At the end of graduate school, I had put on a significant amount of weight & I decided to lose 30lb (~14kg).
I had been skinny all my life and I didn’t know anything about dieting. However with a lot research & trial and error, I managed to lose 27lb in about 4 months. I’ve kept it off until now at least.
I thought I would write down the lessons that I learned so that they might be helpful to other people.
The actual facts that I want to give are generally well researched. I do not have time to find citations, but they are things that I have heard repeated over and over in the literature. My tips are more subjective and merely things that I found useful for me.
I’m going to assume you have a basic knowledge of dieting and biology so that I don’t have to cover every detail.
Basics
I want to start with some basics that are important to clear up misconceptions.
Dieting DOES work: There’s a lot of nonsense out there to the effect that “dieting is impossible”, “dieting destroys your metabolism”, “you have to exert willpower forever”, etc. It’s just not true. Lots and lots of people manage to diet successfully & keep the weight off. However definitely some diets are much harder to adhere to than others & dieting can decrease your metabolism in the short term.
A lot of people claim that dieting is impossible or unhealthy, and that the practice is some manifestation of society’s impossible body standards. Though there is some truth to the latter, I think a lot of this criticism is based on ideology rather than fact.
Having a healthy weight is sustainable: Being a healthy weight is sustainable. How is it that humans were a relatively healthy weight until about 50 years ago? It’s very possible to maintain a healthy weight without having to exert a lot of willpower or grind at the gym every day. However, living in the 21st century certainly makes it difficult.
Success in dieting is about adherence: You should pursue the diet that you can actually adhere too. The specific diet you chose is not as important as picking the diet that you can live with.
The effect of genetics are overstated: Just because your family is overweight doesn’t mean that you have to be. Your environment & habits are far more important.
You need to be in a calorie deficit: This has to be the foundation of any diet. There’s no way around this. However:
“Eat less than you burn” is overly simplistic: Technically, this is how you lose weight. However, it’s like saying that the secret to running a successful business is making more money than you spend: True but unhelpful. How do you eat less than you burn? Also it ignore things like metabolic adaptation. If you go into a 500 calorie deficit, your metabolism will eventually slow down, meaning you will lose less than 500 calories of bodyfat.
Dieting & healthy eating is a life skill: They are skills. They can be learned. You can get better them. You’re going to be bad at them when you start: That’s OK. I promise you it will get easier.
Exercise is very helpful, but eating right is key: Exercise can make dieting a lot easier, however “you can’t out-exercise a bad diet”. Unless you’re an ultra-marathon runner, you cannot possibly exercise enough to eat badly. Exercise can allow you to eat more & boost your metabolism however.
Having a healthy weight will make your feel much better: I cannot describe how much better I feel now that I have a better lifestyle. You will have more energy, higher sex drive, better health, and feel better about your appearance. I had high blood pressure before I dieting, and this has now returned to normal.
Losing weight to within recommended guidelines will make you healthier: This is extremely well supported in the literature. Every 20 pounds of fat loss will reduce your systolic blood pressure by 5-20 points (depending on where you start from). Losing weight reduces joint strain, risk of diabetes, increases energy & sexual function, improve your sleep & reduce risk of sleep apnea, etc. This is not really up for debate among serious people.
Some helpful principles
Minimize your willpower: There are a lot of ways to diet, but personally I have found the following approach to be the easiest. The idea is that your main focus should be on minimizing your use of willpower.
Exerting a great amount of willpower over a long time is very difficult, mentally exhausting, and ultimately unsustainable. You need to structure your life & diet in such a way that doesn’t require a lot of willpower. I will explain how to do this. If you find yourself needing to exert a lot of willpower, you’re doing something wrong & you need to re-evaluate your approach.
