I know there are a lot of fad diets and then there is calorie counting as a more science based approach. I myself do calorie counting and follow a strict diet in order to avoid overeating. How do you eat all day, you follow a system?
My approach to human diet is to only eat organic free range humans. They might be more expensive to aquire but I’ve never tasted any better.
What?!? Where can you still source organic and free-range?
Unfortunately these days only in Bhutan
I hear the New Zealanders have a sweet and salty taste to them on account of their grass-fed diet. But I’ve never been able to afford the Kiwi-grown.
Where do you source ethical girl scout cookies?
So I’m going to preface this by saying that I’ve been very fortunate on my weight loss journey including how much free time I have to dedicate to cooking, and what I’ve done won’t work for everyone. Also I recommend not being hyper focused on weight and instead focus on being healthy.
I used to be very overweight, and was always overweight growing up. I’m 6’3" and at my highest in my mid 20’s was 330 lbs. I basically didn’t pay attention to what I ate at all, so I ate both too much and not healthy. 8 years later and now I’m around 215, and I have much more thought and time going into how I eat.
I decided that I wanted to change that, and after research I learned a few general things:
- If you want to have sustained weight loss you can’t go on a diet - you need to change your habits and relationship to food. If you ever plan to go back to eating how you are now, you will return to the same weight and health. If you’re not prepared to have a permanent change to how you eat, you’re probably better off just staying the course because going back and forth can be very unhealthy, both mentally and physically.
- Losing weight and changing habits are slow processes. It will take months or years to see significant progress, and it won’t be a straight line. Because it’s a permanent change there will be ups and downs along the way and over time, and that’s normal and fine. For me it’s been about 8 years and I’m still making slow progress, but there have been slips where I’ve gained 20-30 lbs back (pandemic was a bitch!)
- My results are probably not typical. Everyone is on their own journey and dealing with their own hurdles, so don’t compare your results to someone else’s. Progress is progress, no matter how small. And improving your health is absolutely progress, even if the number on the scale doesn’t change.
- EXERCISE. But not for the reasons you think. You will never be able to outrun a bad diet, you just don’t burn calories that fast while exercising. But it boosts your energy, mood, and for me also helped a ton with leveling out my hunger levels. It’s also probably the single biggest thing you can do to improve your health.
Sorry about the novel before I go into the question, but I’ve seen a lot of unhealthy mindsets and advice and I think it’s important to share that even with success stories there is struggle and it’s a constant battle and lifestyle change. It’s not easy, and anyone telling you differently is selling something.
So, on to what I do!
Best advice I’ve heard boils down to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Don’t try to follow fad diets. I haven’t seen any good reliable science that supports any super strict diet. The day to day doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the week to week and month to month. Don’t beat yourself up because you went to a party and indulged, or spent a holiday week with your family and went a little overboard. But if you’re doing that every week, it’s going to have an impact.
For me what worked was a combination of counting calories and substituting foods. I started by logging everything I ate without trying to change anything, just to get a baseline (this was VERY illuminating, it’s shocking how easy it is to eat 3000-4000 calories when you’re mostly eating junk food). Try not to judge yourself here and make sure to log everything you eat, but don’t try to go insane accuracy. Again, aim for broad trends not the small details.
Once you have a good baseline, figure out where you can substitute out higher calorie dense foods with lower calorie dense foods. This usually means more veggies, less junk food. The goal here is to be able to still eat until you feel full, but to decrease the total calories. You want to be able to feel full, because if you’re constantly hungry you likely won’t be able to maintain it long term. A good strategy is to identify some foods that you like that are low calorie density that don’t require any prep. If you’re hungry and it’s not meal time, eat those. My foods were carrots, apples, and celery. I can eat as much of those as I want until I’m not hungry and it won’t have a huge impact on my daily calorie intake.
And honestly, that’s kind of it - rinse and repeat. Experiment with new foods and recipes that are healthier and keep looking for substitutions you can do. Like stew or pasta sauce? Increase the amount and variety of veggies you throw in. Start to learn which foods are high calorie density and which ones are lower. Look to eat a variety of foods to improve overall nutrition.
