I used my leet physicist skillz and made a plot of my daily weight measurements for the past couple of months. Progress is not astoundingly rapid.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Edit: strong language advisory for the above link, although I think it's a very good read.
quote:Accomplishing worthwhile things isn’t just a little harder than people think; it’s ten or twenty times harder. Like losing weight. You make yourself miserable for six months and find yourself down a whopping four pounds. Let yourself go at a single all-you-can-eat buffet and you’ve gained it all back.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, the fortunate thing is that I haven't made myself miserable; knowing I was in for the long haul, I just cut back on servings, split the Indian takeout into three instead of two dinners, and suchlike. But it's still slow.
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
KoM, cutting the serving sizes is great, but have you changed what you eat? Less meat, less beer (if you drink beer), less sweets. Go for quality over quantity.
And are you any more active? I walk to campus virtually every day. It took me awhile to get used to it, but now the stroll to my office is a happy part of the day.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Half a pound a week (looks like that's roughly where you're at) isn't too bad.
Are you tracking what you're eating? I find that can be very helpful (and easy to do with modern technology, especially if you have a smartphone). For instance, I use MyFitnessPal on the iPhone, and can quickly locate just about anything I eat (or an approximation thereof). Just paying attention to what I'm eating (and how much) leads me to eat somewhat less, even though I haven't really tried to reduce it.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I used my leet physicist skillz and made a plot of my daily weight measurements for the past couple of months. Progress is not astoundingly rapid.
You're doing better than I am.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:KoM, cutting the serving sizes is great, but have you changed what you eat? Less meat, less beer (if you drink beer), less sweets. Go for quality over quantity.
Unfortunately, my lack of social skills as an undergraduate is now coming back to haunt me. Having never acquired a beer habit, I can't cut back on it. And I was already walking to campus daily.
I did also change what I eat to some extent, yes. I'm considering whether to buy a gaming console, for the fitness games.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
A few other tips:
Give up Soda and other carbonated drinks. Drink water and green tea.
Don't eat after 7:00 PM
Eat breakfast every morning
Have a large lunch and just a light dinner.
If that fails you could always try colonics. I heard the average 25 year old man has something like 10-15 pounds of rotting meat stuck in their digestive track. I don't know how accurate that is but I heard it on the radio, and you know that the radio is ALWAYS accurate!
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
If you can't cut back on the beer, compensate for it.
I roughly estimated a light beer as 100 calories, and a strong beer as 200 calories. Within a week of drinking a beer, I would try to walk (and now run) that number of calories off. This serves both as a good negative feedback on my beer consumption and as a motivator (i.e. guilt reliever) for exercise.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Good lord, colonics are not a weight loss solution. They're an eating disorder tool.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: If that fails you could always try colonics. I heard the average 25 year old man has something like 10-15 pounds of rotting meat stuck in their digestive track.
If you believe that, then I have a liver flush to sell you.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The White Whale: If you can't cut back on the beer, compensate for it.
I roughly estimated a light beer as 100 calories, and a strong beer as 200 calories. Within a week of drinking a beer, I would try to walk (and now run) that number of calories off. This serves both as a good negative feedback on my beer consumption and as a motivator (i.e. guilt reliever) for exercise.
I think you misunderstood me: The reason I can't cut back on beer is that I don't drink it. I guess I could compensate for imaginary beers, though.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
About as good as a colonic for weight loss: cut off a limb.
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
KoM, haha. Yeah. My bad.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I used my leet physicist skillz and made a plot of my daily weight measurements for the past couple of months. Progress is not astoundingly rapid.
You're doing better than I am.
Weren't you like thinner then a stick in that one family video you showed hatrack?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
When I look at pictures of myself from around 2004, yes, I was very scrawny, although annoyingly I still had a potbelly. I am 180cm and when I moved to the US I weighed 73 kg, 160 pounds - so, as you say, thinner than a stick. But this is no longer the case. It took me a while to realise that the cultural habits differed, and that just because a restaurant would give you a certain amount of food didn't mean you had to eat it all at one sitting.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I used my leet physicist skillz and made a plot of my daily weight measurements for the past couple of months. Progress is not astoundingly rapid.
The data do seem to show a downward trend. Have you fit a linear regression?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Nah, I couldn't be bothered. Looks like about two pounds a month.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
Ugh, I just weighed myself I have gained 15 pounds in two months.
Posted by Fitz (Member # 4803) on :
What's the logic behind not eating after 7:00PM or some other arbitrary time (I've heard anywhere from 5-8PM)? My understanding is that eating keeps your metabolism going, that you should eat several small meals a day rather than 3 big meals. Surely, eating a big meal an hour before bedtime is silly, but having an apple or some yogurt probably helps more than it hurts.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Ugh, I just weighed myself I have gained 15 pounds in two months.
That comes of not reading enough. Watching TV is fattening.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
As far as weight loss goes, a calorie is a calorie, whether it's consumed at 6 pm or 10 pm. However, there are two reasons why the "don't eat after -- p.m." can be a good rule to follow.
1. If you eat late at night and go to bed on a full stomach, you'll more likely suffer from indigestion, heartburn, and gas, which will make it hard for you to get a good night's sleep.
2. People who eat late at night are more likely to choose unhealthy food, or graze on snacks when they aren't really hungry. So many people find that if they set a time that they can't eat past, it helps minimize or eliminate the possibility of munching on a lot of high calorie foods.
Both of these considerations have to be weighted against your particular metabolism and daily schedule - if you operate better with many small meals throughout the day, if you tend to stay up late & get hungry, or if you exercise first thing in the morning before eating, it might be better for you to eat later at night, rather than having a strict cutoff.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Ugh, I just weighed myself I have gained 15 pounds in two months.
That comes of not reading enough. Watching TV is fattening.
I read much more than I watch TV, I think the problem has to do with me reading more than going out and getting even a little exercise.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: As far as weight loss goes, a calorie is a calorie, whether it's consumed at 6 pm or 10 pm
Are you sure this is true? Wouldn't a calorie consumed during an active time of the day stand a better chance of being used as energy, rather than stored as fat?
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
When I was working out hard and eating right (losing weight after I was done playing college football), I lost an average of two pounds a week. That was a series of drastic changes, though. Gym twice a day, no fattening foods, no alcohol, etc.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, the fortunate thing is that I haven't made myself miserable; knowing I was in for the long haul, I just cut back on servings, split the Indian takeout into three instead of two dinners, and suchlike. But it's still slow.
Heh, that's not slow dude. At that rate you lose 20 pounds in a year. That's an ideal speed- anything more than a pound a week and you will gain it back even faster. This is a pound every two weeks, that's fine.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, the fortunate thing is that I haven't made myself miserable; knowing I was in for the long haul, I just cut back on servings, split the Indian takeout into three instead of two dinners, and suchlike. But it's still slow.
Hm...try eating a good, healthy breakfast and smaller lunch and dinner.
Also exercise.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Also, your metabolism is higher during the day, which means you burn calories rather than store them. Eating later means more gets stored as fat.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
That's what lots of people say, but I'm pretty sure I've heard from multiple sources that that's a myth. (I can't seem to find a good source online one way or the other, not sure what to google).
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I have heard the "eating late" thing is a myth as well.
I'm not trying to lose weight, particularly (but I am trying to be more in shape) but I always eat before I sleep-- usually a bowl of cereal-- because I get so freaking hungry at that time.
If I don't eat, I just lie there being hungry.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: That's what lots of people say, but I'm pretty sure I've heard from multiple sources that that's a myth. (I can't seem to find a good source online one way or the other, not sure what to google).
How about simple laws of physics. Like, say, Conservation of Energy?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, yes. But just because you put a calorie into your digestive tract doesn't mean it has to be absorbed into the blood, and the rate at which that happens could well differ over the daily cycle, not to mention where the calorie is coming from. Some things are just hard to digest. And just because it's in the bloodstream doesn't mean it has to be stored as fat. And your energy use is not necessarily independent of the amount of calories in the bloodstream, so it doesn't even have to be the case that a calorie absorbed into the blood would otherwise have been fetched from your fat reserves. So conservation of energy is all very well, but when it comes to biology you have got to be careful, to think about flows in many places, and not make simplistic assumptions. Even in physics it's not always easy to keep track of where the energy goes.
I don't know what the data (if any!) say about this point; but the question is sufficiently complicated that I would not trust any argument not backed by a large double-blind study. Not even one from conservation of energy. Given the arguments presented so far, the correct thing for a scientist to say on the issue is: "I have no idea".
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
quote:Originally posted by T:man: Ugh, I just weighed myself I have gained 15 pounds in two months.
I hear you! My weight gain lately has been about that much.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Calories don't spend much time in the bloodstream; I imagine you mean in the liver.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Completely irrelevant to the point I was making.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Here's a blog post (from a blog aptly named Nerd Fitness) that compares the various scientific studies on the subject of eating late at night. I report, you decide, but I think the evidence heavily falls on the "a calorie is a calorie whenever you eat it".
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
And I was already walking to campus daily. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I guess I could compensate for imaginary beers, though.