Reply With QuoteI've suggested my brother should wear a man corset!
Very happy, it is horrible being overweight and a real worry because you know that certain illnesses are far more likely.Originally Posted by Passenger
I've suggested my brother should wear a man corset!
You appear to be dismissing Prof Tim Spector's 20 years plus research with identical twins in one sentence. There is a reason why some identical twins process the same food differently and thus why one is obese and one is slim. TS has identified the reason 'why' … and by introducing the missing microbe to an obese twin's gut, the obese twin has lost weight. Those missing microbes are well documented. However, TS' research and results are not going to please everyone and change their ideas and beliefs.
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
I’m dismissing nothing.
The latest research stems from:
“Researchers tracked about 1,100 U.S. and U.K. adults, including 240 pairs of twins, [and now for the main bit] for two weeks.” That’s TWO weeks! Unfortunately compliance (with both diet and energy expenditure) in diet research is the most difficult thing to accurately monitor.
His research is interesting, but headline grabbing does not change the fact that any of those individuals could achieve amazing results with a tailored diet.
It doesnt matter whether or not your identical twin, brother, mother, next door neighbour etc. can eat more than you, you have to eat less than your personal energy expenditure to lose weight - that’s simple maths.
The research might gives some additional tools in years to come to help some people who find eating a sensible diet (correctly mixed macros and micros for their lifestyle and needs), and exercising, hard.
It's just a matter of time...
You quote the one 2 week study which was not solely about weight loss. TS has researched identical twins for over 20 years. TS has discovered the 'gut microbe' reasons why e.g., one identical twin can be obese whilst the other is normal weight … even though they both follow the same diets and life styles including exercising. Introducing the missing gut microbes to the obese twin has resulted in weight loss. No hard exercise involved. Some will never be convinced of this.
Regarding your belief that "… you have to eat less than your personal energy expenditure to lose weight - that’s simple maths" … Prof Tim Spector's view on this is documented on page 12 of his 'Diet Myth' book where he writes: "Our narrow blinkered view of nutrition and weight as a simple energy-in and energy-out phenomenon and our failure to account for our microbes have been the main reasons for the miserable failures of diets and nutritional diets". There is a lot more to maintaining a healthy weight than just relying on 'energy in' and 'energy out'. Gut microbes are not the only factor affecting some people's propensities to be overweight - but they are an important and often overlooked factor … and can be 'adjusted' to the benefit of an overweight person.
Tim Spector's 'Diet Myth' book is well worth reading … and it's not just about weight loss … it's aimed at boosting the immune system to improve general health.
dunk
Last edited by sundial; 28th January 2020 at 00:36.
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Having steadily lost weight over 18 months - net weight loss plus muscle bulk gain . I just got my first - we wondered if you were sick comment .
Great , thanks and no I’m not wasting away due to some unmentionable disease !
I told my trainer tonight and she said - welcome to the club !
I still weigh 196 lbs
I started receiving those comments roughly mid last year. Still get that a lot. Initially it felt great to know how noticeable it was but then it got a bit boring when people kept insisting I must get myself checked. It was frustrating how many were unwilling to give me credit for my efforts. Even my GP wasn’t convinced despite me explaining my exercise routine. Only after numerous tests and consultant visits the matter was put to rest.
Yep, at my yearly visit to see a consultant I was asked if I had been suffering from any illness in the last year? Was I feeling ok? No other issues? Followed by "you seem to have lost weight, do you know how?"
"Yes, less calories in, more out" I replied.
"Oh good!" said the consultant, we then had a long talk about nutrition, exercise etc. By the end I convinced him to try yoga to help with his running.
Do any of you have experience with fat measuring scales ?
I have access to bodycomp elite scales - no i didn’t pay for them !
How much do you trust them ?
I guess there must be some kind of height/ weight/gender/age algorithm- if I tell the scales I’m 33 not 53 my body fat % drops by 1%..
I have told my trainer I’m not aiming for weight loss now so she is changing the target to fat % vs muscle .
BMI is rubbish calculator at 27 I’m still overweight.
Yes, I quote the study.
Tim has not independently, under research conditions studied the same identical twins over 20 years, taking into account lifestyle, environment, total exercise or total food intake.
