The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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There's a certain type of addiction, where the addicting substance is both the cause and solution to your problems, which is particularly dangerous. Maybe you're having money problems, so you drink to forget them, but then once sober your money problems are even worse, and the need for a drink thus also worse. I have realized this was (is?) the case with me and videogames. I would work at my job for a while, get stressed because a programming problem was taking more than a few minutes to solve, then switch tabs and drown out my sorrows in the comforting buzz of Dead By Daylight or League of Legends. Doing so would dull the edge of my stress, but put me further and further behind in my job, rendering me even more panicked and even more desperate for some activity which would distract me from that panic.
Last week marked the one month point for me of not contributing anything meaningful to the project to which I'm currently assigned. It's a new project, in a language I've never worked in before, in a very large and poorly (if at all) documented codebase, but a month is still a long time to accomplish virtually nothing. I'd go in to daily meetings, try and make up a few tasks that I was working on (I was really still just struggling to study the codebase the whole time), then after the meeting slump back in my seat and boot up a videogame. Occasionally I'd make feeble attempts to take another look at the code, then I'd find something else discouraging and return to the videogames. A month passed like so, I began to get somewhat worried I'd lose my job, and I decided I needed to cut myself off once and for all. I deleted all the games and used Cold Turkey to block a few time-wasting sites (such as this one for most of the day) as well.
I've done this before, but never with such resolve to actually move past such mediocre uses of time. Currently I have no restrictions on Cold Turkey--the website blocks exist, yes, but mostly as a reminder and a method to break unconscious bad habits. I can go in and turn the block off whenever I want. In the past, I set strong restrictions on block-editing, and always fought hard to find ways around them. My only explanation for why it's now so much easier is that I have truly accepted that life will be ok if I never play videogames again. There are better things to do with my time.
It's amazing how much better life immediately became. I have so much time and willpower now. I'm getting conservatively 3-4x as much work done at my job now, plus now there seems to be plenty of time for side projects I've wanted to work on for ages. Perhaps most significantly, I'm on a 1000 calorie/day high-protein keto diet and have lost 10 pounds since I started last week, so I'm the slimmest I've been in a couple of years.
We'll see if this keeps up. My weight loss at least will probably slow down, but for once I genuinely expect this new momentum to otherwise continue. The phenomenon described above, where addiction is at once the cause and solution to all troubles, is extremely powerful. I had no idea just how much better life could be without hours each day devoted to mindless (but mentally tiring) stress-relief. I had thought life would be much harder but also much better--turns out it's just straight up better in every way, despite the loss of my favorite hobby. I'm grateful this past month has been so terrible. Wasting time has always been a problem for me, but it took a month of stressful misery to fully hammer into my head that it was a Problem and not just a minor personal failing to work on.
I've tried to do this before, but always refused to fully give up on the Problematic Pastime. This made it impossible to stick with the plan for long. It was also helpful to conceptualize videogames as a stress-causer rather than a stress-reliever. I'll report again in a few weeks and hopefully will have maintained this trajectory.
That's great and I don't want to take anything away from a fantastic accomplishment. I do want to provide some useful info on your diet plan. There is lots of good published studies on which weight loss strategies lead to long-term decreases in fat mass (youtuber jeff nippard covers a lot of the science if interested). In short, you want to aim for an average weekly calorie consumption of about 10% below maintenance, with weekends eating at maintenance, and weekdays consuming 14% below maintenance, with 2-3 times a week resistance training, and protein consumption of 1.8-3g protein per kg bodyweight. Cardio is not strictly necessary. Low impact cardio is recommended. So that is a brief description on how to increase and keep lean body mass gains. I think calorie tracking apps are a good idea for the first few months. Keto is fine for many, but I would bump the calories, take the fat off more slowly, and do something to retain muscle. That way when you're done dieting down, you're most likely to keep the gains you made. Whatever you choose, best of luck and congrats!
3g per kilogram is ridiculously overkill. Untrained individuals probably don't need to worry about losing muscle mass either.
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Thanks for the info. I have tried such a diet in the past (2-3 g / kg protein, 0.3-0.4 g / kg fat, the rest carbs, with a 300-400 calorie deficit per day) and while it definitely worked, it took a lot of time and attention to track everything. I recognize that my current diet may be worse (at least for retaining muscle mass) but the weight loss is about 10x faster, the calorie tracking is somewhat easier (less food to track), and the hunger pangs / lack of energy actually aren't too bad at all.
