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I am severely overweight and have been all my life. The only thing that does help (temporarily, so long as I stick to the diet, until I fall off the wagon again) is reducing calories. It doesn't seem to much matter what kind of diet it is, though low-carb ones help most.
The rest of it I have no idea about. The basics - don't eat junk, eat less - are what works. What kind of foods you should eat is a freakin' minefield, because for every "eat green leafy vegetables" there's "EXCEPT IF YOU'RE ON WARFARIN BEWARE VITAMIN K" warnings, and as you get older (and podgier) you rack up more "taking medication" which interacts with everything (e.g. grapefruit. I have never before wanted to eat grapefruit/drink grapefruit juice except now, when one of my medications contra-indicates it).
Exercise? I was one of the "fit fatties" because exercise has never made me lose weight, despite the fact that I walked and cycled everywhere (I can't drive) up to a few years ago. Also, I never got the "but exercise is so fun, it makes me feel good, if I don't exercise I feel terrible" experiences other people seem to get. I'd have to be on one of those "training to ride the Tour de France" regimens to see any shift in weight.
Cholesterol: I think nobody feckin' knows a thing. If you look at my total cholesterol (and this is from always, including my most recent lipids panel), the overall level is perfect. Seriously. LDL - the bad one? Within the limits it should be. HDL - too low, needs to come up. My problem is the triglycerides, which are way too high and which medication and diet hasn't shifted an inch.
"Well, that's because you're fat and eat junk".
Okay, but my sister who has been thin all her life (to the point where she was seriously in danger of anorexia a few years back) also has high cholesterol (though hers is slightly different to mine). So - we don't have a similar diet, we don't have similar exercise regime, she does all the right things (except she used to smoke), I do all the wrong things (except I never smoked) and we both have high (though differing in the details) cholesterol.
Is it genetics? I haven't a clue. So I'm not surprised that gimmick websites like the one above ensnare customers, because nobody knows a damn thing about what you should eat, shouldn't eat, can't or can eat, what is the recommended diet yesterday is the one that will give you cancer today.
The only crude metric we still have is "don't eat so much". Which is tough**! Because diets are hard and are not fun*! You can't eat the things you like any more (and that doesn't mean chocolate cake and candy; I love potatoes but, you know, high carbs bad for your blood sugar no no no, so you can guess why I'm crying about the 'all potato miracle diet the pounds melt off').
*No, "you can eat all the raw, undressed broccoli you like to fill you up!" is not fun or easy.
** If you're one of the "well, I never had any problem cutting back because I don't get hungry and indeed I can fast for days, so I don't get what is so hard about simply not eating" crowd, move closer to the screen so I can punch you in the snoot, Smuggie McSmuggerson.
I hate healthy food, but I’m incredibly vain and so being skinny was never non-negotiable for me, so starting from that principle I started intermittent fasting as soon as my teenage metabolism ceased to allow me to eat whatever I wanted. The good thing about it is that I don’t have to think about calories at all and can order or cook whatever I want, as long as I restrict it to a (movable) 2-hour window every day. Over time, I’ve gotten used to it, I don’t get hungry until around 5pm now, and the 2 or 3 hours thereafter are tolerable until dinner is served.
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It takes more exercise than most people think to lose weight. I'm currently about 154lbs, and by the numbers, in order for me to exercise enough to lose a whole pound I have to run a literal marathon. That's more than one 5k per day for a week.
That actually might not be enough. The usual estimate is 100 calories burned per mile, which means that a marathon should burn 2,600 calories, which is not enough to lose a pound of fat.
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