INTERMITTENT FASTING - A LIFESTYLE MAKEOVER

ChristinaOne21 wrote: »

psulemon wrote: »

OP, if you start to exercise you should probably increase calories a bit, especially since you want to make this a long term game. Honestly, I would get a food scale and have my calories at 1500. At 4 weeks you can reassess your progress. I did something similar and found I was able to push harder and make more progress at 2300 calories as compared to 1800.

This game is not just cutting calories low, its about finding an overall balance between a deficit and an amount of calories that will allow for long term sustainment.

If you do stay with 1200 take note of any changes in energy or awareness. If there is decline, increase calories.

Thanks for that advice - I do want this to be sustainable of course - but the on the other hand I want to reach the goal post quickly, as I am focused on my wedding in April (this time doing it for myself), so I guess I am aiming for a reasonably quick loss with 27 weeks to get down at least into the 70's.

Do you mind me asking whether your cals are set higher - is that the exercise?

If you want to see the biggest changes in your body, then I will highly recommend lifting. Every person I know and work with has see huge improvements when they lift. Also, when you work to maintain muscle mass, there will be larger changes in body fat %. And honestly, body fat % > weight reductions. Heck, I can't tell you how many underweight people we work with in the gaining weight section and many have issues with stomach fat. It's because they have poor body composition. It's one of the reasons I would suggest a slightly smaller deficit, higher amounts of protein and a progressive resistance program like strongcurves or even a body resistance program like you are your own gym.


In terms of my calories, I maintain at 3000. I am currently doing an aggressive cut @ 2100 calories with protein between 1g per lb of lbm and weight, full a custom 3 day full body routine and add 2 to 3 days of HIIT/flexibility training (all with a desk job). One day a week, I do tend to bump calories to around 2500 to 2700 (last night 3100) for sanity.

I just wanted to share this, because there's a lot of anti-science talk going on on this thread.

Scientific claims aren't "always changing" the way they're being talked about here; they are in a constant state of refinement. We're not going to find out tomorrow that the sun revolves around the earth. It's just not going to happen. We may find out that it doesn't do this EXACTLY how we thought it does, but it still doesn't revolve around the earth. And that's no support for the idea that because "Science is always changing" that science is somehow unreliable or a waste of time. Science RARELY just up and changes it's mind on a set of facts. When science "changes" what it's doing is refining the statement it has made to be clearer, more correct, more accurate. But the basis of that statement remains true. We knew atoms existed before we could actually see them, and when we could finally see them, we confirmed a few things we believed about them as well as ADDED information that we didn't formerly have. But we didn't find out we were totally wrong and atoms do not in fact exist. We just found out more information about their existence That's what "science is always changing" really means. Not that we're gonna find out tomorrow the earth really was flat after all, but that maybe rather than perfectly spherical, it's a little oblong. Science changes by adding information to already existing bodies of facts, modifying them a LITTLE, not changing their minds entirely. The scientific method is the greatest tool we have for understanding the world around us. If there are errors it is self correcting. The only thing that will ever prove a scientific finding wrong is just better science.

When you read a "Shocking new discovery made by scientists!" in the paper, you're not hearing the Facts. You're not hearing something that is in line with the current model commonly accepted by the scientific community. You're hearing an over-stated, overblown, exaggerated all to hell HYPOTHESIS. The hypothesis is what the papers and magazines print because it's interesting. When a scientists says "hey I wonder if the coffee is what's killing them? Let's test that" the magazine reports "Coffee is killing us all! A shocking new study says that drinking coffee may be the reason you're fat and gonna die of heart disease!". That article may have NOTHING at all to do with the study, because what sells papers is that headline. The Hypothesis makes for the most interesting read, and science editors gotta make money, so that's what makes it into the article. Not the 30 following studies showing how the first study was totally flawed. Not the actual scientist who ran the study saying "but hey wait, I only tested 30 people, and even then there's a margin of error, and more importantly, I was trying to see if coffee is killing specifically this subset of people who consume fewer calories due to coffee, and specifically, those who are already underweight and at risk for X". When you see "Science is changing all the time" you're seeing *hypotheses* changing. Which they're supposed to do. What changes all the time (again, by design) are hypotheses -- not theories (a grouping of FACTS that describe one model of how X works, in science, theory means something very different from how we use it in the common tongue), and certainly not facts. A hypothesis is, after all, an early part of the scientific method; a tentative explanation for something which is then tested by experimentation and more observation. And science doesn't make claims about hypotheses, it TESTS them. Then, if the hypothesis can be repeatedly, rigorously tested and proven over and over and over again, then and only then, it can be accepted as a truthful statement about reality.

And most importantly of all, if you come across a "scientific claim" that seems to completely contradict an existing model (body of facts) stop for a minute and nerd the heck out of that claim. It is incredibly rare, so rare we're talking almost never (think back to Galileo), for some single new piece of evidence in some single study to completely change an already existing scientific model of reality. No one is gonna come up with anything tomorrow that will completely disprove CICO. All that will happen is that that portion of thermodynamics might be refined to be EVEN MORE accurate than it already is. We're REALLY SURE the earth revolves around the sun. Positive. If tomorrow something in science "changes" that, it will only "change" it in such a way as to make it more accurate than it already is. "The earth revolves the sun AND... BY... BECAUSE..." Science "changing" is simply the addition of a modifier, and is Frequently the addition of SUPPORTING evidence for the already existing model.