A dedicated conviction and multi year effort to improve myself. There is no dirt secret. You either cut calories or exercise to make up a deficit.

Metabolism and nutrients and all that help. I think it mainly boils down to learning how to be more active and live with being hungry for a while sometimes.

I don’t recommend losing weight the way I did to anyone, it wasn’t intentional and I definitely suffered more than someone has to in order to lose weight, but it did work.

For reasons unrelated to my weight, I was stuck in a tiny mountain town where I had very little food and had to hike 3 miles down a mountain every day for water and food, and would obviously have to hike back up the three miles, while carrying food and water. I also had to chop wood the first 3 or 4 months I was there, because winter was coming.

That was my life for about 5-6 months, when I came back, I was 70lbs lighter, and my cardiovascular was and has never been better than right when I came back. After the year or two I was back, I did slowly start to gain weight again, but keeping weight off is WAY easier than losing it, so I’ve just been conscious about not gaining it back by working out and eating less food when I notice I’m getting a little squishy.

I started with a week or two of counting calories. Then a week or two of eating maintenance calories. Then I jumped off the deep end, got into biking and ate a 1000kcal deficit until I was 30 pounds lighter and obsessed over my weight to the point it probably counts as an eating disorder (they run in the family).

But on the other end of it it was really about readjusting my understanding of portions and my body’s signals and developing the ability to resist hunger when I knew I’d had enough.

honestly as someone who was a fat kid and has been fat a few times as an adult i would advise steering clear of all these supplements and drugs that are popular for weight loss nowadays.

not really in an alarmist sense but i feel most of the studies and data i see about the safety of these products is kind of copium. i’m not saying they’re dangerous, im just doubting the certainty that they’re safe in the long term. i would personally rather not take the risk.

for me, honestly, weight was heavily tied to my ego or self. when times were bad my weight was “bad.” breaking out of that involved a lot of personal growth and understanding how people and the world work to better understand how i work.

i recommend two books.

first, the bhagavad gita. it’s cringe ik but hear me out. i’m agnostic/atheistic, i didn’t take it explicitly as a religious text. it taught me a lot about life. i specifically recommend the annotated edition by eknath eswarn as he is a religious scholar who grew up in colonial india and later received an extensive western education. he was uniquely position to reach me personally with these ideas.

second, willpower doesn’t work by benjamin hardy. it’s a bit popsci but i think it’s well informed and makes decent points. it helped me analyze myself more objectively.

When I moved to a vegetarian diet my health improved significantly. But when I skipped cheese from my diet I was finally able to lose weight.

As soon as I eat diary fats like ice cream or cheese my weight tends to explode.

But creamy vegan ice cream is a killer for me too.

During the pan, I lived alone and was single and didn’t have a car. I was stuck at home with tons of free time to fill. I listened to podcasts while walking endlessly around my neighborhood and surrounding area. Over the xmas break, I walked 16 miles in a weekend (my furthest by a good amount). I lost a lot of weight and lost a large belly. It’s back since moving to a different area (not as pretty or safe) and living with a partner who loves to cook large meals. I’m not getting real exercise anymore.

When you drastically cut out sugar, your body burns fat to fuel your cells.

Simply stop eating garbage. I cut out processed foods, bread, soda’s and candy. I’ve lost a whole human over the last 10 years and never felt better. I still have chips and dip occasionally but I’m loosing interest. Mixed nuts have pretty much taken their place. We have sweets that are homemade with local honey, and real fruits etc. I’m a lazy sumbitch so no added exercise. If I can do this anybody can. Good luck on your journey.

I’m not a part of the group you’re addressing, but I guess a heads-up for anyone taking notes:

My wife and I tried a number of different eating styles for a while, and discovered maybe 2 years ago that we were becoming malnourished in a couple of key micronutrients and doing a bit of damage to our metabolisms.

Whatever you decide to eat for your new lifestyle, make sure you listen to your body and try at least getting your metabolic support nutrients in spades.

Long story short for us: we were becoming really deficient in our minerals, to the point of suppressing our metabolism. We were consistently running 30% deficits and had to keep reducing our intake because we weren’t losing anymore. The last two years have been good, refocusing on hormone support and we’re feeling really great now, despite not being any smaller.

I think people forget that there’s more to being healthy than just losing weight.

Weight loss is all about “calories burned > calories in”; so in the simplest terms, you need to find a Way of Eating (WOE) that makes a caloric deficit bearable.

For me, that was keto. I managed to drop from 120kg to 78kg over the course of a year and a half.

My suggestion is to try a bunch of different diets/ways of eating (keto, paleo, vegetarian, pescitarian, vegan, Mediterranean, carnivore, Atkins and/or intermittent fasting) and see which one clicks.

Another really important point is to track your caloric intake, at least at the start - to build up the knowledge required to make better food choices.

The last bit of advice is probably toxic, but it did work for me - so you can consider whether it’s suitable for you too: “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

P.S. r/FatPeopleHate was one of my sources of (albeit negative) motivation; so I guess self-loathing helps too! 😅

Tracking calories, weighing and measuring my food, and moving more. Tracking taught me about what I eat, and what contributes to weight changes. I use MacroFactor. It’s really good.

Greatly reducing sugar intake goes a long way.

GLP-1, and Mounjaro is much better than Ozempic. Follow up with SARMs and heavy weights lifting to regain muscle. Yoga and farmer carries for core. It’s been 2 years since I stopped the shots and am exactly the same weight.

