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Will also try to get fit this year as my new year resolution im 85kg right now and wanted to be around 72-75kg only.

I was 155 in HS. At 62 I reached 200 and my wife said you have a gut hanging out there get rid of it. I couldn't reach my shoes to tie the laces. I started doing an hour a day on the treadmill before breakfast. I had a fan blowing on me and no food. At first felt weak and hungry but found it passes and you just keep going. I walked 3.5-4.0 mph on it. A tablet computer to watch movies on it or music. I cut out sugar drinks and snacks like candy and cookies. I cut portions and stopped drinking whole milk and used 2% only on cereal. Anyway long winded here but in 6 months got down to 159. I go to the gym twice a week and have a percent body fat of 17.4 now. I walk a lot at work so far only get on a treadmill, stair climber or elliptical occasionally and I weigh 167 but look very lean and muscular now. Sub 160 was very skinny at 6-1. Anyway you can do it just put the effort and discipline into it and you will drop it and feel great.

OK, so eat, say, from 9 am until 5 pm, then don't eat until 9 am? From endocrinology/physiology that makes some sense. Not eating allows insulin levels to drop, even for insulin-resistant people who spike higher levels, and then fat can be metabolized. A lot of what made the diet easier for me was not snacking between meals. When I did WW, they're big on snacking and "never get too hungry". But what I found is that if I limit carbs (not like Atkins, but limit) and don't snack between 2 or 3 meals a day, I'm actually less hungry.

16/8 fasting means only eat during an 8 hour window, and fast for the other 16. There's more to it on what you consume in the window (if you eat 4 pizzas and drink 6 liters of coke in 8 hours, the other 16 fasting are not going to help) but that's the general idea. It tends to keep you from eating late before bed, and focuses your eating at two meals. Most would skip breakfast.

I'm intrigued by this intermittent fasting idea. Can you say more about what you're doing? I've lost 36 lbs between February and August. Mostly between February and April, but maintained/lost 3 lbs slowly over the summer. I'm done with vacation and ready to get back to it, but having trouble with motivating myself to really be disciplined and log everything I eat, which seems to be what I have to do to lose significant weight.

Guess who's back...yes its the one and only professional dieter!!! Down 20 pounds since February. On and off doing 16/8 Intermittent fasting. lots has to do with my surroundings. When I travel, I eat and drink like a pig. When Im home I can get back in the routine. Next week starts the traveling for 3 weeks. but October and November will be all mine!!! Im expecting to lose 10 pounds in October and November. The race is long. Not in a rush at the moment, just accepting that some days are diamonds, some days are rocks!

The ratio I use is as close to 50/50 as possible. (I really just wing it and drop it in the coffee.) But the more I think about it, it's closer to 1, maybe 1.5 teaspoons of each. And the garlic and onion is for heart/GI health. I'm pretty ridiculous with what I consume since those 275 days. I figured I'd share this tidbit because it worked wonders for me. If it helps one person, that would be awesome. Convinced a good number of friends/acquaintances to give it a shot and all had various levels of "success" depending on dietary changes. Even the one's that didn't change their diet lost a MODEST amount of weight.

Things went south for me this winter.About 3 days after my last post I came down with pink eye, followed by a stomach bug, followed by Bronchitus, followed by sinus infection. Im now doinf a herbal system cleanse. As soon as that is done I will continue with my celery munching and keep you updated. Before all of that it was going great!

2 teaspoons a day seems like a lot of ACV, but simple enough to be worth trying...any idea what the ACV/lemon juice ratio is? I don't think I could handle garlic and onions in the am, except maybe a small amount in a Western omelette or something

I really don't measure it, but I would guesstimate that it's about 2 teaspoons of the ACV and the lemon juice. I actually put it in coffee because I'm weird like that. As an aside, I also eat garlic and onions in the morning, but I don't think that factors into the weight loss.(Lots of mouthwash) All of this can cause stomach issues, especially at first, so I eat ginger to alleviate any GI issues. Not a fan of OTC meds to treat minor issues. The real constant is the ACV/Lemon Juice. If I consume that daily, my metabolism is NOTICEABLY better, so that's ultimately what it came down to for me, other than the obvious stuff. If you can handle the disgusting taste, I can pretty much guarantee your metabolism will increase.

