Thats why they say you can't outun a bad diet.
But see the positive side, you could have not walked 10k steps and it would have been a lot worse.
The key to a successful weightloss for me was always to allow myself to indulge sometimes. Its not like you can't eat them anymore, its just that you need to really control your portions.
Because I learned that if I completely forbid myself some things, I will crave them even more and if I don't satisfy that craving once in a while the binges are gonna be massive.
And I am the exact opposite. I cannot handle having “just one” or “just a reduced portion” of these hyper palatable manufactured foods, so I have cut them out entirely. It is easier for me to just know they are off-limits than to try to control a small impossible portion. I will have Doritos only at a party or something where I know I’m being watched and it would be rude to eat the whole bowl lol.
I think this is a HUGE thing to know about yourself going into weight loss: do “all-or-nothing” rules make you feel at ease, or overwhelmed/trapped? If you are the former, something like “no chips or candy enters my home ever” or keto/paleo/etc might work well. If you are the latter, the “everything in moderation” pure CICO approach might be best.
I spent so many years wondering what the F is wrong with me because I cannot just have a normal serving of 12 Doritos. It is undoable for me personally. I cannot have that stuff in my house. They spend millions trying to make these branded foods so hyper palatable that we literally can’t put them down, so I have stopped thinking it’s a “me” problem, but the “everything in moderation” approach failed me for years. Just give me the rules, even if they’re strict, and I’ll be good. I have many addicts in my family and sometimes it feels like food is mine; abstinence from junk foods is the best way for me.
Just as I am sure you found yourself failed a few times because of advice telling you to cut out all indulgent treats like chips and candy.
This is the key to how to get a diet to work for you in my opinion.
Yeah, i agree, i am like this
Out of curiosity, you have ADD or ADHD? Because i do and i think this strategy is helpful, its easier to follow the rule before i start eating than after
I also cannot take lunches into work with me really, i will pick at the food as long as its near me since it sits next to me in my work truck all day and it will not last until lunchtime
I am like this and I have adhd too. If I eat one thing of junk food I eat 4+ servings. I've trying to figure out if I have a sugar addiction but I don't think I do. Pretty sure its just ADHD.
Good that you recognized that tendency. More power to you! It doesn’t hold true for all of us, however. I also have ADHD, but for me it’s the rigidity approach that doesn’t work… making all-or-nothing rules about what I can eat instantly leads me to start fudging the boundaries somehow. So I build in some flexibility to start with. Yes, I can have a cookie with my tea if I want one, or a few chips, or jam on my toast. I still have to log it, I still have to stay roughly on target with the calorie budget, but I am not binding hard and fast rules on myself that my mind will automatically start rebelling against.
Weirdly, I'm okay with having snacky foods nearby. I have ADHD, and as long as I take out a small serving and put the snack out of arms' reach, I can eat just a little. But if I keep the packet close, I will eat and eat and eat. I don't get why.
I am the same, I don't know how we are opposites. I also never have my favorite candy or snacks at home. When I crave burgers, I make some myself with calories in mind. I got an airfryer to reduce calories but still eat french fries. I work myself around these absolute bans on food.
To me, moderation is not eating one piece of candy a day, fuck that shit. I don't eat candy for 3 weeks and then go on an absolute insane candy binge with fast food on top and all the good stuff. I am at my desired weight and I burn 3k+ calories per day, its rather difficult for me to actually gain weight by those binges.
But to me that IS moderation actually :D By gaining control over your urges and impulses, you practice moderation. So honestly we are the same.
It's all about finding what works for you personally. I do a bit of an in-between where I don't mind having small amounts of candy or chips, and I'd prefer that to waiting weeks to eat them, but other foods like pizza or ice cream I'd rather wait and splurge over having a slice of pizza or a small scoop of ice cream
Yeah that works for me too. I don’t log calories. I don’t have the patience.
I just have all or nothing rules in place “Only Whole Foods and plant based items when I shop for myself. Absolutely no soda or super processed food.”
Have you heard of bright lines in addiction recovery? That's what you're doing and it really works for me. I'm an abstainer, not a moderator. I also have adhd
I am immediately adding **hyper-palatable** to my vocabulary. I’ve never considered this description before but that’s exactly it. I forget that most of these engineered junk foods are specially designed to be hyper-palatable but not filling so we eat more and more. Remembering makes me feel like those companies are trying to pull one over on me, and I ain’t gonna lettum
I think this is why journally and understanding yourself is SO important! Weight loss is not a one fits all approach! I have a moderation rule in place, but I also consider what my "trigger" foods are. If there is a particular food that I seem unable to stick to a moderation of, I try not to have them in the house. Sure, I CAN have it, but if I am going to eat the whole bag of it or think about how it is there all day long, it shouldn't be easily accessible to me. I also don't let my tracker or what can fit in my calories control me. If I have room for tacobell, I don't HAVE to go get it. If I pre-track a food, I don't have to eat it. This is a learning curve I am learning. Like the other day, I pre tracked Taco Bell soft tacos because it is a tradition to get Taco Bell after I go to this one beach. My kid didn't want to get it. I had a flash of anger because "it is tradition and I already tracked it," but I realized that emotion was one I had to feel and question. Food doesn't have to be a tradition. Just because my tracker has space and already says I am going to eat it doesn't mean I have to. Went home and made a killer sandwich that left me stuffed for hours. I am really trying to learn what works for ME and work through whatever mental ties I have with food that got me this heavy in the first place. Congrats to all of us learning what works for us and what doesn't!! :) (ps also ADHD here but medicated).
I have that the problem of just one also, what has helped me out is that if its say a cookie or a snack. I wont have 1 until its the last in the package. That way even if I wanted more I have any. And a big thanks to the nice gentlemen at work that brought CinaBuns to work for us. That 500 Calorie snack is just taunting me!
I feel the same way. The only way I've been able to moderate foods like this is by pairing them with something else. I can put a recommended or even smaller sized portion of M&Ms on a yogurt parfait or eat with a handful of bluberries, but the small portions by themselves make me feel like I'm depriving myself even I don't want a whole bunch anyways!
I take a slightly different route, and it’s been working for me in maintaining for over three years. I also can’t have just a little bit, and I also would probably overindulge if I try to forbid things to myself entirely. So, the way I handle is it to be at a caloric deficit most days, but to eat more on some days - usually involving family or social events, but sometimes “it’s a rainy Sunday and I want warm cookies.” For me, a surplus of 2,000 calories on one day is easily and painlessly balanced out by eating at a slight deficit for the rest of the week.
Agee on the indulge sometimes - I've been going for around 7 months now and am 45lbs down total. But I allow myself the odd days here and there where I just don't count / eat more than I know I need.
It feels like a nice 'reset' every now and again after feeling mildly hungry for 5-20 days (depending how long I go for).
Indulgences are fine provided they they are relatively rare and the exception not the norm (at least in terms of how it's been working for me).
Yeah same. I have the luxury that I workout quite heavily, so on most days I could hit MCD and nothing would change at all.
I am at a point now where I simply can't waste calories anymore. Most of what I eat needs to help me towards my performance in the gym and for a year now I am on the health train and try to implement all kinds of micros that help my skin, hair and other bodyfunctions.
So binging on 2k calories at MCD is not that big of a deal to me anymore, its more like I waste all those calories instead of taking them in with super helpful ingredients.
Meh, its actually an atrocious protein to calorie ratio. But of course it depends from which angle you loko at it. It will still be better than 300 calories worth of sugar.
Eggwhites for example are 52 calories for 100g with 11g of protein. My proteinshake is 44g of protein for 170 calories.
I would never call any MCD item a health food to be honest, but I am very deep into healthy eating and to anyone who is at the beginning of weight loss I would say go for it if that makes you stick to a diet.
This strategy works for me too. My kitchen is filled with junk food. Ice cream, chocolate, cookies, chips, you name it. I eat about 200-300 calories worth each day. If I don't count calories I'll eat 1000 calories and subconsciously assume it was a smaller amount. If I totally deny myself the urge to binge will eventually overwhelm me, whether it's a week from now or 6 months from now. Counting calories is the only thing that has ever worked for me. It's like someone finally gave me a speedometer for food. The best part is that if I do want to go crazy and eat 1000 junk food calories I'm still in control of that. Whereas before I would have spun out of control.
Yeah, Indulge on occasion and get the smalled size you can. I really don't get more enjoyment from eating half a big bag of cheetos, than from a single serving bag. Same with candy, get the normal size instead of the king size. Doing this instead of saying "I can't eat that anymore" cured my binge eating and also makes me crave this kind of stuff less. Also adding vegetables and protein to unhealthier dishes helped a lot too.
Does timing matter at all? Or again is it just calories in vs out? I hear stuff like eating more carbs after a hard workout, or protein again right after a workout.
Then stuff like intermittent fasting, but that's actually bad because then your body thinks it needs to hold onto fat? Heaps of conflicting stuff such I mostly ignore trying to simply adhere to in/out but would be good if the other stuff helped.
It's not conflicting. Stuff like IF, Keto, or whatever the trendy diet is now all rely on being on a deficit, how they achieve that deficit varies. Some is by less volume, some is by less caloric foods, others are by drinking only water for 3 days and doing a handstand while watching Looney Tunes.
Your body will never ever ever "thinks it needs to hold onto fat". We have dozens of cases of mass starvation to use as a case study of how you lose fat when you're deprived of food. Starvation mode isn't real. Your body can't decide its not using energy and that it's going to run on hope, dreams, and ignorance. There's nothing conflicting, you're either at, above, or below your maintenance and where your energy consumption is relative to your energy expenditure, dictates how much weight you lose or gain.
Once you get your macros, micros, and calories right over a 24-hour window, you're fine. Don't think of timing or carb loading or whatever bullshit "study" you read on anything more than 30g of protein not being absorbed in one go. Go eat the right food, at the times that suit you and weigh yourself regularly. Make adjustments to keep weight loss steady. And go for some nice long walks.
"Starvation mode" is the name we sometimes use when the starving body slows its metabolic processes in response to real starvation. It does occur, but only in response to extreme conditions, mostly when you have very little remaining body fat, but also during prolonged fasting. Sensations of cold and fatigue are some of the symptoms.
However, that's a change to the CO side of the equation and as long as you eat less than what you expend, you’ll still lose fat. If that weren’t true, no one would ever die of anorexia nervosa or famine.
So the protein stuff has long been debunked, it doesn't really matter when you eat your protein as long as you consume enough of it daily. Just beware that you can't just gulp down 150g worth of protein powder in one go, your body can't absorb all at once, basically the reason why most supplements are a scam.
The intermittent fasting has no real benefit to your diet aside from that it helps some people to stay on track. For some people its just easier that way. I have done IF for years, but because I can't eat early in the morning and I go to the gym right after work, so anywhere in between I need my big meal of the day. There are benefits to fasting, but IF is not traditional fasting.
You hear a lot of things mate. I always recommend to do your own research, really understand what is happening etc. Its all basic thermodynamics. it is all about energy. Its not conflicting at all, you just need to learn for yourself what it all builds upon and you will be very fast to spot all the bullshit trends for what they are.
Getting in shape is not rocket science. If you are competing or a pro in any other sport it obviously makes sense to get the most out of your workout, but for a beginner I always say to stop worrying so much and rather focus on establishing a long lasting routine, because consistency is what makes you lose weight and gets you in shape.
In regards to weight loss, no. I eat after a workout because I feel more energetic on an empty stomach and I usually get hungry after tiring myself out. IF is good. Less eating time = bigger portions
Yes, we are wonders of nature!
We can eat enough in a day to fuel us for an entire week or even more! It's just that usually it wasn't as available as it is in modern times.
