
How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs - daeken
http://danieltenner.com/posts/0018-how-to-lose-weight.html
======
daeken
I'm planning on following this pretty closely soon. I've lost a lot of weight
over the last couple of years (somewhere around 130lbs, starting at nearly
400lbs), but it's been largely due to cutting out soda and simply getting off
my arse. Now I'm walking 3mi every other day or so, and the next step is to
figure out what to eat to maximize my energy while keeping my weight on a
downward trend, and I think that having more data will help that.

~~~
mtodd
Congrats! Keep it up. I've lost about 60lbs, and it started the same way for
me: cutting out bad foods and doing a bit of exercise. It was nice motivation
to say "no, I'm taking the stairs" or "I'll walk" and know that I could do it
and it was making a big improvement in my life.

Pick up cycling! So much more efficient use of your energy, meaning you can
utilize it more often to hop around town!

~~~
stan_rogers
The last thing one wants when trying to lose weight is efficiency of motion.
Cycling is a great alternative to driving (or taking public transit), but it's
a horrible alternative to walking until you are at or near your target.
Replacing a half-hour walk with a five-minute bike trip rather defeats the
purpose.

Walking is great -- you'll need to pick up the distance soon, though, and
perhaps make it a daily thing. As you walk more (and as you lose weight) your
body will get better at walking. And don't worry too much about the food
intake -- learn to listen to your body's needs rather than its wants. It can
happen. If you are walking about an hour a day for exercise (along with the
normal shuffling about), you should probably be able to get by on something in
the neighborhood of 1500 calories -- and that can represent a lot of food if
you're eating the right stuff, so feeling hungry doesn't have to be part of
the deal. (Keep the time and effort constant -- if you're walking about 3 mph
now, you'll find it steps up to 4 mph pretty much by itself. I regularly catch
and pass "joggers" these days.)

I've lost just a little bit more than 160 pounds, but I started at a slightly
more modest 300-ish (just shy). Just walking, dumping the egregiously horrid
foodstuffs and being engaged with the meal I'm eating (rather than absently
putting stuff in my mouth while doing other things) did almost all of the
work. (Unfortunately, at fifty the skin doesn't quite snap back the way it
might have if I'd done it at thirty -- I look way too much like a shar-pei
these days.)

It really is about calories in versus calories out. Managing calories in
doesn't have to be hard -- it's more about mindfulness than about absolute
quantity. It's keeping that arse in gear, even if that means low gear until
your capabilities catch up with your ambition, that makes the big difference.

------
zyb09
_I didn’t try the crazy diets like Atkins or the Maple Syrup diet. Anything
that requires eating crazy stuff is probably bad for your health._

Now I'm starting to feel like an Atkins Zeolot, I've been defending low-carb
on HN so much lately, but I can't let a statement like that sit on itself!
There's tons of scientific evidence for Atkins and everybody I talked to that
investigated it, agrees.

Furthermore "eating less" will not work, if you're eating mostly carbs.
There's a high probability your body will just go into starvation mode.
Meaning you'll store about the same amount of fat, while there's less energy
to be spend for your body, making you sleepy and lightheaded. Graphing your
weight won't change anything about that.

~~~
swombat
If you read the appendix, you'll see that I do recommend staying away from
processed sugars and other assorted white-bread-and-white-rice.

In my third iteration, I'm also tending to avoid the starchy stuff most of the
time (not always though). In the first two, though, I happily ate a sandwich
for lunch and potatoes for breakfast, and still lost plenty of both weight and
fat.

I won't get into a debate about Atkins. I am naturally dubious of extreme
diets (and Atkins is extreme, no matter which way you slice it), but it's
worth pointing out that "what you eat" is only one third of this method. The
first 2/3rds are all about motivation, and they're the important part. The
third part merely suggests one way to "eat less".

~~~
tcskeptic
OK, so don't get into a debate about it, but I would like to point out that
extreme is relative. From an evolutionary perspective (i.e. What we naked apes
evolved to eat...) I would argue that a standard american diet is FAR more
extereme than an atkins diet (at least one that avoids fake low-carb foods)
based around meat, green plants, many kinds of fruit, and nuts.

~~~
MikeCapone
Indeed. For those wanting to learn (a lot) more about this, with references to
all the studies, check out Gary Taubes's book _Good Calories, Bad Calories_.

