Eat less, lose weight. I read long ago that if you want to maintain weight, eat until you're a little bit hungry. If you want to lose weight, eat until you're still pretty hungry.
I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and setting up portion sizes, etc.
I've found that to be true as well. One thing I do is I eat before dinner (especially when going out for dinner). If I'm really hungry I'll order the largest thing on the menu and overeat. If I have a banana before going out I'll make a wiser choice.
Losing weight is all about hunger management. Eat free foods like fruits and vegetables when you're hungry. Eat 3 balanced meals a day. That's it, that's all it takes.
If you turn losing weight into a job by counting calories and doing meal planning and whatnot you'll quit because you already have a job. So just use some basic common sense judgments and make sure you're never too hungry because that's when you'll make mistakes.
Fruits are not free food in terms of dieting, as they have a lot of sugar (fructose). Bananas in particular are very rich in sugar so are best avoided when on a diet.
All true, unless you do a low-carb diet. Once your body adjusts (2-3 weeks for me), your hunger feelings are significantly dampened because your blood sugar is always stable. This is why low-carb diets are considered "easier" by many people.
You can actually eat more and still lose weight. You just have to eat foods that are low in calories, like cruciferous vegetables, water-based oatmeal, brown rice. You can eat a few apples and still be eating fewer calories than if you ate a single bran muffin. The whole carbohydrates in the apple also mean that you're less likely to spike your blood sugar and experience glycation, than if you were to eat the processed carbs in the muffin.
Carrots are my weight-loss jam. Whole bag of mini-carrots - only 100 calories. They also give you particularly voluminous waste, which makes you feel like you're being successful at losing weight.
This. I have started exercising a lot (6 times a week, with a trainer) and I have only gained weight (both muscles and fat).
Turns out there is a consensus that exercise is the best thing you can do for yourself. It will do wonder on many aspects, but it won't make you thinner.
Eating less will.
A couple of years earlier, I did some small changes to my alimentation :
- always have an healthy breakfast (instead of just drinking a coffee). I generally cook some muesli. It is delicious and I can use one batch for almost a week.
- control the quantities I eat. I was brought up to always finish my plate. It is polite and in theory it avoids waste. But in practice I have been eating too much just in order to finish some arbitrary plates (I was buying lunch around work these days, no control over the portions). I decided to just stop eating once I had enough.
With these 2 small changes, I lost 15 kgs (from 84 to 69 kgs for 1.90m).
Now that I work out, I am back at 77 kgs, but a way healthier one (and there is still some progress to be made, both in building muscle and losing fat).
The whole "exercise so you can continue to drink coke, have burgers, etc" sounds a lot like companies wanting you to do everything but what would hurt their bottom margins.
I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and setting up portion sizes, etc.