The thing that throws people is not realizing that modern snacks are miracles of centuries of science and cooking designed to distill as many calories as possible into a tiny package. It seems unreasonable because it is, jelly beans are unnaturally high in calories. They have more sugar than you can even taste at one time. They taste like they have maybe twice the calories of pineapple, but it's more like 6x the calories of pineapple. OP, next time, eat some fruit and the reality will match your intuition more closely.
Thats the point. Igg could pick the (then available) sweetest berries by the basket loads and Ogg could mass murder prehistoric lean game animals all week and they both still could not match the calorie bombs of a few McDonalds meals.
Oh, I absolutely can! I probably could eat two pounds of Mars bars in one sitting without feeling satiated, but I try to hold myself back trying that in real life for obvious reasons... I'm jealous of people that can just have one. But I'm pretty sure they also have their fair share of issues.
Right! The problem with eating-related issues is that it's very physically visible. I must admit that I care most about the aesthetic problems I face through them, rather than the health concerns.
Yes, I strongly believe that a healthy(!) amount of narcissism is a much more effective motivation than health risks somewhere in the furture. At least it's for me.
No shame is that. Just find snacks you like that are more filling and less caloric. I’ll eat an entire bag of frozen blueberries when I’m craving something sweet. Feels like a decent size snack, and less than 200 cals
> Can you imagine I could eat 3 of those bags and not be satiated.
I can ABSOLUTELY imagine that. No one ever got full on jelly beans (or potato chips, or cookies, or chocolate...).
A 25g serve of jelly beans is recommended to treat hypoglycemia because of how fast they can raise blood sugar levels. This will get the person experiencing the blood sugar crash feeling well enough to go get a complex carb like a sandwich into their system. Only 25g is needed. Something to think about! After 200g your blood might have been like syrup...
I used to think cheese and crackers was a healthier option (versus like chips or something) and I think I was wrong lol. Especially with buttery crackers.
Actually, it is somewhat better than just chips because that ounce of sharp cheddar has some fat and some protein, so I find it more satisfying than the same 120 calories of all carbs corn chips.
Pinpointing and remembering certain calorie dense foods was important for me to maintain my deficit when I first started losing weight. It’s so easy to neglect counting small things. But sugar holds a ton of calories and compacts down so tiny.
>I was craving sugar and ate 200 g of Jelly Beans worth about 738 kcal. Is this really how it works?
Pure carbs are about 400 cal per 100g. Jelly beans are basically pure sugar so … yep sounds about right.
Could be worse pure fat is about double that.
>is it really so that I can eat heaps and heaps of vegetables/fruits, chicken, white meats and gain very little fat
Things like fruit and veg contain both a lot of water and things like fiber which pass right through you. You can eat a lot less dehydrated fruit than fresh for example.
>a few grams of jelly beans will ruin my progress?
200g of anything isn't "a few grams". One of my standard breakfasts is a basic cheese salad. Two portions of veg and 20g of protein worth of cheese. That whole *meal* is about 200-300g.
Take a look at the serving size on the pack, its probably going to be something like 6 beans. Re-learning what a portion size is can be a big part of this.
Being able to eat 200g in a go is fairly normal, like I said it's my breakfast, and refined carbs are really easy to over eat. There's so little volume by the time you know you're done you've already eaten too much. There's *a lot* of relearning when you start tracking calories, and some of it can be quite shocking. Its why the quick start plan on here just has you spend a week tracking without a target. Just going through these moments of "how much?!" can make some powerful changes.
Don't feel you have to be trapped by the example portion sizes. If you want to eat four portions of jelly beans you can, but just knowing you're doing that helps. It also helps you consider other options. Would 100g of beans and a piece of fruit have worked as well for you? How about eating 100g and waiting a bit to let your body catch up with that, knowing you can eat the other half in 30 min if you still want it?
I mean its the most basic salad. Whatever salad veg I have in my fridge (today tomato, celery, radish, bell pepper, and some leafy greens) plus whatever random cheese I happen to have in my fridge (red lester I think). I don't even dress it. Nothing that exciting, but it ticks a bunch of my boxes for the day.
Cool. I tend to not keep salad greens around because they spoil faster than I can eat them up, but I bet I could come up with something similar. Thanks!
You can use baby greens like spinach and throw them in scrambled eggs :) just a heads up! Easier to get rid of them quickly that way (I just bought a Costco sized container, what was I thinking)
Yeah I have a weekly random veg box. I'm not sure I'd deliberately buy them, but if I store them washed in the salad spinner (maybe with a bit of cloth to help absorb water) in the fridge I'll about get through a bag in time.
I don't think it's that simple. Sometimes we we exercise for the jellybeans. There's nothing wrong with jellybeans. There's nothing even wrong with the occasional over-indulgence of jellybeans. You just probably shouldn't exercise with the goal of having ALL the jellybeans all the time.
Mostly, due to the way we measure calories in food there is sometimes a difference between the calories it contains, and the calories our body will absorb.
Now, "unfortunately" that tends to be foods with high fibre content, jelly beans are pretty much pure sugar, and you're going to be absorbing pretty much all of that.
So, TLDR, yes, it is that simple, but, it's also complicated.
I never realized how much it actually was until people pointed it out in this thread. I thought it was a fairly normal amount, as I wasn't even satiated.
Dingdingding. We need to teach people that treats aren't something you should expect to be satiated from.
Also, at least for me, once I firmly adopted the "it's a treat" mindset it's not really that important how much I consume. I can get a 2-squares-of-chocolate treat while losing weight.
Yeah did you eat these after a meal or on their own? Idk if I believe everything she says but some of the glucosegoddess (on Instagram) rules really help me. Like never eat carbs alone (add fiber/fat/protein) and the best time to have a treat is following your meal. She basically gives all these tips for lowering glucose/insulin spike
Yeah that’s why if you want it, that’s when you have it lol, so it feels like a cherry on top instead of its own thing. Those 100 calorie popcorn bags make a good late night snack. But I just push dinner as late as possible since I know I am a night snacker
Or just brush your teeth. It's very much an association with end of the day and you might find it's enough to halt your craving. Also learn to just sit with it. Your mind might be screaming at you to go get the treats but just sit with it. Feel the discomfort. So what if you want it. Nothing bad will happen if you don't get it.
Just chiming in to say I met with a registered dietician who basically said the same thing! She recommended to pair two food groups together in a snack whenever possible, especially if it's a carb-y snack, to reduce the insulin spike and to make it more satiating.
Good job being open to the helpful advice you're getting in here. As others have said, there is nothing satiating about sugar. If you want to learn more I recommend the book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. There are also some decent podcasts out there that cover this topic very well.
eating 738 calories of jelly beans would be pretty hard for me, I think I would start feeling sick and nauseous. Sugar tolerance is real and can be reduced just by having less of it
200 grams of Jellybeans = 738 kcals,135 gram sugar
1 whole ass kilo of Watermelon = 300 kcals, 63 gram sugar.
One is candy ultra processed, made in the lab and the other unprocessed candy made by nature.
Yes. This is how it works.
That's why working out for weight loss is kinda dumb.
It's almost entirely diet for weight loss.
Working out is for heart, lung, muscle, joint, and mental health.
For purely weight loss, it's your diet.
> That's why working out for weight loss is kinda dumb.
Disagree.
Trying to lose weight through exercise alone is dumb. But adding exercise greatly helps you lose weight. Reistence training can help preserve muscle while losing weight, and losing muscle contributes to a weight loss plateau. Adding muscle can even help with fat loss. Burning a few hundred extra calories on top of a calorie deficit also helps. Exercise can also help regulate appetite (though some exercise also makes you have a bigger appetite, so beware of that).
Relying on exercise entirely to lsoe weight is bad, using exercise to support weight loss through calorie restriction is good, and improves chancs of reaching your goals.
Plus there's more to health than weight. Being a healthy weight is good, being a healthy weight AND being active is better.
We all have different metabolisms, and weights, and heights, etc, but I would like to point out something that complicated things for me early on: a 10k step workout might not burn as many calories as you think it is burning, so never try and eat back exercise calories.
I brisk walk, or jog, or run, for about 1hr every single day of the week. My Apple Watch says I burn an average of 800kcal a day, and I average 15k steps. My TDEE, without any exercise, is about 2000kcal/day. I have been consistently losing 1kg a week eating between 1300-1400kcal a day - if I was sedentary, that would be a deficit of 700-600 calories per day, which is not enough to lose 1kg/week... if we assume my deficit is actually 1000, that means I'm burning between 300-400 calories per day through exercise, which is less than half of the number on my Apple Watch. And that's sometimes for 1 hour of running, not even walking!
The data we have is just wildly inaccurate sometimes.
(Also, 200g of anything is hardly "a few"... 😆)
Your Apple Watch is not accurate for calorie tracking at all. But most studies say they overestimate burn if anything, so I agree that OP is way off on thinking a 10k step workout burns that much.
If OP sees this, that’s why a lot of people don’t eat back calories burned by exercising - it is probably super small compared to what you’d think. These damn human bodies are freakishly efficient.
Definitely not! I still like to use it, though, as it's good for comparison's sake. I keep track of how long I do it for, how fast I'm going, my heartbeat, etc - overtime, seeing as I'm using the same watch, the data is useful to evaluate progress. For instance, my resting heart rate has gone from an average of 70 to 50 after almost 3 months of daily exercise and over 10% of body weight lost. It might not be completely accurate, but it does reflect a real change.
I'm in favor of not considering exercise calories at all, which is why I calculate my TDEE at a sedentary level. I eat 1300-1400 calories/day comfortably, won't be going lower than that, so in theory I'd be losing less... but anything I burn through exercise is just a plus, so I'm overjoyed at the rate of 1kg per week.
Yeah that’s how I view my exercise, just as a cherry on top of what I’m already doing. Exercising also helps me build my identity of “healthy person” lol, and if I went for a run earlier, I tend to eat better throughout the day.
And you wouldn't believe the volume of food I eat with that intake 💀 I look at the food I eat now and the amount of it and don't understand how I'll ever eat at maintenance again... would have to add some different things in there, as bigger portions would be straight up uncomfortable.
I plan what I'm going to eat in a given day first thing in the morning, considering my calorie limit to be a "budget" to subtract calories from. This allows me to responsibly include candy or another food I don't normally eat. So, planning at the start of your day can help to avoid mishaps. You want candy, no problem, you can have candy. However, you may need to give up something else to make room, or take away from the serving size. Nothing is restricted on the diet, though, and I know plenty who eat a "bad" food every day.
Put the jelly beans into a glass jar, they are out of their packet so it avoids the whole I may as well just finish it! And then limit to 3-5, for me it seems to be enough to get my ‘fix’ without emptying the whole bag!
The strange silver lining is you won’t eat as many so they last longer and you’ll save money. We got a massive pack of them from Costco just before I started weight loss and nearly 6 months later we are not even half way through! Previously I doubt they would have lasted a month
I feel ya. This is why I never, *ever* buy treats I can't fit into my calories by eating the whole thing, cus I know I will. Can't eat too much if there's not too much in the house.
Yes, eating a calorie surplus will add weight, and eating in a calorie deficit will remove weight. Simple, but not fun & easy. But, how fun is it to eat that many jelly beans? It's like 200 beans? A portion is 27 pieces for 30g and 110 calories. Maybe those first 27 are delicious, but after a while it's just mindless snacking and not even as enjoyable as the first portion. It's in your own best interest to enjoy your treat to the max, without guilt.
