Surprisingly quick initial weight loss

A wee thread resurrection - to bring a bit of realism and honesty. You see these threads that look like something of a success story and then end. The reality for me, is during my adult life I've lost up to 3-4 stone about 3-4 times and then put it back on later. The results described above turned out to be another one of those episodes.

So roll on 3.5 years. 16 stone 2 was as low as I got. I recall we went on a week's holiday and afterwards I didn't train as often. My young baby became a small boy and we had another one. I started priortising family time over training. I started eating whatever the wife and kids were having because it was easy. 3 times weekly gym visits with a little extra training at home dwindled to once a week where I was rarely pushing myself. It's a slippery slope. The weight gradually crept back up - a little at a time. But I let it get past points where I'd told myself I'd intervene - 17 stone, 18 stone - and then it got further.

So earlier this year I went over 19 stone again. There are glimmers of hope. Pound for pound, I'm faster and stronger than 2010. Thankfully the rise was arrested and I've gradually got back down to 18 stone 6 lbs. Made time for more running again recently and I'm managing a couple of miles most days. I ran a sub 12 minute mile and a half last week (still a minute off my 2.5 stone ligher best 2010 time though). I still occasionally beat PBs for press-ups or sit ups in a couple of minutes (51 and 61 respectively recently).

But yeah - reality check. It seems I can't really slack off on the training or diet much without consequences. The diet that helped me shift weight before does little on its own without training (tried that) so either I train, get stricter with the food or need a more radical rethink.

So hey - wish me luck!
 
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Uriel said:
So hey - wish me luck!
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Not to be harsh mate, but you really must be eating far beyond what you need to put on so much weight, even if you take 'ease' into consideration and the lack of exercise.

What is your average daily food intake like?
 
I think it's not so much typical median food as the 'little' extras here and there that add up. Midweek breakfast, lunch and daytime snacks all fairly healthy. It goes pear shaped at evenings and weekends.

I think too many evening meals are based around starchy carbs, which don't fill me up so I either eat large portions or snack later. Then I'm not strict enough about what I snack on (often sandwiches, more rarely biscuits or cake if we have it in). I've found eating more lean protein and veg helps fill me up and sets me up for the rest of the evening but the missus loves pasta, pizza, bread potatoes etc. She eats smaller portions though and has never been overweight.

Going running or to the gym in the evening seems to help with food intake. I guess I actually eat less on those evenings

Weekends are another matter. There's often a cooked breakfast once a week and a roast dinner with pudding at my mum's. It all adds up.
 
Sounds like boredom and bad habit more than anything. Also, drink more water you might find you feel less hungry overall.
 
Oh, definitely bad habits but it doesn't take much in terms of excess food intake to put on a stone on in a year (or 3 in 3). Supposedly just a couple of biscuits or a fruit corner yogurt a day would be enough.
 
Do what I do:

2 meals per day

the only fluid your allowed to drink is water - nothing else unless i'm at a party then i'll have beer, spirits, wine, whatever, etc.

first meal of the day at 2 PM and it's oats with soya milk (no sugar, etc) because i'm lactose intolerant.

you will feel hungry for the first 3 days but your body will get used to it after a while and now i never feel hungry before 2pm, large bowl of oats keeps me full for hours too and is one of the healthiest things you can eat.

when it comes to losing weight it's 75% diet and 25% activity, so your diet is obviously completely wrong.

my second meal of the day is whatever everyone else is eating, usually pasta, pizza, curry, burgers, whatever, etc (all home made, no ready meal or pre prepared crap).

because i'm so strict with my fluids and my first meal of the day and constantly fasting between my last meal til 2pm the next day i find it easy to maintain a lower weight than before.
 
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probably average around 1600-1800 calories a day

i do have a cheat day but i don't assign myself a cheat day, i just have one whenever i feel like one, that could be like once every 2-3 weeks, just depends on my mood

Uriel said:
Sounds horrible. I'm pretty sure I'd get terribly bored by that regieme and give up before too long. All credit to you for keeping at it. How long have you maintained this?
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a few years now.

i feel amazing, look a lot better and i can now run 5k at an incline under 26 minutes, before i struggled to do 6k in an hour.

managed to do a pull up for the first time ever in my life too, etc last year.

i would rather have an extremely boring first meal of the day and drink water then have whatever i want in the evening and look and feel like this rather than look in the mirror in disgust.

i wasn't huge before either, i've lost about 15kg, that's it but I now look and feel 100 times better. i've made huge improvements to my cardio, i can now run for a full five a side match and not get tired.

what would you rather do when your on holiday walk along the beach with your top off and look good? or be too embarrassed to take your top off?

it sounds boring but if you want it bad enough you will do whatever it takes to succeed.

your a yo-yo dieter, the reason why you cannot stay thin is because your not strict and have a plan that you need to stick to for life.

i have my plan it's very simple and it works. your looking for a fix, their is no fix you need to change your lifestyle and diet permanently.

i only drink alcohol once every 2-3 months now or when im on holiday, etc. before it would be 2 times per week, etc.
 
