The Efficient Frontier of Fat Loss
exfatloss.substack.com
exfatloss.substack.com
That's why people will get results doing such wildly different approaches.... All of them work to done extent; the big question is what you can stick to
Probably the biggest issue is compliance when it comes to fat loss - people convince themselves they are eating way fewer calories than they actually are, etc.
The issue with compliance is that you can't drive with an empty gas tank. I think most diets can't be complied with and then we blame the dieter when the body's feedback system activates.
But don't let you already knowing that get in the way of a pointless quip implying that they need educated in thermodynamics.
1. dehydration (feels like you are hungry/dying)
2. insufficient electrolytes (feels like you are hungry/dying)
3. high ghrelin (feels like you are hungry/dying)
The trick is to stay on top of #1 and #2 and power through #3. Eventually #3 will go way down.
Honestly, I just don't understand how people lose weight by simply not eating, as it feels like you have remarkably little control over what your body spends its remaining energy on or even how much energy it chooses to spend.
To flip this: up until a few years ago for me--when a switch flipped and I started rapidly gaining weight for some reason--it was also hard for me to gain too much weight, despite how I cared absolutely not for how much I ate. Like, people act like eating is some choice and that's what causes you to gain or lose weight, but if you try to eat too much it isn't trivial that you just gain weight. My experience is that I'd get full and just not want to eat as much for days after I ate too much, I'd get feelings of more energy leading me to burn more without realizing I was doing so, and I swear your digestion changes somewhat and you absorb less.
Like, what actually causes this mysterious engine to stop regulating itself is crazy. You know what has correlated with my gaining weight? I started feeling cold a lot. I used to never feel cold, but I started getting cold all the time and now I sleep under a giant stack of blankets and it is difficult for me to sleep without them... it is actually ridiculous how cold I get now. My body has clearly decided to stop spending much energy on raising its body temperature.
So like, I can eat less, but there are a ton of ramifications to that and my body starts automatically trying to correct and fight against it and inherently is making energy tradeoffs that I disagree with ("just burn the fat already!" ;P). People do these weird diet regimes--like keto--because it makes them think (maybe correctly!) that it gives them some control over how their body spends that energy budget. I honestly frankly think maybe I just need "more sun" or something stupid like that and I'll lose weight without even trying so hard.
I'm basically looking for that "switch" you describe. Whatever it is that makes the body turn up or down the furnace while leaving you satiated.
https://www.peptidesciences.com/blog/mots-c-metabolic-cardio...
It probably isn't the single solution to the problem, but it might be helpful to investigate.
Just go back in time 30 years, and people were much thinner. Were they driving around with an empty tank? I don't think so, and neither did they.
Now, weight loss is complex at the societal level, but very easy at the individual level. I am currently on a diet because I want to lose 10 or 15 pounds. Do I find it enjoyable? Not really. But I don't find it torture like I did when I had to have an urological exam. Good planning helps, choosing protein over carbs and fats helps, and after 3 weeks, more or less, the feeling of hunger decreases significantly.
And if you go back in time -- not that they were necessarily better times, I'm just talking about the contexts I write about -- many more men wore a suit and many more women wore a dress. Today, asking someone to wear a dress or a suit seems like asking a stallion to wear a saddle for the first time.
Were those who chose the attractiveness of certain more formal dresses over the comfort of sagging shorts and flip-flops foolish? It seems to me that when people are free from certain social expectations they tend, entropically, to choose maximum comfort, such as unlimited calorie consumption and sloppiness in self-presentation. And one could argue why this modern trend does not also see an explosion in the number of sexual relationships -- after all, sex should be one of our strongest urges. But it has just been replaced by pornography, just as physical performance -- showing one's muscles or strength, or sensitivity of soul and body -- has been replaced with watching professional sports played by others while gorging ourselves on chips and beer from the comfort of the couch.
Is the violent person unable or unwilling to be nonviolent toward others? It is hard to say, but for violent people, we (Western democracies) have decided that they are unwilling to be nonviolent, not incapable. In fact, apart from a few "insane" cases, they are housed in normal prisons (separations from gen pop can take place for security reasons) and not in special institutions.
As for addicts, the modern view in Western societies is that they are largely incapable of controlling themselves (when I was a teenager years ago, they were considered unwilling). Addiction is considered a disease, not a lifestyle choice. But cigarette smokers, for some reason, are considered unwilling to quit, not incapable (not: "they need help," but: "it's disgusting"). The jealous lunatic is considered unwilling, not unable to stop acting like a jealous lunatic: could they be addicted to love? (No, some say, that they are addicted to control, not love. But would the diagnosis of "addiction" change?).
