About three years ago, I realized I had to lose weight. Since I had retired and had plenty of time, I began exploring healthy weight loss options. I had never dieted before, but with a BMI of 29, I knew I had a significant amount of weight to lose. Using a ketogenic diet, Intermittent Fasting, and extreme exercise, I lost 40 pounds in 100 days. My weight was now where I wanted it, and after about a year, I decided to stop tracking everything and live an everyday life. Within a few months, my weight started to creep up, and nothing I did would stop it.
I went back to tracking everything, made some dietary adjustments, and got my weight back down where I wanted it. I’ve gone to 18/6 TRE and increased my carbs from low to moderate. I exercise daily, burning ~600 calories, which helps keep my energy balance in the red. These days, I track everything I eat and plan all my meals a week in advance. I can still make changes during the week, but if I stick to my plan, my weight will stay where I want it, and I will feel good the entire week.
Is anyone else this anal about their weight that they feel they have to track everything and plan all of their meals, or is it just me? When I tell people I’m doing this to increase my longevity and health span, they invariably tell me it’s not worth all the time and effort. Nobody I know does this, and my 43-year-old daughter, whom I am living with at the moment, thinks I’m nuts. Your thoughts?
But everything else you’re doing now I did with equal intensity when I was first diagnosed with diabetes and my career was in jeopardy. Knocked off 70 lbs over a just a few months and kept up that level of weight control, diet orthodoxy, daily exercise, total logging, and everything else for about 5 years.
Then I slowly fell off those various wagons, got back on, lather rinse repeat.
That hardcore orthodox period ended about 8 years ago now. My weight now could use about 15-20 lbs gone, and I ought to get back on the total zero simple carbs diet. I still eat far cleaner than most Americans and have a much lower BMI to show for it. And get back in the gym, not just walking.
But it’s rough. I don’t have a career or an ailing wife to protect any more. There’s just me deciding how to balance hedonism and self-abnegation as I’m running down the last 10-20 hoped-for active years of my life.
I do not do that. Doing that would suck an awful lot of joy out of my life. I did the opposite – I. gained a lot of wight when I was pregnant, and decided to buy new, larger clothes instead of trying to lose weight. I remain overweight, (also with a BMI around 29) but I can eat exactly what I want to and remain at that weight – I’ve done so for decades, now.
That being said, I don’t think you are nuts. I think that you are doing what works for you, and that maintaining a healthy weight is good for your joints and your long-term mobility, as well as other health benefits.
In phases, yes. When the mood is on me, I have iron willpower. Even when I’m not focused, I don’t get far out of line. I have a five-pound range that I stay in, and the diet starts the moment I stray out of it. Of course, sometimes I don’t weigh myself as often as others.
How is the “total zero simple carbs diet” different from a ketogenic diet?
I’ve seen lots of people lose weight and then gain it back, and the problem, as I see it, is that they diet hard for a while, get burned out, and revert to eating the way they did before and eventually gain back the weight they lost plus a few pounds. Lather, rinse, repeat. Before starting my diet, I vowed not to fall into this trap, and as long as I plan my meals, rarely, if ever, eat out, and track my daily calories and macros, I can maintain a healthy weight forever. I think living for an extra few years makes it worth it, but I don’t think many people think of it that way.
I’m not one of those who weigh themselves every day. I think that isn’t very smart since your weight can fluctuate quite a bit over any given 24 hours. I weigh myself once a week and plot the results on a graph, and look for trends. If I stay within five pounds of my ideal weight week-to-week, I’m good with that.
More or less this. I’m really more concerned about other markers of health. I am fat. The last blood test I got showed zero evidence of diabetes - he said my sugars were better than most people’s. But I had slightly elevated triglycerides. So I’m working toward cutting carbs to address this. I also care very much about functional mobility, and I have poor mobility due to bone spurs and Achilles tendonitis. The only thing that seems to help is strength training. So I tend to focus on these areas. Weight loss would help for sure, but I’ve read too much research showing that permanent weight loss is a pipe dream for the vast majority of people and that periods of calorie restriction probably make you fatter in the long run, and, well, I don’t want to get fatter. But if cutting carbs and exercising leads to weight loss I won’t be crying about it.
I think our society’s attitude toward weight loss is deeply dysfunctional and includes cultural approval of potentially dangerous and psychologically unhealthy behavior, and I really want no part of it.
Thanks for your vote of confidence. I really appreciate it. I am focused on maintaining my muscle mass because, as we get older, we tend to lose it, and that affects our strength and longevity. That means ensuring I get at least 100g of protein daily. The only way I know if I’m doing that is to track what I eat and plan my meals around it.