~~~
phreanix
I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly:

 _5\. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and
not sedentary behavior.

6\. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than
it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does
not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger._

So if I didn't have this _disorder_ I can over-eat and become sedentary and
not become obese?

~~~
WilliamLP
I think he's just reframing the levels of causation a bit. You don't say
pregnant women gain weight because they eat more than they consume, although
from a thermodynamic point of view this is strictly true.

Have you ever met skinny unhealthy programmers who are very sedentary and eat
a lot of junk food? I have met many. The point is that different people have
very different reactions to food, in terms of hunger, mental reward pathways,
tendency to burn off calories through adjusting subjective energy levels (e.g.
lethargy) and things like jittering, and hormonal responses. Some of this is
affected by the kinds of foods we eat, and much of it is affected by genetics.

The real point is that we can do better than saying "just eat less and
exercise more" by looking at things from a different perspective. (I'm
speaking as someone who lost 45 pounds in the last year and am currently at
about 10-11% bodyfat by the way.)

~~~
phreanix
Thanks, that's clearer to me. =)

Can you share how you got to where you are now?

------
weego
I've lost 8 inches off my waist since august through not dieting and ramping
up exercise (it's really important to not diet). and last year and I would say
the advice is not good practice in places. I've not weighed myself once, I
have no interest in my weight, or my BMI. My waist (and the requirement to
have bought and thrown away quite a few trousers and shirts in the 10 months)
are as much of an indicator as is needed. I want to become fit for life and
not set goals to attain and get quick wins but make no long-term impact.

1) Never skip any meal. You are using a short-term, unsustainable, trick to
drop some lbs you are guaranteed to put back on because you are not teaching
yourself anything sustainable (same reason that low carb diets don't work long
term for 90% of people).

2) Weighing yourself all the time when losing weight by diet alone is a
psychological game that suggests you have a "goal" weight in mind which you
will get to and have not gained any idea of food discipline or life-long
control which should be your primary goal.

3) People who over eat can suffer from guilt cycles and your weight at any one
point can induce more guilt (gaining pounds when you feel you have made even
more effort to eat) even though it is not relevant as long as the over-all
trend for life-long health is getting to and maintaining an approximate body
shape which can fluctuate and still be healthy.

4) Being on a diet means coming off a diet. You will learn no long-term
lessons about how your body and eating habits work for you.

~~~
Shorel
I think that you will be healthier and look better and also weight more if you
exercise a lot, just because muscle is more dense than fat.

------
malbs
My biggest concern with this guys method is he simply glosses over exercise.

I agree with him that exercising for weight loss is a _lot_ harder than simply
not eating shit/unhealthy food (or excess amounts of healthy food)

However going into caloric deficit without a solid resistance training plan is
a sure way to shed more muscle than you likely want.

You shouldn't think in terms of weight loss, you should think in terms of fat
loss. You don't want to be shedding muscle. A simple resistance/calisthenic
training program such as body weight exercises like
pushups/planks/squats/burpees/pullups(if you can) will ensure that you have a
better chance at retaining muscle, while shedding fat.

Also, using scales is simply not an accurate way to measure fat loss. The
simplest way to measure your fat-loss progress at home is the good old tape
measure.

Good luck.

------
frossie
_I’ve gone through this “diet” three times (see graphs). The first time I went
from 83kg to 75.5kg over about 3 months. The second time, from 80kg to 71kg
over 4 months. My latest iteration of this diet has me down from 75kg to
68.5kg in about 2 months._

Note how each time the starting weight is over the last ending weight? And
this is the problem, right there. It is not hard to find an eating regime that
will help you lose weight. That's the easy part. The hard part for many is not
gaining weight when you are not "manning the store", so to speak.

~~~
swombat
Yep. The simple method I've found to deal with this is to keep on weighing
myself every day. I can eat all sorts of crap, as long as I keep weighing
myself.

