[mullingitover]

Sola dosis facit venenum.

I didn't pay attention to my weight for a couple years, ate a lot of sweets and drank a lot of beer. Before I knew it I'd gained 30 pounds, and had a minor freakout. I decided to do three things--weigh myself every morning, stop eating sugar except for from fruit, and stop drinking. I ended up shedding 30 pounds in 90 days, and have kept it off for a full year. I didn't exercise or count calories in any way, in fact I probably upped my overall calorie consumption but I replaced the sugars with more complex energy sources like nuts. I'm not sure if it was cutting the alcohol, cutting the sugar, or both that did the trick. However, I've been letting myself have some alcohol for the past few months (wine, not beer) and haven't gained a pound since doing so, so my gut tells me it was the sugar. I definitely feel a whole lot healthier.

[saryant]

I did something similar during my semester in France. Stopped eating all bread and processed carbs. Vegetables, fruit and meat plus Greek yogurt. I didn't cut out alcohol though, nor was my weight loss as drastic as yours.

Lost about thirty pounds over four months (which was terrific, my girlfriend of four years dumped me the night I flew home so at least I was ready for singles' life).

I won't go so far as to call sugar "toxic" but I know that cutting it out has made me much, much healthier.

Also, I had a blood test a few weeks ago. My doctor actually wrote "outstanding" on my cholesterol report.

[philwelch]

You stopped eating bread while in France?

[saryant]

I was really fat.

[pvnick]

>I ended up shedding 30 pounds in 90 days, and have kept it off for a full year

>I probably upped my overall calorie consumption but I replaced the sugars with more complex energy sources like nuts

Unless you started exercising, these two statements are incompatible with one another (violates the first law of thermodynamics). What's more likely is you felt "fuller" from eating healthy foods and therefore consumed less calories.

[philwelch]

The laws of thermodynamics do not preclude your body from ingesting something that has calories and shitting it out without actually doing anything with the calories. Your shit would just have more calories left in it, kind of like how a poorly made car might leak gasoline everywhere.

[pvnick]

Your statement is only marginally correct, but mostly misleading to the point of being practically wrong. Depending on what you eat, your body absorbs 80%-97% of calories according to the following (simplified) equation:

Energy in = Energy out + Change in Body Stores [1]

Where "change in body stores" is, for all intents and purposes, either muscle or fat. So while going from eating 3000 calories of pure butter to eating 3000 calories of straight fibrous vegetables will show a modest difference in caloric retention, I guarantee you that's not the case here.

[1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance...

[philwelch]

The point is, don't gloss over things by making dumb statements like "it's impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics". The laws of thermodynamics don't preclude engines that either leak fuel or are fantastically inefficient in converting them to any particular form whether it be locomotion, electricity, or adipose tissue. If your point is that the human body is fantastically efficient at producing fat in ways that don't really vary, then prove that point.

[pvnick]

Please don't insult me like that without at least reading the article I posted, which directly supports the statement "it's impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics"

[philwelch]

I'm not insulting you. The law of conservation of energy is insufficient to support your claim because your claim relies more on the particulars of human physiology than on the basic physics. If it were all down to physics, then my car would get fat when I put fuel in the gas tank and didn't drive it. But even though my car and my body are both governed by the same laws of physics, the details are different.

[iopq]

But your body doesn't do this so it's completely irrelevant. You can't fool your body into being less efficient by eating "healthier" which is the point of the parent.

[richcollins]

More likely increased BMR

[nitrogen]

It's possible that they are eating more calories, but digesting or storing fewer (thus passing more as waste).

[isleyaardvark]

Possible, but how likely is that? Is it more likely that he's eating foods that are inefficiently digested (and where are the scientific studies on that?) Or is it more likely that he's underestimating calories consumed (numerous studies showing many people doing just that)?

[donaldc]

Unless you started exercising, these two statements are incompatible with one another (violates the first law of thermodynamics). What's more likely is you felt "fuller" from eating healthy foods and therefore consumed less calories.

Another possibility is that the food eaten affects the metabolic rate. I've known multiple people who stopped having cold extremities when they cut back on their sugar intake.

[jaggederest]

Less than ten percent of your daily energy expenditure goes towards thermogenesis. That's not going to make enough of a different to lose 30 pounds in 90 days while taking in more calories.

You need a calorie deficit of approximately half a standard daily intake to lose a third of a pound a day.

