The Secret to Weight Loss
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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
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