Weight Loss Thread

McCheese_sl said:

Decide what sort of diet fits into your lifestyle and pair it with some solid weight training at the gym to maintain muscle mass. If you are consistent with both of those youwilllose weight and youwilllook much better (i.e avoid the ugly skinnyfat trap that cardio freaks tend to fall into).

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Yeah this. There are many paths to fitness. Dont be skinny fat or a skeleton with abs. Doesnt look good.

Noodleface_sl said:

I've been drinking Diet Mountain Dew recently, because I need caffeine and sometimes water just doesn't cut it. How bad is diet mountain dew for you? The internet provides a plethora of arguments ranging from cancer-inducing to it's good for you. I actually prefer it over regular mountain dew. I'm mostly concerned with sugar and carbs, so that's why I'm trying to stick to diet sodas.

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I mean, imo it's shitty but if that's your one thing just try to limit it. Cut back and eventually look to cut it out completely. 5 cans a day would be bad. One? and the rest of your diet is solid? eh. I've got a slice of cheese cake at home waiting for me tonight. I'm being strict during the day and having that tonight if you get my meaning. At the end of the day it is all about the calories for weight loss, but eating "clean" makes it much easier and healthier in my experience for a variety of reasons.

Brown and wild rice with chix, avacado and franks red hot. Fuck yea!

Then again anything with franks red hot is tits.

Dashel_sl said:

Yeah this. There are many paths to fitness. Dont be skinny fat or a skeleton with abs. Doesnt look good.



I mean, imo it's shitty but if that's you're one thing just try to limit it. Cut back and eventually look to cut it out completely. 5 cans a day would be bad. One? and the rest of your diet is solid? eh. I've got a slice of cheese cake at home waiting for me tonight. I'm being strict during the day and having that tonight if you get my meaning. At the end of the day it is all about the calories for weight loss, but eating "clean" makes it much easier and healthier in my experience for a variety of reasons.

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Took me a few times to read "cheese cake". I kept just reading "cheese" and I was like "what the fuck, guy is anxious to eat a slice of cheese."

I like cheese. I guess cheesecake is one word though. Oops.

Deathwing_sl said:

Denaut, thanks for the link, that's some interesting data. But that does sort of agree with my point. Educating yourself on what goes into your body is the prime reason I like calorie counting. So, instead of "never drink soda", it should be "you should stay away from soda because it's been shown to be a high risk factor for diabetes". I personally think regular soda is especially bad because once you get used to it, aspartame does a decent job.

I'm curious as to what your reasons are for cutting out other types of sugars or foods with labels.

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No problem, I find all this really interesting. Like I said before I was just trying to be concise, which is why everything came out so forceful, that wasn't my intention.

The reason for cutting out sugars was as I outlined before, it has a hugely disproportional negative effect on your health compared to the amount you eat. I just used soda as an example, the the same holds true from "sugar" from any source without significant quantities of fiber (like fruit and berries). Specifically the fructose is what does the real harm to your liver, which in turn causes metabolic syndrome, which among other things makes you gain weight far out of proportion to the amount of Calories ingested.

The food label thing is because saying "eat fruits and vegetables" doesn't work as people are bombarded with misleading advertisements from multi-billion dollar food companies that co-opt otherwise sound nutritional advice to sell you unhealthy stuff. The end-around is to advise people not to eat things with labels as a general rule.

Ossoi_sl said:

Actually his numbers were off by about 3000 calories, well thought out my arse. And I did consider his point of view hence why I had to resort to the bowl of sand metaphor. It's irrelevant because he completely twisted my original statement and turned it into an attack. When I pointed this out some other douchebag came in and attempted to tell ME what I actually meant. The very fact I mentioned that my trainer thinks it will catch up with me next week indicates that that particular result was an anomaly

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My numbers weren't off by 3000 calories, not if the fat loss was 3lbs. I did state "2-3 lbs" in my post, after all. I picked the high end, sue me. And there was nothing aggressive in my post that could have been remotely construed as an attack. I simply asked you if you felt that a fat loss of 2-3lbs in a week when you admittedly ate like shit was realistic. That's all. And you went off the fucking deep end over it.