Back in my late 20’s, I was obese (~80-100 lbs more than I should be) and finally made the decision to do something about it. Nothing fancy, I started tracking calories. I had a weekly food spreadsheet which listed each food item, how much I ate and the calories. Some foods were harder to figure out than others; but, there are a lot of resources on the internet for finding the calories of random foods. And it’s important not to overthink it. Sure, one website may list butternut squash as 80 calories per cup, another might have 90, just find one or two sites which have comprehensive lists and go with their numbers. You just need to be in the right ballpark, your measurements aren’t going to be that exact, and a few calories one way or the other isn’t a big deal. For me, it was important that this was as easy as possible. I know that, were this some complicated exercise in data entry, I’d stop doing it. Always remember: KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Once I had a handle on what I was eating, I worked to change how I ate. This wasn’t “a diet”. Diets are things you do for a while, but eventually you go back to eating normally and the pounds will come back, often with new friends. I needed to make a fundamental change to how I ate and what “normal” was. Eventually the new “normal” became a habit and the tracking fell off. These days, I can look at most meals and get a sense of the caloric content. I also still look at labels regularly. It’s a good habit to be in and can be really eye opening on what gets advertised as “healthy” and how it’s actually just sugar coated sugar floating in a bowl of sugar sauce.

Step one was figuring out portions. I got a food scale and started weighing what I was eating. And boy howdy was I eating way too much. Even to this day (a couple decades later), I don’t really understand that whole “I’m full” feeling people talk about. I tended to eat until either the food was gone, or I felt so overstuffed it made me kinda nauseous. There is no “this is just enough, I should stop” feeling. And this results in me being a bottomless pit, if I let myself go. For example, I can pack away an entire medium Dominos pizza in one sitting. Yup, the whole thing. That’s somewhere around 2,500 calories, in one sitting. And that even after having eaten normal meals all day. So now, I make a conscious decision to eat one or two slices and stop. Yes it sucks, and yes my stupid lizard brain is screaming at me to eat more, but that’s what’s normal. The upshot of understanding what portions are normal, is that I could start to seek our foods which are higher volume and lower calorie. It’s easier to fight off the lizard brain, if it thinks I did just eat a big meal, even when it’s much less calorie dense.

And that leads me to the second step, picking less calorie dense foods. Unsurprisingly, this often means less meat and more vegetables. Up above, I mentioned butternut squash, because that’s something I eat regularly. It’s tasty and you can eat a lot for not too many calories. Even better is when you can make a meal with a ton of leafy greens, as they add a lot of bulk, without adding a lot of calories. Sure, I hate salads as much as any other brainwashed American. But, lots of greens mixed into a budda bowl, with roasted chickpeas, and butternut squash; now that’s yummy. I’m not saying “go vegetarian”. While my BBQ can churn out some wonderful grilled asparagus, I’m still a product of American culture. I will shoot the motherfucker who tries to stop me smoking a pork butt on said BBQ (and dammit, now I want ribs). But, you will want to find different meals, which are both tasty and have less calories. Experiment, have some fun with it and understand that you will fuck up and will have a few meals which get tossed in favor of something else.

Speaking of ribs, look some days I just really want a rack of pork ribs, slathered in BBQ sauce and sitting next to a heaping pile of mashed potatoes with some token vegetable next to it, pretending to make the whole thing a “balanced meal” (grilled asparagus anyone? The grill is already hot). While that “balance” is complete and total bullshit, I’m still gonna want to eat said meal, push back from the table and drink a beer or six while I watch football. And that’s ok. I just do it less often. Again, this wasn’t about “going on a diet”, it’s about the new normal. And the new normal still involves having a decadent meal from time to time. Sure, it blows my calorie budget for the week. Fuck it. The important thing is to keep this to an uncommon treat and not a regular occurrence. If I have a blow out meal once a month and keep things reasonable the rest of the time, it still works out ok.

And that brings me to my last step, learning to cook. I didn’t become a five star chef, or even a really good one. But, I can cook an omelette, know how to make and use a roux, and can follow a recipe and make changes to accommodate my tastes. I spent a lot of time on YouTube learning to do things, read and tried (and fucked up) a lot of recipes. And I’ve sorted out a lot of what works for me and what doesn’t. I am also not afraid to try new things, and can accept that sometimes that means I order a pizza. Though, I’ve had to do that a lot less over the years. Like damned near everything else in life, it’s all about practice. And no one practices without failure. The upshot is that you can start to find some really tasty foods which don’t come from a box. It’s also easier to track a meal’s calories, when you know exactly what you put into the meal. Also, many of those terrible vegetables are actually really good, when cooked right. I used to HATE brussel sprouts. Just Christ on a pogo stick, why did anyone eat these slimy balls of mush? Turns out, that my mother had no idea how to cook them, so they got steamed in the microwave. When properly sauteed or roasted, they’re awesome.

And that’s really it. I started tracking calories and learned to eat differently. Smaller portions, less calorie dense foods and finding new foods that I actually enjoyed. I changed up what “normal” eating was for me and dropped that extra weight. Eventually, I did stop tracking (I hate data entry), but I still have a good sense of what my portions should be and I still weigh foods, it’s just habit now. It also helped that my wife started on the journey at the same time I did (we were both “fluffy”). Having that support and keeping the bad foods out of the house helped, a lot. I also stand by the idea of going “off script” from time to time. Some folks do well with the aesthetic lifestyle, most don’t. If you try to live a live of privation, it’s going to be hard for that to be “normal”, as you’ll always be wanting something else. So, don’t beat yourself up when you have that cheat day, just try to keep it to one or two cheat days a month. 'Cause ya, you can take my ribs when you pry them from my cold, dead, BBQ sauce covered hands. Or just ask nicely, I can make you your own rack.

I just started moving more and eating less garbage