

How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs - lionhearted
http://danieltenner.com/posts/0018-how-to-lose-weight.html

======
niels_olson
As a doctor who counsels patients on weight loss every day, I think this is
the sanest healthy-eating article I've seen from a layman in a long time. This
is absolutely great. A small point: willpower starts in the store. It's much
easier to choose against cookies once in the store than three times a day at
home.

Let me encourage folks that exercise is still the other very important part of
the equation, and, like eating right, has other benefits as well: less back
pain, more energy, better concentration, better self image. Exercise will also
help preserve muscle mass.

I also give people a standard reading/homework list:

\-- Michael Pollan's essay _Unhappy Meals_

\-- Deborah Madsion's _Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone_

\-- Howard McGee's _On Food and Cooking_

\-- Julia Child's _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_

\-- Watch "Food, Inc" and "King Corn"

~~~
SoftwareMaven
And don't ever, ever, every go into a store hungry.

Ever!

~~~
pstuart
Or stoned.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
From what I've heard, doesn't that directly imply hungry? ;)

~~~
pstuart
I hear it's a special kind of hungry.

------
pamelafox
I've wanted to lose a bit of weight much of my life, and decided to approach
it a different way this year.

Instead of blindly trying what I tried before (calorie counting, exercise,
etc), I've started reading books about nutrition & obesity research - the most
informative one being "Good Calories, Bad Calories." I now come to the task
armed knowing much more about how food affects my body than before (*atleast,
according to the best research available today).

So, I've started reducing my carbs and sugars, and taking the opportunity to
learn how to cook delicious vegetable+protein meals. I've lost 10kg so far,
and more importantly, I actually really look forward to my meals.

I'm also trying to graph the weight like mentioned in the article, but it is a
bit trickier as a girl (menstrual cycles interfere) and I don't have a fancy
body fat scale. I've also taken pictures of myself (mostly my stomach), and
have started taking pictures of my food to see if that keeps me more
accountable (dailybooth.com/whatpamelaseating).

Anyway, it's going well so far, and I hope to use what I learnt to help my
obese sister lose weight as well, before it affects her chronically.

Other suggested reading: Fast Food Nation, In Defense of Food, 4-Hour Body.

------
jfb
I lost 100lbs in two years. I started with simple portion control, along with
the daily weigh-in; I also stopped drinking beer, which was a) a lot of
calories and b) mostly at night. I also got on a stationary bike for an hour
at 20mph four times a week, and hit the big breakfast.

This got me down about 40lbs in a year or so. No tricksy diets, or really any
giant exertions of willpower; like many, I am an inveterate creature of habit,
so once I switched habits, I generally stuck to them.

At this point, I started YC, and stress played an important role in losing
another 20lbs or so. Obviously not universally applicable. But the lack of
exercise eventually had me hire a trainer and work out three times a week.
This was fairly serious stuff, taking into account my poor baseline of
fitness. Another 20lbs in about six months.

The final push was moving to a daily 6am boot camp style workout, and a
dedication to running. I'm now hovering between 185 and 195 and dying to get
running again (I did by ITB, so no strenuous exercise involving my left leg
until February).

The biggest thing for me was walking up a staircase in IL3 and having a
coworker comment on how hard I was breathing. She was Chinese and with
characteristic bluntness said, "you're too fat". Hard to argue with that.

------
brutimus
Commenting here because the post's comments are 6mo old.

I've had good luck with a combination of what both the author and the first
commenter said. Go a week forcing yourself to eat smaller portions, your
stomach will shrink and it becomes natural. I can't eat what I used to call
"large" portions before (kind of annoying when you're at a really good
restaurant or a holiday dinner).

I also dusted my bicycle off and got back out and started riding. I hadn't
been active on that since I'd been moving around cities which are terrible for
bicycling (Las Vegas being my current). But I found some good roads and
trails, found the right times to ride them to avoid traffic and I was set. In
the past 6mo or so, I've gone from 5-10mi rides to just over 60mi. When the
time changed I lost my every evening ride after work as I hate riding at night
around here. So I commute a couple miles to work every day on my bike, then do
a nice long ride or two on the weekend.

All this together has taken me from my high school to college to post-college
weight of 210 lbs down to just north of 170 in about 6-8 months. I'm now
lighter than the weight I wrestled in middle school.

------
mmaunder
This article seems simplistic but it's exactly what has helped me lose 20
pounds. Summary:

1\. Weigh yourself every day in the mornings.

2\. Graph your weight. (I started doing this using fatbet.net with a few
friends)

3\. Eat less. (I stick to low carbs and make sure I eat less than 2500
calories per day - ideally less than 2000)

I also do light runs 3X a week and do a tiny bit of weight lifting to maintain
my muscle mass and fitness level which ensures I continue to burn the same
number of calories every day.

Also make darn sure you get enough carbs before going any intense exercise
that last more than 45 mins (e.g. 3 hour hike, 3 hour mountain bike, etc) or
you will crash and burn and it's very unpleasant and inconvenient if you're in
the middle of nowhere.

