Consistency is the key. I've talked about changing habits before and this is part of that.
And what do you consider to be good habits? In my opinion bad ones include: calorie counting, restricting, as well as just picking up the nearest high energy snack, such as a chocolate bar, are equally bad. In the past, they've made me fatter, rather than leaner.
IMHO counting calories is a good thing to do because it makes you aware of what eating habits you need to change. Rushing things and being obsessive about losing weight isn't good and very likely to fail. You have to make long term adjustments to your eating habits even though saying no to pie and ice cream is hard.
I agree about being aware of the energy density of foods and your requirements. The problem with following a restricted calorie diet is, it's very unnatural. Measuring everything and looking at the labels is just a pain. Another issue is people's energy requirements , i.e. their basil metabolic rate, vary dramatically and can't be easily determined by weight and height calculations, so how much one should be eating is difficult to predict. If your BMR is only 100Kcal different from what the calculations predict, then you'll theoretically lose or gain a lot of weight, over the long term, by sticking to that diet, although in reality, your body will adjust somewhat, to prevent it.
Having some physical exercise is good no matter what but if you have a lot of overweight then swimming is probably the best way because this doesn't strain your leg joints that much. Cycling could be a good option as well.
I agree, doing lots of impact work, if you're carring too much weight isn't good. I agree with you about swimming. I suppose I also chose cycling because I've had problems with my knee joints in the past, but in my case, that could have been malnutrition, just as much as jogging.
Yes, BMI is just a rough indicator. My BMI is just over the 24 mark, but that rope would have 8cm of slack. Actually the ratio between waist and height is also quite rough, better than BMI, but still not perfect. The waist to hip ratio is a better measurement. Mine is a healthy 0.85. I used to be over 1, before I started cycling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist%E2%80%93hip_ratio#Indicator_of_health
Well it seems I have more work-out to do.
Sorry if I made you feel bad.
I think we're mostly agreeing. You seem very hesitant to monitor calories because you've gotten yourself in trouble with that in the past. It is a valid strategy and what most proper dietitians and doctors use. It works very well for a huge amount of people. There is indeed a risk that people lose themselves or overdo it. Obsessing over calories is obviously not the way to go and depriving yourself to the point that you're compensating with unhealthy foods isn't either. However, awareness of what you eat and what it means for your body is helpful. A lot of people don't have a clue what the stinkers are and that's what calorie counting helps with. Just make sure to treat it like a tool and not like a religion.
The trouble is it didn't happen all in one go. I've struggled with my weight for a long time. Looking back I had issues with disordered eating, long before it became clinically diagnosable. The striking thing is it wasn't the disordered eating, which was initially responsible for the weight gain, but attempts to lose weight, which resulted in disordered eating. Later more weight gain came, as a result of the eating disorder, but that's a different story.
It I told a doctor, what I was doing to lose weight at the start, they probably would have given me plenty of encouragement, because it's the recommended dietary advice for weight loss. What concerns me is I've met people who are trying to lose weight and many of them seem to be experiencing the symptoms of an eating disorder, just not to the extent where it's clinically diagnosable or having a significant impact on their well-being. I don't want others to make the same mistake as me!
Recovery for me involved seeing a counsellor, dietician, who both advised me to cease any attempts at controlling my weight and relearning to listen to my appetite signal. My weight fluctuated for a bit, before settling at a "too fat" level for a couple of years. This wasn't healthy but it was certainly less unhealthy than having an eating disorder, which had a much higher mortality rate, than just being a bit overweight. Later on I discovered, by accident, that exercise would bring my weight back down to a healthy level. It was not intentional. I originally started pedal cycling to work because it was easier and safer than my motorbike. The weight came off and now I'm very fit and healthy.
Now I'm aware that there's also a link between excessive exercise and disordered eating and it was even a part of my eating disorder: I used to run excessively! I'm monitoring the situation, mindful of the signs of relapse or exercise obsession.
Exercise should be part of maintaining a healthy weight, because your body simply functions better when you do. It can also help with the balance of energy, but people should be very aware it's essentially impossible to get to or maintain a healthy weight through exercise alone. The saying that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise is fairly accurate. Exercise does support the moderation of energy intake in an excellent way and is a massive factor in your overall health, so exercise is always recommended.
Well I'm doing it quite well thank you. I think it's because I'm doing a lot of cardio. It's difficult to estimate the amount I actually burn. If I put the speed, distance and my statistics into one of those online calculators, I get about 600Kcal to 700kCal, but it's likely to be more than that, since it just takes my average speed. It doesn't take into account that I spend some time stopping, decelerating and accelerating, the effects of wind and hills. I'm well aware of the fact that, in theory all I need to do is eat little bit more extra with every meal and I could gain the weight back, but something is preventing that from happening: it's remained stable. I think my increased level of fitness has resulted in my body is managing its energy balance better than before.
The appetite signal has served animals and mankind for millennia. The important difference is that during these millennia people and animals have have predominantly lived in food scarce situations. Most animals will keep eating while there's food. Humans have manipulated the world into a situation where food is essentially always available, so our appetite signal needs to adjust. We're more restrained than a lot of animals, but it's obvious we haven't adjusted to the new situation yet. We tend to prefer foods containing things that are quite rare in nature, like fat and sugar. Unfortunately the impulse to eat any of that we can find is hurting us now and refined foods sometimes mean we're attracted to foods that lack everything else that nature tries to get us to eat.
But the obesity epidemic has happened very recently. It wasn't a problem 100 years ago and there wasn't a widespread famine in most of the US and Europe back then. It also doesn't explain why some people are lean and others fat and self-control doesn't seem to be a significant factor.
Also what happens if we make people eat too much? How fat do they get? Well not that much, check out the opposite of the Minnesota starvation experiment, the The Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study.
http://idealbodyweights.blogspot.com/2009/08/vermont-prison-overfeeding-study.htmlEven given a huge caloric surplus, people struggled to gain 20% over their initial starting weight. Clearly something else is going on here.
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