For fat people we are observing the same transition observed for addicts. When I was a teenager, being fat was a moral weakness. Today it is the fault of genes, broken families, seed oils, soils lacking magnesium: "they cannot lose weight, either because of genetics or soil and water", etc. Since more and more people are getting fat, which is bad, I don't think, from a consequentialist point of view, that the "addiction" approach for fat people is working.
You seem to think that the obese are "unwilling" (whatever that means) to eat less and exercise more and thus lose weight. You basically recommend that they try harder, if I understand you correctly.
I think that there is another reason why they can't eat less and work out more and why the internal feedback systems of their bodies are "misleading" them in a way, making them overeat and have increased appetite and lethargy despite all the energy they're carrying in their body fat.
My course of action would be to identify what causes this "breakage" in the metabolism that'll fix the feedback loop and therefore allow them to naturally and spontaneously eat less and move more.
What means is that the person who is paralyzed from the waist down cannot run (unable), the person with a minor knee pain who is not running can be either unable and unwilling, and the person with no pain, functioning legs etc. who is not running is able to do so, but unwilling (maybe they like different sports or they want to watch a movie).
The other day, pizza was offered at work. I wanted to eat a couple of slices, but I thought about the summer, and the beach, and swimsuits. And I decided not to eat pizza. But I really wanted to eat a couple of slices with cheese and salami. Did I restrain my urge, or I did not have an urge, just a desire? Is the nature determined by the results?
From a consequentialist point of view, and outside pathologies of various nature (such as yours), I find it better to assume that overweight people are unwilling to close the fridge, put the fork down, and push themselves away from the table.
I am perfectly willing to make a lot of sacrifices to lose weight. It's just that none of the sacrifices you list have an effect. Why would I continue to sacrifice it it doesn't work?
So I prefer "unable" in the sense that "we haven't figured out the way and thus they can't just do it harder."
Instead of the wheelchair, think of paralyzed people before wheelchairs. They "couldn't" walk because they were paralyzed and wanting it harder didn't work. What worked was inventing the wheelchair.
My argument is we haven't invented an effective fat loss diet or intervention that works even in a minority of obese people by any reasonable definition of "works." (I.e. long-term, sustainable w/o leading to ramped down metabolism, doesn't lead to massive lean tissue loss, doable "at large" in their normal lives not while literally being locked in a camp.)
Calories In Calories out (CICO) is the ABCs of weight loss, but it vastly oversimplifies a complex problem.
Obese people tend to stay obese despite dieting. Their bodies and brains aren't wired the same way as non-obese peoples.
Obese people experience things like:
metabolic slowdown (so a BMR calculator is no longer sufficiently accurate for them to accurately gauge their daily calorie requirements)
thyroid disorders (causing inaccurate BMR calculations)
high body weight with low muscle percentage (increases the difficulty of exercise or daily movement, causing inaccurate BMR calculations)
pre-diabetes
diabetes
high blood pressure
difficulty feeling full or satisfied with ANY amount of food
depression
lack of motivation
anhedonia
the side effects of drugs designed to treat the diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, lack of motivation, and anhedonia
hormonal imbalances caused by having additional fat cells in your body
the inexpressible and wearying feeling of hopelessness caused by a years long battle with obesity that has yet to find true and lasting success.
All of that is compounded by the fact that even if you lose a significant amount of weight, you will likely then struggle with keeping it off because you body has created an enormous reservoir of fat cells to store the fat you previously acquired.
For obese people, those fat cells have been noted as being able to preferentially absorb the nutrition you intake, leaving your other organs deprived and your body hungry despite your stomach being full to bursting.
Sure, if despite those obstacles you consume fewer calories than you burn, you will still lose weight. Broken clocks are right twice a day and a car can roll downhill even if it's out of gas.
However, these argumentative people fail to understand that you are not talking about "Calories In, Calories Out". That is NOT the conversation. They can argue CICO all they want, but they're arguing with a brick wall.
The thing you are trying to find is the permanent perfect solution to a problem you are dealing with. That isn't something that even the smartest and most highly respected person on Hacker News can do for you with some words or argument.
I honestly feel like they get some sort of pleasure dismissing everything you're trying to do for yourself. They're getting a kick out of shitting on your efforts, feeling better about some tiny fragment of their jerkish lives because they pooh-poohed someone on the internet with their vain and short-sighted facts and logic.
