Personal Log to losing weight

one part I don't understand though. Losing weight (fat) is about intake less cals than my body is using, as the body then uses the reserves of calories/energy from the fat - and this is the result of the weight loss.

Surely if my body isn't getting enough from my daily food intake even for the BMR functions, then my body will just cover the difference by using up more of the body fat content, which I'm trying to remove.
 
Your BMR will reduce as you begin to lose weight (more so mass), so your calorie intake will also need to decrease to maintain a calorie deficit. But if you're already only eating 1500 calories you're then going to need to cut from this down to 1250, then 1000, then 800? and/or increase energy expenditure... see my point?

Where as if you start at a much more reasonable figure you give yourself much more headroom when plateaus arrive. It's much less damaging to eat at or above BMR and create your deficit from activity if needed. By using the logic of the body being able to fuel and sustain itself from reserves you could very well not eat all week, effectively starve yourself thin...

As I said before, eat as much as you can whilst still promoting a sustainable rate of weight/fat loss.
 
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Remember it's a marathon not a sprint. As BennyC said, you'll have to reduce your daily calories as you lose weight to maintain your weight loss. You want to eat as many calories as you can while still losing weight.

I'd recommend upping your calories to say 2,500. Weigh a few times a week and take a weekly average. If you're not losing weight, drop your calories by 100 and check your progress the following week and adjust accordingly.
 
The perfect diet is the one that lets you lose fat, keeps you healthy and keeps you happy.

It's more psychological than biological - although researching some of the biological rules helps cut down the trial and error a lot! The issue is rarely what you eat or how much you exercise - if you weigh your food and yourself regularly you can work all that out in time. It's compliance, always compliance.


Some fun 'facts':

  • Your body can burn protein much faster to fuel activity, if you are on a low calorie diet, you may have very low stores of glycogen in your muscles and liver, if you force yourself to exercise fasted like this, your body will burn muscle - it has no choice. Short intense exercise is much less likely to cause this than long steady exercise.
  • Fat cells do burn calories (less than muscle but not as big a difference as you may think).
  • Eating more carbs and drinking alcohol makes you store water (i.e. put on water weight), drinking more water helps reduce water retention (i.e. lose water weight).
  • Your brain burns about 150g of carbs a day, your brain can't burn fat (ignoring extremely restrictive diets) so make sure you get this as a minimum.
  • Carbs and protein are about 4 kcal a gram, fat is about 9 kcal a gram.


Some opinion:

  • Weigh or measure everything you eat or drink.
  • Weigh yourself daily in the same condition, it will bounce around but you will see trends and how your body reacts to certain foods and activities.
  • Work out a macro nutrient ratio and stick to it (e.g. 20/40/40 f/p/c) and fit your calorie target around it.
  • Lift weights
  • Read https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1583333290 (I know, self help books are gay, but it's thought provoking about the psychological / emotional side)
 
Agreed with the sentiments that you basically want to o maximise the calories that still lets you loose weight. Similarly, you want to be looking for small losses in weight, not a bug jump which is A) likely water weight, B) not sustainable for very long, C) can have health effects.


You need to think long term. How will you eat for the rest of the year and the year after. Anything that is focused on loosing X pounds in Y months is doomed to failure long term. The second you stop you will be putting that weight straight back on and it will go on much faster than you dropped it. You need to think about a lifestyle change, not a short term diet. It needs to be sustainable, you need to enjoy eating and not stress over daily calories but look at the bigger picture.

Exercise is the best way I ahve found to help achieve this. Lots of CV exercise in zone 2 burns through a heck of a lot of calories, much of which comes from fat if you keep the intensity correct. Exercise isn't in itself the best way to loose weight but being as to consume an extra 500-1500 calories a day helps me enjoy larger plates of the food I like to eat and enjoy many more treats.
 
I personally don't think maintenance without exercise is likely with a sedentary job. Losing weight yes, at least down to a reasonable level. But calorie restriction forever? I just couldn't, I like pizza and beer too much.

I think long term, people who keep it off are those who've made exercise a hobby (be it sport, walking, gym or whatever).
 
Dave M said:
I think long term, people who keep it off are those who've made exercise a hobby (be it sport, walking, gym or whatever).
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Long term those that keep it off remain accountable and responsible for their calorie intake. More often than not they also tend to be active.

Peoples negligence when it comes to the energy content of foods is astounding and in my opinion the reason so many of the nation are overweight.

We eat what we want, rather than what we need. Whilst eating what we want can be encouraged, afterall food is to be enjoyed, if you do not exercise control and moderation then you are your own downfall.