[donaldc]

Not the full thirty pounds, but it could definitely be a contributing factor. And, if one's extremities get warmer while one's core temperature remains the same, the same amount of clothing is worn, and the ambient temperature remains the same, it's pretty much a certainty that more calories are being spent on heating the body.

[jaggederest]

You're talking about an extra 50 calories a day. It's going to be negligible against the 1100-1200 calorie deficit needed for that kind of weight loss. A half tablespoon of peanut butter.

Over the course of 90 days, you'd lose a grand total of a pound of fat or so.

[donaldc]

I think it could be more than that. Studies have found that some people have burned off an increase of hundreds of calories a day just through an increase in fidgeting.

And then there's this (http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=99...)

Despite the fact that all of the subjects spent the same amount of time in exactly the same confined space, the results showed large differences in the number of calories they burned. Some subjects burned as few as 1,300 calories in 24 hours, while others burned as much as 3,600 calories, a difference of 2,300 calories in one 24-hour period!

Keep in mind that most of what these subjects were doing would not be counted as "exercise".

[iopq]

No, only calories really matter in terms of metabolic rate. Your metabolic rate increases in a surplus and decreases in a deficit.

[astrange]

Most of your changes could be explained just by calories. Beer is quite high calorie since it has so many carbs, and eating nuts satiates you faster so you end up eating less.

Alcohol itself doesn't affect weight much, though IIRC fat isn't metabolized well together with it. But it can improve your lifespan: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9481115

[brianbreslin]

Not really. Assume he cut out 300 calories a day of beer. So a pound of fat is 3600 calories roughly. By just cutting out beer he would need 12 days to lose 1 lb. not the rate he was losing which was 1/3lb per day. Many studies have shown pure caloric deficits do not lead to rapid weight loss.

[mullingitover]

I figured the same thing--I definitely didn't feel like I was cutting calories in any way. I took up drinking lots of whole milk, eating bacon, and at my desk I'd eat a whole 12-ounce coffee cup full of mixed nuts (still do, in fact) each day at work. I didn't even cut carbs, I ate pizza and pasta pretty regularly. The only thing I did was aggressively eliminate refined sugars and beer from my diet.

I'm curious if gut fauna could be a factor.

[brianbreslin]

Fat is pure energy so you were entering ketosis through the bacon and whole milk etc. nuts are High in fiber as well, so you may have also helped flush out the stuff faster? Pasta and bread I think have less insulin effect than sugars and alcohols so maybe that's all your body needed to avoid fat hoarding.

[jawilson2]

It is hard to say based on the limited info he posted, but you only enter ketosis if you consume under 20-50 g of carbs per day. A single slice of bread, one yogurt, a bowl of cereal, or even a few carrots can take you out of it. You can't really accidentally get into ketosis without very deliberately avoiding carbs.

[zurn]

Blaming carbs is not a "just calories" explanation, rather the opposite.

[astrange]

I suppose you're suggesting the same calories+alcohol in some other form (shochu and lean meat?) would be better. Maybe so, but I don't know if there's any studies on that.

[coldtea]

>Sola dosis facit venenum

Pedantically we might say that, but it's not really true.

Sure, what makes something poisonous/dangerous is the dosage, but the dosage itself depends on more basic characteristics.

It's not like we arbitrarily try high dosages of stuff. We don't go out eating small amounts of cyanide for a reason.

Nice taste facits venenum -- by making us increase the dosage. Think sugar, salt, red meat, etc.

Uplifting side effects facit venenum. Think heroin, alcohol, etc.

Adverse withdrawal effects also facit venenum. Else we could easily quite alcohol, drugs, cigarettes with a little self restraint.

[hippich]

I doubt excluding sugars from your diet made a difference, or excluding alcohol alone did it. Beer in general do not have that many calories, it is usually junk food accompanied beer is what adding a lot of calories and fat.

^^^ IMHO, since there is a chance you were consuming pound of sugar and six-pack of beer daily :)

[jmduke]

Beer usually hovers around the 150-200 calorie mark per bottle. If you're putting away a six-pack every weekend, that adds up very quickly.

(Which is not to say that you'll magically lose weight if you stop drinking, or that it's impossible to lose weight if you're drinking every week.)

[hippich]

If you drink 6 pack in one evening - this is "overeating" already. All these extra calories will immediately start converting into fat.

On the other hand if you drink 6 pack during the span of the whole week - it will hardly make a difference.

So yeah - it really depends on how much beer peak usage we are talking about here.