Studied ~27 people in 3 groups: 1) had lost average of 57 lb and maintained for average of 9 years 2) always normal control group - people who were never overweight and had similar average weight to group 1) 3) overweight/obese control group - people who averaged around the initial weight of group 1) They used some clever science involving deuterium-labeled water to directly measure energy intake (how much being eaten) and energy expenditure, backed up by some other techniques (counting steps with accelerometer attached to thigh). So they weren't just relying on what people said they were eating or doing. What they found is that group 1), the lost-weight-and-kept-it-off gang, were actually still eating about as many calories per day as group 3) the overweight control group, and significantly more than group 2) the always-normal weight control group. The difference was about 300 kcal/day. But they were more physically active to compensate - maybe about 10% more, maybe as much as 35% more. They did not find a decrease in metabolism (resting energy expenditure). Careful work, and in some ways more encouraging results than some other studies relying on what people say they're doing/eating https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22373

Interesting. How much of what exactly are you consuming? Ratio? Quantity? I'm sorry about the loss of your bro and congrats about losing the weight. How's the celery-munching going on?

Just a quick tip to anyone perusing this topic. I ballooned from 170 to 270 after the loss of my younger brother. Other than all the obvious stuff(less carbs, exercise, etc), I found that a combination of apple cider vinegar and lemon juice do WONDERS for your metabolism. I probably lost the weight too quickly, but meh. Went from 270 back to 170 in roughly 8 months. The apple cider vinegar/lemon juice is disgusting, but it's 5 seconds of your day. Just wanted to offer up this tip in case it may help someone. As I've reached my goal and ideal weight, I continue with the ACV/Lemon Juice and find that I can eat more junk(in moderation) without gaining any back.

So I'm happy to report that since 1/31/2019 I have met my initial goal of losing the weight I gained last spring after being involved in an automobile accident and suffering a head injury. Just in time for St Paddy's Day I have lost 17 lbs to date in about 5 1/2 weeks. Just gave away 2 pairs of jeans and am back in the pants I was wearing last year. I kept it up through a planned surgery for my elderly mom and through her emergency surgery 4 days later. The hospital cafeteria actually made it easy with placards posting nutrition information by every dish. This past weekend also concludes a month of "(minimal) added sugar" for me, the exception being a couple servings of homemade crustless pumpkin pie and a small quantity of sugar added to homemade viniagrette dressings. Other than that just fruit in moderation. While we've cut way down on restaurant meals, we have eaten at restaurants 3x and twice at a friend's house and was able to do pretty well there too. Anyone got any questions, ask.

Some good points here that defining "successful diet" as "lost 5% of original body weight for a year" would not "cut the mustard" for other health issues - imagine a paper about successful smoking cessation program "our smokers reduced their cigarette consumption by 10% for a year, this shows the promise of this technique if we can only improve it", erm, No. And yet, people do lose weight, and maintain the loss for years. Maybe this makes me a "confirmation bias" seeker, but I do find these "weight loss is impossible" articles equally and oppositely depressing to the "you too can lose weight if you only had willpower and self-control" crowd. https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-40989-001.pdf

