Eat less, move more did it work for you and if so did the weight stay off and what was your BMI to start with?

[Disfordiet]

Sorry for the long title!
My BMI was around 26 and is now 22. I think I started around September time but with a break over Christmas. Slow and steady weight loss by eating less, moving more. I try not to eat after 6pm but I don't always stick to that. I eat 3 meals a day, and eat snacks if I fancy them which is always.

I know many say that eat less move more doesn't work but it is doing for me. My BMI wasn't very high though and I wonder if the simple theory works ok for those who are overweight rather than obese. Perhaps the closer someone is to normal weight the easier it is. There is of course the theory of insulin resistance but that isn't the case for me. My bloods are normal and my cholesterol is low.

Weight loss fascinates me as does the whole cultural aspect of food which is why I got to wondering but in particular reading about ozempic has got me wondering why some approaches work for some but not for others.

Not getting to be overweight in the first place would be best of course but food is such as integral point of life and chocolate is so nice!

I want to say yes to both, but with caveats.

I lost six stone, but also gained a significant amount of muscle mass. So I was spot on for health for about a year, except for weight, because I had a lot of muscle.

Unfortunately, I then contracted Long Covid. Which gave me absolutely dire sugar cravings, and destroyed my physical activity levels for about 18m.

So I've regained weight, and my BMI is back to my start point - however, I have retained the muscle mass through careful support. So my BMI is the same as what it was, but my health and shape are dramatically different. Bra size 4" smaller, ring and waist smaller, blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol etc all healthy levels.

Although I regained some of the FAT, I didn't lose as much of the health I gained.

@Maraschina the internet is literally bursting with research detailing weight gain due to increasing insulin. Research done on rats. Done on people with diabetes. Done on healthy people. Not mumbo jumbo articles written by Australian influencers but medical journals and medical providers such as the NHS. So many that I am not even going to bother linking.

He has already been debunked. Like Trump, Joe Rogan, or ... All are full of shit, but this doesn't prevent people from hailing them as heroes.

There is a very interesting book to read , Burn, by Herman Pontzer. It focuses on the "calories out" part . Also extremely pleasant to read.

Please do link

@Maraschina

Random articles pulled out of thousands. Beyond this, I'm not responding. I'm not doing your homework

www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/tips-for-managing-insulin-weight-gain

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17924864/

endocrinenews.endocrine.org/making-gains-does-insulin-drive-obesity/

I am not a medical person but beleieve in the theory that eating too amnyncarbs causes a spike in insulin production so you are then hungry for more carbs. I also think cutting right down on bread helps weight loss.

I would add that my six stone loss involved switching up tactics on a roughly quarterly basis. There was one point were I was doing five workouts a week with a net deficit of 500 a day.

I plateaued, and switched to three workouts and a 400 deficit, and started losing again.

Eating low carb helped me lose 4 stone...

... But that was because it was over eating carby food - toast, crisps, chips, etc. that made me fat anyway. I could sit and munch my way through a 150g bag of kettle chips without even knowing I was doing it. Funnily enough when I stopped doing that I lost weight

You haven't read your links.
Insulin resistance is blocking glucose to enter the cells. If you take insulin, it will unlock the cells and allow glucose to enter.
This are two different processes.
I am saying that insulin resistance is not making you less able to lose weight.
The OP was talking about insulin resistance being the cause and continuation of obesity.
I replied , insulin resistance is not the cause. You lose more weight when you are insulin resistance.
If you leave the front door open and a constant flow of food can come in, you won't lose weight.
You are talking apples, I am talking pears.

How old are you? I used to be able to lose weight by cutting out biscuits and wine and making sure I walked every day. Now I am in my 40s it is much harder to lose weight.

There was a really good podcast on this topic: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-economist-podcasts/id151230264?i=1000604360372

I did lose weight through walking 30 miles per weekend, I wasn’t trying to lose weight, so it is possible. But It’s not helpful to repeat this mantra of eat less, move more because, while it might be true, people are hard-wired to seek out calories and build up stores. It’s not a moral failing either.

I have PCOS which is linked to insulin resistance. My gynae told me I'd likely gain weight easily and find it difficult to shift. He also said I'd need help to conceive if/when I wanted to start a family.

Neither were true for me.

I've gained and lost weight over the years. The weight gain was down to poor eating habits and sedentary. The losses were due to diet and exercise.

I've lost a lot of weight on keto in a short space of time but gained it back again (and some). Low GI diet worked best for me. Took a few months but I lost 2.5 stone and never gained more than a 10lbs back.

Slow and steady is most effective long term in my experience.