Yes, you were correct that it's entirely possible that other factors influenced the body fat % change. However, you can't really expect to gain much more than a 1/4-1/2 of muscle in a week if you've already been exercising a lot for the past few months, so in the end that's not going to make much of a difference in the numbers. If you think you lost 1.5% body fat and you weigh 175lbs, that's a reduction in fat or gain in lean body mass of about 2.6 lbs. Any way you cut it. Even if you put on a full half pound of muscle that week, which is a stretch, that still means that even while you managed to put on quite a bit of muscle, you also managed to have a roughly 1000 calorie a day deficit to lose about 2lbs of fat, despite self-admittedly eating like shit that week.

So again, do you think that is realistic? That's a question, not an attack.

Ossoi_sl said:

All I said was that my bf % was down 1.5% from the week before and you seem to think this is me saying I lost 2-3lbs of fat...lol RETARDS!

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Either you lost fat, or put on lean muscle mass, or some combination thereof. At 175lbs (I don't know how much you weigh), that's around 2.5 lbs. So you had to have lost/gained a total of 2.5lbs of fat or muscle in a single week.

As far as water weight goes, I have no idea how that affects caliper tests, if it does at all.

Ossoi_sl said:

Complete fail for not even including in your "back to back" summary the original post, utter idiocy.

As for the rest of your drivel, I really have no desire to devote any more time than is necessary replying to you, hence the succinct "you're idiot" which I couldn't be bothered to correct. <---- I guess some other nerd will come along and write "HA NO YOU ACTUALLY FAILED TO INCLUDE THE AN AND THEREFORE WE KNOW THAT YOU HAVE A WRITING ISSUE HA LOL"

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You're a real cunt, you know that?

Denaut_sl said:

Sorry if that came off as being super hardcore, I was just trying to be concise. It is all dose-response really, the rule most people recommend is 80%-20%, although I always say 90%-10% because I found my clients would end up at about 80%-20% if I told them that

I totally, totally disagree about the sugar though. A can of soda is far worse for you than 140 empty calories, it is a metabolically destructive toxin akin to alcohol. As such a soda should be treated like alcohol, something you have a can or two of on a Saturday or a holiday and that is about it.

"The impact of sugar on diabetes was independent of sedentary behavior and alcohol use, and the effect was modified but not confounded by obesity or overweight. Duration and degree of sugar exposure correlated significantly with diabetes prevalence in a dose-dependent manner"

In his book Dr. Lustig talks more about this study stating "Every additional 150 Calories per person per day barely raised diabetes prevalence. But if those 150 Calories were instead from a can of soda, increase in diabetes prevalence rose sevenfold. Sugar is more dangerous than its Calories."

So, yes you can have that soda, but don't think of it as 140 empty Calories, its metabolic impact is 980 Calories. Treat it that way.

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Oh man, I had chocolate covered strawberries yesterday (I think I had two?). Boy did I feel guilty after, but DAMN those are good, and I hate chocolate.

Itlan_sl said:

Oh man, I had chocolate covered strawberries yesterday (I think I had two?). Boy did I feel guilty after, but DAMN those are good, and I hate chocolate.

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I'm reading his book now, as far as I am concerned he's basically cracked the whole thing. Lots of people have been getting towards it for a few years (think atkins and paleo), but nothing I have read before is so detailed and convincing. He lays it out in a direct biochemical cause-effect chain based on hard science and current research. I had my pharmacologist girlfriend read through some of the chemistry to sanity check it and she seems pretty convinced as well. I don't think it is likely someone else will come up with a hypothesis with even more explanatory power. His book is seriously good, extremely dense with information and research but still pretty easy to read.

I agree with Lustig on the sugar problem, in my mind it's pretty obvious that it's an issue. What I dislike though is using that information the way Mayor Bloomberg did with the soda ban, which Lustig said didnt go far enough. It's like a "Demolition Man" prequel. Getting the information out is fine, bans I am not a fan of. If you want to drink 48 oz sodas and eat "fat free cookies" or whatever else fine, be fat.

Denaut_sl said:

I'm reading his book now, as far as I am concerned he's basically cracked the whole thing. Lots of people have been getting towards it for a few years (think atkins and paleo), but nothing I have read before is so detailed and convincing. He lays it out in a direct biochemical cause-effect chain based on hard science and current research. I had my pharmacologist girlfriend read through some of the chemistry to sanity check it and she seems pretty convinced as well. I don't think it is likely someone else will come up with a hypothesis with even more explanatory power. His book is seriously good, extremely dense with information and research but still pretty easy to read.

