

How to lose weight. No, really. - shadow
http://renatovaldes.com/?p=13

======
BigZaphod
I did this same technique myself starting about a year before my wedding. I
lost a lot of weight and became a lot stronger and it was pretty awesome. I
didn't pay for a gym, but got some weights and a bench at home and did things
that way.

Several years and one kid later, I'm back to being fat. Somewhere along the
line the calorie counting became less disciplined and then faded away entirely
- I don't even know when or why that happened. It just did. The weight lifting
time got shorter and shorter to make room for other aspects of life and
schedule changes, etc. And eventually, it was gone too. So now I'm back where
I started.

Sigh.

~~~
jseifer
I can't recommend this book highly enough:
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583870067>. Get an exercise ball (duraball
is the best) and you can do a ton of work outs from your house. The dieting
recommendations in the book are a bit out-dated but it's really a great book.

------
ruby_roo
The Shangri-La diet is the lifehack of the century (not a diet in the
traditional sense):

<http://www.sethroberts.net/>

Seriously. You simply won't want to eat, and if you _think_ you want to eat,
you'll be surprised at how untasty that delicious looking candy bar or pasta
is once it hits your lips. It's almost as if your body _conspires_ against
your best efforts to gain weight, which is a nice reversal for once.

In conjunction, take a high-quality multivitamin like SuperNutrition or Alive
and you'll also find yourself with enough energy that you'll go crazy if you
don't exercise. Yeah, it helps you _want_ to exercise. That is key for me.

It's so much easier to take your daily olive oil and find yourself
automatically disgusted at the sight of heavy food than to rely on sheer
discipline, which is probably why you're overweight to begin with. And
besides, olive oil is good for preventing disease.

It also helps that you'll feel the effects working on the same day you start,
and you should see an encouraging difference on the scale a week later (I lost
5 pounds on the first week with no exercise - almost scary).

You win, like, 3 times on Shangri-La + high-quality multivitamin, and you
don't have to have much discipline to get started.

~~~
jseifer
I'd switch from olive oil to coconut oil if possible -- much healthier. Olive
oil still has about 10% pufa in it. Check out <http://www.podbean.com/podcast-
detail?pid=27477> for more info.

------
vl
I found Hacker's Diet (<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/>) by John Walker
(Autodesk founder) to be entertaining reading by itself, it also has some
useful advice.

The Abs Diet ([http://www.amazon.com/Abs-Diet-Six-Week-Flatten-
Stomach/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Abs-Diet-Six-Week-Flatten-
Stomach/dp/1579549985)) is written in a bit over-patronizing language for my
taste, but has a lot of useful info about different nutrients, how to read
food labels, how to structure meals to keep blood sugar level constant, etc.
Exercises in the book are not bad too.

By combining these two approaches I was able to steadily loose weight and feel
better for more than a year. Recent change it lifestyle changed that, I'm
looking into reworking my routine to get back on track again.

------
nova
His advice is not bad, but it can be simplified: low carb diet. Avoid
specially excess fructose, so yes, lose the sodas, and sweets and sugar. And
cereals derivatives (like bread). Also starchy vegetables (like potatoes).

Exercise if you want muscle, but it's not necessary or sufficient.

------
dschobel
_Building up muscle tissue also helps you burn calories faster when not
working out. Cool little details I learned at the gym._

This is a very common myth.

 _To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including
the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on
the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly
less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did
not._ [1]

[1][http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-
doesnt-...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-
exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/)

~~~
dboyd
Except that adding lean body mass increases your Basal Metabolic Rate, which
increases the amount of calories you burn when you are not exercising.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_rate>

~~~
dschobel
You're absolutely right, the article above is referencing a different
phenomenon. My mistake.

------
gamble
Good advice, though I think he overemphasizes the gym. The point of exercise
is to emphasize how much overeating costs you. It's harder to justify that
candy bar when it equates to an hour of hard exercise.

~~~
kmavm
An hour of hard cycling burns about 700 kcals, which is a medium-sized meal. A
candy bar is on the order of 250 kcals typically.

~~~
gamble
700 kcals is on the extreme high end for an hour of cycling. You'd have to be
fairly heavy already and pushing it as hard as you can go. A normal person
putting in average effect is probably more like 250-300 kcal.

~~~
kmavm
I weigh 145. 700 kcals is about "tempo" effort: hard, but still fun-hard.
_All_ out, in the best shape of my life for one hour is around 900 kcals. I'm
in good, but not phenomenal shape; my brief flirtations with road racing ended
in utter humiliation.

I know this because of my on-bike power meter, which measures mechanical work
in kJ. That "perfect hour" was around 280 W, and I've done it twice. (Cyclists
have a very narrow range of biological efficiencies, so you can just multiply
mechanical by a constant to reckon metabolic work.)

------
JshWright
So to lose weight, all I have to do is eat <1300 calories and work out for 3
hours daily? Sounds simple enough...

~~~
davidcbc
If you are a 90lb girl then yes. Everyone else can eat a lot more calories
than that and lose weight

~~~
randallsquared
A sedentary 90lb girl may well gain weight on that.

------
yan
> Lots of diets tell you to reward yourself with one good meal or a really
> yummy snack after a week of successful dieting and exercise. Fuck that.
> You’re fat. Punish yourself until you lose the weight

Awesome. As my friend put it, there's a shortage of discipline in the world.

~~~
nova
> As my friend put it, there's a shortage of discipline in the world.

This is very wrong. Obesity is not a shortage of discipline, is a hormonal
disruption. We play havoc with insulin eating too much of things we didn't
evolved to eat.

~~~
yan
I'm sorry but I don't buy it. I'm not obese, most people I know are not obese
and they are all exposed to the same modern, engineered food that obese people
are. I'm not claiming that hormonal disruption doesn't influences it nor am I
saying the modern Western diet is any good for you, but I will claim that the
majority of obesity, from my limited life experience, comes from lack of self
control.

If one exercised discipline and consumed 1500 kcal of even modern, terrible,
HFCS-infused food, they would not get fat. Period. They won't necessarily be
healthy, but they will not be overweight.

Anyway, this argument is not novel nor is it in the scope of this thread. Just
wanted to say congratulations to the OP.

~~~
rdrimmie
I _am_ obese and I don't buy it either. I've lost 40 pounds over the past 3
years following a scaled down version of the exact same plan as in the post.
And I've gained 5 back over the past 3 months by being lax.

There are many people who do have legitimate health problems that cause
obesity, sure. But the vast majority of us fat folk (I still hover around 280)
eat too much and move too little.

------
randallsquared
I need to lose weight (I'm about 320lbs now, his maximum, though I'm 5' 9",
and somehow I never, ever hear anyone say anything insulting about my weight),
but I'm not sure the personality and attitude problem that appears to go with
it is worth it. ;)

------
shadow
Founder of mynameise, impressed by his determination. Some good takeaways
there.

------
FleursDuMal
I've had huge success with the following: no sugar, no white flour, 20 minutes
of intense exercise every day.

------
theprodigy
you lose weight by eating fewer calories, then get your metabolism going with
exercise on a daily basis. You need to stay disipline to eat the right things
and follow your workout goals. It is simple in theory, but hard to execute for
most.

------
IncidentalEcon
calories burned > calories consumed

~~~
dschobel
If you only you could expand that into a book or expensive program... darn it
all.

~~~
dhimes
I wish I could upvote you twice!