If you are lucky enough to have the time, learn to cook more. A lot of processed foods have a bunch of sugar in them, and that increases calories a ton without making you feel more full. Cook in big batches so most of the time it’s still quick and easy to eat healthy. Get a few recipe staples that you can cook without thinking or looking up the recipe to lower the effort for home cooked food. An instant pot is great for making large batches of healthy food - a beef and bean chili with tons of veggies over rice is super healthy, fairly low touch time, and you can make like 10-15 meals at a time. Air fryers are great for cooking 1-2 portions at a time of food you prepare in advance, so actual touch time is pretty low.
It’s really hard at first. It gets easier over time (months and years). I’m 8 years in and these things are much more natural to me, but if I’m not actively putting thought and effort into what I eat I still skip into bad habits.
Hope this helps, and best wishes to everyone on a journey for their own health and relationship with food!
This is quite frankly what we should be teaching in schools, it pains me so deeply that it’s not standard knowledge and that people still think temporary diets are useful for anything unless they’re prescribed by a doctor.
This is so helpful, thanks for your detailed account! Congratulations on achieving your goals!
Happy to share! If you (or anyone really) wants more detail about anything let me know! I’m happy to share tips or recipes that I’ve discovered on my journey if it will help others!
You’re right about exercise. I’d go even farther and say don’t even bother with dedicated exercise if you’re just starting to lose weight, because it’s completely irrelevant to the weight loss part.
I maximize fiber and protein and don’t really count calories. Most americans do not get enough fiber so metamucil can be very powerful. I will go out of my way to eat filling, low calorie foods. Apples, celery, and the not so occasional pickle.
I love pickles. And the juice is great for hydration.
i just eat intuitively, it took some training to wean myself off sugar and onto vegetables but now the most unhealthy thing i can get cravings for is cinnamon buns and meals feel incomplete and vaguely gross without some sort of vegetable, ideally green vegetable, in it.
IMO calorie counting and anything as strict as that is just stress-inducing and gives you a pretty fucked up relationship to food. I think the best thing for most people is to just look at the calorie counts but don’t actually worry about it at all, minimize sugar intake, maximize vegetable and fruit consumption, reduce meat consumption, and choose whole-grain options wherever possible.
This lets you enjoy food without stressing about it, and should be extremely easy to follow.
Sugar is basically the only big bad food that matters, it’s super easy to get way too many calories with sugary stuff because it doesn’t make you feel full and is so calorie dense.
Vegetables on the other hand are pretty low in calories and take up tons of space in your stomach, so you feel full and won’t want to eat more than you need. And always choosing whole grain makes sure that even if you get a lot of starch (which is basically sugar but less terrible), you at least also get a bunch of fibre and other nutrients.And fibre is a bit of a golden bullet i feel: it just generally makes your gut health better and best of all makes taking a dump a much more pleasant process.
Eating like this helped me kick my sugar habit and lose 90lbs. I also would add fermented foods to help diversify you gut microbiome. Kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, and yogurt (Greek, Iceland, etc…) are all great.
Don’t forget beans and lentils too. Fry some eggs and slide it on a bowl of beans and that’s a good eating, right there.
oh yeah big thumbs up to both of those, though i will say that beans and lentils are actually kinda expensive here and dried ones are hilariously inconvenient, yeah sure i’m gonna fucking soak stuff a day in advance lmfao.
What i tend to stick to is frozen peas and haricots verts, that is really cheap (the peas are even domestic!) and can simply be dumped into the meal or quickly reheated in the microwave/boiled/pan fried.
What’s the problem with soaking beans the night before?
It’s an asynchronous process that requires me to hold a mental model of the state of an ongoing project.
I mean it’s not that bad, I can put beans in a bowl of water on the counter and not have to remember it because I’ll see the bowl of beans.
