-Mega Weight Loss from Epic Running: I heard of a man who lost over 100 pounds, I think it was 150 pounds, in 3 months by running 5 miles a day and changing his eating. I threw this in here as a hopeful thing to remember when nothing else seems to work. And running 5 miles a day doesn’t even take that much time out of the day.
-Here is an example of what running for 6 months looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hviX47WTjIk
-How I Lost 100 lbs Swimming 4x/Week | (Michael Allon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=452JBIgMatE
-1500 cal/day of bad food loses weight slower than 2500/day good food.
-stop eating before 3 hours of inactivity or that will factually turn into fat
-likely get protein in diet not need it after a workout, esp. if such was before close to time of rest.
-the myfitnesspal app makes it easy to count calories
-my nutrition professor Eliza Hamilton suggests fitness for 1 hr/day, and to not eliminate any essential food group, including carbs fats proteins vitamins minerals
-NO KETO. When you have no carbs, ketones are made from attacking fats, ketones are acidic. This is the ‘keto’ diet. The acidity is bad. Adkins diet got a bad name when he died, the new name for it is ‘keto diet’. Lots of heart problems from this. It is not sustainable. Much of the weight loss from the Atkins/Keto diet is muscle loss, and you usually gain it back in fat rather than muscle when you start eating carbs again.
-find exercise you enjoy so you’ll actually do it, like dance or a sport.
Gallon of Water per day
Have you noticed how healthy people carry around a water bottle?
-recommended value is about half a gallon per day, but this is particularly good for those with eating and weight issues. Some experts recommend this for everyone. There is evidence supporting the idea the RDA’s for such things as this or vitamins are terribly too low.
-do it throughout the day; if do it all at once can drown
-you’ll see yourself snacking less and healthier
-you’ll see decreased appetite
-you’ll see weight loss
-you’ll see increased energy
-you’ll feel less groggy
Note: Those who aspire to a whole foods plant-based diet will likely not need to count calories, although having a general awareness of how much you intake is wise, because society today is way off in what’s normal vs what’s healthy. Fortunately, when you’re eating wholesome foods, particularly WFPB (whole food plant based), your body will gain speed in the ability to discern when it is full, so caloric intake won’t be such an issue. In fact, it can become a non-issue. The body is a great self-regulator, and starving yourself leads to binging. Improve the quality more so than the quantity of food.
Dr. Neal Bernard (specializes in WFPB) speaks of “the rule of 10” regarding calories, namely that if you’re eating less than this amount which I’ll show, that you’re starving yourself and will binge later. The rule is as follows: take your ideal body weight, multiply it by 10, and that’s how many calories you NEED BARE MINIMUM per day. Those who intake less than this are shooting themselves in the foot, starving themselves, and they will binge later to compensate.
Some find calorie counting as helpful, especially those not willing to make real dietary changes. For them, here are keys for that system.
-If you have interest in calorie counting, you probably already understand the use and importance of BMI, so we will not cover that here.
-A healthy body must have good sleep, good nutrition, and good exercise. To neglect any of these pillars of health is to deny scientific data about short- and long-term health. Good nutrition deals with both QUALITY and QUANTITY of food. Counting calories is about monitoring QUANTITY. All food has calories. A calorie is an energy unit.
-The key is the write your net calories of the day regardless of how bad you performed. Try to make this day better than yesterday, and this week better than last week. Don’t focus on months, they’re too unreal/removed and can result in giving up for long periods of time until there is a new month, or heaven forbid, a new year!
-Most of us eat too much because we think we need that energy to deal with our duties of the day. But when we learn we don’t need the energy (by seeing that we have reached the daily recommendation), we realize that our issue is mental depletion, not physical depletion. Food is for physical depletion. Other stuff is for mental depletion.
-MyFitnessPal is the free recommended app my nutrition professor recommended for counting calories. It makes it easy. Type what you ate and about how much of it, and it’ll do the rest. It also helps you set a daily goal based on how fast you want to lose (or just not gain) weight. Lastly, you log your weight (I recommend not weighing yourself more than once a week, so you don’t go crazy and micro-manage your diet), and it shows a bar graph of your body weight gains, flatline, or losses. The app also allows you to input what exercise you did so as to update your net caloric intake. Finally one of my favorite features is that after you log your day’s foods and fitness (fitness being optional), it will say “if you eat like this every day for the next 5 weeks, you will weigh “x” pounds!” That to me is very encouraging, picturing the self who is that many pounds. Note: this app is private, so no one will see your weight or your goals.
-the body gets bigger if it receives more energy than it uses. Calorie means energy. Weather you got your calories from meat or carbohydrates etc., whatever energy/calorie isn’t used, will make you bigger & less fit.
-counting calories is the best way to know if you’re eating WAY too much or WAY too little. With how bazar the standard American diet (S.A.D.) is today, you may be very surprised to learn that you don’t need all of what you’re eating. I certainly was! Overeating or overfeeding your kids out of ignorance-based compassion for yourself and them can be eliminated and replaced with effective compassion if we know more perfectly what our bodies do and do not need. Yes you need to have a balanced diet in order to be healthy, but you also need to pay attention to overall input output of energy by looking at your calories.
-You may be surprised to learn that even good foods like salad, beans, vegetables, fruits, etc. have calories. Just because a food isn’t a carbohydrate (carb being the main source of calories) doesn’t mean it doesn’t have calories! Too much of anything, even a good thing, is bad. Like how too much time reading the scriptures can be bad if it takes you away from serving the poor (VERY few people read too much scriptures, I’m just using a dramatic example of how even an extremely good thing can be bad if used too much). There are a few foods that have extremely little calories, and when you need to munch etc., you can learn to turn to these kids of food. Many foods are surprisingly high in calories for how small or innocent they look.
