Anyone lost a lot of weight, and kept it off?

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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Shrike
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by Shrike

Anyone cracked the code? :P

joejack951
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by joejack951

Define 'a lot' and 'kept it off.'

I dropped from ~82 kg down to ~66 kg from Feb 2017 to Nov 2017. Still at that weight and hoping to drop some more (4-5 kg) though the latter bit is proving tough.

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JackRussellRacing
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by JackRussellRacing

86kg->63kg between start-2015 and mid-2016. The weight has remained off. There is no "secret code". Every day requires a careful effort to not eat processed, boxed, garbage.

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853guy
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by 853guy

Shrike wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:47 am
Anyone cracked the code? :P
Well, yes, I'd say I've cracked the code for me.

Over five years, of slow, gradual adjustments, I: eliminated all white, processed foods; switched to a diet of whole foods, and upped my protein and fiber; eliminated all soft drinks including ones advertised as "zero sugar" or "sports drinks"; began intermittent fasting, eating between a six hour window; introduced kettle bells and core exercises; drank more fluids, including Bulletproof style coffee, herbal teas, water and one small glass of red wine; allowed myself recovery days from exercise; allowed myself one meal per week in which I could eat out at a restaurant, or at home with a higher percentage of carbs; stopped beating myself up about how I looked, and especially, about how other people looked - comparison was a total killer.

Please note, this was about slow, gradual, sustainable progress, with a greater emphasis of extending my chances of living well longer rather than just losing weight. Any time I tried to accelerate the process via any means, it would almost always backfire.

Good luck!

853guy

joejack951
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by joejack951

JackRussellRacing wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 8:20 pm
Every day requires a careful effort to not eat processed, boxed, garbage.
I would include 'making an effort to reduce the calories of every meal while keeping the meal fulfilling.' For me, this has meant using 'bagel slims' or wraps as opposed to bread for sandwiches, using coconut/pea 'milk' on my cereal instead of 1% cow's milk, using minimal amounts of dressing on my salads, skipping the cheese on my burgers, etc.

Little changes that add up to 100s of calories per day some times.

RimClencher
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by RimClencher

82 kg to 68 kg in about 8 months 5 years ago, now at 66 kg.
Weight came off and has stayed off with combination of lots of cycling and some running in the winter, lowering meat/dairy intake eventually to zero at home (less strict when eating out), and increasing whole food intake to almost everything at home (again, less strict when eating out). No fasting, no calorie counting, eat lots and lots, do lots and lots.

Shrike
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by Shrike

Really pleased when I was reading the above posts. Really curious about the sort of lifestyle and diet changes you've went through to do this. Haven't given any clue or backstory to the question, just wanted to leave it open and let you guys interpret it and give your experiences how you see fit. Watching with interest and will post something less cryptic shortly :P

joejack951
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by joejack951

RimClencher wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 4:14 am
No fasting, no calorie counting, eat lots and lots, do lots and lots.
A lot depends on your activity levels. I've seen diet/weight loss summarized succinctly as: Eat less, move more. And it really is that simple. Do that until you hit your goal weight and then adjust as necessary to stay there. If you are exercising a ton of course you'll need to eat more than if doing nothing (if for no other reason than to avoid going crazy from hunger) but you still need to keep it in check if you expect to lose weight.

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853guy
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by 853guy

joejack951 wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 2:57 pm
RimClencher wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 4:14 am
No fasting, no calorie counting, eat lots and lots, do lots and lots.
A lot depends on your activity levels. I've seen diet/weight loss summarized succinctly as: Eat less, move more. And it really is that simple. Do that until you hit your goal weight and then adjust as necessary to stay there. If you are exercising a ton of course you'll need to eat more than if doing nothing (if for no other reason than to avoid going crazy from hunger) but you still need to keep it in check if you expect to lose weight.
It wasn't that simple for me.

I tried eating less and moving more. Didn't work. I burnt out (I'm 44).

Instead, what did work was eating based on what was most nutritious and the least processed, adding more protein, fat and fibre to avoid plateau and muscle loss, and exercising less to give my body time to recover (but more intensely when I do). In my experience, people who eat less and move more often end up abandoning it simply because they plateau, can't gain in strength, end up damaging their body and its hormonal responses, ultimately finding it's not sustainable.

Sustainability is hugely underrated when it comes to data points accumulated apropos diet/weight loss.

Best,

853guy

joejack951
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by joejack951

853guy wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 3:48 pm
It wasn't that simple for me.

I tried eating less and moving more. Didn't work. I burnt out (I'm 44).

