Who has Been Successful Losing Weight and Keeping It Off?

[gervais]

I'm not preaching. Eat what you like, it doesn't effect me. What I am saying is, if you want to lose weight, you need to control your blood sugar before you start looking at fat or calories, otherwise, short of starvation, calorie counting won't make any difference.
If you don't need to lose weight, yes eat what you like in balance and moderation. And when I go to other people's houses I eat what's put in front of me. I'd never demand special treatment, though I rarely eat deserts because I don't have a sweet tooth anyway.

For context, I watched my father take a year to die very painfully from renal failure caused by type 2 diabetes, so I knew a little bit about blood sugar (though not how it related to weight gain) and I've been very conscious ever since about suffering the same fate myself.

This was brought home a year or so ago I was in poor health. I wasn't seriously overweight though I needed to lose a good inch off my waist and a stone in weight. But I couldn't sleep. I'd wake in the middle of the night with a racing metabolism, a pounding heart and a mouth full of blood. I felt weak and shaky and I had a blotchy face. Bearing in mind what happened to my dad, it was alarming. The tipping point came when I started getting massive blood pressure spikes. As in really dangerous ones like 200 over 100. At one point I had to go to casualty for observation because those figures are stroke or heart attack territory.

That's when I was asked questions about diet and lifestyle and I was directed towards the nutritionalist I mentioned earlier.
I'd recently been through a family bereavement and a major life change. I was stressed to the point of being mentally ill, drinking far too much alcohol and far too much caffeine. taking a step back it wasn't hard to see how these had combined.
So on medical advice I changed my diet, mainly to address my immediate health issues rather than my weight (which I just put down to too much beer). Initially I just cut out things that raised blood pressure and inflammation and increased intake of things that reduced it. The turnaround in how I felt and what I weighed was so dramatic I started looking into it more deeply, purely out of interest, and that's when I learned about the link between raised blood sugar and weight gain and the effects of ultra processed food on the immune system, cellular inflammation, the metabolism and the brain, and so much started making sense.

This whole subject has really taken off just recently in the UK and I've been amazed how far our collective understanding of basic nutrition has fallen in the last forty or fifty years since supermarkets established their monopoly and kids stopped being taught about cooking at school.
The fact that my "diet" - which is simply eating seasonally the natural foods my body was designed for rather than what the food industry wants to sell me - could be considered strict or extreme only reinforces this.

Glad to hear you are watching your health, and it sounds like you are on the right track to a good, long healthy life. The world has definitely forgotten what real food is, I agree.

 

[David D. Davidson]

Just some observations, but living in South America, my diet is mainly vegetables, fruits, rice, beans, chicken and meat. Not a lot of meat but I do eat it. I don't really watch what I eat, I just kinda eat what my wife
prepares.

But... when I come back to the states, I gain weight. Never fails. My bad habits kick in. The food lifestyles in the US just seems inherently awful. There is so much more processed food here. The overwhelming choices of fast food, the portions, frozen food, etc... it's just in your face. It's so easy to eat lousy.

Back home, we shop at a very humble grocery store, all the basics and then some. There's not a shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables. It's more of the lifestyle there. But when I come back to the US and go to a grocery store, the choices of bad food is just overwhelming. It overloads my senses. For me, it's easy to see why so many people suffer from being overweight.

It makes such a big difference. When my family and I eat unprocessed foods, it’s very difficult to gain weight unintentionally. But if we add some cookies, or chips, or ice cream, etc to our grocery list, we swell up like a balloon at an incredible rate. I’m obviously not a nutritionist, but it feels like 500 calories of processed slop is far more fat producing than 500 calories of natural foods, and that’s before factoring in the insane caloric density of junk food.

Unfortunately my gluttonous self always balloons up this time of year. Too many big family dinners to go to, a penchant for comfort food in the cold months, and getting less exercise (no hiking, running in the summer months). Come January I shed it off in a few months, only to gain it back when the days start getting shorter the next year.

Echoing the positive results with OMAD throughout the thread - my biggest weakness is being a snacker, and liking to eat until I’m full, not just no longer hungry, both of which get addressed with OMAD, which is how I naturally ate through my teens and 20s.

 

[Green Hill Hermit]

Yep

Pretty sure he's just trying to get it shut down by playing bullshit ping pong. Just let him go solo.