@GlasgowGal82 I'm 46 and have been perimenopausal for at least 5 years.

Fabulous achievement OP!! I once went down from a BMI of 36 to 28 in 6 months. Was really chuffed 💪

There's an an extremely dangerous eating disorder called diabulimia, where type 1 diabetics will deliberately take less insulin than they need for what they've eaten, in order to lose weight.

I've stopped snacking and try to have lower cal meals . I am quite active, I've lost 12pb since January. So roughly a lb a week. I've had a few drinks/treats some weekends .

I think saying eat less and move more is a bit like telling someone in debt to spend less and earn more. Yes, that is basically what it boils down to, but it's a lot easier said than done, so for many people, there are certain techniques or methods that make it easier for them to manage that.

For me, I have ADHD, so I struggle with disorganised eating and I gained a lot of weight from snacking too much. I find that trying to focus on eating 3 healthy meals a day is the best approach for me. I try to eat plenty of vegetables and I do allow myself desert or a snack ONCE a day. It cannot be more than that though because I just start binging.

On the US TV show Survivor, pretty much everyone loses weight on a diet of just white rice and whatever they can scavenge or win. The bigger people tend to lose more weight, the really slim contestants lose very little.

Also, if have something like porridge and fruit for breakfast, I tend not to think about food until lunchtime, but if I eat toast for breakfast, I do find myself wanting to snack. So, I do think the types of foods we eat does make a difference. It's a combination of physical and psychological factors.

It really is about less calories in than out but for people to consistently reach this state is the complex part because a lot of it is psychological. I truly believe obesity is a side effect of something else going on. Treat or manage it and then it should be easy to eat less and move more consistently and long enough to lose the weight and keep it off.

I've done keto where I didn't lose weight because my calories were too high and been on rubbish but lost weight because I was hardly eating.

I hate the option to copy the full OP and then reply a couple of sentences, why on earth did they bring that in. It's easier to @ the person surely.
Anyway rant over surely all diets are a combination of eat less move more however they are dressed up? I have had success with the 5:2 way of eating and moderate extra exercise.
I chose this because I am late 40's and want something I can live with longer term that isn't every day, so I do the 500/600 for 2 or 3 days and eat normally but not crazy the other days.
Dr says I am pre diabetic too so hoping to lose enough to drop into the not diabetic range.

I don’t know anything about insulin/diabetes but I do believe that eating less and moving more is the key to weight loss.

I’m almost two weeks into using Exante meal replacements on a 1200 daily calorie plan and so far I’ve lost 11lbs. I have a replacement meal for breakfast and lunch and a healthy dinner no more than 600 calories. Snack wise I’ll have something around 100-150cals and I’m taking care not to drink my calories like I was doing before.

I do over 150 minutes of exercise a week (school run mostly) and am feeling all the better for it. I’m still overweight for my height but my BMI has come down. I was just over 29 and have come down to just over 27.

My goal weight is at the top end of the range for healthy BMI - about 9st 6lbs. Once I reach it I’ll probably go to 1500 cals a day and see how that goes, possibly keeping a replacement meal once a day and eating sensibly for lunch and dinner.

I have read that adding in plenty of plants to your diet helps (Zoe research).

My understanding of the blood glucose issue is that as people get older they tend to lose muscle and become less active. This means they don't use (or store as glycogen) as much sugar in their muscles, so blood sugar can get out of control more quickly, particularly if they eat lots of readily available processed carbs. If blood sugar rises too much, insulin cuts in and stores the glucose as fat, which is absolutely the job of insulin but becomes problematic if we keep giving our bodies more blood sugar than our muscles can use or store, and then don't use the resultant fat either. It can also cause problems if a spike is followed by a crash which triggers hunger and cravings which set up a vicious cycle.

Exercise (and to a lesser extent post exercise afterburn) flattens blood sugar spikes very effectively without increasing fat stores. I think moving more and trying to slow muscle loss can make a big difference. The sort of food you eat also affects how quickly the sugar gets into your blood - some calories are much more easily and rapidly absorbed by the body than others.

So I'd say insulin is more like a doorbell that rings when we have a big delivery of unhealthier food we don't need and doesn't need to ring (or at least not as loudly) when we're getting carbs at a rate our bodies can manage.

Eat less move more has always worked for me; but I get better results with some types of eating less and different types of movement than I do others. If I low carb low calorie and lift weights it comes off more quickly than when I’m just doing low calorie but eating all sorts and doing cardio.

As you eat less calories you initially lose weight, but your body adjusts to running on less calories. Hence, you need to lower your calories more to continue to lose weight and the cycle continues. Check out the biggest loser study