How I lost 100lbs in 6 months
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1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453)
2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full)
3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/)
4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...) This is borne out by the above data.
5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/)
Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.
Once again, it means less competition for resources as the population mass gets bloated.
The way I'm doing it now is so easy (subway, chipotle, trader joes & calorie counting) that I feel fine in being in a yo-yo of a slow gain of 10lbs over a year and then losing 10lbs over a month or two.
It's not a useful attitude to be fatalistic about weight loss.
I track my weight regularly to make sure weight gain doesn't creep up on me.
Nor is it useful to promise people trips to the top of Everest on a hand glider, but that's empirically what most weight loss advice entails.
Is there any evidence of that?
Try not to lose weight eating only 1600 calories a day. It's pretty difficult to do unless your 90lbs and 5 feet tall!
Subway, chipotle and other chains provide calorie counts for their food. Don't add calorie-full condiments to your subway sandwiches (mustard, not mayo) and stay within that limit +/- 100 or 200 calories.
The problem with your argument is twofold. First it's anecdotal, not a statistically significant sample with a control group. Second, it's temporally insignificant, therefore does not account for those periods of most significance - years 5+.
I hope you personally do well over the next few years but, based on observations conforming to principles we understand to constitute reliable evidence, such would be an exceedingly rare exception.
TL;DW: Calculating the actual energy in a day's worth of well labeled foods resulted in a 500 calorie overage.
This doesn't even account for how your body absorbs calories different from every other body, and probably even differently every day.
Why is surgery your conclusion when it's not surprising that people revert to their old weight after reverting to their old diets.
I read the abstracts and the studies only have weight-loss programs. Even the weight watchers article (which by the way is not a study) says: "Lifetime Members are only "the most successful” Weight Watchers members who achieve their “goal weight” (usually a BMI of 25) and maintain it for 6 weeks."
Personal experience, I worked hard to lose about 40 pounds and keeping it off is an interminable nightmare. First, people said "oh, when you lose the weight you'll feel better and other people will treat you better..." and so on... Well I lost the weight and I don't feel any different and people don't treat me different (except for all the awkward "wow you look so different" type questions).
It feels like it's not worth it. Plus the fact that every day, day in and day out I have to struggle with limiting my calories and monitoring my weight. It just takes all the joy out of life. (Of course this is personality dependent! For me, stuffing myself with sweet, rich food until I felt like I would burst is just one of the best most satisfying feelings ever... if I could just somehow reprogram the mental pathways there......)
What worked for me:
Find a flavor you absolutely hate. Be it some hot sauce or mustard or whatever. Top whatever sweet, rich food you enjoy with that topping any time you wish to enjoy said sweet, rich food. This corrupted my memories of "this food was sweet and rich" with "Oh god, last time I did that it was terrible I nearly threw up".
I don't drink alcohol, so I put some rum in my Dr. Pepper. Now I don't drink soda anymore. Ever tried chocolate icecream with mustard? The memory will have you avoiding chocolate icecream like your life depends on it.
It took a bit of self control (actually taking a bite of mustard covered chocolate icecream was tough) but I have such bad memories of the things I used to crave that I no longer crave them. I know they're amazing by themselves but I can't bring myself to partake in them anymore.
I think you misread the results of that study. It's countering your point, and demonstrating that the structure and initial success of the diet affects the long-term success of the weight loss.
I spent 18 mos. leading a section of a major study within the armed forces testing physical transformations, mainly focused on gender differences but the point still stands. At this point I have seen hundreds of first-hand examples (if not a thousand plus).
Step 1: Be any profile of relative fitness from normal to your average to slightly overweight 18-20 year old American male/female.
Step 2: Be inducted to the Marines or similar armed forces where you are required for 5 years to wake up and conduct a high level of physical exercise as a mater of daily life.
Result: You've lost 10%+ off your body weight and kept it off for the duration.
It's just so exceedingly simple. Set conditions for a lifestyle where you are burning more calories than consumed and weight loss will continue. It's not some crazy secret. Everything else is crap.
> It's just so exceedingly simple.
Arguably not "average" people, but there is a club of "extreme calorie counters" who have maintained substantial weight loss over many years.
I wish I could find the link to the documentary, but the search signal-to-noise ratio is problematic. It feels like something I saw on an investigative journalism program e.g. The Fifth Estate. In any case from recollection, this is what I recall:
- There were something like 30,000 members worldwide - Membership required maintained weight loss - They generally counted and journaled every calorie, with remarkable rigour
This appears to be the one alternative to gastric bypass that has repeatable success. It's just not achievable by most.
Incidentally, only Roux-en-Y laparoscopic gastric bypass has been associated with long term successful weight loss; the "tube" mini-gastric bypass has not; I'm not sure about others, as some experimental alternatives are cropping up.
The only thing making me loose weight was 5 month studying abroad in Ghana (I'm from Germany).
The ridiculous thing about it was: I didn't intend on loosing weight there. I ate as much as I liked whenever I liked it. Still, I lost about 15 kg in 5 months, and I didn't even notice it until the end of the trip when another student told me that I looked like it.
What I noticed as a big difference in my habits: * no Drive-In, no McDonald's, no Burger King, no other franchise. So, no junk eating while driving (e.g. from work) * no fridge at the hostel (at least none you would want to use). So, no "I'm bored and will just get something from the fridge" * I'm not a cooking person, so almost all food required walking the 5 minutes to the small market. Not a long way, but it keeps somebody like me from boredom eating * the fucking heat =D no movement and a lot of sweating ;-)
> I decided to lose weight after my ex-wife cheated on me stating that she found me unattractive, that she never loved me and that she was leaving and taking the dog with her.