 

[David D. Davidson]

Pretty sure he's just trying to get it shut down by playing bullshit ping pong. Just let him go solo.

Does feel a little bit like “suicide by lock” doesn’t it?

 

[jpmcwjr]

This thread is now reopened after a few things were straightened out. One member went off the rails, attacked, and counter attacked---and the thread got locked. I deleted a number of offensive posts, and reopened the thread as it has value and can continue to be so.

 

[Gimlet]

Glad to hear you are watching your health, and it sounds like you are on the right track to a good, long healthy life. The world has definitely forgotten what real food is, I agree.

It's a work in progress. Real food and home cooking is the answer and accepting that body and mind need to be fueled correctly, rested and cared for and all other societal pressures come second.
When I tell people that I don't eat refined carbs, refined sugars or processed food the level of bafflement is telling. The usual response is "Huh... so what do you eat?" The answer is simple: food. Real food. Like we're supposed to eat. And the range of foods I do it is vast, and the things I don't is actually tiny.

Don't know if you teach kids basic cooking skills in Canadian schools but we stopped doing it the UK a generation ago. We need to bring it back. Kids grow up ignorant of nutrition and preparing food. They've become parents and now we've got two generations, which will soon become three, who don't really understand how to feed themselves. The food retail industry by pandering to this ignorance has fed and embedded it.

I remember being taught in secondary school when I was 11 or 12 the basics of nutrition, the difference between protein, carbohydrate, fats, fibre etc. Now most adults don't know about it, and I confess, until I got interested, I'd forgotten.

 

[Gimlet]

Good to see this excellent thread come back, by the way. Good job mods.

 

[Green Hill Hermit]

Good to see this excellent thread come back, by the way. Good job mods.

Sorted lol

 

[gervais]

It's a work in progress. Real food and home cooking is the answer and accepting that body and mind need to be fueled correctly, rested and cared for and all other societal pressures come second.
When I tell people that I don't eat refined carbs, refined sugars or processed food the level of bafflement is telling. The usual response is "Huh... so what do you eat?" The answer is simple: food. Real food. Like we're supposed to eat. And the range of foods I do it is vast, and the things I don't is actually tiny.

Don't know if you teach kids basic cooking skills in Canadian schools but we stopped doing it the UK a generation ago. We need to bring it back. Kids grow up ignorant of nutrition and preparing food. They've become parents and now we've got two generations, which will soon become three, who don't really understand how to feed themselves. The food retail industry by pandering to this ignorance has fed and embedded it.

I remember being taught in secondary school when I was 11 or 12 the basics of nutrition, the difference between protein, carbohydrate, fats, fibre etc. Now most adults don't know about it, and I confess, until I got interested, I'd forgotten.

Canada is no different, unfortunately. I think it's a worldwide epidemic. Proper nutrition should be a mandatory class in itself in all schools.

Just to give an example, just yesterday I was working in a family's home (I am in customer service for a home building company), and their 5 year old boy was sick with some sort of stomach issue. The mother went on to tell me that his stomach has been giving him issues for weeks and weeks, in fact. Throughout the day I witness the mother throw a boxed pizza in the oven and the kid ate the whole thing, then he asked her for some candy. She gave him an entire bag of skittles to freely eat as much of it as he desired (which was the whole thing)

I would never say anything to disrespect her parenting, but all I wanted to do was say "WOMAN, give that kid an apple or something! You are half the problem with his stomach problem!"

 

[Sam Gamgee]

Glad to see this opened up again as it’s been particularly helpful and encouraging to me.

I wrote down my weight and the date this past weekend as a starting point, and decided I’d take the long upward climb of shedding these 20/25 lbs and getting back to being me (after almost 25 years). A lot of what led to that was just reading what some of you all did and me realizing I can do it too.

I also figured out where a lot of my intake is coming from. It’s funny how so much isn’t noticed and how many things I eat thoughtlessly. For example, when I go to our local dairy store weekly to get our milk, I almost always get a shake or malt for the drive home. When I get gas I almost always get a candy bar. When I hit the market for a few items, I usually get something near the checkout stand and eat it on the way home: then I go home and pile a big dinner on top of all that stuff. It all adds up.

I figure if I just stop doing all that stuff I’d slim down a bit. I’m going to make better and more natural choices at breakfast and lunch, and then just eat one plate (easier said than done) of whatever my wife makes for dinner, sans soda pop but with water.

