Weight loss accountability/support 2024 edition

I think its worth thinking about healthy eating and lower calorie eating as seperate things.
For healthy eating, variety is good, but variety is my enemy for sticking on diet.

A planned cheat meal is useful for damage limitation, and makes up for the boring eating during the week.

Rice is actually quite calorie dense for its volume, so you can eat through a greater volume of rice than noodles and pasta. Cook 100g of dry pasta, noodles and rice, and compare the size difference (can make a difference if your appetite is very visual)

Sometimes the boredom of the meal is tied with having to actually prepare the meal.
I've got a couple of mini cheat meals in the freezer which won't derail the diet due to not being excessive in calories, but something better than takeaway food.

Frozen portions of:
Korean Spicy Pork (700 caories with 80g of steamed rice)
Korean Bulgogi - (600 calories with 80g of steamed rice)
Pizza express sloppy giuseppe small pizza (656 calories)
Frozen ikea meatballs and hash browns (600 calories for 5 hashbrowns and 9 meatballs)

And some quick emergency comfort foods:

Nongshim Shin ramen - (600 calories with a poached egg and some added spring onions and dash of sesame oil)

This isn’t running thread material so posting it here instead. First ‘run’ at lunchtime today. Haven’t run in about a year now. Did an 800m jog round the block last week to check everything was still done up and then a 2km jog/walk with my eldest on their bike. 2.5km actual run in one go today. Everything seems fine. Now going to wait a couple of days to let the DOMS subside and start building back up to a regular 5k.

Was quite liberating to get out and get some air through my lungs even though they feel like crap after Covid.

I normally go large with the evening meal, as I like to be able to have some variety, and I also often eat with the kids and I don’t want to have to inflict diet food on them all the time.

Usual routine is:
Breakfast: cereal or porridge (250 calories)
Lunch: soup of some variety, plus some bread or some extra protein (roughly 400 calories)
Snacks: fruit, veg or protein (50 calories)
Dinner: roughly 800 to 900 calories to play with, so can either have something a bit lavish or can have something low calorie and bank some for snacking later in the evening and / or alcohol.

Possibly an argument that’s been had in this thread (or last years) but I’ve been listening to an excellent book called the glucose revolution which asserts that calories are pretty irrelevant. The combinations of fibre, fats, proteins and starchy/ sugary carbs and the order in which you eat them has a much greater impact on bloody sugar, insulin and fat use/ storage and therefore weight gain and loss. I’d highly recommend it.

Another good one is steamed sea bass (w/chilli, ginger, garlic and coriander) served with Brocolli and brown rice and pickled ginger. You could probably have a whole steamed sea bass and still finish inside 800cals - fish is tricky bc lots of people don't like the smell especially if taking to work.

The pouches of ready cooked rice are great bc really easy to not over eat them and they cook so quick in the microwave so perfect for lunch

Possibly an argument that’s been had in this thread (or last years) but I’ve been listening to an excellent book called the glucose revolution which asserts that calories are pretty irrelevant. The combinations of fibre, fats, proteins and starchy/ sugary carbs and the order in which you eat them has a much greater impact on bloody sugar, insulin and fat use/ storage and therefore weight gain and loss. I’d highly recommend it.

I wish the Supersapiens blood glucose sensor thing was a more reasonable price - would be really interested in what my body did in response to food and exercise.

This is a good shout - and helpfully I have a whole seabass in the freezer needing cooking from a summer fishing trip so will definitely give this a shot. Cheers

Fuck - I won't even bother looking up the price in that case... 😂

What you eat is definitely as important as calorie count.

Rest (i.e. hours of sleep you get each night) in my view is another important (third) factor in the equation after Diet/Lifestyle and Activity Level.

You can get testing strips and meters like what diabetics use for not much: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Glucose-Monitor-Diabetes-Testing-Codefree/dp/B08G88Y3WN/ref=asc_df_B08G88Y3WN/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=499313703587&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10540459501161843867&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006598&hvtargid=pla-1059755659659&psc=1

For losing weight or for general health?

I think the ‘what you eat’ part is not the most important thing in weight loss and frankly over complicates things.
I’ve read articles which suggest that foods which contain both sugar and fat are not recommended because your body burns the sugar as a priority and tends to store the fat. Maybe that is true when you’re combating weight gain, eating a surplus or bulking, but if you’re body is in a calorie deficit, that fat gets burned throughout the day anyway.

