I did not actually set out to lose weight (even though I obviously was overweight), so I did not notice, but it makes sense that I ate less snacks or ate less in general. But again, the only conscious choice was cutting out the diet drinks.
I lost 20 lbs last year in three months, and have kept it off for a year. No one method works for everyone, so take this FWIW. I reviewed my eating habits and I discovered three things: I was eating large amounts of refined carbohydrates (including about 1000 calories’ worth of Grape Nuts for breakfast), had a habit of eating until I was stuffed, and was snacking a lot.
I adjusted my eating routine to change my regular meals, the ones I have almost every day. Like switching from a big bowl of cereal for breakfast to an egg, yogurt, and slice of whole-grain toast. Then I also cut down on portion size at lunch. For dinner I cut down or eliminated pasta, rice, potatoes, and bread. I stopped eating carbs as a snack (have a dozen almonds instead of a handful of pretzels), and try to avoid snacking altogether. And I stopped stuffing myself. I stop eating before I get to the point where I feel too full to eat any more.
It also helps to stop taking seconds. Figure out the right portion and serve yourself once before you start to eat. When you keep going back for seconds (or thirds) you end up fooling yourself about how much you are really eating.
**wollyisdope **asks for rapid weight loss, which is a non-starter. Reducing fat takes time. Rapid losses are probably reducing muscle and organ mass.
Exercise is important for good overall health, but it’s very easy to out-eat any exercise routine. Don’t rely on exercise to lose weight if you are not changing your diet. Two chocolate chip cookies pack on the calories burned by a mile of running. (rough figures)
And such changes need to be permanent. Forget about losing 20 lbs by a quick diet, because it will come right back once you go back to your old habits.
There is much talk about timing meals but eating dinner before 6:00 PM vs. eating the same dinner after 6 isn’t going to make any difference.
Lots of good advice being thrown around. It’s all worth listening to but I personally try to keep these 3 key things in mind:
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Carbs should not be the focus of a meal. That means pizza, burritos, pasta, bento boxes, sandwiches, and a majority of other “entrees” from dining out go right out the window. Carbs are filler and if you’re trying to lose weight, there’s no room for filler on your plate. Replace carb filler with veggie filler whenever possible.
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Exercise is important but weight is lost in what you [don’t] eat. You need to burn roughly 3500 calories for every pound of fat you lose. Your baseline metabolism is roughly 2000 calories a day so if you wanted to lose 1 lbs in a week you have to take in only 1500 calories a day. If you want to lose 5 lbs in a week you’d have to basically run a 17,500 calorie deficit. To burn 17500 calories you’d have to log 4200 minutes of walking, 3000 mins on the elliptical, or 1500 mins of 6mph jogging… a week. That would be 10 hrs a day of walking, 7 hrs a day on the elliptical, or 3.5 hrs a day of jogging. Of course these numbers are all rough estimates but the point remains that unless you’re willing to spend 3-4 hrs in the gym every day doing high intensity, ass-kicking cardio, 20 mins on the elliptical isn’t going to do much to help you lose weight.
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Embrace little changes that don’t drastically change your dining experience. Water/tea over soda. Coffee taken black rather with cream and sugar. No cheese, sour cream, guac. Brown rice and whole grain over white anything. Leaving the crust/bun left over from a sandwich/pizza/burger is about 50-60 calories that will help you get in the deficit. This might seem a bit nitpicky but the impact is potentially doubled in a) you losing those calories and b) you would otherwise swing the other way and go out of your way to eat things you are really ambivalent to. I noticed this when I would be in the office and some coworkers would have cookies and brownies to share. It wasn’t until that I started tracking my calories that I realize that an extra brownie is an extra 100+ calories, which meant an additional 10 minutes of mild cardio that I really didn’t want to do. In declining the brownie and not getting cheese/sour cream/guac on my lunch burrito, it results in a -500 calorie swing for my day without making any drastic change to my diet.
There is a lot of talk because there is real research that backs up that timing does make a difference.
Later main meal eaters " lost less weight and displayed a slower weight-loss rate during the 20 weeks of treatment than early eaters (P=0.002). Surprisingly, energy intake, dietary composition, estimated energy expenditure, appetite hormones and sleep duration was similar between both groups."
Some of the basic science speculations on why …
True for everyone? Doubt. The big deal? Doubt. “The secret?” No. Categorically true that timing isn’t going to make any differnce? No as well.
Just curious but for the people who say they lost X, did they start at 10X or 20X? If you are 300lbs and lose 20, that’s not a big deal. I was 115 and lost 10 and almost had to be hospitalized.
I started at 240 and ended up at 180; losing one fourth of my body weight.
For me, while i wouldn’t describe it as a secret, the key component to weight loss/maintenance is regular exercise. This is not because of the calories burned during the exercise itself but rather the motivation the exercise gives me to adhere to a healthy diet. Diet and exercise have a symbiotic relationship; they feed off each other. As i stick to clean eating and a regular workout schedule, it becomes easier to stay committed to both. But if either one of those components were to be taken out of my lifestyle, it would become much harder to stay committed to the remaining goal.
