Weight Loss Thread

I found a few articles that support it burning fat but other than that I can't find shit. I had heard bodybuilding.com was the mecca of nutrition information but I did not realize it was the forums only, live and learn I guess.

I'm sitting about at 20% body fat right now, been working out and counting calories for a few months just wanted to get a little more serious about it since I had seemed to hit a brick wall.

Hekotat_sl said:

Been doing really good on my diet for about 2 months but I feel like I hit a brick wall, so I went to Whole Foods today and picked up 300 bucks in health food and fat burners to try and get to 12% bodyfat.

I do have a question and I can't seem to find an answer, if I cook with sesame seed oil will I still get the fat burn effects from it, or do I need to like drink a tablespoon of it?


EDIT: When I say fat burners I mean like, Sesame Oil, Grapefruit, Banana, etc.

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Noticed you didn't get any coconut oil, there's your problem.

I am considering doing the paleo thing. Not because lawl coconut oil, but for my wife. She has had issues losing the baby weight and always asks me for advice and it isn't really working for her. She needs a drastic change in diet but I think she doesn't even know where to start, so I was thinking this would at least give her a hard set of rules to abide by and also probably show her results pretty quickly. Then as time went on we could adjust that to fit us better. idk, thinking it through, it is hard because we have the kids as well and I want to make sure whatever we do doesn't impact them.

You don't have to necessarily go full paleo. I generally eat pseudo-paleo, which basically means I cut out processed carbs and refined sugars, but I still get tons of carbs/sugars from natural sources like fruit, which I eat like a madman. I also kept dairy in my diet because I love milk and cheese and it doesn't give me any digestion issues.

I think the main thing to do is rather than go full-on paleo right off the bat, start by slowly cutting out foods. It's very possible that she could see great results just by dropping one or two non-paleo things, without the need to go full on, hardcore paleo.

That is actually what I am leaning towards. Partly because it would be easier and partly because dairy is awesome.

Low Carb diets will not generally work for most people if you "ease" into them. Mostly because when people try to do so, they do it completely incorrectly. They are essentially all or nothing diet plans. You either go full out and adhere to it to the letter, or just try something else. Overweight people typically do not have the appropriate knowledge to mix and match as you go on any diet plan in reality. It's usually a recipe for failure which just leads to depression and more over eating.

I suggest, if you really want to do this, to do it completely by the book. It will be much easier for you to follow instead of saying "yea, I think eating food X should be fine, right?"

Deathwing_sl said:

I'm hoping this diet dies off. The moniker is really really stupid and misleading.

Either way, I still advocate count calories and macros. I think restricting whole types of foods is harder to maintain than an accurate food log. You've got 3 young daughters, some days, that donut is going to look more tempting than usual. But nope, can't have any of that, whatever group the donut falls into that you can't eat anymore. No more of that, at all, ever.

Yeah you can, just make sure you count it correctly. It's going to hit your calories and carbs pretty hard, just make sure to compensate later that day, or the week overall at worst. Though, I usually only try to carryover calorie surpluses/deficits day to day throughout the week, not macros. Going to gym regularly makes those extra snacks really easy to manage. There are some days, especially in the summer when I mow the lawn, where I feel I have to eat too much.

Telling someone they can't eat something can make them miserable, psychologically(notice how you've already said dairy can't be restricted?). It's a childish way of handling things. And if it weren't such a common thing in our culture, I think more people would be offended when told "don't eat this", instead of "watch more accurately what you eat". I know it's grown out of the fact that most adults essentially eat like children, but I think we should treat ourselves and our loved ones with more respect.

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Dude come on, I mean I know the point you're trying to make but why are you using a donut as an example? Donuts have shitloads of useless, unhealthy calories, a ton of sugar and have never, ever satiated hunger for anyone on planet earth for more than 20 minutes. So yea... go eat that donut... and then feel hungry the entire rest of the morning because you just ingested 270 of the most unsatisfying calories available.

But yes, saying "you can't eat this anymore" can be devastating to some people and will make them give up before they even start. The problem is, that is really the key to any diet plan ever created. Not eating garbage that has no health benefits and doesn't satiate hunger because it is tons of calories packed into a miniscule amount of food. Low carb diets aren't really any more or less restrictive than other types of diets. They are just generally more up front about it.

Deathwing_sl said:

I'm hoping this diet dies off. The moniker is really really stupid and misleading.

Either way, I still advocate count calories and macros. I think restricting whole types of foods is harder to maintain than an accurate food log. You've got 3 young daughters, some days, that donut is going to look more tempting than usual. But nope, can't have any of that, whatever group the donut falls into that you can't eat anymore. No more of that, at all, ever.

Yeah you can, just make sure you count it correctly. It's going to hit your calories and carbs pretty hard, just make sure to compensate later that day, or the week overall at worst. Though, I usually only try to carryover calorie surpluses/deficits day to day throughout the week, not macros. Going to gym regularly makes those extra snacks really easy to manage. There are some days, especially in the summer when I mow the lawn, where I feel I have to eat too much.

