We end up tossing most of it after she leaves.

If obesity is a disease, I'm working in Calcutta. Seriously, we got a coffee/pastry food truck outside, a breakfast vendor on site, and differing lunch vendosr/food trucks arriving throughout the day. Yesterday KFC was onsite and people were acting like Shroud's was in the breakroom pan frying up chicken, it was like they never heard of KFC before. It's an all day operation of shit food. It's 8:30 am and the food consumption planning conversations are already firing up.

Well, at least I don't have to ever worry about being overweight. Let alone obese. I imagine that would suck, like having herpes or cancer.

I really don't think that's true anymore. You would read that several years ago, but I rarely see it anymore. Eating several small meals is a strategy that works for some because it keeps them from getting hungry and eating a ton of junk food. It works for some because it keeps their calories low, not because it speeds up their metabolism.

This is what I do. I used to drink a TON of soda every day. I just stopped one day as an experiment and it was much easier than I thought it would be. The thought of drinking soda now seems crazy to me. I don't want it at all.

It's possible. I've visited a dietitian in the past year, and she recommended it for me. On a personal experience level, when I was struggling (still am) and bought into the "eat less" mantra, for more than a month I ate between 500 and 800 calories a day, generally in one or two meals. And I was strictly weighing, measuring, and documenting every gram of food that I "stuffed" in my face. And over the course of that time, I lost 1 pound. The dietitian said my body was in starvation mode, so it was holding onto everything it could.

It's been very difficult. And when I talked with my doctor about it, frankly, he didn't believe me. He said "eat less."

So... I disagree that it isn't just as easy as calories in vs. calories out. Maybe it's just me, but that's my personal experience. :shrug:

What's funny is I can pin point the exact moment when I became fat. My Dad was in the Air Force and got orders to Japan. He went there before us for 6 months to get everything set up. During that time.....my Mom, brother and I went to live with my Grandparents on their farm. My Grandma would not let you leave the table until you ate everything on your plate.....and she would make us WHATEVER we wanted. My Dad said that when we got off the plane in Japan....he didn't recognize me because I had gained so much weight...and I was only 8. It's been a ****ing battle ever since.

The same thing with my parents on our farm, except I had to work my ****ing ass off at that age.

I'm with your doctor. I have a really hard time believing this. It's not that I don't believe you... I just don't see how this is even possible. Your dietitian's explanation also makes no sense, as you'd lose weight in "starvation mode" as s/he terms it.

A person in a coma would lose weight on that diet.


Muscle mass, fat, etc.

All i ate today was a salad with ranch dressing all over it

and a bowl of oatmeal from a package with sugar and butter

and a turkey sandwich with cheese and mayonnaise on white bread

He says he was WEIGHING his food. That indicates that he knew enough about what he was doing to realize that condiments and such contain calories. I also know that FMB is pretty into cooking, so he's knowledgeable about that sort of thing. Still, the scenario he outlines is just really bizarre and seems to defy scientific logic (as indicated by his doctor's disbelief as well).

There is no such thing as the "starvation mode" as thought of by dieters. Your metabolism will drop slightly with extended calorie restriction in response to less body mass (as you lose weight) but won't drop to zero (or you would be dead).

The internet is full of people that supposedly gained weight on 500-1000 calorie diets yet no metabolic ward study (where someone else controls the food) has ever actually found one of these people.

There are several issues that make it seem like it exists. One is that food charts are frequently wrong and can be off as much as 20%. Also, it's impossible to get an 100% accurate calorie count on some things, like meat, because the actual fat content varies so much.

Also, there are short term effects that can mask your actual fat loss. Water is the worst as it can vary by several pounds a day. Women have it worst here because hormonal changes can cause them to gain a lot of water weight in a short time. You have to do it consistently for a longer period of time to get an accurate picture of what is going on. A few days won't show it and can be deceiving.

Here is an extreme example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/

A 27 year old man fasted with nothing but water and a few supplements for 382 consecutive days. He went from 456 pounds to 180 pounds. Tests during his fast showed he didn't lose all of his muscle. He also maintained at 196 pounds five years later so he didn't wreck his metabolism and gain it all right back.

Just read the first page......and it said that guy would go 37-48 days between bowel movements. ****ing hell.....

If you don't eat anything, there isn't much waste to poop out. :shrug: I believe later in the paper that he wasn't constipated. Just no waste.

Yeah....it would just be weird to go that long without taking a shit.

I would fall way behind in my reading.

I watched a show from Britain online recently. They interviewed a man and a woman who couldn't lose weight. The subjects were logging their calories and only eating 700-1000 calories a day...sure enough, they were medical marvels and couldn't lose any weight despite eating like birds.

Then, the show revealed that they had hired private detectives to follow them around. Turns out that they were literally eating a thousand or more calories a day that they didn't even realize...especially when drinking.

People genuinely don't realize what we put into our bodies...even when we try to be aware of it. It's a bizarre sort of denial.

Opposite end of the spectrum.....but there was a show in England where they wanted people to eat a huge amount of calories to see how quick they'd gain weight. I'm talking like 8k-10k calories a day. The test subjects complained that it was almost impossible to force themselves to eat that many calories.

