> The entire experience made me feel like the fitness industry is bordering on fraud with the promises.
The fitness industry is very broad and is by no means just about weight loss. There's a large amount of people who are a normal weight, but not "fit" (ie. skinny fat).
It has been established for a long time that weight is generally diet based ("abs are made in the kitchen" etc), and every diet under the sun is some variation of CICO. Nobody is hiding it, nor is it a secret. It's just hard, and it takes work.
That said, exercise can boost weight loss. If you run 5 miles, you burn 500-ish extra calories which can be used to eat more or accelerate weight loss. I burn around 1500-2000 extra calories a day as a semi-professional athlete (3/4 hours per day).
Having lost a similar amount of weight (12kg) in a similar timeframe (2-3 months) last year, it's important to realise that a big portion of the initial weight loss upon a sudden diet change is water weight. You're probably eating less salt, which means your body isn't retaining as much water (which is very heavy in the body). It's important to keep doing something (like your resistance training) so your body doesn't burn off muscle mass as well, and it's important to ensure that the diet is sustainable, and as a side note, at some point weight loss will hit a slowdown or plateau somewhere above your target weight. Keep at it!
A lot of people lose a lot of weight, then go back to their former habits and put it all back on, plus extra. You have to be careful and make sure the changes you make are sustainable. Unless you're a very heavy weight, it's better to steadily lose weight than lose it very quickly, as this makes it more sustainable.
Exercise can make weight loss more sustainable because it can give you different goals that take your mind off of the number on the scales. For example, if you take up running and work up to 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathons, and improving your own time, you can stay slim without really thinking about it, and reap the benefits of better cardiovascular health and a stronger body.
I'm surprised your doctor/nutritionist expresses shock at the weight loss. If they have a rough idea of what you eat, they shouldn't be shocked. I'd advise finding another.
All that said, great job on the weight loss so far! What's your end goal if you don't mind me asking?
Yes, my bad. I described the fitness industry with too broad terms but implicitly I was referring to weight loss promoting workouts. A lot of them promise unrealistic effects unless you commit to becoming an athlete and working out 6 to 8 hours a day. The modern food technology has gotten so good the processed foods pack extremely high density of calories into very small volumes. It’s not uncommon to have a dinner with 3000-4000 calories without even realizing it. Grab an 800 calories smoothie after a workout, a burger for dinner, you’re well on your way already.
As for water and salt, I’m supplementing salt and drinking about 4-5 times more water than I used to. I used to live on coffee and tea. No actual pure water. I don’t know if that’s more or less salt than before but I’m drinking waaaay more water than I used to. This seems to help digestion and with metabolic processes.
My goal was to address my health comprehensively and eliminate feeling like crap and chronic low key inflammation of the whole body.
According to the WHO, there is no level of alcohol consumption that is good for the health.
OP sounds like he doesn't get anything out of drinking anymore, so I guess he doesn't even want to crack open a bottle for special occasions. He's realised he only lives once, so he kicked the booze.
As somebody who's never drunk, the only thing I think I've ever missed out on is the social lubrication element, but that just made me find people who are more like-minded.
I'm not sure how it's counted (whether it includes forcibly migrated), but according to Statista, Russia currently holds the majority of non-internal Ukrainian refugees.
The lifting heavy weights just ensures you retain muscle during weight loss, doesn't it?
While weight loss is mostly diet, if you did want to use exercise to burn additional calories, cardio would do more than weight training. I burn up to 1000 calories in an hour of very strenuous cycling (from normal weight), which I doubt I could ever do lifting dumbbells and barbells.
I've always used weight training during weight loss to try and tell my body to retain muscle and target fat primarily.
In order to retain lean muscle mass while losing weight you also have to maintain a high protein intake, something like 2 grams per kilogram of lean body weight. This can be challenging while eating at a calorie deficit: after you consume the necessary protein you might not have much room in your diet for other macronutrients.
