I lost 75 pounds starting in July of 2018 (on a cruise!). I have kept it off. I did it in 10 months. Nothing changed about WHAT I ate ( I was always a pretty health eater in terms of type of food. I just ate very large quantities and the “unhealthy” foods I did eat (in moderation) I still do….chocolate every day…fries and potato chips and other things like that on occasion.
Since I couldn’t be one of those “I just stopped eating processed foods” people, I had to count calories. I did that once in my 20’s and it was a pain. I had to carry around a little calorie counting book and a notebook to write it all down. Today it’s all done on the miracle device that’s always with me anyways…my phone of course. I used My Fitness Pal but paid ZERO attention to macros.
The only other thing I did was to stop eating before noon. Not so much intermittent fasting but because I’m not hungry in the morning and I realized it was NUTS to eat when I wasn’t hungry despite people trying to tell me that you HAD to eat in the morning ( before IF was such a “ thing”). I lost all the weight with no real exercise .
As always, have to put in the commercial that while you may choose not to exercise for weight loss, if you’re looking beyond the number on the scale, exercise provides never-ending other benefits for health and wellness - perhaps even beyond how much you weigh.
I love breakfast. Don’t want to live without it. Having homemade granola right now with a cup of blueberries and milk. I think breakfast sometimes gets a bad rap because people think they need to get out of bed and very soon, eat breakfast. I get up at 5:40am, exercise, shower, walk the dog, head to work, work for an hour or so and then eat breakfast around 9am.
There are 2 reasons that a person may not be hungry in the morning (i.e. within a couple of hours of waking up.)
That their natural biorhythms are such that they truly will never be hungry in the mornings (e.g. before noon.)
That they have gotten into a disordered pattern of eating where they restrict as long as they can each day, often skipping breakfast and eating “virtuously” at work for lunch. Then they get home from work famished, and start a binge that may last well into the evening, resulting in eating much more than they would have otherwise. And then because they ate so much the previous night, they wake up feeling “unhungry” and start the cycle all over again, skipping breakfast etc…
Scenario #1 is not a problem. Scenario #2 is a problem. It is not always easy to tell the difference. Breaking the cycle of Scenario #2 can only start by eating more earlier in the day.
My H is #2. Has been for decades. Is overweight. Had some success with WW for a year or so but got off the wagon with some knee surgery and never got back on.
I’ve always been #1. Eating in the morning makes me feel nauseous. And when I force myself to because I know I should, I’m just as hungry at 1 pm as if I hadn’t eaten.
I do drink a protein shake after gym workouts because my trainer makes me.
I was Scenario 2 for a long time. Right now I’m spacing my “meals” every 3 hours or so to allow for a steady source of energy during the day. Pre-exercise (5 am), breakfast 8 am, small meals at 11:30 and 3, then a small dinner around 7. It’s helping my energy levels while eliminating the evening food free for all.
For better or worse, I’m also a “frequent” eater in many people’s eyes.
Water upon waking
9 am breakfast
1-2 pm lunch
4:30 small snack
7pm dinner
Sweet bite before bed (shouldn’t, but sue me!!! )
This is probably 80% of the time. My step average (just to get an idea of activity) for 2022 was about 18K daily.
I never eat anything after dinner. Usually finished eating by 7:00 or 7:15 pm. I am not much of a snacker, but if I need a little something in the afternoon, I will eat something.
Not a brag or anything but an indicator of how/why my eating style works for me. It’s 10:45am, I’m at work and I’m at 10.3K steps - I don’t settle down and sit much except when I have to at work or till later in the evening!
It’s not complicated at all or I would have given up quickly. I was literally starting from a place of total ignorance as far as any kind of diet goes. I had difficulty finding info on it before I worked with the coach but there’s some out there, generally associated with eating for athletes. I’m not an athlete but I am active and do have a consistent and effective workout routine.
I use My Fitness Pal to track what I eat. There’s a learning curve but it’s not bad. I don’t pay for a subscription—all the features I need are free. You need a baseline number of calories to eat and the percentages of protein, fat and carbs you want to use (this is the hard part and hardest to find info about), and then you aim to get that percentage of total calories from each of the three macronutrients. I’ve found that I don’t have to be too perfectionist about it and it still works. I do try to be honest with myself and log everything I eat. 35% protein is a lot and if I’m getting enough protein I’m not hungry and not overeating.
This method does not identify good or bad foods and you can eat whatever you want to get to the macro numbers, so it helps my picking eating self not give up because I can’t stand kale, and and makes addressing how healthy or clean you are eating a separate consideration. But you won’t hit those macro numbers if you’re eating much added sugar, or loads of bread, so it still gently pushes you in the right direction as far as overall nutrition goes.
Google shows me a macros calculator and a recent article on the process on Women’s Health magazine website that might be helpful.