Traci Mann is a professor of psychology at U of Minn. From her blurb: "She is a widely cited expert, but she does not run a diet clinic or test diets, and she has never taken a penny from commercial diet companies, sat on their boards of directors, or endorsed one of their products. Because of this, her livelihood, research funding, and reputation are not dependent on her reporting that diets work or that obesity is unhealthy. This sets her apart from nearly all diet and obesity researchers and allows her to speak the truth about these topics, which she does with abandon." Her book, "Secrets from the Eating Lab", is an eclectic mix of the fascinating and the mundane. Her lab specializes in conducting research around what influences eating behavior and how. Example: put out food items (a bag of chips vs an apple) for people registering for a conference, and looked at how many registrants took the apple when it was labeled "healthy" vs when it had a healthy heart symbol vs when it was just labeled about its origin (this delicious apple was developed at the University of Minnesota's experimental farm). Conclusion: don't label an apple "healthy" if you want people to eat it, but attractive symbols may work. TL;DR: she summarizes a buttload of evidence that conventional calorie-reduction-and-exercise diets simply don't work to produce lasting weight loss and in fact create psychological and physiological changes that make subsequent weight control more challenging; that exercise by itself produces many of the positive health effects attributed to weight loss whether or not someone loses weight (lower blood pressure, improved glucose control, etc); and that the best health strategy may be to change behaviors to exercise regularly, minimize temptations and maximize intake of healthy food to live on the "low end" of one's intrinsic set point weight. Some of her behavior change strategies are novel to me and I'll try 'em. Example of the fascinating: an experiment where they asked volunteers to come into the lab 2x and allow an IV to be placed to draw blood samples during a tests (of course the order of the tests was randomized and all that good experimental stuff). For one test, they were given a milkshake described as "decadent, indulgent, 640 calories". For another, the shake was described as "nonfat, guilt-free, 140 calories". Levels of the hormone ghrelin (which signals hunger) were measured before, during, and after the shake consumption. The level of ghrelin declined sharply after participants consumed their indulgent shake but remained the same after the guilt-free shake consumption. Here's the thing: unbeknownst to the participants, they were given the exact same milkshake each time. Only the description changed. I've never seen a clearer demonstration of the power of our thoughts over our biology with regard to food consumption. Ultimately, though, Mann's book leaves my scientific ghrelin levels unchanged. She references a biological "set point" constituting a range of (say) 20-30 lbs beyond which it is difficult to either gain or lose weight and she summarizes some evidence supporting this concept (studies of identical twins separated at birth show weight correlates to each other and to birth parents, but not to the families that raised them). However, her book does not discuss at all: if a "set point" exists - what is the evidence of what sets it or changes it beyond genetics? Because clearly, some people do manage to lose weight beyond that limited 20-30 lb range and maintain that weight loss for years; while other people who have been stable at a reasonable weight for years will,at some point, gain weight beyond that 20-30 lb range for one or another reason and then struggle to lose it. So if set points exist, there seems to be significant evidence that they are influenced by factors beyond genetics, and can be changed, raising the question is "what are those factors? how are they triggered?" She doesn't go into that at all, leaving me hungry for answers. A subsidiary question: Mann delineates the hormonal and psychological changes caused by dieting (increased cortisol or "stress hormone"; changed responses to availability of tasty food). She cites the famed Keyes "Minnesota Starvation Experiment" of WWII in which 36 CO volunteers spent 6 months on a "starvation" diet of 1500 calories a day and lost 25% of their body weight so that different "refeeding strategies" applicable to WWII refugees could be tested. In that experiment, the volunteers were fed horrible meals of potatoes, bread, rutabagas, turnips, and cabbage and suffered debilitating psychological effects - lethargy, fixation on food, loss of interest in regular activities or studies. But given the results of the "Milkshake Experiment" showing a physiological effect of perceived food quality - one can't help asking, if the same experiment had been performed but using food perceived and described as "gourmet" and "luscious" (and also varied, and including more 'normal' foods) vs "starvation" - would the mental effects of the diet have differed? Would it have been less mentally and socially debilitating?

Really? Before I changed my way of eating I'm pretty certain that I couldn't tell the difference since I never ate any of that type of stuff one way or the other. I'm sure both would have just tasted bland and uninteresting to me. The added fiber though very well could have given it away on the way out, but maybe not. I've seen estimates that >90% of americans are deficient in RDA for fiber so one dose of flax per day may not have been enough to get most folks to minimum desired levels. I get my daily flax either in a smoothie or breakfast grain bowl now, can't tell it's there.