But my life is chaotic and I might forget they’re there or just go sleep at a friend’s house or whatever and then I come home and there’s my bowl of beans harboring an entire microscopic civilization entering the industrial age because Siri decided to play dumb when I asked her to remind me in twelve hours that I’ve got beans soaking.
“Here’s what I found on the web for remind me in 12 hours that I’ve got beans soaking”
My brain evolved in a place where soaking beans would require finding a puddle in a rock depression after rainfall. Like unless I come across a tree full of protein bars, I’m fucked.
it’s an arse, it means i have to plan what i’m going to eat way in advance and if i wake up and just… don’t feel like eating beans then i have a bunch of beans i need to consume before they go bad…
Everyone’s different I guess, but I don’t think of one day before as “way in advance”. Plain boiled beans freeze really well so I just do that if I’ve already made them but my plans change.
Honestly I’m starting to think “Do you freeze food?” is the most powerful indicator of a person’s overall level of having their shit together.
My hypothalamus sends a new wave of sensory data about 10 times a second. That means if something can’t be accomplished in 100ms, I need project management software to get it done.
“Live in the now” they said. “Closest weapon, closest target” they said. “Go with the flow” they said. Now I have the attention span of a gnat and dried beans are just cruel parodies of food.
What are we talking about anyway?
At least you write really well, so you’ve got that going for you. I do get that things which involve that much prep don’t work for everyone’s lifestyle, I guess it’s the upside of being pretty boring and living in a country where I don’t have any friends that I can make it work for me.
I don’t eat for pleasure, and I try to follow some bioethics, but that’s basically it.
I appreciate the sentiment, what do you eat all day?
Regular food items, nothing in particular, though one thing you might notice is I usually skip breakfast. Most of the food are simple items, like raw fruits and vegetables. Not sure how else to describe it.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 20 years now. Other than that, I don’t actively restrict my diet as I never got close to being overweight. My main meals are mostly healthy I’d say, but I do probably consume too much sugar.
What sort of meals do you prepare on any given week? just curios, what your diet’s main staples consist of as a vegetarian.
Some typical lunch dishes for me:
- Curry/vegetable rice
- Potato casserole with broccoli
- Jacket potatoes with green sauce
- Ramen (using Kurata vegan ramen soup stock)
- Lentil curry
- Various pasta dishes
- Spinach lasagna
- Ratatouille
Coffee and croissant for breakfast, bread with various spreads for dinner.
That’s a very very diverse/balanced diet, thanks for sharing this. I am big on coffee too soo good especially with pastry like croissants.
Intermittent Fasting is what worked for me. I’ve been on 16:8 for 3 months now and lost almost 10 lbs so far. I like it because it’s so easy. Just don’t eat for 16 hours. No need to avoid any particular food/ingredients and no need to count calories (relatively compared to other diets). I didn’t have to change what or how I eat other than the time I stop and start eating.
Been doing this as well. Not for weights reasons. But man do I feel the difference in focus and general well being. Also tried a 3 day water fast. A bit hard but also felt really good during the second day.
Haha not eating for 16 hours does not sound easy to me
16/8? That’s basically just skipping breakfast and no snacking after dinner.
Yep, that’s exactly what I do. Just started, so not sure if it will work. I plan to throw in a bit of exercise, too. I’ve been very sedentary since covid.
I hear ya. I worked myself up to 18/6. Lost some weight, but I still don’t move enough.
You’re right and it’s still hard no matter what, but remember that most of that time you’re going to be sleeping.
If you get 8 hrs of sleep going to bed at 10pm and waking at 6 am, you could split the fast evenly in the morning and night (eat your first meal at 10 am and you’d stop eating at 6 pm) or you could stick it in the morning or evening (last meal at 2 pm, OR first meal at 2 pm) or some combo in between.
It’s even easier if you’re a lazy person like me who sleeps ~10 hrs a day!