Don't let them get you down. You don't have to defend yourself from those people. They won't be proven wrong because they're still saying their ABC's while you're working on your Shakespeare.
It could be that I'm minimizing insulin by only eating protein in one meal, and my other meal is energy-dense (heavy cream) but doesn't raise insulin at all. So in terms of insulin, it's an OMAD diet yet still allows me to eat to satiety.
For example, I've heard that if 100 calories is eaten of protein, you may only digest 80 calories, arbitrary number, but it may differ than carbohydrate's 90 calories per 100 eaten.
Is a Calorie a Calorie? Processed Food, Experiment Gone Wrong
Presented by Stanford Health Care
Get back to me in 12 weeks.
It's a bit like saying "If I double my velocity every hour, will I reach 1000000mph?" Yes and no.
The human metabolism is a dynamic system with feedback. You can't sustainably eat 500kcal below TDEE for long periods of time because the body will turn down your TDEE to the minimum. For me that's around 800-1,000kcal/day. I've stayed weight stable for 2 months straight eating around 1,000kcal/day. I've also LOST weight eating over 4,000kcal/day (very different phase of my life, obviously).
CI and CO are not unrelated and you can't change one and expect the other to stay fixed.
Biggest issue though is TDEE will decrease to compensate for less calories (and increase for more calories). Even for small things like fidgeting or deciding to go for a walk, or just be more chipper in general -- it matters and adds up.
500cals is a rounding error. You can eat an extra 500 calories per day due to discrepancies in dietary labeling, because the methodology (and the leniency allowed in how accurate calories reported can be) are shoddy.
Frankly, I'm not interested in weighing less. I'm interested in losing fat, so I look and feel better. I can lose 10lbs by just carb-loading, and then not eating for a few days (shedding water weight due to lack of insulin).
Fastest and most guaranteed way to lose fat is to fast, and do low-intensity cardio. Second best is PSMF and low-intensity cardio. Next best is keto and low-intensity cardio. After that? I don't know, you can count calories and do the recommended -500cals per day, but you'll probably be doing that forever without significantly changing your body composition.
This diet I mention in the blog post is very ketogenic and very low insulin. In fact I originally designed it to be as low-insulin as safely possible (practically no carbs and only 30g of protein per day originally).
Fasting didn't work well for me. I've done up to 7 day water and 10 day coffee (with some cream, so low calorie fat) fasts. Thing is I only lose water/glycogen weight and it immediately comes back 2-3 days after I start eating again.
It's not 2009 anymore. We have these drugs now, GLP-1 agonists, which directly increase insulin secretion, yet they're known to also cause weight loss comparable to bariatric surgery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucagon-like_peptide-1
>Alongside glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP), GLP-1 is an incretin; thus, it has the ability to decrease blood sugar levels in a glucose-dependent manner by enhancing the secretion of insulin. Beside the insulinotropic effects, GLP-1 has been associated with numerous regulatory and protective effects. Unlike GIP, the action of GLP-1 is preserved in patients with type 2 diabetes and substantial pharmaceutical research has therefore been directed towards the development of GLP-1-based treatment
Your low-carb lunacy is long outdated. Go eat an apple.
What it is not: instructive in how to persistently cause more calories to leave the body than to come in.
free link to calculate sedentary TDEE: https://tdeecalculator.net/
My comment is about the fact that when you see reality shows (I also have examples of a stronger nature) like "Survivor" all the participants lose weight at -- allow me to use a non-metric system -- an "insane" rate? How come prisoners of war kept on "bread and water" lose weight? Now, one might say that they do not end their captivity in "good health." But we are talking about losing weight, and since the dawn of time, calorie reduction has worked to lose weight.
What about bodybuilders? What do they do when they want to lose weight? Do they try the "watermelon" diet or choose brown rice instead of white rice? Apart from particular "manipulations" that occur in the last 1-2 weeks (depletion of glycogen and subsequent replenishment, cutting out water, salt, etc.), they simply eat less. And it works for every single bodybuilder, everyone loses weight.
How to lose more fat than other tissues requires a longer discussion, but how to lose weight is settled science.
And I would say the advice of "just eat less" doesn't work for probably 20-30% of people. Especially the very obese. You don't get to morbidly obese by "eating a little bit too much for 10 years." You don't fix it by eating a little bit less.
Obviously people can starve. There are 3 phases of starvation. Phase I is basically just "between meals" where the liver puts out some glycogen into your blood stream to maintain stable blood glucose.