There's a lengthy period of time which I haven't typed in the data for where I
just weighed myself every day. I still managed to keep the weight off when I
did that. The minute I stopped weighing myself, though, the weight piled back
on.

A daily ritual of stepping on a scale seems a small price to pay for not
needing to worry about weight gain, though.

~~~
vorg
I've just been through exactly what you've described. I'd weighed about 88 kg
for 15 yrs. Before that I'd dieted sometimes with low fat diets but they never
worked: I always ended up binging on cheese sandwiches! So for 15 yrs, I ate
whatever I wanted (except for sweets) and sat on 88 kgs (BMI 32= obese).

Then I moved to China a few years ago, and late last year heard about the
Chinese proverb: "Eat heaps for breakfast, eat enough for lunch, and eat
little for dinner". This was news to me because all my life I thought I had to
eat dinner every day. So I started following that rule, still eating the same
food I always did, including heaps of eggs for breakfast. I also started
keeping absolutely no food in my apartment, apart for milk for coffee, and
instead ate out for every meal. In China there's always many restaurants a
short walk from one's home.

Winter arrived, with the cold, some snow, and occasional rain, and I started
skipping dinners because I was too lazy to go out, and dinners were now just
snacks. After a few weeks, I noticed I weren't ever hungry in the evening.
Even when I ate lunch when the restaurants opened at 11:00am, then nothing
else for the rest of the day, I still weren't hungry, as long as I had a big
breakfast. After a few months, I noticed I didn't have much fat where there'd
been some for at least a decade, so I weighed myself: only 80kg. I've since
come down to 75kg (BMI 27), but have sat at that weight for 2 months. I now
weigh myself every day because (for some reason :-) I always remember to.

One other thing: I stopped eating white rice with my meals. The restaurants I
frequent around here probably think I'm a foreign oddity who pays for two
dishes instead of just one with free bowls of rice. I still eat noodles or
potatoes every day though.

All this weight loss happened without trying very hard: eating the same fatty
food I always did, virtually never eating after lunch, not exercising except
for a few long walks every week, and not eating rice with my meals. Just a few
simple rules. One thing I've accepted is: If I want to stay at this weight,
I'll never be eating after lunch time again, and I can live with that.

------
kellishaver
What's worked for me is to stop thinking about how hard it is to lose weight
and to just approach it as a big math/science project that I can geek out on
and run the numbers.

I exercise daily, 20-40mins on a bike and usually a 30-60min swim, and I'll do
some light weights a couple of times a week. This may sound like a lot of
exercise, but it's really not. It's an hour or two a day of being active.
That's in no way overdoing it, even though when I tell people this, a lot of
times their reaction is that to tell me I am. I built up to this from an
almost completely sedentary lifestyle in which I did almost nothing but sit at
the computer and work.

This helped, and definitely made me feel better, physically. I'm healthier
than I have been in a long time, and doing this, I started slowly losing
weight, but the big difference came when I cut out processed sugars and
lowered my carbohydrate intake. It's not a super-low low-carb extreme diet,
but it's definitely a lot lower than it was.

I felt even better, more energy, more weight loss (about 3x faster than I was
before), headaches went away, and I started sleeping better.

Once I got used to not having all the sugar and carbs, my body stopped craving
it. It took some willpower at first, but now it's basically easy to stick to,
because I'm used to eating healthier and just don't have any desire not to
anymore.

------
erikstarck
As I suppose many of the people here do, I have a long list of pet projects
that I plan to one day finish.

One of them is lineardiet.com.

The idea is simple. You just enter your current weight (C) and your desired
weight (D). The service then plots you a graph with a line from weight C to
weight D. The Y axis is the weight and the X axis is time.

Now you have to weigh yourself every day.

If you are above the line it's BROCCOLI DAY (as in: watch what you eat).

If you are below the line it's PIZZA DAY (as in: eat whatever you like).

That's it. It's guaranteed to work! :)

Could be a fun little service. Business model? I plan to collect all the fat
people are losing and sell it as eco-fuel. ;) No, not really. It's just for
fun.

Now if I only didn't have a ton of other projects like this plus a life to
lead... one day...

Actually, I leave this as a question to the HN community: what would be
fastest way for me to finish this service? I'm talking hours of development
time, not days.

How would you build it?

