Why YSK: many countries have issues with weight, such as mine with 74% of US adults being overweight or obese. The global weight loss industry is over $200 billion yearly, with many influencers, pills, and surgeries promising quick results with little effort. These often come with side effects, or don’t work long term.
Studies suggest filling yourself with foods low in caloric density and high in fiber, like fruits and vegetables, can help reach and maintain a healthy weight. It’s good to have these foods available in our living spaces to make the choice easy. Your taste buds will likely adapt to love them if you’re not there yet.
Excuse me, fruit are NOT in GENERAL low caloric density with the exception of strawberries.
This is part of the danger of getting your nutrition advice from some internet randos.
No internet rando. The information is out there, but people don’t want it.
What are you talking about? What’s more filling, an apple or one of those “100-calorie-packs” of hyperprocessed sugar?
The apple is less calories too.
This thread is generally filled with completely pants-on-head dietary advice.
Don’t get this type of information from randoms on Lemmy, contact a professional instead. I’ve noticed that Lemmy is exceptionally bad as a source for this.
is that a term you absorbed from zero punctuation?
Not consciously, it’s been a long while since I watched zero punctuation.
It is somewhat simple, and I know some people live in “food deserts”; but really if you couldn’t get it 500 years ago, it is probably not good for you.
Eat simple foods, with few steps from identifiable grown thing (veg, fruit, animal, fish) to what ends up on your plate.
This is not as easy as that, people don’t know how to cook well or don’t have access to good quality foods.
Eating fruits and vegetables might definitely help and it is in any case very healthy! However, people should not always expect to lose more than 10% of their weight in the long term (over years). This 10% can already provide great benefits for your health, so definitely try to lose that weight if you are overweight.
Often it is said that it is just calories in vs calories out. This is only true up until a certain point. For many people, after losing about 10% of their weight, their body starts to work against more weight loss. Their metabolism starts to slow down and their appetite will increase, making it more difficult to lose weight. It might make it almost impossible to keep on a diet and it might even cause people to gain more weight back than they lost.
The theory behind this is that your body has a set point or settling point for what it thinks your weight should be. When you are overweight, the set point changes to a higher weight. When you lose weight, your body wants to get back to this higher set point. The set point can be changed to a lower weight, but that might take years and years. There also is some limited evidence that building more muscles might help somewhat.
I think it is important to add this to the discussion, as often there is the idea that weight loss is just based on self-control and limiting calorie-intake. While this might play a role, the idea that these are the only factors that determine your weight causes a lot of suffering for people. It might also cause more weight gain in the long term.
So, try to lose about 10% of your weight and if you feel like you are struggling after that, go to a specialised doctor who can help you with losing more weight (doctors without this specialisation are often clueless about weight loss in my experience). In addition, a psychologist might be able to help if your are overeating due to an eating disorder.
No. If you stop losing weight on a caloric deficit, you miscalculated the deficit. It’s a thermodynamic certainty. When people hit a long term plateau on a CICO diet, it’s because they either failed to adjust their total daily calorie expenditures for their new weight, or most likely they’re cheating on their calorie counts.
Like I said, that is an oversimplification. There are many other factors that play a role, like the body working against the weight loss and lowering metabolism and increasing appetite, as I already discussed. There are also psychological factors and environmental factors that can have a big impact on weight loss.
Just ignoring those makes losing weight more difficult and means you have to do it entirely based on willpower. If you are one of those people for which these other factors play a big role it becomes very difficult to keep the weight off in the long term just based on willpower. This can be the case, for example, if you have an eating disorder, very high stress, untreated medical conditions (e.g. hypothyroidism), not enough money to buy healthy food, problems with the body signaling hunger or fullness, unsolved emotional issues, and so on.
Of course there are some people who just eat too much and who can just lose the weight easily by eating less. However, especially for people who are very overweight, these factors will play a role. They hear they should just eat less all the time and if they fail they are made to feel like a failure themselves and as if they have a lack of willpower. This is not the case. For them losing the weight is more difficult and the underlying issues should be addressed. You cannot just generalise like that and apply what works for you to everyone else.
Edit: please find sources for my claims in my comment below.
