Help get me reduce some weight

[Marlb10]

I am 27 and I am gaining weight like anything. Help? Lets make it an official motivating thread too.

[Jack Jones]

Today:
- Go for a walk outside.
- Buy some vegetables and eat them.

[flyingpylon]

Reduce the amount of carbohydrates and grains you consume.

[Don]

Try not to eat late at night. I stop at about 7 PM.

[Maddy]

Could you give us an idea of your current weight? To what do you attribute your recent gain in weight?

[eufo]

Cut soda, even diet soda. Replace with tea and organic raw honey. Cut flour and sugar (naturally occurring sugar in foods is ok).

I mentioned soda first because I think it drives the body into consuming more food. I believe it has to do with the sweeteners used. Even stevia makes me more hungry, and it's supposedly "natural".

[stuper1]

Exercise is good, including just walking, you don't have to kill yourself, but diet is even more important.

Water is your friend. Keep yourself well hydrated at all times. Don't drink soda or even diet soda, or juice, or much milk, or sugary coffee drinks, etc.

Eat lots of protein and vegetables, some fruit, and just a little carbohydrates. Avoid fried foods. As much as possible, avoid anything that has flour or sugar in it. Easier said than done.

Don't try to lose all the weight at once. Just make some solid changes and watch the weight come down little by little, and then you will have a much better chance that it stays off.

Some people like to eat lots of little meals throughout the day, so they don't get super hungry and go on a binge. Other people just like to eat one or two larger, but not huge, meals each day and fast the rest of the time. Either way can work. Just depends on what works for you. I find that alternating between the two approaches works well for me. Some days I eat little bits throughout the day. Other days I only eat once or twice.

For exercise, strength training can be just as good or better than cardio, although I would still recommend at least some walking on a regular basis.

[l82start]

for exercise you could look into HIT (high intensity training), read "body by science" by Doug Mcguff for understanding the physiology, and a great gym based work out (the big five), and "project kratos" by drew bey for a simple 12 min a week body weight, minimal equipment required home work out... both of these guys have good web sites/books with lots of good info on how to get meaningful exercise in a minimal time with low risk of injury..

[l82start]

i second (or third or fourth) the idea of cutting carbs in your diet,
this next suggestion is unorthodox as far as mainstream nutrition goes and maybe more of a middle age man kind of thing to do, but cutting carbs to the point where your body enters a ketogenic state for a few weeks or more, can reset your metabolism/apatite/hormones/gut flora help you loose some weight and get to a new "stable weight" where one or two bad meals is not an automatic and semi permanent gain at the scales.

[Maddy]

I've been impressed by what happens when people do nothing more than cut out grains.

[Mark Leavy]

I am 27 and I am gaining weight like anything. Help? Lets make it an official motivating thread too.

Hi Marlb10. Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of bright people here.

Your sudden entrance, short burst of posts and insipid commentary make me believe that you haven't read much of the forum and that you don't quite realize the caliber of people who regularly post here.

Based on that limited evidence, I predict that you will remain under-informed, overweight, unhealthy, poorly financed and unlucky for the remainder of your life. I hope I am wrong.

Best wishes,
Mark

[Benko]

Get enough sleep/rest.

If you can try not to eat after dinner. Try to go at least 12 hours between dinner and b'fast. 14 (or 16) hours is even better and starts getting into forms of intermittent fasting which many but not all find helpful.

Avoid foods with added sugar and avoid junk.

Use whatever diet works for you i.e. one that you can follow long term and doesn't leave you hungry e.g. giant spinach salad at lunch leaves me full for several hours.

Cardio with intervals i.e. low intensity most of time with repeated bursts of as fast as possible.

[doodle]

A lot of paleo advice here.... I tend to fall into the other camp. A whole foods diet that is almost all plants and grains will lead to weight loss more effectively in my experience and from what I have read and observed.

It seems like the body can be in one of two states...either it burns carbohydrates for energy or it burns fat for energy (ketosis). It's the state in the middle (high fat and high carbohydrate intake) that seems to cause a lot of issues with weight gain. Ketosis however comes with a lot of other side effects though including bad breath that make it the less desirable option.

Not sure if there is a genetic component that makes people respond differently to diet but every strict vegan / vegetarian that I know that eats whole foods (not the junk food variety) is rail thin.

[l82start]

there may be something to the idea that some people are genetically inclined to palio some toward vegetarian/vegan. but either one is ruined by consuming industrial processed foods. whole food and clean food is important for both meat and vegies.. i am not convinced that grains (in there modern form) are healthy in any way or can be remotely considered whole food anymore, they certainly have little or no resemblance to the grain that was eaten even as little as a hundred years ago..

i haven't seen any truly healthy vegans and only a few moderately healthy vegetarians. i think it may be as much due to the political ideology and cult like obsessions with food that have glommed them selfs onto these types of diet, more than a proper vegetarian diet itself, i suspect they are making it hard for people to get clean accurate info about balanced nutrition from "plants alone" hard to come by, or to sort out from all the chafe.

[doodle]

i haven't seen any truly healthy vegans and only a few moderately healthy vegetarians.

There are actually some pretty amazing elite athletes across all sports including MMA that are vegans and even a few fruitarians. Rich Roll is only one in a long list who accomplish some pretty amazing things on a vegan diet: http://www.greatveganathletes.com/rich- ... n-ultraman

I think grains are just the latest food to be vilified. No doubt that industrial processing of the grains often leads to their natural oils going rancid or failing to properly extract all their nutrients but I can say with certainty that I don't suffer any noticeable ill effects from consuming them. I am much more concerned with an increasing number of studies that seem to implicate animal products with certain types of cancer.

