Without going into the ethics or viability of any given diet it's worth remembering (or trying to) just how long ago you were at your target weight. Your body's become used to your current size so if you try to get there too quickly it's going to rebel (yo-yo dieting). No more than 1Kg a week seems to be the currently accepted limit.

However you get there, good luck!

Richard G wrote:That would be nearly 40. Been a while since anyone described me as young.

i was Ok till i hit 38 Richard, all sorts of little signs (that i didn't see or understand) stated to affect me, it got worse into my 40's and i feel i have the knowledge and understanding of my body to listen/see and take action :)

I'll stick to enjoying it for now. Best shape I've ever been in, and mostly injury free right now so I definitely don't feel the need to be messing with anything.

All acid foods, all the time (seriously, there are like five things I eat regularly on the alkaline side!).

you 'may' be an Anomaly Lol

dropped 6lbs in my first week. now 21 stone on the nail. 2lbs a week will be good from now on.

Be aware that eventually the weight loss will plateau (as in, 2lb will become 1lb, and eventually 1lb will become half a lb etc).

This is perfectly normal, and at that point you'll need to make further modifications to your nutrition / exercise regime.

Well done Ton

I don't really do diets. I find I'm fuller on 40c 40p 20f with regular 20g of protein through the day, but I was just fine on 65c 20f 15c. My thing is self monitoring. I have a connected scale (garmin index), an "activities of daily living" monitor (a vivo-whatsit HR), and a GPS for exercise (various Garmins). I log my food on MFP. I ran a 500kcal deficit for a year, and continue to run a 250kcal deficit just so the odd grab from the cupboard I forget to log doesn't bite me. Been doing this for 7 years. I was 105kg. I'm now 70kg +/- 5kg (My weight goes down in winter, up in summer, and plummets if I get ill).

I work in academia, with loads of diet and behaviour change and appetite and satiety types. Interesting to me is that the exercise and behaviour change people are skinny, and the satiety and diet people aren't (at faculty level). When I was at Cambridge, the epidemiologists were skinny, and the gene people were fat, and the prof that was programme director in epi reckoned that the power of the causal model underpinning the research played out in lives of the researchers. It's a lovely anecdote, albeit I'm sure there are counter examples.

Scrap that..

Good luck all

I'm the Lardiest I've ever been at 5' 8" tall and 22.4 stones! Exercise is limited with disabilities being variable, I'll do it from 1st January and aim for a slow, but steady, weight drop. My eventual target is 12.5 stone so it's a BIG challenge.
When I had the Brain Injury accident I weighed 15 stones and, when I came out of the coma, I was 12 stones exactly! A real "Crash Diet" (pun intended)

bloody hell Breff................I am nearly a foot taller than you mate.
good luck with it mate.

yep, best of luck fellas and never forget, Carbs/sugars (same thing) are your Enemy! and animal fats are your Friend

That's put me in the loads of enemies (nooooo not ''enemas', stop it at the back) camp. Which I'm at ease with. Life's to be enjoyed and savoured, whilst perhaps trying to minimise one's impact on other people and things.

I'm not '100% convinced/guaranteed' about anything I do or say and view any such claims with wry cynicism. As Brian Cox, and even Einstein no less, said 'we can never prove anything's right, only wrong'.

So for me, and with all respect to those who have special health circumstances, eat less or the same calories that you expend. Ingest less of 'em or use more of 'em and you'll probably be ok. I eat and drink stuff and exercise and on that 'diet' my weight hasn't varied from 9st7lbs - 10st3lbs for 40 years. But do please read that with a healthy dose of wry cynicism . Stu may well be right about less processing/packaging too. I'm afraid a 'diet' implies stopping doing it after a while, from which point logic says you'll return to your pre-diet state which is a bit of a waste of effort.

If this thread was financial advice the FSA would be having a field day :).

Now, where's that bar of Green & Blacks.....

I'll join up. I'm 50 in January and too big.
I think I met Lawmanmx at Bearbones and was interested in his LCHF diet
I followed the diet for a few weeks and did seem to lose just shy of a stone .... but just got bored of the same food all the time.
Some of it was absolutely lovely, but there was a lack of variety.

It's quite expensive too with me and my boy on it
Mitch is a big unit and NEEDS to shift some weight.

We're planning to do a Belgian Bikepacking trip next June with some reasonable daily mileages (for us) so being lighter and fitter would be good.

My issue is I like a beer. Or two. This is incompatible with Keto. I went onto Vodka and Soda as this was better but it all got very messy

I'll do my own thing but company and peer pressure may help,
I need to lose 2 stone initially to get near to 15 stone. Ideally I'd like to be 14.5 stone. We'll see.

I'm afraid a 'diet' implies stopping doing it after a while, from which point logic says you'll return to your pre-diet state which is a bit of a waste of effort.

Very true Reg - I lost about a stone before setting off for the TNR with a view to making the climbs a little more palatable*. I did it by simply reducing the amount of carbs I ate and substituted them with more meat, eggs, veg, milk etc. However, since returning my eating habits have drifted back towards carbs and about half the weight has returned. I'm not actually that bothered as the weight loss was simply a means to an end but if you want to shift the weight for good, then you need to change your habits for good

*squeezing into those hot pants was an added bonus.

