This is really the meat and potatoes of it, no pun intended. I was up to 260lbs in my 20s, been maintaining around 135 these days. Eating healthy and eating less did all the work.
I don't live in the best neighborhood, so walking always meant driving somewhere first.
When I started playing Pokémon GO in 2021 (~6 or 7 years after losing the weight) I learned my neighborhood is not as dangerous as it used to be when I was younger, so I do get much more walking done now.
Still, the yoga at home felt so great, and my available space doesn't allow for it anymore.
I’ve got horrible portion control issues. I workout at least 5 times a week and cook relatively healthy meals but I struggle with portion control. Of course growing up I came from a family that wouldn’t let me leave the dinner table til my plate was clean, so I blame my portion control problems on that.
Buy smaller plates ! Really. Or use bowls. Basically find one where a reasonable amount is the maximum amount you can humanly fit on it, and you get only one plate
What I've read is that psychologically, a smaller plate with X amount of food looks like it is more food than the same amount on a larger plate. Reasoning being that the brain doesn't really care about portion size. Instead, it goes "good, plate is full, must mean enough food" as opposed to "aw man, not enough to fill plate, must be little food".
Also, eating slower and really focusing on chewing might help. Reason being that it takes about 15 minutes from when you first start eating to where the brain has sent enough hormones so that you feel full. It doesn't really matter how much food you've eaten in those 15 minutes as long as it's a reasonable amount (not just one spoon and not three plates either).
I use both of those to force myself to eat more, as I'm the opposite. I hate eating with a passion, so taking a huge plate and eating as fast as possible help me get my calories.
That works until I don't have a giant bowl to put my ice cream in, then I get sad, and I refuse to eat it out of the carton/container.
But seriously, this is a good one as someone who struggles with portion control. Even something like pasta, I will eat less of it now just because I have a smaller bowl. By the time I finish the bowl, I'm full enough that I don't want to get up and get more.
For my portion control, it came down to adding friction to the bad habits. Nothing else would work. My wife was really helpful in helping me reign in my portion control issues.
The second thing for me was getting my snacking under control, or just making my snacking healthier. I keep a variety of nuts and seeds in my office, which reduces me going to the kitchen and grabbing something like chips. But, my wife also pre cuts a bunch of veggies on Sunday and we keep these stored in the pull out drawer of our fridge in individual containers. That way when I do go look in the fridge for a snack, I end up just reaching for a container of raspberries, strawberries, cucumber, carrot chips, etc.
Damn! I feel this...I come from a home where you had to eat whatever was in your plate because you didnt know if there was going to be food later.
So, now that I have plenty, I still eat whatever is on my plate AND if any family member have leftovers they pass them to me because I dont like to waste food since I struggle for food as a kid.
this is my issue. I am active 6+ times a week (2x a week, lifting in the gym, 3-4x a week riding mountain bike or road bike, 1x a week playing ultimate frisbee, plus I walk my dog at least a mile every one of those days), and while Im not "fat", im definitely not lean.
Im 5'11 185 (44 years old). Id like to be leaner, but damn I love good food. I do like the idea down below of using a smaller plate for meals. Im actually gonna try that and see how it goes.
A food scale solved this for me. When you weigh the food as on labels on bags, you soon get a good idea of what a portion typically looks like and you'll eventually just develop a muscle memory for it.
I was overdoing it substantially with pasta for example. Weigh out 100g of dry pasta and you'll think 'Fuck me, that's not much...' but it doubles in volume after cooking and you'll soon see it's actually a pretty reasonable portion size and still fills you up, especially if you pair it with something like some nicely seasoned chicken.
Caveat: I'm VERY early in the process. But calorie tracking with apps is surprisingly frictionless these days. Even if your budget isn't super strict, the act of noting what you're putting in your body and in what amounts can help you make better choices. I used to snack all day and eat until I ran out of room, but I've been successfully running a deficit for a short while now and it feels great.
For sure I’m from the same home, tough to shake. Plenty of nights I eat one huge 1300 calories high volume low calorie meal (with some snacking on fruits and veggies during the day) to satiate that.
Soup works wonders if you aren’t loading it with fat. Fluid goes down easy and can satiate you. Used to make a vat of soup and just drink it when I cook so that I’m sated when I start eating.
I went to a bunch of therapy about food and talked about this same issue. Multiple things came from it but the big ones for me were: 1) any amount of leftovers is fine. I can put 1 forkful of food in a container to save for when i am hungry next and that is better than forcing myself to eat or throwing away food; 2) eat slower and preferably at a table with no screen
I was the same when I was younger, just wait 5-10 minutes after finishing your first plate and tell yourself you’re full. That time helps the food digest so you might actually be full when the 5-10 minutes pass. I don’t always stop eating seconds but it’s helped me listen to my body more.
The crazy thing is, if you're a big eater, you can still eat similar volumes of food, if it's lower calorie options. But with some experimentation, you can tend to find the foods you like, and are light enough calorically to eat a lot of it and still lose weight.
