Apr 21, 2024 4:42:19 GMT c said:

Still not gotten my Ozempic due to insurance.  May not take anyway though.  Looks like I am dropping 5 pounds or so a month.  Current diet is like 1200 calories a day, so do what I am doing now for the rest of the year and hit the weight I would ideally want to stay at.  Not where the doctors will like, but having wasted once, I want extra fat on me incase it ever happens again.  Each pound is like two days you can go without food.

Thanks for sharing your experience Incy as stomach slowing I just cannot do due to that wasting shit in the past so really leaning towards skipping using it entirely.  Stomach been stable now entirely for 10 years, do not want to spoke the bear.  The meds to jump start it back up are a bitch to get too since they are not FDA approved.

For the rapid loss, starvation weight comes back really fast it tends to be water weight you lose from dehydration.  Purging and starvation are two of the worst ways to lose weight as once things go back to normal the weight comes right back.

For people looking to drop weight, buddy dropped 440 pounds over the past few years, 400 from weight loss, 40 from skin removal.  Way he did it was guesstimation calorie tracking only.   He went to 1200 and stayed there.  Did meds at the first, but once he got used to eating less said it was easy to keep up even without them.  Said the trick was to get yourself ok with eating the same meals regularly.  And to meticulously track what you eat to make sure your weekly target is hit.  Ideally with a system like this, you can then predict your weight loss, which he was able to near the end.

I still think Ozempic works, it's just that you don't need it.
Coming off it for a bit I'm just going to eat the same sized meals I was eating on it and see how I go.

We eat because we're bored and we eat to feel something, we have lost the connection of hunger and feeling satiated. I'm sure most of what we mistake as hunger these days is actually our cravings for sugar.

I'm not a fan of guessing, I say anyone who says they can't lose weight dieting is delusional.
The major problem is people don't we igh and measure accurately, or they don't count the sauce, oil, juice they drink.

My biggest lessons have been:

Don't drink calories, of any description, I don't even have milk or cream in my coffee.

Prioritise protein, not all calories are created equal.

Don't measure your exercise when allowing for calories to eat, let it be a bonus and fitness trackers over estimate calories.

Aim well under your calorie limit, I'm a huge fan of the 800 calorie a day limit, then if you have a day where you're a bit over you don't blow out the whole week.

We are of the generation that were told carbs are good for you, and turns out, not so much. Protein is what you should be eating. Mediterranean diet works extremely well for this reason.

What started my weight drop was cutting soda. Even sugar free, zero cal soda I guess puts weight on you. Then mostly cut out meat and went with fish and lentils for protein. Salt intact is high now as I toss Slap Yo Mama on everything, but on lithium you need to consume a moderate amount of salt a day for stability of lithium levels.

I only started taking nutrition seriously a couple of years ago. My view of the general consensus is that carbs bad, protein good.

In reality it's all about balance. Carbs are good in moderation, like most things. Carbs can give a good energy boost prior to a workout.

I don't count calories, the way I think about what I eat is focusing on making sure I have enough protein throughout the day, balance it out with carbs/veggies/fruit. Works well for me and avoids me obsessing over numbers. I also have the benefit of being pretty resistant to snack temptation.

I only learned 6 weeks ago carbs breakdown into glucose, and are considered sugars for diabetes. I cut almost all real sugar from my diet, but that was meaningless since I ate a lot of processed carbs.

Apr 21, 2024 17:36:46 GMT Emperor said:

I only started taking nutrition seriously a couple of years ago. My view of the general consensus is that carbs bad, protein good.

In reality it's all about balance. Carbs are good in moderation, like most things. Carbs can give a good energy boost prior to a workout.

I don't count calories, the way I think about what I eat is focusing on making sure I have enough protein throughout the day, balance it out with carbs/veggies/fruit. Works well for me and avoids me obsessing over numbers. I also have the benefit of being pretty resistant to snack temptation.

I feel like this is true of the moment, but nutrition keeps changing and the healthy diet of yesterday isn't the ideal diet of today won't be the diet we're all told to follow five years from now.

I'm still on the intermittent fasting plan and it seems to, somehow, still be working for me - the scale stays the sameish, but the pants are getting looser and the shirt that was a little form fitting is less so around the belly.

All without tracking macros or calorie counting -- I see the value in it, certainly, and I'm not going to discount that it works for iNCY but I'd think one can get pretty far without doing it. Personal preference to be sure, but I for one am not going to spend my time weighing exactly how many grams of boiled chicken I'm packing to work for my 3:45pm meal and cutting celery sticks to spec and putting it in a different container for a 5:21pm snack until if/when I'm making that last push to shred weight for a six-pack. (I had a coworker who did this) My time and mental energy is better spent elsewhere til I need that level of refinement.

That was my take for years too. We were told that carbs were the healthy backbone of a diet for decades. Then I go to the doctor and asks what I eat and tell him a lot of healthy meals like rice and pasta and was like that is all sugar my dude. I was like WTF mate, carbs are not sugar. So off to the internets I went. For people who sucked as much as I apparently did at basic bio, non-fibrous carbs when they are digested break down into glucose is the TL:DR. We know the process on the elemental level and molecular level. And well, we know too much glucose you get to start poking your finger several times a day and recording your blood sugar, and shooting insulin.  

So def think carbs bad is not a fad. What is good can still change around a lot I assume, but carbs bad def at least makes sense.  And holy shit were we lied to on the food pyramid and four food groups.  No wonder so many have diabetes after claiming the old meat and potatoes diet was bad and to eat carbs as the foundation of every single meal.

I think everyone should weigh their foods and be pedantic about it for one to two weeks, until people havea good handle on how many calories they're consuming.
Everyone I have seen do this, was wildly underestimating their calories.

I don't weigh everything now, but I get it pretty close.
The best bet is protein and green vegetables.

Protein as a source of calories will make you feel full longer and breakdown slower, where calories from carbohydrates break down quicker and cause your blood sugar to spike and then crash... Which causes sugar cravings that many people mistake for hunger.


As an example of stray calories people may not count, cooking something in olive oil is a healthy way to do it, but a tablespoon of olive oil is 119 calories.
When I am hardcore dieting I'm doing 800 calories per day.

People also get really confused by labelling, when something says low fat it nearly always means high in sugar.

This may be of interest Incy. Creatine can improve cognitive performance in cases of sleep deprivation. Not my area, but popped up in Nature, which is the top journal for science results.  Double blind study design too, which is the gold standard.

www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9

I take Creatine every day, mostly for:

A: Helps with lifting
B: Cognitive function, shows a good protective property for Alzheimers

I don't think it is helping my sleep much.
My melatonin ran out and even 6mg a day wasn't helpful.

My weight went back up after my food poisoning, 102kg now... Which is depressing.

Will not help sleep, but believed to help cognition following a lack of sleep.

Melatonin I mostly found a placebo.