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[Nullsrc]

As far as eating, I know someone who accomplished something around 20 kilos of loss by entirely adjusting where she ate and how much she exercised. The former is the most interesting, as she cut way back on how much she bought fast food/ate out in general. By prepping meals at home, you have a lot more control over what you eat - if what she did works for you (it might not; this is a very granular thing to do mass speculation on) you might not even have to change much of what you eat. She still eats things like bacon, eggs, and coffee for breakfast and cooks things like hamburgers and pork chops for dinner, albeit with plenty of other things in there to eat, such as salads and pastas and whatnot.

It is critical to note, however, that exercise is vitally important to the whole thing, and that just trying to lose the weight isn't going to change anything in the long term. As stressed by others, it's a lifestyle change.

Completely unrelated: The topic title is making my inner grammar nazi happy, just because it's funny to imagine.

[Flying Dice]

What others have said about kicking soda to the curb. I didn't exactly have weight to lose when I stopped drinking it, but I felt better in a really visceral way. That, and replacing it with water helps digestion.

If you've got simple ways to introduce more physical activity into your daily routine, make use of those. If you can walk to work in <30 minutes, walk instead of driving. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Stuff like that. It won't get you ripped in the way that daily manual labor or gym visits will, but it'll help take the edge off.

But yeah. Problem is, if you can't overpower your own weak will, you're not going to get very far regardless of what you try. Step one is always going to be training yourself to deny backsliding impulses. Step two is figuring out food that's both relatively healthful and enjoyable to eat--salads in particular are a thing where the proper touch makes all the difference, though the same applies to some degree to everything. A bowl of iceberg lettuce with big chunks of tomato and ranch dressing or whatever is gross; a bowl of dark greens with little cherry tomatoes, good olives, olive oil-based dressing, raw mushrooms, turnip slices, a little bit of walnut/tuna/hard-boiled egg is delicious.

Basically:
1. Stop allowing yourself to give up.
2. Figure out how to make it a new, enjoyable reality rather than something horrible you're forcing yourself through.

It's entirely about mindset and willpower (barring medical conditions); once you've convinced yourself that living healthily is what you actually want everything else falls into place neatly as long as you have or know how to find knowledge about exercise, diet, &c.

[Bumber]

What I really want is a bicycle machine hooked up to an electrical generator. Something I could recharge electronics or a large battery with. Maybe one day.

[Reelya]

A simple one: stand up while watching a movie instead of slouching in a chair or bed. There's a free calorie burn right there.

[Shadowlord]

Your maths is correct, except your idea about how much calories you can burn with any reasonable exercise routine is way off.

I picked rope jumping (1074 calories for 200 pound people, see the second page of what I linked), and rounded down to keep it simple. (The calories burned are more for heavier people and less for lighter people for probably obvious reasons)

But the point was to show that even if you were able to do a really intense workout for as many hours a week as LB suggested, you still can't eat all the ice cream and expect no consequences.

[Flying Dice]

Yep, weight's far from the sole indicator of health. All sorts of different factors can do you in, which is part of why it's better to take a shotgun approach and deal with as many health issues as possible rather than >just< trying to burn calories. Won't do you any good if you still die in your '50s because you kept a vice that didn't contribute much to fat. Hell, meth is pretty much the ultimate weight loss tool, but you don't see people using it as a dietary supplement. Except in the sense 'round places like this where for some folks it's part of a balanced breakfast, dinner, teatime, supper, and midnight snack.

[Lich180]

Have you considered an all natural, plant based diet?
https://www.drmcdougall.com
This website is totally free. All the information about the life style changes, food, recipes, and more. I have several family members who are followers of this diet, and I can tell from their experience (and mine) that this is one of the best, of if not THE best way to go.

Dr. McDougall has about 40 years experience and research behind his diet plans. It's a lot to go into in a simple forum post, so I encourage you to go check out the site.

I've been working on starting this myself, and the last month or so I can already tell a difference between then and now. I recommend checking out the free Color Picture Book to give yourself a general overview of it.

[scrdest]

The big problem with 'just do this exercise and burn ALL THE CALORIES' approach is that it's not really viable on its own. A calorie is a unit of energy. You need to get that energy from somewhere, like fat. But fat is a long-term storage tissue, it's not meant for here and now - you can only exercise so much before your muscles decide 'fuck this, we're out for dinner'. People like long-distance runners are adapted for that, but someone who just starts exercising to slim down isn't.

This is not just theory - try burning just 250 kcal on a stationary bicycle in half an hour - exactly the half of Shadowlord proposes when converted to per hour - and tell me you can keep going at the same rate for the other half.

Exercise is good for another reason, in my experience - you start planning meals a bit more, watching what you eat so you don't waste your time, and disciplining yourself to stick to it. And that's the big part of it, because if you keep a positive net energy balance (i.e. in this case eat more than your baseline body expenditure + muscle maintenance/growth from the exercise expenditure) then you still will not lose weight.

I have been losing weight for half a year now (to the point where I have downgraded from an L size belt to an M-sized one - and I had to punch new holes in it this week), ironically, after I *stopped* exercising, mostly because I just plain don't eat nearly as much - I've recalibrated my appetite, I quit minor indulgences like some plain whole-wheat cookies every now and then and incorporated more protein into my diet. Although, considering my age, it might partially be hormonal as well, so bear that in mind.

[Reelya]

Also, if you push your muscles really hard for a long time (which bodybuilders do not actually recommend), it needs to get immediate energy from somewhere, and that place is not fat - is by breaking down the muscle tissue itself. So you will lose weight this way, but it will mostly be from muscle tissue, and reduced muscle tissue means reduced sedentary calorie burn. That's also what they seem to mean by your body entering "starvation mode". If you eat too little then your body switches from fat burning to protein burning in order to reduce your future energy needs: you end up eating your own muscles faster than you eat your fat stores.

This is another reasons crash diets do not work. If you overtrain and starve yourself, you will burn off muscle mass and think "great I lost weight". But when you eat properly again, the body really wants to rebuild your lean body mass: so it starts rebuilding the damaged/famished muscle tissues, and people interpret this as "gaining weight" (the "bounce"). This is why it's important to train a sensible amount, and to first stabilize your diet, then cut out the right amount of calories from the diet so that you lose e.g. 0.5kg per week. At this rate it will mostly be bodyfat being burnt and it will be more sustainable.