Official Weight Loss Thread

#327

Well, put a bunch of unneeded sugar in a product and notice that sales goes up. Then change the formula and get promoted because you are selling more. Did you do it deliberately? Yes. Does it foster addiction? Yes.

#328

I’m currently going 30 days without Soylent… definitely not easy…

#329

And what are you doing instead? Eating at Taco Bell?

#330

Trying to eat healthy. Stopping for a month as the family is worried it was the cause of my kidney stone. I doubt it, but to make the family happy I’m giving it up for a month. I REALLY miss my Soylent.,…

#331

Sorry – I forgot you were the kidney stone guy. My sympathies. You should be able to find healthy things on your own; it’s just more trouble, as you know. Good luck. I had a lot of success with a book called Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, some time ago.

#332

Day 36 down 20lbs still 100% soylent 4 servings 1600 calories a day. I’m doing v1.9 cocoa powder 100% now. The 1.9 powder tastes great and it doesn’t give me any stomach issues, unlike v1.8.

#333

Hey everyone! I’m new to Soylent and I’ve been through about 4 cases of 2.0 now. I’ve decided that it’s finally time to get my weight under control.

I am 21 years old (I’ll be 22 in a few weeks), 6’2", and 260lbs. My goal is to get to 200lbs by my birthday next June.

I am planning on going on a diet of mostly Soylent. During the summer when I am not very active, I’ll be drinking 4 bottles a day with some solid food to supplement the missing 200 calories to get to a 1800 Cal per day total.

During the college semester, I’ll be stepping it up to 5 bottles or more due to high activity (I am a firefighter for my college town). I don’t plan of completely shutting out solid food when I am at social events, but I will keep my caloric intake constant.

I would like to chronicle my progress here to keep myself accountable. With my first bottle of the day, I wish the best of luck to you all!

#334

Hey Jesse, it’s always awesome to see people looking to better themselves. It’s even more awesome to see it actually unfold. That being said, if you would indulge me, I think there are a few things worth mentioning here that will help you reach your goals.

First and foremost, you should be eating more calories. At your age, height, and weight, even if you are mostly sedentary, you should be burning 2700 calories a day. When it comes to caloric deficits, bigger isn’t always better and it can even become a bad thing. The concept of diminishing returns certainly applies here. Keep your caloric deficit reasonable, and you’ll keep your metabolism strong. If you do that and stay consistent, you won’t have to worry about plateaus. What is a reasonable deficit? One that is 1-2x your bodyweight, just subtract that from your TDEE and you’ll have a good number to stick with. So you have between 2440 and 2180 calories for your current goal. Where in that range should you stick to? We’ll talk about that with expectations.

Second, a simple truth to keep in mind as you formulate your plans, "Nutrition will determine body mass, while activity will determine body shape". What that means is that everything you eat and drink will determine whether you gain or lose weight, and the grand total of your physical activities will determine what sort of shape your body adapts to. If you only change your nutrition with a goal of weight loss, you’ll simply be a smaller version of what your body has currently adapted to. I highly recommend adding strength training (for shape) and HIIT (for energy) to your activities through the week. You will not only prefer how you look and feel because of it, but you’ll also reach your goal faster. The concept of diminishing returns also applies here, you don’t need to train more than an hour a day (90 mins max), and it’s entirely possible to get a great workout done in 30 minutes or less. Following a competent program makes a huge difference (as opposed to making it up yourself), and a program that I would suggest would be ATHLEAN-X (YouTube). I’ve gotten good results following the AX-1 program, and I’ll link some pictures at the bottom of this.

Third; understanding expectations. After you get past the first few weeks (where a lot of fluctuations will happen), losing 0.5-1% of your weight each week is reasonable. So if you stay consistent, your reasonable expectations are as follows, one month from now you could be from 255 to 250, three months from now you could be from 244 to 228, six months from now you could be from 228 to 200, nine months from now you could be from 214 to 175, and one year from now you could be from 200 to 155. It will require a lot of patience and consistency, it may even require sacrifice at times, but it’s within reach. What if you don’t reach these numbers? No big deal! Progress is what is most important. Take pictures along the way, track your food in MyFitnessPal, and keep yourself accountable.

