Weight Loss Thread

One last thing:

Soda bad. Water good. Drink less soda and drink more water. Your body will thank you.

I'd say that there are three problem areas for most weight loss people, especially those who are really nowhere near what is their "average" mass for their height and skeletal structure.

1. Soda/Sugar'd coffee(starbucks et al) - This is like, a shit ton of calories attached to caffeine and carbonation/mouth feel. It doens't matter that it is carbs or fats or whatever, the drinks are a shitload of your daily percentage of expected maint. calories and are not even remotely filling. Not to mention that they are drunk as a "pick me up" on people who generally have extremely sedentary jobs/lifestyles. Total no-brainer on how bad they are in the long run.
2. The concept of a diet. Lots of people think they need to cut their calories in half (wat.) or do these crazy diet regimens to lose weight at any appreciable weight. And they adhere to those insane diet schemes for a week or two and then go back to whatever terrible eating habits they had prior. The key isn't any weird ass fad diet that has you cutting carbs to zero, or fats to zero, or protein to zero. You just need to be at a caloric deficit. Track your food and eat until you hit your deficit goal, and then drink shitloads of water. Spread your meals out, with -lots- of water in between. This will work for the entirety of the population in losing weight, regardless of physical activity. But the average person has no idea what any of that means.
3. Exercise matters, but not nearly as much as diet. For Angelwatch, his diet is 95+% of his weight loss. That's awesome and should be promoted. Even if you are running marathons, how you eat determines how you lose weight. There is a ranging scale of activities on their effect, but unless you spend considerable amount of time doing HIIT or weightlifting or strenuous cardio (to be clear, unless you are constantly walking uphill or you have a legit medical condition, walking is not strenuous) then your diet is accounting for 90% of your weight loss effects. The people that are lifting/exercising at strenuous levels for half a dozen+ hours a week? Their numbers are changing. Otherwise no, your diet is the vast majority of your weight loss potential.

Good on you for losing ~30lbs. I recently went through the same thing (though 3m vs. 2.x in your case) and it is not easy, no matter how heavy/light you are. Nobody is criticizing your diet, in the slightest. That is literally the overwhelming reason behind your weight loss. But please, don't be offended when you come to a forum of people who are talking about weightloss and expect us to not objectively look at your non-diet criteria and claims and just accept them as fact.

Walking is better than nothing. Literally any other physical exercise is better than walking, for every aspect of life. Just keep that perspective in mind when making your claims, and you will have zero random "min/maxers" telling you things.

Do we have a thread on running shoes? I'm failing to find one. If not, any recommendations? Seems like Made in USA is hard to find unless you go custom, and I may if need be. I'm looking for something a bit more purpose-suited than the cheap sneakers I roll in now, but I don't know what's hype and what's real.

Agraza_sl said:

Do we have a thread on running shoes? I'm failing to find one. If not, any recommendations? Seems like Made in USA is hard to find unless you go custom, and I may if need be. I'm looking for something a bit more purpose-suited than the cheap sneakers I roll in now, but I don't know what's hype and what's real.

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The best anyone could do is suggest respected brands, but honestly you should go to a running shoe store where they'll ask you to walk/jog and check your gait. Then they'll likely bring out a few pairs and let you try them on for comfort.

Yeah you'll have a hard time finding MiUSA running shoes. Only a few sneakers are even made in USA anymore and the only "running" I can think of would be some New Balances.

Take your weight. Go add plates till you get to 280 pounds. Now go walk 3 miles. See if you feel like you did nothing. To a true fat ass out of shape person walking is the best thing you can do. Once you get good at walking and healthy enough to actually do harder exercises do it. You will notice from a time perspective that you are burning more calories.

Angel, Good job keep it up and do more if you can.

Srathor_sl said:

To a true fat ass out of shape person walking is the best thing you can do. Once you get good at walking and healthy....

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*if you want to stay fat and/or want to put in as little effort as possible

No, if you're a fat shit you should absolutely start by walking and ramp it as time goes on. The damage to your knees alone being that heavy and trying to do real cardio will fuck you up. Diet down, then work on athleticism and strength. You don't just make a fat shit dude sprints one day. He'll fucking die. Not that I would mind, but whatever.

Srathor_sl said:

Take your weight. Go add plates till you get to 280 pounds. Now go walk 3 miles. See if you feel like you did nothing. To a true fat ass out of shape person walking is the best thing you can do. Once you get good at walking and healthy enough to actually do harder exercises do it. You will notice from a time perspective that you are burning more calories.

Angel, Good job keep it up and do more if you can.

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Just clarifying, but if someone weighs 280lbs and can't move at a steady pace for an hour walking, they have medical issues beyond just weight. Such as stiff joints, atrophied muscles, etc. Like I said previously, walking is great if that's literally all you can do because of medical issues, which someone who is 280 and hasn't walked more than 5ft in a year is going to have plenty of. Once you no longer have medical issues that prevent you from doing literally anything else, walking is only better than nothing and worse than literally everything else.