Where I live in Northern England, buses are (amongst other reasons) mostly hampered in their reliability by delays and cancellations caused by sharing roads congested with cars.
Here there's an almost palpable attitude of disgust towards using the bus. Almost a me versus the plebs attitude. The car represents the people's private island.
It would be slightly improved if people moved from tank-like SUVs to smaller cars, even better improved by embracing 1/2 seat cars (which will never happen because the design isn't conformist, see the Smart Car), and most improved by people putting their ego aside and taking the bus.
For a country hitting 2/3 of adults being overweight and obese, it may be a perk that public transport doesn't provide A-to-B delivery and instead people get a 5 minute walk somewhere in their day.
Instead it looks like self-driving cars will win out due to people's behaviour.
In London, which is a much denser city that any in Northern England, that attitude to buses and public transport is not shared. We have had a lot more sustained investment into reliable and affordable public transport.
The lack of comparable investment in northern cities is of course not really the fault of the cities in question (London centric institutions, political culture, and voting base power).
In London I personally always try and cycle beucase I know that any bus I get is likely going to be slower because they are continually stuck in car traffic. Especially during rush hours.
Annoyingly, the time when I would like to get public transport most is when it rains. And this is also when the public transport becomes slowest and least reliable.
Your remark on buses being hampered by sharing the road with cars is on point.
I've lived in Porto, and Malmö. Both have done considerable efforts in making certain roads or lanes exclusive to public transportation.
In Porto, for example, these lanes are exclusive to a very interesting set of vehicles: buses, taxis, and motorcycles. It makes a lot of sense, this way you make riding a motorcycle safer (less vehicles), while preventing bus lanes from blocking all other manners of transport.
> For a country hitting 2/3 of adults being overweight and obese, it may be a perk that public transport doesn't provide A-to-B delivery and instead people get a 5 minute walk somewhere in their day.
5 minute? It’s 4 miles to the nearest Caltrain stop from where I live.
The state of bus services in York is pretty terrible. Traffic (journey times) is one reason, but frequency is the main problem. We’ve got these huge vehicles turning up at most very 45 minutes (even in rush hour) because, I’m guessing, the cost of the driver prohibits more frequent services.
I can’t park my car near my office in town, it’s just too expensive. I mostly cycle the 8km trip, except when the weather is awful.
I’m hoping what we actually get are self driving, smaller, more frequent busses !
Of course, because in your personal car you have your own A/C, music, comfort, privacy, and agency. A bus really needs its own lane instead of being stuck in traffic with all the other schmucks who refuse to take it, but few US cities have the balls to do it.
In my car I have a comfy seat and can control my environment (noise, temperature etc.) and whom I share the space with. On the bus I'm often standing and crammed in between dozens of other people. Also the really big problem isn't being stuck in traffic on the bus, but being stuck standing in the cold at the bus stop waiting for the bus that is stuck in traffic or cancelled.
The solution I see working (I live it) is separate bus lanes and regular commuter trains. Because I can work just fine (laptop and phone) sitting in that seat, what I cannot do in my car regardless of the noise/temperature/mates. But yes, I know people who drive to work because they enjoy driving. I instead enjoy my time gains (working while commuting is a significant time gain).
Because I can work just fine (laptop and phone) sitting in that seat
I've been commuting to school or work by public transport since I was 16 and in 4 different European cities. Getting any seat is uncommon, let alone one where pulling out a laptop and getting work done was even an option. The only public transport option where I can conceivably see getting work done are the intercity trains, and then only if you get on at one of the very early stops before the train fills up.
Personally, 'can I get to the office by foot or bike' is one of the most important questions I ask myself when looking for a new job (or house). Commuting by car and public transport are both suboptimal.