~~~
Chris_Newton
Another nod of agreement from me for the general principle of recording your
stats daily.

I go a little further, having written a simple program that draws slightly
more expressive charts than what a quick Excel job will produce, colour coding
just about everything in a green=good, blue=neutral, red=bad kind of way.

In particular, I track total calories consumed, "bad" calories consumed, and
calories expended during exercise. I plot these as a _single_ blue bar for
each day, with the total height being the total calories. I colour the top
part of the bar red to show how much of the total came from bad calories, and
shift the bar down to start below the zero line and colour the lower part
green to show how much exercise calories offset the intake. I know I'm getting
sloppy if the tops of the bars start going up, and it's easy to see from the
red and green whether it's due to eating too much junk or not exercising
enough.

This approach makes the height of the bar relative to the zero line a daily
"calorie balance". I label each bar with the balance figure, in green if it's
under 1,500, blue for up to 2,000, and red for over 2,000. Again, the visual
reinforcement is great: it feels like I want to get lots of green numbers, and
I feel guilty if I get lots of red numbers, even though rationally I know that
a red number is not actually that much.

I do realise that effective weight control isn't really as simple as this
crude calorie balance approximation, but the chart serves its purpose. Throw
in a graph of weight (a marker every day, again coloured for reinforcement, so
it's green when I hit a new low, blue if I equal the previous low, and red if
it's above the previous low) plotted above the calorie balance, and perhaps a
line showing body fat percentage as well, and everything looks much nicer if
you can get it green. It also starts to show patterns of real progress quite
quickly: you can see a general downward trend in weight and body fat within a
few days, and over time you start to see that when you slack off on the diet
or exercise it really does lead to pausing or reversing the downward trends.

After doing this for several months and losing a fair amount of weight, I
concluded that the recommended calorie intakes for adults don't work for me at
all. Despite being over 6' and despite doing a fair bit of dancing in my
social life, I do not require anything like the 2,500 daily calories
recommended for an adult male to maintain my weight. Consuming around 2,000
calories per day is plenty for me, unless I'm planning a particularly long or
intensive workout, in which case I eat more accordingly. As soon as I learned
to ignore the official advice and adjusted all my expectations down by 500
calories per day, I permanently stopped my weight drifting up as it had been
for a few months before I started this exercise, and started it back towards a
level I consider acceptable.

Finally, a few things are _really_ bad for calorie balance, and you don't
necessarily realise unless you're actively checking what you're eating and
drinking. Fizzy, sugared drinks are the kiss of death for any diet, but you
have to be careful with "diet" versions as well, as they sometimes have
secondary effects that cause you to be more hungry and thus eat more than you
otherwise would! Also, if you're an "everything tastes better with cheese"
person, you might want to moderate your dairy intake. Cutting down sharply on
these two things alone reduced my daily calorie balance enough to be losing a
substantial amount of weight, before I even started improving my exercise
regime and looked at other parts of my diet.

------
ludwigvan
Record your weight everyday, but take a moving average, basically the average
of the last N days. That way, you will mitigate the random fluctuations. There
might be better estimators of course (Kalman filter anyone?), but I believe
they would be overkill.

This book was recommended on HN in a diet related article: The Hacker's Diet,
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html> It's written by the
founder of AutoCAD. That's where I got the moving average idea.