My current plan is to transition to a more typical cutting schedule once my weight is in a more typical range, which (at current rates) looks to be in about 1-2 months. At that point I'll do something close to what you describe. I'd like to ask though, how do you keep a strict diet without counting calories? I weigh everything and put it on a macro spreadsheet and still worry that it's not precise enough.
RE: protein / kg, I'm (marginally) obese and don't have all that much muscle mass to lose, so I figure 1g / kg will be sufficient; do you disagree? If I'm trying to eat at least 0.3g/kg fat and eat only 1000 calories that leaves me 1.6 g / kg protein max (which is the main reason I'm doing keto). Costco rotisserie chicken has been a lifesaver haha.
I don't know if keto is significantly different, presumably the need to limit the amount of carbs might require more careful tracking, but I don't weigh every portion. I've weighed my portions once, and I just write:
and so on. I don't bother recording most vegetables, as they are not calorie-rich enough to bother, so I just have my salads recorded as dressing. If my 2000 daily calories are actually 1800 or 2200, I don't really care as long as I'm not constantly biased in one direction, I'm not a competitive bodybuilder.
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For me its getting really good at estimations after logging everything in a paid app for a couple of months. Now I just log my weight a few times a week, and the scale keeps me honest. Everything is a habit now. I cook most of the food I eat, and I think thats important. If I go out, I try to eat a filling snack before (veggies, fruit, low-cal smoothie, water, etc). I just assume the calories I consumed while out are double or triple my norm, so I just go hungry for a meal or two afterwards. If the scale is trending up, I just get more strict for the next week and see what happens. The key is never letting the weight creep back up.
I'd up the protein. Iirc the research shows that protein drives lean body mass and helps spare muscle. You may have more muscle than you think and probably want to save it as much as possible. I think you have a lot of headroom for additional calories and should be mindful of crashing, yo-yoing, and lowering your BMR for a few months. Whey and filtered milk (ie Fairlife)/water might be a good low carb protein and calorie adjustment; 40-50g protein, 6g carbs, and
250-300 calories. I don't know much about keto to say if 6g is too much. Also, I do know that people take keto supplements like magnesium for some reason.I've thought about what you're trying; melt the fat then build back the muscle. The research convinced me to go the very slow route of 0.25-0.5% body-weight loss per week for 15-30 weeks. My base metabolic rate, satiety, and fitness should be exactly where I want it as soon as I'm done. But I love to cook and lift weights so it also suits me personally.
If you go for operation fat-melting, you should start a really dialed-in fitness routine when finished, which should take 4 months to figure out. Done correctly, that should stoke your metabolism. Then you can maintain easily (with keto or whatever). I've had friends that had success going this route. Eventually they found the keto too boring, but I eat a lot of repetitive meals so who knows. You'll gain water weight if you stop keto, which isn't something to worry about. Then just keep your eye on the scale. Best of luck.
As I mentioned before, I got most of my info from youtuber Jeff Nippard. He has a lot of videos going through quality research on diets, proteins requirements, cheat meals/compensatory overeating, rep-ranges, and progressive overload.
Just Interested: how can you measure if you're on track if you aim for such a low goal? If you are 100kg, that would be 250-500g of weight loss per week, which even with a very precise balance may be affected by random variation in water retention and the like - if you weigh less, the situation is even more difficult.
Any idea here?
I'm about 100kg right now, with a goal of 95kg. 250g of weight loss in a week means a net expenditure of some 1900 calories over the week. That alone is quite noticeable to me just from an appetite/ caloric budgeting perspective. In order to end the whole week 1900 calories under maintenance I have to try pretty hard. I don't have room for cheat meals, regular drinking, heavy drinking, peanut butter, empty calorie snacks, etc. I had to make noticeable changes just to get 1900 under per week. I eat so many frozen veggies and chicken breast now! Some weeks I come in 3800 calories under (or theoretically 0.5% bw), but they're the exception. With a calorie tracking app you know exactly where you land. There is random weight variation throughout the day/week, but I habitually weight myself after my morning piss and make a note. The trend is down about 4kg's in 10 weeks. I've got 10-20 weeks left to go. It's the slow and boring route, but time keeps on slippin into the future, and all I have to do is stay the course. At the end, my fitness should be where I want it, and I'll just maintain.
So it's the calories you need to measure, not the weight!
Thanks!
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