
Being Less Fat - aaronbrethorst
http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/17/being-less-fat/
======
tzs
> Instead I bought a “TrekDesk” on Amazon and a cheap treadmill

If you can get by with a cheap treadmill, you aren't fat.

When I was shopping for a treadmill as a fat guy, every cheap treadmill I
looked at had a weight limit low enough that if I was under that I wouldn't
need the damn treadmill!

BTW, as someone who has twice lost a lot of weight, kept it of for a
significant time, and then put it back, here's the most important lesson I
learned: it is all about habit. Both times that I became fat again were after
changes in life circumstances that changed my routine significantly.

For instance, the first time was after I left a steady job with a reasonable
sized company (Unix hacker at Interactive Systems Corporation) to go work for
a friend's small start up. At Interactive, my schedule was quite regular, and
it was easy to maintain good eating habits. Essentially, I did not have to
think about my weight because my habits were right.

The small startup was a consulting firm, specializing in what he called
"crisis intervention programming". Typical job: someone is developing a new
intelligent disk controller. Their firmware is a disaster, behind schedule and
over budget, and pretty much not salvageable. The hardware side of the project
may or may not also be buggy and behind schedule. We'd come in and take a
contract to design new firmware from scratch and implement it, often on a
schedule that would meet their original deadline...and our bid would be a
fixed cost bid with penalties if we were late.

This was a very busy and stressful (but fun!) line of work, with many long
days and nights of writing low level code. I simply completely got out of the
habit of doing any food preparation myself. Say it's 11 PM and I'm finally
getting around to dinner--what am I going to do? Go home, cook something, eat
it, clean up, and then head back to the office? Or call the pizza place two
buildings over that is open till midnight, order a pizza, pick it up, bring it
to my desk, and eat it while cranking out another few hundred lines of code?
The latter, of course.

~~~
tzs
Two more things.

1\. If you want to take weight off and keep it off, forget most "diets". Most
people think of a "diet" as a temporary change--and when they reach whatever
their goal is they go off the diet. And then the weight starts coming back.

You are looking for a permanent change. If you are 300 pounds, say, and you
want to be 200, you should be eating like a 200 point person plus enough extra
so that your weight loss will not be too fast--a pound or two a week tops,
unless your doctor tells you that you need to get the weight off faster.

The overall trajectory you are aiming for is a smooth decrease over time to
your target weight.

2\. Because you should be thinking long term, not meal to meal or day to day,
you can simplify much of your calorie counting (if you need calorie counting)
by working in bulk, at least if you aren't sharing a food supply with someone.

For instance, suppose you have determined that 2000 calories a day is right
for healthy weight loss at your current weight and exercise level. 2000
calories a day is 14000 calories a week, or approximately 61000 calories a
month.

If you set your goal as 61000 calories a month, rather than 2000 a day, you
don't have to bother with keeping track of portions. When you buy a box of
cereal that says it contains 12 servings of 150 calories each, you don't need
to be careful to actually eat it over 12 breakfasts, or break out the scale
and weigh it out whenever you eat it--you just record it as 1800 calories the
day you buy it (or the day you open it--whichever convention you like better).

------
skrebbel
I like it, but I think he's fooling himself. If you want to lose weight, you
need to take in less calories than you burn. Sure, you can increase how many
calories you burn, but it'll make you hungry and, well, you need to buy a
treadmill desk :-)

The simpler option is to eat less.

Of course, I know, this sounds simpler than you think. I'm just a single guy,
so here's my personal anecdotal evidence: I gained about a kilo each year,
reaching about 101 kilos this summer. Not huge, but not particularly thin
either. (no clue how much that is in pounds btw). I decided to start eating
less. I noticed, however, that it was very hard to resist cravings, so I
needed rules.

Now, being Dutch, both my breakfast and lunch are centered around slices of
bread. That's just how we do it here. I'd eat about 6 slices, with all kinds
of nice toppings, for breakfast, and then again 6 for lunch. This is a lot -
I'd eat a full loaf of bread (<http://www.relouw-janssen.nl/wp-
content/uploads/waldkorn.jpg>) every 2 days. So I made two rules:

1) Only 3 slices of bread at breakfast, only 3 at lunch.

2) No candies, cookies, etc while at work.

Note that there is no rule 3: I can eat whatever I want for dinner. These
rules aren't the "best" or "healthiest" rules; they're rules that are _easy to
apply_ in my current situation. You'll probably need different rules.

Turns out I needed these to be simple, strict, and well-defined rules, for
this to work. I tried many times before with all kinds of approaches, but I
failed each time, and discovered it was because the rules were either too
vague or too difficult to meet.

I started with rule 2: no candies and cookies. Our office is littered with
candies and cookies, so I needed to learn to resist, and I knew I could not do
that if I'd just went from 6 to 3 slices of bread at breakfast.

I managed this without exceptions for 2 weeks, so I decided to start on the
bread. Breakfast was easiest, because I bike to work and then eat buns at work
that I made the day before. I could just make less and there'd be less for me
to eat, whether I wanted to eat more or not. Our office lunch has a walk-by
buffet where you take what you want, so I could apply a similar principle
here: take only 3 slices. Then the only rule became: don't walk back to the
buffet.

Putting a big bag/pot/jar of food in front of you while you sit down to eat is
the killer. You'll have a very hard time resisting taking another batch. Take
how much you think you're allowed to have elsewhere (in the kitchen, at the
counter, whatever), take it to where you'll eat it, and _don't go back to get
more_. No getting more. This really made it easier for me.

Now, I computed that I'm eating about 500-ish calories less every day. On the
male average of burning/using 2500 calories, this is not a lot. Results match
this: over a bit less than 3 months, I lost just under 6 kilos.

6 kilos on 3 months is not a lot. Losing 30 will take a long time, and that's
even assuming that it'll keep going as fast (which it won't). This is fine,
however. Fast weight loss probably means you're not changing your patterns,
but you just decided to suffer for a while. There's absolutely no point in
suffering for a while. Change your patterns, and you'll be able to really get
thinner, and also not get fatter again anymore. It'll be suffering in the very
beginning, but _your body will get used to it_! This is very important to
realise. I do still feel somewhat hungry most of the day, but I don't mind
anymore. It's not driving me nuts like it used to.

My next steps are cutting back on dinner, too (using the "don't go back to get
more" rule). I really think I'm on the right track here.

On a slightly related sidenote: I can _really_ recommend "The Hacker's Diet"
by John Walker of Autodesk fame
(<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html>). I didn't manage to do
it, because all the heavy calory counting did just not fit my patterns ("is
this hamburger 500 calories? or 700? how the hell will I find out?"), but the
first chapters have some great info about what does and does not matter in
weight loss, and why that's the case. There's a lot of bullshit out there
about the topic, and the Hacker's Diet really helps cutting through to the
core.

Note: I agree with the other commenters about exercise: you should exercise,
no matter what. I bike to work (20km a day) and go to the gym once a week, so
I think I've got it covered. Just losing weight without exercise is stupid,
you'll turn into a sissy who can't bend a ballpoint pen.