It got down to that few calories because I started at 1200-1500. And since that wasn't working, I'd just "eat less." And this is why it's frustrating. Because I know what I did, and I know the results I had. And people don't believe me. I honestly felt like a fat anorexic.

Just after posting on this thread, I was catching up on the comments on Ray Cronise's blog. Ray is one of the guys that helped Tim Ferriss with his 4 Hour Body book. He has some pretty interesting insight into the mechanics behind weight loss.

In the comments to his last blog entry, someone was complaining about a long term plateau that he could get through. Ray's followup was:

This was followed by a comment by a client of Ray's:

(emphasis mine)

I've done the potato hack over four days and you lose a shit-ton of weight. I also experienced the lower blood sugar.

If someone thinks they "can't" lose weight, try this for two weeks and I bet you will (and it won't be muscle as potatoes have complete protein plus you aren't going to lose significant muscle in two weeks even if you ate nothing). It's an eye opening experience.

It IS tough. Also, not everyone will gain the same amount of weight because some people spontaneously increase movement (called NEAT) in response to increased intake.

Unfortunately, if I were to eat like that, I would slip into a coma and retain all of it. :#

I remember Michael Phelps talking about how he hated eating during the Olympics because it was pretty much all he did all day besides swim. He just got sick of it because he couldn't shovel bacon and eggs down his throat fast enough.

It really is incredible what our bodies can do.

Yeah.....the program was on why skinny people don't get fat. These people were having to find interesting ways to get in their calories for the day....because they HAD to. They talked about putting mayonnaise on pizza to get in the extra calories.

On Fridays, I could easily do that if I wanted. I had to hold myself back last Friday and still ate 7500.

One day? Sure.

Every day? No chance.

I bet I could. Easily. I love those little Entemanns donuts, and each bag is like 2k calories. Three of those, plus my regular food would easily get me there, because its mostly fat. Now, eating a "clean" 8-10k calories is totally different.

Odd coincidence that this thread showed up now. Yesterday, I finally decided to get serious. The last 7 or 8 years I've been at least 50 pounds overweight (now probably about 70 pounds). I'd make half-hearted attempts at losing weight, I briefly did well with a low-carb diet but the lack of variety led me to fail that diet, and I never exercised more than a month.

Now, my knees are starting to hurt and I'm having trouble sleeping. I think thats all the motivation I needed, it feels real now. I'm aiming for losing 40 and getting under 205 by the end of the year with a high protein somewhat-low carb diet and exercise.

I think obesity could theoretically be a disease if someone has some kind of bona-fide "food addiction", but I think thats rare. Most overweight people are either terrified of hunger (not realizing that occasional mild hunger is normal and healthy), eat out of boredom, or just don't care.

The shit these companies put in our food is causing people to blow up. On the other hand these obese people know just about every food that comes in a brown paper bag or is commercially packaged w/ preservatives etc is bad for you and they continue to eat it because it doesn't give them nutrients their bodies need it just temporarily satisfies their brain into thinking they're not hungry anymore, until they get hungry again just a couple hrs later and their body's trained to want that kind of food. That's why some people eat fast food everyday.

It was 1993 and I WISH I had a picture to prove my point... but I don't. KCFalcon59 could confirm this. He knows me as well as anyone especially then. YES I was a shredded beast. VERY proportional as well. My biggest downfall then was working for Coca Cola and working 16 hours a day and my eating habbits and exercise were f**ked.

Yeah. That happened to me when I graduated college and went to work at a cpa firm. I started working long hours and gaining weight like a lazy bitch during freshman year. it took me a few years to realize I couldn't live like that so I changed career paths so I could get back in shape and stop feeling like a worthless piece of shit.

I've been eating like a vegan for the past 9 days and I'm down 10.2lbs.

Actually, I'm more eating like a Veganazi. Because, I've had no soda, no sweets, no processed foods, no dairy, no meat...

I'm doing it to retrain my body and flush the cholesterol out of my system... I'll always be a carnivore... but in less amounts.

Eating vegan for 30 days is more of a discipline mindset and taking control over food, instead of the other way around. I work at a computer desk all day, so I had to stop mindlessly "fog eating"...

All of the meals that I've had so far, have been beyond delicious. Yesterday at Worlds of Fun all day, was tough... but luckily, there was a PandaExpress.

A small percentage of obese people are that way due to overactive thyroids, the majority are that way due to pure laziness and lack of self-discipline.

Just another PC sham perpetrated by an organization that should definitely know better.

You mean underactive, hypothyroidism.

We all know where this is leading don't we? To fats being protected as a "disadvantaged" class, with government protections. Anti-disrimination stuff. Probably allow them to sit in the handicap seats at stadiums and park in the handicap spots. And we all know which political party will go after them with this line of thinking.

You're such a miserable person. You're over the top paranoid and all you do is complain about everything. Perhaps you should seek help.

If I wanted this thread to be in the DC I would have put it there myself.

STFU douche.

What the hell did you eat at Panda Express that was healthy?

Everything there is full of sugar, salt.

Panda Express says "**** you vegetarians!"

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/5632/o8d6.jpg

There is enough salt in one meal to dry up 58,023,123 slugs.