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His information is very good/convincing, but remember, he's also attacking OBESITY more so than sugar. Sugar is linked to obesity, but even he recognizes that sugar can have it's place in a healthy diet, but again, like I've been preaching for fucking months here, it's all about MODERATION.

Also, remember, natural sugar for the most part is absolutely fine people. Don't be afraid to eat an apple or some strawberries, unless you are MASSIVELY overweight. In that case, it's been shown that even natural sugar will fuck you up - stick to meat and veggies in that case until you come down to a more normal weight.

I eat a fuckton of fruit personally, so much so I have to buy a new container of strawberries, a pineapple, honeydew, and cantaloupe pretty much every 3-5 days. I probably don't take in enough protein daily (I blame breakfast!), but I really enjoy fruit.

Great lecture. Worth watching.

Itlan_sl said:

His information is very good/convincing, but remember, he's also attacking OBESITY more so than sugar. Sugar is linked to obesity, but even he recognizes that sugar can have it's place in a healthy diet, but again, like I've been preaching for fucking months here, it's all about MODERATION.

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Well, sort of. I am mostly done with his book now and he isn't so much as attacking obesity as attacking metabolic syndrome, of which obesity is a common marker. It is a symptom though and not the disease itself. A number of diseases can cause obesity for a variety of reasons but the major culprit to the "obesity epidemic" as we call it isNon-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The thing about sugar is that that word moderation means almost nothing because "moderation" is relative. Relative to what? Well, a moderate amount of sugar compared to a dose that is toxic (I read about 40-50 grams a day) is only probably 10-20 grams a day, or about 2-4 sodas a week assuming you don't eat s single gram of sugar from anything else. Compared to what MOST Americans actually eat a "moderate" amount of sugar is still way, way too much.

Also, remember, natural sugar for the most part is absolutely fine people. Don't be afraid to eat an apple or some strawberries, unless you are MASSIVELY overweight. In that case, it's been shown that even natural sugar will fuck you up - stick to meat and veggies in that case until you come down to a more normal weight.

I eat a fuckton of fruit personally, so much so I have to buy a new container of strawberries, a pineapple, honeydew, and cantaloupe pretty much every 3-5 days. I probably don't take in enough protein daily (I blame breakfast!), but I really enjoy fruit.

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Lustig also covers this extensively in his book and on the videos. The sugar in fruit is actually bad for you too, BUT (big but) in a piece of whole fruit it comes packaged with what he calls the antidote, or fiber. This is because the fiber slows down the absorption of the fructose (fruit sugar) to the point where the liver can safely process it without developing a fatty liver. Now, I imagine you COULD develop NAFLD on fruit if you tried, but it would probably be hard to do accidentally.

This is also why fruit juice is bad for you, as bad for you as soda. They are equivalent, juice is not healthy .

I love fruit too, I probably go through 2 dozen apples a week, can't get enough of them. I am really, REALLY looking forward to the summer. During summer, for only a little while, the markets are awash with cheap strawberries from northern Norway. These babies have been soaking on the midnight sun for a while and are absolutely amazing, I am spoiled for all others. I don't even bother buying the fresh ones anymore, I just wait patiently until the right ones appear and then gorge myself for a month straight. Totally worth it.

As someone who has lived a low carb lifestyle on and off for 6 years, and lost ~100 lbs when I made the leap I can appreciate Lustig's book quite a bit. I agree with mostly everything he's saying.

However, after reading the first chapter and remembering the last phyical I went in for, something struck me as strange. Where are these obesity statistics coming from? He says that in 1980 only 15% of people were considered obese and now it's something like 65%. 3 months ago I went in for a physical in which my BMI was calculated.

I am 193 lbs, 5'10", athletic build. I am a size 35 waist (as measured by a tailor, I fit into most size 33 jeans). I could stand to lose 20 lbs, but if I did that would mean I would be in peak physical condition. If I lost 10 I'd say I would look very fit. When the doctor read the numbers back to me she stood there and told me, with a straight face, that I was obese. Not overweight, or fat... obese. If I had gone in for that same physical in 1980 would the doctor have said the same thing? Are we lowering the BMI on what qualifies as obese these days? I am not even close to obese... I almost fell out of my chair when she said that to me. Is that part of why the numbers are growing so exponentially? When I look around I see plenty of overweight people but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near 65% of the people I come across everyday.