For example, you would 100% lose lots of weight if you ate only the following:

500 calories of chocolate a day
Or
500 calories of mayonnaise a day
Or
500 calories of almonds a day
Or
500 calories of steak a day
Or
500 calories of pasta a day
Or
500 calories of cabbage a day

All of those would have hugely different volumes, some of them would have more metabolic cost in digesting and some would put you into ketosis, some would retain more water. some of them would be more damaging to your body and muscle mass and all of them would drive you insane.

However, you would still end up losing a similar level of weight, because thermodynamics.

Obviously any of the above is not recommended for your health, and good quality food and a balanced diet is better for your body.

The biggest challenge to losing weight is willpower and changing eating, drinking and snacking habits. If you’re struggling with that, then adding extra layers of complexity by adding nutrient timing and food combinations, you’re less likely to stick to the diet. And consistency is king.

Cheapest way to do a CGM is with a Libre. Otherwise, if you’re just interested in occasional blood sugars, as said, get a diabetes finger-pricker and test strips.

Yeah, my father is diabetic- I’m aware of the options. The Supersapiens app uses the libre monitor patches.

Dinner:
Boiled lettuce and tablespoon of oyster sauce (35cals)
1 chicken breast w/Nando’s sauce (200cals)
120g brown rice (150cals)
Salad leaves (20cals)
Clementine (45cals)

Snack
Protein mouse (152cals)
4 Oppo ice cream balls (80cals)
C.700cals

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I would recommend reading or listening to the book I suggested above or checking out the glucose goddess on Instagram. It seems pretty revolutionary to me and if it works out a real game changer that’s easily incorporated into life. The hunger comes from the crash in bloody sugar so you need to try and flatten the peaks and troughs, it’s actually pretty easily done with loads of “hacks”. For instance eating some carrot sticks and hummus (fibre) before your normal meal massively affects the glucose and insulin response and whether your body stores or burns fats and how hungry you feel. Essentially you want to avoid eating starchy carbs first if possible.

I’m curious to read through it.
Would be interesting to see how it relates to weight loss.

I think I get triggered when writers say calories are irrelevant. What might be more correct is that calorie counting may be unnecessary if you have a better awareness of how to manage your hunger spikes and urge to overeat. Because you are less likely to gain weight and fat.

Carrots and hummus are a bad example for me, because it’s one of the foods I can’t stop eating once I start.
Like sweet and salty popcorn and manomasa tortilla chips.
Definitely possible to derail a weight loss diet by eating hummus. (Peanut butter also gets an honourable mention of foods I need to avoid)

https://youtu.be/PrvSLtRLDg0

To wet your appetite.

Just make your own hummus/houmous/whatever; supermarket stuff is too full of oil. Can of chickpeas in the blender with a clove of garlic, blob of tahini, blend smooth, loosen it up with a bit of olive oil and water and season it to taste with salt and lemon juice. You won’t get fat eating that with carrots.

Definitely possible to derail a weight loss diet by eating hummus. (Peanut butter also gets an honourable mention of foods I need to avoid)

I resemble this statement.

Peanut butter is wild but it goes in my breakfast every day (no added sugar version). I know mayonnaise is obviously quite unhealthy but the level of unhealthy shocked me greatly.

mayonnaise is obviously quite unhealthy

It's not, though, is it?

No food is unhealthy, as such, other than really salty stuff. Or any of that weird skandi rotten landfill fish.

As part of an even vaguely balanced diet, even a lot of it is not going to cause any real problems if you're otherwise healthy.

Ok brainiac ya got me. Its calorific.

With that recipe, possibly not.
The amount of carrots that would be eaten would punch me in the gut.

I can easily get through 200g+ of hummus in one sitting. With the above recipe, probably would be around 300-350 calories for that amount, subject to quantity of olive oil and tahini.

Won't get fat eating it, but might demolish a planned daily calorie deficit.

Very easy to have extra spoon of peanut butter because you've almost finished the jar, or just because. Thats an extra 125 calories, and doesn't seem like you've actually eaten really anything.

When I'm cutting weight, I try and cut out 'domino' foods, because my food moderation is shit.

personally I think there is lots of extra info out there on how to diet/lose weight - but mostly people are looking to shift books, courses, ads, media etc. The Glucose Goddess was product lead at 23&me - this was famously a performance marketing dtc product used for data harvesting and flipping the data to GSK amongst other things. Now she's shilling her book/ideas in this area - hardly likely to give a balanced on un-biased view.

It's like the guy who said that exercise doesn't help weightloss on the steve bartlett podcast, everyone has to have some hot-take in order to sell some kind of media. I'm sure it's all interesting but I think it's extra data points rather than a breakthrough in how someone who wants to simply lose weight might think about things - eat less, move more :)