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Comment by garenp | Hacker News Reader

About 3 years ago (late 2015 now) I was quite overweight, had a knee injury that limited my mobility (stairs mostly) and had a fasting glucose and post-meal readings that indicated I was nearly pre-diabetic (T2).

So, I cut out out all sugary drinks, refined carbs, late night eating (!!) and tried various intermittent fasting / time restricted feeding techniques (5:2, alternate day, one-meal-a-day) and after about 3.5 months my glucose readings returned to the "normal" range. (Which is WAY more tolerable than sticking to a low-calorie diet every single day IME. I still had pizza and cheeseburgers on occasion, just no soda, fries, "junk" etc.)

After around 6-7 months I'd lost 40+lbs, my knee stopped bothering me and no longer had to entertain the idea of fixing it with surgery. I'm now down well over 60+lbs without having put in hardly any effort to exercise (occasional walking) - pretty stunning to me.

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I lost at least that much weight after cutting the sugar and refined carbs out of my diet, without any fasting or increase in physical activity.

I did take up cooking my food from scratch as a hobby, so I was avoiding processed foods and eating out as well.

It's ridiculous just how terrible refined carbohydrates are for people. There are countless accounts of people losing weight and getting healthier by simply reducing refined sugars in their diet. It's surprising that this isn't common knowledge yet, although I guess we're fighting Big Sugar here.

I field countless questions about diet on a regular basis, and honestly the #1 tip isn't about calorie reduction or low carb or any gimmicks... it just comes down to "start cooking your own food, from real ingredients". Buy fresh meat and produce and go from there. Weight loss and health will come naturally, because real food is far more satiating than the calorie-and-sugar-dense snacks the western world is used to eating.

This always surprises me as cutting out refined and/or unrefined carbohydrates has no effect on my weight.

The only thing that moves my weight down is reducing calories or increasing activity while maintaining the same caloric intake. I suppose it's entirely possible these people are doing the former and just don't know it.

I think that quite often reducing refined carb intake is quite likely to result in a reduction in calorie intake - when our blood sugar rises and then falls, it triggers feelings of hunger, making snacking more likely. With unrefined carbs, the GI is typically much less, resulting in a slower rise of blood sugar to a lesser peak.

It's certainly common knowledge that sugar is fattening (but many people don't know that carbs are relatively bad too), but carbs are cheap and tasty so hard to quit.

> I'm now down well over 60+lbs without having put in hardly any effort to exercise (occasional walking) - pretty stunning to me.

Losing weight despite not exercising isn't surprising. Exercise, even intense cardio, burns far fewer calories than most people think. I'm about 240 lbs, 5'8", 36 years old, and according to this calculator [0], if I ran a 5k at a fast-paced 10 mph (6 minute mile), I'd only burn about 250 calories. That wouldn't even be enough to burn the calories in the energy drink I might drink before it!

Great work on the weight loss. I was 255 lbs at the beginning of the year and switched out my sugary sodas for unsweetened tea or occasionally a diet soda and lost 15 lbs in 4 months. I plateaued because I haven't changed much else.

[0] https://www.freedieting.com/calories-burned

Most exercise based weight loss isn't about the actual exercise it's about the changes the intense exercise makes to your body that causes you to burn more calories while resting. Exercise often tunes your body to burn calories at a higher rate as you gain muscle and / or increase muscle health which requires more energy to support even while resting. So while you don't NEED exercise to lose weight it certainly is a super important part of weight lose for most people.

Some recent research contradicts those ideas.

Contestants on an extreme weight loss television reality show saw their resting metabolism drop after a rigorous program of exercise.

>The group as a whole on average burned 2,607 calories per day at rest before the competition, which dropped to about 2,000 calories per day at the end.

Six years later, calorie burning had slowed further to 1,900 per day, as reported in the journal Obesity.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/6-years-after-the...

Another recent study showed that diet effected metabolism.

>a large new study published on Wednesday in the journal BMJ found that overweight adults who cut carbohydrates from their diets and replaced them with fat sharply increased their metabolisms.

After five months on the diet, their bodies burned roughly 250 calories more per day than people who ate a high-carb, low-fat diet

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/well/eat/how-a-low-carb-d...

That research on the biggest loser participants has since been disproven. Sorry can't pull up those studies easily by mobile do I'll try to update wheni can.

Every time the Biggest Loser study (PMC4989512) gets cited someone pops up and mentions that it's been disproven but I've never seen any citation or followup. In fact, from my research I've seen lots of studies that show that there are long term metabolic changes (PMC6033771) related to adaptive thermogenesis/fat oxidization that is a fat-free mass independent effect on REE (doi: 10.3945/ajcn.115.109173).

Other studies seem to show that the lowered RMR doesn't seem to happen either doing a ketogenic diet (PMC5816424) or with ADF (PMC5042570) vs CR. I also think that the Biggest Loser results are in large part so unsuccessful due to their "crash diet" nature and the lack of any healthy habits being built for maintenance.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989512/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6033771/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26399868

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816424/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5042570/

I was curious to check out your source because I'm 5'8, 130 ish pounds and my 10 min mile 5k only burns a little bit less than 250 calories, which I thought wasn't a big enough calorie difference for the difference in weight. I put your stats in for an 18 minute run and it came up as 350 calories. Am I putting something in wrong?

10mph*!

Congrats! What fasting method do you currently use, or do you switch between the ones listed?

Nowadays I mostly just do OMAD (one-meal-a-day) or close to it (eating window is about 1-3 hours) as it's simpler. Initially some will power was needed to stop myself from snacking in the evenings, but as long as I make sure I have a fair amount of protein in that one meal, it never seems to happen now. Occasionally I'll do alternate-day if I feel 'stuffed' or had a big day of lots of calories (holidays, social events) - whatever is more convenient at the time.

What do you eat most of the time? Meat and veggies?

Yeah - along with a lot of eggs, cheese, and nuts.

Eggs really are quite incredible - a great mix of fat, protein and micronutrients. I can eat just 2 eggs and not even think about eating again for 5-8 hours.

Note! This won't work if you have bread with your eggs, or anything else that raises your blood sugar.

I'm also interested (about to start my own diet but I hate non-varied diets). Any fasting method worked better than others?

I recommend this book - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1628600012/ref=dbs_a_def_r... it's written by a doctor specializing in applying fasting.

He also has several talks and interviews on YouTube worth watching as well. I believe his book, The Obesity Code, is also a good read.

He treats a lot of diabetic patients. I've integrated his stuff into my keto diet and lost a ton of weight.

As far as I can tell they all work (N=1 and all that), so I'd say that whatever you find easier to actually do is what you should do - just keep it up as often as you can over time.

If you wanna get a little geeky about it like I was, could consider buying a Precision Xtra to measure your glucose and ketone levels. For me this was helpful because I could see changes in the numbers after changing my eating habits. Had I not seen that, I would have only my scale to see body weight, and would've just looked at that and thought "looks like nothing changed, maybe this isn't working / doing anything at all." This also allowed me to "gamify" the whole process a bit ("I wonder how low I can get these numbers to go? how long I can stay there?" ... etc).

That's great! That's actually very inspiring. Good work! I do think that exercise is really important and that's something everyone should do.

Same thing here. Except I also refuse any refined flour, Co sidering it sugar. I only eat whole foods, no milk, very little cheese, barely any meat. Lots of vegetarian meals. Dropped 50+ lbs without much drama. I cycle extensively in the warm summer months.

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