> A human body is like an iPhone with a battery pack that can grow nearly indefinitely, and with the abundance of food around us we scarcely unplug from the charging outlet. In this case, the batteries are primarily the adipose tissue and triglycerides (fat) stored within, which are eagerly stockpiled (or sometimes also synthesized!) by your body to be burned for energy in case food becomes scarce.
Incidentally, this is how/why liposuction works: if you remove fat cells from a certain area, your body can't store fat in that spot anymore. The flip side being that if you gain weight afterwards, it still has to go somewhere, but you can't/won't store fat in the lipo'd spot.
And you can't remove every single fat cell in your body because you do need to store fat to stay alive, but it's good for sculpting specific areas.
(I should add that I got a bit of lipo done ~6 months ago and I'm loving it so far. Very little in the way of pounds shed, but it made a huge difference for my silhouette, which is what I wanted.)
I am now reading _Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution_, Cat Bohannon's fascinating book on the female body from an evolutionary perspective. Only the first few chapters blew my mind a couple of times. Here is something she writes about liposuction:
> It seems that women who have liposuction on their hips and thighs do grow back some of their fat, but they grow it back in different places. [...] As it turns out, women’s fat isn’t the same as men’s. Each fat deposit on our body is a little bit different, but women’s hip, buttock, and upper thigh fat, or “gluteofemoral” fat, is chock-full of unusual lipids: long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, or LC-PUFAs. (Think omega-3. Think fish oil.) Our livers are bad at making these kinds of fats from scratch, so we need to get most of them from our diet. And bodies that can become pregnant need them so they can make baby brains and retinas.
> Most of the time, female gluteofemoral fat resists being metabolized. As many women know, these areas are the first places we gain weight and the last places we lose it. But in the last trimester of pregnancy—when the fetus ramps up its brain development and its own fat stores—the mother’s body starts retrieving and dumping these special lipids by the boatload into the baby’s body. This specialized hoovering of the mother’s gluteofemoral fat stores continues throughout the first year of breast-feeding—the most important time, as it happens, for infant brain and eye development. Some evolutionary biologists now believe that women evolved to have fatty hips precisely because they’re specialized to provide the building blocks for human babies’ big brains. Since we can’t get enough of those LC-PUFAs from our daily diet, women start storing them from childhood forward. Other primates don't seem to have this pattern.
> Meanwhile, we found out just a few years ago--again someone finally asked the question--that a human girl's fat may be one of the best predictors for when she'll get her first period. [...] That is how important this fat is for reproduction. Our ovaries won't even kick in until we've stored up enough of this fat to form a decent baseline.
Cryolipolysis (commonly referred to as “fat freezing” where the area is cooled down to the temp that kills fat cells but not surrounding cells) has the same effect.
Interesting (to me at least): the process was borne from the inventor theorizing that their child’s dimples were caused by the child keeping popsicles in their mouths.
Evolution indeed gave us fat storage which is one of those traits becoming unnecessary in the post industrial world of abundance. The problem is our body is more adapted to the too little rather than to the too much. E.g: fasting comes with a flurry of benefits (autophagy, mitophagy, ketones, microbiome reset, inflammation control....) in the absence of which our overall metabolism slowly poisons itself - you know the story, obesity, diabetes and so on.
BTW keto (fast mimicking) diet was invited in the 20s in the Mayo clinic to cure epileptic children. I encourage people to have a look at the fascinating "Brain Energy" book from Chris Palmer (or watch him on youtube) to see what's underneath it and how metabolism and brain efficiency are linked
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation equation for working out Base Metabolic Rate, as stated in this post, is for males. The original subtracts a different constant for females (-161 instead of -5). It is a 1990 paper. And it subtracts these arbitrary constants independent of the other variables, makes me think its limited in its usefulness.
I believe that weight training, maybe even cardio, increases this BMR for many hours after the workout, so I dont agree with the "not a major contributor to losing weight" argument if its done regularly.
I think it's probably based off the empirical observation that in studies of free-living individuals, moderate increases in exercise output simply don't result in weight loss.
