Addiction L8
#702
Vain, But Lacking Talent
I've never approached obesity (I'm 6'3", most I've ever weighed was ~220, 40 lbs less than that now), but it still just makes you feel like there's a crushing biological inevitability to gradually gaining weight until you're fat and middle aged. Unless you're willing to constantly feel a little bit hungry.
It all makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, though.
It all makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, though.
I'm not happy with where I am weight-wise, but I see people from high school, whether it be guys or husbands of girls I knew, and it is shocking how much people approaching mid-30's have already let go. That sort of thing helps motivate me to get off my butt in the morning and ride. I am NOT a morning person, but since the beginning of this year I have found myself getting up at 5 or 5:30 to get on the rollers or go outside.
#703
Should Be More Popular
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#705
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I've never approached obesity (I'm 6'3", most I've ever weighed was ~220, 40 lbs less than that now), but it still just makes you feel like there's a crushing biological inevitability to gradually gaining weight until you're fat and middle aged. Unless you're willing to constantly feel a little bit hungry.
It all makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, though.
It all makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, though.
#706
So it is
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I've said that for ages. For some, it means counting calories, for others, it just means eating different stuff. For me, it meant not having a pack of Hostess Snowballs for breakfast every morning.... That was a start, anyway.
#707
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For someone like me who isn't really needing to lose weight, but would like to be on a downward trend rather than upward, it seems like the important thing is just identifying the little excesses that you don't need and cutting them out.
If I cut all beer out of my weekly intake, I'd probably lose 10 lbs in a month. Same for my semi-nightly bowl of sugar-laden cereal as a snack.
All about the choices made on the margins.
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For someone like me who isn't really needing to lose weight, but would like to be on a downward trend rather than upward, it seems like the important thing is just identifying the little excesses that you don't need and cutting them out.
If I cut all beer out of my weekly intake, I'd probably lose 10 lbs in a month. Same for my semi-nightly bowl of sugar-laden cereal as a snack.
All about the choices made on the margins.
#709
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#712
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That's how, many years ago, I went from 265 lbs. to 173 lbs. in 9 months. I didn't count calories. I cut out most of the crappy stuff I was shoving down my throat and started regular, aerobic exercise in the form of cycling. I am heavier than that now ("6'2", about 212 lbs. right now, usually about 207 lbs. when I am actually riding a lot), but I have a different musculature now. At 173 lbs. I had less muscle mass. If I were to cut out all alcohol out of diet, I would probably drop 10 lbs. pretty quickly.
#713
Has a magic bike
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I don't do beer, but yeah, I miss delicious cereal. Or even any boxed cold cereal. Switching from an Oatmega or Nature's Bakery bar to a Kind bar before morning workouts helped. Cutting the starch out of dinner (except after a late afternoon workout) helped. Switching my scrambled eggs from using rice for texture to shredded Brussels sprouts helped. All these lots of little things matter, and once I did enough of them (and committed to sticking with it for longer than a week), weight started coming down and hasn't stopped. But if I'm hungry, dammit I eat. Had a midnight snack the other night because I woke up with a growling stomach at 2am and wasn't going back to sleep like that.
I hate articles like that NYT articles because they summarize all these studies that look at 1 isolated thing- like adding brussel sprouts to your eggs- and they see that people who ONLY do that thing don't lose weight. Therefore things like that don't help. Duh. It's the cumulative effect of multiple different things and the ideal combo of things is different for different people.
