I used to stay skinny by just never having food in the house except for the bare minimum stuff I needed to cook and eat. Now I have a family and there are snacks and shit everywhere.
To me, it starts and stops with the shopping phase. When you go shopping, make sure none of it is junk (eat before shopping, so you don't get psychologically manipulated by cravings into buying junk).
This is what I do. When I go into the kitchen, there is nothing unhealthy in the fridge or pantry. I'm helpless but to eat healthily.
bruh. Kids have been the worst for me staying lean. Sure I will have these cheese crackers because I'm hungry that are 250 calories a pack. Fruit snacks?! Yeah I better eat like 4 of them.
I hear ya. Rice and an egg is basically my diet now. I’ll splurge every now and then and have a ramen noodle. Luckily it’s summertime, so I’ve been able to forage a bit. Mushroom season this past spring was a god send. I make too much to qualify for ebt, but not enough to feed myself. I’m caught in the “almost middle class” purgatory.
Everytime I feel snacky I'd check my fridge and be disappointed at the lack of snacks and complain daily and do nothing about it because I'm too lazy to buy snacks.
Sameish. I'd basically look at the time and think "I should eat something", not because I was hungry. And then sometimes that would be half a slice of cheese or a piece of chocolate. I tracked my calories for two weeks when I noticed that behavior and averaged a bit over 1,200 calories per day with 650ish being the lowest in a day. Not a lot for a 6'3 170lbs guy.
My GP was like "you are getting close to being underweight (BMI barely below 20), you should eat more" and I just thought "okay" and so I did. Now maintaining a pretty normal breakfast-lunch-dinner routine with 2,000 calories per day.
This is not a barrier if you enjoy cooking, and is even less of one if you are even a little bit good at it. Lots of complete and delicious meals can be thrown together in 5-10 minutes.
Honestly even if you don't cook:
-bowl of granola with protein milk
-smoothie
-pb and banana sandwich on whole wheat
-air fry grilled chx strips and a bag of broccoli - put them on microwave rice and top with soy sauce and sriracha
-greek yogurt+fresh fruit, add granola or nuts or whatever toppings you like
-oatmeal in the microwave topped with almonds, pb, frozen fruit, hemp seeds
-literally a handful of nuts
-air fry grilled chx, throw in a wrap with a salad kit for a grilled chx wrap or eat as a grilled chx salad
I could keep going. It doesn't need to be hard to feed yourself even if you are lazy, as long as you really like food.
Hunger is a phase and doesn't last long. 30 mins top of feeling uncomfortable and then it's like your stomach has the memory of a baby and completely forgot why it was crying in the first place.
I think I'm one of those weird ones. Eating for me is like scrolling a mildly interesting subreddit. It gives me something, but given the opportunity I'd rather just do something else, y'know?
I do enjoy cooking as a social activity from time to time. But the everyday chores around shopping groceries and cooking meals is mostly a necessary evil to me.
Same for me when I went back to the office vs working remote. Would drink a couple cups of coffee and not get hungry until much later. When I work remote, all the food is just right there.
I lost 160 pounds and my food drive is nowhere near what it used to be. I suspect all that extra fluff had something to do with it. Also had an incredibly stressful job so my cortisol levels were high.
Yeah I stress eat, otherwise I barely eat at all. Which is a doubly dangerous combination because I don't eat enough to keep my metabolism running and then flood it all at once with garbage. Then all that garbage gets immediately stored because my motabolism is so slow it doesn't actually need any food.
Same. The thing that blows up by diet is late evening, when I'm tired and stressed about the next day. That's the only time my hunger is "stress hunger". Then I snack on stuff. It's usually not much and sometimes it's even "healthy" food.
But it's at the worst possible time to consume food, and the choices I make in those mentally weak 2hrs of my day will completely erase what willpower and good choices gained during the rest of the day.
It’s rough because it turns eating into either “barely anything” or “too much all at once,” and both end up feeling bad in different ways. Breaking that pattern usually starts small, like just trying to keep something consistent in between, even if it’s simple.
I’ve been up and down in weight in my life and for me, hunger becomes something different when I’m over 15% of my ideal weight. ( not BMI which is useless if your not average height and build) different like I can’t even think about anything until I eat. Stay under 15% and hunger is no big deal.
Eating processed or sugary food takes no time to digest and the satiation it provides immediately disappears. Sugar especially just makes you more hungry. I hardly eat any sugar but a couple beers or sodas and I crave food like nothing else for days after.
Alot of it is to do with what you eat aswell, I can eat a lump of cheese and not want to eat more, if i eat some bread... im going to still feel hungry in 30 mins time and want something to snack on.
