If you guys are looking for a good read, pick up Good Calories Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes…i’m sure you’ve all heard of it anyways. I’m only about half-way through it, but it’s awesome so far. It’d be better if you guys read it for yourselves though because I’d hate to be misrepresenting his words. That’s how problems like the lipid-cholesterol hypothesis came about lol
Here’s part of why I suspect losing weight would be really hard for anyone this obese: At 2,000 calories per day, anyone not active will gain weight. To get that obese, she probably had to be eating 4000 calories per day. So, if she goes on a diet that cuts her caloric intake in half, she is still going to gain weight. But it will feel like hell because she is eating half of what she is used to.
I’ve been amazed while cutting, at how little food the human body needs to get by. About 6 weeks ago, I started cutting for 30 days. I had hoped to lose 10 or 12 pounds. But I only lost 7. So, I have been on a stricter diet for the last 2 weeks. Pretty much every day for 2 weeks, I have had:
2 @ 100 cal light yogurts (breakfast and afternoon)
2 @ 100 cal protein shakes (mid morning and evening)
1 @ 450 cal turkey burger (lunch)
1 @ 650 cal broccoli / chicken / rice (dinner)
1 @ 100 cal orange juice (before workout)
So, 1400 calories per day for 2 weeks. And all I have lost is an additional 2 pounds (if that). lol. Maybe I should cut it down to a half-burger for lunch and half the dinner. (I was 202 6 weeks ago, hoping to cut to 190 before bulking again)
[quote]dan.desroches wrote:
One good analogy I came across recently was this: If you take a growing boy, and starve him, the growth stops. If you take an obese man, and starve him, the growth also stops. Then, once you remove the starvation diet, they both start growing again. This shows it’s not entirely a problem of eating too much, but too little quality.
If I ate 1400kcal / d of snickers bars, I would probably get fat. I wouldn’t gain weight, but my body composition would shift to one holding more fat mass, and less lean tissue. If I continued with this diet, or a similar shitty quality diet, I’d probably develop hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia and very likely hypertriglyceridemia. Having high blood levels of insulin is just asking to store fat.
You literally cannot store one ounce of fat in a fat cell without insulin. Having high levels of circulating insulin, by eating all this floury sugary shit, will undoubtedly cause you to store more energy than if you ingest the same amount of energy from a different source. [/quote]
All of your posts pertain to people trying to fine tune their diets. It sounds like you have done some reading on the subject, but it doesn’t apply to this person. When you are 2 steps past morbidly obese, it IS all about calories in calories out. Clean calories will help even more, but simply getting her to eat less and move more are the two most important steps to be taken here. As far as her being hungry due to the fact that she’s eating half as many calories, its not as bad as it sounds. 1 soda is 150 calories that has no filling effects. A couple donuts have an enormous amount of calories and fat that can be replaced by an apple with one fifth the calories, yet just as filling. Replace these calorie dense non-filling items, that undoubtedly make up the majority of her diet, with wholesome foods and she can actually eat just as much volume with a lower calorie count. Thinking about it, gastic bypass for someone in this situation can be exactly what they need. Seeing 30-40 lbs drop off your body can be an addictive thing and exactly what she needs to stay on track. She just needs to change her eating habits before the surgery. I bet you can find an email for her. Instead of discussing on here, we should send her words of wisdom and inspiration, I bet it would go a long way.
[quote]dan.desroches wrote:
If I ate 1400kcal / d of snickers bars, I would probably get fat.[/quote]
You would absolutely look like shit if you only ate 1400 calories of snickers bars per day. You would absolutely not become morbidly obese to the tune of 400 or even 300 pounds.
[quote]humanjhawkins wrote:
Here’s part of why I suspect losing weight would be really hard for anyone this obese: At 2,000 calories per day, anyone not active will gain weight. To get that obese, she probably had to be eating 4000 calories per day. So, if she goes on a diet that cuts her caloric intake in half, she is still going to gain weight. But it will feel like hell because she is eating half of what she is used to.