Neither of you have cited any sources, this discussion ain’t going anywhere and you should not be listened to
My experience is that if you spend time on providing sources, people usually are not interested in them and will not change their mind anyway. So I do not feel like it is worth the effort in every discussion. However, if you are interested in the work on this topic that substantiate my claims, then I am very glad to provide some links to some interesting articles.
This is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
In conclusion many people with obesity who agree obesity is a disease appear to have an imperfect understanding of the causes and treatment options. The presence of beliefs and perceptions that support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.
I hope that this provides you with enough evidence to at least take the things I was saying into consideration. Please let me know if you find this useful. I have a lot more to share if you are interested.
Modern fruits have too much fructose for good health these days. They’ve been bred to be way too sweet.
Still better than an industrial snack, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you already have illuminated all these snacks and other sweetened products from your diet, I think you’re doing pretty great. Before that, it seems a bit silly to worry about fruits being too sweet.
I have a lot of friends who have a fruit smoothie every morning and wonder why they aren’t losing weight. Bananas, apples, and grapes in particular are to be avoided. Most berries are okay.
The main problem with smoothies is that they make it easy to really overconsume fruit sugars. People generally put way more fruit into a smoothie than they would normally consume in a single sitting. Having some grapes with a salad or a banana with eggs and toast is fine. Dumping a banana, 1 cup berries, 1/2 cup yogurt, 1/4 orange juice, and a teaspoon of honey in a blender then chugging it in the span of a couple minutes is problematic.
Are they also adding full fat yogurt, milk and peanut butter? Skipping protein powder?
A smoothie could easily hit 700+ calories if made mindlessly.
This is oddly controversial, but an even more satiating method is to consume more protein. If you hit your goal body weight (lbs) in grams of protein, you won’t be reaching for that end of day snack.
Note drinking the protein instead of eating it doesn’t work nearly as well for this.
Just to parrot you with an example, which would you prefer? A half pound of chicken breast or two apples and a banana? Guarantee you the chicken breast is gonna leave you better off on the whole than the fruits.
I don’t think it is controversial, except when it is an all or nothing thing just like the zero carbs crap. A balanced diet will keep you full and includes proteins, fats, carbs, and everything else as long as they are in the right balance.
Crappy diets like the one based on the food pyramid, which had way to many carbs, are the main problem.
Too much protein can be hard on the kidneys, especially long term. Balance and moderation. Not saying your point is bad. But there are a lot of protein bros out there.
For me I found that I need summer levels of vitamin D, so when for September to April take 40000 IU per day. For me I took 2-3 months to get out of power saving mode. In the summer I try to be a long as I can sun without getting sunburn without sunscreen, midday.
Then I do intermittent fasting only eating dinner.
This has led me to losing 250g per day.
40 000 iu? I always heard 10k iu is the upper limit for most people. Is this a typo or is there new research on safe levels?
The pills i see are mostly 1000 or 4000
My own advice:
The diet I’m on, which has lost me 36 pounds (196 to 160) and counting since early April, is simple calorie restriction - I try my best not to go over 1500 calories/day, and if I do go over, I try to make up for it by going under on following days until things average out.
Every time I’ve tried this diet or similar diets, I’ve had great success, as long as I’ve meticulously tracked and wrote down how many calories I ate each day. The times I’ve tried this diet without tracking have all ended up failing, even when I “tried” sticking to it for months. The moment I start writing numbers down, things just fall into place. So for me at least, that’s the key.
Some notes:
- Over the last 127 days my actual average calories/day has been 1472/day
- I try to avoid meals where counting is very difficult or impractical. That means I try to avoid going to restaurants that don’t post calories and I’m not big on “real” cooking. If I do have a meal where a good count isn’t possible I try my best to overestimate - usually with 2500 or 3000 depending on how full I am since it’s really hard to eat more than that at once. I find it very difficult to go to most restaurants without getting more than 1500 calories, also, so I don’t eat at restaurants all that often anymore. Fast food places like McDonald’s are actually some of the easier options to work with, though.
- I’ve made little to no effort to eat healthier - just less. I can have a blizzard from Dairy Queen if I want, but that’s 1100 calories and then I’ve only got 400 left for something else. I have mastered making delicious ice cream that’s just 300 calories/pint though. In practice I usually eat processed foods from a can, box, or bag that you just need to heat up or follow the instructions on the box for.