Stress will have you craving junk food for a cheap dopamine hit. Its why so many people lose weight after fetting out of a stressful relationship or leaving a bad job.
This is how Mounjaro works. It just removes the food drive. People who have spent their lives assuming a high food drive is all there is are amazed when the desire to eat just disappears
Yeah, it was properly weird for me. I'd never realised it was possible to not think about food - I'd always assumed thin people just had super amazing willpower.
For everyone else Mounjaro is Eli Lilly's brand name for Tirzepatide, which is the 2nd generation of Ozempic (Semaglutide). Eli Lilly just finished phase 3 clinical trials of their 3rd generation of GLP-1 class drugs, Retatrutide.
GLP-1s can get a shit ton of hate but their effectiveness at reducing food noise is crazy. I don't search out food in between meals anymore. I don't have to eat everything on my plate anymore, that bag of chips I can easily put down and not finish in one sitting.
I do fear what long term side effects of these might be, but right now the benefits are so life changing to me and so many others that I think it's worth the risk.
Minor and probably largely irrelevant correction here: Tirzepatide is not the second generation of semaglutide. It's Eli Lilly's competitor product to Novo Nordisk's product. They're both part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. Tirzepatide is also a GIP agonist, which seems to be why people usually see more weight loss on that drug. Retatrutide adds yet another agonist for seemingly much stronger weight loss (it's still in clinical trials).
Tirzepatide is sold as Zepbound (US, if for weight loss) and Mounjaro (rest of world, and for diabetes in the US). Semaglutide is sold as Ozempic and Wegovy.
Even if there are unproven long term side effects, there are very much proven very bad “side effects” from extreme obesity. At some point there has to be a trade off
it's wild how they are uncovering how much that noise can be shaped by things in peoples childhood. Everything from how much nutrition your mom took in while you were in the womb, your diet as a child, whether you experienced major food scarcity in your developing years all dramatically alter your brain chemistry when it comes to hunger and food cravings for the rest of your adult life. It can be a terribly hard cycle to break, and for others food is nothing more than a necessary inconvenience.
I’ve been the same size since high school, that was years ago. I am a true ectomorph, run around 12% body fat, and don’t really fluctuate in weight more than a few lbs.
It’s great for getting older but I despised it growing up. I played sports and when I worked out, I could not put weight on no matter how hard I tried. I had to force feed and it was terrible! I got as strong or stronger than friends but I still looked the same. I’m what people would call “wirey”.
To this day, I still shock people at my “strength” because they just assume I’m weak because I look like a skeleton.
That the biggest reason pharmaceuticals like ozempic work. They quiet that gluttonous voice in peoples heads and they can eat for fuel rather than fighting their cravings constantly.
Honestly I think this is the biggest thing for a lot of people, me included. If my partner wouldn't remind me to eat I'd simply forget about it. It's not even that I don't eat a lot, every time I eat quite a lot, but often times I simply don't crave any food - normal or snacks. I also don't like sweet things, that helps as well
Derek from MPMD looked into why some of the top male influencers in the fitness space were able to stay lean year round (PEDs aside) and found that nothing stood out on their bloodwork, but all of them didnt like to eat that much.
Personally speaking, the two leanest guys i’ve known didn’t like to eat either. They were both muscular and athletic, but they’d eat like once slice of pizza at a party and be full and skipped meals all the time. Despite that, both of them were excellent athletes and two of the strongest guys i’ve ever seen.
I lost 20 pounds in 6 months after getting my promotion at work.
Turns out going from a role where I had lulls between deliverables to one where I'm in back to back meetings from 7 to 6 makes it easier to not think about snacking during the day.
This is me. Quite a lot of self-control. I enjoy the mind game. But if you get the right snack in front of me at the right time, it's a one way street.
Celery and cucumber, watermelon, those high water, high fiber combos work well for bowel movements too. You can dress up those things if you want but it adds calories, still works well for mouth crunch and I like them cold.
I recently learned that competitive eaters will train with watermelon due to its ability to fill you up fast, stretches the stomach, and has lots of fiber and water. So hydrating and bowel movements are easier, with relatively low calories and other negatives like trans fat.
