Weight Loss Thread

Ambiturner

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Don't think you're understanding what anybody is saying. His overall point is correct, but his use of the law of conservation of mass as proof is flawed.

Since our bodies are not closed systems, the law does not apply and is not proof of anything.
 

Antarius

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I dont think each person is really that different. People just lie their fucking asses off about how much they eat and how much they cheat on any planned diet. When they fail, they claim they followed the diet perfectly and blame "genetics" and "every person is different" .

Guarantee if you actually followed them around and monitored their diet and enforced a regime they'd lose weight like any other normal person. eating habits are like sexual habits though, people lie like fucking assholes to make themselves appear better/more innocent than they are.
Exactly, just like how the average (mean) woman has less sex partners than the average (mean) man.. it's literally impossible, mathematically.

But people lie, and stupid statistics based upon their lies are published.
 

iannis

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200 calories a day is huge. Assuming you ate the same and excercised the same, anyone know how much extra weight that would be?

I mean you would gain weight until your BMR increased enough to counteract the extra 200 calories you aren't burning
3500/200 = 2 pounds a month at an excess of 200 per day.

Fat cells do eventually die. But the body does nothing particularly special to purge them. It really does make no difference if you've got 5 small ones or one big one. Is how I learned it at least. So yeah, it's easier to fatty back up after you've slimmed down. You've already created the storage.
 

Antarius

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Relevent link

Study Finds That Fat Cells Die and Are Replaced - New York Times

About 10% of your fat cells are replaced each year, and that number remains fairly constant, new cells will grow to replace the old ones.

Science Knowledge: The Life and Death of a Fat Cell

You're pretty much good if you can avoid getting fat until after 18. Only morbid obesity will cause you to grow MORE fat cells (hundreds of lbs in the article), and I assume it would also require rather severe starvation or physical destruction (liposuction/laser burning/freezing) to reduce the number of fat cells.
 

Ritley

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3500/200 = 2 pounds a month at an excess of 200 per day.

Fat cells do eventually die. But the body does nothing particularly special to purge them. It really does make no difference if you've got 5 small ones or one big one. Is how I learned it at least. So yeah, it's easier to fatty back up after you've slimmed down. You've already created the storage.
It's not nearly that simple a calculation though. Yes, it would start out about 2 pounds per month but as you gain weight your BMR increases. At some point the extra weight you are carrying will negate the 200 calories you aren't burning for whatever reason. What I'm wanting to know is how many pounds above where you started would you plateau at assuming you compare 2 people with exactly the same calorie intake and activities, with one person just burning 200 cals less per day due to mah condishins.
 

iannis

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Well, yeah, that's the simplified to the point of absurdity math.

For an exact number for that question I'm not sure how to even go about it. It won't only be BMR that affects the total calorie count, there are multiple other factors as well. Some systemic and some all the way down to cellular.

JISSN | Full text | Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete: "Interestingly, the decline in TDEE often exceeds the magnitude predicted by the loss of body mass. Previous literature refers to this excessive drop in TDEE as adaptive thermogenesis, and suggests that it functions to promote the restoration of baseline body weight [13-15]. Adaptive thermogenesis may help to partially explain the increasing difficulty experienced when weight loss plateaus despite low caloric intake, and the common propensity to regain weight after weight loss." and "To avoid rapid fat gain following the cessation of a diet, "reverse dieting" has also become popular among physique athletes. Such a process involves slowly increasing caloric intake in a stepwise fashion. In theory, providing a small caloric surplus might help to restore circulating hormone levels and energy expenditure toward pre-diet values, while closely matching energy intake to the recovering metabolic rate in an effort to reduce fat accretion. Ideally, such a process would eventually restore circulating hormones and metabolic rate to baseline levels while avoiding rapid fat gain. While anecdotal reports of successful reverse dieting have led to an increase in its popularity, research is needed to evaluate its efficacy."

He's studying weight loss in athletes... but that's an interesting little paper. And it would be similar processes.

