The Secret to Weight Loss
ryan_powerlifter
Posts: 115 Member
If you clicked on this post I am assuming you want to know the number one secret to weight loss. Is it a magic pill? Is it a special kind of diet? Is it fasting? Is it a particular eating schedule? WHAT IS IT!?!?!
ok ok ok. The secret...is....CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT
You need to burn more calories per day than what you consume. Your fad diet doesn't matter, your fasting doesn't matter, there are no magic pills, and unfortunately a lot of you have been misinformed!
I have been at this for years. I can tell you the only thing you need to focus on is calories. All of your macronutrients are important, your body needs them all. Dont be scared of carbs, fats, and eat enough protein.
SIMPLE.
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Replies
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agreed.
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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Bugger! I was soooo ready for a fight with a spammer!
Well said, TO
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Well there is the little issue of also changing mindset and habits but physical weight loss is a very simple energy equation.8
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Here's a derived requirement: Apatite control.2
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100% agree. I will say that, for many people, despite the facts being simple, it is not always simple to execute for a variety of reasons. But, yes, I wish people would stay away from fad diets and BS supplements.2
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ryan_powerlifter wrote: »
If you clicked on this post I am assuming you want to know the number one secret to weight loss. Is it a magic pill? Is it a special kind of diet? Is it fasting? Is it a particular eating schedule? WHAT IS IT!?!?!
ok ok ok. The secret...is....CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT
You need to burn more calories per day than what you consume. Your fad diet doesn't matter, your fasting doesn't matter, there are no magic pills, and unfortunately a lot of you have been misinformed!
I have been at this for years. I can tell you the only thing you need to focus on is calories. All of your macronutrients are important, your body needs them all. Dont be scared of carbs, fats, and eat enough protein.
SIMPLE.
Your pictures of comparison show you've put this miracle diet knowledge to good work!! Congratulations! I knew this formula was what it took to lose weight but I admit I didn't truly *know* it was what I needed to do. I had to spend years of frustrating fad diets, even liquid diets and diet pills years ago, looking for that magic bullet to learn it was easier yet still harder than he!! to win this battle.
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Eat less. Move more. Or some combination of the two.4
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ryan_powerlifter wrote: »
If you clicked on this post I am assuming you want to know the number one secret to weight loss. Is it a magic pill? Is it a special kind of diet? Is it fasting? Is it a particular eating schedule? WHAT IS IT!?!?!
ok ok ok. The secret...is....CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT
You need to burn more calories per day than what you consume. Your fad diet doesn't matter, your fasting doesn't matter, there are no magic pills, and unfortunately a lot of you have been misinformed!
I have been at this for years. I can tell you the only thing you need to focus on is calories. All of your macronutrients are important, your body needs them all. Dont be scared of carbs, fats, and eat enough protein.
SIMPLE.
true... yes....but, simple in practice..... no....5 -
I’m so negative. I thought you were yet another one week user coming to preach to us.
Hear! Hear!!!! You speak gospel.2 -
The process is simple, the practice is not. It takes pure discipline and there will be a lot of failure along the way. What you learn and implement from the failure is up to you and will define the rest of your journey4
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Yep. CICO.
That said I'm not a 'use a lot of willpower and discipline, go all in' person. I've pretty consistently and intentionally done everything as easily as I possibly can from obese to healthy BMI. No cutting anything out, no doing workouts I don't like, just pure calorie counting and tracking, maintenance breaks, averaging over a week not a day, all of it. Actually easy? Not initially but still. As easy AS I CAN MAKE IT? Yep. Because I'm going to be doing this/eating and moving like this forever. I'm not going to make it one single bit harder than it needs to be, because if it is? I will quit. willpower runs out. Habits don't.8 -
Couldn't agree more, OP! Sometimes people here say "simple but not easy", and that makes sense to me. The objective formula is simple, the subjective practice has very individualized wrinkles and challenges.ryan_powerlifter wrote: »The process is simple, the practice is not. It takes pure discipline and there will be a lot of failure along the way. What you learn and implement from the failure is up to you and will define the rest of your journey
Well . . . if it universally took "pure discipline", I would've failed rather than being in year 5+ of maintenance. IMO, what it takes is a personalized strategy that works for the individual, exploits their personal strengths, circumvents their personal challenges, accommodates their personal eating/exercise preferences.
