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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

The part almost no one goes into is, so what's your diet now that you've reached the baseline you'd like to keep? Total calorie intake (estimated)? Any food or food groups you still avoid? meal timing? Is it a sustainable lifestyle change?

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Have you read "The Hacker's Diet"? It was written by the guy who founded Autodesk, and I found it very useful. My own weight control system now is a simplified and informal version of the one in the book, I used it to go from over 105kg down to my target weight of 90kg and then sustain that loss (staying between 88kg and 90kg) for most of a decade now. A couple of times I've let it creep up and the same methods got me relatively quickly and painlessly back into range.

The most important thing is to see your calorie intake, not as a goal in itself, but as the control variable in a feedback loop, with your weight as the process variable that you're trying to control. (If you really wanted to get hardcore about it, you could use a PID controller to set your daily calorie intake. :)

When you reach your target weight, keep doing whatever you were doing and just gradually increase your portion size until you stop losing weight. If you're gaining weight again, gradually reduce portion size until you get back to your target weight. If you're losing weight, gradually increase portion size until you get back to your target weight. That's literally all there is to maintaining a target weight.

Link: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

I've embraced the yo-yo, personally, but in my experiments with keto it usually takes me 2x to 3x the time length of the diet to put the weight back on as I revert to my prior eating habits. The longest I've maintained the diet for was about 3.5 months, though over the past year it's averaged closer to 1-2 months at a time. I suspect if I did it for longer or did it more extremely on the calorie-counting side my yo-yo peak would decrease -- I have a friend who went 5 months and lost 100 pounds, now he yo-yos too but his peak before he goes again is only +40 pounds instead of +100. The peak is similar to a baseline, in that if you do nothing different you'll probably remain there. (Of course that's the standard prediction if you look at it from a pure calories in / out model.)

My caloric intake while eating at a deficit was about 1200-1500 kcal. Maintenance is about 2200. I eat a lot of meat, poultry, fish, eggs. No restriction on fats, but I try to favor animal fats and olive oil. Unlimited vegetables. Fruit, but only raw (no dried fruit or juice), and favor berries over bananas. Nuts and cheese in moderation.

If I want carbs, favor sweet potato / regular potato over grains. Generally avoid that altogether though.

No beer, favor wine and liquor, all in moderation.

So that’s how I select, then from there I restrict to the calorie goal. If I do have pasta or cake, I go a little harder on myself the next day (or in the days prior). That’s rare though.

It’s been really easy. Hardest day was day 1, second-hardest day was day 2. Sustained for about a year so far, and I’m not struggling at all.

Is dried fruit bad?

Dried fruit is basically candy. Fresh fruit has already been cultivated to be extra sweet, extra large, and extra tasty, so it's bad enough by itself. And then you concentrate it, now you can eat many multiple times more sugar in one sitting than the fruit you would see in the wild.

The only saving grace I see is that at least it still has the fiber, fruit juice discards with that and just leaves the sugar.

It's not bad per se, but it contains a lot of sugar per unit volume. Some dried fruit even has extra sugar added (effectively fruit flavored candy). So it's easy to accidentally consume a lot of calories without feeling full.

And it's fructose (metabolized mostly by the liver as with alcohol) not glucose which can be used anywhere.

"Raisins are one of the most commonly consumed dried fruits... Compared to non-consumers, raisin consumers had a lower body weight (-4.2%), body mass index (-5.2%), and waist circumference (-3.8%), were 39% less likely to be overweight or obese, and had a 54% reduced risk of metabolic syndrome. In conclusion, raisin consumption was associated with better nutrient intake, diet quality, and weight parameters, and with lower risk of being obese and having metabolic syndrome in US adults."

Association of raisin consumption with nutrient intake, diet quality, and health risk factors in US adults: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2012. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29056890

It’s more that you can over eat much more easily. The water’s removed making you have to eat more t feel the same fullness as raw fruit.

I'm not really sure, but it's a form of concentrated sugar, so I try to avoid it as part of my overall goal of limiting carbohydrates/sugar/calories.

It's also similar to nuts/cheese in that if I allow myself unrestricted access, I tend to overeat them.

They're probably not that bad though.

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