That’s the way I feel about exercise. I was a gymnast in HS and I think that’s the last time I exercised.* Every year, my NYE resolution is to never do anything that would produce a bead of sweat. I don’t own any work-out clothing, I’ve never stepped into a gym, I have no idea what “steps” are, I have no idea what my muscle mass is or how to measure it. And don’t care. I run around all day and take meandering (slow) walks with DH when he suggests it or we’re in the Maine woods. I’ve been naturally thin most of my life and when my weight creeps up (as it did pre-pandemic), I control it fairly easily with food choices. I’m thin now and have no known health issues.
*I did a couple of weeks of in-home PT after my hip replacement. I guess that counts as exercise, but I cut out that nonsense as soon as my gait straightened out.
It’s not complicated. There are numerous websites that allow you to enter what you ate for the day, then the website returns nutrition information include calories, protein/carb/fat percentages, fiber, vitamin/mineral percentages, etc. You can find some in a Google search.
I think the benefits of maintaining a particular macronutrient percentage are often overstated. It’s important to have adequate protein, adequate essential fatty acids, adequate vitamin/minerals, … It’s not important to maintain a particular percentage of calories from protein/fat/carb (outside of avoiding certain extremes and medical issues). More important for losing weight is often controlling calories. If eating a particular percentage of calories from macronutrients helps you control calories, it can be beneficial.
There’s a lot of benefits to moderate and vigorous exercise, such as lowering blood pressure, better sleep, control weight, building and maintaining muscle as we lose muscle, better appearance, etc.
Humans can be unhealthy AND skinny, I’ve mentioned this discussion before.
BTW, yesterday, one of gym buddies in his 30’s is getting a life insurance policy and they told him he would have to pay a higher rate because his BMI says that he’s obese at 5’6" and 175 lbs., which if you saw this person, there’s “not an ounce” of fat on him.
So, the BMI measurement is not the best measurement of one’s health.
I am HUNGRIER all darn day if I eat before noon! Indeed stopping morning eating has been the key to my success in terms of not being so hungry constantly. It feels like a miracle. And doctors who insisted it was number 2 just messed me up terribly! But I almost never drink my calories. That for me is the biggest no no. I have maybe 4-6 drinks with caloric content PER YEAR. Maybe 2 light beers, one or two glasses of prosecco, one or two mimosas and one (on my brithday only…) milkshake.
Oh and soup leaves me so unsatisfied I never have that either.
BMI is best limited to population studies (where the athletes and skinny fat wash out in the noise) rather than individual assessment, where muscle versus fat weight gets mixed together, leading to inaccurate assessment for some.
I’d expect 5.6" and 175 to be classified as overweight with BMI, rather than obese. However this fits with the earlier comments about weight loss sometimes being associated with increased risk of death and weight gain sometimes having positive effects, particularly in older persons. When you look at what type of weight is gained/lost and body fat %, the results can be more intuitive.
For example, the study at https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M15-1181?articleid=2499472&resultClick=3 suggests when body fat % is held constant, weight loss is associated with increased risk of death. And when BMI is held constant, increased body fat % is associated with increased risk of death. Said differently, the study suggests losing weight is associated with increased risk of death if lean body is primarily lost and decreased risk of death if fat is primarily lost.
The final cohort included 49 476 women (mean age, 63.5 years; mean BMI, 27.0 kg/m2; mean body fat, 32.1%) and 4944 men (mean age, 65.5 years; mean BMI, 27.4 kg/m2; mean body fat, 29.5%). Death occurred in 4965 women over a median of 6.7 years and 984 men over a median of 4.5 years. In fully adjusted mortality models containing both BMI and body fat percentage, low BMI (hazard ratio [HR], 1.44 [95% CI, 1.30 to 1.59] for quintile 1 and 1.12 [CI, 1.02 to 1.23] for quintile 2) and high body fat percentage (HR, 1.19 [CI, 1.08 to 1.32] for quintile 5) were associated with higher mortality in women. In men, low BMI (HR, 1.45 [CI, 1.17 to 1.79] for quintile 1) and high body fat percentage (HR, 1.59 [CI, 1.28 to 1.96] for quintile 5) were associated with increased mortality.
Conclusion:
Low BMI and high body fat percentage are independently associated with increased mortality. These findings may help explain the counterintuitive relationship between BMI and mortality.
That’s why I’m not just doing Weight Watchers. I want to focus more on fitness and gaining muscle mass than the number on the scale. That will pay off in the long run, I think.
Counting things doesn’t work for me. The more I think about eating the more I feel like I’m hungry and want to eat more and more often. Which is why I can’t “diet.” I think what will work for me is having readily available healthy items that I like and can easily make or grab when I’m ready to eat.
It definitely helps not having kids in the house. I just don’t buy stuff I shouldn’t eat, like cookies and chips. We have one stash of tiny chocolate bars and I’ll grab one if I need a fix.
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