Phase II is your body using your fat storage to provide energy via free fatty acids and ketone bodies. This can last, depending on the deficit and how much body fat you have, for weeks at a time. The record I've seen is over 400 days of a Scottish man going from over 400lbs to less than 200lbs.
Phase III starvation is when the body begins scavenging lean body mass for energy. This is Very Bad. This is why the POWs you see in photos look so emaciated and skinny. The body used all the fat and then it began using the protein.
The problem for dieting is that you can't just hang out in Phase II until you have six-pack abs. If your body cannot meet the energy requirements necessary from body fat then it'll go straight into Phase III. Many obese people have a "broken" metabolism in some way (how so is not very clear, that's what I'm trying to figure out). Despite carrying lots and lots of body fat around (I had over 100lbs of it on me!) they somehow couldn't "access" that energy. So the body went straight into Phase III with all the signals like reduced expenditure, lower body temperature, lower immune system, increased hunger.. and even if you could willpower though that for 100lbs, you'd lose a ton of protein as the body would use it for energy. So you'd probably die of organ failure before you lost the 100lbs. Unless you somehow managed to do what the Scottish man did. I've fasted for 10 days and I could absolutely not do 400 days.
Bodybuilders are a completely different topic than obese people, I think. They're typically already at a healthy fat level or below. So they really do have to force themselves to undereat and just minimize the muscle scavenging and maximize fat used for energy. But it's temporary for most, they do this in cycles before shows and photo shoots. No bodybuilder I know of had 100lbs of fat on him and then lost it for a show. They go from their walking-around-at 10-15% of body fat to 5-8%.
What I can tell you is that, according to the literature and the experience of millions of people:
- giving adequate protein and some stimulus (i.e., resistance training), even when diets are very restrictive (think 75% of basal metabolic rate), lean mass is largely preserved.
- if you read the Ancel Key's "starvation experiment", every single person lost weight according to predictions. To the point that when subjects did not lose weight according to the prediction, it was because they were (if I remember well) scavenging for food when walking outside. See also the more recent "potato experiment" or try the "burger experiment": two big mac with medium fries and diet soda per day (and nothing else) and a man 200+ pounds will lose weight (the two combined are around 1600-1800 calories).
- people were thinner in the past largely because of greater caloric expenditures (manual jobs, fewer cars, more time spent outside the house) and less calorie-dense and palatable food.
- bodybuilders or gym enthusiasts who are PED-free are normal people who track the calories and macro-nutrients and consistently provide stimulus to their muscle tissue in the direction of hypertrophy. They are not "special people". And while 5% body fat can be maintained only for a short time, 10-12% can be kept indefinitely, from a physiological point of view. Not from a culinary point of view, though, in the sense that you cannot have 3 portions of macaroni and cheese at lunch and dinner.
- there was a recent study on the metabolic differences of thin and less thin people. Thin people eat less, which is quite intuitive. It is very easy to consume calories nowadays: 200 for a snack, 300 for another, let me grab 4 chips and other 150 calories are coming in. Over time, they add up due to arithmetic and one finds themselves fat, while saying: "but I am not eating much!". Overeating is easy, and moving around less than in the past is easy as well. I was with a thin friend at lunch and I was ready to eat like the proverbial pig (say, 1000+ calories), and he ate toasted bread with some ham (maybe 500 calories). Big lesson there.
I recommend the books (and writing in general) of Lyle McDonald.
- Starvation experiments are not relevant to a normal person trying to lose fat. Ancel Keys' subjects were military deserters who had no rights and were literally locked up in a prison camp. They also lost tons of lean body mass. Clearly this isn't what anybody wants.
- There is actually a ton of literature out there disproving the "people used to burn more calories and that's they were leaner." E.g. 1940s New York City white collar workers ate more than most people do today and working out was not very popular, yet they were much leaner. There are some populations that used to do heavy manual labor (like farmers) but the correlation isn't really there.
- Bodybuilders/gym enthusiasts, even PED-free, aren't very relevant to the obese. You don't get to 300lbs by slightly overeating and slightly underexercising. Something's severely broken in your body and has been for years.
- Of course thin people eat less. But correlation doesn't prove causation. My argument is that something's broken in obese people's metabolism which causes the to overeat, maybe because they don't achieve satiety from the food they eat. Of course they have to eat more to put on fat, that's just physics.
Weight loss can be predicted, Keys and his team did that. Yes, they lost fat and muscle tissue (diet was very restrictive, and they were not doing any exercise, since it was a particular experiment), at the end they were bones and skin, on purpose. They were also miserable and sick-looking. Some hurt themselves to go out of the experiment.
