this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts
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All diets offer the same thing: less calories in than you burn.
There's no secret sauce here...it's just about finding ways you can change your lifestyle to reduce calories in.
Exercise is good for you for many reasons, but you can't outrun the spoon. The effort required to burn 1000 calories is significantly higher than the effort required to not eat the 1000 calories.
The thing that worked for me was tracking my calories every day. Didn't aim to change what I ate...but when I saw the realities of the calories rich food I was eating I made simple choices to switch it out for low calories. Fibre and Protein are your friend in this fight.
All diets do ensure you eat no more than you need. Some of us can't just eat less, and need to switch to the two macro nutrients that we have limits on. You can overeat protein, but it's hard and doesn't taste good after you've had enough, and it will be balanced by your eating less the next day. You simply can't eat more fat than you need, it will make you sick if you overeat by a lot, but overeat fat at all and you will excrete the excess
There is no limit but the size of your stomach and the hours in the day for carbohydrates
So it's easy to do no more calories than you need on low carb
I think you've got some things twisted here, you certainly can eat more than you burn.
For example my maintenance calorie level is around 1400 a day. I work a sedentary job and do moderate exercise 5 times a week. The low amount of calories I need to maintain my weight was surprising - I always went by the RDA of 2-2.5k - no surprise I was slowly gaining weight over the years.
I can easily blow past 1400 without even thinking about it. I drink about 500 cals of milk a day alone. No carbs in that yet I'm already 1/3 of my limit and I've not even had that 1000cal tub of ice cream.
Protein is harder to overeat because it's lower calorie per gram and its harder to digest so we feel fuller for longer.
If cutting out carbs works for you then crack on! It's all about just finding the diet that works for you because trying to do something too painful will unlikely result in meaningful lifelong changes.