Consistent small effort: When bicycling, you reduce your gears when you go up a hill. Why? Because if you stay at the same gear, you will tire yourself out, and you won’t be able to sustain your effort even on the flats. It is far easier to maintain a low but consistent effort than to oscillate between pushing yourself very hard and slacking off. Your willpower in this analogy is your energy: You have to use it at a rate that you can handle. If you over-reach, you’ll crash and burn.
Healthy weight is lifestyle engineering not willpower: If maintaining my weight were just a constant battle of resisting temptation, there is absolutely no chance I would succeed at it. The key is to engineer your life in such a way that you are not exposed to temptations in the first place. You should structure your life around healthy eating, exercise, etc. over time. It does take a while to figure out how to do this, but you should think of it as a longer-term skill that you are learning, and not expect everything to be perfect in the short term.
The more muscle you have, the more you can eat! Resistance training can be very beneficial to your health, but it also makes maintaining a healthy weight much easier. Muscle mass increases your resting energy expenditure, and increases the amount of calories you can burn during exercise (even walking). If you gain about 20lb of muscle, this increases your resting metabolism by ~200-250cal/ day. This means that you can eat way more than before and maintain your weight. It also makes losing weight easier for the same reason.
General approach
These are some general things you should do as you start your diet.
Weigh yourself frequently: You might find this painful, but you need to do so to figure out if you’re dieting strategy is working. But my weight will fluctuate a lot day-to-day by as much as 5lb because of glycogen (sugar stores in your muscles) and water weight. Ignore daily readings: They’re not meaningful. Weigh yourself every day at the same time and take an average over about 7 days. It’s a rookie mistake to get upset when you weigh 2lb more than you did the previous day. There is absolutely no way you can gain 1lb in 1 day unless you just entered an eating competition. So many times I’ve had nights where I’ve eaten some pizza, drank some alcohol, and woke up 5lb heavier.
Track your calories: Not tracking your calories is like going into a store and not looking at the prices. You’ll be shocked at how many calories are in foods you thought of as healthy. I would recommend MyFitnessPal (MFP): You can scan the barcodes of food items, and MFP will look up the nutrition information! You should also weigh your portions instead of estimating. When you do this, you’ll have realizations “I really don’t want to eat this baklava. It’s so tiny, so I’ll be hungry. For the same calories I could eat an entire bowl of beans.”
This isn’t forever: You don’t have to do this forever. Eventually when you’ve been looking at nutrition labels for long enough, you will know how many calories are in everything. You’ll know how big a portion should be, etc. This will take about 4-6 months of practice. I no longer track calories because I can do this now. Weight maintenance is a skill.
Start slow: You’re learning a new skill! Don’t jump in too quickly or you’ll fail and get discouraged. Start by eating at a maintenance calorie level for a couple of weeks so that you get used to it. You need time to psychologically adapt. Then try to increase your deficit to 250 Cal for a couple weeks. Then maybe increase to 500 Cal later on when you’ve gotten the hang of 250 Cal. If you think that you can’t handle a 500 Cal deficit: Don’t worry! Just stay at 250 Cal. When I started dieting, I jumped straight to 500 Cal, and I freaked out. I couldn’t do it. I should have eased into it.
Avoid crashing your metabolism: When you cut calories, your metabolism will start to slow down eventually. If you are in a 250 calories deficit, eventually, your metabolism will slow down, partially cancelling out your deficit. This is purely temporary, and will return when you start to eat at maintenance again. This is frustrating no doubt, however the metabolic adaptation will also make you less hungry.
Don’t cut calories too low or too quickly: The faster your increase your calorie deficit/ faster your increase your exercise calorie expenditure, the faster your metabolism will adapt and slow down. This is why cutting calories too quickly is very counterproductive. The goal is to maximize the amount of time before your metabolism adapts. If you cut very quickly, you’re pretty much screwed because you will have slowed your metabolism down so much that it will be impossible to eat little enough to still be in a deficit. If this happens, you will need to stop your diet, and eat at maintenance until your metabolism recovers. This can take months if you’re really messed up your metabolism. One way to avoid this is:
Take diet breaks: Even if you’re doing everything right & minimizing willpower, you should still take a break every now and then. I recommend every 4 weeks taking a week and eating at maintenance level for a week. This will give you a psychological boost, replenish your willpower, and allow your metabolism to recover.