If I stick to all that, by this time next year I’ll probably be at my desired weight. We shall see!

 

[gervais]

Glad to see this opened up again as it’s been particularly helpful and encouraging to me.

I wrote down my weight and the date this past weekend as a starting point, and decided I’d take the long upward climb of shedding these 20/25 lbs and getting back to being me (after almost 25 years). A lot of what led to that was just reading what some of you all did and me realizing I can do it too.

I also figured out where a lot of my intake is coming from. It’s funny how so much isn’t noticed and how many things I eat thoughtlessly. For example, when I go to our local dairy store weekly to get our milk, I almost always get a shake or malt for the drive home. When I get gas I almost always get a candy bar. When I hit the market for a few items, I usually get something near the checkout stand and eat it on the way home: then I go home and pile a big dinner on top of all that stuff. It all adds up.

I figure if I just stop doing all that stuff I’d slim down a bit. I’m going to make better and more natural choices at breakfast and lunch, and then just eat one plate (easier said than done) of whatever my wife makes for dinner, sans soda pop but with water.

If I stick to all that, by this time next year I’ll probably be at my desired weight. We shall see!

Sounds like you know where the issue lies brother. I think if you cut out the things you listed, you'd see improvements by that alone

 

[Gimlet]

Glad to see this opened up again as it’s been particularly helpful and encouraging to me.

I wrote down my weight and the date this past weekend as a starting point, and decided I’d take the long upward climb of shedding these 20/25 lbs and getting back to being me (after almost 25 years). A lot of what led to that was just reading what some of you all did and me realizing I can do it too.

I also figured out where a lot of my intake is coming from. It’s funny how so much isn’t noticed and how many things I eat thoughtlessly. For example, when I go to our local dairy store weekly to get our milk, I almost always get a shake or malt for the drive home. When I get gas I almost always get a candy bar. When I hit the market for a few items, I usually get something near the checkout stand and eat it on the way home: then I go home and pile a big dinner on top of all that stuff. It all adds up.

I figure if I just stop doing all that stuff I’d slim down a bit. I’m going to make better and more natural choices at breakfast and lunch, and then just eat one plate (easier said than done) of whatever my wife makes for dinner, sans soda pop but with water.

If I stick to all that, by this time next year I’ll probably be at my desired weight. We shall see!

Most if not all of those little treats you buy will be heavily processed and full of chemicals which stimulate your brain's reward centres and turn off the messaging between stomach and brain which should be telling you that you're full. If you eat things like that every day that's why you find it hard to walk past them without wanting one. So quite apart from the empty calories, they're effectively addictive because they train your brain to respond to hunger with cravings.

I have no proof because I'm not a nutritionalist or a chemist, but in my bones I'm convinced that food manufacturers know very well what effects these additives have and that is primarily why they're put into foods in the first place: to make you crave more of the same product and so buy more of it. (I'm equally convinced that big tobacco companies do the same thing with additives in ready made cigarettes. I smoked them for years but I now find pipe tobacco to be nowhere near as addictive).

Since I cut out processed food I've found I can tolerate hunger without reaching for junk. I just look forward to my dinner and start thinking about what I'll have. Many's the time I've been on a long drive and stopped at a store to look for something to eat when I'm very hungry and when I've found only rubbish on offer I've passed it by without a pang. I couldn't have done that before.

My version of a "sweet" treat at home now is a bowl of fresh fruit with a great big dollop of Greek yoghurt on top. Or I'll cut some veggie stick and dip them into a jar of tahini. When I was eating processed food such options would have seemed dreary beyond belief but now I genuinely enjoy them and don't feel in any way that I'm going without or denying myself.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Well said. I have also recently reformed some of my intake habits. No sodas, no alcohol free beer, no white bread, less bread over all, and so forth. Almost never eat prepackaged foods. Trying to up intake of salads, which I too frequently ignore. Ice cream and cake, buh-bye!

 

[Gimlet]

Well said. I have also recently reformed some of my intake habits. No sodas, no alcohol free beer, no white bread, less bread over all, and so forth. Almost never eat prepackaged foods. Trying to up intake of salads, which I too frequently ignore. Ice cream and cake, buh-bye!

If you like ice cream try the fruit and Greek yoghurt thing instead. As long as it's not flavoured yoghurt which will be full of artificial additives or low fat yoghurt where the fat is replaced with sugar.
Full fat natural yoghurt is good. The fat makes it tastes great and it makes you feel fuller for longer so you won't binge on it. And it's great for your gut.
I like berries with yoghurt - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries etc. Or slices of apple with cinnamon on top.

