u/Leeeeeroy-Jenkins

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently with the introduction of GLP-1s into the weight loss mix, and trying to find some other kind of questions beyond them!

If we get two trainees at identical beginner resistance training levels, both unenhanced, the only difference is trainee A was formerly class 3 obese (BMI > 40) and trainee B has never been obese, nor higher than their current weight.

If we were then to put them on a modest 10-15% calorie surplus, would trainee A gain back an appreciable amount of body fat due to their previous obesity whilst trainee B gains back proportionality more muscle? Or are the mechanics a lot more complex and at a genetic level beyond previous body composition state?

Effectively is there any evidence or studies out there to suggest that caloric surplus strategies to facilitate muscle gain put formerly obese individuals at a disadvantage to never obese?

I ask because almost everybody I have encountered who has previously been very overweight or obese and who has recomped to a higher and leaner muscular weight has introduced PEDs into the mix. Anecdotally most of them have said that they gained too much fat trying to gain slowly as a natural lifter and PEDs made all the difference.

ETA: I guess a further question here (and feel free to take a stab at it) is if the topic question is deemed to be true, how does this change strategies for gaining lean muscle mass in the formerly obese, whilst minimising fat regain?

I have been thinking about this a lot recently - probably spending too much time reading comments - but it seems like a lot of people expect highly improbable outcomes (eg 10% bodyfat at 200lbs or >25 FFMI or competitive lifting numbers within a few years) in natural lifers, or they believe that people not making outlier progress just aren’t training hard enough, they aren’t disciplined enough, or they aren’t doing something trivial that has little evidence to suggest efficacy.

I think anybody truly in the loop knows that most of the easy and swift progress people make is in the first 2-4 years. At which point your efforts have to move to more targeted approaches (dedicated periods of weight cycling, more complex periodised training, etc) Very few people come away with outlier progress in this period.

It is to the extent that if you were able to accurately measure muscle gain and body composition on a day to day basis and plotted it on a graph, you’d probably see a waveform noise chart and have to rely on a trend line to make sense of it. Similarly for strength related measurements over the long term, that’s been shown to have significant peaks and periods of detraining or lulls.

Knowing that peak natural muscle and strength gain is capped quite modestly for most people, are too many people in online communities expecting too much from themselves or others?

Every year they flood the cities and towns with their flute bands causing congestion and preventing people from getting around and it’s just… accepted? What are they still marching for? Some kind of war that ended hundreds of years ago. Was it even a war? What drives their value system?

In amidst that is constant incidents logged of sectarianism, fighting and alcohol-related crime every time they march. They incite crime and their viewpoints can come across as increasingly backwards in modern society.

What exactly does their organisation represent? Is everyone welcome, are there any benefits? What do they do besides sitting around munching on dry roast beef and talking about the past?

I’ve been on a bunch of vacations the past couple of years and I’ve continued to use MacroFactor throughout to great success (I’ve managed to succeed in maintenance of weight loss, or continuing a cut each time) by making use of AI Estimates and Food Labels.

Many people say to just enjoy a vacation and forget about tracking, but equally I’ve seen many MF users express a desire to both enjoy a vacation and keep on track with their goals and use of the app.

Here’s my tips for making it work.

1. Heavily moderate hotel breakfasts

This is where people can basically ruin an entire day or even week of their goals. The food at hotel buffets for breakfasts is typically high in calories and low in volume. It’s also usually of a low quality, but because it’s all-you-can-eat it encourages overindulging. At one such breakfast I consumed 3500kcal - in just one meal (tracked via MF) that was all my calories for the day. It was pointless and it meant missing out on other meals I could have had to stay in line with my goals. The worst part was I didn’t really get all that much variety or satisfying food, I just ate it because it was a free for all. So I opted to change how I approach them.

Most of the time at home I skip breakfast in the traditional sense, I eat later and that works for me so I take a similar approach on vacation. If I do have something from hotels at breakfast I set myself a cap - 500kcal (which is 1/6th or so of my calories for the day) and opt for high volume, low energy foods like cereal or fruits. There’s usually protein dense foods like eggs and sometimes Greek yoghurt too.

The hotel buffet breakfast is the most destructive thing of all in my opinion, and the easiest way to gain weight on vacation.

