Ask the guy who lost 200 pounds in 9 months

In My Humble Opinion
141

First off, thank you for the shout out. It gives me the courage to try my nag another time:

Your losing “only” 50 pounds (almost 15% of your weight at the start) is not something to beat yourself up over and setting a goal of 30 pounds in 10 weeks is a bit unrealistic.

Beating yourself up over not staying with your nutrtition and exercise plan though is justified.

Meanwhile your cholesterol numbers aint too bad. A good number to follow is the “non-HDL cholesterol” – total cholesterol minus HDL. A low risk individual (see chart here) should aim below 190 for that, and a moderate risk one 160. You are at 183. Not great but not bad and the lowered BP and HgbA1c are great. Regular exercise and cutting out the crap will likely raise your HDL nicely, whether you lose much weight doing it or not.

Good luck!

142

I ended up getting two cholsterol profiles over the last year, I think they were 27 and 30, so it wasn’t just one off bad day. It was only 33 before I started the diet, so maybe I have naturally low HDL, but I went from no excercise to some excercise, so I don’t know why it would go even lower, although I suppose 27-33 could be within the normal fluctuation range. Still, concerning. I’ll see if I can get another panel done in 2 months or so after I’ve been excercising regularly and see if the excercise is the dominant component in it.

Quick question about A1C. From what I gather the normal range is about 4-6, from 6.1-6.5 is considered prediabetic, and 6.5+ is diabetic. Well, since I’ve minimized my carbs, and my blood sugar should be low and steady, shouldn’t I be much closer to the 4.0 end than the 5.0? Makes me wonder if that’s a sign of lifetime elevated blood sugar or something.

The other thing I failed to mention is that there’s a certain opportunity cost to not losing enough while I’m dieting. When I did this all the first time, towards the end I was getting sick of the foods I was eating. Not just bored of it, but I would actually start to find some of them revolting. Not because they specifically unhealthy I think (although maybe so, first ones that started making me sick were nitrate-rich meats like pepperoni and sausage) but just because I had such a limited, boring diet with only a few different things to eat that your body ends up getting sick of them.

I have a more diverse diet now, but not by terribly much. I’m not a skilled cook and I’m lazy. So if I only have a set period in which I can tolerate the diet, say two years, then by not excercising much I’m wasting the opportunity of what I could do in those two years.

I’m not really beating myself up over the part where I stopped for 3 months when I was back home. I was staying at different places, didn’t have a regular place to cook, went out to restaurants with friends all the time, etc. It would’ve been difficult and restrictive to maintain it at that point, and I actually did up my level of excercise while I was out there so I thought perhaps it would offset it more. But in May I took 3 weeks off as a mini-vacation, it took me about a month after I got home to get around to getting back onto it, and then in February I decided to take a weekend off that ended up becoming about a week and a half. Those I think were probably wrong.

I’m still not quite sure the occasional breaks are a good idea - it does help settle some cravings to indulge occasionally - but they’ve been fairly disruptive and I haven’t been iron-willed about keeping them short. In any case, I’m definitely on a single minded path for the next couple of months until I hit 264.

143

What happens then though? I lost 70kg (154 lbs) over a 2 year period by creating a small calorie deficit by eating a little less and moving a little more and maintenance doesn’t look much different, same basic foods, same amount of movement. I didn’t cut anything out to lose the weight (just played with portions mostly) so it has stayed off over the last two years quite easily and there has been no sign of rebound.

Why change things so radically to lose weight when it is so easy to derail you? If you can’t sustain it or you need to “cheat” then you are not doing it in the right way for you. I hate feeling deprived and I loathe suffering so my weight loss contained neither, my maintenance is also free of them.

144

There’s no benefit for me of your method over mine. Whatever feeling of deprivement and suffering I have now is minor compared to what I’d feel doing it the conventional way. I’ve tried that before and it’s miserable. Not only is it much more unpleasant, but it takes longer, several times longer, to accomplish the same goal, so the total amount of suffering is staggeringly higher. I can’t really convey how much more difficult it is except to say that I would most likely choose a likely early death over bothering to do it.

