The One Truth

After answering a ton of posts today and and days previous to today, I have began to see a common thread in a lot of the posts. An underlying lack of confidence permeates the forums so much that we see the same questions over and over. Some people have even used the "Search" feature, found what they were looking for and still felt the need to post the same question out of either fear, lack of understand, unwillingness to accept or all of the above.
The bottom line is that this journey/process/lifestyle (whatever you want to call it, I'm not here to argue semantics) takes time. It takes a LOT of time. And let's face it, we as human beings are in a hurry. We want to have our cake and eat it too and we want to do it NOW!!!
Smart individuals will approach this as a learning process. You are going to learn a lot about nutrition and exercise and some of it is going to be true and some of it is going to be false. And there is always going to be someone there to argue with about the merit of all the things you will learn. There was a thread posted today about "Mythbusting". There are some great truths in there, but I bet that thread confuses the hell out of some people because there is an overload of information for someone who is new to this process.
Luckily, there is one truth that I think none of us will dispute and this is what we need to point our fellow miscreants to when they come to these forums searching and hoping for the magic answer they want to hear. This truth is calories in < calories out= weight loss....
Well "NO ****!" I can hear you clamoring.....but wait, I have more information that is going to help people who are struggling. This really is the one true key to weight loss, BUT.........(yes there had to be a but) you HAVE to find out how much you can eat without gaining weight BEFORE you can lose weight......and no one wants to do that because it means you are going to have to eat. You are going to have to eat for extended periods of time. A month is barely a minimum. You can use a calculator to figure what your TDEE is (google TDEE calculator) and use that as a starting point, but you are going to have to adjust the amount that you eat until you find that magic number of calories that, when consumed, will allow you to maintain your current weight..
OMG yes, I am telling you to STOP losing weight. Stop worrying about losing weight, stop worrying about gaining weight, stop worrying about if tea counts as water, stop worrying about if you should eat at night or if you should eat breakfast......
*takes a deep breath after that run-on sentence* and eat until you find your TDEE.
Here is an easy way to do that:
1. Use a calculator to find an estimate for your TDEE http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/
2. Set your calories just a bit below your estimated TDEE and eat and log them consistently for AT LEAST a month, 6 weeks would be even better.
3. Look at how much weight you have lost or gained.
4. If you lose weight, up your calories and go another 4 to 6 weeks. If you gained, lower your calories and go another 4 to 6 weeks.
5. Look at how much weight you have lost or gained. When you get to where you have gained less than a pound or lost less than a pound, that is close enough (<----my opinion)
6. Multiply the weight you lost or gained for the 4 to 6 weeks by 3500. That is how many calories you were in a deficit or surplus.
7. If you lost weight, add the deficit calories to the total for the 4 to 6 weeks and divide by 30 or 44 (how many days you ate this amount for). This is YOUR TDEE. No one else's, not some calculators, not the amount some knucklehead on this forum is telling you to eat, it is YOURS. You own it. You KNOW it. Life is about to change.
8. If you gained weight, subtract the deficit calories from the total for the 4 to 6 weeks and divide by 30 or 44 and then read the rest of number 7, as I am too lazy to type it again.

Once you have done this, you have discovered the one truth. You will feel free and enlightened and have ownership of your weight loss journey and have tons of time on your hands to worry about other things like should you eat clean or dirty, should you actually have 8 glasses of water, should you avoid carbs.......
But those are other posts.....