How I Lost 7.4lbs in 8 Days without Counting Calories

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Amandaaa

p.s: just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how many calories you're averaging per day?

what are you using to gauge your portions? (or are you just judging by hunger?)

No idea. I've never counted a calorie in my life.

I eat as much as I want, whenever I want. I don't really believe in counting calories. I think my body knows when it's had enough nutrients.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by impaul99

I eat as much as I want, whenever I want. I don't really believe in counting calories. I think my body knows when it's had enough nutrients.

How can you trust your body like that? Has your body ever wanted to have a craving for a Macdonald burger? What about craving for foods that you want to avoid?

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by seeker5

How can you trust your body like that? Has your body ever wanted to have a craving for a Macdonald burger? What about craving for foods that you want to avoid?

I'm speaking strictly on quantity of food. My personal view on obesity is that it's not that we eat too much food, it's that we eat too much of the wrong foods.

Here's a test you can do. Go to the store and buy like 10kg's of broccoli. Then try to overeat on it. You just can't do it.

I eat a big salad and by the time I'm done eating it, I'm so full. My body knows that it's recevied the nutrients it wanted.

I'll keep you posted on my blog. If at some point I get stuck on my diet and I can't lose the weight I want to lose, maybe I'll start counting calories. For now, I really doubt it though.

[seanner689]

Hey, good luck with your diet. whatever works for you. Lots of people don't count calories, but reading labels and nutritional values and at least having an idea of the calorie content of things is a great skill to have when trying to diet.

For example, I was just reading up on your page and saw that you went to Quiznos for a veggie sub. The veggie is an allright choice from a diet standpoint, but lots of people would go there "because it's healthy", and order ... a tuna melt for example, because "a sub is healthier than mcdonalds and tuna is good for you". a quick check on the net (Fast Food Facts | Quizno's nutritional information) shows a large tuna melt to have 2090 calories!! that's almost a whole day's worth of calories to some peopole!! again, if not counting calories works for you, great, but for anyone else reading this ... don't think that you can eat as much as you want as long as something's "good".

I couple other things I wanted to ask you about (i'm really getting "in to" diet and exercise lately as well):

I noticed you don't eat breakfast some days. from almost everything i've read, people tote breakfast as the most important meal of the day, people usually encourage breakfast to give you energy in the morning, and say that later on in the day (evening), meals should be small since you are going to bed soon. is there a reason you seemed to have reversed this?

And for the weight training: the people who do one body part per workout are typically people who workout at a higher level and want to make sure specific body parts keep up with the rest of the body. from what i've seen, novice people who want to burn maximum fat/gain maximum muscle in general do full body workouts or break it into 2 workouts (upper/lower or push/pull), since the big exercises like bench press or barbell row or squat work the big muscles (in back/chest etc) as well as the small ones (bis, tris). more muscle stimulation and more fat burned. is there a reason that you do only bicep curls or tricep extensions for your workouts?

any light you can shed on this would be appreciated.

[seanner689]

oh, and on a side note, i LOL'd about your broccoli comment. how do you judge if you've overeaten when eating straight broccoli?

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by seanner689

Hey, good luck with your diet. whatever works for you. Lots of people don't count calories, but reading labels and nutritional values and at least having an idea of the calorie content of things is a great skill to have when trying to diet.

For example, I was just reading up on your page and saw that you went to Quiznos for a veggie sub. The veggie is an allright choice from a diet standpoint, but lots of people would go there "because it's healthy", and order ... a tuna melt for example, because "a sub is healthier than mcdonalds and tuna is good for you". a quick check on the net (Fast Food Facts | Quizno's nutritional information) shows a large tuna melt to have 2090 calories!! that's almost a whole day's worth of calories to some peopole!! again, if not counting calories works for you, great, but for anyone else reading this ... don't think that you can eat as much as you want as long as something's "good".

I couple other things I wanted to ask you about (i'm really getting "in to" diet and exercise lately as well):

I noticed you don't eat breakfast some days. from almost everything i've read, people tote breakfast as the most important meal of the day, people usually encourage breakfast to give you energy in the morning, and say that later on in the day (evening), meals should be small since you are going to bed soon. is there a reason you seemed to have reversed this?

And for the weight training: the people who do one body part per workout are typically people who workout at a higher level and want to make sure specific body parts keep up with the rest of the body. from what i've seen, novice people who want to burn maximum fat/gain maximum muscle in general do full body workouts or break it into 2 workouts (upper/lower or push/pull), since the big exercises like bench press or barbell row or squat work the big muscles (in back/chest etc) as well as the small ones (bis, tris). more muscle stimulation and more fat burned. is there a reason that you do only bicep curls or tricep extensions for your workouts?

any light you can shed on this would be appreciated.

I'll address them one by one:

(1) Veggie Sub at Quizznos. This is something I don't normally eat. It was more of a last resort as I had to go out for lunch that day to the mall, and I decided to try their veggie sub. I had it before a long time ago but I forgot that it had cheese. It was only a 9" one I ordered, not the large (12").