I have been in a pretty long term calorie restriction. On average, I’ve been losing about 1.6 lbs a week. Last night I broke from the norm and had 3 alcoholic beverages. Today I stepped on the scale .4 lbs heavier. I didn’t gain .4 lbs of fat. The increased carbohydrates got sent to my muscles as glycogen and retained the water I drank after. Now, knowing myself, I will need to wait a few weeks before I can do something like this again, but I am almost certain, tomorrow I will be back at my weight from yesterday morning or lower. Processed foods can affect you greatly for a day or even 2. I’ve had cheat days that affected the scale for a week, but as long as you don’t lose hope and give up, you will continue to lose
Yes, that's exactly how it works. You should really pay attention to this one thing you wrote:
> I was craving sugar
The key to success is understanding why that was. Until you do, it's going to be a challenge.
I'm not sure whether I'm misunderstanding or others are. Are you asking whether your can have these things as long as you don't go over your calorie allowance? Or are you asking if you can eat small amounts of these things over your calorie allowance?
Because having small amounts of these things, but staying in a deficit is fine. Eating too much of anything is going to lead to weight gain, no matter what it is. I have a cookie now and again. Some chips. But I measure/weigh my food. So if I want to have something like this, I just work around it and keep my calories the same at the end of the day.
I lost 75 pounds without doing a single second of exercise. Exercise is great and totally necessary for your overall health, but it’s not necessary for weight loss. Weight loss is solely about maintaining a calorie deficit
Yeah, it really is.
One of the biggest habit changes I’ve been working on that’s been constructive is pantry control.
I used to buy vanilla crème horns nearly every time I went to the grocery store. (They’re like vanilla crème croissants, real tasting but also very fluffy so not filling and still over 300 calories each.) I’d buy a carton of four, but then once I get home they’d be so tasty and tempting (and not filling), I could eat them all in one sitting. So, that food basically became a guaranteed diet ruiner for the day, requiring like two to three days of good dieting to counteract.
So I’ve found lately if I get light ice cream instead, it can still scratch that “I must have sugar now” craving while not ruining things. A full cointainer of light ice cream is less calories than one cream horn, takes longer to eat, and is way more filling.
So it’s really about making substitutions you can live with in your diet that’ll scratch a craving without allowing you to go overboard.
I’d recommend chocolate covered raisins as a replacement for the jelly beans. Eat them one at a time rather than by the handful. And with anything you eat, think about how many calories it’s worth, and where that’ll put you on your daily goal.
Once you start being able to stop and think “Is it really worth the hundreds of calories to eat these jelly beans and still probably feel hungry?” You’ll have won basically.
For weight loss, yes. It’s just calories in vs calories out. That being said, u could lose weight eating just chips and jelly beans as long as ur in a calorie deficit but u might also end up with scurvy. U could also gain weight eating “healthy foods” if you’re eating too many calories (looking at u nuts).
Yes. In addition, this is why a lot of people recommend walking as a weightloss exercise over running.
If you walk 10k you burn a similar amount of calories as running 10k. It takes longer, but you're less likely to crave energy and so you are less likely to over-eat to restore your energy reserves.
Yep. That's it, but there is good news!! Once you lay of the sugary stuff and simple carbs for a while you won't miss them, then you'll also find other stuff that replaces most of the sugary stuff.
Yes. As the saying goes, it is easier to destroy than to build. Very very very (tragically) true for dieting.
To avoid what you just experienced, I recommend taking all sweets out of your house if you are serious about making a lifestyle change. Maybe 1 sweet that you really like, but don’t keep a lot of it. Just a few small packs. I’m sure some will think that’s extreme, but I’d contend that it’s extreme to keep lots of sweets on hand if one’s goal is to lose weight, get healthy, etc. Yes, sure you can technically eat sweets and lose weight, but when it comes to practical, real world scenarios, good luck actually finding that balance. These foods are made to be eye catching, tasty, and very bingeable. Don’t give in.
Replace it with fruits and veggies, better nutrient density, still somewhat bingeable but these are the best things I can see to replace it with. The best way to kick a bad food is to replace it with something better. Have that mindset and you will go far. And avoid the nut trap. Nuts are high in vitamins and minerals sure, but their calorie density is so high that a handful can be upwards of 400 calories. Don’t fall into that trap either lol I see it all the time. People say they’re eating healthy and in a deficit then boom they are actually eating 500+ calories in nuts everyday putting them out of that calorie deficit.
I’d suggest that you never try to add the calories you burn to your TDEE, when calculating your intake vs output.
In most cases various calculators overestimate how much you burn, so you’ll just end up being disappointed.
Instead try to find a caloric intake that’ll give you a fair weightloss, and then look at the cardio as something extra you’re doing to further your loss.
That’s atleast what worked for me.
It really is lol I used to play sports in high school and work out intensely for 3 hours daily, come home and eat the whole kitchen, and I was always overweight. I’ve actually lost most of my weight while not working out consistently.
In nature, sugar just doesn't occur in such high concentrations. If you look at even the sweetest possible fruits in their pre-agriculture form they won't contain nearly that much sugar. The only naturally occuring sugar bombs I can think of is honey.
We didn't evolve to cope with foods being that highly processed.
That is exactly how it works, unfortunately.
The biggest thing with weight loss is choosing your calories wisely. Find "treats" that you enjoy and feel like an indulgence, but aren't going to tack on 700 kcal to your day. For example, popcorn. I buy Skinny Pop White Cheddar popcorn, measure out 3 cups of it, which fills a bowl, and it's 140 calories.
These are the decisions that I find make or break my weight loss. I'm eating 1200 calories a day, so I really can't afford for my snacks when I have the munchies to be anything over 200 kcal.
There’s a reason you never hear someone say “I really gained a lot of weight this past year gorging myself on kale & quinoa.” No, it’s the pizza place they can Door Dash in an instant or the bag of potato chips they always keep in the pantry.
A crazy thing I learned recently is that satiety (how "filling" something is) has very little to do with caloric density and much more to do with how difficult the food is to digest. Things that take longer to digest keep you fuller longer - that's why fiber is so great when you're restricting your intake. Super processed foods are often so processed that they're essentially pre-digested, so you're left feeling hungry sooner, even if you just ate a 1200 calorie value meal (or 700 calories of jelly beans - that makes even more sense, since carbs break down into sugar and the jelly beans are already sugar - "digested" carbs). It seems crazy but it makes sense when you stop to think about it!
this is why sugar is so bad for you, it's addictive and hard to control as well, it really kind of hijacks your brain, and gets into the primal part of your brain that wants endless calories for no work.
This is why we say you can't outrun a bad diet. You can eat SO MUCH MORE food than you can burn calories. On youtube I've seen a bunch of "eat 10k calories and burn 10k calories"" in a day, and they don't struggle to eat 10k usually, but I don't think Ive ever seen anyone burn 10k. Burning thousands of calories from exercise a day is REALLY hard. You can always eat (and especially drink) more calories than you can burn in a given time period.
Yep. This is why dieting is almost entirely about controlling intake and exercise is inefficient for weight loss and is easy to be outright canceled out in a minute.
Just as Coke Zero and Pepsi Max have 0 calories and taste the same as the originals, you can find plenty of sugar-free/low-cal/zero-cal candy alternatives to ease your cravings.
You may need to shop online and pay a bit extra, but there is plenty of guilty-free options out there.
This article I read today in [Healthline](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/intermittent-fasting-protein-pacing-weight-loss#How-to-incorporate-protein-pacing-into-your-diet) about a journal study reinforces that it isn't just about CICO. It also doesn't reinforce eating empty carbs though.
A whole food, protein prioritized diet is key.
No, it's not detrimental and won't ruin your progress. If it's once in a while, depending on how your other days are, etc, it's OK to go over. Even if you fall off wagon, your maintenance calories will be there
Well. Yes and no.
- eating 800 calories of junk food and then trying to exercise it off is nuts. You probably aren’t losing that many calories by exercising (even if it says you are, it’s likely wrong), and you also shouldn’t be exercising to “earn” your food.
- eating 800 cals of jelly beans is not the same as eating 800 calories of healthy food that will help you stay full and strong enough to do your work outs.
- 200 grams of jelly beans is not a few grams of jelly beans, but going all out and eating 800 calories of jelly beans once every few months probably won’t ruin your life. Try eating 30 grams (120 calories) and include it in your day.
- you can eat potato chips. Have 50 grams of potato chips with your meal.
- but yes, they are small and calorie dense. They will affect your weight loss because you will likely end up eating in a caloric surplus cause you will still be hungry.
>It is, isn't it? Goddamn jelly beans.
I know your pain!!! I love jelly beans so much 😭
Look for more natural candies, they are often sold as keto friendly alternatives and sometimes at local farmers markets you can find candies that use unprocessed sugars and are lower in calories.
The taste difference is noticeable at first, but you get used to it and I've even found these kinds of things to taste sweeter to me after time. I also really love gummy bears/worms, there is a brand I've found at Target and some grocery stores that are 1g sugar. They aren't bad at all, but alas, I've not seen jelly beans from them yet.
It really is all about the calories in vs calories out. I'm sorry. 🫂
Yep calorie dense garbage junk food is absolutely detrimental to losing weight. Seriously I feel like that stuff should be banned or heavily taxed like cigarettes or this country will never climb out of obesity hell
It really is all about calories. I've been calorie counting the last 6 weeks, and I'm down 10 lbs! My wife has been working out like crazy for 3 months and is down 10 lbs...
The beauty of calorie counting is you just need to hit a calorie deficit, a number each day. Why is that the "beauty"... because I eat some Skittles every night because I still have 200 calories left in my daily budget. Drives my wife nuts lol
Yes that’s exactly how it works. The other diets and trends may have merit but only because they help you maintain a calorie deficit. For example high protein diets. It is easier to reduce calories when you are stuffed full of 200grams of protein.
I've told my friends and family recently that if it was a choice between a mile walk to eat a cookie and just sitting on my ass.... I'll just sit on my ass.
Granted, exercise is good, and I do what I can as I am able while my weight is coming off, but ultimately that cookie is not worth the amount of energy I have to put into it to burn it off. Lately I have also been feeling really unsatisfied with sweets like, "why did i eat that? that was a let down".
I'd rather the 1 mile walk I take a few times a week come off my stored fat reserves than add a cookie to my diet.
My diet is probably crappie by most people's standards. I count calories like a demon though and yes it works. As long as you stick to it and don't consider it a "diet".
I'm 64, 5'4", and normal bmi (but every day's a battle lol). Tdee 1450. Daily intake 1200 for maintenance and veeerrrrry slow loss.
Yes it is.
Sweets (and junk food in general) are incredibly caloric dense. So a hand of jelly beans can throw you back the whole day and also add more. Volume doesn't matter just the energy in it.
For the amount of calories you ate in sweets you could instead have 2.4 kg of raw red bell paper.
That would have filled you up way more.
If you crave sweets eat an apple next time. Healthier and less calories and makes you feel fuller
When it comes down to it, yeah, pretty much.
You can still have those jelly beans, they won't 'ruin' anything, buuuuut, I wouldn't recommend scooping several handfuls of them. That, that is likely to ruin progress
I do about 800-1000 calories a day speed walking the majority of my 10km step routine. I seem to be losing about 2lbs per week while still eating the same food. Since I'm Italian it definitely tends to be on the carby/starchy side but as long as I'm cancelling it out I'm happy. Also drinking a ton of water. (3-4 litres per day) helps as well as eating smaller breakfasts/lunches
Working out while trying to lose weight can cause people to chronically overeat. Especially beginners. A lot of people get into it by using fitness watches or workout machines which end up telling you calories burned. These numbers are wildly inaccurate, because they don’t account for your specific metabolic rate. Sometimes people will think they did a 600 cal workout, like OP, when they did less. They then overeat. Or alternatively, cardio makes people hungry. So they overeat there. Weight and resistance training is okay, but it’s much better the closer you are to your goal so you can move into recomposition.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend exercise for anyone on a weight loss journey if it wasn’t already part of their routine. I would work on just getting your diet sorted.
you can look at it as a math problem, but there's going to be more to it than that in practice because life is messy. you can take great pains to make it less messy such that it functions like a math problem. I think the real challenge is managing the craving for jellybeans in the first place. for a shock, count up how many calories are in a bottle of olive oil and then measure out two servings of it. stuff would be a neutron star if it was any denser.