JMO, though.5 -
ryan_powerlifter wrote: »
If you clicked on this post I am assuming you want to know the number one secret to weight loss. Is it a magic pill? Is it a special kind of diet? Is it fasting? Is it a particular eating schedule? WHAT IS IT!?!?!
ok ok ok. The secret...is....CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT
You need to burn more calories per day than what you consume. Your fad diet doesn't matter, your fasting doesn't matter, there are no magic pills, and unfortunately a lot of you have been misinformed!
I have been at this for years. I can tell you the only thing you need to focus on is calories. All of your macronutrients are important, your body needs them all. Dont be scared of carbs, fats, and eat enough protein.
SIMPLE.
👏👏👏1 -
CICO has been medical advice forever. Success rate, not so good, 99% or there about failure rate. Reason? You did it wrong. 0
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I agree OP. However, I'm a believer in habits rather than discipline. Discipline can start you out right and put you on track, but for me, it eventually runs out. If I have the habit structure set up in that time frame, I just switch over. I now run on autopilot after 8 years.8
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wunderkindking wrote: »Yep. CICO.
That said I'm not a 'use a lot of willpower and discipline, go all in' person. I've pretty consistently and intentionally done everything as easily as I possibly can from obese to healthy BMI. No cutting anything out, no doing workouts I don't like, just pure calorie counting and tracking, maintenance breaks, averaging over a week not a day, all of it. Actually easy? Not initially but still. As easy AS I CAN MAKE IT? Yep. Because I'm going to be doing this/eating and moving like this forever. I'm not going to make it one single bit harder than it needs to be, because if it is? I will quit. willpower runs out. Habits don't.
QFT.0 -
I'm happy for you... but CICO has never worked for me.... I find many on here who lose that way have to eat so very little forever to maintain or workout like crazy. Yet those who lose with CICO.. are like a strict religious sect who think they're the only ones getting into heaven. They also, can never explain the dreaded plateau. If CICO works like science.. one should never stall in weight loss. But.. they do!
I eat more to lose more... I just eat the right things. I eat more often to lose and keep it off... and I exercise only for an hour at the most at a time. If not..over exercising works against weight loss efforts. I don't log. When I found the way that worked for me.. I lost all my weight so. much easier than the cico battle.0 -
I agree with you on fad diets. I have been around for many. Any diet that requires us to avoid a particular food, food group or macro to create some particular chemical balance (imbalance actually) to cause weightloss is not sustainable. Sure, some people say they felt great on the diet but they feel better because they likely traded junk food for better food. Still maintaining those imbalances is not sustainable.
Long term weight loss isn't as simple as CICO though. To succeed, we still have to make good choices so that we feed our bodies the nutrients it needs and we stave off hunger. We aren't supposed to walk around hungry all the time. If we waste our calories on a high calorie "something" that is mostly empty in terms of nutrients (bagel for breakfast comes to mind), we will be hungry later and be forced to choose between going over our calories for the day or going to bed hungry which leads to a bad night's sleep which then leads to more poor the choices the next day.
I find that when I want a snack, an apple is an excellent choice. I always want something else, like cookies. The cookies and the apple might be close to the same calorie count (depending on the kind of of cookies, of course). If I choose the apple, the apple will be much more satisfying. After the apple, I will be good to go for a few hours. After the couple small cookies, that weigh almost nothing in my stomach and have no fiber, I will want more. A hard boiled egg compared to a small handful of potato chips is another such example. The egg will keep me satisfied and fueled for hours, while the small handful of potato chips will just leave me wanting more.
You are right, fad diets are just that, passing fads. Losing weight using CICO really isn't simple and, for sure, it isn't easy.2 -
snowflake954 wrote: »I agree OP. However, I'm a believer in habits rather than discipline. Discipline can start you out right and put you on track, but for me, it eventually runs out. If I have the habit structure set up in that time frame, I just switch over. I now run on autopilot after 8 years.
I think this is interesting, because in my mind habits are just evidence of very strongly developed discipline. It takes less effort because you've ingrained it in so well. Discipline is harder at first because you're making order out of chaos. It's much easier to keep things in order than it is constantly clean up chaos. That's the lesson that I think is really hard for many of us, for healthy eating and exercise or other good habits.
