It definitely is not just you. I have an extended family who lost weight and has maintained the loss for decades with that approach. She is also part of a support group. I think she had an obsession attitude to eating and was well served by diverting her obsession to precise measurements of things.
I don’t think it is a sustainable approach for the majority of people but all it has to be is sustainable for you.
But the fact that it is not what most do does not necessarily mean that
This bit is IMHO key:
I believe that chasing the healthy behaviors in ways that are sustainable for that individual is possible for all. More often than not an obese person doing that will experience clinically meaningful fat mass loss, especially of visceral fat. And they definitely will have much better odds of good long term health. But for many (I suspect most) chasing the number on the scale, tracking everything, is not the effective approach to optimizing long term health.
I have certain habits I keep to, I know the general calorie and macronutrient count of foods, but I don’t keep up very close tabs. I lost about 60 pounds since last year and have a BMI of 24.5. Most of my weight loss (about 40 lb, was over a period of five months.) I walked over 10K steps a day (doubling the previous years’ average), ate two meals a day, had one cheat day, and that’s about it. I just made sure to eat an appropriately sized dinner (~1000 calories), and I know what it looks like now, so I keep to it. Other than that, I lean away from carbs and towards fats and protein, but I still take about 50% of my calories from carbs. And I just hold to keeping all those steps a day, skipping one of the traditional three meals, and it seems to have worked so far for a year. And I do feel so much better and healthier and more energetic having all that weight off. I’m so happy I was able to do this when I had previously thought it was impossible, being 50 and all.
I read a book a long time ago that said if you eat the carbs with protein or fiber, it prevents the insulin spike. Do you know if that’s true?
At any rate, it totally makes sense to me that continuing to eat a small amount of sugar will perpetuate your craving for it. I’m looking into cutting carbs but I don’t think the cold turkey approach will be effective for me. But going cold turkey on certain things categorically does make sense. Like no to soda or sweets.
Again I understand you’re eating for a specific diet, but I’m not diabetic or hypoglycemic. I can see a future where I don’t drink soda, but not one where I don’t eat potatoes.
For most with diabetes or prediabetes a “safe dose” of brown rice is more like a third to two thirds of a cup. The red and black rices have even more fiber and protein. And alternatives like barley, buckwheat, etc., are also generally even better tolerated in reasonable meal serving sizes.
whole intact grains like brown rice, whole wheat bread, whole grain pasta and oatmeal; starchy vegetables like corn, green peas, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and plantains; and beans and lentils like black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas and green lentils. If you’re using the Diabetes Plate, foods in this category should make up about a quarter of your plate.
A quarter of a plate being the carbs component is a good normal amount for all of us.
I didn’t mean to imply that getting healthy was only about weight management or chasing a number. Getting my weight down to a BMI of 24 and keeping it there permanently was important, as was losing two inches on my belt size and reducing my visceral fat to almost nothing, but that wasn’t the only thing I changed.
I also made numerous lifestyle changes over the past few years that I feel have made me healthier. For example, I walk nine miles, burning 600 to 700 “move” calories daily. I attend a strength, balance, and cardio class twice a week. I do my upper-body strengthening exercises with weights twice daily. I do postprandial walks after each meal. I never drink, smoke, or snack between meals. I use an 18/6 TRE to limit how much I eat and when. I get eight hours of sleep every night and keep my stress/cortisol level low. Most importantly, I enjoy the company of family and friends whenever I can.
It is wonderful this works for you. But do realize the level of focus you devote to this would be a source of increased chronic stress for many others!
And FWIW most experts would caution against
The more standard advice is to respect recovery and give rest to the same body region, whole body no more than every other day or split sets.
That’s fair. I just didn’t want someone to think I was just focused on my weight. I’ll look into your comment on using weights daily to strengthen my upper body. If I’m doing that wrong, I need to find that out. Do you have an authoritative reference I can look at?
Strength training means different things. If you are going to the gym and lifting heavy weights often (60% of your maximum with many reps, or more), then you need to allow sufficient recovery time to maximize benefit, and it makes sense to rotate areas worked on, as well as to take (at least) every other day off.
But if strength training means you are using light weights or doing bodyweight exercises (pushups, etc.), are not training anywhere close to failure (defined as where you couldn’t possibly do even one more rep), and experience no fatigue or difficulty after doing this for a few days - then the stimulus is mild to moderate and much easier to recover from; and probably recovery is adequate.
