Comment by xcubed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xcubed | Hacker News Reader

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I agree that it's hard to make healthy choices, but I think it's a bit more complex than that...

I packed on an extra 20-30 pounds working in a catered, snack-heavy silicon valley company. I decided to change my diet completely. I slowly cut out all processed food from my diet, and then all snacks, so that everything that I ate was homemade by myself, typically "healthy" (similar to mediterranean diet), with no sugar, no juice, lots of vegetables and fish, some fruit, and relatively portion-controlled (eyeballed.) I lost 8 pounds but then plateau-ed - I continued to be overweight. I also exercised 4 times a week.

I started monitoring calories for a couple months and realized I was eating at a slight "calorie deficit" - I should have been losing a pound every week or two but I wasn't. Only when I cut my calories and STRICTLY portion-controlled my healthy food (to a calorie deficit where I should have been losing 2-3 pounds a week), did I finally start losing 2/3 pound a week. I'm proud to say I'm now a healthy weight but I eat FAR less and exercise FAR more than I should "need" to.

The journey really helped me realize there's something wrong with our food (not just the processed food but the ingredients themselves) and that there are some environmental factors involved (something in the water? the environment? pesticides? I really don't know. I'm not sure what it is.)

Did you actually get your base metabolic rate measured? I'm curious why you think you were eating at a calorie deficit.

I control my calorie intake using published calorie counts (for mass market stuff), and a kitchen scale for anything I make myself. I also record every single thing in a diary. I eat a lot of crap (breakfast is either a hot dog or a bag of mustard pretzel bits), but my weight loss is exactly what I'd expect given my measured calorie deficit. If anything, its easier to measure your calorie consumption if you don't cook at home, because many mass market places now publish nutrition info, and they have a strong commercial incentive to maintain uniform portion sizes.

No I didn't get my metabolic rate measured. I was using estimates based on my height and weight, which told me I should be burning X calories a day. I used the low end of the range (despite exercising I didn't count myself as active for getting that estimate.) I'm very curious though about measuring my official metabolic rate. Do you know where I could get it done in the bay area?

I did the same as you in terms of measuring calories, but mostly using scales or calorie counts on packets as I was cooking using raw ingredients. I recorded everything in a diary, using paper initially and then myfitnesspal app. I would also "cross-check" (e.g., after finishing a bottle of olive oil I'd look back at how much I'd logged.) I do think there's space for error and variation - e.g., a vegetable that's sweeter than average, or trying to judge how much fat (and therefore calories) is left on a piece of meat. That last one is the toughest because it can make a huge difference.

Some rec centers and high end gyms will have an RMR machine (BodyGem).

Did you get your base metabolic rate measured? Was that helpful? What was the process like?

I hear this from many people, and experienced it myself, lose weight to a certain point, then level out. My theory: when you are over weight, you burn more calories just doing daily activities. As the weight comes off, your normal movements burn fewer calories. I guess a way to test this is once you plateau, start wearing a 30 pound weight around your waist. Then see if that makes you plateau at 30 pounds lighter.

Gosh that sounds like an excellent weight loss product if you could make some sort of weighted undergarment that didn't make the wearer look frumpy (assuming it actually works of course). The problem would be that people would get used to the amount of calories they burn while wearing the product, and would probably balloon up as soon as the stopped wearing it.

Well, you probably used a calorie budget based on a few simple statistics like your sex, height, and weight. With individual differences is metabolic rates, it's very possible that your "slight calorie deficit" was actually breaking even for your individual calorie usage. Just as likely is that the nutrition info on labels is imprecise or even systematically inaccurate. For example, I believe there are penalties if your box says it contains 1 pound and it actually contains less, but there's no penalty for putting in more, since only in the former case is the consumer getting shortchanged, and this asymmetry probably creates an incentive for systematic underestimation of net weights, and therefore underestimation of calories per food package.

Probably some combination of these factors explains why you need to "ear FAR less than you should need to" based on how the math works out. I still think counting calories can be useful, but only in relative terms, not absolute.

American food is crap. I don't know what they add in the US, but a lot of stuff seems artificial. Even the milk seems over-processed. Source: European who had 2 trips to the US, in supposedly healthy states: California, Washington.

I feel more like American milk is extremely homogenized, so all milk tastes exactly the same. However, I really enjoy the taste of it, so I haven't had any problem so far.

In contrast, Indian milk tastes different when you buy from different vendors. You also have a choice between cow and buffalo milk.

Have you ever tasted natural milk? Non pasteurized? I mean either completely raw or just boiled once straight after it's been collected? I have. The taste of European milk is similar. That of American milk is almost nothing like real cow milk.

Euro milk always tasted burnt to me. I assume it's the UHT vs. HTST pasteurization.

Burnt, as in boiled?

Obesity is not just an American issue anymore. Note that this article is British.

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