Instead, what did work was eating based on what was most nutritious and the least processed, adding more protein, fat and fibre to avoid plateau and muscle loss, and exercising less to give my body time to recover (but more intensely when I do). In my experience, people who eat less and move more often end up abandoning it simply because they plateau, can't gain in strength, end up damaging their body and its hormonal responses, ultimately finding it's not sustainable.

Sustainability is hugely underrated when it comes to data points accumulated apropos diet/weight loss.

Best,

853guy
I'm 39, by the way, with two kids, and have had my ups and downs with weight as my life situation has changed. Peak weight was coming out of college, starting a new job and traveling a lot for it (eating out a lot). Got into cycling, dropped from 86 kg to 73 kg, and felt like a new man. Kept that weight (mostly) off for 11 years until kid #2 was born. Got through that and started my most recent weight loss efforts, dropping far below my prior weight much to my satisfaction.

That out of the way, perhaps I should elaborate. To start, if you lost weight then you managed a calorie deficit. Whether it was by consuming fewer calories than you did previously and/or exercising more, you did it. So in essence, you ate less and/or moved more.

Now what you describe regarding burning out can happen, sure. But I would argue that it only happens at the extremes. Most people, myself included, have far more capacity, so to speak, to eat less and move more than they currently do. What I see frequently (and this has been tested in actual studies) is that people simply lie to themselves about how much they are eating and exercising, downplaying the former and exaggerating the latter. The emphasis in some circles of '10,000 steps per day' hasn't helped here as walking at a relaxed pace is about the most worthless exercise you can spend time doing. There's also so much conflicting advice on what to eat floating around (with a lot of it NOT focused on eating less [fewer total calories] which is one of the most important details, maybe #2 behind getting appropriate nutrition from the calories you do consume).

So while there are personal details that need to be considered when attempting to eat less and move more, the basic principle remains. You need to do one or the other to lose weight and most people are best served by doing both.

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853guy
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by 853guy

joejack951 wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 4:17 pm
I'm 39, by the way, with two kids, and have had my ups and downs with weight as my life situation has changed. Peak weight was coming out of college, starting a new job and traveling a lot for it (eating out a lot). Got into cycling, dropped from 86 kg to 73 kg, and felt like a new man. Kept that weight (mostly) off for 11 years until kid #2 was born. Got through that and started my most recent weight loss efforts, dropping far below my prior weight much to my satisfaction.

That out of the way, perhaps I should elaborate. To start, if you lost weight then you managed a calorie deficit. Whether it was by consuming fewer calories than you did previously and/or exercising more, you did it. So in essence, you ate less and/or moved more.

Now what you describe regarding burning out can happen, sure. But I would argue that it only happens at the extremes. Most people, myself included, have far more capacity, so to speak, to eat less and move more than they currently do. What I see frequently (and this has been tested in actual studies) is that people simply lie to themselves about how much they are eating and exercising, downplaying the former and exaggerating the latter. The emphasis in some circles of '10,000 steps per day' hasn't helped here as walking at a relaxed pace is about the most worthless exercise you can spend time doing. There's also so much conflicting advice on what to eat floating around (with a lot of it NOT focused on eating less [fewer total calories] which is one of the most important details, maybe #2 behind getting appropriate nutrition from the calories you do consume).

So while there are personal details that need to be considered when attempting to eat less and move more, the basic principle remains. You need to do one or the other to lose weight and most people are best served by doing both.
Hi joejack,

I definitely appreciate your perspective, and fundamentally, I agree with what you’ve written. I hope this doesn’t come across as contentious for contentiousness' sake - my intention is only to clarify my post above.

As I came to discover over the five years of trying to lose weight, gain lean muscle mass, and improve my cardiovascular health (i.e. move away from the things that are the leading causes of preventable death), a calorie is not just a calorie. And the nutritional value of that calorie has very real world consequences on the body’s ability to burn fat, instead of burning carbs and/or muscle mass. When I was eating less, but consuming mostly carbs (and especially non-fruit derived fructose), my body was only going to do one thing - elevate the production of insulin which will cause the body to store fat. So it didn’t matter how much I exercised. By consuming calories that were deficient in nutritional value - and especially if I fed it non-fruit derived fructose - I could exercise all I liked… my body still sought to store fat. What’s more, it learned to only burn carbs, meaning I needed to feed it carbs to keep up the energy to exercise, meaning I could keep exercising, burning calories as carbs, but never burn fat.

