Tracking your calorie deficit/surplus isn't the easiest method, but unlike fad diets, it's guaranteed to work (provided, of course, that you stick with it and count accurately).
I'd argue that most people are more interested in sustainable weight loss (some exceptions, e.g. losing weight to fit into an outfit for a professionally photographed lifecycle event).
I am currently in the process of loosing weight and the only thing I've bothered with is calories. No foods are off limits. I allow my self to eat more in accordance to the amount of exercise I do (which naturally incentivises me to exercise, but doesn't depend on it).
I wrote up some formulas to estimate my weight loss before committing to the diet. It's been three months and so far it has been accurate to the pound (accounting for natural dailyvfluxuations in weight).
I'm sure there is some value in monitoring carbs, starch, fats, sugars, and other things, but I can confirm that the simple calorie diet works very well. If all you're interested in is weight loss, I strongly recommend it.
IANANutritionist, but here's some extra tips I've found very useful:
- !ntx searches nutritionix.com for nutrition data on Duck Duck Go.
- Drinking a lot of zero calorie beverages helps aleviate hunger (I like Propel, Sprite Zero, and Dr. Zevia).
- Don't frett over being super accurate with your counting. Just don't cheat yourself and it will even out over time.
- If you're like me, a big portion of your diet is covered by a relatively small selection of meals. If you figure out the calories in those, it becomes much easier to plan meals and alter plans on the fly.
- If you breakdown a meal, it's often possible to make a small modification that significantly reduces its calorie count.
- Don't focus on eating traditional diet foods (eg salads and "superfoods"). If you focus on having a perfect diet, you might burn yourself out.
If you only rarely go out to restaurants, just give the meal your best estimate and don't worry about it too much. If you eat out every day, it'll be hard to estimate. Fast food chains are often (ironically?) helpful here because many of them list the calories in their meals.
You don't really need to estimate your calorie expenditure. Just keep your activity level roughly even, count calorie intake, and track your weight. If your weight doesn't decrease after a couple weeks, subtract a couple hundred calories from your intake. Eventually, you'll get a deficit and your weight will decrease.
That's not to say weight loss is impossible. If you're overeating as a habit you may be keeping your weight above your set-point. Learning to "listen" to hunger cues may then bring your weight down. It happened to me 2 years ago and I managed to keep the weight down, and I'm not feeling hungry. There are other ways of lowering the set-point, but not very recommendable in general.
I think focusing on hunger cues and eating a balanced diet is good advice, together with exercise and avoiding drinking and smoking. These will (statistically) reduce morbidity risks to normal-weight levels.
Note that I am not a doctor, though, so take this information with the proper grain of salt.
In moderation though, too much sodium is bad for you
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
This is a well-understood process with much data to back it up and it will take a lot more than one meta-analysis of 6k people to provide evidence against it.
Note also a common mistake of studies that test correlations between a factor such as salt and a health outcome like CVD or death: often, the people at most high risk are already cutting down on the substance.
For example (I can't find the reference now, sorry) a study that reported that moderate drinking had better health outcomes than not drinking at all included in its study population individuals who had cut alcohol consumption completely because of pre-existing (at the time of the study) disease. So obviously those people had worse health outcomes than the ones that drank moderately.
This can skew results something bad. If you're testing whether cutting down on salt correlates with a reduction to CVD and some of your study population have cut down on salt because they already have CVD, the association between cutting down on salt and good outcomes will appear reduced in your data. In the first study reported in Scientific American in the link you provide it's hard to know whether this is the case because they don't link to the study (typical). The next study reported by SA, where the amount of sodium in urine was measured, seems to have suffered from this error: it found that cutting down on salt increased risk of dying from heart disease. Not benefitting from reducing salt intake is one thing, but dying more of it? That takes hellalot of explaining!
The point is that just because a study found one result doesn't mean everything changes overnight.
It is important to understand that when there is a large body of evidence supporting one hypothesis ("too much salt is not good for you") it takes an equally large body of evidence to reject that hypothesis. A single study, even a meta-analysis, doesn't cut it. It will take many years and a lot of work before the evidence SA presents is credible enough to change our understanding. And this is as it should be.
[1] https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...
The meta-analysis results are very confusing: low salt intake is associated with a relative risk of cardiac death, but moderate and high salt intake is associated with a relative risk of stroke death. Now what?
Some of the studies analysed controlled for various groups, e.g. with high BMI, or, indeed, with previous CVD. Some followed patients up for 10 or more years, some had 10,000 or more subjects, some had more or less than 60% male subjects- and all these factors seem to have afffected outcomes.