But I wrote that given "adequate protein and sufficient stimulus" (and not like 500 calories per day), loss of muscle tissue is, for the general population, not a concern (bodybuilders and athletes require different considerations).
There is no disproving whatsoever of people (on average) eating less and doing more manual activities and spending more time outside in the past.
"You don't get to 300lbs by slightly overeating and slightly under exercising". For the vast majority of 300-pound people, that's exactly what happens. They overeat and not use enough energy during their day (can be exercise, manual labor, moving around, fidgeting - they can all add up to more than 1000 calories per day, not 20). Wait 5 years and putting on 100 pounds or more happens.
"Of course thin people eat less. But correlation doesn't prove causation". Of course, it is causation. If people eat (substantially, 50 cal difference are "adjusted") less, myself included, they lose weight.
I wrote in the beginning that I am not referring to your specific case, which I don't know in the specifics, it looks like a medical problem at this point, and I am anyway sympathetic with. People can be strange exceptions. But for people who are 50-100 pounds overweight, eating less, eat enough protein, move more, exercise, is what works for losing fat and being more "healthy".
That's why I'm searching for a strategy that works and is falsifiable, not religious dogma that there is "no disproving whatsoever" for.
I've lost 100lbs before w/o ever restricting my eating or exercising much, so I just know you're wrong on this from personal experience.
The fact that this is even at all debated is bizarre. These people should stick to astrology.
You ate in a surplus and gained some muscle and some fat.
I also gain weight when I eat more and train, what's the confusing bit here?
It's not sustainable to maintain a calorie deficit indefinitely. No-one claims that. That would be anorexia.
What is sustainable is to eat in a calorie deficit for a period of time until you reach a weight you're happy with and then maintain.
I think what you're describing is probably accurate for reasonably lean people trying to cut 10lbs. But for the severely obese (I briefly hit morbidly, in my case) that strategy doesn't help very much. Getting from 300 to 290lbs isn't nothing, but it's not enough.
I believe that you only get to severe obesity by something being seriously wrong with your metabolism. Therefore you need to identify that issue and fix it, probably with some pretty severe intervention, to get back to healthy.
Having done that for two years, why was it unsustainable to eat at maintenance from then on? You felt hungry? Lost interest? I lose interest in goals all of the time. But what happened?
I wasn't even doing anything - just eating keto to satiety every day. Then I moved back to the US and slowly began gaining it all back (also over about 2 years).
I tried various things to slow down or reverse the gain, including lifting, other methods of working out, dieting more or harder.. nothing worked. Until this :) With the heavy cream. Down 45lbs again so far. Yay!
You gained fat following a program that is notorious for making people fat. Google images for "starting strength meme" and see for yourself.
I know Rippetoe's answer to everything is "eat moar fooood!" so yea I kinda see how that meme exists.
Are you serious? SS is notorious for making people fat, or even obese. Rippetoe has repeatedly said he doesn't care about your abs, and tells you not to run. This guy recently went viral as a another SS "success": https://old.reddit.com/r/StartingStrength/comments/y0ybtd/ad...
> Are there other lifting protocols more designed for fat loss?
Cardio is better for fatloss, tbh, and lifting in a deficit is best pursued as a way to preserve muscle mass and maximize the weight lost from fat. If you're a newb you can recomp somewhat, but it becomes harder the longer you train and leaner you get. SS is too low volume of a porgram to aid much in fat loss, and a higher volume (more reps per set, more sets) hypertrophy program would burn more calories, build more muscle (and increase your BMR) but you really should try to incorporate regular cardio, especially that you enjoy and can maintain.
Your diet should be high protein (at least 1g per lb. of bw, but with the obese, height in cm. is used instead, so target 1g per cm. of height), again, to shift the balance towards fat vs. muscle loss, and high in carbohydrate (fruit, veg, whole grain) to fuel workouts, replenish glycogen, and spare muscle protein, and low in fat (especially low in saturated fat).
Thanks!
I'm pretty sure, having seen that, that this is just a really elaborate troll. I stopped engaging after seeing this.
His chosen method of achieving caloric restriction is to get 70% of his nutrition from cream. The amount of cream isn't even defined; it's just "I have some amount of coffee a day and this one time I measured how much cream I happen to put in it". If for whatever reason one day Starbucks changes their coffee and he ends up having 8 instead of 5 the whole thing will change arbitrarily.
If this is real then the guy needs psychological help.