I have already agreed his research, and indeed research in this area is interesting. However:
IMO it is quite wrong to state:
“ our failure to account for our microbes have been the main reasons for the miserable failures of diets and nutritional diets“
It’s far from the main reason! & quite frankly is like trying to force a conclusion.
Who sponsors his research in this area?
Any way. My blinkered view is reality.
When you cut through all the BS, look at an individual and tailor for them, you will achieve results. The research simply shows that despite a pre-held belief by some that, everyone should expand the same energy due a given task, guess what, some people are more efficient than others - for some of us that’s hardly surprising! The interesting side is that some of that difference may be due to microbiomes.
I’m not arguing the point. As most of this seems to be semantics and does not change the fact that changing diet and eating less overall, whilst getting the right macro and micro intake will lead to weight, and or fat loss, as desired, and will be within a set expected range.
Most good personal trainers that also know their nutrition well, could design a program to reduce fat/weight from a client at an expected rate and overall outcome within a set range, easily and consistently - provided the client remained compliant.
It's just a matter of time...
Yes, completely agree. Weight and BMI alone are useless measures. Fat vs. lean mass % is what matters.
There is a Boditrax machine at my gym and I regularly weigh/scan myself on it. I don't trust the absolute accuracy of the numbers very much but it is the direction that I care about and it gives me a pretty good idea that I have progressed. It reports metrics like fat free mass, water/muscle/fat/bone percentages/mass and metabolic age among many other things. When I started using it, it showed my metabolic age as 51 years. I was 39.5 at the time and even though I was a regular gym-goer and a new runner, I had a big waist so I agreed with my body age being well above my actual age. Over the last year or so, I changed my diet very slightly but increased my exercise to a whole different level. I started seeing a consistent improvement in my Boditrax numbers. Except the metabolic age that got stuck after dropping to 26 (actual age 41) and didn't move even though everything else continued to get better. As soon as I turned 42, it jumped up to 27. Clearly it has a limitation and doesn't show anything below 15 years your actual age. My last scan showed body fat at 14.6%. I don't know if it is true but it is the drop from 25% to 14.6% on the same machine that I focus on. It all ties in with a big reduction in waist and feeling much stronger & healthier than before.
Apparently the most reliable indicator, when it comes to all-cause mortality, is simply waist measurement. Which is of course correlated with fat (not necessarily weight or BMI which are badly skewed by muscle), but it's a much easier thing to measure than body composition and certainly a better goal to set than BMI. It is suggested that the reason waist measurement is such a good indicator is that it is a very close proxy for visceral fat, which is the kind you mostly don't want.
Yup. Drop in my visceral fat rating (another thing reported by the Boditrax machine) has been directly proportional to the decrease in my waist circumference.
FK 77. 14.6% is impressive
4 weeks in to the year and 6.3kg lost
9.7 kg to go to my target of 77.5 hoping to get there by the summer
I had a (heart surgery related) check-up last year and my cardiologist ensured me that BMI as an accurate tool is well over its date. More and more people go to the gym and gain muscles. That has a 'negative' effect their the BMI: it's up! More effectively is the fat percentage, but that's difficult to check accurately with normal household scales.
Your trouser size is the best tell-tale: smaller size clothing or an extra hole in your belt is your best everyday signal how you're doing.
How are people doing under the circumstances?
Annoyingly I’d got into having 2 PT sessions a week and could feel quite a difference. All of a sudden I’m stuck abroad for 10 days and arrive back to lockdown.
I decided that day I needed to do something (if only for my sanity).
Every hour on the hour I walk up and down my stairs 10 times, then walk around the house or garden until I’ve done 10 minutes total. Do that at 9am through till 5pm. Also do one walk a day for around 30 minutes. Averaging 18,000 steps a day since lockdown. Not losing much weight as I’m eating too much but feeling very good in myself. Also doing 10 minutes a time is easier.
Since the start of the year I have lost 15kg and my blood pressure is down from 160/100 to 130/80. Through a combination of diet, intermittent fasting and exercise.
I now through lack of work have more time to exercise so do 2 30 minute YouTube routines per day and go for an hour walk.
