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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2701 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 15, 2023

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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I'm about 20-25% body fat and really need to lose some weight. I love all kinds of unhealthy food and crave them often. I just started intermittent fasting again.

Does The Motte have any tips to share for successfully making permanent diet changes? Psychological/mental advice is especially welcome.

From a more purely psychological/mental side, I would say find a higher-order goal that will help motivate you and give your denial of tasty foods purpose. If you just try to lose weight to lose weight, it will often fail in my experience.

For instance, do you want to lose weight to be a better role model for your children? To find a partner? To become healthier and live longer? To be able to engage in a hobby or other physical activity? Or maybe just to become more successful in your career and/or social life?

Instead of telling yourself 'I want to lose weight' tell yourself 'I want to achieve my higher level goal, losing weight is a step in that process.' This type of hierarchical goal setting will both make the immediate goal of losing weight seem less all encompassing, and also make it easier to remember exactly WHY you're doing it, even when the temptation is strong.

Things that have helped me:

  • get people close to you on board: tell them you're losing fat and get them to support you
  • remove liquid calories: soda, juices, sweet coffee or tea
  • replace desserts with protein bars (the ones that are tasty, obv)
  • avoid oil-based sauces
  • eat more vegetables and lean meat
  • no snacking between meals unless it's a protein shake
  • walk more and do resistance training, cardio that makes you tired makes you hungry

It's not a coincidence that @screye's advice is similar to mine. That's because that's what works.

Again, you need support from the people that live with you, they should adjust their diet to match yours:

  • if they consume liquid calories, find stuff they like and you don't
  • if they keep eating desserts, find stuff they like and you don't
  • if they keep using oil-based sauces, have them add it to their plates and, you guessed it, find stuff they like and you don't
  • if they don't like vegetables, find stuff they like and you don't find stuff they and you both like
  • if they keep snacks around, find stuff they like and you don't

If you do all this and it doesn't work, you'll have to do calorie counting. If you've fixed your diet according to the list above, your diet should be sufficiently simple that counting will be easy. Count your calories for a few days and then try to come up with a meal plan that is 500 calories smaller. Some advice:

  • it's easier to calculate the calories and macros for the whole pot and divide by the number of portions
  • the best way to avoid extra carbs is to cut down on rice/pasta/bread
  • protein:fat ratio should be at least 2:1, processed meat and most ground meant have a lot of fat

As you lose weight, your calorie target should reflect it: CalNewDiet = (CalOldMaint * WeightNew) / WeightOld - 500. When you are happy with your weight, gradually move to CalNewMaint = (CalOldMaint * WeightNew) / WeightOld.

I've heard that some people react better to refeeds than to constant caloric deficit, but I don't have experience with that. Beware of cheat meals, though. They are not an indulgence to indulge. They are a way to incorporate occasional social eating into your diet. You should still track them and don't go overboard. You have 500 calories of deficit, they are your safety buffer:

  • a Cinnabon roll is 880 calories, so if you have one, you have to find 380 calories to cut elsewhere, which is hard and will make you hungry
  • a Caramel Pecanbon MiniBon® Roll is just 460 calories, so you can have one with a black coffee once every few weeks and just know that your goal has been delayed by one day

UPD: one more weird trick I can recommend is complex food. Simple finger food that goes bag to mouth is the worst, eating food that you need to pay attention to satiates you better. Heterogenous food is better than homogenous food, since every bite feels different.

You have to make up your mind. Do you want to remain a slave to transient, small minded desires, much like a regular cigarette smoker, or do you want to increase your chances at a longer, healthier life?

It may help to read about just how destructive the worst foods are for your body (and brain). They significantly increase your chances of dying of any cause over a given year. Eating like shit daily is up there with daily heavy drinking and daily smoking in terms of risk of shortening your life. Some healthy foods, on the other hand, actively help repair the body.

Make your choice and stick to it.

For some people it will be helpful to have a "cheat day" once a week where you eat whatever you want. However I've found it's easier to go teetotal during a weight loss process. That way you don't tempt yourself to fall back into old ways.

It'll become more attractive to you to live clean and less attractive to you to eat junk, the longer you stick to it. The first few weeks will be rough. Tough it out.

I had great success with this method last year, but haven't been able to keep it up this year as work has gotten impossibly stressful. So I'll say this before even starting : "you cannot build new habits if you don't have some extra juice left in you by the end of the week."