Telling someone they can't eat something can make them miserable, psychologically(notice how you've already said dairy can't be restricted?). It's a childish way of handling things. And if it weren't such a common thing in our culture, I think more people would be offended when told "don't eat this", instead of "watch more accurately what you eat". I know it's grown out of the fact that most adults essentially eat like children, but I think we should treat ourselves and our loved ones with more respect.

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I don't know of anyone, beyond the super hardcore devotees of paleo, that absolutely refrain from EVERYTHING "non-paleo". Hell, even the people running Nerdfitness, which harps pretty consistently on the virtues of eating paleo, freely admit that having some beers at a summer BBQ or eating the occasional donut is just fine.

Just because you eat paleo (or some variation of it) doesn't mean you can't enjoy non-paleo stuff now and then.

*Edited to add* Just because something works well for you doesn't mean it's ideal for everyone else. Counting calories and tracking macros is great, but some people might find just eating paleo 80% of the time to be more effective and fit their lifestyle better. I've done both and I definitely prefer (and got better results from) my pseudo-paleo diet.

It isn't so much that I really want to do this shit, I just want to find something that will be easy enough for my wife to stick to long enough to see results and encourage her. She is also on medications that cause weight/water retention and shit so she's having a difficult time of it and I hate o see her discouraged, so if the bullshit fad thing works for a couple of weeks or a month then it could be a big help in the long term.

McCheese_sl said:

I don't know of anyone, beyond the super hardcore devotees of paleo, that absolutely refrain from EVERYTHING "non-paleo". Hell, even the people running Nerdfitness, which harps pretty consistently on the virtues of eating paleo, freely admit that having some beers at a summer BBQ or eating the occasional donut is just fine.

Just because you eat paleo (or some variation of it) doesn't mean you can't enjoy non-paleo stuff now and then.

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You're not wrong but I don't like recommending people who are new to the whole healthy eating thing to just kind of wing it. It's a lot easier for people to succeed when they follow a diet like paleo to the T, otherwise they get themselves into all kinds of bad habits and end up just confusing themselves.

Yeah and really that is the appeal of a system. "Here are the rules, eat this, not that." Black and white, no room for debate.

I know a lot of doctors recommend thisDASH Diet for healthy weight loss, lower blood pressure & cholesterolshe might be more inclined

Those are all questions I am thinking she will be more prepared to worry about once she has seen some progress. That is really my goal, give her a taste of what she wants and then leading her to other knowledge which will hopefully in time make my whole house healthier.

chaos_sl said:

Those are all questions I am thinking she will be more prepared to worry about once she has seen some progress. That is really my goal, give her a taste of what she wants and then leading her to other knowledge which will hopefully in time make my whole house healthier.

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That's a solid approach. People tend to not care about the details of something until they see it succeed in practice. She will learn as she goes and then she will be able to make much more informed decisions the longer she sticks with it. Eventually she won't even need a pre-fabbed plan. She'll be able to make her own (if she stays with it).

I'm a big supporter of the pseudo-paleo not counting Calories paradigm. That isn't to say you should never count Calories or that "omg super hardcore paleoz only!" is the correct advice either. But I feel like in your situation chaos it is a very good strategy, especially with growing kids.

Don't confuse paleo with a strict list of dos and don'ts, it is more like heuristic you apply to a whole diet. I prefer the term "minimally processed" diet because it generally speaking covers all the bases of paleo without a lot of the baggage (dairy for example). Dairy is awesome btw, if you have good genes for it in confers massive health advantages, and you should drink it even via paleo logic. That is to say lactase persistence is probably the most successful gene in the modern human genome, which points to the evolutionary argument that paleo uses where you should eat food you are adapted to thrive on.

As for the sweets for kids thing, there is some traditional wisdom to be found. For example Saturday is "sweets day" in Norway for children, basically they are only allowed to eat sweets (usually just a bit) only on Saturday and if they want something to during the week you tell them they can get it Saturday. Other than that you don't keep sweets in the house and you just make normal healthy meals, they'll eat the food if they are hungry and if they aren't hungry they won't. This is societal "rule" is strict to the point that if you send your kids to school with something like candy or potato chips in their lunch (during the week), the school will take them away. This is changing though, more processed food is being eaten more by Norwegians and now their heart disease/obesity rate is going up. This correlates nicely with the adoption of a more "American" diet (I feel compelled to note here that correlation does not equal causation).

That was a bit more rambling than I meant it to be...

chaos_sl said:

Yeah and really that is the appeal of a system. "Here are the rules, eat this, not that." Black and white, no room for debate.

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This was definitely a big help for me. Then once you do it "strict" for a few weeks you reintroduce other stuff and see how it goes. I've done the calorie counting macro thing and while it did work for me, it was a huge pain in the ass, especially in the beginning. Unless you only eat a very narrow list of foods repeatedly..... which is pretty much like paleo.