The thinking is that our bodies are very good at recognizing a calorie deficit and respond very effectively by increasing spontaneous intake to balance the calorie budget. It often only takes very small increases in intake -- so low they can easily go unnoticed (or that people deny they could have happened, again why metabolic ward studies are so vital) -- to obliterate the calorie expenditure of moderate exercise.
yeah, it's a bit strange. generally, most papers say exercise isn't a huge contributor but at least in my case it makes all the difference. theoretically muscle mass burns few additional calories (see https://www.strongerbyscience.com/calories-muscle-burn/) and you have to a lot of cardio to significantly push the envelope.
as soon as i start weight training 3 times a week or endurance training 5 times a week (i'm bad at combining the two) i have to up my intake significantly just to keep my weight at the same level and gaining often means eating more than i'm comfortable with (considering my dietary preferences).
> Avoid sugar like the plague, including carbohydrate-heavy foods that immediately break down to sugar (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes), including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay.
This is not an evidence-based approach. I swear all these nutrition grifter folks on YouTube and Twitter melted certain people's brain.
Avoiding sugar and fat is evidence-based, but wayyy too broadly applied. Depends on the person, the condition, and the rest of the diet. Some people who shouldn't be eating broccoli are... some people who should be eating fats are avoiding them... some people who should be eating sucrose are avoiding it because they think it's the same as taking in glucose and fructose independently. Lots of people replaced butter with margarine, which was worse.
Another comment claims: "I recall andrej walking around the office at this time (tesla), bad-mouthing all the sugar products that came into his view, claiming they are weaponized; and very pleased if he saw any nuts." [1]
This advice would actually kill me fairly quickly if I didn't know any better.
The internet is full of prescriptions without qualifiers, and desperate people, (feeling very ill without answers from their doctors, or no access), willing to believe whatever opinions they find because it fits their current perspective without deviating too much. It might be better to just give people the tools they need to understand what's happening [2], and let them listen to their own symptoms to make changes, if they're willing and capable...
Yup. Negotiating any writings on nutrition is like walking through an endless minefield of hearsay and bullshit. Otherwise a pretty good article though I thought.
I recall andrej walking around the office at this time (tesla), bad-mouthing all the sugar products that came into his view, claiming they are weaponized; and very pleased if he saw any nuts. haha good times :)
I’ve known a few people like that. They think they figured out the proper way to live, and they love to judge everyone else’s bad choices. It gets old real fast.
I can't be bothered to read the article, but I recently discovered I can lose weight fairly easily by, wait for it... just eating a little bit less of everything I already eat. Other than that, the only conscious change was to sometimes substitute a chocolate snack with an apple.
> Avoid sugar like the plague, [...]including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay.
If you need a sweet treat, some fruit is fine. If you're just starting to work on your diet and health, and you're trading fruit for chips or cake or any other "hyper-palatable" foods, great! Fresh fruit is undeniably a better choice.
But, fruit juice is approximately as good for you as any soda, and as you try to optimize your diet more and more, you'll want more fibrous fruits, less sugary fruits, and eventually a little bit less fruit overall.
But by then you'll already be pretty familiar with your goals and diet and how various foods fit in to them.
You can safely eat 200 grams of tomatoes as the sugar and calorie amount is pretty low but it will make you feel satiated.
Meanwhile 100 grams of banana will have 5 times the sugar and calories of tomatoes (for 100g) but still is pretty fine if you restrict yourself at that 1 small banana.
200 grams of an apple is also pretty safe and is a nice snack.
The point about artificial selection is not far off, there was some news about a zoo having to switch to other food because today's fruits were starting to rot the animals' teeth [0].
But in moderation and ideally sourced locally it's probably fine.
I’d say in general no. Show me any unhealthy person that is that way from eating lots of fruits. When you dig deeper, it’s always the Little Debbie snacks they have in the cabinet and the fast food.
Avoiding fruits only comes after cutting out all processed sugar, or added sugar on the label. Then you should cut out all processed grains. Flour is basically powdered carbohydrate, which spikes your insulin in a manner not much different from table sugar. Then you can look at sugar. I would still include berries, they're low cal and the antioxidant content is insane.
Basically, you need to earn your carbs. Sugar is fine if you burn it off, that's why athletes drink Gatorade mid workout. If you eat an apple before a walk/jog/swim/etc, there's no issue. If you eat a pile of bananas while doing nothing, that glycogen has to go somewhere.
Probably not, unless your diet is already very good. Fruit is high in fibre and micronutrients relative to the average diet, is reasonably satiating, and is difficult to eat too much of without shoving into a blender or juicing.
If you're a biohacker, fruit's your biggest remaining problem, you've replaced the micronutrients with other sources, and you don't need fast burn energy, sure.