A bus is already slower than my car because of the need to stop to let others on. Plus a bus is much less likely to take a direct route to where I want to be thus requiring me to go someplace I don't want to go just to transfer to a different bus to get there. Finally when I drive i often am on faster roads that a bus wouldn't be on because there is nobody else to pick up (unless I transferred to an express bus)
Most people, throughout history have had a fixed time budget to get to work. They move if the trip takes more than half an hour. They will not take jobs (or will move) if it is farther away. We see this across civilizations, from hunter gathers following herds to modern people. There are exceptions but they are exceptions.
It's not people's behaviour. It's the state of public transport. Lots of delays, dirty seats, crowded spaces, weird smells, hard noises, jerky movements etc etc etc.
I'd be okay if the state would ban cars, and put all that money into extremely well thought out public transport. But that won't happen.
Privacy nuts are always going overboard about things that mean very little.
Genetic data sounds important but in the bigger scheme of things, it's probably the least manipulatable data about a person on the internet.
My genetic data is less weaponizable than if I uploaded hundreds of pictures of myself and my shared my social graph to Facebook, if I shared my political opinions on Twitter, if I commented/posted on Reddit boards of my interests and hobbies. It's also less weaponizable than the multitude of "invisible" data that I feed to Google, my incompetent local government, service providers, every shop that is shipping something to my home address.
I lose genetic data everywhere I go, every day.
50-100 hairs fall of my head, and I leave fingerprints on everything I touch. I "lose privacy" every day by walking into somebody else's photo/video/TikTok, and by mishandling of it by poor government/business entities.
Okay got it, so it's not like hiking is more in a hilly area (but I would guess more probably because it's more serious) or something. I also wondered if when you use walking you wouldn't use hiking. Thanks!
> somebody choosing to smoke/chew/dip tobacco which may eventually cause them serious health conditions and death
In a crowded street, somebody's choice to smoke tobacco isn't just causing them serious health conditions.
I don't advocate banning smoking (Brits seem to love banning things they disagree with). I'm fine with people smoking so long as they do it in an isolated area where it's just harming them. It would be better if they didn't (especially to ease the burden on the healthcare system and spending), but that's their prerogative. I'm just as much an NHS burden if I break my leg doing sport.
The fitness industry is very broad and is by no means just about weight loss. There's a large amount of people who are a normal weight, but not "fit" (ie. skinny fat).
It has been established for a long time that weight is generally diet based ("abs are made in the kitchen" etc), and every diet under the sun is some variation of CICO. Nobody is hiding it, nor is it a secret. It's just hard, and it takes work.
That said, exercise can boost weight loss. If you run 5 miles, you burn 500-ish extra calories which can be used to eat more or accelerate weight loss. I burn around 1500-2000 extra calories a day as a semi-professional athlete (3/4 hours per day).
Having lost a similar amount of weight (12kg) in a similar timeframe (2-3 months) last year, it's important to realise that a big portion of the initial weight loss upon a sudden diet change is water weight. You're probably eating less salt, which means your body isn't retaining as much water (which is very heavy in the body). It's important to keep doing something (like your resistance training) so your body doesn't burn off muscle mass as well, and it's important to ensure that the diet is sustainable, and as a side note, at some point weight loss will hit a slowdown or plateau somewhere above your target weight. Keep at it!
A lot of people lose a lot of weight, then go back to their former habits and put it all back on, plus extra. You have to be careful and make sure the changes you make are sustainable. Unless you're a very heavy weight, it's better to steadily lose weight than lose it very quickly, as this makes it more sustainable.
Exercise can make weight loss more sustainable because it can give you different goals that take your mind off of the number on the scales. For example, if you take up running and work up to 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathons, and improving your own time, you can stay slim without really thinking about it, and reap the benefits of better cardiovascular health and a stronger body.
I'm surprised your doctor/nutritionist expresses shock at the weight loss. If they have a rough idea of what you eat, they shouldn't be shocked. I'd advise finding another.
All that said, great job on the weight loss so far! What's your end goal if you don't mind me asking?