Still, absolutely no judgment if it still sounds hard or impossible. Everyone’s eating styles are different :-)
I’ve got ADHD, I either binge eat for the dopamine, or I forget that I’m human and need food to survive, and then eat whatever’s fast and easy when my body is finally signalling hunger at a level that I can’t ignore. I try to keep some healthier options around for both scenarios, and it also helps to be around other people who have more regular schedules and I can follow their lead on meal times and join them socially. But when I’m alone, my personal diet is only “balanced” because it’s so chaotic.
Whole food plant based diet. I also try to limit the amount of carb intake to maintain a healthy mix. Some people go WFPB and end up eating mostly bread and pasta which isn’t great. I also try to go zero SOS (salt, oil, sugar).
Why salt, and Oil of all rhings?
I mean fat is good for us.
The exception is of course if there is an underlying medical problem (high blood pressure, overweight, …).
Fat good. Oil bad. Oil is a highly concentrated extract that we aren’t very capable of processing. If I want fat, I’ll eat olives, nuts, avocado, etc. I can stuff myself with food for the same amount of fat and calories as two tablespoons of oil.
There is absolutely no evidence that we “aren’t very capable of processing” oil. Eating whole foods is good. Oil is fine.
If you consume oil then you are not following a whole food diet. Oil is a processed or refined ingredient, therefore not a whole food. Obviously, you (as in you personally) can eat whatever you please, but I choose to follow a WFPB diet as intended and that includes no refined ingredients like salt, sugar and pressed pills, or processed ingredients like vegetable oils and such.
That’s got very little to do with my comment. Obviously, you (as in you personally) can eat whatever you please, but if you make biological claims about it you ought to back them up with evidence.
What does “as intended” mean? You mention bread and pasta in an earlier comment; do you understand that flour is also a processed ingredient? And that baking is a means of processing food? Oil can be as simple as just being squeezed out of whole seeds or fruit, that’s no more processing than grinding, cooking, or peeling something.
Flour (which I avoid) is not processed, it is ground just like nut butters (which I also avoid) are not processed. High quality olive oil comes from squeezed olives, which makes it refined. The problem with refined oils is it’s unatural concentration, which I’ve already covered. Vegetable oils and such are 100% processed.
As for backup you can read all about it from the experts instead of some random guy on the Internet. I recommend Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn and Dr. Michael Greger.
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Virgin Extra Olive Oil of course.
No processed crap neither.
All oil follows the same concept. It’s fat concentrated in pure form. If you’re starving, and I mean literally starving, then oil will save your life. Most of us aren’t starving so that extra concentrated punch of fat and calories is not only unnecessary, it is unhealthy.
Nobody just drinks oil by itself. We typically combine it with foods with very little fat, e.g. as salad dressing. Oil adds flavour, increases satiety and doesn’t spike blood sugar. It is a perfectly fine ingredient.
Do you ever miss salt?
I never liked salt, so I didn’t really miss it. No salt doesn’t mean no seasoning. In fact, I season my food far more now than I did before. Leaning on salt for seasoning leaves a lot of complex flavors out of recipes.
I’ve found this about myself after extensive trial and even more extensive error:
- My body seems to use up potassium fast when I’m stressed. No idea why. But taking potassium seems to help me recover when I’m feeling burnt out (I have an HPA axis problem so my stress response isn’t normal)
- Low carb diet (under ~125 grams per day) makes me functional in a way antidepressants, adderall, modafinil, tony robbins, ayahuasca, zen training, therapy, etc never could. I’ve never done keto but low carb is incredible for me
- I have no sense of thirst so keeping a nalgene bottle nearby helps me a lot (the 1-liter capacity is important for tracking my water intake, and this is why the new 828-ml standard for sports drinks pisses me off)
- Wheat gives me systematic inflammation, resulting in miserable outlook on life for about three days. It’s dose-dependent. I can have a piece of toast and be fine but if I eat half a loaf of bread, then I hate everyone and everything the next couple days
I think that humans are, evolutionary, omnivores but with vegetarian food outweighting meat. Dairy came in later with the ability to domesticate animals and turning formerly non digestible food (grass) into milk and hence increasing the availability of food resources.