There is almost nothing in fruit worth taking. Especially not a tremendous amount of sugar. One apple can have amounts of sugar similar to Coca-Cola. Furthermore, a lot of it is fructose, which is basically a poison to the body. The sole purpose of human adaptations to fruit seems to be fattening, which makes evolutionary sense for survival in the time of scarcity, but not when you have food in abundance all the time. Note that it's also true that todays fruit is 'weaponized' by long-lasting preference to sugary variants so it contains much more sugar then in historic times and a lot less of other things like vitamins and minerals.
One other important reason is that such amount of sugar will block vitamin C as they are absorbed via the same mechanism (GLUT2). Blocking vitamin C absorption leads to all sorts of bad things, slowly, like lower immunity, higher cholesterol, fragile blood vessels.
The third important aspect is cancer feeding (which mostly relies on sugar, so even though the body makes it, you certainly do not have to ignite it) and effects on insulin which dysfunction is tied to both cancer and diabetes.
You should replace them with vegetables.
As a personal anecdote, my family and I almost never eat fruit (in last 20 years or so) - at most a couple of times per year. We all seem very healthy.
Great post, I had a different experience with the diet though. I lost 17kg in circa 4 months (an average of 1% body mass per week) while eating mostly carbs (240 g of pasta a day, 3 or 4 fruits) and vegetables. A couple of times a week I would eat 300g of chicken. The only physical exercise I do is running for 20 to 30 mins 3 times a week.
I have to say I'm quite happy with the diet, I basically never feel hungry and I love pasta so it's enjoyable. Obviously you can't just cover the pasta in a calorie dense sauce and expect to lose weight, you still need to keep an eye on the calories.
interesting but it doesn't touch on blood sugar and insulin. Insulin is what tells your body to store the excess glucose circulating in your blood in your fat cells. manage your blood sugar for good things.
Agree, it's a bit odd that he did not focus on this, since he is obviously aware of it. It's the reason calories in/out is totally insufficient as a guide - what you eat affects hormones, which will hugely affect what you want to eat, and how it is metabolized.
The advice about avoiding sugar is also clearly rooted in this effect, but without the explanation it it comes across as just another "mom said".
About a year ago, I did two extended water fasts (24 and 16 days, about 8 weeks apart). I wanted to do a single 40 day one (just for kicks, to see if I last) but stopped after 24 days as I wasn't feeling well.
I've lost 18 kg during the first one (102 kg -> 84 kg), then quickly regained about 4 kg, and lost about 10 kg during the second one (88 -> 78). After the second fast, I started resistance training between two and four times a week (with a brain-endowed gym coach). I'm currently down 14 kg (88 kg), but gained quite a lot of muscle.
Though I can't recommend water fasting on blanket terms, if you're like me and you prefer short-term intense stress to long-term baseline stress, you may find that it's a great way to lose a lot of weight quickly, start feeling better about yourself and what your body is capable of, and get on the path to a healthier life style.
My biggest problem is eating something that makes me feel full, tastes good, can be prepared easily (or at least cookable and storable in bulk) and that does not turn into fat.
I am confident that I'm in good company when I say that I hit this sort of paragraph like a brick wall:
> Do not drink any calories (no soda, no alcohol, no juices, avoid milk). Avoid sugar like the plague, including carbohydrate-heavy foods that immediately break down to sugar (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes), including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay. Avoid processed food.
Look, I have nothing but respect for people who can read that and think, oh, cool, I hate everything that tastes good, is easy to access and leaves me feeling satisfied.
For those of us who are still yoked in service to evil things like rice, this paragraph just makes us feel like we're fucked.
Also: even introverts who love cooking at home occasionally have to go for dinner with clients, relatives or friends. While it's true that you can just order some naked bitter greens, this often doesn't feel like a socially normal thing to do (even though norms are changing, especially in large and progressive cities).
The thing I find odd about many of these biohacking/longevity experts is that they don’t seem to look at real people that live a long time in Spain, Italy, Japan, etc. and instead just default to an over-optimized “scientific” diet that insists that over-analyzing everything is equivalent to being effective. If there isn’t a name for this fallacy, there ought to be one: analysis and results are not always correlated.
Edit: reading the linked post again, I realized what it is: an obsession with data and a total disregard for cultural practices. French people, for example, eat all kinds of things considered forbidden, and yet obesity isn’t much of an issue there compared to other Western nations. One reason why is the strong cultural rule against snacking.