So I wouldn't sell yourself short on being disciplined at all!0 -
elisa123gal wrote: »I'm happy for you... but CICO has never worked for me.... I find many on here who lose that way have to eat so very little forever to maintain or workout like crazy. Yet those who lose with CICO.. are like a strict religious sect who think they're the only ones getting into heaven. They also, can never explain the dreaded plateau. If CICO works like science.. one should never stall in weight loss. But.. they do!
I eat more to lose more... I just eat the right things. I eat more often to lose and keep it off... and I exercise only for an hour at the most at a time. If not..over exercising works against weight loss efforts. I don't log. When I found the way that worked for me.. I lost all my weight so. much easier than the cico battle.
CICO is not some crazy fad diet, all diets are CICO. Regardless if it’s Keto, IF, Atkins, etc it is based on taking in fewer calories over time than the body is burning. Even if you’re “eating more to lose more” your body is ultimately burning more than you are taking in or you’d be gaining or maintaining. So no matter what you call it, you were doing CICO11 -
penguinmama87 wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »I agree OP. However, I'm a believer in habits rather than discipline. Discipline can start you out right and put you on track, but for me, it eventually runs out. If I have the habit structure set up in that time frame, I just switch over. I now run on autopilot after 8 years.
I think this is interesting, because in my mind habits are just evidence of very strongly developed discipline. It takes less effort because you've ingrained it in so well. Discipline is harder at first because you're making order out of chaos. It's much easier to keep things in order than it is constantly clean up chaos. That's the lesson that I think is really hard for many of us, for healthy eating and exercise or other good habits.
So I wouldn't sell yourself short on being disciplined at all!
Yes/no.
The thing is, you can do a lot of changes to your environment to make the path of least resistance the habit. Ie: I don't do in person grocery shopping - ever. I do online order and pick it up. This started because covid, but it continues because my 'last cart' list is the healthy stuff, and if I am using online pages with catagories there's no walk past the bakery. Any 'treat' I pick up I have to choose and seek out. I need to exercise some discipline not to choose that, but it's way less than walking past fresh made brownies or whatever.
Same thing at gas stations where the former habit was going in and buying a candy bar. Now I pay at the pump and keep going. Again, I have to use a little discipline not to go in, but not nearly as much as white knuckling it past picking up the snack that's at the register.
All my 'snacks' that I do buy are pre-portioned and put in either the freezer or with the canned goods, depending on what they are. They don't sit on the counter or the desk. So, I only have to use discipline in the 'put them away' 30 seconds, rather than every time I walk into the kitchen - or worse, I used to keep them ON MY DESK. If I want to go have one, I go get it and leave the room - again the discipline is in the pre-portioning and walking out on the room with one serving in a bag - not in gritting my teeth and stopping at one serving from an open bag in front of me.
It is EASIER for me to go upstairs, grab an apple that IS out on the counter than it is to walk further to the pantry for a ziplock of chips or dig into the freezer and grab a frozen brownie and wait around for it to thaw. I CAN, but it's extra effort and meh. Then when I don't do it as often, because I am lazy, the habit of having that brownie kind of fades out and 'go to the fridge, grab the fruit and go' becomes the muscle memory and habit.
Basically all these habits form from some discipline, sure, but in tiny little spurts not some big act of willpower all the time. It's only the willpower necessary to minorly inconvenience yourself. And because those little habits are LITTLE, it's easier to make it a habit. When you have to fight the big stuff, yeah, you're expending a lot of effort to make the habit a habit, but when it's the little stuff not so much.
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@wunderkidking
I think that's what I mean to say - I'm coming from a very particular POV on this that probably doesn't make sense to deep dive in on MFP of all places - I'm long winded enough as it is - that good discipline is not just "being able to do the extra hard thing" but also "recognizing our own weaknesses and setting ourselves up for success anyway." You have to be honest with yourself and know your weak points in order to improve upon them.
The true discipline is actually in the little things, because those are the things that come with almost no instantaneous reward but we do them anyway. It's easy to pat yourself on the back for white knuckling it through some hard thing, but the long term success is going to involve a lot of very boring avoidance of temptation.
That's probably the best I can do while being brief...at least for me, haha.1 -
While I don't disagree, I feel this is too simplified for many people. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I do think it's too stripped down for some.