So perhaps a tentative conclusion should be that salt intake doesn't have a significant effect on healthy individuals, but it does seem to affect those with underlying conditions.
The question is- how do you know what underlying conditions you have, given that our interest in the study is probably to decide how much we should cut back on our salt consumption as individuals, according to dietary advice from basically all major health bodies, etc.
Well, I have a single data point on this. A relative of mine recently found out she has kidney disease. The news came out of the blue. She had a blood test for something unrelated and there was a worying signal. She was referred to a nephrologist, had an ultrasound to check the state of her kidney and discovered that she's missing one kidney from birth. It turns out that people with a single kidney from birth have an increased risk to develop kidney disease, higher than people who lose a kidney later in life, who in turn have a higher risk than the general population. It seems also that my relative's liberal salt consumption (until now) has played a role in her developing kidney disease, because the most likely course of events is that her blood pressure was elevated, which damaged her kidney, which raised her blood pressure, which further damaged her kidney, etc.
Like I say, this came out of the blue. Kidney disease is like that: it sneaks up on you, when you don't expect it. My relative was lucky to find out before she found herself on a hospital bed, strapped to a dialysis machine, but others have not been so lucky.
This whole affair made me realise I have no idea what might be going on in my body, that may affect me very suddendly a few years down the line. Perhaps I have some underlying condition I don't know of, myself. Maybe I'll find, when I'm older, that I have a high blood pressure and that I need to take medication, and cut back on salt, to control it.
Current guidelines are to limit salt intake and those are based on numerous studies carried out over many years, and, I think, clinical experience. Perhaps there were confounding factors not controlled for, in those studies- like high BMI, previous CVD, smoking (!) etc etc. But, if those confounding factors caused a significant jump in the relative risk for things that can easily kill anyone, then maybe the message is that there are many things that can increase the risk from high salt intake- and that many people are affected by those things. In which case the wise thing is to not assume that you can eat as much salt as you want, and that you have to be a little bit careful with it, now, so you that don't have to make huge, very difficult changes, later.
My relative has had to cut back entirely on the salt that she eats: no cheese, no cured meats, no eating out unless she can be entirely sure the food she eats is unsalted (which means steak and fries pretty much every time, because there's nothing else that most restaurants can guarantee is salt-free). That is a big pain in the ass, and she might have been able to avoid it if she had been more careful earlier on.
For the record- I'm suggesting everyone should do as I say, not as I do. I salt my food liberally, still. Incorrigible :)
Edit: On the other hand, you can always monitor your blood pressure. If you're eating "too much salt" that's how you'd find out. But, who monitors their blood pressure when without a good reason?
One of the key insights was that I was eating a lot of foods that were fattening but weren't filling. It turns out that the ratio of "how full does this make me feel" to "how many calories does this contain" is not a constant across foods. Sugar has probably the worst ratio. Protein and fiber probably have the best, at least in my experience. Fat is a little trickier, but probably also decent if consumed in moderation.
Anyway, as a result, I eat a LOT of vegetables and lean meat. For dinner (my large meal), I often have 1/2 to 3/4 pound (225-340g) of something like chicken breast and 3/4 to 1 pound (340-450g) of steamed veggies. Sometimes I feel like I can barely finish it all.
The other part of the equation was I really did have to change a lot of long-time habits. I was accustomed to just eating whatever and whenever I wanted. That had to end, and the adjustment was painful.
It probably also helps to stay physically active, but I was active before undertaking the weight loss, so I can't comment on the effect of changing that.
The closest thing to device that measures actual calories in is a scale (or measuring cup) and a nutrition label. Yes, this is limiting and tedious. Your favorite local restaurant probably doesn't have any nutrition info available at all. To some extent, you can get around this by looking up equivalents. When you're at your local burrito place, just look up the closest Chipotle menu item. If you only need to that occasionally (not every other meal), your overall totals will be pretty close.
I could go on and on, but Hardvard my plate is the definite guide for what you should be eating. This is the non lobbyist, highly educated PhD take on what current science says we should eat.
Replacing sugar with Erythritol and monk fruit has been more than sufficient replacement for things like coffee and small treats. It’s hard to find commercial products with Erythritol which is a shame but that seems to be slowly changing.
Sadly most “sugar free” products have Maltodextrin or Xylitol which is awful for me as I have colitis and I’ve read they aren’t keto friendly. If every product that contained those two switched to the former two my life shopping for groceries would be so much easier.
I also don’t go hard at restaurants (nothing worse than having to be picky at a restaurant) mostly for practicality reasons but that would be the 2nd area I'd focus on next if I started to care more.