If training strength twice daily is no big deal, one might consider training with more substantial effort twice weekly (greater than 60% of maximal). Why?
Peter Attia, in his remarkable book Outlive says:
“The sad fact is that our muscle mass begins to decline as early as our thirties. An eighty year old man has about 40% less muscle tissue (by cross section of the quad muscle vastus lateralis) than he did at twenty-five. But muscle mass may be the least important metric here. According to Andy Galpin… a foremost authority on strength and performance, we lose muscle strength about two to three times more quickly than muscle mass. And we lose power (strength times speed) two to three times faster than we lose our strength, because the single biggest change is atrophy of the fast-twitch (or type II) muscle fibres… Daily life and zone 2 endurance may prevent atrophy of slow-twitch (type 1) fibres, but unless you are working against significant resistance, your type 2 fibres will wither away. It takes much less time to lose muscle mass than to gain it… in its most extreme form, muscle loss is called sarcopenia … a prime marker for frailty, where a person meets 3 of 5 criteria: unintended weight loss, exhaustion, low physical activity, slowness in walking and weak grip strength.” (p. 252).
As an approximate guideline, working out at 60-70% of maximum load, with some volume (several sets of several reps) helps build muscle; some workouts over 85% of maximum weight (where only a few sets and reps are possible), or done at great speed (including sprints and explosive movements) build powerful type 2 muscle fibres.
In short, the goal is not just weight loss but retaining and building muscle, and preserving strength and power (force times velocity).
I’m no expert, but at one time in my youth I was motivated to set up a little gym in my basement, mainly featuring a weight-lifting bench. I used it regularly, and while I wasn’t personally aware of any direct benefits, at some point my sister-in-law commented on the change in my appearance – a perfectly flat belly and muscular arms. Sadly, exercise is one of those things I have let go in my older age, just when I need it most.
Do you have space for a little gym in your basement now? I don’t enjoy strength training, but in terms of time, effort, and willpower needed to do it, lifting weights twice a week for 30-45 minutes each time is one of the cheapest things you can do to improve your health as you age.
Speaking of which:
Lol, i use light weights (10, 15, and 20 pound hand dumbbells) and body weight exercises (like pushups) and that’s enough that i often train to failure. Occasionally, i have to give up and don’t finish my third set of reps. Often, i have to push really hard to get through it.
Also, it amazes me how much easier it is to lift in some directions than others. My trainer can tell me which set of muscles she is trying to stress, and it’s obvious that some of those muscles are a lot stronger than other ones.
Anyone can train to failure doing enough repetitions of a light weight. And some bodyweight exercises are too hard for the vast majority of people to do (muscle ups, human flags, one arm pull-ups, pistol squats…)
Most people in the gym do very few (usually no) exercises where they lift a weight above their shoulders or head, or while rotating their trunk. Light weights begin to feel very heavy indeed if done in unusual ways. One of the advantages of cable machines is they allow weights to be used in planes not always easily possible with free weights.
Indeed. Weightlifting is the last thing I should be doing given my paraumbilical hernia. Of course the right thing to do is get the hernia repaired and then get on an exercise regimen. But with me, the right thing to do and what I actually do are often quite different!
If you talk to a good physical therapist, i bet there are exercises you could do without damaging the herniated area. And they might prevent other damage.
But yes, it’s probably worth getting that repaired, too.
Thanks for all the advice, but I think I misled you. I’m not talking about weight training in the way you may be thinking. I do 200 biceps curls daily with six-pound neoprene weights, along with other upper-body lifts using those same weights or sometimes a 10-pound kettlebell. This is not heavy lifting by any stretch, and it’s only five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night. I don’t break a sweat.
I’m trying to keep my arm muscles strong as I age. I keep my leg muscles strong through walking. I also take a 45-minute class twice a week at my gym that works my whole body, with a balance component and some cardio. I’ve worked with a trainer there, and he advised me on my home workout. I’ve been doing this for a few years and haven’t noticed any loss of muscle mass. I plan to keep doing it for as long as I can.
Yes, i liked the cable machines back when i went to an actual gym. But free weights have several advantages. They are small and store easily in my basement. They are cheap. And i think it’s a feature, not a bug, that they don’t perfectly isolate a single muscle group, i always need to engage some other muscles a bit for stability.
I suspect it’s also easier to injure yourself with free weights. That cable machine won’t fall out of your hands and break your foot. But one of the advantages of working with a trainer (over Google meet) is that she reminds me to hold my back straight and stuff.