It's a fine study and I don't mean to diss it off, but I'm pretty certain I could tell the difference between a baked good containing flaxseed and one containing milled wheat. If I couldn't on the way in, I promise I could on the way out. TMI I'm sure. There are some good studies, sorry if I sounded as though I were doubting it. Just making the point that there isn't really a lot of gold standard work (randomized double blind placebo controlled) in the nutrition field for good reason. Now I think I go chomp down some celery.

It is indeed difficult if not impossible to perform a double blind placebo controlled trial for overall diet, but there are examples of these studies testing a particular dietary component in treatment of chronic diseases. In response to the celery test and for @Hapless Bills Fan here is an example of a double blind placebo controlled trial where they used flaxseed to treat hypertension. Their results are on par with anti-hypertensive drugs, without troubling side effects. The full text of this paper is free at the link below. I'll have to find it again but I also recall reading a randomized DBPC study showing showing improved markers in breast cancer patients when consuming daily flaxseed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24126178 Here is a rather striking study that showed what an intensive dietary intervention could do with patients with moderate to severe heart disease published in JAMA. What they hoped to show with the intervention group was a slowing of the disease progression vs patients under standard care protocols. What they ended up observing at one year and ultimately 5 years was a reversal of disease in the intervention group. No drugs or surgery, just intensive lifestyle changes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9863851

Ok, about 1 week into the celery test. I actually have been eating 1/2 a stalk a day. Also eating a handful of dried cranberries and 1 slice of dried apricots a day. I stopped taking the supplements for this test (2 days prior). My blood pressure went up to 145/108 but has remained steady the last 3 days around 125/88ish. Huge improvements IMHO. Many benifits to Cholesterol and Triglycerides too so In June I will know if they help with them too. interesting read: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/health-benefits-of-celery#1

Well, here is the crux of the problem: Unless you know something I don't, there are very very few true randomized double-blind placebo controlled studies of overall diet in human subjects. This is because they are extremely difficult to do. So actually to the extent you feel you have a bunch, I'd be all for pointers at them. Years ago, when I was an undergraduate, dinosaurs walked the earth and kids walked to school through the snow (uphill both directions), one of my $$-earning gigs was prep work in the "human metabolic research lab" at my school. They paid male students to sign a contract agreeing to eat only what was provided to them, and to give back all their output. The studies were mostly isocaloric and focused around things like the effect of varied fat content on trace mineral absorption, with the end goal of ensuring armed forces members deployed for months at a time didn't develop deficiencies. The food totes sucked - it was stuff like slabs of baloney and cookies made of cornstarch - but when you're a broke undergrad and someone offers to buy all your food for the semester and pay you besides, who cares? But even there, the double blinding was iffy. It was hard to completely conceal stuff like different levels of fat in the food. Compliance was pretty good - but once you get away from broke teenagers willing to live 15 weeks on cornstarch and baloney and into people living real lives eating real food, more bets are off and you really just can't double-blind or placebo control. Which is why so many nutritional studies are cohort studies based in part on food frequency questionnaires. Even studies in true omnivorous mammals are relatively rare. Watching a rabbit munch cecotropes suggests just perhaps these cute critters are not the best models for human digestion. So true! Words to live by. The bright picture is that for you, it sounds as though the diet puzzle is solved and you're doing great so...three cheers and keep up the good work!