If I had to lug around an extra 125lbs, walking three miles would be difficult. But that's not comparing the states accurately and leads to ambiguously "wrong" conclusions.

The best thing you can do for your feet is to find a reputable place to have a gait analysis done. They'll take video of you walking/running, calculate the degree to which you pronate or supinate, and give you a list of current shoes that suit you. They may also recommend an orthotic for those shoes if you're in really bad shape.

You guys who are getting caught up in telling someone who is struggling with weight and bad eating habits that they need to be as efficient as possible. Except you're forgetting that exercise isn't needed at all to be efficient at weight loss. How you eat is 99% of that battle.

Excercise is an extra.

We had some friends over and they wanted pizza last night. My body is NOT used to that kind of crap food anymore. It was good pizza but it made me really nauseous. My body has adapted to the low calorie healthy diet I've been on.

Honestly your body always "hated" that greasy lethargy inducing food you just didn't realize how crappy it made you feel because you felt that way all the time. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels is pretty true. But delicious food also makes that race a photo finish.

Eh, if you are mentally telling yourself it's terrible, then sure. Otherwise the human body is basically designed to love things with fat and sugar in them. A shitty, greasy ass burger at the end of a week of eating broccoli and chicken is ridiculously good tasting, and you telling yourself that "omg I feel terrible!" is a cognitive response to the fact that you "know" you shouldn't be eating that type of food. The human body doesn't recoil at carbs or fats, literally ever. That's a mindset thing 100% of the time.

Rezz_sl said:

Eh, if you are mentally telling yourself it's terrible, then sure. Otherwise the human body is basically designed to love things with fat and sugar in them. A shitty, greasy ass burger at the end of a week of eating broccoli and chicken is ridiculously good tasting, and you telling yourself that "omg I feel terrible!" is a cognitive response to the fact that you "know" you shouldn't be eating that type of food. The human body doesn't recoil at carbs or fats, literally ever. That's a mindset thing 100% of the time.

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We're talking about things like soda, pizza and processed garbage. Not ground beef in patty form.. And being a fatass definitely makes you feel like shit and sugar crashes are also a real thing. Come on now... 100% a mindset thing... cognitive response? You've got to be kidding me here man.

Yeah, the highly processed stuff definitely has an effect that is different from natural foods. I have a little experience with eating large quantities of processed food like pizza rolls and Doritos, and it absolutely leads to feelings of lethargy, sluggishness, and overall haziness. The difference is that, like has been pointed out, if that is all you eat, you get used to your body feeling that way. Once you get your body used to real food, you much more acutely notice the effects processed food has on your body.

Khane_sl said:

We're talking about things like soda, pizza and processed garbage. Not ground beef in patty form.. And being a fatass definitely makes you feel like shit and sugar crashes are also a real thing. Come on now... 100% a mindset thing... cognitive response? You've got to be kidding me here man.

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And I'm 100% positive that the human body doesn't taste those things and go into revulsion mode. The fact that it is an issue for people to break themselves from that is uh, pretty good proof that the human body doesn't immediately go "Oh shit, processed food? NO FUCK YOU." at any point. The people who eat healthily will have a mental difference in how they feel that isn't related at all to how their body actually reacts to those. Sorry if you think that once you eat "healthy" that your body is going to have a physical negative response to food that doesn't fit your paradigm. So yeah, I'm gonna say that the people who eat reasonably for a few weeks/months are not having a physical revulsion action that isn't mostly situated in how they feel about their weightloss goals and eating habits when they eat a pizza. The burger anecdote was just that; an anecdote. But factually, the body doesn't discriminate on that level, processed or not. That's 100% a mental thing.

And to McCheese, you're comparing apples to hand grenades. Yes, food that is high in fats and calories that you aren't using are going to make you feel lethargic. Doesn't matter if they are processed or not, it just so happens that the food you are referencing happens to have those attributes, and has nothing to do with the "processing" at all. You're telling yourself there's a difference; that's the only actual difference. My chemistry might be a bit rusty, but I'm positive the state that food enters your body in, processed or not, has nothing to do with how your body handles that food in the long run. That shit is entirely mental.

The biggest issue I had when eating super clean was fried food, I'd go out and get tater tots or mozzarella sticks and it was like almost instant stomach ache and liquid poops.

I don't think the body likes eating oil in general, regardless of where it comes from. I haven't done any research on it though, so maybe there's a legit reason why you would have that reaction. Even after eating nothing but salads and chicken/tuna/salmon for several months (not my most recent weight loss adventure) I could still eat a bag of fries and a burger and have zero issues. Were you able to eat fried foods prior without issue?