What if I am just meant to be fat?

That's something I often wondered to myself, I tried everything I knew how to do and nothing worked. Until now. Forget everything you "think" you know about weight loss.

Firstly your body is made to store fat when you eat at a calorie surplus. This was vital for the survival of our species during our evolution because there wasn't always a guaranteed meal. It's not a curse, it's a biological advantage that doesn't have much of a purpose now that there's a grocery store every few blocks away.

To lose wight, it's a simple matter of calories in and calories out. I don't care how "healthy" you think you are eating or how much exercise you do, you will gain weight if you do not eat at a calorie deficit. To lose weight properly I have a few tips

1. Take the guess work out of measuring your food, measure and weigh everything. Buy an electronic scale that weighs in grams. Call me geeky or whatever, but I have one at my desk at work and one in my kitchen at home, I hate guesswork.

2. If you eat at a restaurant you are essentially guessing how many calories you food contains. Just because a restaurant posts nutritent facts on their website doesn't mean the cook won't be heavy handed on the butter and oils and other ingredients.

3. When you prepare you meals you need to weigh and measure everything. Did you know that if you measure peanut butter that you are actually dong it wrong? Peanut butter and items liek it should be weighed,and the difference in calories when you compare the two are significantly different.

4. Weight loss can be achieved in the kitchen, you don't need exercise. This is true, you can lose weight not going to the gym at all if you eat at a calorie deficit, remember points 1-3.

5. Though going to the gym is not required, it can help improve your general health and help mitigate muscle loss while on a weight loss diet. I don't want you to get into the mindset that you have to bust your butt at the gym in order to enjoy food, that's not a healthy relationship. By picking up a heavy lifting program like Ice Cream fitness (you can youtube it) you can improve muscle strength, mitigate muscle loss while at a calorie deficit and it will give you extra calories to enjoy per day.

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

This is great, but I'd like to add one thing as well. I was hovering at 160 +/- 4 lbs. (being 5'4") for the last year. My trainer suggested that I change the proportions of fats, carbs, and proteins that MFP so nicely breaks down for me. I also have to admit that I wasn't logging all of last year accurately (I did the eyeball method). In two weeks however, being much more careful about weighing or measuring food and trying to carefully stick to my carb/sugar proportions, I lost 8 lbs which I'm still disbelieving so I'm not logging the number yet.

Can it be as simple as sugar and carbs holding on to unwanted wanted, etc.? I'm not sure, but could it be worth a try? Definitely! I'm trying right now and it is so far working.

Or it could be the greater attention to weighing, measuring, and logging.

iIf I had to pick a time period, I would say Ancient Romans probably had the best diet. They had consistent access to food, it was minimally processed, high in good fats (fish, olives, nuts), had plenty of protein (Roman soldiers were required by law to eat a certain amount of meat each day) and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a civilization that was more physically fit.

You just gave me a great idea for a diet book: The Ancient Romans Didn't Get Fat. I'll make millions telling people to brew their own garum and put it on everything.

I ate a paleo diet last year for 3 months and didn't lose but I didn't gain during that time either. I make good choices and I like healthy food. I also drink a gallon of water a day.

I wanted to comment on this section separately. It doesn't matter how "healthy" the food is you eat, if you eat too much of it and achieve a calorie surplus you will gain weight.

I really don't like the logic of why people follow the paleo diet. The idea here is that if you eat like humans did in the Paleolithic era that you will be healthier like they were. That logic is terrible, first have you even seen a person from that era and thought, man he looked amazing? You realize that people in that era also didn't have a guaranteed meal and had to gather / hunt and kill for their meals as well? Driving to the local whole foods doesn't count as hunting, sorry.

Paleo works in my opinion due to the amounts of restrictions on the diet. You can't go to McDonald's, or eat twinkies and ice cream and all of that jazz. So if you eat fresh meats, veggies and fruits then it's less likely you are going to over indulge. There's no stopping by starbucks every morning for your double double white mocha with extra whipped cream, cavemen didn't have that.

The problem with following a restrictive diet like paleo is it won't last forever. How long can you really last on a diet that doesn't let you have all of your favorite foods? There's nothing wrong with cutting out processed foods from your diet, in fact I wish they would just call it the no processed food diet, but I guess that's too boring. You get really good at eating paleo and maybe even lose the weight you desired, but then you go back to eating like you did before and all the tips and tricks you learned eating paleo are useless now.

Better idea, eat all of your favorite foods and still lose weight. IIFYM is a flexible dieting technique that in addition to watching your over all calories for the day you also track the amounts of fats, proteins and carbs you consume in the day. I love flexible dieting because as long as I reach my fat minimum goal and protein minimum goal for the day I'm doing well, and if I go over those goals its ok, I just consume less carbs. Best of all, following IIFYM is something you can do the rest of your life.

My problem with the Paleo diet is: Why do people assume that cavemen had the best diet? They were scavengers, hunters and nomads for the most part- they were physically strong because they had to be in order to survive. They walked EVERY place they went, ran full blast after an animal and killed it brute strength and stone clubs. Their activity level was far higher than anyone in the modern era and their meals were far from consistent. I just have a hard time believing the Paleolithic era was the pinnacle of human nutrition. I know they say its what man "evolved" eating- but if you look at it truthfully, what man "evolved" eating was different all over the world. In order to stay in line with what your people ate during their evolution you would have to trace your lineage back to the paleolithic era, which would be pretty hard.

If I had to pick a time period, I would say Ancient Romans probably had the best diet. They had consistent access to food, it was minimally processed, high in good fats (fish, olives, nuts), had plenty of protein (Roman soldiers were required by law to eat a certain amount of meat each day) and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a civilization that was more physically fit. But regardless of the quality of food, quantity is what determines whether or not you will lose weight.

The Romans also had epic cheat meals, for example the Satyricon's Dinner at Trimalchio's.

Of course, by epic I don't mean I'd want to join in.