Getting a handle on calories out can be difficult, especially for people with extenuating health concerns. Managing calories in can be difficult, especially for people with mental/emotion ties to food, weight, etc. Not to mention that some have never seen anything resembling portion size/control... the constant messaging about "best" diets or demonized food or "3 simple tricks", etc.
Yes, the answer is simple -- cals in and cals out -- but the practice can be very VERY difficult. There is context and nuance to these conversations that is important, and that can be hard to flush and flesh out in text-based formats, like MFP. IMO, saying things like, "it's easy, just manage your cals in and cals out" does a disservice to people trying to manage their weight, even though it is technically correct.2 -
elisa123gal wrote: »I'm happy for you... but CICO has never worked for me.... I find many on here who lose that way have to eat so very little forever to maintain or workout like crazy. Yet those who lose with CICO.. are like a strict religious sect who think they're the only ones getting into heaven. They also, can never explain the dreaded plateau. If CICO works like science.. one should never stall in weight loss. But.. they do!
I eat more to lose more... I just eat the right things. I eat more often to lose and keep it off... and I exercise only for an hour at the most at a time. If not..over exercising works against weight loss efforts. I don't log. When I found the way that worked for me.. I lost all my weight so. much easier than the cico battle.
If you lost weight it was because you created a calorie deficit.
Not everyone finds that counting calories works for them, because there are emotional or logistical barriers to consistently implementing it.
But even if you find another way to do it, weight loss is always created by a calorie deficit.8 -
Secret subsection A is: patience.
Takes a long friggin time to put CICO into use in a noticeable way.4 -
elisa123gal wrote: »I'm happy for you... but CICO has never worked for me.... I find many on here who lose that way have to eat so very little forever to maintain or workout like crazy. Yet those who lose with CICO.. are like a strict religious sect who think they're the only ones getting into heaven. They also, can never explain the dreaded plateau. If CICO works like science.. one should never stall in weight loss. But.. they do!
I eat more to lose more... I just eat the right things. I eat more often to lose and keep it off... and I exercise only for an hour at the most at a time. If not..over exercising works against weight loss efforts. I don't log. When I found the way that worked for me.. I lost all my weight so. much easier than the cico battle.
So much wrong here (for others who aren't you) but, mostly, how in the heck can you say being in a calorie deficit doesn't work for you if you're not even attempting to count them? You could just be one of the lucky ones who eats under maintenance naturally. Not all of us has that luxury.4 -
I just want to hijack here for a minute and say, I didn’t find CICO a battle at all. In fact, I found it waaaaay easier than I expected. It was just a matter of paying attention.
I feel a bit sorry for people who are armpit deep in keto, IF, or other challenging plans. It seems so much work to reach the same eventual goal.
I guess I need more punishment or it’s not real.8 -
springlering62 wrote: »I just want to hijack here for a minute and say, I didn’t find CICO a battle at all. In fact, I found it waaaaay easier than I expected. It was just a matter of paying attention.
I feel a bit sorry for people who are armpit deep in keto, IF, or other challenging plans. It seems so much work to reach the same eventual goal.
I guess I need more punishment or it’s not real.
Compared to all the other things I tried over the years to manage my weight, counting calories is by far the simplest, most flexible, and least intrusive socially.4 -
neanderthin wrote: »CICO has been medical advice forever. Success rate, not so good, 99% or there about failure rate. Reason? You did it wrong.
Not always. There are some people that di have Issues. Some psychological and some physical. The research shows us that there is a compensatory drive to over eat post weight loss. So,yes CICO is king, but controlling one's appetite is a close second. 99% failure rate? Probably closer to 65% failure rate. Many studies use someone's lowest weight and count any regain as failure. Is it though?2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »springlering62 wrote: »I just want to hijack here for a minute and say, I didn’t find CICO a battle at all. In fact, I found it waaaaay easier than I expected. It was just a matter of paying attention.
I feel a bit sorry for people who are armpit deep in keto, IF, or other challenging plans. It seems so much work to reach the same eventual goal.
I guess I need more punishment or it’s not real.
Compared to all the other things I tried over the years to manage my weight, counting calories is by far the simplest, most flexible, and least intrusive socially.
All of this!5
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