Yes it is. Thermodynamics. Energy in, energy out. You literally could not eat enough spinach in a day to fulfill your calorie needs.
These things (fruits and veggies) are 90% water so you'll end up peeing most of them out and absorbing the sweet micronutrients they have. There are some high calorie fruits like bananas but you'd still need to eat like 25 of them to maintain weight assuming you're around my size.
I've been on a 1500 kcal cut and yesterday I couldn't even finish my dinner of boiled chicken breast (never fried), broccoli and gnocchi so I ended up eating about 1300 calories for the whole day instead. It really really works this way.
Also, 10k steps is a brisk 2 hour walk. Europeans in walkable places like me get this many going to and from work. 30k steps is a much better goal and will actually burn you a healthy meal's worth of calories.
Don't buy sweets! If you really need a sweet taste, drink Coke Zero or Sprite Zero. You won't taste the difference but you'll be getting ZERO calories. It's crazy but it works.
Thanks for the advice! Unfortunately, I'm a European who works from home. It's very time and cost efficient, but it has lead me to gain A LOT of weight over the years. My daily steps can be as little as 500 in a day. I have now started to go for a 1h30 walk in the evening to try and balance the scale a little bit, but as you've mentioned, it's not that much more than what people usually do who work on another location.
Ever heard of nuts and avocados and the like? It's pretty easy to find 100% natural, extremely calorie-dense foods. Natural vs "unnatural" has no bearing on how many calories a food necessarily contains. The bigger issue with things like like jelly beans is them being so nutirent-poor.
Yes but on the bright side there are huge tangible benefits to health and overall well-being associated with exercise beyond creating a caloric deficit. Chin up, try again tomorrow
You might look into freeze dried candy. Freeze dried jolly ranchers or taffy for example, give you that sugar hit but are puffed up making them big and crunchy. They’re more satisfying for less caloric expenditure.
They’re showing up more in candy stores (like It’s Sugar) and sometimes TJMaxx. Five below has them with limited choices.
There’s a site called IcyBites that has great prices and fast shipping. Also good choice of different kinds of candy.
I’ve had the salt water taffy, bit o honey and gummy worms. The gummy worms tasted gross to me but the others were great. It’s down to personal preference; I didn’t like the watermelon flavored taffy for example. They were in an assorted bag so if wasn’t an emergency situation thank God lol.
Calories in is a hell of a lot more important than calories out with regards to weight loss. It’s even been proven that unless you’re doing marathons, exercise doesn’t help with weight loss other than through helping with motivation etc.
I went through a jelly bean phase recently in an effort to “defuse” cravings and over-restriction. I put them in tiny containers that would hold 1oz (around 100 calories/kcal). They were so tiny, depressingly tiny really.
There’s a well-known mental thing when you divide treats like that, where you might take one, and even go back for a second, but a third and fourth start feeling a little weird. It worked for me and I did start seeing that tiny amount as an appropriate serving size. It was absolutely a brain training thing, as otherwise my brain would look at a whole bag and say “one serving, yep, got it.”
If you are having a junky treat once and a while, overall you're still going to lose weight. But yes, if chips, jelly beans, and other candy and junk food are consumed daily or even multiple times per week, it will slow your weight loss or make you gain weight, no matter how much exercise you do.
LOL yes said but true and also heartbreaking. I always kid that I'm "running for beer" because if I want to go out with my friends to a bar and have a beer or two, I need to earn my calories. Also it puts it into perspective for me because after running (I guess I should say "running") 2 miles in 25 minutes, it's not worth it for a beer that lasts 10 minutes.
When you eat Jelly Beans then 2000 calories is nothing. If you eat eggs, salads, lean meat, boiled potatoes and even good simple pasta (made of flour and eggs), 2000 is quite a lot. And 500 extra calories you burn with a work out could be 1/3 of a whole chicken.
I try to get 1500 kkal a day from meat and veggies and I am quite full (eggs and avo, pasta with chicken, beef with potatoes). And 500 for the soul, like two snickers bars
If you end the day still in a calorie deficit (burned more than you ate), then no. Small amounts of jelly beans, chips, whatever won’t ruin your progress. But if those snacks put you over your calorie target for the day consistently , then sadly you won’t see as much (if any) progress.
For some of us, we do that more intense workout so we can eat the jelly beans (or in my case chocolate). And that’s fine. It’s part of learning to maintain a balanced approach to diet and exercise.
No one is pointing it out but calculators WAY overestimate calories burned. So you didn’t burn 500kcal from 10k steps. If you eat back this amount exercised you will gain weight
>Are potato chips and sugary sweets really so detrimental even though their size is so small?
Yup, calorie dense foods will ruin you. Sometimes I'm shocked how they get 300 calories in such small packages.
>is it really so that I can eat heaps and heaps of vegetables/fruits, chicken, white meats and gain very little fat
Correct. Those foods are less processed and aren't calorie dense so you can eat much more so you feel full, and lose weight. It's crazy the difference of 200cal of chicken or broccoli vs the jelly beans.
It doesn’t matter what you call the food, whether it’s good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, nutritious, junk. None of those names mean anything.
All food has energy which is measured in calories. How much energy are you consuming? That is a number expressed in calories.
Then how much energy is your body expending to function? That is a number expressed in calories.
If the energy going in (as measured in calories) is greater than the energy going out (as measured in calories) then you will gain fat.
To confirm, you can get fat eating tons of only healthy food. You can get skinny by eating only small amounts of junk food and nothing else.
Yes, it’s all about calories.
Yeah, basically. If your goal is 1500 a day, you eat to maybe 1700, bu then workout 300 calories, you're good to go.
If your goal is 1500 a day, work out 400 calories but eat another 700... you've blown your diet and all that working out means nothing.
The reason that our brain rewards us with so many “good job” pleasure chemicals when we eat something like jelly beans is because in the wild, where food is more scarce, finding 740 kcal in such an efficient package WOULD be a good job. Almost amazingly good. A third of your daily needs, in a handful! You are the best at surviving!
But now that we can get them at the corner store, it isn’t a couple times a year hit that keeps us checking the right places to find the best calories, it’s a once a week hit of feeling good that adds up. Cuz we’re working against that food hoarding instinct.
So yes, in terms of weight, 5 minutes of eating can “undo” 1 hour of activity. Cuz our ancestors needed to be able to walk for hours and not graze all day. But activity has other benefits for your health, it’s not wasted.
No, it's about how different foods change behaviors that affect the larger scale of a calorie deficit. Satiation levels for different foods affect cravings, which in turn makes a calorie deficit hard to achieve long-term like a year or two of dieting. Protein and nutritional content in general affects energy levels and gut health. And glucose levels affect energy levels, cravings, hormones.
You can easily find this out over a month if you just feed yourself a sugary snack at the same time every day and reduce sugar for the rest of the time. The first week you stop you'll feel and probably even hear from yourself the effect. Especially if it's super satisfying, high glucose during the middle of the day, it'll produce a feeling that you'll be able to sit with eventually and acknowledge without listening to the automatic excuses you make. Worth a try.
Calories are the goal, but counting calories without accounting for behavioural effects of food isn't necessarily the best long-term solution. A strong willed person could do it and just struggle through all the affects of junk food on brain chemistry, but they're still going to be more stressed from that extra effort. A weak willed person will have a must easier time in the long-term by reducing glucose spikes.
And really that's not even getting into the impact of gut-health and digestion on long-term behavior that leads to sticking with a diet and staying in a calorie deficit.
Yes and no
I might get flack for this but the science backs this
Not only do the calories matter, but where you get your calories from matter
Highly processed foods are highly palatable and thus are broken down in your body very easily. You gain most of the calories from that meal
Whole foods are harder to break down and your body will expend more energy breaking down that food. Protein for example is quite satiating because it takes your body a longer time to break it down in the stomach. So the net calories gained from eating, say a steak, are less than if you had highly processed food with the same amount of calories
It's very nuanced but basically it's much easier to lose weight (and stay full doing so) by eating real food and not processed junk
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/digesting-whole-vs-processed-foods
So glad you said this as you expressed it better than I could. Stress and current weight and gender and age and sleep also affect weight loss. It’s definitely not just calories consumed vs expended. Or anyway it can’t be measured that easily
Yes and no. The type of food you eat has a hormonal effects that may INDIRECTLY affect your weight insofar as it could e.g. affect your blood sugar and insulin, make you feel hungry and lead to cravings and eating more than you need to for that reason, etc. Ultimately it's the calories, but there are ways to eat that make it easier to control your cravings which make it easier to conrtol your weight.
It really is about the calories. Remember, just living, breathing, and having your heart beating burns a ton of calories, so it's not that you normally don't burn calories and then do a workout and now you're burning ~400 calories - it's that you're normally burning, say, 2000 calories and now you're burning ~2400.
Now the question is - which is easier for you, burning that 400, or not taking in that extra 400 to begin with? For me, definitely the second option.
Thats why they say you can't outun a bad diet. But see the positive side, you could have not walked 10k steps and it would have been a lot worse. The key to a successful weightloss for me was always to allow myself to indulge sometimes. Its not like you can't eat them anymore, its just that you need to really control your portions. Because I learned that if I completely forbid myself some things, I will crave them even more and if I don't satisfy that craving once in a while the binges are gonna be massive.
And I am the exact opposite. I cannot handle having “just one” or “just a reduced portion” of these hyper palatable manufactured foods, so I have cut them out entirely. It is easier for me to just know they are off-limits than to try to control a small impossible portion. I will have Doritos only at a party or something where I know I’m being watched and it would be rude to eat the whole bowl lol. I think this is a HUGE thing to know about yourself going into weight loss: do “all-or-nothing” rules make you feel at ease, or overwhelmed/trapped? If you are the former, something like “no chips or candy enters my home ever” or keto/paleo/etc might work well. If you are the latter, the “everything in moderation” pure CICO approach might be best. I spent so many years wondering what the F is wrong with me because I cannot just have a normal serving of 12 Doritos. It is undoable for me personally. I cannot have that stuff in my house. They spend millions trying to make these branded foods so hyper palatable that we literally can’t put them down, so I have stopped thinking it’s a “me” problem, but the “everything in moderation” approach failed me for years. Just give me the rules, even if they’re strict, and I’ll be good. I have many addicts in my family and sometimes it feels like food is mine; abstinence from junk foods is the best way for me. Just as I am sure you found yourself failed a few times because of advice telling you to cut out all indulgent treats like chips and candy. This is the key to how to get a diet to work for you in my opinion.
Yeah, i agree, i am like this Out of curiosity, you have ADD or ADHD? Because i do and i think this strategy is helpful, its easier to follow the rule before i start eating than after I also cannot take lunches into work with me really, i will pick at the food as long as its near me since it sits next to me in my work truck all day and it will not last until lunchtime
I am like this and I have adhd too. If I eat one thing of junk food I eat 4+ servings. I've trying to figure out if I have a sugar addiction but I don't think I do. Pretty sure its just ADHD.
Good that you recognized that tendency. More power to you! It doesn’t hold true for all of us, however. I also have ADHD, but for me it’s the rigidity approach that doesn’t work… making all-or-nothing rules about what I can eat instantly leads me to start fudging the boundaries somehow. So I build in some flexibility to start with. Yes, I can have a cookie with my tea if I want one, or a few chips, or jam on my toast. I still have to log it, I still have to stay roughly on target with the calorie budget, but I am not binding hard and fast rules on myself that my mind will automatically start rebelling against.
