Asklemmy

Figure out how many calories you need to maintain your weight and eat less then that.

A calorie calculator can estimate how many calories you burn a day and can estimate plans based on how much weight you want to lose per week.

Exercise so that you don't lose muscle mass and your body burns the stored calories.

And finally, test things and find what works for you. Staying consistent is key.

For myself, I like a Zig Zag plan for losing weight cause I can still enjoy some junk food on the weekend. I track my calories using MyNetDiary because it syncs with other apps I use.

I've lost 15lbs in 4 weeks but I know it's going to take about 5 more months to meet my goal weight.

Good luck on your journey!

Lost around 10 kg in lockdown era. Ate less and did some exercises 3 days a week (nothing fancy. Just played a YouTube video and followed along). Most importantly I got used to feeling a bit hungry sometimes.

Counted calories, ate less, reduced sugar, flour and potato consumption. No exercise.

Exercising has a lot of health benefits and helps with loosing weight but food consumption is the most important.

Eventually I started running but this was after I lost weight. If exercising demotivates you, don't force it

Sport, I run, cycle or swim every day of the week. 1 hour mon-fri and 3-5 hours sat/sun.

And I went to a sport nutritionist who gave me a diet which makes me eat actually MORE (and much more balanced) than before.

Lost 15kgs in 6 months while gaining lots of muscle tissue that is heavier than fat.

60lbs. Calorie deficit. Aimed for 1500 calories, bled over with a reasonable margin to 1800 calories. Per day.

"Lose It" app, which is a food log. Awareness does the trick. I set it to about 2/3 of my average daily calorie burn, and stick to it, with a day off every two weeks or so.

Works for me.

Edit: just in case someone sees this, making an update in bold.

Stopped eating breakfast. No eating after 8 pm. Ate 4 ounces of meat, a cup of veggies and a 1/4 cup of some kind of nuts for lunch at noon and dinner at 7 pm every day except Saturdays. For energy/appetite control, I keep a 1/4 of nuts and a cup of baby carrots that I sometimes eat around 5 pm, but not always.

On Saturdays, ate whatever I wanted from 4:30-8 pm which motivated me to get back on diet the next day.

Walk or ran an hour a day. At first during the evenings, then woke up an hour early and did it in peace. Started causing me to go to bed earlier, a good thing.

Lost 70 pounds from March to October of last year. Stopped dieting and gained 40 back to date. Started back on diet this week. We just had our cheat meal and I could already tell the difference in where it felt more special than eating badly all the time. Going to shoot for 80 pounds total.

I’ve been back on diet for almost a week and lost 6 pounds. Likely water weight, not normal rate, but nice to see nonetheless. I’m already feeling better too.

Low carb diet. I count carbs and keep the daily total below 70g and try to keep it closer to 30g per day. My peak weight was 235# and I am now at 172#.

I went from 217->173 and have stayed in that range for 4 years. I’m 5’10” / M / 43years

Short answer: high protein / adequate fat keto with skipping breakfast (aka 16:8 intermittent fasting)

I tried it for weightloss, and immediately had health benefits within 36 hours of switching over. I’m never going back. I feel 10 years younger. Brain fog lifted, joint pain gone, more energy to move and do things, more patience and clarity at work and home. Hunger is a signal now and I’m never hangry.

It’s also just not that hard. I eat a ton of awesome meals full of chicken and roasted veg, bbq meats I smoke, steaks, omelets, huge salads. Life is good and I feel good.

I rode an elliptical, lifted weights and ate healthier to lose 60lbs. Lots of water too.

I was never good at staying on a diet. I have really bad self control and go through phases where I get hooked on soda or energy drinks or smoking, etc.

Two things helped me finally lose weight and maintain a pretty healthy build (these days 90kg 183cm originally 110-115k).

First, I found I could lose weight in short periods when I had a concrete goal. I lost 10k in maybe 6 weeks. Plenty of it was water weight and came back. But after doing that 3 or 4 times I was down to a place I felt more comfortable with myself. During those cycles I was basically always thinking about my calories. It would get tiring in normal life but it was ok if I was trying to hit my goal.

Second, by focusing on my macros and trying to limit salt every day I ended up filling my stomach way before I went into calorie surplus. By going low sodium it eliminated any kind of fast food and most frozen foods. Getting rid of salt wasn't really for health it was just to lose water weight and hit my goal. But getting rid of salt ended up making my diet way healthier.

I also had some success by cutting out bread. I don't think bread is terrible for you or anything, but by giving myself that limitation I made myself choose better options

COVID. Lost 10kg.

I've seen a few people recommending calorie counting here but haven't seen anyone mention Macrofactor, which seems weird considering how often I see people recommending Kagi. I draw the parallel because, while it's a paid product, I find it significantly better than the competition.

I started using it at the start of the year and have had steady progress. Foremost, it is extremely snappy and easy to log food. The database is fairly expansive without having poor quality user submissions. The real win of the app is the feedback loop. Rather than estimating calories expended using formulas meant to be accurate across a population (but not necessarily accurate to each person), it uses your calorie intake data and your weight data to derive your expenditure.