High deficits are just too hard: Deficits of 1000 calories are insanely difficult. I personally cannot do them, though I know people who can. I would suggest just sticking to a deficit you can handle. Going too hard risks burnout. This strategy is too risky. I honestly found the most success with small deficits of about 300 calories.
Try low-intensity exercise like walking: Jogging is hard. If you’re not up to it, don’t worry. I lost most of that 27lb with just walking. Walking and jogging burn the same amount of energy per mile. However it’s pretty difficult to run 4 miles a day, 7 days a week. However walking this distance every day is pretty easy, and will lose you the same amount of weight. I would recommend trying to walk about 4-5 miles a day. Find yourself a good podcast or call a friend. Sometimes after work I will call and friend and start walking. By the end of the conversation, I realize I’ve walked 4 miles and burned 400 calories without noticing!
Exercise allows you to eat more, which means less willpower! Low intensity exercise is also much less likely to make you hungry. It will also preferentially burn fat rather than glycogen: That is, high intensity exercise will lower your blood sugar, leading to greater adherence challenges. You will be much more comfortable in a calories deficit if your glycogen is relatively high.
Incorporate lifestyle changes one at a time: When you are restructuring your life in this way, you need to give yourself time to adapt. Don’t try to make too many changes at once. Add them one at a time so that you learn how to fit them into your lifestyle. Once you’ve added something healthy into your lifestyle and it has become a habit, and you’re feeling OK about the difficulty of the diet, add one more thing. When life gets tough, you may need to go back one step. This is also fine, and to be expected sometimes. When you’re in a better place mentally, you can get back in the saddle.
Minimizing willpower
So how do you minimize the amount of willpower you need to use? Here are some strategies.
Eat low calorie density foods: When you are full, there’s much less drive to eat. If you are full, you’re way less likely to eat things that will make you gain weight. How do you make yourself feel full? How filling a food is is more dependent on the volume it takes up in your stomach rather than amount of calories. It is super easy to eat 600 calories of peanut butter, but I challenge you to eat 600 calories of carrots. This is 3.5lb! (Actually don’t do try this! Waaay too much fiber: It will give you diarrhea… often of the explosive variety. Not that I would know or anything ). You probably cannot not physically make yourself do this. This isn’t to say that you should only eat carrots: What I’m telling you is that it’s very easy to make yourself full if you eat the right foods.
Eating strategies:
Eat slowly. There’s a delay between the time you eat and the time that your brain has realized that it’s been few. If you eat slowly, you are less likely to overeat.
Eat vegetables/ low density foods first: Make yourself full on the low-calorie foods first so that your drive to eat is much less when you reach the high-calorie foods.
Drink lots of water with meals: Drinking water with meals will physically fill your stomach, increasing the sensation of fullness.
Foods to avoid: You should avoid these foods because they have high calorie density. They will not make you full, so you’ll have to exert a lot of willpower to not eat more. Exerting lots of willpower is hard/bad.
Dense or unsatiating carbs: Bread, cereal, pasta, white rice, etc. It’s too easy to eat a lot of these. They will also bloat you. Honestly just don’t eat bread ever. You can either eat pizza/ bread or be thin — not both. Chose wisely!
High density fats: Butter, peanut butter, nuts, olive oil, etc. Yes nuts & olive oil are healthy. But eating them is going to make adherence way too difficult.
Processed foods: Chips, potatoes, etc. Eating potatoes is metabolically equivalent to eating raw sugar. Potatoes don’t count as a vegetable. These are packed with way more calories than you realize.
Sugary drinks: Soft drink, sweets, fruit juice, etc. Fruit juice is basically sugar water. It’s not healthy.