I don't know. I'm not sure if there is a formula for that. But I have to assume that it would stabilize at some meager %age of total body fat and take at least half a year to plateau. The endochrine works slowly and you're not really talking about a huge amount (200 is a lot, but still it's really not THAT much. It'll be less than a 10% difference for a man below middle age). But what the fuck do I know. I might be retarded.
 

Eidal

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I don't really see the point for most people to get caught up in this. I think it's a fair assumption that some people, for whatever fucking reason, are just better at losing/gaining weight. Similarly, my wife smoked from 15 to 25 then just stopped, cold turkey. I smoked 18-29 and attempted to quit so many times I can't count. Her words: "I just decided it was dumb so I stopped." I can't relate whatsoever... I -still- occasionally crave tobacco.

But at the end of the day, that just means that I needed to put more effort into it. Some people seem to halfheartedly accept energy burned:energy consumed relationship... but then they get all caught up in why it seems easier for others. This makes sense if you're a leading scientist attempting to unravel the secrets of the human genome, but... for most people? You either eat/exercise in a proper relationship to each other so weight declines or you're doing it wrong.
 

Khane

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Were you dating your wife and still smoking when she quit cold turkey? Cuz that's pretty impressive if yes.
 

Ambiturner

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I dont think each person is really that different. People just lie their fucking asses off about how much they eat and how much they cheat on any planned diet. When they fail, they claim they followed the diet perfectly and blame "genetics" and "every person is different" .

Guarantee if you actually followed them around and monitored their diet and enforced a regime they'd lose weight like any other normal person. eating habits are like sexual habits though, people lie like fucking assholes to make themselves appear better/more innocent than they are.
There's a lot of people that use bs excuses when they really just lack willpower, but it's crazy to think everyone's about the same when physical characteristics rarely are.
 

Ritley

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Well, yeah, that's the simplified to the point of absurdity math.

For an exact number for that question I'm not sure how to even go about it. It won't only be BMR that affects the total calorie count, there are multiple other factors as well. Some systemic and some all the way down to cellular.

JISSN | Full text | Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete: "Interestingly, the decline in TDEE often exceeds the magnitude predicted by the loss of body mass. Previous literature refers to this excessive drop in TDEE as adaptive thermogenesis, and suggests that it functions to promote the restoration of baseline body weight [13-15]. Adaptive thermogenesis may help to partially explain the increasing difficulty experienced when weight loss plateaus despite low caloric intake, and the common propensity to regain weight after weight loss." and "To avoid rapid fat gain following the cessation of a diet, ?reverse dieting? has also become popular among physique athletes. Such a process involves slowly increasing caloric intake in a stepwise fashion. In theory, providing a small caloric surplus might help to restore circulating hormone levels and energy expenditure toward pre-diet values, while closely matching energy intake to the recovering metabolic rate in an effort to reduce fat accretion. Ideally, such a process would eventually restore circulating hormones and metabolic rate to baseline levels while avoiding rapid fat gain. While anecdotal reports of successful reverse dieting have led to an increase in its popularity, research is needed to evaluate its efficacy."

He's studying weight loss in athletes... but that's an interesting little paper. And it would be similar processes.

I don't know. I'm not sure if there is a formula for that. But I have to assume that it would stabilize at some meager %age of total body fat and take at least half a year to plateau. The endochrine works slowly and you're not really talking about a huge amount (200 is a lot, but still it's really not THAT much. It'll be less than a 10% difference for a man below middle age). But what the fuck do I know. I might be retarded.
It would be an interesting study I think. I honestly don't have nearly the background and desire to research something like that, but I've always wondered if you could really explain someone who is 30 lbs overweight on their metabolism being 200-300 calories lower than the average person. I'm positive the morbidly obese can't fall back on that like some do.
 

Khane

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I've never had trouble losing weight. I lose it at what I would consider a normal rate, no issues there. But I do have an impossible time maintaining any weight. I gain weight so fucking fast and then concentrate on losing then regain, it's a vicious cycle!
 