That is a made up term that means nothing and everything. Washing vegetables is a process. “Cooking” is a process. Cutting is a process. Chilling is a process.
I agree this sucks and I personally struggle to follow anything this strict because I love cooking AND I love eating (the perfect storm for obesity, sadly). However I found a good middle ground is to focus on "Avoid processed food" and sticking to whole foods. Try buy things that don't have bar codes, or stick to the outside of the supermarket (where they tend to put the fresh produce), or whatever.
Well, rice is also among the most environmentally damaging plants you can eat, so I suppose there's multiple arguments to be made in favor of avoiding it.
Cutting drinkable calories and all added sugars is the 20% of effort that gives you 80% of the effect here. As far as going to 100% goes, cutting carbohydrates altogether has also become enough of a trend ("no-carb") that you can find lots of information on how to do it, if you feel like you need to do it. However, those diets usually require you to eat a lot of meat, which is unhealthy for a host of other reasons, and if you're stringent about it, they would also require you to cut beneficial foods like nuts, which is likewise bad.
I think it's a very natural American reaction. Of course if your food supply is full of preservatives and fillers, you'll find it difficult to eat food that doesn't make you fat or feel like shit.
I've been living in the EU (Netherlands) for a few years now, and I've lost weight naturally through walking more, better food, and less access to fast food. My wife and I love cooking, and love eating too. It's legitimately hard to find quality produce in the US, and it's often substantially more expensive than produce in the EU.
I actually dread going back to the US to visit family or when I have to travel for work because the food really irritates my stomach...
I find rice to be a curious thing to put on the list. I understand that it is a carb, but it’s also a question of moderation, and portion size. Prior to the introduction of western franchises like McDonald’s, the Japanese diet led to some of the longest lifespan’s in the world. A small quantity of carbs like rice seems like a non-issue to me. It’s when you sit down to a massive plate of fried rice that you’re asking for trouble.
Not contradicting, but your brain is reprogrammable. If you cut things a bit, you won't feel the need to be satisfied. The amount of sugar we eat in modern societies is mostly useless. Now I was "lucky", I fell ill, so I just couldn't eat sugar, now I don't eat pastry, or carbs (maybe 3 times a month at worst). Veggies, tea, meat, fish, nuts, yogurt, can give you a lot.
[+] [-] spondylosaurus|2 years ago|reply
Incidentally, this is how/why liposuction works: if you remove fat cells from a certain area, your body can't store fat in that spot anymore. The flip side being that if you gain weight afterwards, it still has to go somewhere, but you can't/won't store fat in the lipo'd spot.
And you can't remove every single fat cell in your body because you do need to store fat to stay alive, but it's good for sculpting specific areas.
(I should add that I got a bit of lipo done ~6 months ago and I'm loving it so far. Very little in the way of pounds shed, but it made a huge difference for my silhouette, which is what I wanted.)
[+] [-] kieckerjan|2 years ago|reply
> It seems that women who have liposuction on their hips and thighs do grow back some of their fat, but they grow it back in different places. [...] As it turns out, women’s fat isn’t the same as men’s. Each fat deposit on our body is a little bit different, but women’s hip, buttock, and upper thigh fat, or “gluteofemoral” fat, is chock-full of unusual lipids: long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, or LC-PUFAs. (Think omega-3. Think fish oil.) Our livers are bad at making these kinds of fats from scratch, so we need to get most of them from our diet. And bodies that can become pregnant need them so they can make baby brains and retinas.
> Most of the time, female gluteofemoral fat resists being metabolized. As many women know, these areas are the first places we gain weight and the last places we lose it. But in the last trimester of pregnancy—when the fetus ramps up its brain development and its own fat stores—the mother’s body starts retrieving and dumping these special lipids by the boatload into the baby’s body. This specialized hoovering of the mother’s gluteofemoral fat stores continues throughout the first year of breast-feeding—the most important time, as it happens, for infant brain and eye development. Some evolutionary biologists now believe that women evolved to have fatty hips precisely because they’re specialized to provide the building blocks for human babies’ big brains. Since we can’t get enough of those LC-PUFAs from our daily diet, women start storing them from childhood forward. Other primates don't seem to have this pattern.
> Meanwhile, we found out just a few years ago--again someone finally asked the question--that a human girl's fat may be one of the best predictors for when she'll get her first period. [...] That is how important this fat is for reproduction. Our ovaries won't even kick in until we've stored up enough of this fat to form a decent baseline.
