I did this same technique myself starting about a year before my wedding. I lost a lot of weight and became a lot stronger and it was pretty awesome. I didn't pay for a gym, but got some weights and a bench at home and did things that way.<p>Several years and one kid later, I'm back to being fat. Somewhere along the line the calorie counting became less disciplined and then faded away entirely - I don't even know when or why that happened. It just did. The weight lifting time got shorter and shorter to make room for other aspects of life and schedule changes, etc. And eventually, it was gone too. So now I'm back where I started.<p>Sigh.
The Shangri-La diet is the lifehack of the century (not a diet in the traditional sense):<p><a href="http://www.sethroberts.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sethroberts.net/</a><p>Seriously. You simply won't want to eat, and if you <i>think</i> you want to eat, you'll be surprised at how untasty that delicious looking candy bar or pasta is once it hits your lips. It's almost as if your body <i>conspires</i> against your best efforts to gain weight, which is a nice reversal for once.<p>In conjunction, take a high-quality multivitamin like SuperNutrition or Alive and you'll also find yourself with enough energy that you'll go crazy if you don't exercise. Yeah, it helps you <i>want</i> to exercise. That is key for me.<p>It's so much easier to take your daily olive oil and find yourself automatically disgusted at the sight of heavy food than to rely on sheer discipline, which is probably why you're overweight to begin with. And besides, olive oil is good for preventing disease.<p>It also helps that you'll feel the effects working on the same day you start, and you should see an encouraging difference on the scale a week later (I lost 5 pounds on the first week with no exercise - almost scary).<p>You win, like, 3 times on Shangri-La + high-quality multivitamin, and you don't have to have much discipline to get started.
I found Hacker's Diet (<a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/</a>) by John Walker (Autodesk founder) to be entertaining reading by itself, it also has some useful advice.<p>The Abs Diet (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Abs-Diet-Six-Week-Flatten-Stomach/dp/1579549985" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Abs-Diet-Six-Week-Flatten-Stomach/dp/1...</a>) is written in a bit over-patronizing language for my taste, but has a lot of useful info about different nutrients, how to read food labels, how to structure meals to keep blood sugar level constant, etc. Exercises in the book are not bad too.<p>By combining these two approaches I was able to steadily loose weight and feel better for more than a year. Recent change it lifestyle changed that, I'm looking into reworking my routine to get back on track again.
His advice is not bad, but it can be simplified: low carb diet. Avoid specially excess fructose, so yes, lose the sodas, and sweets and sugar. And cereals derivatives (like bread). Also starchy vegetables (like potatoes).<p>Exercise if you want muscle, but it's not necessary or sufficient.
<i>Building up muscle tissue also helps you burn calories faster when not working out. Cool little details I learned at the gym.</i><p>This is a very common myth.<p><i>To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.</i>[1]<p>[1]<a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/" rel="nofollow">http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-...</a>
Good advice, though I think he overemphasizes the gym. The point of exercise is to emphasize how much overeating costs you. It's harder to justify that candy bar when it equates to an hour of hard exercise.
> Lots of diets tell you to reward yourself with one good meal or a really yummy snack after a week of successful dieting and exercise. Fuck that. You’re fat. Punish yourself until you lose the weight<p>Awesome. As my friend put it, there's a shortage of discipline in the world.
I need to lose weight (I'm about 320lbs now, his maximum, though I'm 5' 9", and somehow I never, ever hear anyone say anything insulting about my weight), but I'm not sure the personality and attitude problem that appears to go with it is worth it. ;)
you lose weight by eating fewer calories, then get your metabolism going with exercise on a daily basis. You need to stay disipline to eat the right things and follow your workout goals. It is simple in theory, but hard to execute for most.