It’s not “easy to derail” me. It’s true, once every 4 or 5 months I took a week or two off. (The period when I was travelling was circumstantial and not due to deprivement and caving in). But outside of those deliberate periods, I don’t deviate or splurge at all. I can’t slip up and grab a pizza, it would disrupt my metabolism for days and waste a lot of time. Whereas if I was eating a normal diet, just restricting my calories, it would be easy to find little ways to cheat all the time.

That said, at some point, I will probably want to transition back to a more conventional diet, for ease if nothing else, and I’m going to have to work something out in regards to keeping eating under control and continuing to stay in shape. But at that point, I’ll have lost a lot of weight, gained fitness and muscle, and would generally find it easier to stay fit. To do it now, when I’m out of shape and need to lose a lot of weight, to struggle with it to accomplish slow progress.

Basically, I understand the concern - that I need to lose weight through the same process that’s eventually going to lead to keeping the weight off for the rest of my life. That if I “diet” temporarily, and then go back, I’ll end up back where I started. These are actually two entirely seperate issues. The first issue is losing weight, and the second issue is maintaining that loss. There’s no reason those two have to be the same.

Essentially, if you think I could summon up the willpower to lose weight via a normal low calorie route on what’s normally considered a healthy diet, then you’d have to grant that I could do that very same thing after I’ve lost 100+ pounds and I’m in way better shape, when it would be far easier. Conversely, if you think I’m incapable of transitioning into a weight maintenance routine after I lose all the weight, how in the world am I going to use the same system to lose all that weight in the first place?

145

You overestimate, I think, the physiologic power of low carb. But in any case, you went from a number that was touching into pre-diabetic range, to a number that was solidly normal range. No you should not be low normal.

You’ve established that you can lose weight. Even that you have been able to do so in the past while preserving large amounts of muscle mass. That’s great. And there obviously are health benefits to losing some weight. What some of us keep trying to get you believe however is that the weight loss is relatively the easy and from here the less important part. A long term plan of healthy nutrition habits (not a diet) and improving fitness with or without further weight loss that you can and do maintain is the bigger tougher challenge and the much much more important task. Your recurring focus on the scale as the goal just delays your getting down to the harder job, and does not make that harder and more important job any easier. It seems to me like it has the opposite effect.

Learn some lazy cooking skills. Educate yourself about some different sorts of healthy foods that are easy to make. Keep up with the fitess for its own sake. You are capable of these things, aren’t you?

146

I’m using the scale as a proxy for general health. In fact, I’m relatively unconcerned with my actual weight. I’d choose being moderately fat but in great shape, strong, healthy, physically capable, over being not fat but in bad health. Not that that’s a normal/common dichotomy. But using the scale as a proxy works because as you’ve said, I can lose weight while gaining lean mass, so all those health benefits are coming alongside the lost weight.

As far as blood sugar A1C, blood sugar is almost entirely dependent on carb intake, right? And if my carb intake is very low, my blood sugar should be on the low range. Which makes it seem logical to me that I’d be on the low end of the A1C range.

As far as weight loss vs maintenance, what I’m trying to say is essentially this. One day I’m going to have to begin a lifetime-long lifestyle change, a lifestyle that’ll either involve slow loss or just maintaining what I’ve got. Now, I could start that lifestyle change at 340 pounds and out of shape. And I could use that change to slowly make progress until eventually several years later I’m some reasonably healthy weight. Then I just basically continue what I’m doing, maybe ease up just a bit. I’ve already learned the habits of the good lifestyle, no transition necesary.

I get that.

But what I’m saying is: I could also begin that process at, say, 220 pounds, and in good shape, with lots of lean muscle mass.

If for some reason anyone thinks I’m incapable of starting that process after I’ve lost all that weight, if I don’t have the willpower to live the lifestyle when I’m healthy and it’s relatively easy, then how am I going to do it now, when I’m overweight, out of shape, and it’s much harder? Conversely, maybe I’ll flame out, maybe I’ll be unable to maintain a healthy lifestyle once I hit a good weight, but if that’s true, then there’s no way I would’ve stuck with it all the way from 340 pounds all the way down. I’d have quit somewhere along the way.

Entering that lifetime weight maintenance process at a lower weight, with greater fitness and lean body mass, and a greater basal metabolic rate, with general feelings of good health and success towards getting fit would make it more likely to succeed. Trying to enter that state at high weight, bad health, and high struggle would be discouraging.

Does that make sense?

147

Hey, it’s your body :slight_smile:

In the four years since I started paying attention to this stuff I have seen a lot of people lose and regain weight and it is almost always down to not changing their base habits, just doing radically different and unsustainable things to lose and not figuring out what happens afterwards.

You are a step ahead by thinking about so all I can say is good luck to you.

148

The almost certain result of trying to do a low calorie diet, being hungry all the time, combined with working out would probably be, within a month “well, I feel like shit, and I’ve lost all of 2 pounds, so fuck this” and I’d be done and not doing anything. Even worst case I slack off and don’t bother after losing a whole lot of weight and gradually regain it, it’s still superior to not having gotten in shape in the first place.

149

I couldn’t handle being hungry either which is why I made sure I wasn’t, it took some figuring out to work out what satiated me best within the cals and the answer for me wasn’t in any magazine or eating plan, it was in whether I was happy and satisfied. The only formerly regular food I never touch now are doughnuts and that is because they send me straight to sleep and make me feel sluggishy bad.

I couldn’t do low calorie either but aiming for 100-500 cals under my daily expenditure wasn’t that low, big bodies use a lot of calories. I never had a day under 1700 even as I neared my goal due to exercise and that can be a lot of food if you don’t blow it all on stuff that leaves you craving.

Now if I don’t eat 2600 I lose weight and make my doc cranky but that is because I fell madly in love with weight training along the way.

150

Yes. And your low carb approach has also resulted in the “diet” having been too much hassle and had you feeling like crap and saying I’m not not losing anymore weight (the totally unexpected plateau) so fuck this.

What do you conclude from that?

Hint: a long term sustainable plan of healthy nutrition and exercise habits is not a diet even though it results in fat loss too.

151

I conclude that I have very little will to bother to lose weight. I honestly don’t care about it terribly much. The fact that I’ve lost 50 pounds in a little over a year, despite being what I’d consider unsuccessful and really half assing it, is only possible due to the fact that I was low carbing. Had I not been low carbing, with the same level of not really giving a shit attitude, I’d have gained 10 or 20 pounds instead of losing 50. There’s no way I could’ve used the same amount of willpower to be more successful on something much harder and slower.

This shit does not thrill me. I don’t like doing it. I’ve been doing it recently because I had serious concerns that I was near-death with medical issues, but once those began to fade, and the feeling of immediate danger was less, so did my desire to keep doing this. I realize, rationally, though, that while the symptoms may have subsided somewhat, I have a long way to go. But without that immediate motivator of fear, my heart wasn’t really in it.

So I still don’t understand what you’re asserting. It seems to be something like “Half ass sticking with something you’re not really that into only lost you 50 pounds, so you should acknowledge that the other thing, which would’ve been something you wouldn’t have been able to stick with at all with the same half-ass level of enthusiasm, is superior”

It’s only recently, within the last 2 weeks or so, that something has flipped in my brain that’s sort of made me feel more proactive about all of this. I’m not quite suy why, but suddenly I do give a shit, and I’m going to respond by ramping my efforts up considerably. This may fade away, I don’t know. I’m pretty worried about it.

152

I think you should consider a different line of approach. I think you should learn to cook

. Focus on only learning to cook the very healthiest and tastiest food! A new hobby and a new approach. It’s fun and creative, you might like it. Your diet will certainly improve, and your lifestyle, seamlessly, along with it, i should think. Good habits are never regretted. You could find a new passion. Never teach yourself to cook anything but healthy food though.

Good Luck and thanks for the up date!