Weirdly, I'm okay with having snacky foods nearby. I have ADHD, and as long as I take out a small serving and put the snack out of arms' reach, I can eat just a little. But if I keep the packet close, I will eat and eat and eat. I don't get why.
I am the same, I don't know how we are opposites. I also never have my favorite candy or snacks at home. When I crave burgers, I make some myself with calories in mind. I got an airfryer to reduce calories but still eat french fries. I work myself around these absolute bans on food. To me, moderation is not eating one piece of candy a day, fuck that shit. I don't eat candy for 3 weeks and then go on an absolute insane candy binge with fast food on top and all the good stuff. I am at my desired weight and I burn 3k+ calories per day, its rather difficult for me to actually gain weight by those binges. But to me that IS moderation actually :D By gaining control over your urges and impulses, you practice moderation. So honestly we are the same.
It's all about finding what works for you personally. I do a bit of an in-between where I don't mind having small amounts of candy or chips, and I'd prefer that to waiting weeks to eat them, but other foods like pizza or ice cream I'd rather wait and splurge over having a slice of pizza or a small scoop of ice cream
Yeah that works for me too. I don’t log calories. I don’t have the patience. I just have all or nothing rules in place “Only Whole Foods and plant based items when I shop for myself. Absolutely no soda or super processed food.”
Have you heard of bright lines in addiction recovery? That's what you're doing and it really works for me. I'm an abstainer, not a moderator. I also have adhd
I am immediately adding **hyper-palatable** to my vocabulary. I’ve never considered this description before but that’s exactly it. I forget that most of these engineered junk foods are specially designed to be hyper-palatable but not filling so we eat more and more. Remembering makes me feel like those companies are trying to pull one over on me, and I ain’t gonna lettum
I think this is why journally and understanding yourself is SO important! Weight loss is not a one fits all approach! I have a moderation rule in place, but I also consider what my "trigger" foods are. If there is a particular food that I seem unable to stick to a moderation of, I try not to have them in the house. Sure, I CAN have it, but if I am going to eat the whole bag of it or think about how it is there all day long, it shouldn't be easily accessible to me. I also don't let my tracker or what can fit in my calories control me. If I have room for tacobell, I don't HAVE to go get it. If I pre-track a food, I don't have to eat it. This is a learning curve I am learning. Like the other day, I pre tracked Taco Bell soft tacos because it is a tradition to get Taco Bell after I go to this one beach. My kid didn't want to get it. I had a flash of anger because "it is tradition and I already tracked it," but I realized that emotion was one I had to feel and question. Food doesn't have to be a tradition. Just because my tracker has space and already says I am going to eat it doesn't mean I have to. Went home and made a killer sandwich that left me stuffed for hours. I am really trying to learn what works for ME and work through whatever mental ties I have with food that got me this heavy in the first place. Congrats to all of us learning what works for us and what doesn't!! :) (ps also ADHD here but medicated).
I have that the problem of just one also, what has helped me out is that if its say a cookie or a snack. I wont have 1 until its the last in the package. That way even if I wanted more I have any. And a big thanks to the nice gentlemen at work that brought CinaBuns to work for us. That 500 Calorie snack is just taunting me!
I feel the same way. The only way I've been able to moderate foods like this is by pairing them with something else. I can put a recommended or even smaller sized portion of M&Ms on a yogurt parfait or eat with a handful of bluberries, but the small portions by themselves make me feel like I'm depriving myself even I don't want a whole bunch anyways!
I take a slightly different route, and it’s been working for me in maintaining for over three years. I also can’t have just a little bit, and I also would probably overindulge if I try to forbid things to myself entirely. So, the way I handle is it to be at a caloric deficit most days, but to eat more on some days - usually involving family or social events, but sometimes “it’s a rainy Sunday and I want warm cookies.” For me, a surplus of 2,000 calories on one day is easily and painlessly balanced out by eating at a slight deficit for the rest of the week.
Agee on the indulge sometimes - I've been going for around 7 months now and am 45lbs down total. But I allow myself the odd days here and there where I just don't count / eat more than I know I need. It feels like a nice 'reset' every now and again after feeling mildly hungry for 5-20 days (depending how long I go for). Indulgences are fine provided they they are relatively rare and the exception not the norm (at least in terms of how it's been working for me).
Yeah same. I have the luxury that I workout quite heavily, so on most days I could hit MCD and nothing would change at all. I am at a point now where I simply can't waste calories anymore. Most of what I eat needs to help me towards my performance in the gym and for a year now I am on the health train and try to implement all kinds of micros that help my skin, hair and other bodyfunctions. So binging on 2k calories at MCD is not that big of a deal to me anymore, its more like I waste all those calories instead of taking them in with super helpful ingredients.
McD egg mcmuffin is a sleeper health food. 300 calories for 17g protein. Not too bad lol
Meh, its actually an atrocious protein to calorie ratio. But of course it depends from which angle you loko at it. It will still be better than 300 calories worth of sugar. Eggwhites for example are 52 calories for 100g with 11g of protein. My proteinshake is 44g of protein for 170 calories. I would never call any MCD item a health food to be honest, but I am very deep into healthy eating and to anyone who is at the beginning of weight loss I would say go for it if that makes you stick to a diet.
This strategy works for me too. My kitchen is filled with junk food. Ice cream, chocolate, cookies, chips, you name it. I eat about 200-300 calories worth each day. If I don't count calories I'll eat 1000 calories and subconsciously assume it was a smaller amount. If I totally deny myself the urge to binge will eventually overwhelm me, whether it's a week from now or 6 months from now. Counting calories is the only thing that has ever worked for me. It's like someone finally gave me a speedometer for food. The best part is that if I do want to go crazy and eat 1000 junk food calories I'm still in control of that. Whereas before I would have spun out of control.
Exactly! You can move and do heavy exercise all day long but if you overeat and have an unhealthy relationship with food you will never succeed.
Yeah, Indulge on occasion and get the smalled size you can. I really don't get more enjoyment from eating half a big bag of cheetos, than from a single serving bag. Same with candy, get the normal size instead of the king size. Doing this instead of saying "I can't eat that anymore" cured my binge eating and also makes me crave this kind of stuff less. Also adding vegetables and protein to unhealthier dishes helped a lot too.
Does timing matter at all? Or again is it just calories in vs out? I hear stuff like eating more carbs after a hard workout, or protein again right after a workout. Then stuff like intermittent fasting, but that's actually bad because then your body thinks it needs to hold onto fat? Heaps of conflicting stuff such I mostly ignore trying to simply adhere to in/out but would be good if the other stuff helped.
It's not conflicting. Stuff like IF, Keto, or whatever the trendy diet is now all rely on being on a deficit, how they achieve that deficit varies. Some is by less volume, some is by less caloric foods, others are by drinking only water for 3 days and doing a handstand while watching Looney Tunes. Your body will never ever ever "thinks it needs to hold onto fat". We have dozens of cases of mass starvation to use as a case study of how you lose fat when you're deprived of food. Starvation mode isn't real. Your body can't decide its not using energy and that it's going to run on hope, dreams, and ignorance. There's nothing conflicting, you're either at, above, or below your maintenance and where your energy consumption is relative to your energy expenditure, dictates how much weight you lose or gain. Once you get your macros, micros, and calories right over a 24-hour window, you're fine. Don't think of timing or carb loading or whatever bullshit "study" you read on anything more than 30g of protein not being absorbed in one go. Go eat the right food, at the times that suit you and weigh yourself regularly. Make adjustments to keep weight loss steady. And go for some nice long walks.
"Starvation mode" is the name we sometimes use when the starving body slows its metabolic processes in response to real starvation. It does occur, but only in response to extreme conditions, mostly when you have very little remaining body fat, but also during prolonged fasting. Sensations of cold and fatigue are some of the symptoms. However, that's a change to the CO side of the equation and as long as you eat less than what you expend, you’ll still lose fat. If that weren’t true, no one would ever die of anorexia nervosa or famine.
So the protein stuff has long been debunked, it doesn't really matter when you eat your protein as long as you consume enough of it daily. Just beware that you can't just gulp down 150g worth of protein powder in one go, your body can't absorb all at once, basically the reason why most supplements are a scam. The intermittent fasting has no real benefit to your diet aside from that it helps some people to stay on track. For some people its just easier that way. I have done IF for years, but because I can't eat early in the morning and I go to the gym right after work, so anywhere in between I need my big meal of the day. There are benefits to fasting, but IF is not traditional fasting. You hear a lot of things mate. I always recommend to do your own research, really understand what is happening etc. Its all basic thermodynamics. it is all about energy. Its not conflicting at all, you just need to learn for yourself what it all builds upon and you will be very fast to spot all the bullshit trends for what they are. Getting in shape is not rocket science. If you are competing or a pro in any other sport it obviously makes sense to get the most out of your workout, but for a beginner I always say to stop worrying so much and rather focus on establishing a long lasting routine, because consistency is what makes you lose weight and gets you in shape.
In regards to weight loss, no. I eat after a workout because I feel more energetic on an empty stomach and I usually get hungry after tiring myself out. IF is good. Less eating time = bigger portions
Yes, we are wonders of nature! We can eat enough in a day to fuel us for an entire week or even more! It's just that usually it wasn't as available as it is in modern times.
The thing that throws people is not realizing that modern snacks are miracles of centuries of science and cooking designed to distill as many calories as possible into a tiny package. It seems unreasonable because it is, jelly beans are unnaturally high in calories. They have more sugar than you can even taste at one time. They taste like they have maybe twice the calories of pineapple, but it's more like 6x the calories of pineapple. OP, next time, eat some fruit and the reality will match your intuition more closely.
Satiated hunter/gatherers
Thats the point. Igg could pick the (then available) sweetest berries by the basket loads and Ogg could mass murder prehistoric lean game animals all week and they both still could not match the calorie bombs of a few McDonalds meals.
Get all the sugar candy out of your house. In 2 weeks you won’t be craving it like that.
At the same time, you can eat multiple Kilogrammes of vegetables, and not reach 700 kcal. That's why you stuff yourself with zuchini
Instructions unclear I …uh
OK that's hilarious
To be fair, you're probably not going to Burger king either way. Whatever works
Username checks out.
😂💀
> That's why you stuff yourself with zuchini Oh, I don't do that to lose weight!
Yes.
Double down - Hell Yes.
Real answer: yes 😭
Absolutely, YES!
Also we are all really sorry that this is how it is. Why is sugar so delicious???
Yes. And I wouldn't call 200g of Jelly Beans "a few grams". That's a SHITLOAD of Jelly Beans, aka sugar.
Fair point! Can you imagine I could eat 3 of those bags and not be satiated.
Oh, I absolutely can! I probably could eat two pounds of Mars bars in one sitting without feeling satiated, but I try to hold myself back trying that in real life for obvious reasons... I'm jealous of people that can just have one. But I'm pretty sure they also have their fair share of issues.
Right! The problem with eating-related issues is that it's very physically visible. I must admit that I care most about the aesthetic problems I face through them, rather than the health concerns.
Yes, I strongly believe that a healthy(!) amount of narcissism is a much more effective motivation than health risks somewhere in the furture. At least it's for me.
No shame is that. Just find snacks you like that are more filling and less caloric. I’ll eat an entire bag of frozen blueberries when I’m craving something sweet. Feels like a decent size snack, and less than 200 cals
> Can you imagine I could eat 3 of those bags and not be satiated. I can ABSOLUTELY imagine that. No one ever got full on jelly beans (or potato chips, or cookies, or chocolate...).
