Five years ago I disciplined myself to stop eating between meals and skip deserts and sugary drinks in order to lose weight while on a six month overseas assignment. My average weekly bicycling mileage dropped from about 125 to 25 miles during this assignment. My work schedule of 12hours/7 days a week kept me busy but did not require strenuous activity. I never missed a meal at the available government dining facilities and ate well 3 times a day, but without desserts, pastry and the like. Never counted calories; lost about 35 lbs. in the six months and never was hungry. Have sustained the weight loss for the last 5 years in retirement by continuing to mostly skipping between meal snacks and sugary drinks and upping my weekly mileage to about 70 miles/week.

I don't eat between meals ... i make my snacks big enough to be meals in their own right.

I posted 3 links earlier in the thread to studies that showed calculated calorie counts aren't the whole story when it comes to useable calories for food. Here's one of them(a 32% discrepancy between calculated calories and useable calories for almonds): https://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/96/2/296

Nuts seem to be the most affected by the inadequacy of calculated calories to capture the real digestive calorie content of foods, but I would not be surprised if it's significant enough with other foods to make a difference for people who are pure calorie counter dieters.

Even the form of a food can affect available calories. Whole peanuts provide fewer available calories than peanuts that have been turned into peanut butter.

Yeah, I've read nut butter has ~25% more digested calories than when chewing them up. And if I'm not mistaken, chewing has some sort of hormonal and/or psychological effect that increases satiation. I've stopped with the nut butters (e.g. Nuttzo) - it's one of the few foods where I have trouble controlling how many calories I take.

Thank you for the citation! This does point out a significant discrepancy in measured calories vs metabolized calories. I'd love to see if similar discrepancies exist for other unprocessed foods.

This points to a problem with measurement, though, not the overall premise.

The level of mastication changes the level of digestion of nuts. Different people will get differing amounts of calories from the same amounts of nuts. This probably applies to other foods to some extent but I haven't seen any studies on it.

Here's a study comparing the energy expenditure of digesting meals of equal calories but differing in how processed the food was. The variables don't seem (to me) to be very well controlled in the study, but the authors' take is that the body uses less energy to digest processed foods. Not really what someone trying to lose weight would want.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897733/?report=classic

I wish I had known that during my calorie reduction diet. I looked at the nutritional information, saw how many calories raw nuts had and how little protein they had, and treated them like the occasional "cheat on my diet" snack.

And absorption drops in general as you get older. And all this varies between individuals. This is part of the reason I refuse to count calories. Also, it's just not how I want to live my life. I'd rather listen to my gut. Literally.

I don't feel guilty about snacking on almonds, walnuts, pistachios, or cashews even though they do have a lot of calories. Eating them on a regular basis improves cholesterol, and I rarely eat so many that I feel like I'm over-indulging.

Yes, and no.

On a purely calorie or weight basis, yes, calories are calories. However diet is about more than calories. There are all sorts of other nutrients in that food, all of which are important. There's also a question of what I call the satisfaction index. Some foods offer high satisfaction as you eat them, and can stay in the stomach longer, so you're likely to be more satisfied longer, and eat less than you might with low SI foods.

So, calories are what matters, but how you get them is also important in subtle ways.

You are so right. When I was sticking to my diet I found that certain caloric tradeoffs made sense in the long run....a few extra calories now so I wouldn't want to eat later on vs a low calorie food that either didn't last or triggered a craving. Trail mix was a biggie, that satisfied my body and my mind even though it's higher calories than a lot of suggested foods for losing weight. Cheese was another one, I would put grated cheddar or colby jack on a lot of foods.

Yup. One reason I don't do all these "lo-fat" diets. A little fat creates a little more satisfaction (and the body needs some anyway.) Some nuts or cheese as a snack can prevent a second snack? Good deal.

The most important thing to eliminate is the barking of the lardass walruses in your ear trying to convince themselves that you will fail because they are right and fatness is ok dont you body shame me and no its not because I have zero will power and more excuses than people to hear them and I'm not fat i'm big boned and how dare you try to lose weight by doing something so simple that I don't want to do you selfish bastard whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa it's not fair it's just not fair waaaaaaaaaaaaaa I need a snickers because i'm not myself when I'm hungryyyyyyyy.

yah, any time you suggest something asinine like "if you want to lose weight, eat less than you burn, and if you burn more it helps that side of the equation" you had better well expect to take a lot of incoming dung fire.

all posters to this thread weigh in

ex: 6'2 340 "ding"

Wow. If only ugly minds were as visible as peoples weight. What excuses would be made then.



For those who fast.

I just talked to my wife about this yesterday. If doing a 1 day fast is it better to go from after dinner one day to dinner the next or after breakfast one day to the next?

Yesterday I did a fast from dinner to dinner but found myself a little wonky in the afternoon (I bike commute and walk all day as a job). I attributed this to having no easily accessed calories during the day, as my last meal was the night before. It got me thinking that it might be better to eat breakfast and then fast as I would have energy during the day when I need it but not so much in the evening when I don't need it. My lowest point would be when I sleep whereas yesterday my lowest point was in the afternoon at work. Hope that makes sense.

Thoughts?

Ps. 215 5'11"

90' at tempo on a mug of coffee. I only passed out 2 or 3 times and died once. Felt much better after a second coffee when I got to the office.

5'10" (178cm), 165lbs (75kg)

Weigh in: 5'2" 180 lbs. Before you sneer, 10 months ago it was 250+ lbs.

I usually eat my meal in the evening after I get home from work, sometime between 9 and 11pm. Realistically it shouldn't matter, as long as you settle into a routine where you eat around the same time of day. I like to eat in the late evening because I'm always awake at that time. I don't always wake up at the same time or go into work at the same time, so it would be far more difficult to eat in the morning consistently.

But if you wake up at a set time every day and have the time to enjoy your meal consistently, there's no reason to not have your daily meal in the morning after waking.


6'0" 180lbs. Was 260 last november, started intermittent fasting and got down to a low of 178 in May. Since then, I hover between 179 and 185, depending on time of day and how much water I drink. I could lose more but my girlfriend says I'm already too boney

70 lbs. loss in 10 months is very good. Congratulations.

The real test is maintaining a diet over the long haul that allows you to keep it off. If a weird, unsustainable diet was involved in shedding weight it may be impossible to keep it off. My nephew lost a 100 lbs but it involved some kind of diet of a propitiatory shake and he alas gained it all back when he returned to the eating habits that made him overweight in the first place.

+1 on the kudos.

-1 on the weird unsustainable diet being impossible to keep off.... with the qualifier that you have (one has) to transition from a "losing weight" program to a "whatever you think comes after program".

for cycling, it can be cut weight, then build power and endurance. for non cycling it can be lose weight then maintain. slightly different diet and strategy.

you can always go back into lose weight mode for short periods if needed.

I stopped dieting altogether in July and my weight stabilized. I half-heartedly started dieting again beginning of last month and have lost nearly 10 pounds. Crazy as it sounds, the 2-3 pounds a week for six months appears to have been healthy.

6' 230lbs.

Was 270 last year and went on the no carbs bandwagon. Lost 25 lbs but could not move lower than that.

Regained weight to 265 as of September 2017

Went onto calorie counting diet and basic reeducation about eating less... lost 35lbs as of today.

Hope to go down to 200lbs by mid 2018

Mostly by people that have something to sell you so you lose it "fast".

And then the no-carb guys start slinging poo at the no-fat guys, and the vegans just piss everybody off.