I look forward to seeing your progress, keep us updated! And as promised, here is my three years of progress and six months of ATHLEAN-X.

#335

JustSnilloc,

Thank you for your encouragement and input. I a quite new to all of this, so I welcome your suggestions. I had calculated my caloric intake via a few websites that use the “Mifflin-St Jeor Equation” that calculated similar number to your suggestion, and a lower one for more rapid weight loss.

I appreciate the advice, because I don’t want to harm myself trying to get in shape.

I will check out that workout program too! Thanks for the encouragement!!!

#336

thanks for this! I need to get in more exercise to “change the shape.” :slight_smile:

#338

I am on day… 23 of my meal replacement journey with Soylent. I call it meal replacement so my mind won’t think it is a diet. I don’t really feel like it is a diet anyways…
I started it at the beginning of this year. I have done this once before when soylent first came out because I wanted to be able to go on vacations and to walk easily. When I first joined the Air Force I was a nice 190 lbs. 13 years in the military made me see a steady rise in weight… and my PT test getting harder and harder to achieve as time went on. I just thought I hated running and that I was never meant to be a runner… tell that to a guy who was carrying around a 50 lbs dumb bell of hidden fat in his body. Because I am 6’ tall I didn’t realize that I was getting so heavy until I got out of the military and started to see the scale pass 250 mark. While in I averaged 230… wow… anyways… at the beginning of this year 37 and a pound away from 280 I decided to just stop what I was doing and concentrate on understanding what I needed to do and how to get there. Enough was enough. At 279.6 I could really feel the pressure in my knees and couldn’t move like I wanted. My love handles had a presence of their own… a tension.
You know those lovely Arizona ice teas? Well, I had switched to them to get away from the badness of Dr Pepper while I worked (Now a nice office job where I sit all day doing CAD designs.). I didn’t realize that each can was 300 calories… and that I was not supposed to have more than 2000 a day. O_O. So yeah, that and eating whatever I liked… you get the picture. Anyways, a normal day usually involved Tums to settle acid down.
Onto my experience: Desire/Dedication/Discipline is my little triangle motto keeping me going. That and a nice weightgrapher thing that I use to see my steady downward path of weight loss. The first week was all on 2.0. It was chocolate delight in a bottle and easy to plan and take with me to work. 3 bottles a day and a small dinner if I couldn’t last at dinner time kept my observable weight slowly dropping. (Yes, I know that is a 800 calorie deficit but I don’t care. I am sitting on my cheeks all day and as long as I sip it every 15-30 minutes I am never hungry.) I am 12.3 lbs down, don’t carry any tums around any more, don’t feel the pressure in my knees like I did, don’t feel my love handles having their own personalities, and am excited about every lbs I lose. Each pound is 4 lbs of pressure off of my joints… or something like that they say. I will write more after I pass 260.
I have found that… my stomach doesn’t like me going off of soylent. I used to drink Dr Pepper or Sweet tea all through the day for energy. Now… I am steady, no headaches, no tiredness, nothing… like I am a string with no ups or downs. (As long as I am steady having the calorie intake.)
I did choose to go to eat Subway the other day… and it almost put me to sleep. Something about switching to a sandwich was like pouring concrete into my ability to maintain energy. I think that was why I always had a soda with my food before.
Anyways, after the first 2 weeks I switched all to 1.9 powder bags because it was like $1.6 a serving vs $3.5.
Anyways… if you hadn’t noticed, I am a bit of a writer and tend to write allot. Sorry! :smiley:

#339

I enjoyed the read. Great journey so far.

I agree it is not a diet, I like to consider it a lifestyle change. Helps not thinking as a diet, as we often think about “diets” in negative terms.

I hope you reach your goals, and put some exercise in your routine. Your health will thank you in the long term.