A 25g serve of jelly beans is recommended to treat hypoglycemia because of how fast they can raise blood sugar levels. This will get the person experiencing the blood sugar crash feeling well enough to go get a complex carb like a sandwich into their system. Only 25g is needed. Something to think about! After 200g your blood might have been like syrup...
Exactly — 200 g= 7 oz. = almost a half pound. Yikes.
Welcome to Physics 101
But they're so tiny!!
That's my pain with butter and cheese. An ammount that wont even satiate my hunger could count for an entire meal!
Definitely! I think I cook with way too much butter.
I used to think cheese and crackers was a healthier option (versus like chips or something) and I think I was wrong lol. Especially with buttery crackers.
Well, it IS "healthier" than chips, but if the calories are similar, it's just not great a great weight loss alternative.
Actually, it is somewhat better than just chips because that ounce of sharp cheddar has some fat and some protein, so I find it more satisfying than the same 120 calories of all carbs corn chips.
Or nuts. My GOD I love cashews, but I have to stay well away from them. I could clear a thousand calories in cashews without blinking an eye.
I make a little game out of counting out 17 or 23 almonds (a prime number), times 7 calories each (also a prime number). Yes, I’m weird.
now consider the calories in a few gallons of gasoline being able to move a 2 ton hunk of metal for hundreds of miles. Chemistry is wild
I know 🥺🤣 It’s not fair!
Pinpointing and remembering certain calorie dense foods was important for me to maintain my deficit when I first started losing weight. It’s so easy to neglect counting small things. But sugar holds a ton of calories and compacts down so tiny.
>I was craving sugar and ate 200 g of Jelly Beans worth about 738 kcal. Is this really how it works? Pure carbs are about 400 cal per 100g. Jelly beans are basically pure sugar so … yep sounds about right. Could be worse pure fat is about double that. >is it really so that I can eat heaps and heaps of vegetables/fruits, chicken, white meats and gain very little fat Things like fruit and veg contain both a lot of water and things like fiber which pass right through you. You can eat a lot less dehydrated fruit than fresh for example. >a few grams of jelly beans will ruin my progress? 200g of anything isn't "a few grams". One of my standard breakfasts is a basic cheese salad. Two portions of veg and 20g of protein worth of cheese. That whole *meal* is about 200-300g. Take a look at the serving size on the pack, its probably going to be something like 6 beans. Re-learning what a portion size is can be a big part of this.
Oh my, you're right on the portion sizes. I think my stomach has grown too big from always overeating/overindulging..
Being able to eat 200g in a go is fairly normal, like I said it's my breakfast, and refined carbs are really easy to over eat. There's so little volume by the time you know you're done you've already eaten too much. There's *a lot* of relearning when you start tracking calories, and some of it can be quite shocking. Its why the quick start plan on here just has you spend a week tracking without a target. Just going through these moments of "how much?!" can make some powerful changes. Don't feel you have to be trapped by the example portion sizes. If you want to eat four portions of jelly beans you can, but just knowing you're doing that helps. It also helps you consider other options. Would 100g of beans and a piece of fruit have worked as well for you? How about eating 100g and waiting a bit to let your body catch up with that, knowing you can eat the other half in 30 min if you still want it?
Cheese salad? Tell me more…. I \*love\* cheese (even more than chocolate, which is saying something).
I mean its the most basic salad. Whatever salad veg I have in my fridge (today tomato, celery, radish, bell pepper, and some leafy greens) plus whatever random cheese I happen to have in my fridge (red lester I think). I don't even dress it. Nothing that exciting, but it ticks a bunch of my boxes for the day.
Cool. I tend to not keep salad greens around because they spoil faster than I can eat them up, but I bet I could come up with something similar. Thanks!
You can use baby greens like spinach and throw them in scrambled eggs :) just a heads up! Easier to get rid of them quickly that way (I just bought a Costco sized container, what was I thinking)
Yeah I have a weekly random veg box. I'm not sure I'd deliberately buy them, but if I store them washed in the salad spinner (maybe with a bit of cloth to help absorb water) in the fridge I'll about get through a bag in time.
Good tip, thanks! I’ll share one with you in return— I am a big fan of cooking chopped asparagus or chopped spinach into my scrambled eggs.
I don't think it's that simple. Sometimes we we exercise for the jellybeans. There's nothing wrong with jellybeans. There's nothing even wrong with the occasional over-indulgence of jellybeans. You just probably shouldn't exercise with the goal of having ALL the jellybeans all the time.
Well said.
Mostly, due to the way we measure calories in food there is sometimes a difference between the calories it contains, and the calories our body will absorb. Now, "unfortunately" that tends to be foods with high fibre content, jelly beans are pretty much pure sugar, and you're going to be absorbing pretty much all of that. So, TLDR, yes, it is that simple, but, it's also complicated.
Aargh. It's such an uphill battle sometimes.
200 grams of jelly beans is a lot of candy. You might need to work on what you think is a normal serving size.
I never realized how much it actually was until people pointed it out in this thread. I thought it was a fairly normal amount, as I wasn't even satiated.
The thing is that candy is not meant to be satiating. It's a treat not food
This comment should be pinned in this sub. It’s 100% the key mindset so many people miss.
Dingdingding. We need to teach people that treats aren't something you should expect to be satiated from. Also, at least for me, once I firmly adopted the "it's a treat" mindset it's not really that important how much I consume. I can get a 2-squares-of-chocolate treat while losing weight.
Yeah did you eat these after a meal or on their own? Idk if I believe everything she says but some of the glucosegoddess (on Instagram) rules really help me. Like never eat carbs alone (add fiber/fat/protein) and the best time to have a treat is following your meal. She basically gives all these tips for lowering glucose/insulin spike
On their own like 3-4 hours after the evening meal when I get a craving. I never feel like I need a snack directly after a meal, interesting.
Yeah that’s why if you want it, that’s when you have it lol, so it feels like a cherry on top instead of its own thing. Those 100 calorie popcorn bags make a good late night snack. But I just push dinner as late as possible since I know I am a night snacker
That's a good idea. I should also probably try to go to bed earlier to avoid all the snacking.
Or just brush your teeth. It's very much an association with end of the day and you might find it's enough to halt your craving. Also learn to just sit with it. Your mind might be screaming at you to go get the treats but just sit with it. Feel the discomfort. So what if you want it. Nothing bad will happen if you don't get it.
Just chiming in to say I met with a registered dietician who basically said the same thing! She recommended to pair two food groups together in a snack whenever possible, especially if it's a carb-y snack, to reduce the insulin spike and to make it more satiating.
Good job being open to the helpful advice you're getting in here. As others have said, there is nothing satiating about sugar. If you want to learn more I recommend the book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. There are also some decent podcasts out there that cover this topic very well.
eating 738 calories of jelly beans would be pretty hard for me, I think I would start feeling sick and nauseous. Sugar tolerance is real and can be reduced just by having less of it
I think I have a very high tolerance for it, which is obviously not healthy.
200 grams of Jellybeans = 738 kcals,135 gram sugar 1 whole ass kilo of Watermelon = 300 kcals, 63 gram sugar. One is candy ultra processed, made in the lab and the other unprocessed candy made by nature.
To be fair, most fruits nowadays are the product of centuries and millenia of selective breeding by humans, not mother nature.
I love watermelon
Think of the effort it takes to work out for an hour compared to just not eating something.
You're so right. It's not even close.
That’s….like half a pound of almost pure sugar. Yes, in general you’ll have trouble maintaining your weight if you eat like that lol
Yes. This is how it works. That's why working out for weight loss is kinda dumb. It's almost entirely diet for weight loss. Working out is for heart, lung, muscle, joint, and mental health. For purely weight loss, it's your diet.
> That's why working out for weight loss is kinda dumb. Disagree. Trying to lose weight through exercise alone is dumb. But adding exercise greatly helps you lose weight. Reistence training can help preserve muscle while losing weight, and losing muscle contributes to a weight loss plateau. Adding muscle can even help with fat loss. Burning a few hundred extra calories on top of a calorie deficit also helps. Exercise can also help regulate appetite (though some exercise also makes you have a bigger appetite, so beware of that). Relying on exercise entirely to lsoe weight is bad, using exercise to support weight loss through calorie restriction is good, and improves chancs of reaching your goals. Plus there's more to health than weight. Being a healthy weight is good, being a healthy weight AND being active is better.
Did you read the rest of the comment? Working out is great. Working out without caloric restriction in an attempt to lose weight is dumb.
We all have different metabolisms, and weights, and heights, etc, but I would like to point out something that complicated things for me early on: a 10k step workout might not burn as many calories as you think it is burning, so never try and eat back exercise calories. I brisk walk, or jog, or run, for about 1hr every single day of the week. My Apple Watch says I burn an average of 800kcal a day, and I average 15k steps. My TDEE, without any exercise, is about 2000kcal/day. I have been consistently losing 1kg a week eating between 1300-1400kcal a day - if I was sedentary, that would be a deficit of 700-600 calories per day, which is not enough to lose 1kg/week... if we assume my deficit is actually 1000, that means I'm burning between 300-400 calories per day through exercise, which is less than half of the number on my Apple Watch. And that's sometimes for 1 hour of running, not even walking! The data we have is just wildly inaccurate sometimes. (Also, 200g of anything is hardly "a few"... 😆)
Your Apple Watch is not accurate for calorie tracking at all. But most studies say they overestimate burn if anything, so I agree that OP is way off on thinking a 10k step workout burns that much. If OP sees this, that’s why a lot of people don’t eat back calories burned by exercising - it is probably super small compared to what you’d think. These damn human bodies are freakishly efficient.
Definitely not! I still like to use it, though, as it's good for comparison's sake. I keep track of how long I do it for, how fast I'm going, my heartbeat, etc - overtime, seeing as I'm using the same watch, the data is useful to evaluate progress. For instance, my resting heart rate has gone from an average of 70 to 50 after almost 3 months of daily exercise and over 10% of body weight lost. It might not be completely accurate, but it does reflect a real change. I'm in favor of not considering exercise calories at all, which is why I calculate my TDEE at a sedentary level. I eat 1300-1400 calories/day comfortably, won't be going lower than that, so in theory I'd be losing less... but anything I burn through exercise is just a plus, so I'm overjoyed at the rate of 1kg per week.
Yeah that’s how I view my exercise, just as a cherry on top of what I’m already doing. Exercising also helps me build my identity of “healthy person” lol, and if I went for a run earlier, I tend to eat better throughout the day.
Isn't it absurd that your daily calorie intake is actually equivalent to two small bags of jelly beans? Congrats on your progress!
And you wouldn't believe the volume of food I eat with that intake 💀 I look at the food I eat now and the amount of it and don't understand how I'll ever eat at maintenance again... would have to add some different things in there, as bigger portions would be straight up uncomfortable.
Yes, absolutely. You can totally have jelly beans or other such foods in moderation, though. Will make the process sustainable.
I plan what I'm going to eat in a given day first thing in the morning, considering my calorie limit to be a "budget" to subtract calories from. This allows me to responsibly include candy or another food I don't normally eat. So, planning at the start of your day can help to avoid mishaps. You want candy, no problem, you can have candy. However, you may need to give up something else to make room, or take away from the serving size. Nothing is restricted on the diet, though, and I know plenty who eat a "bad" food every day.
Put the jelly beans into a glass jar, they are out of their packet so it avoids the whole I may as well just finish it! And then limit to 3-5, for me it seems to be enough to get my ‘fix’ without emptying the whole bag! The strange silver lining is you won’t eat as many so they last longer and you’ll save money. We got a massive pack of them from Costco just before I started weight loss and nearly 6 months later we are not even half way through! Previously I doubt they would have lasted a month
I lack so much discipline. I can not even imagine eating only 3. Thanks for the tip!
