(October 18, 2023 at 10:00 am)Gwaithmir Wrote: At last! I'm down to 298 lbs.! A few people have noticed the weight loss, saying I'm beginning to look a bit thinner.
Congrats!
The difficult part is starting.
From my observations about losing fat, it's mostly about having low caloric intake, while still getting the nice nutrients in proper amounts, like proteins, vitamins, fibre, etc.
Then it's a matter of going with the diet that you fell good with for the long haul.
What helped my 38 year old ass to lose 10 (20) out of 78kg(170lbs) waso cut out carbs from my meals, except for my breakfast sandwich. No potatoes, no rice, not pasta, no noodles, no couscous, etc... Just fish or meat and some salad. But that's the kind of meal I've always enjoyed and, ever since I was a kid that I thought the carbs in the plate were the least tasty part of the meal. It makes sense that I managed to stick with this for a number of years.
Of course, pizza and cakes and desserts once in a while are very welcome and I guess help me keep my gustatory sanity.
Beware the plateau that happens when your body gets used to a particular diet and adjusts the metabolism accordingly. That's when you need to switch it up. One strategy is to go back to the old style of meals for a couple of weeks, get the metabolism back before the weight returns, and then diet again.
There's also the intermittent fasting method where you eat the same that you were eating before, but you restrict it to 8 hours per day... Or two meals, breakfast and lunch, or lunch and light supper. The rest of the time, you can trick your belly into thinking it's full the same way toddlers do, fill it with water (or tea, it coffee, just keep them free from milk and any sugars). There are some claims that this helps keep some chronic diseases away, so it's worth giving it a shot. It's a good way to get your body used to eating less on a daily basis, too.
Also remember that many of the daily dose numbers we're given are overestimates to suit a larger portion of the population.
You don't move much, so you probably need quite a bit less than 2000 calories per day... Still should be more than 1000cal.
On protein, I learned recently that the 0.8g per kg of body mass is the 98th percentile, not the average. The idea of that guidance was that, this way, most people (98% of us) get more protein than they need, but they end up getting the mix of amino acids that they need, even if they get too many of a few of them. Amino acids that don't get used, end up converted to fat... So... Keep an eye on that.