My weight is now 78.5kg down from 93.5kg still got a bit to go
This is my second week working from home. I am snacking too much and mostly eating irresponsible lunches and dinners too. It was easier to be disciplined about my diet in the office.
I am running more than before but there is only so much I can improvise at home so can’t fully make up for the loss of my intense gym workouts. Also missing about 4-5km of my total daily walk that was just part of the routine.
I haven’t gained any weight (yet) but pretty sure the distribution of fat, muscle and water would have changed for the worse.
Calorie deficit is the way to go to lose weight
At the start of lockdown my wife asked me to lose to 2.5 stone i need to get down to a "normal" weight. I'm 6'5" so thats not as challenging as it sounds.
I've lost most of the target but have about 8 lb to loose the end of this month that will take me from a 38" waist and 17.5 stone to a 34" and 15 stone.
I adopted a number based approach to this, essentially not eating much less but doing a lot more exercise to create a regular calorie deficit. I've enjoyed it and have a much better understanding of the relationship between my; diet, physical work and metabolism as a result. I think that will help me maintain the progress I've made and, if i start to regress, increase the volume of exercise i need to keep my weight under control.
The problem is that nothing i have apart from underwear still fits and i need an entirely new wardrobe. There is no point in doing anything until i hit the target, but I do need to start budgeting for new stuff and working out how i can determine my size without being able to try things on. That leads on to a question as to what i do with the old stuff that looks like clown clothes on me now?
My head is as saying don't dispose of what i have in case the temptations of "normality" take me back to something close to where i was.
My heart is saying dump it all now it will make it harder to go back and encourage you to reach the target so that you can buy new stuff.
Has anyone been here before, if so could you offer advice?
I haven't been there before so can't advise on the clothes sizing judgement, but I would say get rid of the now too big clothes. I think you are spot on thinking that keeping them could make it easier for you to put weight back on without a financial penalty.
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First of all, congrats on size reduction and well done for all the effort.
I had a 38+ inch waist. I say 38 plus because I was in denial, refused to buy trousers/jeans based on my actual size and kept wearing 38 despite them being quite tight so don’t know what my peak waist really was. I’m now at a point where 30 is a bit loose. Similarly with work shirts, I went down from classic fit to super slim fit (there’s slim and extra slim in between where I buy my shirts from). So I have been in that position, yes.
I kept wearing the loose clothing for as long as practical because like you, I didn’t want to keep updating the wardrobe as I wanted and expected to lose more. Obviously with such a big change, I had to keep updating the size but not with every inch of waist loss. For example, I have some 32 waist trousers that I can still wear as they don’t look too bad under a jumper.
I don’t think twice about disposing off my clothes when I decide they are too loose to wear. That’s my motivation to carry on working hard and making sure I don’t allow myself to believe I will need those clothes ever again. The stuff in good condition goes to charity and the rest in the recycling.
Underwear is the only problem really, as you can't send it back. Order online, send back anything that doesn't fit. Amazon offer free returns on clothing, as do some other retailers. Amazon may be a good place to start for determining the right size before ordering from anywhere that doesn't offer free returns.
As to keeping old stuff, I'd keep a few things in case you rebound because that's definitely a thing. So if it happens to you, don't worry about it. Just focus on losing the weight again. If you can do it once you can do it twice. Don't try to force yourself into a mindset where you must keep the weight down or it's a failure. Throwing out the old stuff might seem like a positive thing at the time, but it can add unwanted pressure. Obviously don't keep it all though, just enough to act as a safety net just in case. Stick it in a box at the back of a cupboard or an attic.
Thanks for this.
A big part of the reason why this was so much easier than it has been in the past is that working from home has given me the chance to control my environment and be completely happy in it.
That in turn has led me to thinking that however much i like my work, if we are forced to go back to an open plan office enviromnet i'm going to retire.
That in turn means that most of my old work clothes are redundant either way.
I’m in the exact same position now. I’ve lost just under 2 stone. It’s all down to exercise, which has only been possible because of the lack of commute. I’ve bought some new jeans but do wonder what I’m going to do with all the work suits when I eventually get back in the office. It’d cost a fortune to replace them!!
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I lost 30kg. Had to donate the entire wardrobe. It was comical. Suits were hard to let go!
