My family has the tendency to gain weight with age. I am unfortunately also someone that stress eats. So I have gained weight and lost it already a few times in my life. At the moment I am again in the process of dropping off weight, so I think it is a good time to record and share my experiences with anyone listening.
Throughout the years I have tried different “techniques” and approaches to losing weight and here is a list of them. Maybe you can try any of them and let me know how it went. I’ll give each one of the techniques a score so that you know what I found useful. But also let me add a disclaimer: I am no nutritionist or a doctor, by trade I am an engineer. I’m just a regular everyday normal guy interested in physical fitness.
No Sugar
Score: 10/10
This is the best you can do. Hands down. No cakes, no candy, nothing. This also includes ALL sweet drinks, including fruit juice. No juice at all. You will drink only water, tea or coffee. Say to yourself and then to others “I don’t drink sugar”.
It’s hard at first, but believe me, with time it gets easier because the cravings go away, and also, for some reason, you feel less hungry.
Ok, so there is some sugar it is ok to eat. Some fruits will be fine, even good for you, because they contain fiber that your gut biome needs and vitamins for many of your body processes. But don’t overdo it. And as I said, no juice. Drinking fruit juice is not the same as eating fruit. Again, say to yourself “I don’t drink sugar”.
Another difficulty I’ve found for not eating sugar is that people will very often offer you a dessert, chocolats, cake, etc.; and if you are like me it is hard to say no. People are being nice to you. I’ve found that if you are open to them and tell them you are really trying to keep your diet, they will understand.
No alcohol
Score: 9/10
This one also makes a big difference. Of course alcoholic beverages themselves have calories, which in excess can make you fat. And I think there are a million reasons why not to drink alcohol. But I have another take here about one of the issues that I have found through my experience regarding this specific topic. I’ve found that a huge problem with drinking alcohol is that you will not sleep well. When you go to sleep after drinking alcohol your body is still stressed out. I found this out after I started sleeping with a Garmin watch and then tried to figure out why I got so bad sleeping scores when I drank. It turns out alcohol is not so good for your body (shocking!). So your body, being the efficient machine that it is, will work very hard to get rid of it. You will get much quality sleep as a result. I have found that it brings some physiological but also psychological issues.
So for the psychological issues first: not being rested will make it hard to keep up your good habits. It will mess up your mental strength for the day. So you are less likely to do your work-out. You are more likely to stress-eat and more likely to drink again, which starts a vicious cycle.
For the physiological issues, I am certainly not qualified to understand the science of what happens in your body while under the influence during sleep, but from what I understand in deep sleep is when the magic happens. Your body secretes human growth hormone which helps you build that lean muscle, and other neat stuff.
Also, as far as I understand, it is your liver which is in charge of breaking down your stores of fat for energy. If you have a liver busy with alcohol you cannot give it the chance to do the good work.
So there you go. My take on no alcohol for losing weight.
Counting calories
Score: 8/10
This one is kind of controversial. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but recently I have heard very often that it doesn’t work. Right off the bat I will tell you that it worked for me quite well. But before I continue, I want to briefly explain what a calorie is, because there seems to be some confusion.
A calorie is a unit of energy. The scientific definition is not useful. What you need to know is basically that calories are the amount of energy (or fuel) you put into your body. Just like the fuel you put in your car has energy and this energy will make your car move, the food you eat has energy (or calories) that will allow you to do everything you do, consciously or unconsciously (walk, think, breath, digest). There are three types of “substances” that your body can use for energy: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. They are nutritionally not the same, and a nutrition expert will probably yell at me, but for the purpose of calorie counting you will treat all of them the same. Just have in mind that the protein is the “higher quality” calorie and you should try to prioritize it over the other ones whenever possible.
From here on out all you need to know is that if the calories you take in are less than calories used then you will lose weight. The so-called calorie deficit. Because thermodynamics. If you give your body less fuel than it needs to function, it will start using the energy it has stored as fat to keep you functioning. Keep in mind that your body might also want to use your muscles for energy, so being physically active is also important for your body to prioritize keeping your muscle and burning the fat instead.
Now there are two things you need to do for this to work out. Finding out how many calories you eat and tracking them.
How many calories are in my food?
So how have I gone about it? First of all, to count calories you need to know how many calories you are eating, obviously. This is what makes this technique difficult (at first). You need to know how many calories are in your food. Usually you will need to do some things.
Buy a kitchen scale to weigh your food
Read the labels on the food you buy at the supermarket
Google the amount of calories of food where you don’t have a label
Usually you will get for a type of food the amount of calories per 100 g. Now, there will be a bit of math to calculate the amount. Sometimes it is easy. For example, chicken breast has about 100 cal per 100 g. So if you eat 200 g of chicken breast then you are eating 200 cal. Sometimes it is harder, but thankfully we all have calculators in our pockets now, so if you are eating something with 140cal/100g and you are eating 85g of it, then you will have 140x0.85 = 119cal. Easy peasy. Then you add everything up.
Now maybe you are thinking “but what if I go out to eat and I can’t measure my food?” Fair enough. What I do is to give a generalized value. If the meal seems not super heavy I will give it 800cal. If it looks heavy I will give it 1000cal. I find it makes sense to estimate everything up. You don’t want to be exactly right, you want to be mostly right.
How do I track
I have tried a few things for this. I used to have an app in my phone and also tried writing down in a notebook, but what I have found most useful is tracking the calories in a google sheet, since it is fairly flexible and I have it in my pocket.
Here is an example of my tracking in february 2023: Example Calorie tracker
When I’m counting calories I don’t always track everything I eat. But I mostly do it, which I think is the important part. I believe the real power of calorie counting is that you become mindful of the things you are eating, and also figure out which foods are actually hurting you the most. Sometimes you are eating things that you thought are healthy, but actually are caloric bombs.
Intermitent Fasting
Score: 7/10
For me this one has worked just fine, but it’s not like it has worked miracles. There are people who swear by it and incorporate different fasting times.
What I would usually do is have my last meal of the day at 6 p.m. and then not have any meal until noon the next day. I found that I got fairly quickly used to not eating in the morning, though by noon I am usually already craving for lunch. Coffee in the mornings helps me attenuate my hunger. Coffee is magic.
Sometimes I would try to go for longer fastings, but the most I have been able to do is 24h. I haven’t had the willpower to go for something like three days without eating, so I can’t tell if that also works. But as I said, some people swear by it. All I can say for sure is that keeping my “eating window” between noon and 6 pm has worked well for me. It hasn’t made miracles, but I have seen good results from it, not to mention I sleep much better if I don’t eat after 6.
Working out
Score: 6/10
Working out and doing sports is for sure a 10/10 activity for overall quality of life, but here I am referring to how useful I found it to losing weight.
Now there are people who say working out does nothing for losing weight, and that exercising for weight loss is one of the biggest myths. I disagree. I do think that exercise helps. Just definitely not alone. If you do a workout that burns 400 calories, well that is 400 calories extra you burnt that day. That’s like 50 grams worth of fat. Pretty good. HOWEVER, if you are eating and drinking 3000 calories a day, well you are not going to burn any fat. So exercise alone without being mindful of your diet will not make you lose weight. Though I do think it will improve your results if you are already on the right diet and with the proper habits. Not to mention it will help you become a more well balanced human being regardless of the way you look.
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