153

My assertions are quite simple and just as simply may not apply to you because your interestest in your health seems to be only involved when you believe you are at risk of imminent death.

I don’t care about your weight either; the scale as a single data point is a lousy proxy for my concern. My comments are focused on long term health and function. If you are not especially interested in your long term health and function then what I have been saying does not apply to you. That’s fine.

Long term health and function is not best served by tempory unsustainable diets given up because an unrealistic goal was unachieved or out of frustration when the inevitable plateau hits. Long term health and function is best served by establishing realistically sustainable good nutrtion habits and a realistically sustainable and progressive fitness plan. If kickstarting that with a period of more rapid weight loss (by whatever approach works for that person) helps someone get there wonderful, whatever floats one’s boat, but losing more than 10% of bodyweight as the goal, rather than establishing those new lifetime habits as the goal, is aiming at the wrong target (in terms of long term health and function).

From a health perspective your problem is not that you are fat; your being fat is a symptom, which may persist even as the actual problem is addressed successfully. Your problem is your baseline long term unhealthy habits. To the degree that you change them (and you have to some degree, with some setbacks to be sure) you are a healthier individual. To the degree you do not you are not. Whether or not you care about that is for you to decide. Changing them long term is indeed a bigger challenge then just losing some weight for a bit.

154

I understand what you’re getting at, and it’s logical when applied to a typical person.

You’re concerned that what I’m doing is a “temporary unsustainable diet”, because I took a few breaks in a year and a half, and I’m telling you whatever you’re recommending, to me, is a “temporary unsustainable diet” that I might do for about a week before giving it up.

I am simply not interested in the sort of continuous discomfort and effort for so little return. I don’t want to feel like shit, I don’t want to put a lot of effort into my eating only to always be hungry and crawl along with minimal results. It isn’t worthwhile. I’d rather be fat, unhealthy, and die an early death.

Half of this thread has been people telling me that I’m doing it wrong, that I should be doing it the “right” way, that I should be constantly hungry and miserable and maybe after 5 or 10 years I’ll have gotten somewhere. But what I’m doing now is not unhealthy - all markers of my health have improved except cholesterol, but that has a specific cause in that I stopped taking medication that was controlling it before. I’m losing weight, I’m building muscle mass, I’m improving across the board.

The concern is that when I’ve reached a certain weight, I’ll quit low carb completely and go back to bad eating habits. That may be. I don’t know, I’ll have to see what I can do at the time.

But here’s the thing. You all seem to be suggesting that if I don’t start doing it the “right” way now, when I’ve got a low muscle mass and a lot of weight to lose and I’m in bad shape, then I won’t do it then, after I’ve lost the weight, gained body mass (and increased my basal metabolic rate), and improved my fitness so that it isn’t such a struggle to excercise, and that I only have to target maintenance rather than loss.

I’m saying that this is illogical. If I am capable of doing it the way you suggest now, with all of these factors working against me, then I will be capable of doing it that way then, after I’m in better shape and have lost the weight. If I’m incapable of doing it then, then I’m certainly incapable of doing it now when all of the factors make it more difficult.

There is absolutely no upside whatsoever to doing it the way you’re suggesting now. It would only slow my progress, make me less healthy, make me more miserable, and far more likely to quit. There is no downside to what I’m doing now, which is not causing me any harm.

So, TLDR version: If I do a conventional healthy diet, as you suggest, I will quit within a week, and well, that’s that. If I do what I’m doing, I will lose at least 80 pounds and be in far greater shape. The option for either continuing to low carb as a lifestyle, or come up with some sort of lifetime maintenance plan involving excercise and diet modification, while still difficult, would be far easier then. So if you have no confidence that I can do it then, then telling me to do it now is completely illogical.

155

No. You do not get what I am trying to say. Not close.

I am not and have never been suggesting that you go on “a conventional diet” and certainly not that you live with “continuous discomfort.” The fact that you read “realistically sustainable good nutrtion habits and a realistically sustainable and progressive fitness plan” as that is frankly a bit disturbing.