Thought I’d reprise this thread if only to kind of publicly commit myself. I see I started this nearly 3 years ago and I’ve good and bad moments on my weight journey.
On the positives I’m still a stone lighter than 3 years ago. On the negatives I never quite stick at anything long enough to see really great results before returning to bad habits. My Fitbit has probably been what’s helped me a lot.
Anyway after the awful 2020 it’s a new year, a new start and no excuses. I’m following Michael Moseley’s intermittent fasting and committing January for health. No booze, no snacking and healthy eating. I started on the 1st and just two healthy days and I’m feeling better already.
Good luck to anyone else and let’s stick to it :-)
Yep I'm back on the keto. Started it in 2019 and lost 32 kilos within 7 months. 2020 was a bad year psychologically for me (nothing to do with Covid though) and I put 28 kilos of that back on. Started again yesterday as I'm refocusing mentally for 2021and I'll stick with it until June. I've found Keto works best for me of all the diets as I quite like the food choices (basically eat meat and high fibre veg) and I find it easier to stick to.
Aim is to lose 7 kilos in Jan (half of that will.be water weight) and then 4 kilos per month average thereafter. This will be done by a 1k a day calorie deficit with at least half that deficit comprised of exercise burned calories (mostly brisk walking in Jan, then adding weights from Feb onwards). The calorie deficit works on keto as the body burns excess fat to make up 'the difference' whereas my understanding is that on non keto diets where carbs are the primary fuel the body reacts differently to calorie deficits and slows down metabolism instead making it ever harder to lose weight.
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Good luck to you and well done on keeping the stone off.
I've lost a stone since last spring, down from 14st to 13 and have also managed to keep it off. Cant see me losing anymore but dont really need to.
Diet is good, very varied but healthy with treats thrown in.
Exercise is regular but not extreme, 3 or 4 five to ten mile walks a week, and a quick ten minute daily session involving press ups and a couple of dumbbells. Exercise was walks and regular swimming before lockdown.
Booze I couldn't give up, but have developed a regime that's working well for me. I've taken the government's advice of 14 units a week and I've, ahem, adjusted it upwards to 14 drinks a week including 3 days with no drink at all. Many weeks the total is only 9 or 10 drinks, as 14 is my maximum and not a target to reach. I class a bottle of wine as 4 drinks (4 glasses), a little bottle of beer as 1 drink, a pint (although that's history at the moment) as 1 drink, a g&t as 1 etc. A pint of Pernod definitely wouldn't be 1 drink ;) This regime means I may have the odd bottle of beer or glass of wine in the week, a midweek bottle of wine, and a bottle of wine either Friday or Saturday night, never both. When the pubs were still opening I'd have the odd pint on a long walk and this replaced the weekday drinks in the house.
The 13st seems to be holding well. Good luck to all trying to stay disciplined.
Be interested to hear how the intermittent fasting goes. I've heard good reports on that.
It really does work. I felt great when I did it properly and lost a lot of weight. Stupidly I became ill and had some time in hospital followed by long bed rest and I stopped doing what was working. Once you lose tour weight doing it twice a week was enough and you always felt great after.
I find my Fitbit hugely beneficial and do a lot of work week and ‘weekend’ challenges, trying for at least 12,000 steps as a mimimim, but 15,000 as my goal. If anyone wants to join in message me and I’ll send you my email address to find me on there.
For context I weighed myself this am and am a smidge under 20 stone which at 6 foot is 'fat barsteward' territory. At 43 years old I'm within 5 years or so of that being a major heart attack risk so this needs sorting now.
So the aim is to be at 15 stone by end June which would sound difficult but I've done it before and losing 5 stone from 20 stone is much easier than losing 5 stone from 15 stone.
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No gyms being open doesn't help.
I find motivation difficult out with that environment.
I could do with losing half a stone but can't see it happening until gyms reopen but will try and cut back on sugar snacks at the moment.
Apart from Christmas we cut out anything junk which comes in a plastic wrapper which has done more than we both thought it would. Bake cakes, eat as much food as you like, even get a takeaway once per week, just stay away from anything junk with a barcode and try go for walks.
