Well on my way, here's some things I've learned

M30 6’0” SW: 323 CW: 276 GW: 190 Week: 15 I think I’ve found a contribution for this sub that’s been so helpful. I’ve kept a journal for years and I want to share some interesting comparisons between my initial assumptions about the weight loss process, versus the lived reality. It might prove useful to others with similar preconceptions.

1. Loose Skin: This was a real boogieman for me. Also a blame shifted way to cop out. When I was considering weight loss a few years ago and started hearing about it I thought: “Well crap, plenty of people told me I’d be healthier if I stopped gaining weight but no one mentioned that the cosmetic damage would become irreversible except through prohibitively horrifying surgery! There’s not much point to losing weight if I can’t reap the social benefits of looking healthy.” Turns out loose skin is not a given. Granted I’m not yet to the point where I can confirm that unequivocally, because I’m only 1/3 of the way there and the square/cube law may yet rear it’s head, but as of now I’ve had excellent face, neck, upper arm and thigh losses as well as visible progress in the torso. There is nowhere on my body where I can pinch and pull away a flap like loose skin sufferers describe. Everything that is exposed while wearing a tank top is nearly as fat free as it’s going to get and looks good. I’ll be surprised if I don’t eventually have at least some looseness around the torso but it’s already clear that it’ll be nothing like as bad as I feared.

2. Time Cost: I assumed that between exercise, meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleanup I was going to lose all of my free time. And for the first week or two, when everything required a lot of consideration and trial and error, and I didn’t have the right tools, that was basically true. But once I’d established my staple meals, programmed them into my calorie counter, streamlined my kitchen, and created a fixed shopping list, the time cost of eating correctly dropped from several hours per day to about 40-50 minutes per day all inclusive. That’s still a big chunk out of a busy day, so I wasn’t entirely wrong to worry about it. I was right to clear my after work schedule for the first week, in order to pay the upfront learning curve costs. And I have had to simply cut back on my precious screen time (note the new Reddit account) to find the time to do so. But I haven’t had to restructure my whole life around this project, the way I thought I would. Partially that’s because the method I’m using treats exercise as a bonus, not a necessity, and partially because I’m not getting inventive with the cooking. I might do a write up on that as well if asked.

3. It can’t feel good: “Calorie excess feels good, calorie deficit must feel bad” Before I began, I understood that whatever methods one might use to loose weight they all ultimately amount to CICO. I’d never run a sustained calorie deficit in my life and I assumed, since the process of losing weight is caused by the same circumstances as starvation, that the former must feel like the latter. Less painful perhaps, but surely not painless, and no less constant. My notes at the time paraphrased: “I don’t think I could deal with being hungry all the time” But it turns out that hunger is the sensation of an empty stomach and it’s only as related to calorie intake as you let it be. When planning my staple meals (with the help of this forum) I considered fiber, calorie density, and bio-availability of those calories. not just Calorie In Calorie Out. CICO, while crucial, can be a trap if approached naively. It would let me eat whatever I wanted up to my daily limit, but might allow me to pack my budget into some super dense stuff that leaves the digestive system painfully empty.

4. Planning a diet around these additional considerations sounds complicated: That’s because it is. But that’s what established diets you can find on this forum are for, ultimately they are the relatively streamlined systems covering up raw CICO to help you avoid it’s pitfalls and analysis paralysis. I use a homebrew system but its results are very similar to some established low-meat diets you can find here. Ultimately whatever framework you use you just have to create a few meals with it, make sure they’re repeatable and voluminous enough to keep you filled, and then you can stop thinking about it.

5. Running a deficit must impact cognition: As far as cognition goes I haven’t noticed a difference, not the improvement described by some testimonials and not the fuzzy sluggishness described by others. I suspect that the energy supply to the brain is not throttled significantly or at all prior to the unleashing of fat reserves and that the impairment experienced by some dieters has more to do with other factors like deficiencies in specific micro nutrients, falling short of the minimum safe daily intake, or the distracting sensation of hunger brought on by compensating for an overly calorie dense food selection.

6. Food waste is a problem when cooking for yourself: I thought I was speaking from experience with this one since I’d made attempts to cook in years past and wasted all kinds of food. But once I had a limited set of staples that I became practiced at making, and that I cooked at scheduled times my food waste quickly dropped to zero. The trick is routine.

Hopefully some of you find a few of these useful. Good luck in your own efforts.

submitted by /u/GndCommanderVordokov
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