~~~
tallanvor
The Hacker's Diet, with it's heavy emphasis on calorie counting, is not
sustainable. As you mention, there are too many times when it's very hard to
accurately determine the number of calories of a meal - just about anytime you
don't make the food yourself or buy it prepackaged with calorie information.

I did use it once, to drop down from 290 to 220, but that was by limiting
myself to 1200 calories a day and very carefully counting everything that I
ate. I never went back to it - even after climbing back up to 260 and then
dropping down to about 175.

------
tallanvor
If there's one thing that all the research being done suggests, it's that
there is no one-size-fits-all approach to weight maintenance. "Just eat less",
or "move more" are solutions suggested by many people, but it's not that
simple.

Some bodies naturally store excess calories as fat, while in others the body
ups its metabolism to try and prevent this. At the same time, diet certainly
plays a role - some forms of carbs can be converted into body fat much more
easily than other energy sources (the fat that you eat, for example, doesn't
get converted into body fat nearly as efficiently as sugar, for example). And
of course, once you've been fat, even if you lose the weight you will have to
work harder to keep it off. --There was an NPR story about a study that if you
have two people of similar weight and muscle mass, one of whom has lost a lot
of weight, the person who lost the weight may have to eat as much as 500 fewer
calories per day to maintain his or her weight. It's no wonder how few people
manage to keep weight off.

