You ate in a surplus and gained some muscle and some fat.

I also gain weight when I eat more and train, what's the confusing bit here?

It's not sustainable to maintain a calorie deficit indefinitely. No-one claims that. That would be anorexia.

What is sustainable is to eat in a calorie deficit for a period of time until you reach a weight you're happy with and then maintain.

I think what you're describing is probably accurate for reasonably lean people trying to cut 10lbs. But for the severely obese (I briefly hit morbidly, in my case) that strategy doesn't help very much. Getting from 300 to 290lbs isn't nothing, but it's not enough.

I believe that you only get to severe obesity by something being seriously wrong with your metabolism. Therefore you need to identify that issue and fix it, probably with some pretty severe intervention, to get back to healthy.

Having done that for two years, why was it unsustainable to eat at maintenance from then on? You felt hungry? Lost interest? I lose interest in goals all of the time. But what happened?

I wasn't even doing anything - just eating keto to satiety every day. Then I moved back to the US and slowly began gaining it all back (also over about 2 years).

I tried various things to slow down or reverse the gain, including lifting, other methods of working out, dieting more or harder.. nothing worked. Until this :) With the heavy cream. Down 45lbs again so far. Yay!

You gained fat following a program that is notorious for making people fat. Google images for "starting strength meme" and see for yourself.

I know Rippetoe's answer to everything is "eat moar fooood!" so yea I kinda see how that meme exists.

More seriously, there are lifting programs designed to be run whilst in a deficit - they typically lower volume. Their purpose is to maintain muscle mass so that the body preferentially catabolizes fat.

They don't actually produce fat loss in and of themselves, that's primarily diet.

It sounds like what you need is psychological. You need a way to convince yourself to stick with it. No program can do that, it's just a list of instructions.

Are you serious? SS is notorious for making people fat, or even obese. Rippetoe has repeatedly said he doesn't care about your abs, and tells you not to run. Go look at the people in this video: youtube.com/watch?v=REtVJO4FC0s

Most of them are overweight or obese. This guy recently went viral as a another SS "success": https://old.reddit.com/r/StartingStrength/comments/y0ybtd/ad...

> Are there other lifting protocols more designed for fat loss?

Cardio is better for fatloss, tbh, and lifting in a deficit is best pursued as a way to preserve muscle mass and maximize the weight lost from fat. If you're a newb you can recomp somewhat, but it becomes harder the longer you train and leaner you get. SS is too low volume of a porgram to aid much in fat loss, and a higher volume (more reps per set, more sets) hypertrophy program would burn more calories, but you really should try to incorporate regular cardio, especially that you enjoy and can maintain.

Your diet should be high protein (at least 1g per lb. of bw, but with the obese, height in cm. is used instead, so target 1g per cm. of height), again, to shift the balance towards fat vs. muscle loss, and high in carbohydrate (fruit, veg, whole grain) to fuel workouts, replenish glycogen, and spare muscle protein, and low in fat (especially saturated fat).

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure, having seen that, that this is just a really elaborate troll. I stopped engaging after seeing this.

His chosen method of achieving caloric restriction is to get 70% of his nutrition from cream. The amount of cream isn't even defined; it's just "I have some amount of coffee a day and this one time I measured how much cream was in it". If for whatever reason one day Starbucks changes their coffee and he ends up having 8 instead of 5 the whole thing will change arbitrarily.

If this is real then the guy needs psychological help.