maillemaker Member

Thanks for the advice. I've decided to use frozen dinners for dinners. Breakfast and lunch is pretty easy - I eat a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and I eat a McDonald's McDouble for lunch. About 400 calories per each. A frozen dinner is generally about 600 calories so I can have one of those and another peanut…

I really don't want to make the food myself as if I play with food I lose my willpower. If I'm going to the trouble to make an omelette, for example, it's going to end up being a 1000 calorie omelette.

Here's the harsh reality: Once you have gained weight, it is pretty much irreversible health damage for most people. People who are able to lose the weight and keep it off have one common trait: They make weight loss/maintenance their life-long single most important focus. There is lots of real science now that indicates…

Understand, as others have said, that weight loss happens in the kitchen, not the gym. Exercise is great for health but unless you are doing tremendous amounts of exercise you will far more effectively generate a calorie deficit through not eating things rather than by exercise.

Yup. It's a natural consequence of fat loss. Hungry all the time.

Understand that exercise is not required to lose weight. It's certainly good for your health, but most of your weight loss caloric deficit is going to come from eating less, not exercising more. In terms of weight loss, it doesn't matter how you achieve a caloric deficit. So if you don't like the discomfort of exercise,…

>Your average everyday Joe Blow "I need to lose 50 lbs" guy is going to end up lethargic, with terrible looking skin, hair loss, brittle nails, and no sex drive when doing such a diet. When it is over, he's going to look in the mirror and think "this is not what I thought I'd look like at this weight" and then will spend…

For the whole "nutrient" thing, can't you just pop a multi-vitamin? I mean one of those Penn and Teller dudes lost a bunch of weight really fast by going to like a 500-calorie-a-day diet.

Except destructive behaviors do make you feel better, in the short term, and trigger the reward mechanism. That's what makes them addictive. All pleasurable stimuli are rewarding. And of course one of the problems with food as a reward in particular is the fatter you get, the more food becomes one of the fewer and fewer…

I'm in the same boat as you, so I totally get it. I have lost weight dozens of times in my life and always gained back and then some. You are going to have a lot of people telling you that you "can't" be addicted to food. Don't listen to them. People can and do get addicted to anything pleasurable. Gambling, sex,…

There is a difference in being healthy at any size and being healthier at any size. Being fat is never going to be good for your overall health. However, if you are fat and you engage in these four activities: * Eat "healthy" food * Don't smoke * Exercise 3 times a week * Don't drink alcohol Then your mortality rate will…

The sad reality is that if you are running a calorie deficit, you are going to be hungry. That's just the way it is. Your body monitors the levels of the hormone Leptin, which is produced by your body fat, and as fat levels decline, Leptin levels decline. Your body tries to defend the fat stores and so kicks in a variety…

"Lifestyle change" to me is this mythical state where you change your lifestyle from one that results in weight gain to one where you lose/maintain weight. I've never been able to sustain such a change for any longer than 6 months max. I've never once reached "maintenance".

Man, I had to get out a tape measure to visualize that. My thigh is bigger around than your waist. I could almost put my hands around your waist and have my fingers and thumbs touch!

This stuff is actually old news. People who were once obese and lose body fat to become the same weight as someone who was never obese will have a metabolism that is 10%-15% slower than the person who was never obese. This reduction in metabolism comes mostly from an increase in skeletal muscle efficiency of about 20%.…

A friend of mine was a psychiatrist. He told me, "Weight loss is basically an exercise in pain tolerance."

The proof of the pudding is in the scale. If you aren't seeing the losses you want to see, you have to increase your deficit. So whatever your deficit is right now, real or imagined, you need to increase it.

If you are not losing weight there is only one answer: You are not maintaining a caloric deficit. You'll have to eat less or exercise more.

Getting "likes" is interaction. There is no fundamental difference between me clicking "like" and me typing "like" as a reply to your status update, which is what I did before the like button. All I'm doing is indicating that I am watching you. Being watched is what makes me want to continue "being good".

I would love to have this problem.

> If the metabolism slowed down significantly from a long period of dieting, then why is it anorexics and starving children are emaciated? This is like saying if I drive slower how did I still run out of gas? In obese people, the body responds to fat loss by causing skeletal muscles to get about 20% more efficient,…

If you care about weight loss, it's all about the calories. The fitness people worry about macros.

"I've lost 42 pounds in X months" would seem to do the trick.

There are very few effective weight loss drugs currently on the market, and all of them have serious side effects. Believe me, obesity is a serious problem for our society today. If someone invented a truly effective drug for it they would probably be in the news for a Nobel prize, and everyone you know would be taking it…

One decent sized bowl of ice cream would double your caloric intake.

Yup. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. Or in McDonald's kitchen.

Yeah, but you missed what he was responding to. John asked: And Bluefish correctly noted: You are absolutely right that if you understand calorie goals you can eat anything at McDonald's. But most people don't go to McDonald's with a calorie goal in mind. They go with a Quarter Pounder with cheese, a large fries, large…

Unless you have rendered the food toxic, no "processing" makes it harmful. You can slice it, dice it, mix it, cook it, package it, whatever, as long as it's not toxic it's not harmful. Now you still have to watch your calories. A perfectly natural rack of baby back ribs is well over 1000 calories of food, and I can knock…

The best you can realistically achieve is 2 pounds per week, which I have never actually sustained on average over months of weight loss. The lighter you are the harder it gets. So you could possibly lose 10 pounds if you were very diligent over the next 30 days. But you'll have to buy/fit a dress before then, right? So…

Yes, it is entirely possible to eat at McDonald's and maintain a caloric deficit and even eat nutritious meals. But you have to know what you are doing and pay attention to what you are eating. Most people just go into a fast food restaurant and pick one of the top 4 value meals and call it good. Maybe throw in a desert to…