~~~
phreanix
Is the site in german?

~~~
jws
It is a parked domain. Interesting choice to shill from a parked domain in a
language with only 100 million native speakers.

~~~
wozer
Actually, only 10 million speakers.

------
ghoerz
Hacker's Diet Online has a nice graphing utility. It's much easier to see
progress on the average than with daily fluctuations.

<https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/HackDiet>

~~~
jgaudette
My "weekend hobby" is a site that aims for a better user experience that John
Walker's site, while remaining true to the hacker's diet tenants.
<http://myhackerdiet.com>

I've also integrated the Withing's wifi scale, so daily readings are fully
automated!

------
sprout
>My breakfast would involve stuffing myself with as much food as I could fit
in my morning stomach. I followed that with a light lunch around 2-3pm, and
then almost no dinner (or a low-calorie snack if I was hungry – examples in
the appendix

In college I lost a fair amount of weight by eschewing snacks altogether and
eating three large meals every day, meals filled with whole grains that take a
while to eat and a while to digest too.

I found that this made the willpower thing a lot easier to deal with. Once
you're in the habit of eating well three times a day, and not at all at other
times, it becomes easier to cut down on overall food intake. You just don't
even consider snacking if you're used to not snacking.

------
hellotoby
There are two points I wish to add to this discussion:

1\. This is what works for _one_ person. Every body is different and
everyone's daily routines are different, so what works for one may not work
for another.

2\. This diet distinctly lacks any form of exercise and implies that by simply
eating less and weighing yourself every day is the key to losing weight.

While this may be true and may make you lose weight, it will not make you
healthy. It's a fine balance between diet and exercise and it takes some time
to find a solution that is right for you.

If you really want to be healthy and not just lose weight I would suggest
seeing both a personal fitness instructor and a dietician, both of whom can
tailor a program depending on your own body and level of fitness. It is really
the _safest_ (and I stress safest as following any sort of dietary or exercise
advice from the internet can be extremely dangerous) and easiest way to lose
weight and become healthy.

~~~
swombat
As the author, I couldn't agree more. This diet is about losing weight, not
being healthy. My overall plan is to get rid of the weight first, then, once I
reach my target body fat percentage, focus on being healthy without regaining
the fat.

I've found that losing the fat was impossibly hard no matter how healthy I
tried to make my lifestyle. I suspect that once I have gotten rid of most of
that fat, exercising will result in more visible improvements (muscles are
much more visible when not covered in thick layers of fat), which will
generate motivation for me to keep exercising. We'll see.

------
jessriedel
He says, as I've heard, that those body fat scales are wildly inaccurate. But
it looks like the variance is less than a percentage point, which seems really
good to me. I guess it's more of an issue of a constant error?

EDIT: Yea, I guess it is probably a constant (person-specific) error. The
first google result said

>Use [the scales] to measure your progress only. Don't compare your body fat
percentage to tables or to your friends score. It is probably inaccurate no
matter what the manufacturers say.

I guess if you calibrated this with a one-time, accurate body-fat measurement,
it would be pretty good set-up.