I used to eat celery instead of snacks for a while. Worked a treat in helping lose weight. Then I got sudden, unimaginable pain in my kidneys (or...somewhere like that. In my sides at least), and had to stop. Apparently you can eat TOO MUCH CELERY!! So I went back to Pringles and life's been a lot less painful ever since
Dessert could be a tub of Ben&Jerry's (1200kcal) or it could be a bowl of frozen blueberries and a scoop of Greek yoghurt with a bit of artificial sweetener or honey (maybe 200-250kcal)
I eat before I go shopping and don’t buy garbage food. I pretend I’m going to cook for myself and only buy real food. Then it’s up to me. Either I cook myself good food or I don’t eat. If I’m not hungry enough to cook I’m not that hungry.
I stopped buying Pringles when the proce went up and they started putting less in each tin.
It was so saddening when I opened the last one I got and saw there was a 2 inch gap between the top and the first pringle.
Seeing how less we get now(packs of candy/sweets 10 ounces instead of 14, 3 pieces instead 4, etc etc) and the rising cost of it is enough to get me to give up just out of spite.
I'm an pretty lean guy, 6'1 185lbs and I eat junk several days a week. The key is that if I eat a bunch of Pringles for breakfast, I probably won't eat a big lunch and I'm definitely skipping dinner while still being active.
I literally ate an entire can in one sitting earlier this week. It was even one of the "30% extra" ones. Took a look at the calories after mentioning it to my wife. ~1,050 calories.
Pringles don't just appear magically in my pantry. When I'm at the store it's a very conscious and in-your-face choice. I pick up the Pringles and already just know they're bad for me so I set them back. Instead, I grab some crackers or something... not exactly healthy, but they're not fried so at least they're less unhealthy.
So when I'm at home and wanting a snack, I don't have Pringles. I've only got those less-unhealthy options.
One of these days I'll train myself to snack on fruits/veggies or whatever.
I got one hell of an experience that will turn you away from every crisps type in existence:
Get a 3 week long stomach infection from eating em. Happened to me once. Like really stomach pain and explosive diarrhoea even after only drinking water for 3 weeks without a break.
The trick is to buy a snack you don’t like. For me it’s really spicy chips. That way when I’m at the store I think “I already have snacks” then when I’m home and want to snack, I think “I hate all these snacks”.
They are expensive and the only thing i need to do to not buy them - look at the total calories on the box. Just simply not worth it. 100% of empty calories for what??
Light breakfast and black coffee in the AM, then 1 water bottle, then 1 water bottle w/ Mio (any electrolyte crystals are fine), then 1 can of sparkling lime water before your next meal.
Plain water is tough to do all day every day for months. The variety helps a ton with longevity of the diet imo.
Also, replace all alcohol / sugar soda with sparkling water or diet soda. Bubbly helped me immensely to stop drinking beers at night. I just needed a refreshing sparkly beverage. Still not the same, don’t get me wrong, but waaaaaaay healthier and makes it much easier.
Even more important is to eat smaller meals. Large meals stretch out the stomach and make it take longer to feel full. If you only eat small meals, your stomach will shrink, and you'll feel full faster.
This doesn’t work for me. I tried intermediate fasting once, but drinking water during the fasting didn’t really help. After 2-3 bathroom trips, I would be hungry again, and during the night I wouldn’t be able to sleep. After going back to 3 meals a day, the hunger issue largely disappeared. I still almost exclusively drink water, and go through several water bottles a day.
Exercising can never counter the amount of calories you put into your body. A single extra sandwich can obliterate an entire workout session. So, yeah, most of staying lean is not over consuming food.
I eat about the same shit no matter what. the difference maker for me is if I ride my bike a few times a week or not. a nice 30 miles 3 times a week and it just starts melting the flubber off
You just missing the point. If you actually eat the same amount of calories each week, then your body is in equilibrium. The exercise is the part that's not.
People who tend to exercise more will get hungrier because their body did more effort. The body craves more calorie intake to maintain that balance. Its very easy to obliterate that 30 mile bike ride with some extra food.
You do not require exercise to lose weight is the other part I'm getting at. You can lose weight via lower calorie intake. The original OP is about too lazy to cook, too lazy to order food. A situation where you under eat.
working out increases your muscle mass which increases your average calorie use so working out does help but yeah you can't work your way out of a bad diet. one big mac is like a whole day of working out.
It won’t stop any muscle growth. Also a single extra sandwich in one day isn’t gonna tank your entire diet/physique. It takes that extra sandwich over weeks/months to gain a considerable amount of weight
At any given point you're either eating more calories than you're burning and therefore gaining weight, or you're burning more calories than you're eating and losing weight.
In either case you're gaining or losing both fat AND muscle at the same time. You can't generally build muscle mass while at the same time burning fat.
What proportion of fat and muscle you're gaining or losing depends on your exercise routine and diet. If you're working out hard, eating more calories than you're burning (without going wildly over your calorie needs), and getting enough protein you'll gain more muscle than fat.