[+] [-] joshspankit|2 years ago|reply
Interesting (to me at least): the process was borne from the inventor theorizing that their child’s dimples were caused by the child keeping popsicles in their mouths.
[+] [-] charlysisto|2 years ago|reply
BTW keto (fast mimicking) diet was invited in the 20s in the Mayo clinic to cure epileptic children. I encourage people to have a look at the fascinating "Brain Energy" book from Chris Palmer (or watch him on youtube) to see what's underneath it and how metabolism and brain efficiency are linked
[+] [-] carlsborg|2 years ago|reply
I believe that weight training, maybe even cardio, increases this BMR for many hours after the workout, so I dont agree with the "not a major contributor to losing weight" argument if its done regularly.
[+] [-] n8henrie|2 years ago|reply
The thinking is that our bodies are very good at recognizing a calorie deficit and respond very effectively by increasing spontaneous intake to balance the calorie budget. It often only takes very small increases in intake -- so low they can easily go unnoticed (or that people deny they could have happened, again why metabolic ward studies are so vital) -- to obliterate the calorie expenditure of moderate exercise.
[+] [-] stefs|2 years ago|reply
as soon as i start weight training 3 times a week or endurance training 5 times a week (i'm bad at combining the two) i have to up my intake significantly just to keep my weight at the same level and gaining often means eating more than i'm comfortable with (considering my dietary preferences).
[+] [-] tpush|2 years ago|reply
This is not an evidence-based approach. I swear all these nutrition grifter folks on YouTube and Twitter melted certain people's brain.
[+] [-] matisseverduyn|2 years ago|reply
Another comment claims: "I recall andrej walking around the office at this time (tesla), bad-mouthing all the sugar products that came into his view, claiming they are weaponized; and very pleased if he saw any nuts." [1]
This advice would actually kill me fairly quickly if I didn't know any better.
The internet is full of prescriptions without qualifiers, and desperate people, (feeling very ill without answers from their doctors, or no access), willing to believe whatever opinions they find because it fits their current perspective without deviating too much. It might be better to just give people the tools they need to understand what's happening [2], and let them listen to their own symptoms to make changes, if they're willing and capable...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38110001
[2] https://www.roche.com/about/philanthropy/science-education/b...
[+] [-] davedx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timzaman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jb1991|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asicsp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JR1427|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daco|2 years ago|reply
Is avoiding fruits a good recommendation?
[+] [-] thaumaturgy|2 years ago|reply
But, fruit juice is approximately as good for you as any soda, and as you try to optimize your diet more and more, you'll want more fibrous fruits, less sugary fruits, and eventually a little bit less fruit overall.
But by then you'll already be pretty familiar with your goals and diet and how various foods fit in to them.
[+] [-] DeWilde|2 years ago|reply
You can safely eat 200 grams of tomatoes as the sugar and calorie amount is pretty low but it will make you feel satiated.
Meanwhile 100 grams of banana will have 5 times the sugar and calories of tomatoes (for 100g) but still is pretty fine if you restrict yourself at that 1 small banana.
200 grams of an apple is also pretty safe and is a nice snack.
[+] [-] alpaca128|2 years ago|reply
But in moderation and ideally sourced locally it's probably fine.
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6223529/Melbourne-Z...
[+] [-] Elucalidavah|2 years ago|reply
Completely avoiding - no. Reducing fruit consumption to some sensible level - definitely. Hence "to a lesser extent".
[+] [-] Mistletoe|2 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315720/
[+] [-] Danjoe4|2 years ago|reply
Basically, you need to earn your carbs. Sugar is fine if you burn it off, that's why athletes drink Gatorade mid workout. If you eat an apple before a walk/jog/swim/etc, there's no issue. If you eat a pile of bananas while doing nothing, that glycogen has to go somewhere.
[+] [-] strken|2 years ago|reply
If you're a biohacker, fruit's your biggest remaining problem, you've replaced the micronutrients with other sources, and you don't need fast burn energy, sure.
[+] [-] huytersd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoseja|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpush|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majkinetor|2 years ago|reply
There is almost nothing in fruit worth taking. Especially not a tremendous amount of sugar. One apple can have amounts of sugar similar to Coca-Cola. Furthermore, a lot of it is fructose, which is basically a poison to the body. The sole purpose of human adaptations to fruit seems to be fattening, which makes evolutionary sense for survival in the time of scarcity, but not when you have food in abundance all the time. Note that it's also true that todays fruit is 'weaponized' by long-lasting preference to sugary variants so it contains much more sugar then in historic times and a lot less of other things like vitamins and minerals.