I would like to have a vegetarian diet for the most part and reduce meat intake to maybe twice a week. I prefer unprocessed meat (steak or chicken beast). But I was not able to find the muse to change my diet.
This is not driven by moral concerns. Eat or be eaten is something I, as a human somewhere at the top of the food chain, can live with. I just feel like meat is not as scarce as it should be and many people have lost the connection between meat consumption and the animal where the meat comes from.
I hear you, so since you aim for mostly vegetarian diet, would you exempt eggs from that?
No I wouldn’t.
I don’t eat animal products. Even though many animal products are associated with negative health outcomes, I do it for ethical reasons, not those health reasons.
I usually eat twice a day, a very large meal and a small to medium meal. Has nothing to do with health that just follows when I get hungry and eating is more pleasurable when I am hungry.
Been cutting back on hyperpalatable foods, more potatoes, less potato chips.
To save money I rely a lot on high calorie staples like grains and pulses.
For drinks it’s almost all water and tea. When I’m out I will indulge in some liquor, but I’ve cut back on that a lot.
I basically just eat whatever I feel like whenever I feel like it. Lots of meat and fat and salt. Seems to work great, I’m reasonably skinny and healthy. To the extent I’m not just getting randomly lucky I think I’ve stumbled into something in the Atkins diet genre, with unlimited calorie and nutrient dense foods not being an issue because they fill me up when I’ve had enough.
It’s your genetics. I’m the same way. Can eat basically anything. At my absolute heaviest I was 5’11 165lbs, which is heavier than I like to be. But I just cut out the 10 sodas I drank a day and lost the 10 lbs I wanted to in like a month.
I try to eat 80% to 90% minimally processed foods, and the rest is “fun” food. This is what makes me feel good and keeps me from putting on weight. If I consume too much processed stuff I feel like garbage - I’ll feel tired, get headaches, and feel achey (shit just hits you harder when you’re older).
Minimally processed is stuff like oatmeal, fruit, veggies, lean meats, beans, and rice. I try to eat some fermented stuff every day if I can, usually in the form of fermented dill pickles or kimchi. I try to vary my foods as much as I can, since variety is good for your gut microbiome.
I eat oats too, have you heard of the rumor that oats bind vitamins/minerals and thus you eat a a healthy breakfast with oats and fruit but the oats suck up all the nutrients and you get nothing out of it? I am not sure why but i think they claimed there was some binding agent in oats, like some chemical compound.
You’re probably thinking of phytic acid. While it is present in raw oats, cooking it breaks it down. Most oats you buy from the store have been steamed, so it’s even already cooked before you do anything with it. Cooking breaks down a lot of these types of compounds.
I’ve been eating them raw for years 😬
Can you find that claim in a reputable scientific study or at least a reputable journal (not an anti-carb paleo or keto blog)? I’d like to know more, but I can’t find anything that isn’t woo science.
While they contain phytic acid, I don’t know if they contain enough quantity to counteract all the veggie/fruit nutrients you eat with it.
That article indicates that isolated phytates resulted in reduced absorption of calcium, iron, and zinc, but no significant effect was found when consumed in a matrix. Furthermore, phytate-containing grains tended to contain other compounds such as fermentable fiber that increased the bioavailability of those minerals, resulting in very little effect. So if that’s the only evidence we have to go by, it doesn’t sound like oatmeal is going to prevent you from absorbing the nutrients from fruits and veggies you eat with it, nor does if have any affect on the other nutritional benefits derived from oats.
I am not sure what evidence there is or what studies were the basis of the rumors I’ve heard, this study was what I found on google 😂
Had a UC flare, after that I adjusted my diet. About 50% of the time I do 18h of fasting. Tried an 3 day water fast, gonna do this maybe every 2 months. Mostly meat free meals, cooked from scratch. Trying to keep sugar and bread to the weekends. Eating fermented vegetables and kombucha with most meals. Additional vitamins when I remember.