- A scale is essential for getting accurate calories out of things like butter, milk, ketchup, ice cream ingredients, etc.
- In general meats are a pretty poor choice - compared to other foods they make me a lot less full compared to how many calories they take up. I can eat 8 hotdogs (without buns) and fill up my daily calories in that one meal, and still be hungry - or I can have two cans of spaghettios (580 calories total), and be so full I almost can’t finish.
- For me at least, after the first week or so I just stop feeling hungry in general most of the time. There are occasionally days where I only eat because I know I should, rather than because I got hungry.
- When I’m on this diet, I basically never get heartburn, even after a day where I eat something that would usually have given it to me badly - probably the nicest part of all this.
- Despite what the post says, I eat basically no fruits or vegetables in my day-to-day life.
- In the past, I’ve incorporated extremely heavy daily exercise into my routine as well - I’m talking multiple hours a day, every day, for at least two months. While it did have some noticeable benefits like a very noticeably lower resting heart rate and increased strength, it had basically no visible effect on my rate of weight loss - looking at the graph, you couldn’t even tell which portions of the diet were subject to heavy exercise vs. heavy leisure. The lesson learned is that diet is far, far more important than exercise - you can offset an entire workout with a single cookie.
- When I’m not making any dieting attempts at all, I’m a huge glutton. I’ve never gotten over 200 pounds, because any time I get close I start doing this diet - but if I ate the way I wanted to all the time, I could easily weigh 350+ pounds. I can very easily eat single 1200-2000 calorie meals multiple times a day. I’ve yo-yo’d a lot in the past few years but I’m hoping to more or less keep things permanently under control this time - once I get to 140ish I plan to raise my daily calorie allowance to the point where I maintain, rather than gain or lose, over time.
An added bonus of writing things down is getting to graph things too!
Note that I’m not claiming this is healthy. Just effective. Anyone can lose weight eating nothing but chocolate cake, as long as they eat sufficiently little. It doesn’t mean you won’t die from it.
I’ve made little to no effort to eat healthier - just less. I can have a blizzard from Dairy Queen if I want, but that’s 1100 calories and then I’ve only got 400 left for something else.
In addition to choosing not to have something in the first place, choosing not to finish something is another great skill. Lowest calorie blizzard is still hundreds of calories, but choosing to eat only half of the smallest size can work.
Definitely a harder habit to change compared to not ordering in the first place when raised to always clean the plate.
While that’s true, and while it’s something I’d definitely recommend for others, I can’t honestly say that’s something I’ve mastered doing myself. To me, not finishing just means I have more work to do when it comes to figuring out how many calories I actually ate. While I could just guesstimate that I had 60% of that blizzard, I find that in practice I’m really not okay with being that wishy-washy with the numbers. The days where I have to just guesstimate kill me inside.
And this situation with the blizzard is something I’ve dealt with. I had a mostly finished blizzard but couldn’t finish it. I had to mark the level of ice cream still remaining, empty the cup, then get weight measurements for the empty cup (c), cup full of water (f), and cup full of water up to the level of remaining ice cream (w) - at which point the total calories eaten were (w-c)/(f-c) * B, where B is the number of calories in the full blizzard. If I could have avoided all of that by finishing the last 28% of that blizzard, you bet I would have.
I either go for about half and call it good or just round it up to the full amount when counting and then not worry too much if some other things are 5-10% higher than they should be.
It isn’t like the menu calories are precise. Heck, for a blizzard it could be up to 15% more when served if it is above the cup line.
The important thing is paying more attention to what we are eating, how high in calories things are, and whether we actually know what a portion size is.
The worst part is that I know the menu calories aren’t precise at most restaurants, but I still won’t let myself be wishy-washy with them. I actively recognize there’s no point in relying on how many calories Outback Steakhouse says are in a Bloomin’ Onion (1900 btw) when the largest bloomin’ onion I’ve had in the past is close to double the size of the smallest I’ve had. But my entire system relies on precise tracking so I still feel I have to make the effort.