 

[gervais]

Glad to see this opened up again as it’s been particularly helpful and encouraging to me.

I wrote down my weight and the date this past weekend as a starting point, and decided I’d take the long upward climb of shedding these 20/25 lbs and getting back to being me (after almost 25 years). A lot of what led to that was just reading what some of you all did and me realizing I can do it too.

I also figured out where a lot of my intake is coming from. It’s funny how so much isn’t noticed and how many things I eat thoughtlessly. For example, when I go to our local dairy store weekly to get our milk, I almost always get a shake or malt for the drive home. When I get gas I almost always get a candy bar. When I hit the market for a few items, I usually get something near the checkout stand and eat it on the way home: then I go home and pile a big dinner on top of all that stuff. It all adds up.

I figure if I just stop doing all that stuff I’d slim down a bit. I’m going to make better and more natural choices at breakfast and lunch, and then just eat one plate (easier said than done) of whatever my wife makes for dinner, sans soda pop but with water.

If I stick to all that, by this time next year I’ll probably be at my desired weight. We shall see!

BTW, I have absolutely no idea what a "malt" is, but it sounds delicious

 

[Sam Gamgee]

BTW, I have absolutely no idea what a "malt" is, but it sounds delicious

O man…. It’s a milkshake with malted milk powder mixed in. It’s the same stuff that’s on the inside of Whoppers candy.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

If you like ice cream try the fruit and Greek yoghurt thing instead. As long as it's not flavoured yoghurt which will be full of artificial additives or low fat yoghurt where the fat is replaced with sugar.
Full fat natural yoghurt is good. The fat makes it tastes great and it makes you feel fuller for longer so you won't binge on it. And it's great for your gut.
I like berries with yoghurt - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries etc. Or slices of apple with cinnamon on top.

I love Greek yogurt and our local dairy store (Braum’s) makes some that’s excellent. I usually get the plain and mix in blueberries.

 

[Salvaje]

Well first off Merry Christmas and Happy Piping!
So this is the second time that I’ve gotten back on track and had to loose weight. The initial time I lost 25lbs in about 45-60 days. I got off track and had to stop my bad habits and get back on track again and this time I lost just over 30lbs.
It wasn’t difficult as long as you have a smidge of discipline. I assume that most of us on this forum might since we try and take care of our beloved tobacco and pipes.
I will keep it very basic and if you’d like further details on how I did it feel free to contact me. Saying that I am not a medical professional nor a nutritionist. I just ate better and it actually cost less than how I ate before.
1. I was eating more than I normally would. I went from 220+ lbs to 172lbs (as of writing this).
2. Breakfast was overnight oatmeal. Approximately 2 cups.
3. Meal preps. This is nothing more than premade meals (I made at home) that I would freeze for the week. Four meals per day plus the oatmeal is 5 meals a day. The first week you might not be able eat it all but you will be eating clean and this boosts your metabolism. The second week you will realize that you are eating it all and you will begin to feel better and have more clarity.
4. Four items are needed; Protein (approx 50 grams for men and 40 grams for women), vegetables rich in vitamins, Fiber rich Carbs and Good Fats. Protein for muscles, Carbs for energy and Fats for cognitive functions. Finally lots of water.
5. Protein can be chicken, lean meat or fish/shrimp. Carbs can be brown rice, avocado, sweet potato. Fats can also be avacado coconut oil sunflower seeds. Finally add some vegetables like spinach, broccoli or a broccoli cauliflower mix.
6. Depending on how much weight you want to lose will determine how much you eat a day and how long you remain on the meal plan. To make it simple I wanted to get down to 180lbs so I would take in 1800 calories a day.
I hope this helps and didn’t confuse you. There’s plenty of meal prep options and websites out there to help. Just make sure you’re eating healthy and drinking plenty of water but remember that it’s ok to veer off and have a snack once in a while. The point is to eat healthy so your body can start raising your metabolism to burn fat since you are eating better. Good luck with your healthy lifestyle change. Don’t take it to hard if you don’t meet a goal. The hardest part is starting. Remember when you didn’t know anything about pipe smoking? It takes time patience and knowledge. Be happy that you’re taking the initiative.