Simplest approach to weight loss?

[M>B>]

SDGuy,

You elaborated on my post and I was just rephrasing the first reply by volcs0.

[kap]

volcs0 wrote:
calories out > calories in = weight loss

can't get much simpler than that.

It was working fine and dandy until I got hypothyroidism!

[Wags]

Sit down and eat a leisurely meal each time, preferably cooked at home with fresh local ingredients. Savor the experience and enjoy it with friends and/or family. When you eat slowly your internal mechanism that tells you when you are full has time to work properly. The antithesis of this is to drive thru Wendy's and cram the food down as fast as possible while hurrying to the sale at Walmart.

Read Michael Pollan's book: In Defense of Food. If you can't stand the the thought of non passive media, here's the essence:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Or, don't worry about it and enjoy, indulge. Die young and have four extra pall bearers.

[volcs0]

Black Landlord wrote:
[quote=volcs0]
calories out > calories in = weight loss

can't get much simpler than that.

Well, maybe, yeah, no, not quite.
There's that whole "metabolism" thing.
The above forumula would suggest that you could lose weight by exercising more while not changing your diet.
Yes. If you exercised enough to expend more calories (your resting energy expenditure + exercise) than you ingest, you would lose weight. That is part of the reason why Michael Phelps can eat 18,000 calories a day - he exercises a lot. And he obviously has a monstrous metabolism. For most people, exercising alone is not enough to make up for a massive fatty American diet, so the calories need to be simultaneously cut.

All it says is that if your body expends more calories than it takes in, weight will be lost.

How the body expends calories is very individualistic - exercise, metabolism, etc. How the body takes in calories is up to you. But if you keep the balance on out>in, weight will be lost. Right?


Anecdotally for me, weight loss is usually achieved when I:
(1) eat breakfast (oatmeal), (2) eat lunch (yogurt), (3) eat dinner, and (4) nothing between dinner and bed. Exercise helps, but usually doing #1-#4 is enough to get things going in the right direction. Skipping meals and binging at night are what makes the weight go right back up again.

[incognegro]

salad for lunch AND a short, brisk walk afterward (or before).

if he/she works on any floor other than the ground level, take steps up & down instead of elevator/escalator.

[macphanatic]

If your friend is a male, suggest the South Beach Diet. Years ago several of us that worked together tried it. The males of the group did very well, loosing between 20 and 50 lbs. We dropped the weight much faster than the females which motivated us to stick with the diet.

The no carbs for 2 weeks is critical for starting the weight loss. It was a tough 2 weeks, but the results were great. Unless you a going to implement a major cardio program, you need to limit the carbs as they become the fat that you don't want.

[Greg the dogsitter]

The only time I've ever been able to lose noticeable weight was by not eating after 7 PM. I felt great; and co-workers became alarmed. :-)

[Carthaigh]

I think that Christian Bale is THE authority on losing weight. Bale lost 63 pounds to play his role in The Machinist, then gained about 90 pounds to play Batman in Batman Begins.

Found this online:
Q: What did you eat during this ordeal?

A: My daily thing was generally like a bit of a coffee and an apple if I felt like it. Well, I had to eat the pie in the scene, and then there was a scene eating chicken as well. But I tried not to swallow. Because it's amazing how you can literally just have a couple of bites of something and your face will expand again if you're really at that low point. To keep that really sunken look, you've got to be eating practically nothing.

[Seacrest]

Run, Fat Boy, run.

[bazookaman]

Try Richard Jeni's program.