rankinsect Member

I think you need to make it so you don't need motivating at all. All motivation is temporary. Build habits and find a lifestyle you can enjoy forever. You don't need to have the best diet or exercise plans, you need sustainable plans.

Yup, I will weigh and log everything. I don't dislike it at all - if anything it's just second nature. I plan my meals in advance and just use the scale to measure out what I chose the night before, it's super easy.

The better choice is not to agonize over irrelevant options, and just eat what you feel like as long as it's within your overall calorie goals. I certainly hope you're not planning to micromanage every food decision you make for the rest of your life. Come up with 1-3 food targets - overall calories should be one of them,…

Which is better depends on what your goals are. One of my goals is to enjoy life, and so when we celebrate my niece's birthday soon, I'm gonna eat a big slice of cake with ice cream and I will enjoy the kitten out of it. (Actually, probably quite literally enjoying the "kitten" since I'm going to make the cake and decorate…

I wouldn't sweat what is essentially being over your calories by 2%. That's certainly a very far cry from "miserable failure". Just the error in calorie counts alone is going to be more than that. Personally, I consider anything within +/- 5% to be meeting my goals.

It's very normal for your thighs to be thicker when you are sitting and thinner while standing, and no, it doesn't mean they have a lot of fat. Muscle is quite floppy, too, when it's not actively contracting.

I think you need to be a little more realistic with expectations. Even if you do everything perfectly, some weeks you will lose less than you expect. Some you will gain. Some you will lose more than expected. Week to week changes are basically irrelevant - what matters is the average change over months and years. Two data…

I'm down by almost 140 pounds (some before and after pics are on this thread if you want to see the difference objectively.) Sometimes I see it in the mirror. Sometimes I still don't. I'd say that my self-perception is slowly shifting, certainly far slower than reality, but it's shifting.

Overall, work by Susannah Holt on satiety really shows that, apart from protein having a sating effect, there is no clear correlation between carbs or fats and satiety - some high-carb foods are very sating, others very poorly sating, and likewise for fats. A lot of it actually depends on things like protein, fiber, and…

Well, unenriched white rice is actually significantly less nutritious in several key vitamins, particularly thiamine. Historically thiamine deficiency from subsisting almost exclusively on white rice was a key cause of malnutrition among the very poor in southeast Asia. It's extremely rare in developed nations, though,…

Depends on what she wants, doesn't it? I mean, if her goal was to have a healthy, fit body, yes most can do that. If her goal is a particular number on a scale, or to be at the very bottom of the normal BMI range, then no, not everyone can do that without sacrificing health.

I love to dip meats, particularly summer sausage, in yogurt.

There isn't "the" right way. There are millions of right ways. As long as your diet meets your nutritional requirements, you have appropriate calorie consumption to maintain a healthy weight, and physical activity to maintain your target level of fitness, it's all good. That could be high carb, low carb, clean, dirty,…

1. Nutrient density is a poor metric for a food. It's an oversimplification that overlooks the fact you need each individual nutrient. You can eat only nutrient dense foods and still be very deficient in one or more nutrients. For example, you could eat only fruit and veggies, and you'd have lots of nutrients overall but…

The second article wasn't very compelling. Besides being a correlation study, the results of which could be totally meaningless if any confounding variable was not accounted for, three red flags for me: 1. The use of 95% CIs is common but it lends itself to a very high number of false positives. More compelling studies use…

Sometimes maintenance can make you hungrier, too. A prolonged deficit somewhat paradoxically makes you less hungry - your body seems to assume you are simply unable to acquire food and reduces hunger signals somewhat. Once you eat at maintenance again, you can get a rebound hunger effect.

It is a great ingredient for some tasty food - my favorite marinated chicken uses it.

Water weight lasts for as long as whatever caused you to retain the water lasts. If you gained water weight from high sodium, it lasts until your kidneys excrete the excess sodium. If you gained water weight after a strenuous workout, it lasts as long as your muscles are repairing. If you gained weight by increasing your…

You really can't do low carb and low fat at the same time - there's only one other macronutrient and very high protein diets are both very hard to do as well as possibly dangerous for some people. Trying to do low carb, low fat, low sodium sounds pretty awful - is there an actual medical need here? Because most people…

There are tons and tons of different strategies for HIIT. I like the 30/20/10 method: Start by setting the bike for a resistance where you can really push yourself hard. You want a resistance level where you can go slow and get a light workout, but also push yourself really hard. I don't like trying to change resistance…

They don't use more chemicals, they actually use fewer (but different) chemicals, and the new chemicals they use are safer to humans. Chemical weed control has been the norm for almost sixty years now for large-scale farming operations. What Roundup-ready crops do is allow farmers to use a safer, easier chemical control…

Don't eat so low, you're just going to lose muscle at a terribly high rate. At your weight you shouldn't even be trying to lose more than 1-1.5 lb/week anyway, probably closer to 1. I'm around 183 as well and I'm eating 1800-2200 calories per day, or a lot more if I go on a long hike.

Here's one of my favorite recipes, courtesy of my mom: Sloppy Joe Sauce46 fl oz tomato juice 2 cups ketchup 1 green pepper, diced 1 onion, chopped 3 stalks celery, chopped (including leaves) 2 Tablespoons brown sugar 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 Tablespoon mustard Add tomato sauce and ketchup to a pot, and put over…

Exercising with someone whose fitness was once miles beyond my own and realizing that now, he is the one who gets winded first. I mean, I knew my own fitness had gone up by a ton, but there's something weird about when you realize your fitness now exceeds that of other people you know.

Probably that most people don't need to watch sodium so a lot of people don't enter it. Also, there's a big caveat for non-US foods - MFP bases its data on US food labels which specify sodium, while much of the world specifies salt instead. They aren't equivalent - 1g of salt is about 400 mg of sodium, because the US…

I would definitely not recommend eating that low. The faster you lose, the more lean mass you lose per pound of fat mass lost. The goal should be to come in as close as possible to your target calories, not far below.

There's no demon food keeping you fat. There's no miracle food that makes you thin. Eat a variety of food that you enjoy, keeps you reasonably full, and meets your nutrient needs, and eat at a reasonable calorie deficit. By and large, for weight loss, what you eat is almost irrelevant compared to how much you eat.

Don't exercise with them. Frankly I don't like trying to keep anyone else's pace, period, and even fit individuals have a wide variety in terms of comfortable paces. If it's a walk or run, go individually and meet up at various points when you stop and rest.

Oh, I agree fully that even if the genetic deck is stacked against you, it doesn't mean you can't be a healthy weight. It does mean that it will likely require some additional effort to reach and maintain goal weight.

Eat basically whatever you like, as long as it meets your calorie & nutritional goals and you like it. You're not constrained to stereotypical "health foods".