I don’t disagree with this in the slightest, but the fact remains that being significantly overweight significantly raises your risks for having serious health issues. So, while trying to subscribe to society’s ideas on how our bodies should look (read: thin) is probably not health, NOT doing anything about a serious weight issue is probably even MORE unhealthy.
I’ve read that same research, but it doesn’t deter me. I’m among the 15% who will make sure they never regain the weight.
I think it has to do with whether you have a healthy diet and whether you are doing all the other things you need to do to get and stay healthy. You have to think holistically. Your diet is just one part of it. If you smoke, drink, don’t exercise, don’t get enough sleep, and don’t maintain a healthy lifestyle, you’re unlikely to succeed. I track 14 markers to make sure I am doing everything I can to stay as healthy as possible.
The difference is I know exactly what the former is, but I don’t really know what the latter is.
That’s sorta flippant, but is also sorta the truth. My interest was solely blood sugar control. Which comes from simple carb control. And my personal psychology is much better at cold turkey absolute than cutting back. Whether that aligns with any given fad diet out there is immaterial from my POV.
I credit the weight loss mostly to portion control and exercise, not carb reduction. While I credit the blood sugar improvements mostly to the carb control. Yes, it’s all synergistic and they’re all pulling in the same direction. But I choose, not entirely without scientific merit, to allocate the credit that way.
For the years I was hardcore, I never thought of it as a “diet”. It’s how I eat, and it’s a permanent lifestyle. I’ve never had a yo-yo weight scenario. Even now, the extra 15ish pounds I’ve got took me 8 years of semi-orthodoxy to gain. And I’ve not gone up at all in the last 2 years.
ISTM the yoyo disasters are crash diets for 6 months, then backlash binging for 6 months. Lather rinse repeat into chronic incurable obesity. My advice to anyone: Don’t do that.
Maybe so. What I’ve never been able to tease apart personally is whether obesity is a casual factor for these health problems or rather an associated characteristic. For example, people who eat an unhealthy diet and don’t exercise are more likely to be fat and have metabolic syndrome, but is it being fat that causes said syndrome? Or is it eating a trash diet and never moving your body? Or is it influenced by both things? Also, what other things are we not considering as potential factors?
It’s hard for me to get a grip on the science because everyone’s got a pitch these days.
That’s true. But i don’t think a BMI of 29 that’s not going up is a serious weight issue. That is, if your weight keeps creeping up, and gets that high, you probably need to do something. But mine doesn’t creep up. In fact, it’s been drifting down a little (probably from loss of muscle mass with age – i do exercise in an attempt to maintain my muscle mass and strength). I’m pretty sure I’m not in the 15% who would lose weight and keep it off, and i suspect yoyoing would be worse for me than holding the course.
I am 58 and 5’ 6". I am always worried about my weight. I don’t want to be fat. Almost everyone around me is fat, and I just don’t want to be fat.
In the winter of 2024 I stopped drinking beer, and I was down to around 150 pounds by the summer of 2025. But then I started drinking beer again in July of 2025, and now I am… I don’t know. Am afraid to weigh myself. But I’ve increased belt sizes.
At the start of the new year I am going to stop drinking beer again.
Very much the same for me. I’m a very categorical thinker and I think it’s an executive function thing for me. Either it’s in or it’s out, because I can’t deal with all that decision-making. One decision one time.
My keto diet got me down to 15g of net carbs per day, which was challenging to maintain for 3 1/2 months. But it allowed me to eat cruciferous veggies. No fruit, no sugary or starchy foods. I cannot see how you can have anything close to a healthy diet, eating zero carbs. All plants have carbs, so you aren’t eating any plants? I suppose a pure Carnivore diet would do it.
I feel your pain. I had to give up added sugar, which is in about everything I love to eat. But after a month of not eating added sugar, the cravings went away, and they’ve never returned. You could switch to drinking red wine, I hear it’s good for you in moderation.
Oops. Sorry to be imprecise. A zero simple carbs diet. Which has plenty of veggies (and fiber) in it.
Another form of the same idea is the “no white diet”. Other than milk & unsweetened milk products, if it’s white then don’t eat it. Zero bread, pasta, flour, grain, sugar, potatoes, or rice. They’re white and food doesn’t come in white.
Your techniques are doubtless more analytical than mine. But we end up in a broadly similar place.
Yes, fiber is a carbohydrate, and yes, you can eat as much as you want. It’s good for your microbiome. It’s recommended that I eat 30g of fiber per day, and my 3-month average is 35g, so I am getting enough fiber and protein in my diet by design.