This, to me, helps reduce the stress of tracking significantly. Reason being, if you habitually do not track something like small bites during cooking or condiments, the calculation will take it into account and reduce your calorie target accordingly.

It also doesn't take into account data from activity trackers. Instead, your exercise is essentially smoothed over the following weeks. It helps psychologically to break from "I exercised so I get a treat" mentality, where you 1: immediately eat back whatever you've burned (or more) and 2: are telling yourself a reward for good behavior is calorie-dense food.

The website has a lot of data driven articles.

It also has a bunch of neat graphs. Anyway. Would recommend it. Obviously there's a LOT of different ways to lose weight, but for me it starts with understanding what I'm putting in my body. Can't outrun a bad diet.

Ulcerative colitis

I started taking antidepressants

Nutritional Ketosis reversed my obesity and high blood pressure (after 6 months)

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/for-doctors (they have references just hover over the numbers)

Ketogenic: The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health a scholarly book for medical professionals if you prefer heavy book medical texts 🦜⛵

There are many paths to metabolic health, this path worked for me. Because my insulin levels are kept low by avoiding carbs by body is able to self regulate hunger, satiation, and cravings. I no longer had to struggle to maintain my diet, it was no longer a impossible hill to climb. I found the hormonal model of healthy eating much easier to maintain then the calorie counting model.

The body is an amazing homeostasis machine, if you let it.

The hardest part was learning how to go out socially and eat drink on plan without hurting my social life. Bars: soda water. Restaurants: salad/eggs are always available. Coffee shops: black coffee, Americano. Clubs: Soda again, with a lime slice.

This might not work for everyone but this is honestly what I did:

• I made sure my health was in check. Were my Hashimoto's medications up to date? Did I have any deficiencies? etc

• Started eating filling food, without calorie counting. Both when I cooked and when I ate out I picked options that used nutritious ingredients and a variety of food groups, but also weren't absolutely fucking dreadful to consume. Getting rid of enjoyment from your diet completely is the fastest way to relapse into binge-eating and just generally isn't helpful.

• Started not just exercising, but also moving around more. Either alone to run errands or just with friends, we can just walk around and talk, see where the road takes us. (I understand this might be difficult for suburbia Americans though)

• Understood my goals. I wasn't sure initially if I wanted to just lose weight or gain muscle. I had some not-so-great experiences with the scale when I was an athlete that I only just started overcoming. I wanted to decrease my overall volume so I stopped looking towards the scale and just made sure to do the workout exercises that catered to my body's needs and checked for progress in the clothes that stopped fitting me.

Hope this helps! I've been a lot healthier and happier since taking my health into my hands and staying away from the disordered habits of my gymrat family 🫡

Eat raw veggies (salads)

In the first week or two you won't feel like it was a real meal since your body still craves sugars, fats and junk. But once you get past the cravings you find out that this huge meal filled with fiber is super filling but the calorie count is really low, and so you start losing weight

I ate less by keeping snacks out of my home.

Carnivore. Went from 275 to 150 in a year of as close to zero carbs as possible.

Stopped drinking beer and doing HIIT/circuit workouts regularly -- lost about 30lb so far

Eat healthily, exercise.

What worked best for me was fitting eating around my weekly routine.

I have a standard 5 days work, 2 days weekend.

In general, the weekend is for fun so I applied that to food as well.

The week is for healthy eating. No snacks, bed early to be well rested. The weekend is for blowing off steam and eating treat foods.

For me, this meant that I reduced my cravings as I wasn't eating unhealthily all week. By the time the weekend rolls around now I don't want that unhealthy food that much. Note. It's taken a while to get to this point but my weight has now been consistently low for over 2 years.

I think the main thing is whatever you find that works for you, it has to become something you can sustain.

This is not going to be helpful, but I started weight loss that resulted in about 35 pounds lost simply by going to a con and waiting for people to meet up to eat. Ended up with me not eating until like 8pm each day, so close to 24 hour fasts for 4 days in a row.

Once I was kinda used to it, I did shorter ones and started roughly calorie counting as well.

Cutting snacking, calorie dense foods, and counting caloiries.

Calories in/calories out is the only thing that works long term. You dont go on a diet, you change how you eat permanently.

I keep bread in the freezer so i dont snack on it. I only have a small desert. Measure portions until you have a good eye for it, etc.

Working out to burn calories is unsustainable for the majority of people.

Stop drinking soda and alcohol at random. They are loaded with empty calories. You can easily drink 600-1000 calories a day with soda if you have a couple of glasses with meals and snacks.

Metformin. No other changes. Guess the better blood sugar levels make a difference. Still drinking coke and eating whatever I feel like and dropped 10lbs. The only reason I noticed was because my pants kept falling down.

I know people say you can't lose weight with exercise, that diet controls your weight and exercise your health, but personally I guess I eat about the same amount all the time on average, because increasing activity (except for weight lifting) either on purpose or accidentally, has always been the factor most related to my wright. I'll note that I haven't been overweight so YMMV, but I have been hugely pregnant several times.

Weight lifting makes me gain weight but stay about the same size, which is also a good result. But anything else - walking to work instead of driving, jogging couple times a week, aerobic dance, those will drop my weight the most, the quickest, and without dieting (which isn't good for me mentally).