Rounding up to the full amount after eating >85% or so is something I do though. I’m much more okay with it if I know I’m overestimating than if I think I might possibly be underestimating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiety_value
It’s not just fruits and vegetables, but getting the right components.
A high sugar low fiber fruit won’t do as much as a higher fiber fruit, so apple > blackberry, for example.You can also take advantage of your bodies insatiable love for protein and make that a key part of the meal as well, and it’ll signal that it’s full sooner and for longer.
Food that physically takes longer to eat also help because you can eat faster than you can “realize” you’re full.
A trick of mine, that I don’t know if there’s any general basis for it but it helps me, is to not take a plate with as much food as I think I want, but to instead take a plate with about half that. That way I get to feel like I’m having two servings, and the gap between finishing the first and starting the second usually means that the second is less than the first.
Yes! The biggest factor with body weight is calories in vs calories out. Foods with volume and mass but fewer calories displace calorie dense foods. Even as simple as substituting popcorn vs potato chips is huge on calorie savings. Protein and fats (ideally plant based) can also help you feel full longer than say simple carbs like potato chips/white pasta.
I highly recommend Harvard’s Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition info and recipes, the language is very accessible too!
Edit: fixed link
Correcting link https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/
Thanks!
Humans don’t need grains.
Pretty simple.
74%? That’s actually lower than I thought
That little clicker in the brain that goes off when you’ve had enough doesn’t really work for me. I have to feel physically full or I still feel hungry. Even worse, my dopamine levels are garbage and eating makes me feel good.
Not saying this doesn’t work. Only that I’m far from the only one where it is this simple.
I’m like you, and no it’s not simple. As others said, calories in, calories out. Nothing else matters, you need to find your own way to keep it. And no, exercise does not help much with weight, only if paired with a good diet. You would need to work out for hours continuously just to lose the calories from a random extra dessert.
But, you can do it. Two things I wish I had known:
-
For example, my body was able to keep my weight instead of losing it if I kept calories intake where it should be and had a “cheat day” once a week at most. No cheat days for me, my body is too smart for that.
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Sometimes you feel you are on track, and then you get stuck at a certain weight. Even if you keep your diet, you might get stuck at a certain weight despite losing it well beforehand. Keep at it. You will break through at one point, closer than you think. But you have to keep at it.
It is not as simple as just calories in vs calories out. Your body has a setting point for what weight it thinks it should be. Once you are overweight, your setting point will be higher and your body wants to get back to that higher weight. It will start working actively against you. This might mean your appetite will increase and your metabolism will slow down. I think that is what you are describing here.
Trying to push yourself to lose more weight despite your body working against you can cause rebound weight gain if you are not able to keep the diet (which might become increasingly difficult due to increasing appetite). The most important thing is to keep a healthy diet that does not reduce your quality of life too much and is doable on the long term, I think. If you are struggling everyday, then it might be better to eat a little bit more and stay on a higher weight a bit longer to ensure that you will maintain the weight loss.
Maybe this is already what you meant. But the phrase “calories in vs calories out” and stating that nothing else matters made me want to respond. I think it is a popular oversimplification that causes a lot of unnecessary suffering for people trying to lose weight.
This is propaganda from companies that want you to keep gorging on their slop instead of natural portions of food.
It is not. I am not saying people should not eat healthy or should not try to lose weight. I am just saying that pushing the oversimplification that for everyone it is just calories in vs calories out and that it is only about willpower is not correct. People should get the right help with losing weight and the factors that cause the weight gain or makes people not losing the weight should be addressed.
There is lots of scientific work on this. I copied some links from another comment I made.
For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
If you disagree, please provide some substantiation. I would be interested in reading it.
Despite what others are saying, I think you are right in a lot of ways.
There definitely is a set point where your body feels comfortable. You can get above and below a few kilos, and your body will return to that set point if you return to what you eat normally. That’s why it’s hard, to move the set point, you have to get around 5 under and keep at it. So when you are 5 under and your weight loss suddenly stops, that’s when you really started to push the kilos down, that’s why it suddenly gets harder. And you should go that 5 kilos past your set point because you will gain it back when you stop eating less.
