I hesitated to post on here for fear of being hypocritical, as I'm "trying" to lose weight as well, but here goes:

You have to eat less. That's it. Yes, you should eat a healthy, balanced diet. Yes, you should avoid certain things if you have health concerns. Yes, you should do cardo x number of times per week for x number of minutes. I've been researching every diet you can imagine as a way of putting off facing the fact that I need to EAT LESS.

Hey, responding to this made me face it! Yay!

Agreed with the type of diet. Call me crazy, but yoga 3x a week with walking. Shed so much fat in difficult places (especially core) and give you a lean looking, but strong, figure. A total steal if your Y offers it with membership.

"The food revolution"

That guy is a swedish physician. Most of his advice is free on his blog ("kostdoktorn"). Thers is no real "money making scam" going on.

I eat really good food three times a day, I am never hungry, have done a pretty strict LCHF diet for 1½ week and lost 2,7 kg (4,4 pounds). Some light, simple workout.

A big thing for me is that my "craving" for "snacks" is gone. I am weak for ice cream like Ben & Jerrys - but not a problem anymore. The craving is gone! Seems my blood sugar is balanced.

Breakfast today was one scrambled egg, 60 g of bacon and some sweet peas. With 3% fat milk in a cup of coffe about 220 calories (9-11% of what I need?). With that, I am not hungry for 3½ hours (22% of the day). Feel great, no problem to take a fast pace walk or slow running. No feeling full like after having loads of cereals etc.

The method has started a massvie debate about diet and health in Sweden, and there are tons of critics. Multiple recent studies support the theories behind LCHF-diet though. A guy in Sweden lost 196 of his 383 pund weight in eight months with strict LCHF diet and a daily walk of 1-2 hours (link in next post). I ask myself what the overall health benefit is for him.

"How I lost 196 pounds in eight months

Note "before picture" 12 seconds in to the video.

This guy was never super motivated. He explains he never liked candy, but gained weight by loving food, and especially massive quantitys of meat, potatoes and béarnaise sauce. He simply excluded potatoes. Kept eating meat, vegetables, eggs and fatty sauces. Was never hungry. "The only reason I walk alot is that I love audio books and find it boring to just sit at home and listen to them".

NL, I am skeptical of this. As you know, I used to live where you do. Thirty years ago it was very rare to see obese people. Now, not so much. And the diet back then was lots of potatoes and plenty of fatty meats (flask, isterband, etc.). But people also got a lot more activity from just everyday things...and there was the "ut och tjuta" campaign (Out and howl?) to get people outside exercising.

So, while I think the whole issue is complex, I'm skeptical that just eliminating potatoes is the answer.

One big difference though was that people ate a largish breakfast, a big lunch, and a small supper.

First of all, you do loose weight if you minimise sugar and carbohydrates (and replace that energy with fat). This is nothing new, multiple "gurus" have made this claims since the 1700:s. The process of loosing weight in Sweden is since forever called "banta". This comes from William Banting (1796-1878). An obese englishman who lost weight... By limiting intake of refined and easily digestible carbohydrates (see Wikipedia).

Second, what happened in the 1980:s was that the world was persuaded that fat food (saturates) increased cholesterol, wich increased risk of heart disease (see Ancel Keys). This conclusions is now beeing questioned. If you stop eating one type of energy, you replace it with another. When people decreased fat, they increased carbohydrates. Believe it or not, before 1985 obesity was not a major issue in the US. Today obesity has tripled. In Sweden there is a perfect correlation between the drop in sales of butter and incresed obesity from 1980:s to 2010. Last couple of years the trend have changed. Sales of butter is increasing again and you know what? The correlation continues. Obesity is slowly retreating. The study where Ancel Keys proved the correlation between fat, cholesteol and heart disease shows signs of a man looking for, and presenting information that proved his theory - and excluding information that opposed it. He used seven counties in a big study of the correlation, even though there where data from 20-30 countries that did not show the correlation he wanted in order to prove his theory.

What is proven very unhealthy is beeing obese. If there is a method to get rid of this quite easy without surgery by eating pretty much what people did for the first 99% of their existence - I am all ears.

PS. Multiple people with diabetes (which have increased since the 1980:s) in Sweden has experienced not only weight loss by eating LCHF-diet, but also experienced huge improvements with balance of blood sugar. Many report less need to medicate. DS.

Correction, day 16 with light daily workout and healthy food, the scale shows 4,2 kg (9,3 pounds) less than when I started. Since I am never hungry, this is by far not only the fastets weight drop I have done - it is also the most easy one. The fact that craving for snacks/sugar is limited is a big relief.

* 2,7 kg is 5,9 pounds, not 4,4. I calculated it on an online converter that only uses first decimal.

I work for an organization that runs one of the most successful (and expensive) weight loss programs in the country, and even that program has plenty of flaws. Like others have said, the most important thing is not to be dogmatic and keep adjusting based on what works best for you.

Beyond that that, here are some things you should know:

-Sustainability is king. It's far better to lose 2-4 pounds a month sustainably than 2-4 pounds a week unsustainably.

-There's a million different diets, most of which are terribly off base, but some things are virtually universal between them. Processed foods, sugar, soda, junk food, fast food and so on are things everyone knows they need to stay away from. Start there.

-Be careful about vegetarian/vegan stuff, especially with your wife who's nursing. Here's a good resource that dissects a lot of that literature.
http://rawfoodsos.com/the-china-study/

-Think about health, not weight loss. If you eat healthy, the rest will come.


And that's about it. I guess personally I'm a little biased towards paleo-type stuff (more the whole food + food quality aspect of it than anything else). I eat similarly to that and maintain around 8% body fat (based on DXA scan) and my clients have had a lot of success eating similarly.

Cheers and good luck!