As far as the body is concerned, fat is stored energy. And the one thing that causes energy storage and inhabits fat burning is insulin release as a direct response to glucose and the ingestion of refined carbs. In a cycling-specific sense, then, a three hour ride followed by white-flour pancakes, with maple syrup and icing sugar is not going to see anyone lose fat (1). They may lose water weight, or weight as muscle mass, but they won’t be burning fat. Even in cases in which you are able to cause a caloric deficiency, the nutrition of the calorie still matters, and for me, mattered much more than the amount of calories I consumed.

Best,

853guy

(1) There is however lots of evidence to suggest that exercise in which the aim is muscle mass (i.e. gains), carbs (with protein) can indeed be helpful, and in fact, necessary. For cycling, however, it’s worth reading this: http://www.thetallcyclist.com/2015/11/s ... d-cycling/

AJS914
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by AJS914

I've lost significant weight twice. The first time I used a tracking app. I set it for 1/2 pound of loss per week. It worked really well. I lost about 30 pounds but then the weight loss slowed to a crawl. Unfortunately, I was a bit hungry all the time. While I was trying to eat healthy, I was still eating bread and sugar and more bad foods than I should have.

One thing the app taught me was that you can shave a lot of calories out of your day by doing little things, like having one slice of cheese on a sandwich instead of two. You just saved 100 calories.

The second time I lost weight I went lowish carb. Not no carb or keto, just trying to make low glycemic index choices (cut out all white) and most vegetables are unlimited. Again I lost about 30 pounds and have kept it off. The biggest difference is that I wasn't hungry all the time having cut out the white stuff.

That said, I have gain a few back but have kept the majority off. To be in peak cycling shape I'd like to lose 25 or 30 more pounds. It feels hard because my diet is as healthy as can be rigth now. There is no low hanging fruit like sugar left to cut out.

Doubly frustrating is that I really ramped up my cycling this year. I only road 500 miles in 2016 due to injury. I rode about 2000 miles this summer and only lost a few pounds. Now, maybe I lost inches and converted fat to muscle (I assume I did) but in my 20s or 30s that much riding would have resulting in easily losing 10 pounds a month. I'm 51 now.

I recently decided to keep on my healthy low glycemic index diet and also count calories with the App. The first thing I've noticed is that I only ate 400 calories for breakfast the first morning. With all my working out, I should probably eat much more at breakfast and lunch and then eat a lighter dinner. I'm probably doing the reverse and then eating too many snacks after dinner.

I've also been researching paleo principles and intermittent fasting. I'm not going to get all keto religious and super strict but I think some of the princeples are good.

chunky666
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by chunky666

Aha! A topic I can talk about.

150KG at my biggest. 90kg at my smallest, now sitting around 97 while trying to get back down to 90!

Glad to see no one has recommended some milkshake rubbish to lose 10lb in 2 weeks!! Haha

Ultimately weight loss is nothing more than the basic physics of calories in Vs calories out. Anyone who disagrees with this is either trying to sell you something or will probability try and confuse you with complicated theories that basically do actually agree with you in the first place.

Remember basic weight loss when stood on the scales may be the initial goal but eventually it becomes a jigsaw piece to the bigger picture of overall health.

If your body needs 2500calories a day to sustain itself then ultimately with a calorie being a calorie regardless of source as long as you eat less than that you'll lose weight and more than that and you'll put on weight. If you want to eat nothing but doughnuts go for it the same as if all you want to eat is salad.

Simples!

Personally I eat what I want ignoring the whole idea of whats good for me but I log it all via MyFitnessPal on my phone. It means if I want that Doughnut I have it providing it fits within my daily calorie limits and if it doesnt I go for a run or cycle or maybe just dont eat it.

853Guy is right about the Whole Insulin thing and the more complex nature of it but without you detailing what you think you need to lose weight wise its hard to say if it's advise worth bothering with. If you're like I used to be and significantly overweight to the point of it being a serious health risk then stick to simple. Eat less, move more! If you do infact only have a few pounds to lose and you're already only 75kg then you really need to concentrate on the finite details, lift weights, eat protein, stay away from the carbs except for the occasional treat, and then on top of that eat less crap!

dastott
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by dastott

Not much to add except to say that after cutting out sugary stuff like soft drinks, biscuits and chocolate I no longer want to touch them. Beer too is a big source of empty calories. Fasted training is also worth trying.

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Conza
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by Conza

"The secret" (intellectually honest, rational, and value free enquiry): http://www.konradsgraf.com/blog1/2017/7 ... tal-healthm

8) .
It's all about the adventure :o .

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