Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dropping weight and getting fit (the numbers)

I am notorious at the office for bringing in home made coconut fudge, peanut butter chocolate bars, brownies and cookies all made from scratch with lots of butter, eggs, sugar and flour.

My plan is that if everybody around me becomes morbidly obese then by comparison I look as sleek as a race horse...





And being a bit less facetious, KR13's post is it in a nutshell. Eat less and exercise more.

Folks will argue 'til they're blue in the face about which exercise regimen is best or which diet is best because it worked for them and by God, everybody else will be well advised to be exactly like they are.

Lots of folks are healthy, fit and trim from lots of different variations of eat less and exercise more. Eat a balanced diet like your Mother told you to (or your grandmother) and get off the couch and you'll be okay. If you want to take it to the nth degree, find someone's recipe that appeals to you and follows an eat less exercise more model and have at it.

And as DIYguy alludes to, don't look solely at the scale. Look at how your clothes fit and how you feel.

A lot of your information is not correct.
Carbohydrates do supply the body's main fuel, glucose. And the body can store it, but not as fat, with rare exceptions. Virtually all of the excess is stored as glycogen. This is stored in the liver and in the muscles themselves. When needed, the body can easily convert it to glucose.
Excess proteins also can not be stored as protein. It is converted to fat and stored as such. BTW, if used as protein, and not as fuel, it doesn't count towards one daily caloric intake.
Most calores are burned by the muscles, well over 90%. So, the more you use your muscles, the more calores you burn. That includes fat as well, if you don't go into an anerobic state, i.e. out of breath.
One more thing you didn't mention. As one's blood sugar (glucose) level drops, so does one's consumption of fat.
You also don't seem to understand that the body can only store about 1200-1400 calores worth of glycogen for most of us. This is why regular meals, especially breakfast, are so important. Skip a meal, and the next time you eat, the body prioritizes making fat. So, when you loose your blood sugar level, you slow down your fat consumption and when you eat again, even if it's a carb based meal, the body turns at least some of it into fat. One of those exceptions to the rule.
Like you said, the science hasn't changed. That's why the Federal Food Guidelines recommend a diet of at least 50% being complex carbs, not sugars. E

What worked for me:

1, Eat smarter
2, Eat less
3, Do more

I dropped 120# in a year and have kept it off for 11 months. Still following it.

120??? Holy [bleep]' Jesus!




Travis

I'm down 65 lbs. It's taken me a year to get here and I still have about 50 to go to get where I want to be. I don't consider what I have done to be a diet so much as a lifestyle change. For the first time in my life I'm retraining myself to eat healthy.

Here's what it took for me to do it:

1. Cut out beer. I used to drink some beer almost every day, now I've pretty much cut it out unless it's a social occasion of some sort. I love beer so it was hard, but beer is pure empty calories and it also lowers my willpower. I get the munchies after drinking a few and can't stop eating then. I know how the potheads must feel.

2. Eat lots of salads and watch my carb intake. I'm not on a "low carb" diet per se, but I find that the healthier foods I'm eating are naturally low in carbs. I still have bread every now and then but I'm not eating a burger every day.

3. Walk 3 miles every day. It's moderate exercise that I enjoy and gets the blood flowing, plus more importantly it keeps your digestive system going. I have some well meaning friends that immediately started offering advice when they heard I was trying to lose weight. Most of it was along the lines of "you need to hit the gym hard, weights, lots of running, etc." This was well intentioned but would never work for me. If a workout sucks then I'm not going to stick with it. An easy workout like walking works for me. What the others say is true, losing weight is mainly about controlling your eating, you can't exercise it off. You'll just be a fit fat person.

Others are losing it faster than me but what I'm doing is working for me and I think I'll be able to keep it off by how I've changed my eating habits. I don't see how the the OP lost 215 lbs. in a year, it seems like you'd have to do an almost total fast to do that. Good on him for doing it but dang, that's got to be brutal!

This has always been my "program" and I have been fortunate enough to never be overweight. I eat all 4 food groups. Meat is without the steroids and hormones. I probably place more emphasis on step 2 than step 1.

True, but diet/exercise advice is like any other kind of advice you read on here, you just need to be able to recognize good information when you see it, and separate the wheat from the chaff. Take what you can use, and ignore the rest.

For example:



Anyone who tells you it's rare for the human body to store excess carbohydrates as fat is obviously someone whose advice you'll want to avoid.

It's simple math to a large degree. Consistently burning more calories than you take in equals weight loss. And it can't be overemphasized...that you can't out-train a consistently bad diet.

I never said that. I lost 185 pounds in 15 monnths. How on God's green earth did you come up with 215 pounds in a year? LOL

All three of the above sentences are in conflict with one another and with metabolic/biochemical reality. Only the last sentence is true.

laffin'

No they're not.

They're all true.

From this:



400-185=215 lbs. Okay, I got the year thing wrong, you actually said one year and 3 months but that's still a hell of a lot.

Bullschidt. Quote some science to prove it.

laffin'

You just described, in one word, a significant percentage of what you post on this board.

still laffin'

You are in way over your head. Cite a single study that has ever demonstrated a near 100% correlation between caloric reduction and weight loss per se. IE, 3500calories removed from the diet equals one pound of fat lost.

It doesn't exist.

While you're at it, enlighten us all on the effects of elevated cortisol, and how that effects human metabolism.

The assumptions behind that statement are so misguided that it's astounding.

laffin' some more

Still waitin' on that cortisol lecture/explanation.

Most, if not all (except you), can see the difference between what I said...and what you said. 'Consistently' (over time) burning more calories than one takes in will result in weight loss. That's very different than saying cutting 3500 calories out of your diet will result in one pound of fat lost.

my side is hurting from laffin'

The best exercise is to push...........


yourself away from the table.

In typical fashion TAK is out Ankle Biting in full force,

Dude, give us a break, We're developing some real scar tissue down there,

Spend some time learning where Kent state is,

Then start your own thread on nutrition.

DIYguy, thanks for your time, good read.