Cad

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There's a lot of people that use bs excuses when they really just lack willpower, but it's crazy to think everyone's about the same when physical characteristics rarely are.
"about the same" to me means when you eat less, you will lose weight. Adjust "eating less" until you are actually losing weight. Voila, everyone is about the same. There's no doubt there is some variation in metabolisms and amounts. But people go "I ate nothing but salad and 2 almonds for a month and gained 5 pounds, fuck diets!" ... no you fucking didn't.
 

iannis

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"about the same" to me means when you eat less, you will lose weight. Adjust "eating less" until you are actually losing weight. Voila, everyone is about the same. There's no doubt there is some variation in metabolisms and amounts. But people go "I ate nothing but salad and 2 almonds for a month and gained 5 pounds, fuck diets!" ... no you fucking didn't.
Well, maybe they did. But they drank nothing but fruit juice as well. And don't realize that fruit is made of sugar, and fruit juice is just about as calorie loaded as soda is.
 

McCheese

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One big reason I was a fat kid (other than subsisting on hot pockets almost exclusively) is that I would drink about half a gallon of OJ in a sitting. It's fruit juice! It's healthy!
 

Azrayne

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^On the flip side of that, at the end of last year I swapped over to drinking water almost exclusively (maybe every other day I'll have a single glass of milk or diet ginger beer, and a 6 pack of beer maybe once every other month) and found that, even with no changes to my otherwise not too impressive diet (lots of frozen food, sandwiches and lately, snacking fairly constantly on sugary crap), it resulted in my weight going from a slow but steady climb (about 10kg a year) to completely stabilizing (I've actually lost weight from exercise, but even during my off periods where I don't train for a month or two I don't put the weight back on).

Now if only I could figure out how to get myself eating a decent diet, I'd be set.
 

Agraza

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If you can substitute whole grains for refined white flour you may make another dent depending on how much your diet relies on them. There are a lot of filler carbs people eat that don't have much nutrition. As you already noticed liquid carbs are easy to reduce.

I like oatmeal and I find it useful for breakfast. I don't feel hungry as quickly as with cereal or whatever.
 

Azrayne

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Yeah, I figure that's probably the next and easiest move. I've already swapped out white bread for a brown multigrain, but I hear there's a lot of dodginess with how healthy they claim the bread is v. what it actually contains, so I'm not sure it'll make a huge difference. Either way, it tastes better.

Another small thing I've found which helps is chewing gum. I originally started doing it for a whole other reason, but I've found it reduces my snacking massively. Not sure if it's actually "healthy," but definitely a decrease in random calory intake I don't really need.
 

Antarius

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Yeah, I figure that's probably the next and easiest move. I've already swapped out white bread for a brown multigrain, but I hear there's a lot of dodginess with how healthy they claim the bread is v. what it actually contains, so I'm not sure it'll make a huge difference. Either way, it tastes better.

Another small thing I've found which helps is chewing gum. I originally started doing it for a whole other reason, but I've found it reduces my snacking massively. Not sure if it's actually "healthy," but definitely a decrease in random calory intake I don't really need.
I think just cutting back on breads and pasta was a lot easier than trying to switch to whole-grain, but maybe that's just me. I love the taste of white bread (I was raised on wonderbread).
 

mkopec

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Use a calorie tracker. My fitness pal, its free app for your phone. You feed it all your starting infos, select how much weight you want to lose per week, and it auto calculates the amount of calories you need to eat every day. Then just track it, track everything you put in your mouth. Get a cheap ass scale for the kitchen. They even have a bar code scanner for packaged foods. Its so fucking easy these days with apps and shit that do it all for you there should be no excuse. Ive been pretty much doing the paleo thing. I basically cut out most if not all processed carbs. Lots of lean meat, fibrous veggies, some fruits, and nuts, legumes. Yeah I cheat here and there, but still track that shit. When I drink on the weekends, I use the alcohol as a meal replacement. I know its not healthy, whatever, but a man has to have his drinks sometime.
 

Itlan

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Brown rice takes too long to cook, I just eat white rice. Plus it's cheap as fuck.

My starches are simple - oats, rice, potatoes (usually sweet). Rarely have any pasta or bread.