-you don’t have to be perfect in your count. Even getting a general idea is usually enough to help you make needed changes. This doesn’t mean just guess how many calories are in a food, yes you need to calculate it with a reference book or website or phone app, but the reason many get overwhelmed and quit calorie counting is because they are being too strict on how exact their count is.
-Have a goal for how many calories to take a day. 1500/day is the least recommended for average men who want to lose 2 pounds per week. 2000 is a rate where you will lose 1 pound per week. 2500 you will not change; more than 2500 you will gain. For women, it’s about 500 less overall.
-exercising burns calories. Today’s goal – amount eaten – amount burned (via exercise, including steps so wear a step counter) = net calories not used for that day. Try to have this net number be 0. If your goal is 1500, and you eat 2000 and burn 500, your net is 0. Since your daily goal is 1500, this daily 0 means you lost weight. Another way to look at it is to set a goal for 2000 daily (the amount where you don’t lose or gain) and try to be negative at the end of the day. If you’re at 0, no change; at positive, gained; in the negative, you lost weight. Caution: just because you exercise doesn’t mean you can eat more. The only time you can eat more is if your net caloric intake for the day is in the negative. If you are in the positive net caloric intake that day (meaning you will gain weight that day from the excess energy you’ve consumed), do some extra exercise. Now you know that Snickers isn’t just a 10 second mercy, it’s a half hour jog. Not so satisfying now, is it?
-having the motivation to change is so much easier when we know specifically how to change, or in other words, doing a large goal is so much easier if we know what little goals need to happen to make that bigger goal occur. Like the student who waits till last minute on an assignment and does poorly or even fails, so is the person who doesn’t do small goals to get their big goal. Being in the appropriate weight range (BMI) is impossible without small goals/checkpoints.
-One important note is the fundamental concept that if the calories you are eating are healthier, you’ll lose weight faster. One nutritionist said that a person will lose more weight eating 2500 calories per day of healthy foods than someone who eats 1500 per day of unhealthy foods. Don’t think that just because you eat healthy you don’t have to measure (count) energy (calories) intake.
-Beware: you will make excuses about why counting calories isn’t applicable or important to your health. There is a tendency to think that people with healthy bodies are just lucky that they don’t have “x” trial that you do. Most people have health problems, and those with healthy bodies are they who have overcome the common and uncommon barriers to health. My nutrition professor says that she can find ways for just about anyone to exercise, etc., even if they have a bad foot or whatever else if they don’t make excuses. Counting takes some amount of time. If your health is a high priority to you, find the time. Hire a nutritionist for a monthly meeting for a small fee.
-To wrap things up, life isn’t all about how much you weigh. Go have fun, go socialize. If you’re single, go on tons of dates with tons of people. Living to the fullest while not at your best health is a way of expressing that you believe in your ability to improve your health. You’ll lose weight faster if you’re not neglecting your social life than if your plan were to hide in a cave until you were perfect. Being involved in society helps you see how happy and effective people who are being responsible with their bodies. We often think that having a healthy and limited diet means we won’t enjoy life, and seeing healthy people (especially interacting with them) helps us know the reality of the joy of healthy lifestyles. Being depressed is a sign that you don’t think you can change, and leads to reclusively, and your favorite coping mechanism: putting energy (calories) in your body. With prayer to God in the name of Jesus Christ, and little tools to help you understand what’s really going on with your body, you can change! So be faithful, and be educated about your body!
-When you have no carbs, ketones are made from attacking fats, ketones are acidic. This is the ‘keto’ diet. The acidity is bad. Adkins diet got a bad name when he died, the new name for it is ‘keto diet’. Lots of heart problems from this. It is not sustainable.
-Much of the weight loss from the Atkins/Keto diet is muscle loss, and you usually gain it back in fat rather than muscle when you start eating carbs again.
-Carbs and starches are key historically, and most major world religions suggest not using much meat if any.
-They looked at autopsies of Koreans and Americans in the Korean war, Americans have a meat heavy diet and were predisposed to atherosclerosis (which leads to heart failure), the Koreans didn’t have any signs of this (see Discovering the Word of Wisdom)
You are What You Eat
You are what you eat. Let’s look at animal proteins. In general animal proteins are bad in my opinion because it increases risk of disease, and it’s not really necessary for your body to have, because you’re trying to ingest metabolized food, you’re basically trying to tap into the stores of an animal, which may not necessarily store things the way you need to access them (Fuhrman, J., M.D. (2011). Eat to Live. Little, Brown and Company; namely Ch 4). So some of the nutrients they’ve ingested won’t be accessible to you, and some of what they’ve ingested which you don’t want will be accessible to you. Kidney failure, cancer, liver damage etc. can result from eating animals. One of the ways I like to think of it is by using a forest protein analogy. Plants have protein. Animals and humans wander in a forest seeking protein via the plants. Humans find it easier to kill animals than the garden. Humans decide that if animals eat plants, then eating the animals will bring them what the animal ate, the plants! But in reality, this “middle man” (the animal) is taking its toll, and the delivered product isn’t what it would have been if we had gone to the primary source (the plants) for the protein. Going to the primary source we get all that we were looking for, but using a middle man, lots of unwanted stuff is added into the “contract”, and lots of desired stuff is removed from the contract.
