Firstly, fantastic achievement. I'm curious as to what motivated you enough to put in the effort (I'm assuming it required effort).
Secondly, I wonder if the speed/drastic nature of the weight-loss can be counter-productive. When you think about people don't become over-weight overnight. Perhaps a more gradual pace with some time for settling at various stages of the process...I'm thinking losing weight over a couple of years as opposed to over a couple of months.
Honestly, there were no side effects other than my back problems went away, I stopped snoring, and I felt better. Even with fasting, I just think your body has enough time to catch up when it's just a pound a day or whatnot. (Btw, you know what the world record for fasting is? 382 days. I'm not recommending that, I like food, but, as long as you get enough nutrients not to get something like scurvy and you consult with a doctor the human body is a lot more adaptable than people realize)
And the time is certainly a factor - people have to set up weight loss scenarios that are sustainable over the long term. My weight loss goal was 1-2 lbs a week, so that was aggressive, but I am large enough that I can lose weight on enough calories to not feel deprived. By counting calories and making sure I had enough to enjoy myself it was a relatively easy process, once I got used to the counting and accountability.
I only weighed myself once a week for this reason. Every day can be demoralizing if you have a bloat day, but once a week gives enough to have a pretty regular drop. Whatever behaviour you do can't be considered on a day by day basis, it needs to be considered as a week of good behaviour, and then weeks and then months. You gotta stay consistent every day over the long term to expect results.
We hackers can geek out on the math in the Hacker's Diet[0], which goes into various smoothing algorithms and plotting styles to show the daily weight and smoothed trends.
I worry that daily tracking could be discouraging or introduce maldaptive behaviour - you went up a lbs since yesterday, but that's because your morning poop wasn't as productive as it usually is, and now you feel like you need to go more extreme to make up for it the rest of the day.
What's good is what works. And honestly, drugs work today. The likes of the FDA considers them too risky, but I think they're deciding wrong.
def: A medicine
>drugs work today
....
Seriously though, the problem is that, regardless of cause, we're fat and lazy. Throwing more drugs to take care of diabetes and heart disease is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I'm watching my boomer parents realize that medicine isn't going to help everything, and they are going to have to be accountable for their help. They've gotten much more physically active and lost weight because they are seeing that my grandfather's heart medication may be stopping the heart attacks but it isn't stopping his diabetes or inability to climb the stairs, and the gamut of surgeries are just making him more and more crippled. A pill won't solve our problems. It may solve the current health crises, but it won't stop the next one. Losing weight, eating better, and being active will solve the whole set of problems.
You're adopting a moralizing stance here, one that says that gain without pain is illegitimate. This approach has broad appeal, but it just doesn't work. For decades people have been making the same argument you're making, and it hasn't worked. It's time we try something else.
No, I'm saying that a pill won't solve the root problem. You make people skinny with a pill, you just end up with unhealthy, malnourished skinny people who insulin is all out of wack and who will still get heart attacks.
> For decades people have been making the same argument you're making, and it hasn't worked. It's time we try something else.
Are you suggesting that "throw a pill at it" hasn't been a solution for decades? We've had this belief that medical science can cure us of all our ills, and I think we are no realizing we can't. I've seen family members become shells of themselves after surgery after surgery causes them to lose as much as they got back. Pills always have trade offs, surgery always leaves scars. Maybe one day that'll be the case where a pill will solve all our problems, but it's not today.
...
Case reports have shown that an acute administration of 20–50 mg per kilogram of body weight in humans can be lethal. The lowest published fatal ingested dose is 4.3 mg/kg. Concerns about dangerous side-effects and rapidly developing cataracts resulted in DNP being discontinued in the United States by the end of 1938. DNP, however, continues to be used by some bodybuilders and athletes to rapidly lose body fat. Fatal overdoses include cases of accidental exposure, suicide, and excessive intentional exposure (overdose). The substance's use as a dieting aid has also led to a number of accidental fatalities."[1]
I would argue that's an entirely unsafe medication. That's not a drug that's short of perfection, it seems to be the sort of medication that will solve the obesity crises by actively killing people instead.