156

You don’t seem to be getting me. Whatever plan I can come up with is going to take a lot of effort - I’d have to be choosy about my foods, cook for myself, avoid eating tempting things I actually like, going to work out on a high carb diet which is more difficult with a longer and more painful recovery time, etc. And for this, I would see extremely slow progress. I’m willing to put in some work, but it has to come paired with dramatic progress, otherwise it’s not worth doing.

And the key point is this: What I’m doing now is working. It has worked in the past. It’s something I can manage. It’s providing enough results to keep me at it. I’m healthier than I was. I’m losing weight and building muscle at a far greater rate than I would with any other plan. There is no benefit to using another plan over this one, and they would almost certainly be doomed to very rapid failure.

As such, I don’t understand why people keep trying to sabotage me by insisting that I deviate from my current course. I know that’s not their intent, but I don’t know how I can make it any clearer.

Edit: And before anyone chimes in with “but it didn’t work before, you didn’t keep the weight off” - I get that. But insisting that the fix to that is suggest that I have to lose the weight instead with something that I would never, ever stick with is illogical. If I’m going to make a transition to a lifetime maintenance plan, it’s going to be when I’ve lost the weight and I’m in shape, not when I’m fat and out of shape. I lose no options by beginning the maintenance plan after I’m fit, and I gain several advantages.

157

Sorry if I’m coming off as hostile now, it just feels like I’m not adequately making my point and I keep having to argue the same points repeatedly.

I want to clarify something though. The fact that I’ve only been half-assing this and slipping here or there has nothing to do with the difficulty level of low carb, at least not compared to other methods of eating better. It has to do with the bare minimum of giving a shit level I’ve been able to maintain.

I just haven’t managed to find a way to really give a shit about the weight loss this time around, so I’m just going through the motions. Low carb specifically isn’t making me feel like shit (I feel like shit all the time when I’m in vegas anyway). Low carb is still the easiest, most effective option for me. If I can’t manage to muster up the motivation to stick with that, there’s no way something harder with lesser results is going to be something I can stick with. Have you ever committed to the equivelant of something like losing 80 pounds while not actually giving a shit about it and having nothing to keep you on task except your desire to complete something you don’t actually care about? It’s kind of weird.

That said, I’ve been wasting a lot of time, so I’m going to step up my efforts significantly to see if that gets me interested again. So I’m committing to a sprint to knock off the last 30 and hit my original goal. We’ll see if the regularity and quick progress inspires me in a way that this half-ass stuff hasn’t.

158

Number 2 for the win. I lost 100 lbs at one point (have since gained it back unfortunately) by following Richard Simmons’ Food Mover diet plan and exercising moderately for 30 mins to 1 hour, 5 days a week. I had to work up to that level of activity when I first started of course. Obviously I had trouble maintaining even that, a relatively sensible and effective diet and exercise plan. I can’t imagine maintaining long periods of extremely strenuous exercise every day as a permanent way of life.

159

To solve the “don’t give much of a shit” problem, have you considered placing some weight-loss bets with friends, family, and maybe even Dopers? If you setup a good spread of bets including short, medium, and long term weight-loss (and maintenance) goals, you could have some pretty consistent motivation, as well as accountability.

Based on the extent of the back-and-forth displayed in this thread, it seems like you should harness that desire to prove your assertions correct by backing 'em up with the force of cold hard cash!

Proceeds could go the bettors’ favorite charities, if that would be even more motivating.

160

Actually, that’d be an interesting possibility, because I tend to get a lot more motivated by stuff like bets or grudges or proving I’m right. But it would take a lot to get me motivated, a novelty bet of a few bucks or bottles of booze or whatever wouldn’t do it. Which I don’t see anyone being interested, or practical, to do with strangers. Unless there’s some sort of betting exchange that mediates this somewhere.

I don’t know - something like that could be a good idea, but I’m not sure the terms would be big enough to motivate me. I also can’t really get a “prove them all wrong” motivatonal streak going, since I’ve already done it.