I've signed up for a few walks on Strava so I'll see how that goes re motivation. Main goal for this year is to not have a month with less than 100k steps. Looking back through Google health when I was in the office I was doing 200k-250k steps per month consistently. Walking to and from the station, going for walks at lunch, walking around the office and walking to and from external meetings, but since lockdown I've only ever gone over 100k steps once and that was December. I'm over a million steps behind for 2020 which is worrying.
Maybe WFH is actually bad for you if, like me, you're the sort of person who does f all with the ten hours per week commuting time you save by not commuting.
I’ve managed to be under BMI 25 since the summer of 2012, and this is what I found helpful to me.
Eat real food cooked from scratch. I sometimes eat something dirty, but it’s not regular. I just try and eat healthy food. I definitely DO NOT drop carbs such as rice, pasta from scratch, and potato, they are all staples in my house. Morning pastry (bad carbs, bad!) with coffee is once a week, or I would really gain! I like the 5:2 and have done it, but I get very hungry on those days. I may go back to it as I like it’s theoretical benefit of putting the body in repair mode. I’m sure Keto works for some, but I dislike fad diets, and in evolutionary terms we are designed to use carbs as an energy source. The long terms effects of keto are a bit uncertain.
Don’t skip breakfast, I’m a big fan of poached eggs
Keep an eye on the booze, 14 units is tough sometimes!
Know what you weigh. I weigh myself at a fixed point every week, and may measure several times a week if I’m very focused
Myfitness pal for calorie tracking is useful in bursts. I’m a terrible sugar snacker, and the app stops me lying to myself. It’s a good fit with my obsessional nature
Exercise important. I cycle (4000 miles 2020), and it saved my life. I think you need to do something that raises the heart rate.
It’s all about sustainable change
Dave
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Your last sentence sums it all up really well.
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I let my BMI rise from 27 to 31 in the 4Q due to health setbacks (and depression?). First, my right knee started hurting badly and found out I need a complete joint replacement (to match my new right hip!). No more jogging or even walking more than a couple blocks now. Second, I've been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis (PF) to go along with my mild emphysema (=CPFE). I can't take a shower without my oxygen saturation dropping under 80%. Two separate pulmonologists are ordering more tests to evaluate the stage and prognosis. PF is a fatal condition over time with no cure, but a couple therapeutics to lengthen the journey.
Nevertheless, I am committed to make 2021 the "Year of pacifichrono" by aggressively fighting back:
- Eating smarter and lowering my weight.
- Drinking more water in place of Diet Pepsi.
- Using my inhalers and steroid medications.
- Pushing for insurance approval of an expensive drug therapy.
- Walking with a knee brace and lengthening my daily walks.
- Getting more sleep (5-6 hours historically).
- Book a tropical summer vacation to provide added motivation.
By Independence Day (July 4) I'm expecting to look like a more "mature" David Beckham!
It will probably end up being an expensive fad but the wife has persuaded me to order us a spin bike. Went for a more entry level to see how it goes but still cost £500.
I left university almost 20 years ago at 14 stone , and after a year or so got down to under 12st which I kept to until around 18 months ago when a niggly illness kept me from exercising and by the time I got over it we went into lockdown!
I'm back up to 13st now and need a bit of a kick. The diet isn't too bad but have gone from having 4/5 pints on a Saturday to drinking more at home on both Friday and Saturday.
Once the weather improves I'll be out walking a lot but need something to help until then. My wife has missed the spin classes at the gym so hopefully she will get use of it too.
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Yes, WFH is really bad. I am short 5km daily on weekdays just because of not walking to/from the tube stations, no school drop off, no walking in/around office and short 2km on gym days due to the gym being closed. Plus I used to have healthy lunches everyday in the office: fresh greens with hummus and boiled egg OR grilled salmon with salad OR just a protein shake. Snacks in the office used to be restricted to bananas and apples. At home I am having ‘dirty’ lunches and junk snacks between meals all the time. Working far more extra hours than I save from commuting too.
