Exercise is tricky. If you do no exercise at all, you get really sluggish and tired all the time as your metabolism slows down, which then requires further caloric restriction. This works (especially, it seems, in a time/place that feels like winter, as the cold and darkness coupled with the lethargy seems like it maybe downregulates hunger), but it's really hard because now you have to barely eat at all.
If you exercise a bunch, you burn energy exercising and you also upregulate your metabolism significantly, giving you a higher calorie budget -- but you also really, really heavily upregulate hunger. If you exercise enough that the calories burn "matter", you're likely to feel the need to eat way way way too much.
Doing "just enough" exercise that you don't become sluggish and lethargic is probably the right place to be purely from a weight-loss perspective.
But in my experience, the hard part about losing weight isn't really anything other than "the amount I have to eat to not feel miserable all the time is too much"
Diets do work, in that if you want few enough calories, you will lose weight. They "don't work" because asking someone to spend months or years continually in escalating misery generally eventually results in noncompliance -- and if your body tells you that it wants 2500 calories per day and you go on an 1500 calorie diet to create a 500-calorie actual deficit to lose about 0.8-1.0lb/week, you're go to feel really really hungry 24 hours a day.
Some folks report that if they force themselves to eat less after a month or two, their sense of hunger downregulates and it gets easier. Other folks report that hunger remains a constant companion, never relenting until they broke.
I started intermittent fasting, basically eating nothing between dinner at 8PM and lunch the next day at 1PM. The most striking thing is that I eat much less for lunch than I usually do, I'm full very quickly. And the effect continues throughout the day (smaller dinners, less / no snacking)
Had to give up coffee in the mornings because of the milk I put in it and the fact I can't just have coffee on an empty stomach. I have 3-4 cups of tea and 1.5L of water before lunch. Makes me piss like a race horse and gives me an overall "clean" feeling with no real hunger feelings at all.
It's only been 2-3 weeks so too early to say if the diet's any good, but at least there's no hunger / misery / counting calories. Overall pretty easy.
During lockdown, I ended up adopting roughly that eating schedule unintentionally -- just because my routine didn't have a "breakfast" gap.
It did not work for me at all, I gained SO MUCH weight, because by lunchtime I was ravenous and couldn't stop myself from eating way, way, way more than I would have if I split between breakfast and lunch. I mean, it was also a stressful time, so it's hard to compare, but I put on 20 pounds in a few months, after having been stable weight for 5-6 years.
I started forcing myself to get up earlier and have a breakfast of around 350ish calories (basically a bowl of cereal or oatmeal or something with milk), and that allowed me to immediately stop the weight gain, because I removed probably 750+ calories of "excess" lunch in exchange. Still struggling to lose what I gained, but I've been stable for 18+ months since I made space for breakfast.
It's really interesting how individual some of this stuff ends up seeming. For example, I have learned that I can not be a stable weight (at any weight, it seems) if I drink sugared drinks with food. It seems that if I have a sugary drink with my food, I actually feel the urge to eat more food in addition to the calories in the drink, leading to a massive downward (well, upward in weight) spiral. I almost completely cut out sugary drinks from my life when I figured this out. (I now have maybe two or three sweet drinks per month on average. I haven't lost any weight this way, but I have regained stability).
I am a firm believer that the real solutions to the obesity epidemic are all going to be around helping people control their hunger sensation (be that with dietary changes, coaching and counselling, routine changes, chemistry or other medical intervention). Learning how much you should eat to be the weight you want to be isn't that hard. Spending about a third of your concentration power at all times to avoid the overpowering urge to raid the pantry, on the other hand, is really hard.
I'm glad you found something that works for you. I'm still working on finding it for myself, though I did manage to stop the bleeding at least.
If you exercise a bunch, you burn energy exercising and you also upregulate your metabolism significantly, giving you a higher calorie budget -- but you also really, really heavily upregulate hunger. If you exercise enough that the calories burn "matter", you're likely to feel the need to eat way way way too much.
Doing "just enough" exercise that you don't become sluggish and lethargic is probably the right place to be purely from a weight-loss perspective.
But in my experience, the hard part about losing weight isn't really anything other than "the amount I have to eat to not feel miserable all the time is too much"
Diets do work, in that if you want few enough calories, you will lose weight. They "don't work" because asking someone to spend months or years continually in escalating misery generally eventually results in noncompliance -- and if your body tells you that it wants 2500 calories per day and you go on an 1500 calorie diet to create a 500-calorie actual deficit to lose about 0.8-1.0lb/week, you're go to feel really really hungry 24 hours a day.
Some folks report that if they force themselves to eat less after a month or two, their sense of hunger downregulates and it gets easier. Other folks report that hunger remains a constant companion, never relenting until they broke.