I'm not going to say anything anyone wants to do is wrong. Everyone needs to do what works for them. So the following is what has been working for me. It might sound preachy, but it's not meant to be. This is not a religion and everyone needs to find their own path.
Next to What you eat, How often you eat is far more important that how much you eat.
Yes, definitely. I didn't mean to come across as dictatorial.
I did a ton of reading since the time of the old ketosis thread, and what I learned then and have had driven home to me by recent research and my own experience is that hormones do drive the entire body, including fat storage and burning. If you accept this, then you will see why counting calories doesn't work very well.
We all learned in grade school that the body stores fat to stay nourished when food isn't available, and the body will use this fat when no food is available. The hormone that decides when the body stores fat and when it uses fat is insulin. This process worked to perfection for millennia...until agriculture. Before that point, life was basically feast or famine, so it was easy for insulin to judge: is there food coming into the stomach? If so, then it's time to store fat, and the mechanism to burn body fat was shut off, and the mechanism to store fat was turned on. If the body went 12 to 24 hours (research generally showed the switch point to abut 16 - 18 hours) without eating, then insulin flipped the switches.
The problem with that system is that we now have food available all the time. We rarely hit the point anymore where we regularly don't eat for 16+ hours.
What worked for me over the last 3-4 years is that I went on-and-off of a system of only eating for 4 to 8 hours a day. I brought my weight from the 280's down to the 250's. But I couldn't maintain it and kept falling off the diet, and the weight crept up to a high point of 295. I did NOT want to hit 300, and got very strict with what I ate and when I ate. I found that how much I ate was nearly irrelevant as long as I ate whole foods (not starchy foods like underground veggies) went 20 hours every day without eating. Also, no sugary foods, (including assumed-to-be-healthy foods like honey and most fruits). Two meals a day making sure I finished the second meal no more that four hours after I
started the first meal.
I got down into the high 220's and again went back to my old eating patterns. I eat better now but my weight has been creeping up so that this morning I was 262. But I finally figured out the problem. I was giving up something I wanted (bread, most fruit, starchy veggies), and I would 'reward' myself with an occasional pizza or ice cream cone so I always felt deprive and retained the desire to eat the wrong kind of food.
When I quit smoking in 1981 and quit drinking in 1989, it wasn't this way. I simply became (after a couple of years each time) a person who didn't smoke and didn't drink. Regarding food, I am still a person who would enjoy spaghetti and garlic toast, but I can't eat it because I need to lose weight.
What I need to be is a person who doesn't eat crap. I'm not sure I can do it, but I better decide soon, as I'm about to leave soon for 5 weeks of traveling with no kitchen facilities. 5 weeks of restaurant food. I know I can avoid coming home at 300+ pounds, but I don't want to gain anything.
I know what will work for me, Whether or not it works for you depends on whatever.
Oh, and I believe that while losing weight and getting fit are related and both are good for you, I think the processes aren't the same and care must be taken not to ruin one while focusing on the other. (But I still believe I can't outrun your fork. I ran 40-50 miles a week for several years in the 70's and early 80's proving that to myself.)
www.bowflex.com