One other important reason is that such amount of sugar will block vitamin C as they are absorbed via the same mechanism (GLUT2). Blocking vitamin C absorption leads to all sorts of bad things, slowly, like lower immunity, higher cholesterol, fragile blood vessels.
The third important aspect is cancer feeding (which mostly relies on sugar, so even though the body makes it, you certainly do not have to ignite it) and effects on insulin which dysfunction is tied to both cancer and diabetes.
You should replace them with vegetables.
As a personal anecdote, my family and I almost never eat fruit (in last 20 years or so) - at most a couple of times per year. We all seem very healthy.
[+] [-] francasso|2 years ago|reply
I have to say I'm quite happy with the diet, I basically never feel hungry and I love pasta so it's enjoyable. Obviously you can't just cover the pasta in a calorie dense sauce and expect to lose weight, you still need to keep an eye on the calories.
[+] [-] fadedsignal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfjailbird|2 years ago|reply
The advice about avoiding sugar is also clearly rooted in this effect, but without the explanation it it comes across as just another "mom said".
[+] [-] hxelk1|2 years ago|reply
I've lost 18 kg during the first one (102 kg -> 84 kg), then quickly regained about 4 kg, and lost about 10 kg during the second one (88 -> 78). After the second fast, I started resistance training between two and four times a week (with a brain-endowed gym coach). I'm currently down 14 kg (88 kg), but gained quite a lot of muscle.
Though I can't recommend water fasting on blanket terms, if you're like me and you prefer short-term intense stress to long-term baseline stress, you may find that it's a great way to lose a lot of weight quickly, start feeling better about yourself and what your body is capable of, and get on the path to a healthier life style.
It was truly a remarkable experience.
For me, the trigger was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWVflQolmM.
[+] [-] g-b-r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Perz1val|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkx|2 years ago|reply
please use https links
[+] [-] pallas_athena|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kashif|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liampulles|2 years ago|reply
Very open to suggestions here
[+] [-] mfld|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrflowers|2 years ago|reply
> maintaining an average deficit of 500kcal per day did lead to about 60% of the expected weight loss over the course of a year.
[+] [-] WithinReason|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lagt_t|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteforde|2 years ago|reply
> Do not drink any calories (no soda, no alcohol, no juices, avoid milk). Avoid sugar like the plague, including carbohydrate-heavy foods that immediately break down to sugar (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes), including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay. Avoid processed food.
Look, I have nothing but respect for people who can read that and think, oh, cool, I hate everything that tastes good, is easy to access and leaves me feeling satisfied.
For those of us who are still yoked in service to evil things like rice, this paragraph just makes us feel like we're fucked.
Also: even introverts who love cooking at home occasionally have to go for dinner with clients, relatives or friends. While it's true that you can just order some naked bitter greens, this often doesn't feel like a socially normal thing to do (even though norms are changing, especially in large and progressive cities).
[+] [-] keiferski|2 years ago|reply
Edit: reading the linked post again, I realized what it is: an obsession with data and a total disregard for cultural practices. French people, for example, eat all kinds of things considered forbidden, and yet obesity isn’t much of an issue there compared to other Western nations. One reason why is the strong cultural rule against snacking.
[+] [-] itake|2 years ago|reply
That is a made up term that means nothing and everything. Washing vegetables is a process. “Cooking” is a process. Cutting is a process. Chilling is a process.
What the heck do they mean by “processed food”?
[+] [-] eddtries|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indigo945|2 years ago|reply
Cutting drinkable calories and all added sugars is the 20% of effort that gives you 80% of the effect here. As far as going to 100% goes, cutting carbohydrates altogether has also become enough of a trend ("no-carb") that you can find lots of information on how to do it, if you feel like you need to do it. However, those diets usually require you to eat a lot of meat, which is unhealthy for a host of other reasons, and if you're stringent about it, they would also require you to cut beneficial foods like nuts, which is likewise bad.
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|2 years ago|reply
I've been living in the EU (Netherlands) for a few years now, and I've lost weight naturally through walking more, better food, and less access to fast food. My wife and I love cooking, and love eating too. It's legitimately hard to find quality produce in the US, and it's often substantially more expensive than produce in the EU.
I actually dread going back to the US to visit family or when I have to travel for work because the food really irritates my stomach...
[+] [-] jb1991|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shuiling|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]