EDIT2: Well, maybe not. Some people apparently report that the (cheap?) scales
vary several percentage points during a single day. My calibration method also
seems vulnerable to the fact that people store their fat in different places
on their body depending on their genetics. Maybe this can be fixed with _two_
calibration measurements...

~~~
briancooley
Yes, they vary widely. If you control for certain variables, they can give you
decent directional information.

One of the biggest factors in the accuracy of the older Tanita brand scales
(this is the brand I have had for many years) is your hydration. For example,
if you weigh right when you get out of the shower (even toweled dry), your
reported body fat will be much lower than your reported body fat before the
shower.

They are also sensitive to callouses on your feet.

My brother reports much more consistent results with a handheld body fat
analyzer, but I've never tried one on a consistent basis.

------
jules
> You’ll notice this plan says nothing of exercise. That’s because you don’t
> need to exercise to lose weight. In my case, I’ve found that exercise, by
> stimulating hunger, actually makes it harder to eat less. Whereas the
> weighing and charting generates motivation, exercise sucks it away. In the
> context of a healthy lifestyle, of course, exercise is very important. I
> just don’t think it’s that helpful for weight loss. Some notable
> publications agree with me.

Here's another data point: I lost 3kg when I started running. It was not my
intention to lose weight at all, it just happened. In my experience running
makes you eat less, I had to make a conscious effort to eat more.

------
rkalla
Great article for folks that aren't physical in which case the only way to
loose weight really IS to just manage what you eat -- this has never worked
well for me.

This can also be a dangerous path for people that are not great self-starters.
Using the scale every day teaches you to become obsessed with your weight. A
lot (not all) make the association of:

My weight == My self worth

So if they slip up and put on 3 pounds, they feel horrible about themselves. I
also think this doesn't promote a healthy long-term method of thinking because
at _some point_ you will stop loosing weight. At some point you will have that
beach body you wanted -- and then what? If you were obsessed all along with
the weight of BF measurements, then you can potentially loose your cause to
continue.

This happened to me when I lost 30 lbs. I was so obsessed with the weight, I
took it off in 2 months, and kept it off for about 6... then gained it all
back + 10lbs over the next 2 years due mostly to being "bored" once I was
"done" with the diet and had been at my goal weight for so long.

Again, this just happened to work for me.

I actually like excercise, but I liked food more. So without giving up the
good quality foods I liked (eating fast food for every meal doesn't count) I
upped my activity level to compensate and have enjoyed a much healthier method
of taking off weight for _my_ personality type.

I still have a bit of a gut, but I'm stronger, faster and cardio is much
better with better blood work -- and that is what matters to me long-term.
These are the type of habits I want to carry forward... needing to work out
every day, enjoying what I do.

I want to pass good habits to my kids some day, and that all starts with
learning to love physical movement I think (unless you are a phenomenal eater,
then that's good too... but most of us aren't)

If you don't mind playing sports or exercise and LOVE food, then try and play
with upping your activity level instead of dialing back your diet.

Fight 1 battle at a time.

The pride and confidence you will gain from feeling better will naturally
translate to not eating so much of the really terrible food (drive thru) and
instead replacing it with something slightly worse... maybe a veggie pizza or
something.

That being said, I'm by no means a guru, I just know for 10 years I've tried
everything and this is the only thing that worked for me.

Also, if you are the type that likes to push yourself and kick your own ass to
see if you can take it -- you need to look into CrossFit, it's awesome.

------
starkfist
Most people want to lose too much weight too quickly. Patience is a virtue. I
lost 55 pounds with what I considered minimal effort, but it took one year.

------
techiferous
Changing to a car-free lifestyle is also a great way to lose weight. If you
are considering relocating to a new city soon, that's a good time to
investigate whether your new city would be conducive to car-free living. When
I moved to Boston and ditched my car, I lost 50 lbs without even trying.

------
radu_floricica
I really like the main idea: it's a willpower management issue, not a diet
issue. A lot of stuff is approached differently if you think about it this
way, especially in the light of studies who found out willpower is a finite
resource, which is replenished easiest by... eating.

~~~
zavulon
I actually completely disagree with this main idea. Everybody eventually gives
up, no one has 100% steel willpower, we're all human. I would be very
interested to see and update in a year or so, to see if the author has managed
to keep the weight off.

A much better idea is to change your diet completely, so your taste buds
change and you stop craving unhealthy things.

A wrote a similar article 3 years ago, and took a completely different method.
I lost 40 lbs in 4 months, and has kept it off since (ok, I may have gained
5-10 lbs since the peak). Not adding a "shameless plug" since I've stopped
updating this site a long time ago, but I think it's still useful:
[http://www.alexanderkharlamov.com/2007/07/22/how-to-lose-
wei...](http://www.alexanderkharlamov.com/2007/07/22/how-to-lose-weight-on-
losing-40-lbs-in-4-months/)

~~~
swombat
The first graph is from 2.5 years ago.

I have regained weight only when I stopped weighing/charting. Weighing
yourself once a day is not an onerous expenditure of time and energy, and I
believe it achieves the goal of faking "100% steel willpower" by generating a
little willpower for you every day.