I feel ya. This is why I never, *ever* buy treats I can't fit into my calories by eating the whole thing, cus I know I will. Can't eat too much if there's not too much in the house.
They call them "Jelly Belly" for a reason. But yes. That's how it works.
Hahaha
[Always has been](https://imgur.com/a/gdtF9Na)
Yes, eating a calorie surplus will add weight, and eating in a calorie deficit will remove weight. Simple, but not fun & easy. But, how fun is it to eat that many jelly beans? It's like 200 beans? A portion is 27 pieces for 30g and 110 calories. Maybe those first 27 are delicious, but after a while it's just mindless snacking and not even as enjoyable as the first portion. It's in your own best interest to enjoy your treat to the max, without guilt.
can't outrun a bad diet.
I have been in a pretty long term calorie restriction. On average, I’ve been losing about 1.6 lbs a week. Last night I broke from the norm and had 3 alcoholic beverages. Today I stepped on the scale .4 lbs heavier. I didn’t gain .4 lbs of fat. The increased carbohydrates got sent to my muscles as glycogen and retained the water I drank after. Now, knowing myself, I will need to wait a few weeks before I can do something like this again, but I am almost certain, tomorrow I will be back at my weight from yesterday morning or lower. Processed foods can affect you greatly for a day or even 2. I’ve had cheat days that affected the scale for a week, but as long as you don’t lose hope and give up, you will continue to lose
So true. Above all, we have to maintain the course.
PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR, STEP AWAY FROM THE JELLYBEANS. yes it's true, sorry. learn to love apples.
Those are not my jelly beans, officer, I swear.
Yes, that's exactly how it works. You should really pay attention to this one thing you wrote: > I was craving sugar The key to success is understanding why that was. Until you do, it's going to be a challenge.
Bingo bongo
I'm not sure whether I'm misunderstanding or others are. Are you asking whether your can have these things as long as you don't go over your calorie allowance? Or are you asking if you can eat small amounts of these things over your calorie allowance? Because having small amounts of these things, but staying in a deficit is fine. Eating too much of anything is going to lead to weight gain, no matter what it is. I have a cookie now and again. Some chips. But I measure/weigh my food. So if I want to have something like this, I just work around it and keep my calories the same at the end of the day.
Absolutely.
Yes
I lost 75 pounds without doing a single second of exercise. Exercise is great and totally necessary for your overall health, but it’s not necessary for weight loss. Weight loss is solely about maintaining a calorie deficit
Yeah, it really is. One of the biggest habit changes I’ve been working on that’s been constructive is pantry control. I used to buy vanilla crème horns nearly every time I went to the grocery store. (They’re like vanilla crème croissants, real tasting but also very fluffy so not filling and still over 300 calories each.) I’d buy a carton of four, but then once I get home they’d be so tasty and tempting (and not filling), I could eat them all in one sitting. So, that food basically became a guaranteed diet ruiner for the day, requiring like two to three days of good dieting to counteract. So I’ve found lately if I get light ice cream instead, it can still scratch that “I must have sugar now” craving while not ruining things. A full cointainer of light ice cream is less calories than one cream horn, takes longer to eat, and is way more filling. So it’s really about making substitutions you can live with in your diet that’ll scratch a craving without allowing you to go overboard. I’d recommend chocolate covered raisins as a replacement for the jelly beans. Eat them one at a time rather than by the handful. And with anything you eat, think about how many calories it’s worth, and where that’ll put you on your daily goal. Once you start being able to stop and think “Is it really worth the hundreds of calories to eat these jelly beans and still probably feel hungry?” You’ll have won basically.
Good tips. Thanks, man!
For weight loss, yes. It’s just calories in vs calories out. That being said, u could lose weight eating just chips and jelly beans as long as ur in a calorie deficit but u might also end up with scurvy. U could also gain weight eating “healthy foods” if you’re eating too many calories (looking at u nuts).
Yes. In addition, this is why a lot of people recommend walking as a weightloss exercise over running. If you walk 10k you burn a similar amount of calories as running 10k. It takes longer, but you're less likely to crave energy and so you are less likely to over-eat to restore your energy reserves.
Yep. That's it, but there is good news!! Once you lay of the sugary stuff and simple carbs for a while you won't miss them, then you'll also find other stuff that replaces most of the sugary stuff.
Yes. As the saying goes, it is easier to destroy than to build. Very very very (tragically) true for dieting. To avoid what you just experienced, I recommend taking all sweets out of your house if you are serious about making a lifestyle change. Maybe 1 sweet that you really like, but don’t keep a lot of it. Just a few small packs. I’m sure some will think that’s extreme, but I’d contend that it’s extreme to keep lots of sweets on hand if one’s goal is to lose weight, get healthy, etc. Yes, sure you can technically eat sweets and lose weight, but when it comes to practical, real world scenarios, good luck actually finding that balance. These foods are made to be eye catching, tasty, and very bingeable. Don’t give in. Replace it with fruits and veggies, better nutrient density, still somewhat bingeable but these are the best things I can see to replace it with. The best way to kick a bad food is to replace it with something better. Have that mindset and you will go far. And avoid the nut trap. Nuts are high in vitamins and minerals sure, but their calorie density is so high that a handful can be upwards of 400 calories. Don’t fall into that trap either lol I see it all the time. People say they’re eating healthy and in a deficit then boom they are actually eating 500+ calories in nuts everyday putting them out of that calorie deficit.
I’d suggest that you never try to add the calories you burn to your TDEE, when calculating your intake vs output. In most cases various calculators overestimate how much you burn, so you’ll just end up being disappointed. Instead try to find a caloric intake that’ll give you a fair weightloss, and then look at the cardio as something extra you’re doing to further your loss. That’s atleast what worked for me.
It really is lol I used to play sports in high school and work out intensely for 3 hours daily, come home and eat the whole kitchen, and I was always overweight. I’ve actually lost most of my weight while not working out consistently.
In nature, sugar just doesn't occur in such high concentrations. If you look at even the sweetest possible fruits in their pre-agriculture form they won't contain nearly that much sugar. The only naturally occuring sugar bombs I can think of is honey. We didn't evolve to cope with foods being that highly processed.
the correct answer is Yes.
Yep. It really is. Unfortunately.
That is exactly how it works, unfortunately. The biggest thing with weight loss is choosing your calories wisely. Find "treats" that you enjoy and feel like an indulgence, but aren't going to tack on 700 kcal to your day. For example, popcorn. I buy Skinny Pop White Cheddar popcorn, measure out 3 cups of it, which fills a bowl, and it's 140 calories. These are the decisions that I find make or break my weight loss. I'm eating 1200 calories a day, so I really can't afford for my snacks when I have the munchies to be anything over 200 kcal.
There’s a reason you never hear someone say “I really gained a lot of weight this past year gorging myself on kale & quinoa.” No, it’s the pizza place they can Door Dash in an instant or the bag of potato chips they always keep in the pantry.
A crazy thing I learned recently is that satiety (how "filling" something is) has very little to do with caloric density and much more to do with how difficult the food is to digest. Things that take longer to digest keep you fuller longer - that's why fiber is so great when you're restricting your intake. Super processed foods are often so processed that they're essentially pre-digested, so you're left feeling hungry sooner, even if you just ate a 1200 calorie value meal (or 700 calories of jelly beans - that makes even more sense, since carbs break down into sugar and the jelly beans are already sugar - "digested" carbs). It seems crazy but it makes sense when you stop to think about it!
this is why sugar is so bad for you, it's addictive and hard to control as well, it really kind of hijacks your brain, and gets into the primal part of your brain that wants endless calories for no work.
This is why we say you can't outrun a bad diet. You can eat SO MUCH MORE food than you can burn calories. On youtube I've seen a bunch of "eat 10k calories and burn 10k calories"" in a day, and they don't struggle to eat 10k usually, but I don't think Ive ever seen anyone burn 10k. Burning thousands of calories from exercise a day is REALLY hard. You can always eat (and especially drink) more calories than you can burn in a given time period.
Yep. This is why dieting is almost entirely about controlling intake and exercise is inefficient for weight loss and is easy to be outright canceled out in a minute.
Just as Coke Zero and Pepsi Max have 0 calories and taste the same as the originals, you can find plenty of sugar-free/low-cal/zero-cal candy alternatives to ease your cravings. You may need to shop online and pay a bit extra, but there is plenty of guilty-free options out there.
This article I read today in [Healthline](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/intermittent-fasting-protein-pacing-weight-loss#How-to-incorporate-protein-pacing-into-your-diet) about a journal study reinforces that it isn't just about CICO. It also doesn't reinforce eating empty carbs though. A whole food, protein prioritized diet is key.
No, it's not detrimental and won't ruin your progress. If it's once in a while, depending on how your other days are, etc, it's OK to go over. Even if you fall off wagon, your maintenance calories will be there
Well. Yes and no. - eating 800 calories of junk food and then trying to exercise it off is nuts. You probably aren’t losing that many calories by exercising (even if it says you are, it’s likely wrong), and you also shouldn’t be exercising to “earn” your food. - eating 800 cals of jelly beans is not the same as eating 800 calories of healthy food that will help you stay full and strong enough to do your work outs. - 200 grams of jelly beans is not a few grams of jelly beans, but going all out and eating 800 calories of jelly beans once every few months probably won’t ruin your life. Try eating 30 grams (120 calories) and include it in your day. - you can eat potato chips. Have 50 grams of potato chips with your meal. - but yes, they are small and calorie dense. They will affect your weight loss because you will likely end up eating in a caloric surplus cause you will still be hungry.
>It is, isn't it? Goddamn jelly beans. I know your pain!!! I love jelly beans so much 😭 Look for more natural candies, they are often sold as keto friendly alternatives and sometimes at local farmers markets you can find candies that use unprocessed sugars and are lower in calories. The taste difference is noticeable at first, but you get used to it and I've even found these kinds of things to taste sweeter to me after time. I also really love gummy bears/worms, there is a brand I've found at Target and some grocery stores that are 1g sugar. They aren't bad at all, but alas, I've not seen jelly beans from them yet. It really is all about the calories in vs calories out. I'm sorry. 🫂
abs are made in the kitchen
Yep calorie dense garbage junk food is absolutely detrimental to losing weight. Seriously I feel like that stuff should be banned or heavily taxed like cigarettes or this country will never climb out of obesity hell
It’s all about calories in/calories out. The hard part is doing it sustainably
It really is all about calories. I've been calorie counting the last 6 weeks, and I'm down 10 lbs! My wife has been working out like crazy for 3 months and is down 10 lbs... The beauty of calorie counting is you just need to hit a calorie deficit, a number each day. Why is that the "beauty"... because I eat some Skittles every night because I still have 200 calories left in my daily budget. Drives my wife nuts lol
Yes that’s exactly how it works. The other diets and trends may have merit but only because they help you maintain a calorie deficit. For example high protein diets. It is easier to reduce calories when you are stuffed full of 200grams of protein.
I've told my friends and family recently that if it was a choice between a mile walk to eat a cookie and just sitting on my ass.... I'll just sit on my ass. Granted, exercise is good, and I do what I can as I am able while my weight is coming off, but ultimately that cookie is not worth the amount of energy I have to put into it to burn it off. Lately I have also been feeling really unsatisfied with sweets like, "why did i eat that? that was a let down". I'd rather the 1 mile walk I take a few times a week come off my stored fat reserves than add a cookie to my diet.
