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Comment by mrleinad | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to count calories. I'm just too lazy to measure and research everything I eat, and the alternative is to have only processed foods that are labeled.

It's too bad that we can't just live on Soylent (the actual beverage, not the thing from the book)

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With a 10 dollar scale and an App like Lose It, it is pretty easy. They have both things with UPC codes for easy look up and standard foods, for example brown rice or salmon. I keep track and probably spend less than 5 minutes a day getting everything down. Obviously it will be difficult at a restaurant unless you want to bring a scale with you or beg the wait staff but largely they won't mind and if you're order grilled chicken and veg most likely they won't mind measuring the chicken for you. Anyways, the stuff on labels are estimates so the whole process has some moderate error so as long as you estimate fairly you don't have to worry about being crazy accurate.

A few years back I lost 30 lbs over the course of a year using Lose It. I didn't make any major dietary changes other than reducing total caloric intake. I found that ballpark estimating calories for restaurant food was fairly easy and close enough. I never weighed my food. I even went over my caloric budget fairly often and would just make up for it the next day. Overall, it was surprisingly simple to lose the weight but I did find myself hungry more often than I would have liked. After regaining that weight over the last two years, I recently bought an exercise bike. I'm hoping that the regular exercise it provides will help suppress my appetite. I have been thinking about picking up Lose It again, and this thread has convinced me.

I dunno, me and the wife realised that certain foods are simply not worth the calorie count. Really nice curry vs Pizza? The curry wins on taste, nutrition and calories. Chocolate bar vs chocolate-chip brioche? If I'm honest, id prefer the brioche (warmed a little, with a cup of decent coffee). It also affected ingredient choices: if I'm gonna make an Indian dish like palak paneer, I find it impossible to get low-fat paneer. However I can get low-fat halloumi (lots of protein), and if it's cooked right, it works extremely well in place of paneer. Over 6 months using a calorie counting app we got to our "perfect weight" without having to go hungry. In fact, if anything, it just made me stop and think before having second helpings and overeating. So now we have "free meals" in the freezer, for when we want a lazy evening.

On the low fat halloumi vs paneer thing... We also found that low-fat soft cheese (like Philadelphia light) are amazing in soups. Simmer lentils and cubed potatoes with some spices and a can of chopped tomatoes, and just before you serve, add a large dollop of light Philadelphia and stir it all the way in. Boosts the protein content and makes for a really creamy soup. Also works great in other soups.

Absolutely. Preventing overeating was likely the biggest contributor to my weight loss. I stopped going back for seconds every time. The next biggest was probably eating higher quality foods, similar to your examples. My memory is fuzzy on this detail, but I believe the times I ended up hungry were largely the days on which I'd had an especially calorie dense meal, like pizza, earlier in the day, so my calorie allowance was smaller come dinner time. However, pizza being my favorite food, I'm unlikely to give it up. Rather, I try to make it the last meal of the day. I found that I was able to resist the late-night munchies easier than mid-day hunger pangs.

I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to make a healthy pizza. Adding gluten to the flour for extra protein, using low fat cheeses etc. If I crack the 500 calorie 12" pizza I'll let you know.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0MpL1KfYEJg

The Milton's brand cauliflower crust pizza (available at Costco among other places) is also pretty good. Not available outside the USA yet AFAIK, unfortunately.

Making the crust very thin is also an obvious way to reduce carbs, and using whole wheat crust also help, and using Khorasan wheat or similar whole grains.

For sweets, I adopted the snob diet: raise your standards so much the average supermarket chocolate bar just doesn't appeal any more, and you are less likely to snack casually :-)

Never had a decent cauliflower crust (yet). Unfortunately the Milton brand isn't available where I am. But checking out the nutritional value, they're replacing replacing wheat flour with "Rice Flour, Tapioca Starch", which smacks of gluten free rather than low carb. Having said that, it is lower in calories than my store bought pizza (690 vs 800 for the same weight). But is it as good? Like your snob chocolate diet: I would prefer to eat pizza less often and maybe walk an extra 5km on the days that I enjoy a real pizza.

I am going to experiment with low-flour dough with extra gluten and cauliflower to bulk it out. Might need xanthan gum and an egg.

If you eat a lot of similar stuff, after looking up things periodically over time you'll get to be able to ballpark calorie counts. Calories aren't really hidden that well.

I was very excited about Soylent years ago...until I tried it. I really disliked the flavor, so wouldn't have stuck with it regardless, but what really surprised me was how much I enjoy the act of sitting down and eating a meal. Soylent filled me up, but it never satiated me. Regardless of the time savings and predictability, I missed the act of eating, if that makes sense.

Makes total sense to me - we are creatures of habit and eating is one of our most sacred rituals. It's deeply rooted in our psychology so no surprise to me that one would miss the ritual even if satiated.

I tried it while on a trip to the states, and had the same experience as you. It was barely ok, and the taste was not great. Also, saved time from not eating a regular meal is not that much, cooking it is. As with many things, that can be fixed just by throwing more money at it.

MyFitnessPal does a pretty good job. You can scan barcodes and it'll (usually) have the calories and macros. Also just having a set of scales on hand makes it a lot more accurate!

When you cook for yourself it's pretty easy. After a month you remember kcal per 100g for each common ingredient and the weight is on the box or on the receipt anyway.

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