I get your point, and I am sure that some on these boards are sick of me pointing the following out, but still it must be said: someone who is obese and loses 5 to 10% of their body weight and keeps it off with improved lifestyle (nutrition and exercise both) has done a very big deal, achieving the lion’s share of the health benefits. Even though they are still obese. 20lbs off a 300lb base maintained is a very significant weight loss.
Four and a half months in hospital did the trick for me! I lost over 40kg.
Admittedly, along with losing the fat (good), I lost a crapload of muscle (not so good) from being stuck in bed so long. Previously had huge footballer-type thighs, and when I came out of hospital, my knees were the widest part of my legs, leaving me looking like a famine victim. I still have to put a blanket between my knees when I sleep on my side, otherwise they get sore from taking weight they never used to. I had trouble walking far when I came home, because I just got tired through not having enough muscle. I’ve since built that back.
On the positive side, no paunch or heavy jowls. I haven’t looked like this for twenty years.
I need to print this in extra large font and look at it every day. As a lifelong yo-yo dieter and comfort eater, I can’t get my head around the (sensible) concept of eating what you want (no way!! I’ll get as fat as a house - again) and stopping when you’re not hungry. Once I’ve started, I keep going until it’s gone. :o
That said, I’ve lost approximately 35kg over the past ??year and, so far, am managing to keep it off better than any of my many, many previous attempts. Minimising carbs (no bread, ice cream, cakes etc and very small amounts only of brown rice or pasta) seems to have helped me this time around.
Who knows what weight I’ll be at in a year? I’m hoping the same as I am now - 59kg.
I agree. I make excellent food choices when I’m dining out with friends. My worst choices (half a loaf of toasted bread with peanut butter for example) occur when I’m sitting here on my own.
I’m thinking about the quality of their weight loss advice.
Person A: Has never weighed more than 125. Goes to 160 during pregnancy. Comes back down to 130, net loss 30 lbs, has maintained this weight for 10 years.
Person B: Has had weight issues their whole life, was 200lbs in high school. After going through a period of depression, balloons to 400lbs. Loses 60 to 340 after stomach stapling surgery 6 months ago.
Person B has lost twice as much as Person A, but whose advice is better?
I have been toying with trying to lose weight for the last couple of years but so far have been too lazy to seriously address the issue. I’m 5’ 10" and just under 200lb so only about 10-15% over an “ideal weight”. Lots of helpful advice in this thread, but can anyone suggest any tips when living with someone who has quite different eating habits?
Let me briefly explain what I mean by this. As some have already said, I have a sweet tooth and so have found that the best way for me to avoid snacking on junk is to not have the food in the house. I believe I can still lose weight by allowing myself one treat per day (say a regular chocolate bar), but will struggle if a whole packet of cookies is available. However, my wife has less willpower than me when it comes to shopping and often buys this kind of stuff. Also, if I have had a big lunch I can quite comfortable skip dinner, but if I say I’m not hungry she gets upset as she wants us to eat together.
Really, this is not a big issue and I’m sure I could still lose weight in spite of these factors, it just doesn’t make it easy for me. Any advice?
I can’t offer any advice re the lunch/dinner problem but are there are sweet items your wife likes which you don’t? My husband likes snakes (a jube/jelly sort of confectionery) and I don’t care for them - chocolate is my sweet poison of choice and he doesn’t like it, so if there are snakes in the house, I’m good. Chocolate? Not so much. He also likes a particular biscuit (cookies to you) which I don’t like, so I buy Monte Carlos for him and they don’t tempt me at all. Luckily for me, he doesn’t like Tim Tams or I’d really struggle.
Neither one’s is better.
The circumstance and life experiences of someone who gains weight and then loses it again in a relatively short period of time is of little use to someone who has been chronically obese and whose obesity is associated with depression and the other way around.
What works, what you even define as success, is very different for someone who has always been thin, situationally gained enough to be called overweight or maybe borderline obese, and then went back to their baseline, than for someone who has been obese their whole life and has become morbidly so at great risk of serious health complications.
Whose advice is better: someone who is borderline obese and who has a very active lifestyle and eats mostly healthy foods (albeit a bit much of them) and whose parents and grandparents had been built the same way and lived the same sorts of lifestyles staying active and vibrant well into their 80s or beyond, or someone who often forgets to eats and who does not focus on the quality of the foods eaten, whose main activities are watching tv or playing videogames, who is maybe a bit on the underweight side, and whose family that lived the same way all fell apart sometime soon after hitting 60 and who plans on killing himself at 60 to avoid that? Just as a hypothetical example. 
What a great example of an ad homenim attack that was both unnecessarily dirty and personal as well. Kudos.
Huh? Uh, no. None of those things.
It was meant in fun Superhal but sorry that it did not play that way.
Ambi, in another thread, the lifespan one, he noted how everyone in his family falls apart after 60 and his plan to kill himself at that point that I hope was not a serious one. His reacting that way is not completely out of line and I probably I should not tease people I don’t know. Superhal is underweight and possibly at some health risk maybe even associated with underweight and/or FH. And apparently those issues are very sensitive spots. Again, Superhal my apologies for what came off nasty.
The serious portion of what was meant without malice is that weight loss experiences are relevant based on how they apply to the particular circumstance. Aptly one size does not fit all.
The value of advice is independent of the source. Good advice is good advice.