------
tommoor
Great article, these are exactly the principles behind our startup
<http://skinnyo.com> \- infact it was almost like I was reading my own words
:-)

We encourage checking in your weight everyday and produce slick graphs
automatically (which you can embed in a website or blog for that extra
motivation to stop it from rising!).

If anyone signs up let me know how you get on and follow me:

<http://skinnyo.com/people/tom>

------
mattparcher
Meta-comment:

The link URL includes with the www prefix, which redirects to the top-level of
the domain (danieltenner.com).

Using the URL without www [1] behaves properly, without redirecting the user.

[1] <http://danieltenner.com/posts/0018-how-to-lose-weight.html>

(Reproduced in the latest public releases of of Chrome, Safari and Firefox on
Mac OS 10.6.5)

------
bemmu
One interesting thing is that foods with same amounts of calories can differ a
lot in how full they make you feel.

[http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_food_diet/satiety_index....](http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_food_diet/satiety_index.php#axzz19Xy70fBf)

------
mbesto
I started using <http://www.dailyburn.com> to track a lot of this. Very useful
to get going.

------
ThomPete
The best advice I ever got was.

Eat until you are not hungry anymore rather than until you are full.

------
Bud
Bud's Genius Guide to all weight loss, which obviates the need for ever
reading about any diet or weight-loss method, ever again:

Burn off more calories than you eat. Adjust exercise and eating to follow this
rule.

------
viggity
I've struggled with weight for almost my entire life. I know how much it sucks
to try everything under the sun and to watch the pounds come rolling back.
Sometimes, there is just more to the equation than is in your immediate
control. If you're 100+ lbs overweight and feel completely helpless/hopeless,
there are surgical options with very high success rates. I've had a gastric
band for the past 13 months and I feel like a completely new person. If you
need some to talk to, please don't hesitate to email me - my info is in my
profile.

~~~
Shooter
I'm happy a gastric band worked for you, but I'm always uncomfortable when
people suggest surgery without also mentioning that it has major risks. [My
aunt passed away last year after gastric band surgery at one of the top
hospitals in the country. She contracted MRSA and had some other
complications.] While I can appreciate the feelings of frustration and
helplessness when you can't control your weight, I think one should seriously
consider the risks before signing up for surgery. Especially if you have kids.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Anybody who tries surgery for anything (including increasing the size of their
lips) without understanding all of the consequences...

I had weight loss surgery and lost 160lbs. I also almost died almost a year to
the date after the initial surgery because of an intestinal stricture that
resulted when a permanent stitch become semi-permanent and came very close to
my intestine tearing (sepsis from that is BAD). I basically had to have most
of the surgery twice as a result, the second time in an emergency setting
(fortunately from the same doctor as the original, who was chosen because his
practice of doctors are so good).

Still, I am a proponent of the surgery for a certain class of individuals,
like me, who had tried for years and years to lose and saw nothing but yo-
yo'ing into BMIs of 40s, 50s and more. Quality of life is so low and health
dangers so high, that the risks can be worth it.

Few people who haven't been morbidly obese can understand how bad the quality
of life can be (note: QoL does not _have_ to be bad for the morbidly obese;
some people are very happy and I say more power to them! I was not one of
them. I was miserable.).

Even knowing how close I came to dying, I would do it again, just for the
opportunity to live. It is not a decision to be made lightly (I can give a
list as long as my arm as to potential complications), and my heart goes out
to every person who hoped for that better life and succumbed to complications.
It is also not a silver bullet. You still have to think about how you eat,
retrain yourself, etc., or you will be back at your weight again (I'm dieting
now because I've gained back a bit more than I wanted because I didn't pay
enough attention, but the tool still works and I am losing weight. I'm down
about 20lbs and able to diet like a "normal" person.).

However, even with all that, I will still encourage everybody I talk to who is
considering it to do it if they think it is right. Only they can decide that.

Edit: Rereading, I noticed you mentioned "especially if they have kids" and I
think it is also important to address that. The decision is certain more grave
at that point.

I had four kids, the youngest was 3 when I had my surgery. It factored
significantly into the decision, but in the end, it actually encouraged me to
have the surgery. Let me explain:

1\. Children of obese parents tend to be obese and unhealthy. I wanted to try
to help break that cycle. 2\. I could not really play with my kids, do the
things I wanted to with them, because of my weight, so it was negatively
impacting my relationship with them. 3\. My health was deteriorating to the
point that it was questionable whether I would have 10 more years with them at
the current trajectory (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, beginnings of
type 2 diabetes), and those 10 years would be miserable, watching me decay.

So, in the end, I did the surgery for myself and for my family.

------
mstret
"Eat less". Good idea. Wish I'd thought of that.