Aye, long term lifestyle changes are definitely the key. On the fatfighters theme, my niece and her boyfriend were slimming world's couple of the year after losing massive amounts of weight.

They put it all back on, and a little extra for good measure.

The wife did Slimming World. Was quite good, some nice recipes / tasty food (and some utterly gopping ones). Personally all it illustrated was "eat less sh!te" (and drink less booze) plus be more active. Once she came off it she also piled it back on. Shame. I don't have the interest or conviction for anything more involved / complicated / rabid.

I'd be happy to get below 82 kg as at 5'10" and 14stone 9lbs (i.e. 90+ kilos) I fall in the heavyweight category. That tends to mean the fat but also the massive (6 foot plus) blokes. Whilst I like to think of myself as being genetically disadvantaged with a predisposition to being "short and dense" it also leaves me rather disadvantaged in terms of reach and power. Light heavy would be good but it's a big ask.

"Belgian Bikepacking trip" - ah yes, the fabled land - forgive my stereotyping - of beer, chocolate and cakes. Ample scope for a superb diet there, just my type of thing sign me up please

"squeezing into those hot pants" Now that is an image I wish to frame and treasure, brilliant!

Anyway, back to our "sitting in a bothy talking bollocks etc" position: seems to me that our eating habits for millenia were pretty much "grab whatever I can, get it back to my cave for the missus and kids, and stuff it down our faces before we get eaten by sabre-toothed tigers", ie. omnivorous. Any excess calories were soon expunged by climbing trees for berries, digging up roots and bashing slow-moving animals on the head, oh and fending off those sabre-toothed tigers.

Some while ago "science" cleverly managed to find solutions for any number of dread diseases (unfortunately in our newly philistine and frightened times we're now told that "nobody likes an expert" so forget any more advances). This was probably a good thing. Ironically just as we did that, we started to eat loads of sh1te! The American Diet perhaps you could say - massively processed, massively salted/fatted/overpackaged/profitable. At the same time as that, everybody suddenly found themselves unable, for some reason, to "hunter/gather" in the supermarket 100 yards away without getting inside a motor vehicle for that ludicrously short journey. A bizarre coincidence then that everyone suddenly became rather portly eh!

Whilst some food innovations have undoubtedly been a benefit - Curly Wurlies for example - many haven't. 30% of food is just chucked away which is scandalous.

Well that's my half-baked (at 200c for 40 minutes) moralising done for the day. Time for lunch - Turkey Twizzlers and Sunny Delight.

"Reginald" brought-up-in-the-70s-on-Angel-Delight-FrayBentos-Pies-ChickenNuggets-and-none-the-worst-for-it-;-) "Iolanthe Perrin".

I think you've summed it up pretty well there Reg, only missing the point that much of the processed crap acts on our brains in much the same way (effectively if not chemically) as many illegal drugs and are as equally addictive.

This does seem to be the problem with Slimming world style diets, my wife
Has been following it on and off for many years and to be fair maintains her
Weight but is still heavier than where she wants to be, interestingly enough
On holiday a couple of years back we tried the VK diet, in a matter of days
The weight was dropping although it's somewhat hard to follow, finding a
Decent Kebab and drinking Copious amounts of Smirnoff at lunch can be
Frowned upon......but the weight was dropping, obviously the Kebab meat
Was fresh chicken/lamb with salad etc

Interestingly, often it's the simple mindfulness aspect of a diet that has people losing weight. Statistically speaking, if you ask people to record what they eat (be it via app / paper / whatever), they tend to eat about 10% to 20% fewer calories than those who aren't recording.

Fad diets are particularly interesting for this, because on top of the recording aspect, they make it ridiculously difficult to work out what you actually can eat... and by restricting choice, you pretty much automatically restrict calories too.

So from now on, only green foods on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Purple foods on Fridays. Red foods on Mondays with a full moon.

An interesting point - I saw one methodology that had you recording what you ate and also how hungry you were at the time: 0 = not at all hungry to 5 = starving, stomach in knots. Alcohol was always to be recorded as a zero. Not only were you seeing what you ate but you could target those snacks that slip under the radar because someone offered you a sweet and it would have been rude not to take one etc.

RIP wrote:"Belgian Bikepacking trip" - ah yes, the fabled land - forgive my stereotyping - of beer, chocolate and cakes. Ample scope for a superb diet there, just my type of thing sign me up please

:) TBH I couldn't give a flying f*ck about the chocolates or cake really .... but the point of the trip is to ride to Westmalle, La Trappe, Achal, Rochefort & Chimay breweries :)
And get to ride in the Ardennes ..... did someone mention Pate?
350miles 5 days

Don't forget the frites!

Well as I said, its a lifestyle change for me, not a diet so hopefully the changes i make will stick.

How ever we do it and for whatever the reason, by doing it together, hopefully we will all stick at it (on the hard days) and see how it goes.