Gotcha - there are calories in BCAAs, but they don’t have to be labeled so they aren’t. It’s not as much as a complete protein, but it’s probably close enough to just count it that way (so 7g BCAA would be 28 Cal). I think that kind of stuff will be negligible at this point, unless you’re drinking gallons.
I would point out they have a relatively significant impact on insulin, which may be worth paying attention to with T2D.
Most are not worth the money, but they typically have no (or trace) calories.
I would steer clear of anything that requires a prescription or would cause you to fail a piss test (AAS, PEDS, etc). You have much progress to make before things like these have a justifiable introduction. Lose as much weight as you are physically/mentally able to on your own, then consider ‘help’. When I say “consider help”, i mean in the way you would look at a fire extinguisher when no fires are nearby.
Do you have any diet modalities that seem appealing to you at this time? Macros, Keto, 5/2, MATADOR, etc?
Dropped 80lbs in the last year while working in between 60-96 hour weeks, while never counting a calorie or touching PED’s. (Side note: I see this thrown out so often as a question of “should I take PEDs. I have never had the freaking option lol. Idk where you guys are at with just ready access to this stuff, I doubt i could find some if I tried)
Anyway, Atlas’s rules for weight loss:
eat essentially the same thing every day. I don’t know what my macros broke down to, but I know with my same 3 meal preps and 1 snack, i dropped weight. When weight stalled, I dropped the snack, and dropped more.
meal prep everything. I’d take one day a week and just spend 2 hours going madman in my kitchen. 21 Tupperware containers later, my food for the week was set.
some people praise low carb diets. Some people praise low fat diets. I don’t know what happened to the traditional balanced diet, but I still swear by it. Eat some fats, eat some carbs, eat a lot of protein
cut out refined shit. I’m no doctor, I may not know the absolute optimal mix of food and micronutrients to maximize life and make me Superman, but common sense tells me that a banana is a better carb than a donut, and anything that comes in a plastic wrapping with ingredients I can’t pronounce probably isn’t great. Chicken breast, rice, beans, potatoes, tuna, avocado, stuff of that nature should make up the bulk of your diet.
Daily weigh ins. Some people say this creates an unhealthy relationship with the scale. I totally agree, but when you are fat and need to fix it, that everyday accountability is important. Get yourself trim, then you can focus on not obsessing over the scale, but if you’ve got 100lbs to lose, your relationship with your waist line is a bigger issue than your one with the scale.
diet soda is fine. I’m sure you can find something to say I’m wrong. It worked for me.
you should always be at least a little hungry. Not ravenous, but after eating, you should finish your last bites of food and wish there was a little more. Losing weight isn’t fun, it’s the price we pay for letting ourselves get fat in the first place.
do cardio. 3x a week. 20 min minimum. You should be sweating, it should take effort. I’m a big fan of the bike since it’s easy on joints. It will definitely aid weight loss, and also just increase your health overall.
lift weights, because being strong is awesome. Your lifts will go down. Mine did. It sucks. Being fat helps move weight. One thing I liked to do was compare my lifts to my bodyweight. My bench might be lower, but I can rep out my bodyweight plus now, where as I couldn’t do my bodyweight for one when I started. Little bit of a mindset shift that helps.
do pull-ups. When I started, I had to use a shameful amount of bands to do more than 1 Pullup. As you lose weight, lose some bands. Big motivational boost to see Pullup numbers increase as your bodyweight drops.
I did 1-2 cheat meals a week. It’s a cheat meal, not a cheat day. Also, don’t be an asshole with your cheat meal. If you go to the buffet and eat 10 plates, that will screw you up. Go out to a nice dinner with friends or family, have a steak or salmon, burger, whatever, but just a reasonable meal, then back to strict.
no booze on weekdays. Max 2 drinks total on weekends. No booze period if weight is stalling.
I would put my weight in a tracker so I could see a graph of weight loss over time. From day to day or even week to week, it could look stagnant of even up and down. Keep with it for a while, zoom out to several months view, and all of a sudden it looks a lot more linear. Just remember that when you get frustrated