Liquid calories: No protein shakes, smoothies etc. These are the least satiating, fastest metabolized foods.
Restaurant foods: It is impossible to accurately estimate the calories of what you eat in a restaurant unless it is a chain. The chef is more concerned with making the food as palatable as possible than preventing you from gaining weight.
Foods to fill your house with: These foods will make you full because they have low calorie density, etc. If you only have healthy choices in your house, you’ll probably be too lazy to go out and buy something bad: You’ll just snack on what you’ve got.
Vegetables: Carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. Honestly the easier way to lose weight is to eat a TON of vegetables. You literally will not have the space in your stomach to eat unhealthy foods.
Greens: Salads, greens, tomatoes, etc. Don’t eat cruciferous vegetables or too much fiber before bed or you will spend all night farting, and snacking on treats instead of sleeping and burning fat.
Slow-digesting carbs: Oatmeal, brown rice, etc. You do need a little carbs. It’s best to eat ones that have a lot of fiber since they’re more filling.
Lean proteins: Lean chicken, fish, lean beef, beans, lentils, etc. These don’t have as low a calorie density, but protein is the the most filling macronutrient. Chicken breast is fantastic. So is white fish.
Others:
Fat free yoghurt. Super tasty & low on calories!
Sugar free jelly/jello. You can eat an absolute shitload of this. It’s super tasty & has practically no calories.
Carbonated drinks. These are tasty & will create a sensation of fullness.
Stevia: Artificial sweeteners are fine. They won’t give you cancer. Maybe don’t drink 12 diet cokes per day, but short of that, you’re probably fine.
Caffeine! Stimulants suppress appetite.
Low fat popcorn. Shirataki noodles.
Interesting condiments: Sriracha, soy sauce, tabasco, etc.
Don’t let yourself get too hungry: You should never let your hunger level go beyond 7/10. If you do, you are either going to burn through willpower or lose your self control. If you are always super hungry, you’re doing something wrong: This shouldn’t happen if you eat like I described. Also don’t shop while hungry! You’re going to buy unhealthy things.
Don’t let yourself get too full: If you feel “stuffed”, you’ve eaten too much. Eat just enough to feel full & no more. Also remember the principal of consistent effort: It’s way easier to be a tiny bit hungry all day than being stuffed for half the day and starving for the rest.
Don’t have anything unhealthy in your house: If you buy a packet of chips or candy, there is a 100% chance you will eat it, and probably quickly. If I had a bag of Cheetos in my apartment, I would find it pretty difficult to resist eating it for even a single day. It’s far easier to not buy it in the first place so that you don’t even have the option of eating unhealthy.
Other Strategies
Cook as often as you can: It’s way easier to eat healthy if you cook everything you eat. You have the freedom to control portions & ingredient, you can estimate the calorie content much easier, etc.
Snack on vegetables: Honestly, just keep a bowl of carrots & broccoli at your desk. It makes it really easy to last without eating between meals.
Avoid people with bad habits: If you have friends that have really terrible eating habits & go out to eat unhealthy food, try to avoid them when this kind of thing is likely to happen. If everyone is sitting at table eating chips, you have no chance of resisting eating some too. That’s not to say you can’t be friends or something, but maybe try to suggest different activities, eat before you get to events so that you don’t end up eating what everyone else is having, etc.
Don’t go to bed stuffed: Go to bed satisfied, but not overly full. Why? Sleep is a good opportunity to burn fat without having to exert willpower. Maybe if you were awake at 4am, you would be a little hungry and be tempted to snack. However you are unconscious! A great way to lose weight without exerting willpower. Just make sure that you’re full enough that you won’t have trouble sleeping or staying asleep.
Find a physical activity you like: I personally hate jogging, and I think most people do if they’re honest with themselves… If you find a physical activity you enjoy, even if it’s not super intense, you’re going to burn a lot more calories in the long run because you’ll be more likely to actually do it, and will do so longer.