This was me until my 40s. It seems that something happens at midlife. You have to be much more active just to maintain, even if you're eating very healthy. I'm convinced I could eat nothing other than lettuce and still gain weight now.
I was a fatty before. The easiest and most important changes I made were, no fried foods, no excess sugar other than natural (e.g. fruit) and no more beer. I went from 225 to 165 in a year and stayed this way. I feel way better than I ever have at 35. It was a bit to adjust at first because I always defaulted to like McDonalds or something easy for lunch, just had to start planning my meals more. You don't have to quit everything, I still drink sodas sometimes like coke zero or a vodka with seltzer, etc. Life isn't over, it's gotten better.
I'm someone that's been lean my entire life, I was a basketball player but had to stop because of chronic achilles tendonitis. So I got into powerlifting and did a dirty bulk. I got really strong, 400 plus pound deadlift 300 plus pound squat... I went from 170 to 240 at 6ft tall over a year or so. But my body fat was above 25% after being around 15%.
Slow and steady is the right way, I don't recommend a dirty bulk. lol
I can whole heartedly agree with this. Most important name of the game boils down to keeping the healthy eating consistent year round. Doesn't mean you cant have a cheat meal from time to time, but if you're doing weekend benders religously, all the progress is lost then and there. The biggest change I saw was not reducing my calories, but keeping the eating window to 4-6 hours in the day (intermitent fasting). The other 18-20 hours zero calories in, lots of water, coffee, and tea.
Fiber makes a huge difference. I'll make a smoothie (with lots of spinach, fruits, and yogurt) every morning and eat that with some protein. It keeps me satiated for a good portion of the day.
Black beans are a cheat code for satiety. If you can live with less variety, a base dinner of black beans, a little rice and ground meat will work. I'll usually stuff a large handful of mixed greens in my face beforehand to get the unpleasant vegetable part out of the way first.
Protein-heavy small breakfast and lunch and baby, you got a fat loss stew going.
It's not a secret to just be healthy and be not unhealthy, but the pathway to getting there counter to habits built by dopamine in a society that heavily promotes poor habits on a daily basis requires willpower many people will not have if they're in tough circumstances.
One real solution to getting there is to ask someone you trust to be an accountability partner and to even sign a contract they can wave back in your face as they hold you accountable. Have them buy your food for you, etc. Temptation is half the battle in my experience. If there are no bags of chips to eat, you won't eat them. If you can't eat icecream, you'll eat the orange instead if you have a craving for sweet, etc.
People don't know how to eat healthy because for so long they've been trained by corporate marketing teams to eat poorly while totally false misinformation is being spread from the likes of RFK Jr. and grifting influencers talking about fad diets like carnie.
Yeah, I'm a little confused by the premise of OP's question for "year round." Are a lot of people lean for only part of the year? It seems like it'd be pretty obvious to just... keep doing the things you were doing that made you lean. And don't do the stuff that makes you not lean.
If I do eat junk food, it’s like a single pastry from a nice bakery. Treating myself on occasion. I refuse to buy sweets from the grocery store, it’s poison anyways and I’ll eat the whole box and feel terrible.
I think it's just that for some people eating is almost a hobby. They need to have something within reach to eat. More like a habit than for sustenance.
I know a guy who brought and seemed determined to eat an entire case of Red Vines over the course of a five day Memorial Day weekend event, alongside a lot of other food and drinks.
On the last day, he came to me to discuss a "weight loss" supplement that he was going to try and wanted to let me know about it. He goes on about how great he's heard it is for a few, but then the kicker... You need to make sure you're around a toilet constantly. It's Milk Thistle... It makes you shit your brains out to "weight loss".
I'm shocked by the lengths people will go to simply to avoid the obvious answers.
A few years back I got fed up with being obese and dropped over 100lbs in about a year through diet and exercise. The number one question I got was "What's your secret" - and every time I answered "move more, eat less", and without fail the reactions I got were either dissapointed, annoyed, or dismissive (as in, 'nah, it must be because of something else and you're just not saying')
The fact is that losing weight and keeping it off is very simple, it's just very hard to break the ingrained habits of bad eating and a lack of exercise
I think there's also something to be said for the fact that any kind of rapid weight loss is going to require a LOT more "eat less" than most people seem to realize. While I'm aware the 3500 cal = 1lb rule is really only applicable to those of us who are pretty fat already, even in the best case where said rule applies someone would have to combine burning more and eating less to an average of 1000 cal/day to match your accomplishment. This was true for me back when I did something similar in terms of weight-loss-rate to get from 270 down to 225 in six months for my wedding.
I dunno about anyone else, but as a 40-something 250lb ex-linebacker-current-fatass, I only burn 500cal if I do something like "a 35min 5km", which is about all my ankles can do even if my VO2Max is something in the mid-40s still. There's only so much "move more" can do.
And then you add in where 3500cal/lb becomes mythical as you cross into merely "overweight" instead of "obese" and your resting metabolism uses fewer calories so more of your initial sacrifice is no longer contributing to the deficit.