There are ethical and environmental considerations that also factor into diet, but from a purely health standpoint I think limiting your meat intake to 10% or less of your total calories would probably be a good idea.

[doodle]

There is even a more extreme form of veganism that involves intermittent fasting and extreme caloric restriction to around 1000 calories a day in some cases. This fellow is an example of such a diet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im1rxgcUK3E

There is also Dr.Nun Amen Ra (who incidentally is one of the most captivatingly strange individuals I have ever come across) who has national powerlifting stats that are amazing and claims to eat less than 1000 calories a day of vegan food. His powerlifting stats are real and I have seen videos of him nearly totaling 1500 pounds in the squat, deadlift and bench at the age of 50 something. I can't say for certain however whether or not his diet regimen is real or whether or not he isn't chemically enhanced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1FCJS8DoM&t=952s

[l82start]

i probably should have been more clear, i haven't met any truly healthy vegans and only a few moderately healthy vegetarians , that doesn't mean its not possible or that they don"t exist, considering that most Americans are eating the SAD diet, it doesn't come as a surprise that many vegi eaters seem to be a bit off on their calculations of what is good nutrition. the same is probably true to some extent with palio dieters as well.. if it is less true it is likely due to the palio/ketosis information coming of age in the Internet era making it easter to sort out the junk info.

[Maddy]

there may be something to the idea that some people are genetically inclined to palio some toward vegetarian/vegan. . .

Could very well be a result of differences in microbiome. It's weird to think that the bacteria in a person's gut can exert chemical influences that compel the person to eat those substances that are most favorable to the bugs, but that seems to be the case.

I have my concerns about the long-term health effects of ketogenic diets, but you have to admit that diets like Atkins have worked for many people--including some very seriously overweight people--when other diets have failed. For that I'm willing to give it some leeway.

[l82start]

i don't disagree, the idea of permanent or long term ketosis seems iffy at best, short term (for weight-loss/system resets ) and in and out (intermittent fasting) have a much better overlap with human historic dietary patterns.

gut biome and human health, including the mental and emotional connections are a cutting edge area of health. the connections are both incredible and weird.

[Don]

Exercise every day at the same time. Get into the habit and don't miss days. I do it in a fasted condition every day before breakfast. Be committed.

[WiseOne]

This probably doesn't impact morbid obesity too much, but I find that I tend to put on weight in unhealthy areas (e.g. tummy) when I'm under a lot of stress. Once it resolves or at least drops to a manageable level, the weight magically drops as well. I don't consciously do anything different, but I think my "stop eating I'm full" signal seems to be disabled under stress. There's also a lot of research pointing to the damaging effects of long-term high cortisol stimulation.

Not sure what exactly to do about it other than get better at stress management. Exercise certainly helps, but for me the short bursts in the gym aren't nearly as effective as a good 2 hour bike ride. Working occasional days from home has helped a lot too. It feels like a vacation day even though I get more done than I would in the office.

[Maddy]

I've been reading that weight around the middle is often seen in association with high blood sugar levels, which fits nicely within the stress/cortisol paradigm. I've also been reading that the accumulation of fat in this particular region is believed to contribute to the onset of a wide array of diseases commonly thought of as age-related, the common denominator of which appears to be chronic inflammation. Seems that visceral fat and the visible "spare tire" which accompany it are a powerful generator of inflammatory cytokines.

Of course, middle aged hormonal issues have absolutely nothing to do with it.

[farjean2]

I just experienced some significant and needed weight loss - about 15 lbs in 30 days. I can thank a head cold that I couldn't seem to shake for it. I attribute it to 3 things all of which suppressed my appetite....

1.) No Alcohol - not only does it add calories to the diet but it releases inhibitions which can cause me to overeat

2.) Very little exercise - I find that exercise isn't such a good idea when I have a lot of weight to lose, especially cardio. It just seems to make me hungry so it's a losing battle. Good to maintain weight but not lose it, at least for me.

3.) Sudafed - I think one of the ingredients is the same thing they put in diet pills so I only ate about one small meal a day along with an occasional piece of fruit

(BTW, I noticed the OP hasn't been back. Maybe it was something somebody said).

[Mark Leavy]

I just experienced some significant and needed weight loss - about 15 lbs in 30 days. I can thank a head cold that I couldn't seem to shake for it. I attribute it to 3 things all of which suppressed my appetite....

1.) No Alcohol - not only does it add calories to the diet but it releases inhibitions which can cause me to overeat

2.) Very little exercise - I find that exercise isn't such a good idea when I have a lot of weight to lose, especially cardio. It just seems to make me hungry so it's a losing battle. Good to maintain weight but not lose it, at least for me.

3.) Sudafed - I think one of the ingredients is the same thing they put in diet pills so I only ate about one small meal a day along with an occasional piece of fruit

(BTW, I noticed the OP hasn't been back. Maybe it was something somebody said).

farjean2, your method is one of the few "1/2 pound per day" methods that I believe would really work.

As an aside, I once recommended a diet of unlimited vodka and slim jims - with a few eggs added to a good friend of mine. I knew she wanted to drop a lot of weight before a wedding and I had no expectation that she would give up the vodka. It worked. She looked pretty good in that dress.

Also... I have been considering a new career drumming up business for suicide hot-lines.

[Benko]

As we get older (40-50 or more) our body's become less insulin sensitive.

https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/ ... metformin/

You can take metformin, but I've had good luck with Gymnostemma (works via AMPK):

https://examine.com/supplements/gynoste ... taphyllum/

There are now 4 people I know who have taken it (all over 40) and slowly lost weight (without really doing anything else).

Dose 2-3 grams (5:1 extract) per day.