~~~
bena
Right. What looks like iron clad will over the course of a year is nothing
more than the will to go one more day, every day.

I've lost close to 90 pounds over the last year. Honestly, I didn't expect to
be this successful. I thought that after a few months, I'd lose the
motivation. But every day I tell myself, "Forget yesterday. Forget tomorrow.
Get through today, that's your goal."

Now some days, I didn't get through. But the next day, I'd begin all over as
if it never happened. If you don't worry about willpower lapses, you will find
it easier to get back to it. 100% willpower is an illusion created by having
over 50% willpower along a great enough timeline.

------
gte910h
Withings makes a scale (about 150 on amazon) which automatically uploads your
weight daily to their servers where you can view it on their website or your
iPhone.

It has helped a lot with the recordkeeping part of dieting I always do so
poorly at.

~~~
Benjo
Link to the wifi scale: [[http://www.amazon.com/Withings-WBS01-Wifi-Body-
Scale/dp/B002...](http://www.amazon.com/Withings-WBS01-Wifi-Body-
Scale/dp/B002JE2PSA)]

------
sbov
Even though its called weight loss, most people I know want to lose fat, not
lose weight. If you skip exercise altogether you'll go from being large fat,
to average fat, and finally to skinny fat.

~~~
bena
I had a friend who was "skinny fat" as you call it. He had gone to the doctor
and the doctor basically told him that he was essentially bones wrapped in
fat, very little muscle.

Those people have always irked me because they would have the same amount of
fat as me, but wouldn't get crap for it because it wasn't as visibly obvious.
Whereas, for most of my life, I've been what you could call "fit fat(?)".
Reasonably strong with above average endurance but obviously carrying a lot of
baggage. Unfortunately, I eventually got an office job and went to being just
plain fat. But I've decreased my caloric intake to lose weight and started
training to increase my strength and endurance.

------
dkarl
Interesting ideas and great detail to back it up. I'd like to insert my 2
cents, which is that people have widely varying experiences using exercise for
weight loss. In my case, exercise suppresses my appetite. My overeating is
mood-driven, and exercise is known to improve mood, so this isn't surprising.
Anyone whose overeating is driven by depression (mild or serious) or another
mood disorder should consider regulating their mood through exercise.

------
sev
I tried the fruitarian diet recently and lost 8 pounds in 2 weeks. Of course,
how much you lose is highly dependent upon your current weight and body fat %.

The fruitarian diet is where you only eat fruits and vegetables and drink
water and 100% pure juices. Avocados have the protein you need, and you can do
without starch for 2 weeks.

It really cleanses your body and leaves you feeling great! I'd suggest doing a
fruitarian diet once every few months for cleansing purposes.

~~~
liedra
Your body doesn't need cleansing. What it needs is a healthy diet to start
with. Eat healthily, get exercise and fresh air, and you won't need to go on
extreme diets that will only cause you to put all the weight back on later.

~~~
sev
A normal to health body doesn't, you're right. But at some point, and
depending on your age, it might need cleansing. Either way though, cleansing
isn't bad. Especially if you stick to a good diet afterward. It'll give you a
head start. Even if you put it back on later, but through a good diet, as
opposed to junk that may have caused it in the first place, you're better off
than before.

------
yesimahuman
> My breakfast would involve stuffing myself with as much food as I could fit
> in my morning stomach. I followed that with a light lunch around 2-3pm, and
> then almost no dinner (or a low-calorie snack if I was hungry – examples in
> the appendix).

