mike_ny Member

The main thing to remember if you're new to exercising is to take it slow at first. It's easy to overdo it and you won't feel it until the next day or so. Even though you'll feel like you can easily do so much more in a session, ramp up slowly. So many people kill themselves in the first few days of starting exercising and…

Cutting way back on alcohol is great way to speed up your weight loss. There just isn't that much room for the extra calories if you're trying to run a deficit and still get all your nutrition. The other problem with too much alcohol is that it often leads to making bad decisions in food choices, which only compounds the…

There are also plenty of recipes for just egg whites and they freeze really well too. Save them for that and have a three egg yolk omelette for a rich treat. :-) Whole eggs are still the best bet, though, to get the full balance of proteins, essential fatty acids, and abundant nutrients that together are harder to find…

That's fine in the short term or if that's all your goal is, but weight loss alone doesn't equate to fitness. It's a challenge to get all of your needed nutrients and stay within your calories when you use up half of them on junk low in nutrition. Does eating good and real food over the long run really make a difference?…

I think people like to bash anything that allows them to justify their own view or to continue doing things that aren't supported by the facts or science. Facts do change as more information becomes available, but people don't adapt anywhere as quickly with their beliefs and biases. That goes for diet, fitness, nutrition,…

A two egg omelette for breakfast, a boiled egg sometime during the day, and another egg incorporated into your cooking.... How could anyone possible eat that many eggs in one day? It really isn't hard at all to eat 6 or more eggs a day and with the ratio of great nutrition per calorie that's a very compelling argument to…

I eat at least 4 cage free eggs every day and sometimes more and my cholesterol has never been lower than it currently is. I also drink whole milk, eat full fat yogurt and cheeses, and other sources of fat and usually exceed the "saturated fat limit" for the day before I finish breakfast. Dietary cholesterol doesn't cause…

Get rid of them as soon as you drop a size. Donate them to goodwill, give them to people you know, just get rid of them. The last thing you want is any "fat clothes" you kept in case you started gaining back what you lost. I know its hard giving away hundreds of dollars of your favorite and perfectly good clothes. Just get…

Genetics affects your body type, metabolism, and how well you may absorb some nutrients, but weight gain is still from consuming more calories than you burn above your individual TDEE. There are plenty of people on this site who were fat kids from fat families and carried that weight for any years, yet still managed to…

Just pick the closest match you can and then add another 500 or so calories to it to cover , since it's more likely over than under it anyway.

Protein and fat take longer to digest and will keep you from feeling hungry longer. Carbs just get processed too quickly and you're hungry an hour later. Insulin spikes and drops from sugar also will increase hunger for more carbs, which can be a vicious cycle. Water can stave off hunger for a little while, but it also is…

In the short term that's true, but after a couple of hours you'll be much hungrier eating mostly carbs than protein and fat. It's a trade off. Carbs will fill you up and give you quick energy, but they get burned quickly and then it's a long time to your next meal. Protein and fat take longer to digest, so the energy is…

I agree with most of this except the high fat diet making one feel sluggish. That simply is not true. Eating too many carbs can make one feel sluggish, but eating fat doesn't have that effect at all. I get almost 50% of my calories from fat and have done so for most of the last year. By cutting back on carbs and loading up…

That is absurd. Even of you ate nothing but meat, it would be hard to maintain that unless everything was extremely lean. And protein is not a great fuel source. Carbs and fats are what the body runs best on. Doing that is unhealthy because you would not be getting enough of your essential fats and other nutrients and will…

If you don't count calories, you'll have no way to determine a calorie deficit. You also won't have any way of verifying your macro numbers and ratios. You won't be able to tell what works and what doesn't in your weight loss efforts, and you will never learn how to estimate portion sizes with any accuracy. It is a pain in…

Empty calories are foods that supply calories but little or no nutritional benefits beyond that. The biggest single category of empty calories are simple starches and sugars. They may supply glucose, but usually not much of anything else. Fats (with the exception of trans-fats) are definitely not empty calories in any way.…

From your food description, it doesn't sound like you're getting enough fats. A common mistake people make is to try and eliminate as much fat as possible to lose weight, which isn't a balanced diet. They're called essential fatty acids because your body needs them and can't make enough on its own. So, try adding more fat…

It's worth every penny to me. Devices that keep track of your movement and calorie burn are great for automatically keeping track and updating the info. They may not be totally accurate, but they allow you to set a baseline for your activity level and aim to increase it daily and weekly. Counting food intake is hard…

You still burn calories and process nutrients while sleeping. That's when your body does a lot of repair work and your brain is very active which both contribute to calorie burn. Eating before sleep is only a problem if you have GERD or other digestive or medical conditions where being in a reclining position with food…

In the short term it doesn't matter what makes up the content of your calories and macros. I think most of us get that. In the long term, though, I'm still betting that a decade or more of mostly eating real food versus junk food and foods containing many additives that have not been fully vetted yet could make a huge…

It depends on how muscular you are, but as a rough starting point aim for the weight that puts you in the range for a healthy BMI. If you work out and are more muscular at all, then add at least five pounds to that since BMI is only a rough estimate and not very accurate if your body fat is lower than the average. Weight…

A measuring tape is a lot more useful than a scale for trimming down. I hate calling it weight loss because it's not about what you weight. It's about being in better shape and felling better about yourself. If you looked like you wanted to and felt great, would you really care what you weighed? Anyway, often when the…

Blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels are due to genetics and lifestyle and not diet. Your body can make as much cholesterol as it wants regardless of what you eat. Doctors and the AMA are slow to change, but new studies are finding no credible links between fat intake and heart disease. There's a link between obesity…

A scale is the only reliable method. A basic kitchen food scale really doesn't cost that much these days and every cook should have one. If you won't get one or don't want a scale, then you're stuck with eyeballing the box contents and dividing to get 2 oz portions. Spaghetti comes in different sizes so the size of the…

I don't plan cheat days since they happen all by themselves. You can't avoid social occasions or other circumstances where it's very hard if not impossible to stay within your limits. There seems to be something like that at least every other week. Those are my cheat days. I don't stress over them. I just try to make up…

At 24, exercising every day is no problem if you're in OK health, although it's still not a bad idea to have a rest day maybe once a week to let your body recover somewhat. As you get older, recovery does take longer and then rest days are needed every couple days or more. Your body lets you know when it needs to rest, so…

Sugar isn't a problem if you burn all or more of the calories you eat. Excess sugar that isn't burned is stored as fat and too much excess sugar in your blood for extended periods is not good for your circulatory system. That being said, fruit has lots of benefits like fiber, nutrients, and phyto-chemicals so it's…

Cutting calories will reduce weight. Cutting fat alone will not. Fats are nutrients your body needs. Eating too little fat is not a healthy balanced diet. You can eat fats and still stay within a calorie deficit to lose weight sensibly and meet your goals.

Eat more protein and fat and less carbs at lunch and you should have less of a slump. Bread and pasta are typical lunch fare and they will contribute to being short of energy a couple hours later. It's not that carbs are evil. They just get used up quickly, especially simple starches and sugars. Protein and fat take much…

Certain foods are "fat-burners", as if you can eat a dozen donuts as long as you chase them down with grapefruit juice or one of the magic fat-burner foods.