If I was going to eat those kinds of things on a regular basis, I probably would count calories, but most of the time I prepare my own meals and salads and I'm too lazy to figure out what my vegetable salad is in terms of calories.

It's easy to count calories if you're eating pre-packaged products, but I am mostly eating home made stuff.

(2) Regarding Breakfast. I agree breakfast is an important part of a good plan. The challenge here is my sleeping schedule. Most nights I eat dinner at around 8pm. I go to bed around 2am, and wake up at around 8-9am. I typically don't feel hungry right when I wake up, so I'll eat my lunch as my breakfast basically.

So lets say that you normally get up 6am and eat breakfast at 9am. I get up at 9am and eat my breakfast (calling it lunch) at noon. Most people I know don't go to bed at 2am. Most people I know go to bed at around 11pm, and then they feel hungry at 9am or before. Since I go to bed late, I don't usually feel hungry.

Having said that, lately I have been trying to get myself to start eating just after I wake up. For example, this morning I had a small bowl of oatmeal.

(3) I'm testing out working out single body parts because I'm following a slightly different type of theory on muscle growth. What I basically try to do is take a muscle group, like biceps for example, and instead of doing 3 sets of 8 reps or something along those lines, I basically focus all my efforts on completely working out just that one muscle group. I basically do really, really slow muscle movements with heavy weights, very similar to static contraction, and I focus my mind on that single muscle group going up and down until I totally want to quit because it burns so much, but I don't stop, I keep going.

It only takes about 10-12 minutes to "kill" one muscle group, and it takes a lot of mental concentration to not give up. What I do then, is I let that muscle group rest for 7+days until I work on it again. I'm just experimenting with this. So far my pecs have felt a LOT better working them this way than doing the standard workout.

There is a book out there called "The 10 Minute Workout" or something like that. He talks about something similar to this.

I am just experimenting right now with different things. I might switch back to a normal workout, or stick with this, we'll see. The staple of my workout is the 30 minutes I run each day. Outside of that, I can play around with whatever muscle building techniques I feel like according to my plan.

I may go for a period of time without doing muscle strengthening with weights, and instead work on some of my martial arts stances for building strength.

Hope that answers some of your questions!

[impaul99]

Woot. I'm down to 194.4lbs this morning. That's a loss of 9.2lbs in 21 days.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by impaul99

I'm speaking strictly on quantity of food. My personal view on obesity is that it's not that we eat too much food, it's that we eat too much of the wrong foods.

Make sense.

I'll keep you posted on my blog. If at some point I get stuck on my diet and I can't lose the weight I want to lose, maybe I'll start counting calories. For now, I really doubt it though.

Have you felt negative side effect like feeling weak, or more tired then usual?

[Amandaaa]

I realized a long time ago that I'm not going to become wealthy and make millions of dollars listening to the advice of people who are not wealthy and who don't make millions of dollars.

^That is such a good point.


Hearing your advice is both comforting and inspiring... so thanks for taking the time to respond.

[ginkgo]

The purpose of the all raw diet is not to lose weight but to transform the entire body chemistry of the body to be much more superior. Some people who stay on it will go through a temporary time where they are very skinny and underweight. Even 3o days on the all raw diet makes a big difference in the body chemistry. It makes your immune system thrice as strong. I think that thrice means 3 times.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Make sense.



Have you felt negative side effect like feeling weak, or more tired then usual?

Nope. In fact, I've actually been really busy lately and I've been able to keep up. For example, last night I went to bed at 2:00am, and I had to get up at 7:45am this morning, only getting 5:45mins of sleep. Normally I would have passed out by now, but I'm only moderately tired right now.

I'll still get a workout done tonight before I go to bed. I've been super busy with so many projects, and I think the 1 hour/day I devote to exercise and the time I devote to preparing my meals more than makes up for the energy I've had this month and the focus.

I also haven't had any dry skin problems like Steve, or anything like that. I feel healthier than ever. It's kind of weird...I don't know why, but my posture has improved too....weird.

[impaul99]

Did a BF analysis today.

Jan 01/08 - 203.5 lbs - 28.5% Body Fat
Jan 27/08 - 193.8 lbs - 26.8% Body Fat

My daily stats are here: HealthyFitGuy.com » View Progress if anyone is interested.

Just wanted to update.

[Joeschmoe]

Oops this was an old post and i didn't realize it. Sorry.

[jonarmis]

To achieve an effective weight loss mindset you must think positive and tell yourself you can do it. For added inspiration, I'd like to share with you this video I found:

Self Improvement Lounge - Register for Free Access

I hope it helps!

[HenryJDaniels]

Nice work, Paul! Feels great having successful weight-loss.

I go for the whole bulk-and-cut approach used by many in bodybuilding, and have had a similar experience. I wanted to 'cut up' for a certain occasion, and, without counting energy consumption, lost 4kg in two weeks. All it takes is a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle