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Which weight loss method is the most successful?
Replies
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Seems obvious senalay788 is not being serious.9
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tgillies003 wrote: »senalay788 wrote: »senalay788 wrote: »
Speaking as 46+ years a vegetarian (and fairly knowledgeable about fully plant-based eating):
No. Way, way no. Experience based no.
It was easy to get fat, then obese, as a vegetarian, and stay that way for decades, even when I added a pretty aggressive athletic training regimen (yes, while staying obese, for over a decade doing it). There are fat and obese vegans. I routinely try to talk people here out of becoming vegetarian/vegan if their *only* motivation is weight loss (or health, for that matter). It's a blind alley, a tangent, a red herring, an unnecessary complication, a distraction from the core issue . . . .
There is no magical way of eating, for weight loss. And even if there were, it wouldn't be vegetarianism. NopeNopeNope.
Tough crowd.
If not keto and not vegan then maybe......... paleo. Yes, paleo. Sorry for the confusion.
@senalay788
I think what Ann is getting at here is: for weight loss, it does not matter what you are eating; what matters is how many calories are you eating as compared to how many calories you are expending.
Caloric deficit = weight loss
Caloric surplus = weight gain
Neutral calories = maintain weight
All of these can happen regardless of whether you are doing keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian,etc.
I think the point is that senalay's trolling. 🙄 Which I'm not flagging, FTR, just in case someone else does.4 -
Does Noom pay NBC for advertisement? I always find it difficult to trust many sources because they often have a vested interest in a certain program being used.
The other day I was trying to find the best daily planner for hitting goals. I typed this in the search bar and got advertisements or articles which were actually advertisements. I still don't know which is the best... but someone got $75 from me for a 2021 planner.
So many people reach their goals in different ways. I know people who have lost quickly or with fad diets and have actually kept it off for years. I also know people who lost weight in a ways I respect that gained it all back.
I think that motivation/determination plays a key role-- and how people power through is going to be different for everyone. I find it easy to lose weight when I have been losing weight because I'm excited about what I am doing and can see the results.1 -
breefoshee wrote: »Does Noom pay NBC for advertisement? I always find it difficult to trust many sources because they often have a vested interest in a certain program being used.
The other day I was trying to find the best daily planner for hitting goals. I typed this in the search bar and got advertisements or articles which were actually advertisements. I still don't know which is the best... but someone got $75 from me for a 2021 planner.
So many people reach their goals in different ways. I know people who have lost quickly or with fad diets and have actually kept it off for years. I also know people who lost weight in a ways I respect that gained it all back.
I think that motivation/determination plays a key role-- and how people power through is going to be different for everyone. I find it easy to lose weight when I have been losing weight because I'm excited about what I am doing and can see the results.
Dunno. If motivation/determination were universally key, I'd still be obese (or be obese again), like I was for 3 decades or so, rather than being at a healthy weight 5+ years after losing. "Know thyself" is pretty important . . . personalization, to put it more prosaically - as you say, different people succeed in different ways.
I like this, lots, as a distillation:
If I were one of those annoying people who say "boom!" a lot, I'd say it here.8 -
senalay788 wrote: »tgillies003 wrote: »senalay788 wrote: »senalay788 wrote: »
Speaking as 46+ years a vegetarian (and fairly knowledgeable about fully plant-based eating):
No. Way, way no. Experience based no.
It was easy to get fat, then obese, as a vegetarian, and stay that way for decades, even when I added a pretty aggressive athletic training regimen (yes, while staying obese, for over a decade doing it). There are fat and obese vegans. I routinely try to talk people here out of becoming vegetarian/vegan if their *only* motivation is weight loss (or health, for that matter). It's a blind alley, a tangent, a red herring, an unnecessary complication, a distraction from the core issue . . . .
There is no magical way of eating, for weight loss. And even if there were, it wouldn't be vegetarianism. NopeNopeNope.
Tough crowd.
If not keto and not vegan then maybe......... paleo. Yes, paleo. Sorry for the confusion.
@senalay788
I think what Ann is getting at here is: for weight loss, it does not matter what you are eating; what matters is how many calories are you eating as compared to how many calories you are expending.
Caloric deficit = weight loss
Caloric surplus = weight gain
Neutral calories = maintain weight
All of these can happen regardless of whether you are doing keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian,etc.
I think the point is that senalay's trolling. 🙄 Which I'm not flagging, FTR, just in case someone else does.
Just having some fun here. Getting the regular posters ready for the January slew of questions from people looking for the magical way for weight loss.
🙄😒
Your penance is to answer a whole bunch of those January questions . . . and answer well. We'll be watching. 😉😆11 -
breefoshee wrote: »Does Noom pay NBC for advertisement? I always find it difficult to trust many sources because they often have a vested interest in a certain program being used.
The other day I was trying to find the best daily planner for hitting goals. I typed this in the search bar and got advertisements or articles which were actually advertisements. I still don't know which is the best... but someone got $75 from me for a 2021 planner.
So many people reach their goals in different ways. I know people who have lost quickly or with fad diets and have actually kept it off for years. I also know people who lost weight in a ways I respect that gained it all back.
I think that motivation/determination plays a key role-- and how people power through is going to be different for everyone. I find it easy to lose weight when I have been losing weight because I'm excited about what I am doing and can see the results.
Dunno. If motivation/determination were universally key, I'd still be obese (or be obese again), like I was for 3 decades or so, rather than being at a healthy weight 5+ years after losing. "Know thyself" is pretty important . . . personalization, to put it more prosaically - as you say, different people succeed in different ways.
I like this, lots, as a distillation:
If I were one of those annoying people who say "boom!" a lot, I'd say it here.
Maybe it is the way that motivation/determination are defined. Initially, I only typed "motivation" but on second thought added "determination". Because there is a reality where one simply determines to stick to something-- be it easy and most satisfying or not. I don't think that being determined has to really be white knuckling through something.
I do like to be motivated and excited about a plan, but that comes and goes. But I do find motivation to be a catalyst of sorts. When it is there, it propels me through.1 -
Eat Less
Move More
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
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I think it's not so much about what is the best method, it is what best works for people individually, what works for one person, may not suit another. Personally I've tried loads of things, Slimming World (they kept telling me I wasn't eating enough, but the amount they wanted me to was causing me to gain weight.. Weightwatchers, same thing happened as Slimming World. Dukan diet which didn't work for me because the food I had to eat was ending up very different form what my family ate and it got too expensive or ended up me having the same things days in a row. and even starving myself on 500kcals a day (that was fun and no it didn't work). Other than the starving myself one, the other plans have worked fine for other people.
I've always had problems with bread but up until last year, I could get away with having a bit every now and again. Long story short I ended up in hospital with sepsis after my intestines nearly perferated, I wasn't even eating bread, but I was eating things with flour/wheat in without realising, on the day I had to go to hospital due to sever pain, I'd had mushy peas (I didn't know they had flour in lol).
So I had to totally give up anything with wheat in and I started losing weight, so I decided then to start exercising more (walking, rowing machine etc) and I started counting calories with a view of, well if it works brilliant but if it doesn't fine I'm just going to do it anyway. So far, since before christmas (with a break christmas eve, day and new years eve and day) I've lost 41lb, and although I do try to fill half a plate with vegetables (other than potatoes I tend to put on weight with those) I eat what everyone else in my family eats, which means no extra spending and I also eat what I want and not worry about it as long as it's within my calorie allowance and I've had fruit/veg (I won't lie, I don't particulary like fruit and veg). What has really worked for me too, is buying a digital scale, rather than guestimating the measurments of what I was eating, which is what I did before.
However, just as other things haven't worked for me, what I do may not work for someone else and I think it's just about finding what works for you, things like Slimming World can work for some people because of the social aspect (I'm an anti-social sod and the thought of sitting around with people made me dread going to meetings, which didn't help matters).
I also think it's about mind-set too, I have found something that works for me and I don't feel like I'm depriving myself so it's just become my normal way of eating now. I do still have problems though which I know are psychological, I weigh myself every day which I know I shouldn't but I feel like I'll mess up if I don't, and if the scales go up or even stay the same, in my head its a disaster and I'm a total failure but before when I was doing the other diet plans that I didn't particularly enjoy, I'd totally give up and go off the rails if that happened but I don't now.
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I tried this diet once where I entered my activity level and weight, sex, age into an app. Then, I ate 1750 calories for 10 months, with additional calories given for whatever exercises I did. Worked amazing! 50 lbs in one year. I had already lost 30 by exercising, but had stalled.
I wish I could think of the name of it...
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The one you’ll follow. It’s all about the calorie deficit.3
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I did noom. I did WW. I did Jenny Craig. I’m doing better just tracking calories and activity on MFP. I think I had to be in the right place mentally to do the work.7
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The one that YOU can do and maintain afterward.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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The one that helps me keep the weight off that I lost.1
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Weight loss is caused by being in a calorie deficit. All weight loss methods have the same goal a calorie deficit.
The best weight loss method is one that best helps you reach your calorie deficit, and hopefully keep the weight off.
I don't follow any named diets.
This, this is all that matter for weightloss
How you do that, is totally up to the person, you could be eating only dog biscuits for all i care (i heard they are relly low in calories)
But law of physics is what matters here1 -
My personal story: I started running (trained for half marathons) while also doing a low-carb diet. I lost 10 pounds in 6 months as a result. Then I decided to add carbs to avoid further weight loss. When I did that, I ended up being able to run faster-- I used to run a 10k at a pace of 10:30 min/mi before but after including carbs in my diet was able to run at 8:45 min/mi. That made my body burn more calories and I lost another 10 pounds within a period of 2 months. In conclusion, physiology is messy -- and probably why this discussion topic exists in the first place. But I would hypothesize that if I hadn't done the low-carb diet initially, the rest would not have happened.5
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My personal story: I started running (trained for half marathons) while also doing a low-carb diet. I lost 10 pounds in 6 months as a result. Then I decided to add carbs to avoid further weight loss. When I did that, I ended up being able to run faster-- I used to run a 10k at a pace of 10:30 min/mi before but after including carbs in my diet was able to run at 8:45 min/mi. That made my body burn more calories and I lost another 10 pounds within a period of 2 months. In conclusion, physiology is messy -- and probably why this discussion topic exists in the first place. But I would hypothesize that if I hadn't done the low-carb diet initially, the rest would not have happened.
Anecdotally, I feel like this isn't an uncommon experience. People may try some methods successfully earlier in their weight management process and as their lifestyle changes or fitness goals change, they may adapt/change.
Does your story mean low carbohydrate didn't work for you? Just because something doesn't work FOREVER doesn't mean it doesn't work. I loved walking on a treadmill early in my weight management efforts -- it was easy for me to access a treadmill and very non-threatening as a form of exercise. Now I'd rather do almost anything else than walk on a treadmill, but I'm where I'm at today because I started with that.6 -
Exercise, specifically table push-aways and fork/spoon putdowns.7
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Move more. Eat less.2
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It has to be a plan that doesn’t cause extreme hunger all the time. I person can fight their own body only for so long.
Along with that it needs to be something you can do long term.
If you feel restricted by what or how much you eat then it may get the pounds off but it is not something that will work long term.3 -
80% lost weight.. how much weight? How long? What did you eat before you started?
I can eat just meat & eggs, and lose 3-4 lbs. a day, for a couple weeks. Do we count water weight, and note diets which have a diuretic effect? Do we look at long term success. Do we note that you had a big " last meal ", and gained 5 lbs. the day you started, and then lost weight immediately!! Does that count as losing weight?
Most of us have lost weight on dozens of diets.. but they didn't end up working for many of us.
The best diet is one where you have no desire to eat off plan, no cravings or hunger, so you eat the proper amount, and feel great.. and helps you get to a healthy weight, and causes no other health concerns. That isn't the same for everyone.. in fact I doubt ANY diet works for the majority, and there are many ways to do EACH diet.
I eat low carb, for example, but cheese causes me to gain weight. So does diet pop. I don't eat bacon, because salt is an issue. Oher people do different levels of LC, and eat foods I skip, like fruit, and I may eat more of another food, like eggs. I eat eggs every day. We have dietary categories, but may eat completely different forms of the diet.. same as vegans, eating different vegetables, or other non-meat products. A person who eats tofu, may not like a vegan diet without it, and vice versa.
If it works, stick to it, and keep repeating.. and be healthy.. stop worrying if it is the healthiest diet.. for YOU it is, and THAT is all that matters.0 -
Ive not read the replies and im positive this has been said but the most successful one is ....
the one you will stick to and that you will be able to maintain even after you have reached your goal.2 -
Long term, have no idea, they all fail miserably on a % basis. There are some long term success stories for every diet and for me personally it's down 45 lbs from my heaviest 15 years ago and now maintain by controlling my carb intake. I never count calories and if I feel my cloths getting a little tight I'll just keep the carbs on the lower levels for a while, then I'm good. For me it works like a well tailored suit.2
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I read a meta-analysis several years back on long term success of diet approaches, and by far the most successful one was one that I've never heard talked about or marketed.
The approach was simply to have people project forward to how their body would feel *after* eating as opposed to focusing on how they would feel *while* eating. If subjects focused on the feeling after the eating is done, they naturally moderated their intake and chose healthier options, and had the best long term success with weight loss.
I wish I could track down the meta-analysis, or even the study, but I originally read it about a decade ago in school when I was my heaviest. Suffice to say, I use this approach myself, lost from obese down to a low-healthy BMI and maintained for many years until recently when I gained a bit due to meds.
This approach also helps for motivation to exercise. Instead of thinking about the actual exercise, which can be discouraging because it's hard, instead focus on how great it will feel afterwards. This can be highly motivating.3 -
I've been on this weight loss journey for over 7 years and that is how long I have been logging here on MFP ... for several years, a healthy, balanced diet with exercise and following CICO worked. I lost over 50 pounds and then maintained for quite a while. Then perimenopause hit with full force and all the above no longer applied. After gradually gaining back 25 pounds over several years, all the while logging my food, exercising and staying under my overall calorie goal and not losing weight, I got tired of working harder and decided to work smarter instead.
I can blame hormones to a certain extent but then I also needed to start shaking things up a bit so I tweaked my macros to 35% protein, 35% fat and 30% carbs. I am not 100% successful BUT I have lost about 12 pounds since May ... slow and steady. I think I needed more protein for sure in my diet and I have to work hard to get enough but I still rarely meet my protein goal (I come really close though) and I also always seem to go over a little on the carbs (but way less than I have before). Also, based on weekly totals, I have been able to lower my sugar consumption substantially. I think the sugar thing and the protein thing is what really helped.
Of course, perimenopause is like the ocean ... waves come crashing to shore but eventually the tides go out. That is basically what is going on hormonally. I am constantly having to tweak my eating plan and sometimes I get tired of it. It took almost a month for me to lose 1 pound! While I still want to lose 10-15 more pounds, right now my focus is more on health and staying fit.
Bottom line is I decided that time is going to pass whether I do something or not so I continue to make changes so that my body feels strong and that number on the scale goes down a little. I don't think there is any one truly successful weight loss method. Everyone has different health issues and body chemistry so there no one size fits all ... once I got past the fact that I wasn't necessarily failing at CICO, I was able to figure out what would work for me. I'm still a work in progress ...2 -
For my wife and I we definitely agree with being in a calorie deficit. However, we have found the mix of macros has huge impact on the rate that we lose weight.
Every "diet" we tried required 3-4 hours of weight lifting + 3-4 hours of cardio each week and a ~5500 calorie per week deficit and we lost about 1 pound per week.
We are now trying the Keto diet. After 2 weeks (13 days for me) with no exercise (yet) and a ~3500 calorie per week deficit and I have lost 11 pounds already.
I am calculating my weekly deficit by using the BMR MFP suggests minus the goal I set for myself multiplied by 7.
Your estimated BMR is: 2,022 calories/day
I set a goal for 500 calories less per day
2022-1522=500
500*7=3500
As far as hormones go what I can say with 100% certainty is this: Your metabolism is comprised of a production of hormones! The more out of natural balance, the more weight challenges one has - either under or over weight problems.
Jillian Michaels wrote a book - Master Your Metabolism: The 3 Diet Secrets to Naturally Balancing Your Hormones for a Hot and Healthy Body! An extremely eye opening look at our endocrine system and what exactly each of these hormones do. Just a thought.0 -
Weight watchers worked well for me. I lost 10 pounds in a week. Then I spent a week in bed, too tired for words. The next week I ate more, gained the weight back, but felt so much better. Repeat. Finally figured out this doesn’t work for me.
Next chapter. I subscribed to a local food service that delivered healthy meals. Lost a few pounds every week I was on it. When they went out of business, I went back to normal eating and slowly gained it all back.
Next chapter. Went to a wonderful dietician who told me what MFP now tells me about what and when to eat. She tried to teach me to do it myself, but I had so much to learn and I only saw her a few times. I lost 60 pounds in 6 months, felt great.
Life happened and I eventually gained most of it back.
Next chapter. Here I am.
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It's been hit on a bunch. But definitely here to 40th or whatever the count is at that there is no best method.
Step 1: Eat in a calorie deficit.
Step 2: Find some sort of program/plan/system that works best for you. I tell people all the time, I couldn't have lost 120 pounds doing a different method than what I did. I found what worked for me. Likewise, what worked for me wouldn't work for alot of other people. During my weight loss, my mom also lost 75 pounds. While we both ate in a calorie deficit, our approaches were very different - because we each did things that worked best for us individually.2
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