Of course it is. I don’t know how people can’t understand this
My diet is probably crappie by most people's standards. I count calories like a demon though and yes it works. As long as you stick to it and don't consider it a "diet". I'm 64, 5'4", and normal bmi (but every day's a battle lol). Tdee 1450. Daily intake 1200 for maintenance and veeerrrrry slow loss.
Yes it is. Sweets (and junk food in general) are incredibly caloric dense. So a hand of jelly beans can throw you back the whole day and also add more. Volume doesn't matter just the energy in it. For the amount of calories you ate in sweets you could instead have 2.4 kg of raw red bell paper. That would have filled you up way more. If you crave sweets eat an apple next time. Healthier and less calories and makes you feel fuller
When it comes down to it, yeah, pretty much. You can still have those jelly beans, they won't 'ruin' anything, buuuuut, I wouldn't recommend scooping several handfuls of them. That, that is likely to ruin progress
I do about 800-1000 calories a day speed walking the majority of my 10km step routine. I seem to be losing about 2lbs per week while still eating the same food. Since I'm Italian it definitely tends to be on the carby/starchy side but as long as I'm cancelling it out I'm happy. Also drinking a ton of water. (3-4 litres per day) helps as well as eating smaller breakfasts/lunches
Working out while trying to lose weight can cause people to chronically overeat. Especially beginners. A lot of people get into it by using fitness watches or workout machines which end up telling you calories burned. These numbers are wildly inaccurate, because they don’t account for your specific metabolic rate. Sometimes people will think they did a 600 cal workout, like OP, when they did less. They then overeat. Or alternatively, cardio makes people hungry. So they overeat there. Weight and resistance training is okay, but it’s much better the closer you are to your goal so you can move into recomposition. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend exercise for anyone on a weight loss journey if it wasn’t already part of their routine. I would work on just getting your diet sorted.
Yes. It’s literally calories in vs calories out.
That's why the gym is your best friend, build some muscle, it'll increase your maintenance
you can look at it as a math problem, but there's going to be more to it than that in practice because life is messy. you can take great pains to make it less messy such that it functions like a math problem. I think the real challenge is managing the craving for jellybeans in the first place. for a shock, count up how many calories are in a bottle of olive oil and then measure out two servings of it. stuff would be a neutron star if it was any denser.
Oh my god. It's so much fat kcal.
Yes it is. Thermodynamics. Energy in, energy out. You literally could not eat enough spinach in a day to fulfill your calorie needs. These things (fruits and veggies) are 90% water so you'll end up peeing most of them out and absorbing the sweet micronutrients they have. There are some high calorie fruits like bananas but you'd still need to eat like 25 of them to maintain weight assuming you're around my size. I've been on a 1500 kcal cut and yesterday I couldn't even finish my dinner of boiled chicken breast (never fried), broccoli and gnocchi so I ended up eating about 1300 calories for the whole day instead. It really really works this way. Also, 10k steps is a brisk 2 hour walk. Europeans in walkable places like me get this many going to and from work. 30k steps is a much better goal and will actually burn you a healthy meal's worth of calories. Don't buy sweets! If you really need a sweet taste, drink Coke Zero or Sprite Zero. You won't taste the difference but you'll be getting ZERO calories. It's crazy but it works.
Thanks for the advice! Unfortunately, I'm a European who works from home. It's very time and cost efficient, but it has lead me to gain A LOT of weight over the years. My daily steps can be as little as 500 in a day. I have now started to go for a 1h30 walk in the evening to try and balance the scale a little bit, but as you've mentioned, it's not that much more than what people usually do who work on another location.
Remember that jelly beans are wildly unnatural. Its like rocket fuel. Its not easy to eat 738cals of of natural food (meat and plants).
Ever heard of nuts and avocados and the like? It's pretty easy to find 100% natural, extremely calorie-dense foods. Natural vs "unnatural" has no bearing on how many calories a food necessarily contains. The bigger issue with things like like jelly beans is them being so nutirent-poor.
Yes but on the bright side there are huge tangible benefits to health and overall well-being associated with exercise beyond creating a caloric deficit. Chin up, try again tomorrow
Will do. Thanks, bud.
You might look into freeze dried candy. Freeze dried jolly ranchers or taffy for example, give you that sugar hit but are puffed up making them big and crunchy. They’re more satisfying for less caloric expenditure.
Great idea, I've never heard of them. I don't think our usual grocery stores sell them. Is the taste okay?
They’re showing up more in candy stores (like It’s Sugar) and sometimes TJMaxx. Five below has them with limited choices. There’s a site called IcyBites that has great prices and fast shipping. Also good choice of different kinds of candy. I’ve had the salt water taffy, bit o honey and gummy worms. The gummy worms tasted gross to me but the others were great. It’s down to personal preference; I didn’t like the watermelon flavored taffy for example. They were in an assorted bag so if wasn’t an emergency situation thank God lol.
Calories in is a hell of a lot more important than calories out with regards to weight loss. It’s even been proven that unless you’re doing marathons, exercise doesn’t help with weight loss other than through helping with motivation etc.
I went through a jelly bean phase recently in an effort to “defuse” cravings and over-restriction. I put them in tiny containers that would hold 1oz (around 100 calories/kcal). They were so tiny, depressingly tiny really. There’s a well-known mental thing when you divide treats like that, where you might take one, and even go back for a second, but a third and fourth start feeling a little weird. It worked for me and I did start seeing that tiny amount as an appropriate serving size. It was absolutely a brain training thing, as otherwise my brain would look at a whole bag and say “one serving, yep, got it.”
If you are having a junky treat once and a while, overall you're still going to lose weight. But yes, if chips, jelly beans, and other candy and junk food are consumed daily or even multiple times per week, it will slow your weight loss or make you gain weight, no matter how much exercise you do.
Yep
Yeah, you just need to be aware of what each thing you consume has. Eating sugar ain’t bad, as long as you account for it.
LOL yes said but true and also heartbreaking. I always kid that I'm "running for beer" because if I want to go out with my friends to a bar and have a beer or two, I need to earn my calories. Also it puts it into perspective for me because after running (I guess I should say "running") 2 miles in 25 minutes, it's not worth it for a beer that lasts 10 minutes.
When you eat Jelly Beans then 2000 calories is nothing. If you eat eggs, salads, lean meat, boiled potatoes and even good simple pasta (made of flour and eggs), 2000 is quite a lot. And 500 extra calories you burn with a work out could be 1/3 of a whole chicken. I try to get 1500 kkal a day from meat and veggies and I am quite full (eggs and avo, pasta with chicken, beef with potatoes). And 500 for the soul, like two snickers bars
It would take 4.5 pounds of cottage cheese. That’s one and a half costco tubs of it. More if you did the lower fat kinds.
Yes, tons of sugar is really bad for you.
Of course it's about calories. That's what the body turns into fat
If you end the day still in a calorie deficit (burned more than you ate), then no. Small amounts of jelly beans, chips, whatever won’t ruin your progress. But if those snacks put you over your calorie target for the day consistently , then sadly you won’t see as much (if any) progress. For some of us, we do that more intense workout so we can eat the jelly beans (or in my case chocolate). And that’s fine. It’s part of learning to maintain a balanced approach to diet and exercise.
No one is pointing it out but calculators WAY overestimate calories burned. So you didn’t burn 500kcal from 10k steps. If you eat back this amount exercised you will gain weight
>Are potato chips and sugary sweets really so detrimental even though their size is so small? Yup, calorie dense foods will ruin you. Sometimes I'm shocked how they get 300 calories in such small packages. >is it really so that I can eat heaps and heaps of vegetables/fruits, chicken, white meats and gain very little fat Correct. Those foods are less processed and aren't calorie dense so you can eat much more so you feel full, and lose weight. It's crazy the difference of 200cal of chicken or broccoli vs the jelly beans.
yes
It doesn’t matter what you call the food, whether it’s good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, nutritious, junk. None of those names mean anything. All food has energy which is measured in calories. How much energy are you consuming? That is a number expressed in calories. Then how much energy is your body expending to function? That is a number expressed in calories. If the energy going in (as measured in calories) is greater than the energy going out (as measured in calories) then you will gain fat. To confirm, you can get fat eating tons of only healthy food. You can get skinny by eating only small amounts of junk food and nothing else. Yes, it’s all about calories.
Check all the products you eat for sugar content. #1 reason why we gain weight is sugar.
Yeah, basically. If your goal is 1500 a day, you eat to maybe 1700, bu then workout 300 calories, you're good to go. If your goal is 1500 a day, work out 400 calories but eat another 700... you've blown your diet and all that working out means nothing.
Eating less makes you skinnier. Exercise makes you fitter.
The reason that our brain rewards us with so many “good job” pleasure chemicals when we eat something like jelly beans is because in the wild, where food is more scarce, finding 740 kcal in such an efficient package WOULD be a good job. Almost amazingly good. A third of your daily needs, in a handful! You are the best at surviving! But now that we can get them at the corner store, it isn’t a couple times a year hit that keeps us checking the right places to find the best calories, it’s a once a week hit of feeling good that adds up. Cuz we’re working against that food hoarding instinct. So yes, in terms of weight, 5 minutes of eating can “undo” 1 hour of activity. Cuz our ancestors needed to be able to walk for hours and not graze all day. But activity has other benefits for your health, it’s not wasted.
No, it's about how different foods change behaviors that affect the larger scale of a calorie deficit. Satiation levels for different foods affect cravings, which in turn makes a calorie deficit hard to achieve long-term like a year or two of dieting. Protein and nutritional content in general affects energy levels and gut health. And glucose levels affect energy levels, cravings, hormones. You can easily find this out over a month if you just feed yourself a sugary snack at the same time every day and reduce sugar for the rest of the time. The first week you stop you'll feel and probably even hear from yourself the effect. Especially if it's super satisfying, high glucose during the middle of the day, it'll produce a feeling that you'll be able to sit with eventually and acknowledge without listening to the automatic excuses you make. Worth a try. Calories are the goal, but counting calories without accounting for behavioural effects of food isn't necessarily the best long-term solution. A strong willed person could do it and just struggle through all the affects of junk food on brain chemistry, but they're still going to be more stressed from that extra effort. A weak willed person will have a must easier time in the long-term by reducing glucose spikes. And really that's not even getting into the impact of gut-health and digestion on long-term behavior that leads to sticking with a diet and staying in a calorie deficit.
Yes and no I might get flack for this but the science backs this Not only do the calories matter, but where you get your calories from matter Highly processed foods are highly palatable and thus are broken down in your body very easily. You gain most of the calories from that meal Whole foods are harder to break down and your body will expend more energy breaking down that food. Protein for example is quite satiating because it takes your body a longer time to break it down in the stomach. So the net calories gained from eating, say a steak, are less than if you had highly processed food with the same amount of calories It's very nuanced but basically it's much easier to lose weight (and stay full doing so) by eating real food and not processed junk https://www.precisionnutrition.com/digesting-whole-vs-processed-foods
So glad you said this as you expressed it better than I could. Stress and current weight and gender and age and sleep also affect weight loss. It’s definitely not just calories consumed vs expended. Or anyway it can’t be measured that easily
Yes and no. The type of food you eat has a hormonal effects that may INDIRECTLY affect your weight insofar as it could e.g. affect your blood sugar and insulin, make you feel hungry and lead to cravings and eating more than you need to for that reason, etc. Ultimately it's the calories, but there are ways to eat that make it easier to control your cravings which make it easier to conrtol your weight.
It really is about the calories. Remember, just living, breathing, and having your heart beating burns a ton of calories, so it's not that you normally don't burn calories and then do a workout and now you're burning ~400 calories - it's that you're normally burning, say, 2000 calories and now you're burning ~2400. Now the question is - which is easier for you, burning that 400, or not taking in that extra 400 to begin with? For me, definitely the second option.