Eat Less Of Whatever, Lose Weight
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Low carb, high protein or the other way around? Science shows it doesn’t matter what diet you follow, as long as you eat fewer calories than you burn.
Calories Matter
A whole armada of scientists looked at how successful diets with different ratios of fat, carbohydrates and protein were.
Most studies in this field never go beyond six months, some keep track of changes for a year. Only very few will monitor their subjects for longer than that. This one now went over two years.
Turns out it doesn’t matter what diet you follow, as long as you as you eat fewer calories than you need to maintain your weight:
Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.
and
We did not confirm previous findings that low-carbohydrate or high-protein diets caused increased weight loss at 6 months and that the advantage of these diets usually eroded by 12 months, with weight loss that was nearly or fully equivalent to that with low-fat diets or other diets. Other studies showed increased weight loss at 1 to 2 years with diets that were high in unsaturated fat or with low-fat, high-carbohydrate vegetarian diets. These divergent results suggest that any type of diet, when taught for the purpose of weight loss with enthusiasm and persistence, can be effective.
There you have it: Follow the diet that best suits you. If you think vegetarian is the way to go, so be it. And if you want to take that a step further and think vegan is what best suits your lifestyle, that’s what you should do. You could even lose weight with products at fast food restaurants, if you manage to keep the calories in check.
My Frustration Before I (Finally) Lost Weight
I went from 196 to 163 lbs and to do that the composition of my foods had to be of much less concern to me than the calories I wrote down for them. I had tried a diet before and did what what many experted tell you to do: eat vegetables and fruits. This resulted in a disaster.
After five days of having a salad every evening, the sixth day resulted in me eating the salad and throwing up afterwards, because it made me so sick. Eating salad was the healthy thing to do, but how much good did it do for me? I couldn’t keep it up, it made me unhappy and frustration set in. Not to mention I then gorged myself in the foods I had deprived myself of.
Yes, I know they are healthy
The Evil Diet
So I designed the “The Evil Diet”: I swapped some of the foods I normally eat for their low-cal alternatives; I adjusted my daily eating frequency so that I wouldn’t go over my daily calorie limit, but still wouldn’t feel hungry; I had the foods I love in smaller quantities and on some days saved calories, so that in the evenings I could have a real portion of one of my preferred foods.
In practice this meant that regular butter, soft drinks and whole milk I replaced with their low cal variants – which was a smaller sacrifice than giving these up entirely – and being able to have the occasional cheeseburger or even a nice tuna pizza in the evening, if I cut back a bit during the day. And those two are foods you are supposed to avoid when you want to lose weight.
Design Your Diet
The only diet you will be able to follow through is the one that suits your individual needs.
If you can find one that fits your bill in a health magazine or book, then great. But if those don’t work for you, then it is not your fault. You are an individual and your individual needs might simply differ. Just remember that it is not what you eat, it is always how much you eat, and as long as your nutrition doesn’t lead you to develop deficiencies, you will be healthy and will lose weight.
20 Comments
Those carrots look delicious!
Oh, I like the occasional carrot, mind you! Next time we have some come over! 🙂
Yeah I will just pop over to Germany, it’s only a short trip.
Hey Evilcyber great blog!
I know you have some background in chemistry so how do you personally think of processed foods? I’ve always believed that; although you can still lose weight while eating “whatever you want” there is so much long term damage we’re not fully aware of yet in processed foods.
Oh and it’s disaster not “desaster.”
I think he was right. It is ‘desaster’.
“Desaster is a black/thrash band formed in Koblenz, Germany in 1988. Their lyrical themes involve war, hate and satanism. They are considered influential to many black metal bands”
Only meaning I can find online.
Yeah, it indeed is “disaster” – the German spelling “desaster” slipped in. Thanks for correcting it!
And I agree about the effects of processed foods. In many cases we still lack the data of their long term effects. However, when it comes to losing weight I’m rather pragmatic about it: If you weigh 300 lbs the negative effects of obesity are a much immediate threat on your health than the long term effects of processed foods, because if you keep that weight you might not live long enough to ever experience them.
I notice that backs up exactly what you said in your losing weight videos from months ago. It’s something people really have to understand, that they just have to eat less of whatever they are already eating. It’s easier just to eat LESS of what you like than to completely change your diet and eat a bunch of things they don’t like.
You said it perfectly in your videos, which I like to recommend to people.
Portion control!
Thanks for the friendly words, Sean! I just have to watch out that I don’t come across as some kind of holy crusader. After all, it took me myself some insight as well until I realized it really is that simple.
In the end its all about the energy balance. Calories in < calories out. Its what I've believed since the beginning and what got me 160 lbs lighter. Use more than you take in and you will lose weight.
160 lbs? Man, what a feat! I bow my head to you!
Yeah, people are always amazed when I say that you just have to burn more than you take in.
Personally I manage to eat lots of peanutbutter without going over my calorie intake.
Yep, it seems many people think that to accomplish the seemingly difficult task of losing weight the solution has to be as difficult.
I wonder how you manage to do that with peanut butter – you must have steel willpower! 🙂
Dropped 33lbs and no sexy “before & after”-photo? Shame on you ;P
But yeah, I don’t understand why people have such a hard time accepting that the facts are so easy. I mean, it’s so much simpler, yet people seem to want rules like “no carbs after 8 in the evening”, “10 cups of green tea a day”, and all the other silliness.
I think having learned basic programming really helps you think logically. Every single “if” you throw in to a script means more work. The fewer “ifs” etc you have, the simpler & faster the script is to make. Same goes for dieting, the simpler the rules, the simpler it is to win the game.
Oh, exactly: Why make it overly complicate?
And there are no before pictures of me because at that point I wasn’t too keen on being photographed at all 🙂
awesome! thanks for the help! I agree that it is truly a simple thing. Common sense is, eat less, lose weight. I completely get that. so why is it so hard? 🙁 I also have the prob with not eating breakfast and going most of the day without eating and then realize I am STARVING then I completely over do it. Do u mind if I use excerpts from this post on my blog for my journal? you will be credited of course….
Heah Kellie, the beginning is the hardest: You are used to eat whatever you like, whenever you like and now through pure willpower have to say no to that. But after a little while you get accustomed to it and realize that you actually have power of these cravings.
The key for me was that I could still have the foods I liked and having something low cal inbetween meals kept me from being hungry until meal time finally arrived. Sometimes just a carrot or a slice of bread was enough to tide me over.
But why aren’t you eating the whole day? No wonder you are literally starved in the evening! 😉
And yes, I’m fine with you using the excerpts.
Tuna pizza? I lost weight sort of like you, some things I cut way back on, ate less frequently, and some things I ate a lot more of. I didn’t do any low-fat subbing, having gained so much weight trying to eat low-fat in the first place. Now I’m trying to wrap my life around the subtleties of maintaining, as my weight will creep slowly up if I’m not very mindful. It never ends.
I continue to be astonished at how people persistently complicate the simplest of matters. When disproved, they resort to incredible acts of mental contortionism to vindicate themselves from the obvious invalidation. Such is the power of dogma and it is alive and kicking in modern nutrition.
The calorie-in/calorie-out model has been proved by over 6 decades of quality research, yet people continue to emphasize the importance of restricting particular macronutrients.
An excellent post, Evil.
This is all great the facts is what I’ve been looking for, thank you for providing what I needed.