Newmark's Door

I was pleased to read this because the research summarized is consistent with my experience: if you want to lose weight, or maintain a desirable weight, you shouldn't pay attention to whether foods are "ultra-processed" or not. Focus your attention on calories. (That is assuming you don't want to use drugs or have surgery.)

When I decided I really had to lose weight, I read a fair amount about diet and weight loss. There was--and is--a large amount of questionable research and a large number of contradictions and disagreements. The one thing that commanded nearly universal agreement was simple: to lose weight you must consistently, over a fairly long amount of time, consume fewer calories than you burn. So my approach was to first, determine my goal weight. You could use the government's guidelines, the last weight you were happy with, or, maybe, your weight at 18. Then second, figure how many calories per day you will burn at that weight. That's in two parts. Determine your basal metabolic rate, roughly how many calories you'd burn if you slept 24 hours a day. There are formulas for this; a page showing one is here. Then you have to add in the calories you burn in your daily activities. There are some sites that will that estimate that crudely but I suggest using a site that gives you a finer breakdown of your day. (I thought even reading and watching TV while obviously not burning as much as exercise still had to burn more than sleeping and it could add up.) Some possibilities: this site in combination with this one; this site; or this site.

There are just three more steps. One is you have to disregard at least one study that I looked at that claimed if you've been fat for a while once you lose the weight your metabolism will still run slower than people who've been at that weight most of their adult lives. I don't know if that's true and if it is how much that would mess up the computation described above but I chose to simply ignore it. Second, you have to count your calories. (There is software and nowadays, web sites, that will make recording and computing calories consumed easier.) And last, as noted, you must keep the calories consumed below the amount you burn. Which of course is virtually the whole trick.

But I think I have an important observation about that: there are many approaches and absolutely no one knows which approach will be best for you to try. (Increase protein? Maybe. Substitute "good" fats for carbs? Maybe. Etc.) An example from my experience: a number of books and credentialed experts recommend replacing three meals a day with five or six mini-meals. One expert summed up this approach by stating "As long as you're awake it shouldn't be more than three hours since you last had something to eat." I tried that and gave it up after two weeks. It was a terrible fit for me. Just when I was really enjoying my food I had to stop eating. I've gone the opposite way: I typically eat all my day's food in the morning, usually in two or three hours. (AKA "intermittent fasting".) When I started I thought, "This is crazy. I'll be starving by late afternoon." But I wasn't.

A final thought. When I started, professionals in the weight-loss field declared attempted weight loss successful if a person lost 10% of his initial body weight and maintained that loss for five years. By that standard the overwhelming majority of attempts fail. I've seen estimates that the best weight loss programs in the world--Duke's, for example-- obtain a success rate of only about 10%. So while it may not be a lot of consolation, if you don't lose the weight you want you have lots of company. (Another thing that helped me: after I left my parents' house I went nearly 40 years avoiding vegetables. There is a lot of agreement that that is undesirable. But I read some famous cook who stated, "Show me somebody who says he doesn't like vegetables and I'll show you someone who hasn't them prepared well." Add heat--roast them--add fats--butter or olive oil, for examples--or add spices. Or more than one. I eat more vegetables now.)