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Uriel said:
Sounds horrible. I'm pretty sure I'd get terribly bored by that regieme and give up before too long. All credit to you for keeping at it. How long have you maintained this?
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You have to decide what you want more, being able to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, or to lose weight and keep it off.

I have a fairly strict regime, in that for meals I'll eat pretty close to the same thing every day, there are variations but everything except the odd night out or whatever is pre-planned for that day.

I've lost over 10 and a half stone and kept it off for over 3 years so far, if you want to lose weight bad enough you'll do what needs to be done.
 
Uriel said:
I think it's not so much typical median food as the 'little' extras here and there that add up. Midweek breakfast, lunch and daytime snacks all fairly healthy. It goes pear shaped at evenings and weekends.

I think too many evening meals are based around starchy carbs, which don't fill me up so I either eat large portions or snack later. Then I'm not strict enough about what I snack on (often sandwiches, more rarely biscuits or cake if we have it in). I've found eating more lean protein and veg helps fill me up and sets me up for the rest of the evening but the missus loves pasta, pizza, bread potatoes etc. She eats smaller portions though and has never been overweight.

Going running or to the gym in the evening seems to help with food intake. I guess I actually eat less on those evenings

Weekends are another matter. There's often a cooked breakfast once a week and a roast dinner with pudding at my mum's. It all adds up.
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You're right about eating lots of carbs in the evening. Where is it going to go?

I was turning into a bit of a porker until October last year when I'd had enough and began dieting. Big healthy breakfast, decent sized healthy lunch and then very little for evening meal/supper. Cut out bread completely, no junk food at all and just getting used to the fact that feeling a bit hungry towards the end of the day was ok. Lost 2 stone in 3 months, still nowhere near as fit as I used to be but training is so much easier now I've shed a bit of weight and although I'm going to need to increase my calorie intake as I train harder the routine of loading the front of the day with food and going to bed hungry will stay.
 
I find that running shorter distances to the point of pain works OK appetite wise. Longer, steady state cardio does make me hungry. I've always combined it with press ups, pull ups, sit ups (when I can be bothered). Given I am heavy, it's lifting heavy stuff! I never stopped doing weights at the gym either. Short and intense brings performance gains too.

What makes me skeptical about the type of regime psycho sonny advocates is I'm pretty sure I could have kept losing weight and kept it off, had I stuck to what I was doing back in 2010. That was 3 nice healthy meals a day (enjoyable ones) plus healthy snacks and less strict at weekends. The bad habits and laziness are avoidable with a bit of will power. The problem wasn't with the plan. The problem was I gradually stopped doing it.

Also - 1600 to 1800 calories a day? I'd be concerned about losing lean body mass.
 
If you know roughly how many calories are required to maintain/gain/lose weight, break that calorie figure down into a sensible macro split (protein/carb/fat numbers based off lean bodyweight) then you don't need meal plans and can eat a varied diet each day/week where nothing is forbidden as long as it fits in with those numbers and you're getting plenty of nutritious stuff in. Even with 'healthy' diet it's easy to get fat if you eat too much; excess is excess, doesn't matter if that comes from nuts and berries or ice cream.

You can use something like MyFitnessPal to track your intake as they have pretty much everything in their database, cave save macros for recipes you make etc. Adjust macros if loss is too slow/fast, monitor progress, see results. If you search on YouTube for 'a full day of eating' you'll see a lot of different people with different macros showing you how they hit their numbers each day.
 
It's easy enough to read labels and do it in my head, unless I'm eating out.

I have some salter BIA scales that estimate lean body mass and BMR in terms of calories. According to those I have a 2400 kcal/day BMR. I take the figures with a pinch of salt though.
 
bainbridge said:
You're right about eating lots of carbs in the evening. Where is it going to go?