The 80/20 rule for whole vs processed foods is a good way to satisfy cravings & desires without negatively affecting your health and ensuring you still have a nutrient dense diet. Equally ensuring a minimum of 10g fiber per 1,000 calories consumed forces fruit & vegetables in to your diet.

More often than not it's perceived as 'bad' to eat a few hundred calories of foods you enjoy every day but having a blow out which far exceeds that at the weekend as a reward for being good is considered fine... If you restrict foods from your diet that you want or enjoy when they are placed in front of you the majority of people do not possess the will power to not go off the rails and gorge. You can undo an entire weeks calorie deficit in one weekend blowout.

Edit: Another note. It takes 10 days for your daily average intake to reach the level of actual daily intake when reducing or increasing calories. For example, reducing from 2,500 calories to 2,000 calories, your 10 day moving average will not reach your current intake level until day 10 (thereabouts).

I would also recommend as suggested considering a 7 day moving average for your weight trend. This will smooth out any fluctuations in weight caused by meal timings, foreign foods and bowel movements/water retention :cool: and avoid making unnecessary premature adjustments to intake.
 
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Ace Modder said:
one part I don't understand though. Losing weight (fat) is about intake less cals than my body is using, as the body then uses the reserves of calories/energy from the fat - and this is the result of the weight loss.

Surely if my body isn't getting enough from my daily food intake even for the BMR functions, then my body will just cover the difference by using up more of the body fat content, which I'm trying to remove.
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In addition to what Benny said, the body can only metabolise so much fat over a given time period and it can also make the deficit up from more than just fat sources; running extremely heavy deficits runs the risk of you losing muscle, bone density etc. If you want to minimise LBM loss when dieting then excluding some very precise and miserable dietary protocols or hopping on certain anabolic steroids, you generally have to run a moderate deficit, maintain training intensity (use it or lose it sort of thing) and get plenty of dietary protein since in a deficit it'll end up getting used for all sorts of things, not just the usual growth/repair. This becomes more and more important the leaner you get.

There's also factors like NEAT to consider - the heavier your deficit, the more likely you are to feel lethargic and move around less and end up with a much lower TDEE, reducing the size of your deficit - this can often be a totally unconscious thing too, so going too low can end up being potentially counter-productive because you end up losing at the same rate as if you were eating more and being more active but with extra misery and hunger pangs.
 
Well done mate. I too am on the losing weight train atm. Well i've been on it since last Feb with some bumps in the road and a bit of time off over Xmas but well and truly back in the zone.

Helps that I've got a Mrs who is also very into this kind of thing and is an absolute beast when it comes to meal prep and food etc. One thing that's helped definitely is varying up the diet where possible especially with the food you are cooking. Eating a grilled chicken breast with broccoli and sweet potato will get boring very quickly.

Some of the things we've made over the past week (and in bulk batches so we have some dinners and teas ready done)

Turkey, egg and avocado breakfast bowls - spiced turkey mince, diced sweet potatoe, cherry tomatos, pepper all cooked up served with some sliced avocado and a couple of poached egg.

Fish curry - 2 packs of basa fillets from aldi cooked with broccoli, cauliflower, chopped toms, tomato puree, spices

Quorn chilli - sweet potatos, quorn mince, peppers, carrots, celery, onions loads of spices

Chicken massaman curry - admittedly we used a little one of those pre-made packs of paste but it didn't have any sugar in, only had to add a can of coconut milk and some potatos (not many) - we bulked it up by adding some green beans and roasted cauliflower.

Bluberry and banana breakfast muffins - not sure what exactly goes in here but theres flax seed and chia seed, bluberry and banana, banana protein powder and a few other bits. We have 2 for breakfast which is about 250 cals.

Another thing I've found helps with maintaining the gym is to vary up your routines. Use a programme if you want but if you just go and do the same thing day in day out that will also get boring very quickly.
The Mrs has some programme that we follow which is a 6 month one with 5-6 sessions worth of exercises a week and is more focused around weight training and a bit of cardio. I was a bit skeptical at first as i'd always thought that you didn't really lose weight by weight training but i've had consistently good results and can see the difference in shape and size of my muscles since starting, so that may be something to consider!

Good luck with it all though mate and don't live your life thinking you can never have a treat again. In the grand scheme of things a slice of cake or a beer is perfectly fine every once in a while. If you're maintaining exercise and your diet then don't sweat it!
 
Thanks ROSSI, I am not completely removing nice things from my diet, just reducing it to occasional treats.