I wonder how this plays into a more muscle-building oriented plan. Doesn't
seem like being calorie deficient all evening into next morning would be good
for building muscle.

~~~
swombat
Probably not. This is a weight loss method, not a muscle gain method. In fact,
you will probably lose some muscle along with the fat. Whether that's
something you're willing to accept is up to you. Personally, I don't think
putting the muscle back on is all that hard - but losing the fat was almost
impossible previously.

You can do exercise on the "big breakfast" approach - but you'll find it much
easier to do so in the morning. I doubt you'd gain much muscle while in a
500-1000 daily calorie deficit, but you could certainly help maintain it, and
after a nice big breakfast you wouldn't be short of energy to lift weights.

------
noarchy
Most of my diet consists of carbs, and I am in pretty good shape, which is why
I would tend to agree with the author in dismissing the low-carb diets. The
key for me, I think, is an active lifestyle. People who think that they don't
have time for exercise, should try to think of creative ways to bring activity
into their lives. Bicycling to work is one that works for me, and many others
that I know.

------
jules
How does one determine body fat percentage? This seems like a really hard
problem to me. How do body fat percentage scales work?

~~~
klous
The scales use electrical current to measure your body's resistance and
compute it based on your weight. Using a fat caliper where you take multiple
points of measure tend to give more comparable measurements.

------
pizza
OK, let me just talk about the low-calories idea and some other stuff for a
second. It's gonna be a little long. This is pretty much all copy-pasted from
Gary Taubes' ideas, so please don't accuse me of plagiarism!. [Notes, from
[http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-
ba...](http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-bad-
calories/) Really really great resource, everyone should read it if they
haven't read Good Calories, Bad Calories]

1.) This guy is saying that the

    
    
        Delta Fat Stores = Energy In-Energy Out
    

Well, which is the cause and which is the effect? Isn't it possible that when
Energy Out changes, so does Energy In? And, if that's not the case, why don't
kids grow obese when they start eating as if they're bodybuilders? The kids
eat a lot because they're growing; they're not growing because they're eating
a lot. A hormonal drive increases appetite. Pregnant women also grow fatter
because of hormones.

2.) Folks say that even an extra 100 calories per day will make you get fat
over a year. Bogus; the variables Energy In and Energy Out are dependent. As
Energy In changes, so does Energy Out. Also, have you ever had a really,
really indulgent meal? I mean, over a fat-pound's worth of calories. You
didn't wake up with an extra pound of fat, though.

Based on these, it shows that trying to lose weight by adjusting the quantity
of calories is pretty counter-productive.

Let's look at some people who intentionally try to fatten themselves. Massa
tribe males eat an extra 1000 calories worth of milk and sugarcane. Japanese
Sumo wrestlers eat a high carb, very low fat diet. Maybe it's the type of
calorie that matters more than the quantity. The diets used to fatten farm
animals are also high in carbs. Hmm, coincidence? Obese people tend to eat the
same amount of calories, but a greater proportion of carbs. Another thing
about high carb diets is that they're the only way humans get deficiency
diseases; they happen usually when glucose gets crowded in a cell so it takes
more of it to even be used in a cell. Deficiency diseases are usually
carbohydrate wastage diseases.

(Hint: if you want to skip some boring sciency stuff, just read the last
paragraph)

Hunger, satiety, and physical activity are physiologically regulated (not
psychological). Imagine if people started attributing the hunger in diabetics
as a psychological problem!

Most people think of fat as an inert storage medium; "like a garbage can.”
Nope; fat tissue is dynamic and really kind of like a coin purse rather than a
long-term savings account. Fattening is when the rate at which fat is
deposited exceeds the rate it is mobilized (getting richer). Fat is controlled
by hormones in the body, not by quantity of fatty acids in the blood. When
fasting, fat provides 85% of energy and protein is converted to glucose (via
gluconeogenesis) for the rest. Likewise, the presence of glucose or insulin
(the only hormone behind storing fat) removes fatty acids from circulation;
cells burn glucose first, fat second (e.g. having a credit card is more
convenient than using cash).

The fat stored in adipose tissue is called a triglyceride (3 fatty acids on a
glycerol backbone). Some trigs come from fat, the rest from carbs. Fat can
only go past the cell membrane in the form of free fatty acids - trigs are too
large and must be broken down first. In fat cells, trigs are continuously
broken down into FFAs and recomposed into trigs. Fatty acids not immediately
recomposed are sent into the bloodstream as fuel. The rest of FFAs are
converted into trigs and loaded on VLDL (read: the super bad cholesterol) and
shipped back to fat cells. Simple control mechanism: blood sugar. Glycerol
phosphate is the result of burning glucose, and also happens to be the
backbone of triglycerides. The rate of trig formation (fat deposition) depends
on the availability of glyerol phosphate. So carbs = glucose = glycerol
phosphate = trigs = fattening.