I was turning into a bit of a porker until October last year when I'd had enough and began dieting. Big healthy breakfast, decent sized healthy lunch and then very little for evening meal/supper. Cut out bread completely, no junk food at all and just getting used to the fact that feeling a bit hungry towards the end of the day was ok. Lost 2 stone in 3 months, still nowhere near as fit as I used to be but training is so much easier now I've shed a bit of weight and although I'm going to need to increase my calorie intake as I train harder the routine of loading the front of the day with food and going to bed hungry will stay.
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Meal timing is largely irrelevant unless you're performing several glycogen-depleting events in a day in which case performance would benefit from eating in between etc. If he ate all his carbs in the morning and at the end of the day it still all totals up to a net energy excess, he'll put on fat. Same as if it was broken up into anywhere from 1 to 6 meals - the bigger meals just take longer to digest.

People have success with 1000 different dietary fads which have nothing in common except, unsurprisingly, calorie restriction below TDEE. It's really about finding what works with your food preferences, eating when it's convenient for you and then tracking intake, as if you don't know how much you're eating, you're shooting in the dark.
 
Uriel said:
It's easy enough to read labels and do it in my head, unless I'm eating out.

I have some salter BIA scales that estimate lean body mass and BMR in terms of calories. According to those I have a 2400 kcal/day BMR. I take the figures with a pinch of salt though.
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Try this:
http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/

If you're overweight it's preferable to use the calculation that takes LBM into account, especially when it comes to protein intake. It's just a guide though, ultimately the scales/tape measure will dictate if you need to raise/lower things - it's a good tool for getting the macro split though.
 
Slobbo said:
Give up the cardio - it does nothing but make you eat more
Lift heavy stuff
Replace processed food with real meat and veg
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LOL

Cardio does nothing but make you eat more?

So it doesn't make your heart stronger, fitter, healthier? It doesn't improve your health and fitness vastly? etc, etc.

there's 1000 different reasons to do cardio and yes the calories you burn off you will want to replenish some of them if your on a calorie deficit diet and looking to lose weight.

I could say the same about weightlifting making people eat more due to "bulking", etc.

I know a lot of people on here don't like cardio but the health benefits are clear for anyone to see, i would like to see someone who does zero cardio try and keep up with me in a 5 a side match.

Uriel said:
I find that running shorter distances to the point of pain works OK appetite wise. Longer, steady state cardio does make me hungry. I've always combined it with press ups, pull ups, sit ups (when I can be bothered). Given I am heavy, it's lifting heavy stuff! I never stopped doing weights at the gym either. Short and intense brings performance gains too.

What makes me skeptical about the type of regime psycho sonny advocates is I'm pretty sure I could have kept losing weight and kept it off, had I stuck to what I was doing back in 2010. That was 3 nice healthy meals a day (enjoyable ones) plus healthy snacks and less strict at weekends. The bad habits and laziness are avoidable with a bit of will power. The problem wasn't with the plan. The problem was I gradually stopped doing it.

Also - 1600 to 1800 calories a day? I'd be concerned about losing lean body mass.
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your concerned at losing lean body mass when your obese? your priorities are all wrong, forget muscle mass completely it can be regained or maintained easily enough. i doubt you have muscles like jay cutler that you need to worry about them, lots of fat people use this excuse that they have a lot of muscle mass, when it's all lies to make themselves feel better.

fact is your obese and if you want to stay lean and healthy you need to lose weight, preferably bodyfat but it's impossible to lose just bodyfat unless you do everything 100% scientifically right.

cut calories, increase activity and continue to do this until you can look at yourself in the mirror and feel you have achieved what you want to look like.

after that you can then see what works for you in maintaining that look, whether it be a strict diet like myself or a combination of diet and training.

most bodybuilders advocate weights and eating 300g of protein a day, yet every average natural bodybuilder doesn't look any different to me who does cardio, weights and eats a lot less than 100g of protein on an average day.
 
Yes, I'd be concerned about losing lean body mass. Less metabolically active tissue and you end up permanently needing to eat only 1600-1800 calories a day just to maintain weight. Eat like a normal person and you balloon. Sounds counter-productive when I have no desire to permanently skip breakfast and live on oatmeal.

I'm far more interested in athletic / sports performance than how I look though so this 'no cardio' malarkey sounds daft to me too. It's amazing how quickly five a side performance etc deteriorates if you don't do some regular cardio.

Edit: losing some lean mass along with fat is practically inevitable but I'd rather keep it to a minimum.
 
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