#340

Yes, as the pressure is getting less and less on my knees I am adding more walking and elliptical workouts. When I reach 250 I plan on adding weights to my routine (if I don’t sooner.). Just got to keep building up what I do until I can actually jog like I used to when I first joined the military.
Thanks for the reply! I hope you too progress to where you want to be.

#341

That’s awesome! I always enjoy seeing getting in shape, it’s even more amazing when the beginning and end are so drastically different. Of course, you’re just starting, but if you stay consistent you won’t even recognize yourself after a while.

A word of caution though, the whole “2000 Calories a Day” thing has nothing to do with how much people should be eating. It’s a placeholder number by which daily values can be split into relevant percentages. How much should people be eating a day? That depends on a person’s weight, the composition of that weight, and level of activity. Some people erroneously assume that they should go by what their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) suggests, but that’s wrong. The only time you should go with that number is when you are comatose or bedridden (ie absolutely ZERO activity). What you SHOULD be looking at is your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), as this number is literally how many calories you burn a day. Your TDEE can be estimated in a number of ways, the easiest is going to be by using an online calculator. I’ve taken the liberty of calculating your TDEE for you. To maintain weight as a sedentary man with your stats, you should be consuming 2164 Calories a Day. That number goes up quite a bit if you’re even a little bit active. For fat loss, you’ll obviously want to do less than your TDEE, but there is a such thing as too much.

Okay, that was a mouthful. If you get nothing else from what I’ve said/suggested, check out the pyramid below. It explains A LOT in a simple infographic. You can also check out some of my earlier posts in this very topic. Good luck!

#342

An article in today’s Science Daily concluded

“This research shows for the first time that healthy thin people are generally thin because they have a lower burden of genes that increase a person’s chances of being overweight and not because they are morally superior, as some people like to suggest.”

#343

That sounds incredibly dubious to me. What does “lower burden of genes” even mean? Genes can be turned “on and off” depending on various factors, one of which is a person’s weight. Furthermore, human physiology and thermodynamics are clear - the body cannot sustain itself on less than it requires to sustain itself. If you eat less energy (calories) than your body uses in a day you lose weight.

Healthy thin people aren’t generally thin because of genetics, it’s because their activities and food consumption are more or less equal to what they need to maintain that weight. It’s like suggesting that citizens of first world countries are smarter than members of isolated tribes because of genetics instead of public education.

The only possible credence I could imagine that the sentiment you quoted bears is that thin people have slightly more wiggle room in terms of maintaining weight. That’s it. Nothing else makes sense.

#344

Wait, you mean my moral superiority won’t make me thin? May as well go be a jerk I guess.

#346

Day 52 on Soylent. Still drinking 3 servings a day @ 400 calories each. I have added dates and asparagus to my meal plan since they are like candy to me now. I stalled in my weightloss for a little bit because I started eating too many calories and was simply maintaining rather than staying in a deficit. (Chocolate covered almonds lol.) It stalled at 261 and wouldn’t let me get passed 260. That was a hard couple of weeks. I had to look at why I wasn’t progressing and found the little things that were sabotaging me.
Anyways, I have lost 25.4 pounds since 1 January. 280 to 254.6 so far.
I keep a goal chart on my wall to keep me excited about it.
I had my blood taken for my Veterans yearly exam and everything was great. (Well… besides getting stuck by a needle.)
I have energy all day these days and don’t feel the extra tightness in my love handles or noises in my knees. My love handles are still there… just softer than they were before.
The main thing is to just keep progressing, staying in a deficit in calories and to keep visiting the gym occasionally. Giving up is easy… but now keeping on is actually allot more easy than the week before.
Plus I feel better inside. It is a good feeling to see progress and to know that with each pound I lose the less I have to carry around every moment.
A little motto I found that is nice to have is the 3 D’s. Desire, Dedication, and Discipline. Keep at it and understand that it will be worth it. Also… you can’t use food as a reward anymore… that will just shoot you up 3 pounds. You have to find something else to celebrate with like a trip, adventure, movie, or hobby toy. Trust me, food rewards are bad for someone who lives to eat.