I think it's also hard for us to realize here because we all have the common interest of an athletic endeavor (cycling)- but the vast majority of Americans are lazy and unrealistic about food choices/nutrition/calories. I've mentioned that I participate in another forum which has nothing to do with cycling. There's been discussion of this NYT article over there. One woman argues that anything more than 30 min of exercise daily is "unbalanced" and she's talking about easy stuff like yoga & riding her exercycle & walking. She won't exercise on weekends. She won't give up her Saturday pasta dinner & bottle of wine (she's Italian-American). She has previously lost weight but is currently 65 pounds overweight. Her son is over 300 pounds. Her conclusion is that it's not realistic to lose weight and she believes you can be just as healthy at 65 pounds overweight as she would be at a normal weight. Why does she believe these things? Because it means she doesn't have to make any difficult changes in her life. Ironically her job is to run the weight management clinic at a hospital! Another woman is actually writing a book that explains why humans are biologically destined to be overweight, how kids are not really overweight they are just bigger with more muscle making BMI charts erroneous for kids, how dieting will ruin your health and most importantly how IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT if your overweight. The perspective is just stunning to me. Your typical American has zero idea what it is to really exercise & they just want someone to make them feel better about their overweight or obese status. Public health agencies would never even look at the question of whether people should maybe get 2 hours of exercise per day because they know even 30 minutes is going to be a nearly-impossible sell.
Crazy stuff and it's outside a lot of our experience, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in our society.
#714
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I like sweet things, salty things, greasy things, dairy, meat, alcohol, wine, coffee, liquor, tobacco, no one has offered me hard drugs in a long time .
I've dumped and am going to continue to dump the beer/wine/liquor bit, and I've converted my lunches over to the veggie hell that we spoke about earlier.
In giving up the booze I think I'll probably pick up recreational sweets a little to fill the void but will still probably come out on top for calorically less intake.
I'm not effectively trying to lose weight, just feeling like this is a better way to live long term.
I'm also about 10-13 lbs away from fighting weight anyhow, so I'm not really in any kind of danger zone weight wise by any means.
I've dumped and am going to continue to dump the beer/wine/liquor bit, and I've converted my lunches over to the veggie hell that we spoke about earlier.
In giving up the booze I think I'll probably pick up recreational sweets a little to fill the void but will still probably come out on top for calorically less intake.
I'm not effectively trying to lose weight, just feeling like this is a better way to live long term.
I'm also about 10-13 lbs away from fighting weight anyhow, so I'm not really in any kind of danger zone weight wise by any means.
Last edited by topslop1; 05-06-16 at 01:09 PM.
#715
Vain, But Lacking Talent
This is exactly the right approach IMO: make lots of little painless changes, eat when you're hungry (of course the right things and in reasonable portions) but don't panic over it, watch the surprising calorie bombs (big portions of starch with dinner), drop or minimize empty calories like beer, exercise in enough volume to make a difference.
I hate articles like that NYT articles because they summarize all these studies that look at 1 isolated thing- like adding brussel sprouts to your eggs- and they see that people who ONLY do that thing don't lose weight. Therefore things like that don't help. Duh. It's the cumulative effect of multiple different things and the ideal combo of things is different for different people.
I think it's also hard for us to realize here because we all have the common interest of an athletic endeavor (cycling)- but the vast majority of Americans are lazy and unrealistic about food choices/nutrition/calories. I've mentioned that I participate in another forum which has nothing to do with cycling. There's been discussion of this NYT article over there. One woman argues that anything more than 30 min of exercise daily is "unbalanced" and she's talking about easy stuff like yoga & riding her exercycle & walking. She won't exercise on weekends. She won't give up her Saturday pasta dinner & bottle of wine (she's Italian-American). She has previously lost weight but is currently 65 pounds overweight. Her son is over 300 pounds. Her conclusion is that it's not realistic to lose weight and she believes you can be just as healthy at 65 pounds overweight as she would be at a normal weight. Why does she believe these things? Because it means she doesn't have to make any difficult changes in her life. Ironically her job is to run the weight management clinic at a hospital! Another woman is actually writing a book that explains why humans are biologically destined to be overweight, how kids are not really overweight they are just bigger with more muscle making BMI charts erroneous for kids, how dieting will ruin your health and most importantly how IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT if your overweight. The perspective is just stunning to me. Your typical American has zero idea what it is to really exercise & they just want someone to make them feel better about their overweight or obese status. Public health agencies would never even look at the question of whether people should maybe get 2 hours of exercise per day because they know even 30 minutes is going to be a nearly-impossible sell.