Strength train: If you do some strength training and increase your muscle mass, your maintenance calorie level can significantly increase. This means that you can eat a lot more calories while still maintaining the same weight. However, walking is still the number one exercise to lose weight.
Fitness: Fitness can make it much easier to burn calories. Why? Because if you are fitter, you can burn more energy faster with the same amount of effort. Running a mile burns roughly the same amount of energy no matter how fast or slow you go. If you’re fit enough to run 5 miles in 40 minutes, that’s 500 extra calories you can eat that day. However being fit isn’t actually necessary: It just makes it more time efficient to burn calories. Also if you’re fit, it takes way less willpower to exercise because it isn’t taxing.
Learn how eat the portions you need rather than what you’re given: When you order dinner or buy food, you can’t control the portion. Maybe you’re only really hungry enough for 70% of the plate of pasta. However it’s just going to be staring at you for the rest of the evening if you leave some on your plate. You’re going to eat more than you actually need to be full. Ask your waiter to take your plate away.
Maybe you’ve bought yourself a bag of chips. That’s OK. Have a few, but just throw the rest away when you’re not enjoying them as much any more. Otherwise in 5 minutes you’ll crave them again, and eventually will eat the whole thing.
Find hobbies: A really common reason for overeating is boredom. You should find another way to entertain yourself if you want to succeed.
Other important information
Water weight
You may find the oscillations of your weight on the scale really confusing and discouraging. A big part of the confusion is caused by water weight.
Water weight is additional weight that you hold onto that is not strongly related to your level of bodyfat.
Salt: When you eat salty foods, the salt propagates to the tissue throughout your body. Your body works most efficiently when the concentration of salt is within a certain range, and so it tries to dilute the extra salt by making you thirsty, and causing you to drink water. This water sits in your tissue with the salt, and can make you significantly heavier (up to 4lb for me!) in a matter of hours. This is what that “bloated” feeling is caused by when you eat salty foods.
If you eat a salty dinner and wake up 3lb heavier, don’t panic! It’s just water weight. Drink a bunch of water throughout the day, and you’ll urinate the additional salt. On the next day your weight should return to normal.
Glycogen: When your body has additional carbs (e.g. from eating a lot of pasta, drinking, etc.) it stores the extra carbs as glycogen. Glycogen is essentially carbohydrates that are bound to water. Each 1g of carbs are bound to 4g of water. So if you eat 100g of additional carbs, your body will also store 400g of water with the resulting glycogen! Water weight from glycogen is the primary reasons for your weight changing a lot day to day.
Your glycogen stores can only be within a certain range which is mostly related to body size. Once your glycogen stores are full (because you’re eating too much), your body will start to convert the additional carbs you eat into fat. When your glycogen stores are depleted, your body will start to convert fat into sugar for energy.
Diet implications: First off, if you eat a lot of carbs or drink alcohol one day, your glycogen level will increase, and you’ll start to retain a lot of water. This will make you gain a lot of water weight, which means you might be a few pounds heavier than the previous day! However when deplete your glycogen stores, this water weight will disappear again.
Second, it’s super easy to lose the first 5lb of weight, and then it gets harder. Why is that? The first 5lb of weight is 1lb of carbs and 4lb of water. Your first 5lb is actually just 1lb of weight loss. If you lose 5lb, that’s great! Just remember though that you’ve simply depleted your glycogen stores, and that now you’re starting to also lose fat. This takes much longer because fat isn’t stores with so much water.
You shouldn’t be discouraged if your progress stalls, this is expected: You are finally at the point at which you’ll be losing fat now! Say you lose 10 lb, but then after a night of drinking you gain 5lb of them back. You haven’t lost your progress! You just replenished your glycogen again. It will go away when you enter a caloric deficit.
). You probably cannot not physically make yourself do this. This isn’t to say that you should only eat carrots: What I’m telling you is that it’s very easy to make yourself full if you eat the right foods.