Starting small and simple (ie just no bread) at the beginning is the best way. Abrupt changes usually have A abrupt endings as you significantly increase the workload.
If you're worried about nutrition, take a dive on PubMed and you'll see that many research studies show, for some reason, less risk of cancer for people with nutrient deficiencies.
> Is fasting good, or will it put me in ‘starvation mode’?
Starvation mode is what you want if you're overweight. Many diets urge you to exercise or to eat often to keep a fast metabolism. But if you want to live longer, you WANT your metabolism to be slow, not fast. That will require you to keep a low-calorie intake for the rest of your life. Fortunately, your hunger pangs will go away after about 5-10 weeks and undereating will actually become a problem.
Also some would argue that keeping a food journal and measuring every calorie you eat is far more complicated than special diets like "don't eat carbs" which are successful for some people without measuring or recording anything.
I'm going to plug in a program that changed my life, even though I have never done that, and I don't really agree with their business model, but their methodology for training yourself to eat less is top-notch and incredibly simple. The program is called Naturally Slim, and many insurance companies cover it.
I think their $50/month fee for non-insured people is a bit outrageous because the principles are simple:
* Eat really slowly and stop eating when you're not hungry anymore (not full, just not hungry). Throw away the rest of the food or store it for later.
* Only eat when you're really hungry.
* Drink diluted orange juice at a 1:8 ratio throughout the day to maintain a steady glucose level and prevent hunger.
* Your meals should consist of about 1/3 vegetable or animal protein to keep hunger away.
* Instead of having breakfast, drink plenty of water or the diluted orange juice. Most people aren't really hungry in the morning.
The beauty is that as your body weight drops, your caloric requirements drop, and if you're following the first rule, you're eating less every week.
Probably that's how anorexia sufferers get to eat so little without feeling devastating hunger.
Whole foods are harder to get an accurate count for, but seem to leave me feeling full after consuming a more reasonable number of calories.
Doesn't mean I was eating it 3 meals a day, mind you; still mostly brown rice, broc, and chicken breasts. But I could plan around a lunch at Wendy's, while the local steak house was a crapshoot.
Really, the difference between say 2,500 calories a day and 1,800 is about the magnitude you want and not that hard to differentiate.
If you switch to getting your calories from whole grains, beans and legumes, potatoes, rice (ideally brown rice), fruit, etc, and don't add fat or oil when you cook, you can eat until you're full and still not gain weight. Nuts and seeds are the only whole plant food you may have to watch out for a bit -- the oil in them makes them relatively high-calorie.
The downside to this diet is that you'll probably have to do a lot of the cooking yourself at home, because virtually all the prepared food you can buy has had oil of some sort added to it. You can buy some things like pasta sauce, but you have to pay close attention to the nutrition label and try to get ones with minimal added oil. It takes a little while to get used to it, but it soon becomes pretty intuitive.
And of course, cutting out dairy and meat means that you'll want to supplement B12.
The upside is that this diet has health benefits (based on research, not just anecdotes) that go way beyond weight loss, though. Reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, reduced fatigue, less pain from inflammatory conditions, less anxiety, better digestion, etc.
Although, the anecdotes are generally impressive and fun to read, so if you want those: https://www.forksoverknives.com/success-stories/#gs.6onygn
By contrast, calorie counting requires only that you obey the laws of thermodynamics. At some level of reduced intake it will produce weight loss for literally anyone.
Having said that, if not eating carbs gets you there that's great-- I don't want to diminish anyone else's experience with weight loss. I just think more people should be up-front when talking about their new diet that any surprisingly easy way to lose weight is surprising because things don't normally work that way.
There are countless of people who instead of eating less move to higher protein diets and exercice more, while doing many many more small adjustments that make it work for them.
Some can eat dramatically less while keeping roughly the same level of everyday activity, while for other it will become hell on earth and put so much stress on them that they will rebound very hard after losing only a small amounts.
I personaly think any advice that is summed up in a sentence or two should be seen as some proverbial saying and be considered applicable only after reaching the same conclusion by ourself.
I know nearly a dozen people at work who've lost as much or more weight than me, eating like I did. In fact you're the first person I've ever heard of gaining weight on keto, on or off the internet.
When I go 100% raw unprocessed vegetarian for weeks at a time, I'm eating so much plain lettuce and fruits/vegetables by volume my jaw has to adapt.
It's very effective at controlling weight in my experience FWIW, while still eating huge volumes of food.
Sorry, just needed to vent.