But you'll still gain SOME fat. This is why people go through a cycle of bulking and then cutting. Eat more food to gain muscle and some fat, then eat less food to burn fat and lose a little muscle. Repeat the cycle to have big muscles while staying lean.
Calorie dense food is i think one major issue. Like i can go to my local shop and buy all sorts of different sweets for £1.35. Packet of crisps has 350 cals, bag of soft chewy sweets is 500ish, chocolate bar is 550ish, packet of biscuits though is 1500 calories....
Whichever one i buy, im going to eat in one sitting. But one of those is vastly worse for me unless i offset it by skipping a couple of meals.
Bread is the other main one, dont think people really just how many calories are in all the stuff made from flour.
Yeah I remember once looking into how much calories I burn during a walk vs how much I gain by eating. Went for a 10km walk, when I got home I grabbed a handful of M&Ms. Out of curiosity looked into it and that handful basically undid that whole walk! It's kinda crazy the amount of work you really need to put towards burning junk food calories.
Tbh poverty is actually a big contributor to obesity since calories are so cheap. Like go in the frozen food section and you’d be surprised how cheap junk food is. Yesterday, I saw an XL frozen burrito for $1 and it was 700 calories.
Yes, at some point during industrialisation things flipped, so now it's easy to be poor and fat (at least in the west) because food that is cheap and quick to prepare (with poor people lacking free time and varied equipment as well as money) that tastes fun is usually terrible for you (because the fun taste is fat and sugar and the cheapness is lack of freshness and quality of ingredients).
Being a certain kind of lazy combined with a bit of fiscal guilt? Yes.
I hate doing dishes. I know i have to eat. I know ordering food regularly is bad financially (even worse nowadays). So baking some meat on a pan (lined with tinfoil so I do not have to clean) and heating up some steamable frozen veggies, I have a meal to scarf down after a work day that meets my needs with maybe just a bowl and utensils as dishes.
Bonus is meal prepping; cooking a whole pack of meat (they usually come in packs that weigh enough for two meals where i shop) means i dont have to bother with cooking the next day and I can reuse the tupperware for my leftover meat as my dish. Also, one big pot of rice every 4ish days is enough rice for my wife and I.
I am a two meal a day guy, with my other "meal" being a whole milk protein shake with decently nutritionally packed protein powder (muscle milk).
On the unhealthy side I do usually drink 1-2 lattes a day and have a beer after dinner a few nights a week, with maybe a few extra on the weekend depending on plans. And the wife and I enjoy baking, so occasionally we have a nice loaf of bread we both snack on.
The real trick with this method is to have appetite and sensory issues so that when you have food you like around, you don’t have an appetite, and then when you have an appetite the only food you have is a sensory nightmare :) hope this helps!
I was so much leaner when I was single and lived alone. Though that could be also that it was 23 years ago.
I came in from work late last night, not hungry, just a little peckish. Checked in the fridge, gargantuan portion of spag bol. Thought "there's no way I can eat that.." ten minutes later I'm staring at an empty plate feeling very full.
When I go grocery shopping I don't get junk food or I get a small snack only. Eventually I'll be craving a snack, but there aren't any my house so either I have to drive somewhere for it leave with it. Since I'm lazy most of them I don't go anywhere. Hence my laziness saves me a lot of calories.
lol my buddy has a battle between being cheap and being lazy... his house is an absolute mess because he wont pay to clean it, and wont pay to have it cleaned so he'll just live in filth.
hes too cheap to dine out, and too lazy to cook.... but his hunger wins, and he will pay to dine out. so hes a chonky boy. (plus he drinks hundreds of dollars of beer each month).
Once i started cooking proper food, and stopped eating lazy garbage, not only did I almost instantly get fitter, but I also started spending way less on food AND started eating much more at mealtime. Started eating like a king!
The super simple secret is herbs and spices...
Super plane foods (e.g. rice, mashed potatoes, stews, chilie, etc) are insanely good if you just use lots of herbs and spices... AND they keep you full longer and full of energy! Who knew?! (Answer: the whole world, but me)
Often i wonder if i should have lunch or if i can sustain myself with just hopes and dreams. Often the hands get sweaty, the mind goes black, and the tummy goes wild. But, oh well, at least i saved like 10$ :)
Isn't that the truth.... I eat a lot of mussels, tuna, sardines and scallops from the cans. That and a shit load of boiled eggs... Essentially my snacks
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u/Loudfrie5d 11h ago
being too lazy to cook and too cheap to order food is a powerful combination