With me, with a resting consumption of around 1800 kcal, how it went is that I did 6 months of trying to keep it below 1500 kcal, targeting 1400 if I can - but no less, and more or less kept it. My results have been going from 124 kg to 110 then rebounding to 114, then another round of doing the same got me from 114 to 100 then rebound to 104. After the ~4 kg rebound, it stabilized. Just now, a month after finishing, I just ate nothing but shitty McDonalds for 3 days (have been on the road a lot) and my weight went from 104.2 to 103.9.
I guess what I’m saying is that your only real way of affecting the system is cals in vs cals out, but as you say, the inside of the system is not simple. Also, don’t crash diet, and even if you feel like eating less on one day for some reason, keep your diet from the other side as well. Every time I ate less than 1400, the next day I fucked it up and went to 1800-ish, every single time. It makes it much harder.
Thanks! I think you are describing what a lot of people experience. Weight loss is highly complex and by oversimplifying it, lots of people do not get the help they need and are made to feel bad about themselves.
There is actually quite some scientific work supporting what I am saying. For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.
This is not true.
It’s just not true.
Very solid argumentation…
You said words that weren’t factually accurate.
I’m not going to argue with you about it but straight up the notion that your body has some “set point” and the idea of needing to keep your metabolism in the right area so calories work is … it’s bullshit.
It’s wrong.
The real problem with CICO is people don’t measure properly and our bodies have a varying requirement day to day based on a myriad of factors but that doesn’t invalidate the simple truth that is CICO.
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Feeling full is about volume of food. With high calorie dense foods like fast food, that’s going to be a ton of calories. With low calorie dense foods you can eat the same amount of food, and eat substantially less calories.
The only thing that matters in weight loss is calories in, calories out.
I get that it’s harder for some people, but finding less calorie dense foods that you enjoy will go a long way towards helping lose weight. Also, don’t drink pop unless it’s diet.
or maybe stop eating for feeling full, and start eating for satiety.
It doesn’t work for me when it comes to any sort of fried potato variation (fries, tots, crispy crows, etc). No matter how full I am, I can keep eating those.
I fucked my “clicker” up with too large portions, which expanded my stomach over the years. i was NEVER satiated, because i had no way of filling my stomach up. I was always hungry. In the end and after many years of fighting my massive overweight i went for an stomach bypass. If someone tells you that this is the easy way out: they are full of shit. You have to relearn eating, and 1) that really sucks and 2) that was exactly what i needed, No more feeling hungry is a blessing.
Same here. I use popcorn to get there. We probably go through three air poppers a year.
If you would accept a suggestion: Just fast for a few days. Your stomach will shrink and you can go back to eating normal portions after. Plus it’s good for the soul, there’s a reason so many religions recommend it.
A few days? Depending on the person’s condition, it might turn out badly.
First, start with one day. Second, and most importantly, consult with a medical professional to make sure you don’t have any counter-indications.
I don’t want a pickle.
I just want to ride on my motorcycle
Funniest shit I ever saw…
Edit: autocorrect screwed me.
Unless your brain is fucking broken like mine, lol.
Fruits are high in sugar, how are they considered low calorie foods?
Most fruits are low calorie with a lot of them having less than 100 kcal per 100g. There are some exceptions such as Avocado (due to fat content actually) and dates as well dried fruit (prunes at 300/100g vs plums at 45/100g).
Strawberries, cherries, apples, figs, bananas all are below 100kcal/100g. Obviously some are better at filing you up than others.
It doesn’t say low calories but low caloric density and high in fibre. It’s a combo that matters. Though one can definitely overdo on fruit.
One apple (223 g) is supposed to be 116 calories.
Fruits have plenty of fiber, which helps increase satiety, which is what’s important here. Also check the difference between a candy bar and a piece of friut, and then think about which fills you up better with fewer calories. Density matters too, it’s much easier to snarf down a bunch of candy than to eat the same caloric value in fruit.
Like the other commenter said, it’s about the calorie density, not the calories.
An apple makes you satisfied longer than an equivalent number of calories of Oreos, so if you get to snack as much as you want on either, you’ll eat fewer calories of apple than of Oreo over a given timeframe.
You can over eat either of them, it’s just easier with one than the other.Similarly, something like a steak can fill you up a lot, for a very long time, but has enough calories in it that it’s still better to not eat for every meal.