I lost 10kg in 2020, taking me from overweight at 88kg to a “healthy” BMI at 78kg. I’m 180cm tall. My weight has been in the mid-eighties since, well, the mid-eighties. What made the difference last year was working from home and therefore having more time to exercise. I use a Garmin to track calories and as gyms were shut for most of the year Iset up a bike/turbo trainer in the garage linked to Zwift. Previously I’d be bored out my skull on a turbo trainer within half an hour but with Zwift I can easily do a couple of hours and burn over 1000 calories at a time. I’m starting a new job in two week’s time and I know it’s going to be tough to avoid some weight gain. I’m just going to have to really watch my intake until I can move my turbo up to my new place or find some other exercise.
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In 2017 after routine blood tests, the NHS put me on a pre-diabetic programme and warned me that I was going on the insulin after the previous 12mos had shown no improvement. I weighed in at 106kg (1.79cm) with a 46” chest and 37” waist. The typical “powerfully built company director”.
I remember my first time on the elliptical with the ‘effort’ set at level 2 (out of 20). After 3minutes, I thought I would pass out. Later that day in the gym, I actually did pass out when just doing some simple lunges, and woke up to a very panicked PT and gym staff. My resting heart rate was about 75bpm.
But I kept at that elliptical. 5 times a week. And went cold turkey on my favourite beverage: Diet Coke - which I regularly drank 3-4 cans a day of, excluding the several “Jack and Diet Coke with lemon please”.
By end-2019, I was doing 75min sessions on the same elliptical at level 15, strength training, and a 30min swim about 5 days a week. Then the gyms closed with lockdown in 2020 and I started running outdoors in April. I now run, on average, about between 40-60km a week and am totally addicted. Ran 2091km in 2020. My blood sugar is normal again, chest size 38”, waist 32”, weigh in at 76-77kg, and my resting heart rate 42bpm. I swapped diet coke for San Pellegrino, although I still enjoy wine (blame Laithwaites) and an Old Fashioned/Negroni/Boulevardier at least once a week. Food wise - I still eat far too much as my wife and I enjoy our food - including lots of unhealthy SE Asian food with rice and carbs.
But the key is simply exercise and burning more than one consumes... and staying off the sugary drinks. Currently averaging about 13-15k steps a day throughout lockdown at home. A 10k run is already about 10k steps, and the rest is somewhat sedentary around the house sadly. The downside to all this weightloss, is that I have gone from a 7.75” to a 7” wrist. I used to be able to happily wear my DSSD JC, but it looked ridiculous on me when it got sold. If you want to lose weight and still enjoy food/drink... Exercise, exercise, exercise!
Well done that's awesome! One question though - what was the reason for ditching the Diet Coke?
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I'm going to guess the same as any fizzy drink -- they expand your stomach with the fizz and when the fizz goes you feel hungry again or know your stomach has capacity for more. Diet doesn't matter, the fizz is still there. Also Ryan, have you ever seen a slim guy order a diet coke? Fat lumps order diet and slim regular guys generally order regular.
spareparts, good going on the 13k steps per day during lockdown. That is some commitment.
Last edited by wileeeeeey; 18th May 2022 at 08:18.
Thanks for this. On the Keto Diet I have been drinking a ton of Diet Coke (at least 3 cans per day) and I know diet or otherwise that isn't great. Whilst there are no calories in Diet Coke I believe the sweeteners do interfere somewhat with blood sugar levels.
If my memory services me right, there are also studies that indicate that the sweeteners on diet drinks can mess up bacteria in your intestines and actually lead to weight gain and raise the risk on type 2 diabetes.
Also some studies indicated that aspartame might disturb metabolism.
I don’t really understand the Diet Coke thing but it’s been discussed for years. There was even a documentary about it on Channel 4 I think where some Universities looked into it. If memory serves me correct, they couldn’t actually find anything really wrong that they could prove, although they did advise against it and said it did seem to cause a chemical reaction of some kind (maybe insulin spike or something) that seemed to make people hungrier or eat more.
All a bit hazy but the upshot of it seems to be cut down or stop it.
It is bad ju-ju! Biggest difference when I stopped: lethargy went away, energy levels went up, and the desire to snack (because I had previously felt tired) went away. The body just felt lighter and you become more inclined to be physically active.
Ain’t that the truth! Used to go to MaccyDs, order a ton of grease, and choose the Diet Coke option... all a bit ridiculous on hindsight!
Lockdown - the best excuse to get on 2 feet and explore the local neighbourhood :thumbup:
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