There are three cycles to control: 1. the hunger cycle (short, daily), 2. the hypothalamus equilibrium (aka "set-point", 6-months+ cycle, controls inhibitions [1]), 3. the hydrocarbon cycle (i.e. 1+ year hormone release by non-flush fat cells [2]).
We also know that decisions made in the hypothalamus are responsible for energy regulation,[3] and we also know that those decisions happen before we are consciously aware of them.
In other words, the feeling of hunger and short-term control appears to be a surprisingly small portion (pardon the pun) of the dominant forces that control long-term weight - namely hormone cycles and decision making.
So while the 100lbs loss is an achievement, I'd be more interested in hearing how someone kept it off for several years – since that's presumably the ultimate goal and it requires overcoming what appear to be exponentially more difficult challenges.
(The links below touch on supporting the above, but I think I should be able to find the papers/references for all the above.)
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084499/ [2] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/... [3] http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(14)0...
All I do is count my calories everyday and add 10%, if it's less than 2630 (my BMR based on age, weight and activity) I'm good.
If I go 200-300 over one day I go 200-300 under the next.
Weight has been completely stable.
It's the running total in my head that works for me as an incentive to not over eat.
It's really hard to over-eat when you calorie track and eat healthy.
Besides the pre-packaged engineered foods he listed, there's also fresh fruits and vegetables.
My issues with a blanket recommendation of fresh fruits and vegetables are around (1) perception as calorie-neutral, (2) prep time and (3) overall caloric variance.
1. Regarding perception, for me it's very easy imagining apples are "free" (= 0 calories) so I can just eat as many as I'd like. That's not true because an apple is approximately 70 calories. So in a universe where I think apples are calorie neutral (e.g. Weight Watchers has 0 PointsPlus apples) I might be overindulging in apples.
2. Prep time. Most vegetables require either a certain presentation or preparation. That time investment is a "barrier-to-eating" and could cause me to consume higher calorie foods and that's why I prefer very low prep time snacks. Nature's packaging requires some assembly in most cases.
3. The caloric variance amongst is meaningful. e.g. Celery being at 16 calories/100g and potatoes being at 77 calories/100g. That caloric variance there cautions me from saying carte-blanche "fresh fruits and vegetables work for my kind of diet".
Eh. Cucumbers, bell peppers, mushrooms, and almost all fruits including tomatoes can be enjoyed raw. Broccoli and cauliflower, too, if your teeth are good - delicious with a dash of vinegar and salt - and while we're visiting the Brassicaceae, let's not overlook kale, which can be brined or salted, then dried in a low-temperature oven, to produce amazing kale chips; granted, this does take us a bit higher on the prep time scale, but it's the sort of prep you do once, on a weekend day, and pay little attention, and once it's done, you just grab a bag and you're off and running.
> "It was fairly easy due to a combination of low-grade depression that reduced my appetite and having fairly immense energy stores in the form of fat."
For me, it's all about focusing on the sensation of being full. I'd like to avoid the mental sensation of hunger as it'll be counterproductive to long term weight loss. Whenever I'm hungry I eat something substantial, for example: a quarter of a watermelon (~1 lb, 200 calories) or two bags of Miracle Noodles (~1 lb, 0 calories) with yakiniku/pasta sauce (100-200 calories) or a double bowl of miso soup (100 calories).
It is great to see someone achieve their weight loss goals.
Yes it is that “SIMPLE” and I know it can be done, as I too did it myself.
I too had a massive weight loss goal (90 lbs / 40kg) and achieved it with the same basic principals, but in a slightly longer time frame (9 months / 40 weeks).
I wrote a book about it (My Weight Loss Story: 40kg in 40 Weeks Without Exercise (90lbs in 9 months), instead of a medium post. ;)
I personally (Richard Boegli) lost 40 kg in 40 weeks (90lb in 9 months) WITHOUT exercise. [90lb in 9 months (no exercise)].
I’m not trying to hijack your story! I would just like to provide another data point, that the basic principals do work. As I have found their can be a lot of scepticism, even though the math works!
Justin Angel: How I lost 100lbs in 6 months [100lb / 6 months (with exercise)]
I could do a line for line comparison, but these are the points that immediately came to mind as I read the article: Richard Boegli: [90lb in 9 months (no exercise)]: “Just Eat Less”, its in the preface of the book :)
Justin Angel [100lb / 6 months (with exercise)]: "Calories In — Calories Out = Weight Change"
Richard Boegli [90lb in 9 months (no exercise)]:: “I reduced my food intake”
Justin Angel [100lb / 6 months (with exercise)]: “I reduced my daily caloric intake”
Richard Boegli [90lb in 9 months (no exercise)]: “I lost on average 1kg (2.2lbs) a week, every week for 40 weeks WITHOUT exercise
Justin Angel [100lb / 6 months (with exercise)]: “I would experience a 3lbs a week weight lose.”
I chose to do it WITHOUT exercise, as my theory was that I would keep it off longer, if it wasn’t dependent on exercise. Every other time I lost weight in my life, it was a combination of diet and exercise. When the exercised stop, the weight would creep back up, as I was still eating too much.
EDIT: Cleaned it up a bit.
While the physical change is great, it's a byproduct of the changes in your mind. Keep it up.