The biggest thing I have done to reduce my poor diet is not actually food, it is fizzy pop and beer. On average I was drinking 5 cans of coke per day (not even diet coke) and maybe 8-10 pints lager/cider per week on average. I have now switched to water, this has been very hard, I think I had a minor addiction to the sugars and caffeine in the coke.

Friday night I was with friends at a restaurant, then drinks back at mine, normally this would involve in maybe 10 beers, but I had water and a lemonade when out, and 1 vodka with grape, apple and cranberry juice back at mine after the meal.

My other big bug bear was my twice weekly takeaway, which on occasion isn't bad, but it was the quantity of food I had, for example a dominos order would be a Large Pizza to myself, I dread to think what the cals were in that.
Combined with 0 exercise it was a terrible combination.

I know exactly where my flaws were.
When I ate home cooked meals I was eating healthy anyway - it was the exception nights of takeaways etc.
I have stopped with the crisps and chocolate completely now too, I was eating maybe 5 bags of crisps per week and maybe 8 chocolate bars. This is now a yogurt or some fruit.

As for boring foods, my cupboard is full of various herbs and spices, a sprinkle of chilli or mint or ginger etc, can make a boring meal quite enjoyable.
 
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When I was 17st+ it was the changes to my diet which made the most impact on weight loss and that was without doing any gym work.

As I have lost more the weight loss from purely dietary change has slowed hence why I go to the gym now. For the first time in my life I actually like going to the gym (don't like the 5:35am wake up call though!!!).

You'll notice a massive change though purely by cutting out the twice weekly take-aways, fizzy pop and beer etc. Water is the way to go! Im currently doing Dry Jan but I don't drink during the week normally anyway and only drink at the weekend if i'm going out or there is something on. When i have been completely T-total I actually enjoyed checking out some different coffees!

Remember there will probably be little hiccups along the way but just keep pressing on and you'll do great, i'm sure!
 
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good luck, over the years found out loads of helpful short term solutions, but never found a way to stop the binge eating coming back in at some point, usually at the 3-6month mark, and usually after a birthday/wedding or something else where it starts the binge eating back up.

how do you feel on such a diet? that in the OP has never worked for me, just constantly sleep and feel rubbish.
Where cutting out the high carb foods and upping the fat makes me feel great. I don't mean super low carbs, just not from rice, pasta, bread etc. still had 200g of carbs yesterday, but all from relatively low carb veg. essentially a meat and a big ******* mound of veg of some sort. Today making a kind of chicken Parmesan chicken breast to keep fat down, so can add a good bit of cheese, then in the tomato sauce add a good amount of spinach, carrots, celery etc.
 
There are a lot fo small things that can help.
E.g., if you make your plate to smal and unstaisying then you will give in to cravings for snacks later so sometimes having a proper sized meal will mean lower calories overall.


When you do snack eat things like a while carrot or whole apple. A whole apple takes much longer to digest than apple puree for example. Bulky high fiber vegetables will make you feel full longer than a banana etc.


have a big glass of water before eating a meal. This helps you feel full earlier. There is typically a delay between your stomach signalling your brain that it is full, so you continue eating and then only later feel stuffed, typically after we have taken a second helping.

Don't be afraid to not finish a plate and simply throw food away. There is no shame in throwing food away. Don;t feel guilty about starving children or the tails your mother told you about the poor. If you are not hungry don't force youself to polish off the plate.
 
Glaucus said:
how do you feel on such a diet? that in the OP has never worked for me, just constantly sleep and feel rubbish.
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Much better than I expected actually. I'm finding it easy. I think the fact I have a goal/target to aim for is making it much easier. Being best man for my Dads wedding in July is the motivation for me.



Tonights dinner was very nice.

2 x small chicken kievs,
2 x mini Jacket potato with some butter.
Lettuce, Tomato and Cucumber Side Salad with Mango Salad Dressing Sauce


2017-01-09%2017.45.28.jpg
 
^^ I think the key is making what you are eating look nice, and taste great, otherwise it is very easy to get bored and fall off the wagon. I actually like preparing food now, rather than just opening something processed and full of crap.
 
Well done so far on the journey. I weighed myself a few months ago and was 16st 5 and i don't know how but in the festive months I've actually lost weight as weighed myself last week and was at 15st 7.5lbs. I'm doing dry January too and cutting down on carbs and loading more vegetables on the plate. Everything being cooked from fresh too. Luckily I never had to come off the sugary drinks as never really had them.

I'm obese though as my height is 5'7 and at this weight definitely need to lose 2 or 3 stone. Haven't weighed in since 2nd Jan so be interesting this week what I've lost too.
 
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