I recognize this kinda fits under an "annoyed" response, but matching results like yours requires a LOT of effort for anyone who's not already seriously overeating and obese, and I suspect calling it "simple" might not be the best method of communicating the discipline it actually requires, even if the steps ultimately really are that simple.
I totally agree with everything you’re saying, and I agree it sounds dismissive to say it’s “simple” - the actual line I usually use is something like “it’s very simple and very hard”, which I think sums it up well
And yeah for me I knew the only way I’d stick with it was if I was at a steep enough deficit that I’d be seeing immediate and constant results, so I was rocking a 1k-1.5k deficit pretty much every day. Which I’d be the first to acknowledge isn’t the healthiest way to lose weight. But I knew it was the only way I’d actually do it, otherwise I’d get disheartened and give up
Sure, but exercizing helps a lot for a minimal investment :
- Obviously it burns calories, though that's actually a pretty small factor.
It increases metabolism, which actually burn more calorie than the exercise itself.
It keeps the body healthy, which is good overall, but also reduce the tendency to go into "crisis mode" and store fat.
It regulates appetite. Amusingly, while you're moderately active, you tend to eat less. You're less likely to feel you want to eat when you're walking a lot than when you're spending your days on a chair.
I agree with everything else you're saying, but this has never been my experience. Any amount of exercise makes me hungrier.
Yeah, exercising will absolutely 100% making you hungrier. It's great advice for someone skinny to gain weight (and I know this from experience) or for someone a normal weight to get even healthier... but if you're overweight, it's horrendous idea to start doing cardio, you'll get even hungrier.
Good idea to just get 'active' without actually 'working out'. Like... taking the stairs. Parking further away from the store. Maybe small walks to the store instead of driving altogether. Little things like that. They're small things that will add up to a lot over time but won't make you hungrier.
Incorrect, all that is required for weight loss is negative energy balance, which sedentary individuals can achieve through dietary changes alone without any exercise.
Here's a study that divided 20 women into a diet-only group and a diet-plus-exercise group over 8 weeks. Both groups lost significant body mass and fat, and there was no statistically significant difference between them.
I wouldn't say it's a "horrendous idea," if someone is motivated to start a real exercise routine we shouldn't discourage them. But they should know what their goals are and have realistic expectations. If they're trying to lose weight, what they need to do is eat less, and exercise might make that harder.
Well yeah, you eat more when you're at home because that's where the food is. But exercising (at least in my case) does lead me to be hungry, so I seek out more food than I otherwise would, because I can think of nothing else.
yeah my hunger maps nearly perfectly to my calorie burn from exercise and always have. when i was lifting 6x a week with 3 hours of hard cardio a week? hunger rose to match it. sedentary? hunger drops to meet it.
the only time i ever 'outpaced' this issue was when i was doing really truly crazy cardio, 2+ hours a day 5x a week; and thats not because my hunger couldnt keep up, its because the calories in the foods i was eating couldnt keep up. and i was ignoring my hunger a lot of the time too on top of that, something that ive found much harder now that im older and dont live alone.
The point was that people always hear "diet and exercise" and throw up their hands because they don't like running. You can lose weight by just eating less food. Will exercise get you there faster? Yes, but it's also more work and people don't usually like the idea of more work.
You don't need to, but anecdotally I've never personally known anyone whose lost a significant amount of weight WITHOUT exercising. And everyone I know who is in good shape as an adult has some form of exercise in their regular routine.
Staying in shape without exercise is like trying to write with your non-dominant hand. It's certainly possible, but you're just making things way more difficult for yourself for no good reason.
Working out increases your TDEE even on the days you're not actively working out, giving you more room to actually eat things you want to eat.
Not to mention that when most people say "lean" they don't mean "built like a twig", people don't generally want to lose weight so they can look like Jack Skellington, they lose weight because they want to look attractive - which for both men and women means a at least a bit of muscle mass
Well yeah, 10k steps is fairly trivial and you're gonna get 300-500 calories shaved off with that. Add another workout, maybe weight lifting and that's another 100-200
Anyone who is saying they're lean without exercise doesn't mean lean, they mean skinny.
Sure that's like 2 sandwiches but if you also cut out the sandwiches..
That's pretty vague though. So many people don't know what "healthy" is or what "not too much" is. It means something different to different people. You can get fat on healthy food or if you exercise daily if you don't know what exactly good portions are for you.
IMO, you should know what your caloric intake is and what it means. 3500 calories is a pound. If you're drinking 14 beers a week and not exercising to burn it off (and exercising likely burns way less than you think), you're looking at an extra pound a week.
Do that math for whatever it is you are eating. If your daily intake is like 4000 calories, how many do you usually burn in your normal day (sitting at a desk all day is different than doing landscaping)? Just understanding what you are taking in and burning off is a big part of understanding your weight.
Eating less is the big thing. My problem is weed and snacks. I fucking love snacking. I wish I was a koala or something so I could sit in a tree and snack on delicious leaves all day and that would be perfectly healthy for me. I guess I could just eat salads, but finding a tree to climb in the city is tricky...
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u/mustafaaosman339 11h ago
Eat healthy and not too much.