~~~
beoba
Compared to exercise, it takes much less effort to accomplish weight loss
through eating less. Doing both certainly doesn't hurt, but there's more work
involved in burning 200 calories than in skipping that extra cookie to start
with.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Spending an extra 9-12 minutes on the elliptical is not _that_ hard.

Harder than skipping the cookie, sure, but also better for you. For example,
look at the thighs of a chronic eater/exerciser and a chronic dieter.

~~~
matwood
Like most people you have waaaay overestimated the amount of calories burned
during exercise [1]. To burn 200 cals in 9-12 minutes you will need to be
doing all out sprints for that entire time and that might not even get you
there.

I'm in pretty good shape and did a real 1000 calories workout one time with a
trainer friend of mine (he has a body bug which does an okay job of tracking
calories). It took an hour of high intensity exercise and I nearly puked a few
times during the workout. That's how hard it was.

[1]<http://www.fitsugar.com/Ten-Ways-Burn-200-Calories-1081158>

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't think I'm that far off. According to the calorie counter on the
exercise machines, that's what I do while warming up. (I do 1 minute full
intensity, 30 second rest intervals, which prevents the puking.)

Your own link suggests 12 minutes of vigorous biking will burn 200 cals as
well as 10 minutes of boxing.

<http://www.fitsugar.com/health/tools/calorie_burner_input>

~~~
matwood
The calorie counters on the exercise machines are generally not very good.
They are like the scales that attempt to show you your BF%, directionally
correct but number given is not very good.

You hit on the rest of the equation though, specifically about what people
think is high intensity. Vigorous biking means going all out for 12 full
minutes likely with the resistance turned up pretty high. When it comes to
elliptical machines they are notoriously bad at making people think they do
all this 'work' when in reality it's momentum unless they turn the machines
resistance way up. Treadmills do some of this by 'carrying' people along, but
they are not nearly as bad as ellipticals.

Boxing is very good, but really doing boxing for 10 minutes with a heavy bag
is not easy. Notice how long the rounds are in a real boxing match and how
tired the fighters are. Reminds me of the only other time I've puked while
exercising was doing 2 minute on/1 minute off BJJ rounds.

You should actually swap your warmup method around [3]. If you can do a minute
full intensity with only 30 seconds rest then that would lead me to believe
the intensity isn't as high as you think. Instead do 30 seconds full intensity
with 90 seconds rest[1]. Personally, I have to do this on a track b/c it
scares me to even try to run at a true full speed on a treadmill (I had a
5.0sec 40yd at one point in my life hah!). 60 second splits with 180 second
rest is also popular. I can't find it now [2], but the original HIIT research
found the 1:3 sprint:non-sprint ratio as a key factor.

[1]<http://www.intervaltraining.net/HiitTraining-30.html>

[2]Darn all the 'fitness' crap on the internet because it makes it near
impossible to find anything a second time

[3]To clarify - I would actually do a different warmup more focused on the up
coming workout and do true HIIT post workout or on it's own day.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I know what vigorous biking means. I don't see the point of doing anything
else while you are at the gym, unless you are just there to enjoy the sight of
yoga girls. And I don't think it's implausible that an elliptical on high
intensity (which works both upper and lower body) can burn something
comparable to a bike.

As for my interval times, it corresponds to 1 minute rounds, 30 seconds rest.
I could jack up the intensity more if I wanted to do 30/90, but in the ring
that would correspond to 30 seconds dishing it out, 30 seconds getting killed.

By the way, could you explain the rationale behind [3]?

~~~
matwood
Not sure if you'll see this, but a great message board (sorta like HN for
fitness) is forums.jpfitness.com. A great site with good, knowledgable people.

Check it out sometime.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Thanks for both your comments.