Dashel_sl said:

I agree with Lustig on the sugar problem, in my mind it's pretty obvious that it's an issue. What I dislike though is using that information the way Mayor Bloomberg did with the soda ban, which Lustig said didnt go far enough. It's like a "Demolition Man" prequel. Getting the information out is fine, bans I am not a fan of. If you want to drink 48 oz sodas and eat "fat free cookies" or whatever else fine, be fat.

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At some point you have to make decisions about public health. We can agree or disagree where that line is, for example we probably agree about mandatory vaccinations.

I tend to support Lustig and Bloomberg on this one, thefull reporthas lots of details. Keep in mind this isn't about banning soda, you can still buy as much soda as you want, it is about helping people maintain portion control. The US population is up against huge, rich agribusiness and losing. They have LONG ago figured out how to manipulate people into purchasing (and consuming) much more food they we need or really even want. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to increase portions and charge a little more for them. People tend to kind of eat what is in front of them whether they really want it or not. Selling food in larger containers increases consumption (and profits) across the board.

Keep in mine, you can still purchase drink 48oz of soda, there is no count limit, just a size one. Bloomberg's proposal was NOT meant to curtail "freedom" as people like to say, it was about helping people make smarter choices. It was actually one of the more common sense, minimalist, government interventions that would go a surprising amount of good.It is pretty astonishing just how much more people will eat/drink simply by increasing container size.

Denaut_sl said:

Lustig also covers this extensively in his book and on the videos. The sugar in fruit is actually bad for you too, BUT (big but) in a piece of whole fruit it comes packaged with what he calls the antidote, or fiber. This is because the fiber slows down the absorption of the fructose (fruit sugar) to the point where the liver can safely process it without developing a fatty liver. Now, I imagine you COULD develop NAFLD on fruit if you tried, but it would probably be hard to do accidentally.

This is also why fruit juice is bad for you, as bad for you as soda. They are equivalent, juice is not healthy .

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Oh, I know. I just didn't feel a need to explain why it's fine, but eat fruit motherfuckers. Except for you obese kids, like I said. Veggies and lean meat for you!

When you say fruit juice, you're referring to Tropicana bullshit right? Cause I'm pretty sure homemade orange juice is absolutely fine. Or if you make a fruit smoothie, you're using whole, natural fruit - you're fine. Or am I wrong on this?

Khane_sl said:

I am 193 lbs, 5'10", athletic build. I am a size 35 waist (as measured by a tailor, I fit into most size 33 jeans). I could stand to lose 20 lbs, but if I did that would mean I would be in peak physical condition. If I lost 10 I'd say I would look very fit. When the doctor read the numbers back to me she stood there and told me, with a straight face, that I was obese. Not overweight, or fat... obese. If I had gone in for that same physical in 1980 would the doctor have said the same thing? Are we lowering the BMI on what qualifies as obese these days? I am not even close to obese... I almost fell out of my chair when she said that to me. Is that part of why the numbers are growing so exponentially? When I look around I see plenty of overweight people but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near 65% of the people I come across everyday.

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Without getting into the statistical nitty-gritty, BMI works for populations but not individuals because individual differences along either side of a bell curve at an individual level cancel each other out at a population level. TheWikipedia article on BMIis pretty extensive and can probably answer most of your questions.

If I were you I'd find a new doctor, yours sounds like an idiot that doesn't understand basic things like the usefulness (or lack thereof) of BMI in individuals. If my doctor made such a rudimentary mistake I'd wonder what else they were making mistakes about.

I am built like you except a little shorter and probably a bit wider, a couple of years ago when I was at my peak fitness (no girlfriend, easy job, nothing but time) I found a new doctor and he had me come in for a checkup. As usual the nurse took my measurements for the chart (at the time 5'9 ~185, almost no belly fat) so I imagine the doctor was expecting the worst when he walked in because I actually saw a look of relief cross his face when he glanced up from the chart. If he had said "according to my chart you are overweight" rather than "you look like you are in good shape" I probably would have never come back.