Crazy stuff and it's outside a lot of our experience, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in our society.
And also, it is an extremely skewed population sample with no control group. You have a small group of people who had the motivation of being on freaking national television working to have massive daily calorie deficits. Yeah, they're going to get away from that motivation, daily life starts again, they stop exercising and start eating what is readily available. I wish they had talked more to the one person who continued to lose weight post-program.
All that said, it boggles my mind that you could tamper with the metabolic rate that much. I wish they would look at the data a little harder and check it for some sort of accuracy/verification. It has too many gross implementations to gloss over it like this and cast doubt on the basics of how people lose weight to not really dig into it and see if there is more to it.
So yeah, I guess I was trolling by posting the article.
#716
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I think the key is keeping active. Most of the people that pack on the pounds over the years are also the people that haven't played sports or been at all active since college.
I'm not happy with where I am weight-wise, but I see people from high school, whether it be guys or husbands of girls I knew, and it is shocking how much people approaching mid-30's have already let go. That sort of thing helps motivate me to get off my butt in the morning and ride. I am NOT a morning person, but since the beginning of this year I have found myself getting up at 5 or 5:30 to get on the rollers or go outside.
I'm not happy with where I am weight-wise, but I see people from high school, whether it be guys or husbands of girls I knew, and it is shocking how much people approaching mid-30's have already let go. That sort of thing helps motivate me to get off my butt in the morning and ride. I am NOT a morning person, but since the beginning of this year I have found myself getting up at 5 or 5:30 to get on the rollers or go outside.
If people don't learn to eat selectively, and to push away from the table, they're just kidding themselves. @datlas is not 6'2 & 140 because he rides his bike, he's that way because he's disciplined about what he eats.
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#717
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Sure I know we'd rather cut off a limb than to make that sacrifice, but as they say, life's a *****, then you die.
Speak the truth, brother!
Speak the truth, brother!
__________________
See, this is why we can't have nice things. - - smarkinson
Where else but the internet can a bunch of cyclists go and be the tough guy? - - jdon
#718
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This is exactly the right approach IMO: make lots of little painless changes, eat when you're hungry (of course the right things and in reasonable portions) but don't panic over it, watch the surprising calorie bombs (big portions of starch with dinner), drop or minimize empty calories like beer, exercise in enough volume to make a difference.
I hate articles like that NYT articles because they summarize all these studies that look at 1 isolated thing- like adding brussel sprouts to your eggs- and they see that people who ONLY do that thing don't lose weight. Therefore things like that don't help. Duh. It's the cumulative effect of multiple different things and the ideal combo of things is different for different people.
I think it's also hard for us to realize here because we all have the common interest of an athletic endeavor (cycling)- but the vast majority of Americans are lazy and unrealistic about food choices/nutrition/calories. I've mentioned that I participate in another forum which has nothing to do with cycling. There's been discussion of this NYT article over there. One woman argues that anything more than 30 min of exercise daily is "unbalanced" and she's talking about easy stuff like yoga & riding her exercycle & walking. She won't exercise on weekends. She won't give up her Saturday pasta dinner & bottle of wine (she's Italian-American). She has previously lost weight but is currently 65 pounds overweight. Her son is over 300 pounds. Her conclusion is that it's not realistic to lose weight and she believes you can be just as healthy at 65 pounds overweight as she would be at a normal weight. Why does she believe these things? Because it means she doesn't have to make any difficult changes in her life. Ironically her job is to run the weight management clinic at a hospital! Another woman is actually writing a book that explains why humans are biologically destined to be overweight, how kids are not really overweight they are just bigger with more muscle making BMI charts erroneous for kids, how dieting will ruin your health and most importantly how IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT if your overweight. The perspective is just stunning to me. Your typical American has zero idea what it is to really exercise & they just want someone to make them feel better about their overweight or obese status. Public health agencies would never even look at the question of whether people should maybe get 2 hours of exercise per day because they know even 30 minutes is going to be a nearly-impossible sell.