Personally, I've been struggling with my weight since I was 9 years old. I
used to be skinny, but I managed to catch hepatitis, and after that I started
gaining weight. One of my doctors told me this wasn't that surprising as
hepatitis can often cause drastic changes to your metabolism. At my heaviest I
was around 290lb, but I'm down under 190, and have been as low as 175 - it's
not easy, though. I try hard to watch what I eat (not always successfully,
obviously). I used to do high intensity workouts of at least 1 hour 6 times a
week - in 2010 I was at the gym more than 300 times. I suffered a setback
earlier this year that accounted for a fair bit of the weight gain back from
175 to almost 190 when I caught mono and was advised by my doctor not to work
out for 6 weeks, and lingering fatigue issues meant there were many weeks
where I only managed to make it to the gym 2 or 3 times a week. I'm finally
back up to 5 workouts a week near my old intensity, but it'll still take
months of keeping this up to get my weight back down. I'd love to make it down
to about 160-170, but that won't be easy.

~~~
jacques_chester
Hi, I'm one of the others who suggested "eat less".

Is it "that simple"? No, of course not. The body is stupidly complex and
variability between individuals is enormous.

On the other hand, is it "that simple"? Yes, of course it is. Chemical
reactions in human beings are much as anywhere else.

What matters for weight loss purposes is that your internal mechanisms are,
for the most part, not observable. I personally can tell when I fall into
gluconeogenesis (the breakdown of amino acids into glucose) because I can
smell the ammonia produced as a by-product. But otherwise I wasn't born with a
dashboard with helpful graphs of my insulin sensitivity over the past 5
minutes, my current circulating grehlin, testosterone levels or any one of a
hundred variables that will have some effect on what happens to me _today_.

So what _can_ I observe?

I can observe:

    
    
        * My current weight on a scale
        * My current physical appearance
        * Some calliper fold measurements
        * Weight lifting performance
        * How much I am eating
    

And so I use these to control my weight, strength, appearance and so on.
Because that's what I have.

As I said elsewhere, it's more important to find a dietary approach that
_works for you_. Some people are good at counting calories (not me). Some find
it surprisingly easy to give up carbs or fast or whatever. So long as you find
an approach, that's what matters.

I'm sorry to hear about your illness. How are you training? Are you on
fitocracy?

------
johnwatson11218
I have setup a treadmill with an xbox 360, cable, and a dvd player in front of
it. I only run when I'm playing intense shooters like Call of Duty. Mostly I
walk while playing longer single player games or watching dvds from netflix. I
actually had to get rid of my couch to make room for this so if I want to veg
out in front of the tv I have to be moving. I don't know how much weight loss
I can attribute to this but when I do it consistently I sleep much better, am
more relaxed and have better digestion. And I don't feel like playing video
games once I'm done - so it really does kill two birds with one stone.

I built a table from Ikea that I had a laptop on ... I liked it but I could
only use the computer when walking and then there wasn't enough room to run
anymore. Also I only surfed the web and ripped cds when I had the computer
setup. I didn't do any serious work but I could see myself getting into that.
I think I would want to use the big tv for a monitor and a wireless
keyboard/mouse.

I agree with the above comments about diet for weight loss. I'm trying to eat
vegan for a while and I have noticed an immediate improvement in my blood
sugar and how I feel. It is as if a whole body inflammation has cleared up.

~~~
jfruh
I do think that an important part of maintaining an exercise regimen is to
trick yourself into making exercise a reward. Yes, the endorphin rush you get
from working out can be a reward in and of itself but in my experience that
doesn't always last over the long term and sometimes you need an extra boost.

My wife and I have a rowing machine and entertainment setup in the basement
and we've both started working our way through TV shows that the other one
doesn't want to watch (the relaunched Dr. Who for me, True Blood for her)
while rowing. Both often feature cliffhangers and other incentives to keep
watching, but the rule is that we _only_ watch while we row. Makes us much
more likely to do it.

------
flocial
Middle aged people with deskjobs being overweight and implementing small
changes in lifestyle is not exactly newsworthy.

------
oomkiller
I think weight gain has lots to do with diet and little to do with exercise. I
started dieting this year, I've lost 60 pounds so far. If you want to loose
weight and stay healthy, stop eating crap. You don't have to resort to crazy
desks to be healthy. To lose weight, eat as few carbs as you can (under 20g
per day). To maintain it, try not to eat as much bread, grain, sweets, etc.
Also, don't sit on your ass all day, get up and walk about the building for a
few minutes at least every hour!

~~~
malbs
if you're combining a diet with a decent exercise regimen, cutting out carbs
like that is a road to ruin.

Also you lost 10-15 pounds of muscle. sad but true.

~~~
lupatus
Bodybuilders love low-carb ketogenic-style diets to lean-out and they are def
not low on muscle. Jamie Lewis at chaosandpain.blogspot.com is currently
breaking powerlifting records on a diet of little more than protein shakes and
dry-rubbed beef ribs. Dave Asprey at bulletproofexec.com has a no-exercise
six-pack with a claimed diet of almost no carbs and 2000-3000 calories of pure
fat a day.

Wikipedia's insulin page even explains how the body stores excess sugars as
adipose tissue and later burns that fat for energy.

~~~
jacques_chester
Pro bodybuilders also love clenbuterol and DNP; you have to take their dietary
advice with a grain of salt. Jamie Lewis, though, is one strong entertaining
bloke.

~~~
lupatus
Agreed about the body builders and Jamie Lewis. His site is very NSFW, but
each blog post amuses and amazes me.

------
malbs
Sounds like a pretty extreme solution to his weight problem. But if it works
who am I to question it.

Personally I would have just started cycling to/from work (Although maybe he
does already)

------
jacques_chester
There's nothing mysterious about weight loss.

1\. Take in fewer calories.

2\. Do some exercise with weights to prevent muscle loss and bone weakening.

That's about it. The secret is finding a "less calories" approach that works
for you. The Hackers Diet appeals to lots of nerds, but I've seen people do
well with Weight Watchers, Paleo, Keto and Intermittent Fasting. Do what works
for you.

Those of you on reddit should look at /r/fitness and /r/loseit.

edit: I'd be interested in rebuttals, rather than downvoting. Entirely too
much downvoting in this thread already, IMO.

~~~
fossuser
I found fewer calories and intense daily cardio to work well. If you run
everyday while eating less you're guaranteed to lose weight and as long as you
keep running you can start to mostly eat what you want when you reach your
desired goal.

