Okay, so since the new year I've been having this discussion in real life with some of my overweight friends or people I work with, who are doing paleo, vegan, or even juice cleanse diets that they hate but think the end goal is worth it. Since this is the off topic section of my favorite keyboard forum, I'll give my opinion here as well. The ones doing paleo actually buy sticks to pee on that tests for ketones, as well as all sorts of other crap that only makes the diet industry richer. The whole idea of these fad diets makes me cringe about how people are getting taken advantage of by the diet industry. People like to be told what to do, rather than figure out what works for them. All you need to do to lose weight, and keep it off, is a bit of math. You could lose weight eating nothing but doughnuts, though you'd be hungry all of the time and lacking nutrients. If you're on a diet that works, then cool, stay with it. The point is that meat isn't bad, carbs aren't bad, most things are not bad in moderation, and you don't need to do crazy **** to lose weight.
First, figure out what your BMR is using an online calculator. That is the amount of calories per day that you need to stay the same weight if you did absolutely no physical activity. A pound is 3500 calories. If your BMR was 2000 calories, and you want to lose about a pound per week, you would eat 1500 calories per day(7 days x 500 calorie deficit = 3500 calories AKA 1lb per week), and this assumes that you stayed in bed all day doing nothing. Most overweight people will have a BMR much higher than 2000, but since that is a standard in food packaging I went with that number as an example.
Most people also don't sit around doing nothing all day, and burn at least 500 to 1000 calories doing daily activities like walking, going up stairs, or playing with their kids. Don't factor in the physical activity into your calorie counting, and instead use those extra calories as a buffer for when you eat some unhealthy crap one or two days per week. Other than that, eat whatever you want as long as it keeps you below your daily limit. Make sure to eat some sort of comfort food once or twice per week, because it will keep you from having constant cravings make you give up if you know that you can indulge one or two days per week. If you constantly feel hungry, then fill up on vegetables because they are less calorie dense foods that make you feel full. Don't worry about eating too many carbs, or not enough protein, because if you apply common sense and variety to your meals you'll be fine.
Stop going out to eat, and stop eating crap that comes in a can, box, paper bag, or any other type of processed food. If it's something that you can't make from scratch, don't eat it very often. Buy a $10 food scale if you want to be super exact on calories. Don't drink your calories, and don't try to cheat the system by drinking diet soda. There are numerous scientific studies showing that diet soda messes with your metabolism because your brain expects sugar that it never gets, google "diet soda metabolism" if you don't believe me. After a week or two of looking up calories by food weight, you won't even need to count calories because you'll pretty much be able to accurately estimate a meal.
This strategy has always worked for me and anyone else I know that has tried this. I've always been skinny, except during one point in my life about five or six years ago. I went through a heavy drinking phase for a couple of years and put on 50 lbs that I lost over a one year period. It took a while because I had two cheat days every week, and did only weight training three times per week and zero cardio. I lost weight the easiest, laziest way possible. Obviously if you have more than 50lbs to lose, or don't want to wait a year you need to be more aggressive with the exercise and have cheat meals not cheat days. The most I ever let myself put back on these last 5 years was 20 pounds, mostly because of holidays, and I made sure to address it immediately before it became more difficult. Anyways, I figured I would share simple diet advice that works, since most of the crap online tells you that the only way to lose weight is through fad diets(no carbs, no meat, cabbage soup, juice cleanses, etc.), and I have nothing else to do while I'm drunk at 2AM. Yes I still drink moderately on the weekends, but I don't make beeramids every single day anymore. Thanks for reading.