So hormones control the control mechanisms. Insulin stimulates transport of
glucose to fat cells, thus controlling trig formation and fatness. Every
single other hormone mobilize fat, but they can only do so if insulin is low.
Virtually anything that increases insulin will decrease other hormones.

You heard of fructose? It gets turned into glycerol phosphate much more
efficiently than glucose. It's the most fattening carbohydrate. Couple this
with the fact that table sugar (sucrose) is one molecule of glucose with one
of fructose, it's more than their sum since now glucose is increasing insulin
with the higher triglycerides from fructose. Even worse? High Fructose Corn
Syrup.

What I'm trying to say is that the only thing you should be monitoring when
you're trying to lose weight is carbohydrates. Eat as much protein and fat
(eat a whole stick of butter if you'd like) as you want. Avoid sugar and other
carbohydrates. It's safe. Read the book Good Calories Bad Calories (or just
the notes, which I pretty much copy-pasted: [http://higher-
thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-ba...](http://higher-
thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-bad-calories/)) for more info.
That is all.

~~~
noarchy
Carbs are quite fine if you're an endurance athlete, much less so if you are
sedentary. Take a look at what a pro cyclist consumes during a tour: thousands
of calories a day beyond what most people would consume, the majority of which
are carbs. It works for them, because not only do they need the energy from
it, but they are burning it. And these are not fat people (some of them are
close to being underweight, by some people's standards). But if you're not
active, eating a lot of carbs is like shoving extra gasoline into a car that
never goes anywhere; useless, and counter-productive.

~~~
pizza
I think the reason why carbs work well for endurance athletes is because it
gets stored in the muscle glycogen _and they actually use it_. Yeah, otherwise
it's useless.

~~~
noarchy
So is excess protein, which can stress the kidneys. The right balance, for the
right lifestyle.

~~~
pizza
The studies that have been done on protein stressing kidney's were on bunnies,
animals not meant to eat much protein in the first place. Send me any other
studies, though.

------
patrickryan
I'd suggest not weighing yourself everyday, but every week at the same time of
day. This is because each day your body weight varies from water weight lost
and gained. So one day you may be a few lbs. more than usual, which can be
discouraging.

~~~
swombat
It's not discouraging if you graph it too, so that you can see it in
perspective.

------
joshwa
see also:

"The Diet Spreadsheet" by Jeremy Zawodny

<http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006851.html>

<http://www.myweightracker.com/about>

------
jgrahamc
This is just like that way in which I lost 9.9kg:
[http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/johns-amazing-diet-secrets-
revea...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/johns-amazing-diet-secrets-
revealed.html)

------
noodle
i think he discounted a step: exercise. if you don't, you'll lose some weight,
sure, but if you remain sedentary, you won't see that big of a difference. it
doesn't even have to be much to start, just walk more.

i also would discourage the "skip dinner" plan. i think you'll find you'll
have better results if you do eat SOMEthing for dinner. it could just be some
of the low calorie foods he mentions, but just to have eaten something will be
a bit better than not having eaten anything. don't want to kick your body into
starvation response mode.

~~~
radu_floricica
There is a _long_ discussion about how much exercise helps weight loss, what
kind of exercise is better (aerobic vs anaerobic, burning calories vs building
muscle, priming the metabolism vs getting hungry), how much is enough etc.
It's much safer to skip it altogether.

~~~
mtodd
Well, overall the goal is to burn more calories than you take in. I wouldn't
recommended "skip exercise" to anybody, but tell them that it's not necessary
if they can control their intake enough. But, if you don't change your intake
and also add exercise, it'll certainly speed things up.

------
runjake
The iOS app WeighBot would work great for this, as it allows you to easily
record your weight and also graphs it.

~~~
paulhuts
Yes, that is a nice little app.

------
JulianMorrison
It has worked if you are at the improved weight ten years later.

If you find a way to do this, notify science.

------
hngryhppos
This guy could have instead bought a Wii Fit