That being said, here is what works for me (as the ADHDiest person you know)

Detailed tracking is impossible. So focus on broad rules that have an impact.

Here were my broad rules for diet:

  • No liquid calories. Especially on weekdays. (Alcohol, Lemonade, Soda, Tea, Sweet Coffee)
  • No deep fried things
  • No oil-based sauces. (Yogurt based sauces are a great substitute)
  • Smaller servings of rice & wheat

Generally speaking, if I keep this up, I just end up eating lower calorie meals without thinking about it too much. I also allows me to eat fairly delicious foods, so none of this feels like sacrifice. I love cooking, so to me this almost feels like an exciting challenge than a struggle.

Portion control is obviously important, so here were my broad rules for that:

  • No breakfast except coffee. If I must, then it it is unflavored (full fat) Greek yogurt with berries. I don't explicitly intermittently fast, but this basically facilitated the same thing.
  • No snacking outside meals. If I am craving something sweet, then it is fibrous fruits. (Plums, Pears, Pineapples, Musk Melons, etc). More importantly, never bring snacks back to the house. If I am really craving them, buy and eat them at the grocery store.
  • Promote food waste. (jk). Sometimes I am only craving the first bite of something. I am human, I break my rules. I normalized throwing away the rest of the dish after the novelty of the first bite had run out. Total gratification stays the same, calories are much lower.

For working out, I pick a hobby I love : Soccer, climbing. But I don't enforce much other than:

  • Put dumb bells / pull bar in a highly trafficked area in the house. If you touch them, you must do 2 sets.
  • Cycle when possible

I was down to around 16-17% late last year, but I too have climbed up to 22-24% now. I have been in the midst of massive life change the last year, so I have been kind to myself. But, things are finally stabilizing. So, the target for the next 6 months is to be back to the 17% target before mid-next year.

LMK if you want suggestions for delicious low-calorie meals that still have decent amounts of protein.

What's the reasoning for no oil based sauces? Isn't is as easy to consume the same amount of fat with butter or cream based sauces?

I rarely eat oil based stuff so it doesn't really affect me but I'm curious now that both you and @orthoxerox mentioned it.

Most of my sauces are greek yogurt based. Starches also help create low calories sauces.

I hate what i call 'non satiating calories'. You could go throigh a pot full of mayo dip withour realizing that is a 1000 calories by itself. On the otherhand, the yogurt based dip is 200 calories and no one notices the difference. (Very important to use full fat yogurt.)

Since oil and butter are the same word in Russian I implicitly meant all fat-based sauces. The reasoning is liquid calories again.

LMK if you want suggestions for delicious low-calorie meals that still have decent amounts of protein.

I'm always on the lookout for more delicious low-cal meals. Have you tried gently roasted sea perch fillets with tomatoes, onions and black pepper?

This is fantastic and exactly what I was looking for.

LMK if you want suggestions for delicious low-calorie meals that still have decent amounts of protein

Yes please, I'm always looking for new ideas!

I've never needed that much due to being heavily endomorphic and turning fat into muscle easily; but when I do feel the need to loose some weight I set myself a monetary budget and eat to that.

EG, post holiday blowout I put myself on a 30$ a week food budget for a while and eat very small portions of meat and lots of beans and stuff from the garden, type of thing.

Thanks, this is a good idea.

How do you calculate body fat as a layman, I’ve never been sure how people are so certain without those high level tools like water displacement / hydrostatic weighing etc.

Skinfold measurements at a few sites get you pretty close with the right formula. May need a friend to help you take them though.

Smart scales. They are wildly inaccurate, but you don't need super high precision if you're not a bodybuilder.

You caught me, I actually don't know my precise percentage. I Googled "body fat percentage comparison" and looked at a few charts, then looked in the mirror and eyeballed it. Actually measuring to get a more precise percentage seems like a hassle and like it wouldn't actually be terribly useful information.

My experience is that those pictures are kinda dumb and bf% can have a lot of different appearances based on age, genetics, bodily condition, etc. So take it with a big grain of salt.

In any case i think screye's post is very good. Ill add that for me, its about focusing on protein. I dont elimate fats or carbs, because fats are needed and i personally get miserable on no carbs, but i only make meals that prioritize meat. This keeps me full and happy on fewer calories. I have an instant pot (which i adore and recommend) that i make meaty stews in. Ill eat this with just enough carbohydrate to make me feel good. Nice thing about this approach is you can control the carb input depending on your goals and tolerances.

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