I’ve been amazed while cutting, at how little food the human body needs to get by. About 6 weeks ago, I started cutting for 30 days. I had hoped to lose 10 or 12 pounds. But I only lost 7. So, I have been on a stricter diet for the last 2 weeks. Pretty much every day for 2 weeks, I have had:
2 @ 100 cal light yogurts (breakfast and afternoon)
2 @ 100 cal protein shakes (mid morning and evening)
1 @ 450 cal turkey burger (lunch)
1 @ 650 cal broccoli / chicken / rice (dinner)
1 @ 100 cal orange juice (before workout)
So, 1400 calories per day for 2 weeks. And all I have lost is an additional 2 pounds (if that). lol. Maybe I should cut it down to a half-burger for lunch and half the dinner. (I was 202 6 weeks ago, hoping to cut to 190 before bulking again)[/quote]
It very much depends on activity levels. If you get that obese, that you can’t move very much, your muscles tend to waist away (thus lowering the metabolic rate).
What you said before about the hormones is true to a certain extent. But even still, it takes a great amount of calories for a really obese person to even maintain their weight. If this weren’t the case, then why would people still be getting gastric bands to limit the amount of food they consume? Because they work (so long as the individual doesn’t “override” it in some way).
In your case, have you considered the possibility that maybe you have been recomping (losing some fat and gaining some muscle at the same time)? I don’t usually set scale targets because of this…
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
[quote]humanjhawkins wrote:
Here’s part of why I suspect losing weight would be really hard for anyone this obese: At 2,000 calories per day, anyone not active will gain weight. To get that obese, she probably had to be eating 4000 calories per day. So, if she goes on a diet that cuts her caloric intake in half, she is still going to gain weight. But it will feel like hell because she is eating half of what she is used to.
I’ve been amazed while cutting, at how little food the human body needs to get by. About 6 weeks ago, I started cutting for 30 days. I had hoped to lose 10 or 12 pounds. But I only lost 7. So, I have been on a stricter diet for the last 2 weeks. Pretty much every day for 2 weeks, I have had:
2 @ 100 cal light yogurts (breakfast and afternoon)
2 @ 100 cal protein shakes (mid morning and evening)
1 @ 450 cal turkey burger (lunch)
1 @ 650 cal broccoli / chicken / rice (dinner)
1 @ 100 cal orange juice (before workout)
So, 1400 calories per day for 2 weeks. And all I have lost is an additional 2 pounds (if that). lol. Maybe I should cut it down to a half-burger for lunch and half the dinner. (I was 202 6 weeks ago, hoping to cut to 190 before bulking again)[/quote]
It very much depends on activity levels. If you get that obese, that you can’t move very much, your muscles tend to waist away (thus lowering the metabolic rate).
What you said before about the hormones is true to a certain extent. But even still, it takes a great amount of calories for a really obese person to even maintain their weight. If this weren’t the case, then why would people still be getting gastric bands to limit the amount of food they consume? Because they work (so long as the individual doesn’t “override” it in some way).
In your case, have you considered the possibility that maybe you have been recomping (losing some fat and gaining some muscle at the same time)? I don’t usually set scale targets because of this…[/quote]
Just FYI, I’m not the guy talking about hormones. I believe they may play a role (as may genetics and other factors). But basically I think the “calories in vs. calories out” description is the most reliable and accurate.
I hope I’ve been recomping… I’ve certainly been trying to. But I think mostly it boils down to the fact that fat is calorie packed… 1 gram of fat has 10Kcal, right? That means a pound of fat has over 4500 kcal. So, even if you are burning 500 kcal/day more than you take in, it will still take 9 days to lose one pound. To lose 2-3 pounds per week, you have to be burning on the order of 3000 kcals while only eating 1400 or 1500. That is some intense shit to maintain for more than a week or two.
Anyway, it is pretty hard to gain more than 1 pound of muscle per 3-4 weeks. The last thread I saw where a guy had gained 15 pounds of lean muscle per year (0.3 per week average), everyone was saying that he had to be on steroids, etc. So, goals like losing 10 pounds in a month are fair to set… The amount of muscle you can gain over a short period while cutting is dwarfed by the amount of fat you can lose.
Just for the record, making fun of fat kids doesn’t make them want to lose weight. It just makes them more depressed and not want to exercise because they usually have to be in front of others when they exercise. It’s a lot better to try and motivate them in a positive way and give them something to work towards. You know, the ubiquitous carrot, or cupcake, on a stick.
[quote]bigscarymonster wrote:
Just for the record, making fun of fat kids doesn’t make them want to lose weight.[/quote]
So that’s where I’ve been going wrong with those fat loss classes