Rather than get into citing intervention and randomized, double blind placebo controlled studies, I'll just focus on this part of your post otherwise we can go back and forth until the cows come home. No pun intended. You'll find that nearly all the plant based luminaries agree with this quote, Esselstyn, Campbell and Greger included. Anything people can do to move themselves towards this end of the spectrum and away from what most people on the standard western diet do: "Eat food. Mostly meat, dairy and processed foods. Overindulge." This is why I hate the term vegan and all the baggage that comes with it. It's called a whole food plant based diet on purpose to distinguish itself from some of the radical fervent vegans. WFPB is meant to encourage people to move towards a diet that has it's foundation in whole, plant foods. A very simple way for someone who is apprehensive and unwilling to give up meat like I was would be to just reverse your plate; keep eating meat and dairy if you wish, but make it 25% of your plate instead of the usual 75%. I still eat meat and fish, but I can count the times I did so over the past year on my fingers. It's what we eat day in and day out that matters. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Also @Hapless Bills FanI wasn't able to gain access to the full text of the Indian group studies, just the abstract on pubmed that you linked to, which is probably why I didn't read them in the first place when I was systematically reviewing things last year.

Oh, Lordy! Have just spent several days doing what "deep dive" I can with my current limited journal access and I gotta say - while I agree with the bolded completely and applaud you (on one hand), on the other @BillsFanNC I'm sort of feeling cursed with the apocryphal Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times". 1) There is a lot of just plain Bad Science out there - people trying to draw conclusions that probably really can't be drawn from the data they're using. An example would be the August announcement that low-carb diets may be unhealthy in the long term. It has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, but from what is released, it's almost certainly based on a "Food Frequency Questionnaire" or FFQ, which means someone hands you a questionnaire and asks you "how often in the past 3 months/6 months/12 months have you eaten......how many times a week? how much?" 538 does a nice critique of this. It may be the best data we've got, but it's pretty flawed intrinsically. And people who want to follow a keto or Atkins diet will look at it and say 'but did you really sort out the effect of......" Example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712342/ Just a glance, I saw that their quintiles for increased red-meat consumption were also ordered with increasing overall energy consumption, alcohol consumption, smoking, and dairy consumption, and inversely ordered for exercise and fish and poultry consumption. Now I've done statistical multivariable analyses like that, and when you see those kind of patterns in the raw data, trying to sort out the other factors to pull out one effect as statistically significant - well, it's troublesome, and sometimes troubling. 2) Even when there seems to be a pretty good study - for example, the Seventh Day Adventist diet study where they look at a sizeable population that's fairly uniform in lifestyle, weight etc and try to drill into the weeds of various dietary factors - confounding lifestyle factors such as nonsmoking and nondrinking can be pretty hard to sort before applying the conclusions to a population generally. Among the Adventists, the best longevity-promoting diet appears to be a pescetarian one, not a . Would that still be true if looking at a population of smokers, or people who drink alcohol several times a week? And then, in a study of British vegetarians, similar effects of lower all-cause mortality in vegetarians was not found - the authors suggest differences in the specifics of the vegetarian diets may be responsible. Ay, Karumba! Anyway, I've been a pescetarian for almost 2 decades at this point and was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for decades before that. I don't feel I eat a particularly healthy diet at all - we eat a lot of cheese and a fair bit of refined carbohydrates - love us some crusty white bread! I'd like to make some changes towards better health, but durn if I know what they ought to be. Other than everyone seems to agree "Eat food. Mostly (unprocessed) Plants. Not too much." is a good start.

We completely agree on that. But honestly, I'm pretty gobsmacked by how misleading the data quoted in that film actually are relative to the actual studies, or to readily available information. They do NOT reasonably support the conclusion that animal protein = bad or that high protein = bad at all. Here's a pdf of a paper on Norwegian diet during WWII. When I look at Table I, I think the preponderance of the evidence suggests that a +200 change in fish consumption and a -110 (combined) consumption of fruit and sugar must be given at least equal consideration as a -60 change in consumption of meat and a -40 change in consumption of dairy. One simply can not look at the data and conclude decreased consumption of animal products is the causal factor for a 6 death per 10,000 population decrease in cardiovascular deaths, which is the conclusion he draws in the film. The Indian group's papers, it's a set of two. Read both. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14326435 It all makes perfect biochemical sense - a low-protein diet inhibits the enzyme that detoxifies aflotoxin results in fewer tumors, but the un-modified aflotoxin is then toxic to the liver.