Crazy stuff and it's outside a lot of our experience, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in our society.
And, for some reason, people are wildly opposed to real food that you can look at and see what it's made of. The concept of pulling something out of the ground and eating it seems, somehow, unnatural compared to something designed in a lab and made in a factory. Food is meat and eggs and fruit and veggies and nuts.
And yeah, those fat kids are not just more muscular...
#720
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It's about people who missed the gist of the Potbelly thread.
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#722
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There's also the fact that most people 1) still think eating fat makes you fat, and fat-free grains are awesome for you 2) sugar-free/ fat-free/ chemical-laden stuff is great for weight loss 3) have an unerring ability to find the least-healthy, for example, trail mix and edit it into their mind as "healthy". Or "Very Vanilla" soymilk with as much sugar as a milkshake. "But it's soymilk! That means I'm healthy for drinking a big glass several times a day!".
And, for some reason, people are wildly opposed to real food that you can look at and see what it's made of. The concept of pulling something out of the ground and eating it seems, somehow, unnatural compared to something designed in a lab and made in a factory. Food is meat and eggs and fruit and veggies and nuts.
And yeah, those fat kids are not just more muscular...
And, for some reason, people are wildly opposed to real food that you can look at and see what it's made of. The concept of pulling something out of the ground and eating it seems, somehow, unnatural compared to something designed in a lab and made in a factory. Food is meat and eggs and fruit and veggies and nuts.
And yeah, those fat kids are not just more muscular...
People's idea of real food is very convoluted with the amount of media and marketing that is behind all of the 'buy this and slim down' powder-milkshake-mixes, etc, etc.
Easiest way to lose weight is to eat the realest **** you can find with the least amount of tampering done to it.
#723
So it is
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JEB
Just Eat Broccoli
Just Eat Broccoli
#724
Vain, But Lacking Talent
You've learned nothing from that potbelly thread. Once you filter out all the noise, it's clear the problem is diet, not the amount of exercise you do or don't do. The problem is EATING, you have to change your eating habits. Not saying to stop exercising, but the the greatest changes are going to be made by changing diet.
If people don't learn to eat selectively, and to push away from the table, they're just kidding themselves. @datlas is not 6'2 & 140 because he rides his bike, he's that way because he's disciplined about what he eats.
If people don't learn to eat selectively, and to push away from the table, they're just kidding themselves. @datlas is not 6'2 & 140 because he rides his bike, he's that way because he's disciplined about what he eats.
And I was going to mention it, but didn't get to it, that while calorie counting works for me it's mainly because I don't want to eat boiled chicken and raw veggies. I have changed my eating habits, but that's mostly in avoiding empty calories. I am fully aware that if I just worked more fruits and veggies and leans protein in there I would get all I need, feel full, and still have a calorie deficit, but I don't wanna.
EDIT: Also, you could not pay me to read through the pot belly thread.
#725
Vain, But Lacking Talent
There's also the fact that most people 1) still think eating fat makes you fat, and fat-free grains are awesome for you 2) sugar-free/ fat-free/ chemical-laden stuff is great for weight loss 3) have an unerring ability to find the least-healthy, for example, trail mix and edit it into their mind as "healthy". Or "Very Vanilla" soymilk with as much sugar as a milkshake. "But it's soymilk! That means I'm healthy for drinking a big glass several times a day!".
And, for some reason, people are wildly opposed to real food that you can look at and see what it's made of. The concept of pulling something out of the ground and eating it seems, somehow, unnatural compared to something designed in a lab and made in a factory. Food is meat and eggs and fruit and veggies and nuts.
And yeah, those fat kids are not just more muscular...
And, for some reason, people are wildly opposed to real food that you can look at and see what it's made of. The concept of pulling something out of the ground and eating it seems, somehow, unnatural compared to something designed in a lab and made in a factory. Food is meat and eggs and fruit and veggies and nuts.
And yeah, those fat kids are not just more muscular...