Dude you look fantastic!!!
What show are you signing up for??!!!?
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thank you.
let’s see if I can actually make it to 210lbs this time 
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I mean, since you asked…
I feel it’s a matter of psychology. Some people thrive when it comes to counting and tracking and some people self-destruct. I’m absolutely the latter. Once you attach numbers to something, I obsess over the numbers and try to do my best to have the VERY best numbers. I make everything a competition. That’s part of how I absolutely crashed my hormonal health, but making a game out of having the absolute BEST blood lipid profile.
But, some folks are the opposite: if the numbers aren’t there, they panic, because they don’t have the assurance that they’re doing things “right”. You tell them “Hey, just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not” and it’s a total tailspin. You tell them “Eat until the food is gone and then you’ll know how much you ate” and they’re at peace.
I feel the only mistake is trying to force a method that’s inappropriate for you.
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I totally agree with this. I was counting for awhile and stopped recently and it almost seems easier to drop weight for me. Something about being in bed and knowing I only had 2000 calories would make me more hungry if that makes sense, I’d be thinking about how little I’ve eaten. Ive been going with the thought process that if I’m hungry before meals and when I wake up, then there’s a good chance I was in a solid deficit that day. Maybe this will taper off and counting will make more sense in the future, but right now it’s working.
Ironically, I think counting will be more helpful when I’m trying to gain weight as to not overeat too drastically.
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It can be useful to find out what an actual serving size of things you eat on a regular basis is.
Beyond that, it depends a lot on your personality.
Set some hard stops for yourself, so if you find yourself doing the thing, you have the self awareness to step back and correct it.
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It makes total sense to me. You’ve suddenly quantified an experience that, ideally, should be very natural and instinctual. It also leads to folks trying to “hack” their existence: filling up on non-calorie “foods” is an attempt to trick hunger away with a belly full of filler and no nutrition. We’re not all guilty of that, of course, but it’s a trap to watch out for.
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Same, but the other way in terms of screwing myself up. I don’t really like being told what to do, so I don’t tend to get as insane about adhering to numbers (screw you, authority). On the other hand, if left to my own devices, I can pretty silly with free eating. If I know I need to get a little hungry to lose weight, I can get really hungry and dig myself a bit of a hole - like maybe we just don’t need to eat for a few days. It also backfires on me coming out of a diet, as I’ve demonstrated repeatedly: time to eat more, let me show you what “more” can really look like!
This conversation kind of reminds me of the similar ones we often have with training. There’s always “another” way, but likely not a “better” way.
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I like to count protein. To be sure I get my daily gram totals. I call this “Gram Life.”
Occasionally weighing and measuring here and there can be useful. Just to have a better idea of serving sizes so you can eye ball portions better.
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I call this “Hunger Games”, stealing the title, of course, but yeah. I imagine our combined backgrounds of enduring misery compels us to lean into it when we feel it, rather than back off. As is often the case: extremes are easy and moderation is hard.
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You’re both very high achievers! 
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This is pretty much my approach too, focus on protein and not eating like a child and then just monitor performance, weight, the mirror and how my clothes fit. But saying that I have never wanted to get single digit fat shredded so would probably need a better approach if that was the goal.
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Horrifically late to sign up!
6ft2, 98kg. Want to lose weight and gain as much muscle as possible.
Eating 2200 calories, 160g of protein whilst doing greyskulls program.
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@Feeble_Knievel
Have you had hormones checked? Looks like estrogen related fat storage.
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Had a test check about 3 years ago out of curiosity. It was 21.3nmol/l. They have a normal range of 7-31nmol/l. As far as oestrogen no I haven’t
Give the man the trophy already
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it that is a start pic then he might have peaked early like you 
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Dang, a lot of good competition here! Also a lot of good discussion on methods to manage nutrition. I’ve done the whole macro and calorie counting route before, and it worked well, but took a lot of time and I got a little anal about it, which took the fun out of it. This time around I’m going more @T3hPwnisher method, eating good quality food, lots of protein and veggies and not overboard with carbs, and going by feel. I’ll do my next official weigh-in and update on Sunday, but from when I actually first started working to lose weight, which was the last week of November, I’m down 15 lb as of this morning, so I consider it a success so far.
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Something else I’ve been mulling over with eating lately is mindset shifts. As mentioned above, I’ve typically tried to lean into hungry. This can suck for a lot of reasons: I can push it too far, I am definitely no fun to be around, and I assign a lot of negativity to just not eating like a monster (I don’t like to be hungry!). It’s also set up some pretty gnarly rebounds, because the opposite of leaning into hungry is… eating in a way that causes mothers to hide their children.
Lately, I’ve just thought about not being full. Basically, if I felt like getting up and jogging or going to lift or play ball with my kids or whatever, could I do so without feeling terrible? This has totally changed how I eat - I even leave food on my plate! I don’t feel the same that I’m giving things up, either: I don’t have to be hungry, I just have to be capable of movement - so I’m actually leaning into feeling better.
I doubt there’s an epiphany there, and everyone else probably already knows how to be a human being, but just jumping into the “what works for you” concepts.
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I like this question.
A lot.
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You only liked it once, forcing me to question my worth as a contributing member of society
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