2. Tweak the AI’s suggestions

If you eat something oily and it doesn’t suggest oil? Add it, but also be conservative. If it looks like 1tbsp of oil, I’ll do 1.5. On the inverse, the AI can sometimes overdo things like suggest fatty sauces when you’ve just got a serving of ketchup or decide a chicken breast is a skin-on chicken thigh, etc. It works both ways, but honest accountability is the most effective tool you have. If you’re eating what appears to be low volume food and you’re stuffed or feeling a sugar coma coming on by the end of it, you’re probably at or over the 1000kcal mark, even if the AI suggest something like 250kcal. Restaurant cooks and chefs aren’t thinking about favorable macros or being diet friendly, it’s all about taste. I’d say however, that they aren’t overdoing the portions in the majority of places either (as that’s a quick way to reduce margins)

3. Walk, a ton

At home I get maybe 10k steps a day, most of the time that will include any cardio I do as well. I have a life, responsibilities and a job. On vacation I don’t have that and hit in excess of 20k steps, and sometimes 30k most days. In the long term people adapt to that, but in the short term if you aren’t doing it everyday, it will allow you to see so much more of the world whilst also adding a ton to your TDEE. This means more freedom for estimates or eating out than you might have at home; where a food scale is your friend most of the time. On my most recent trip I averaged what hypothetically should have been the top end of maintenance across two weeks, via estimating restaurant meals and using the AI. I lost 2lbs.

4. Limit alcohol

People call alcohol “liquid fat”. It’s consumed in large quantities by many on vacations and most lose track of how much they drink (and eat alongside it to “soak it up”) It’s the quickest way to gain weight and also inhibit any kind of movement or good nutritional habits when you get hungover. I have a couple of drinks on vacation but the majority of the time I drink calorie free beverages. Two beers in Europe can easily be 500kcal.

So there’s the 3500kcal theory/rule which suggests that for a lbs of fat, you would need to consume in excess of 3500kcal above your maintenance.

Assuming a maintenance of 2500kcal, theoretically if one consumed 6000kcal in a single day, they could gain a lb of bodyfat…

…Except there’s some problems with this:

We know that pure fat is rarely, if ever, the actual result. Even in sedentary individuals, there is a proportion of muscle or organ tissue gain demonstrable in a sustained energy surplus. So this suggests some kind of disparity between fat storage mechanics and overfeeding.

People can and do regularly exceed this calculation in the short term. We see this with competitive eaters, people at Thanksgiving and heavy weekend drinkers. So the estimated total value of permanent weight gain that they **should** be left with, doesn’t compute. In many cases people who excessively overeat in a classic “cheat day” scenario (such that it’s enough to bump their caloric average into what would be a significant surplus for several days) either maintain their bodyweight or even lose (if they are dieting)

So is there actually a limit on how much permanent tissue - ie fat, muscle, organ, skeletal mass, etc that somebody can gain in a short time frame, even if mathematically they were to provide the conditions that accounted for linear weight gain?

If so, what creates this limit? Is it a reverse metabolic adaptation of sorts that just hyper rejects calories (ie sh*ts them out) past an absolute maintenance PR, does BMR/TEF, etc jump up massively in the short term to compensate, or is the process of storing fat and building skeletal tissues, really, really costly and not preferential in a 24-48 hour period?

This obviously excludes the normal routes to permanent weight gain wherein people are in a caloric surplus for many weeks and months (and sometimes years with regards to the heaviest individuals) but even then, if we were to track their intake precisely every single day, I’d bet the actual permanent tissue weight wouldn’t perfectly scale to their energy balance.

I’ve been reading a lot about this recently, due in part to my own issues with body image (I’m male and have body dysmorphia as well as having battled obesity in my past.) The one thing in particular that I keep coming back to is:

Most people in the UK who lose weight gain it all back. There’s such a small number of people who successfully maintain weight loss long term. It suggests there’s more to happiness than simply not being overweight. I am one of them having lost over 50kg over a decade ago, and maintained that loss since (but, excluding a couple of yoyo periods of partial weight regain which I lost again.)

What I will say is that it’s incredibly difficult to maintain a healthy weight having been previously obese. It has required me to track calories for pretty much forever as well as limit myself in social scenarios and exercise hard restraint with some foods. At times I don’t feel like I’m part of society, and I’ve been reading many anecdotal accounts as well as encountering those who’ve said similar - so to me this suggests that the action of weight loss simply isn’t enough to bring happiness for a few people. I think I understand why people do regain it.

In the UK food culture isn’t as massive as continental Europe or the USA (to a lesser degree), but there’s a lot that does involve food still, and sometimes it’s isolating to approach it differently to your peers.

Food doesn’t really bring me joy, but there is an ongoing urge or “noise” that distresses me and leads me to sometimes observe poor behaviours around food, this is often pronounced with stress or being upset. Giving into that noise affords a temporary release of sorts, although it creates its own problems later.

At the same time, knowing I cannot naturally control myself with food or observe normal satiety does make me feel that it’s all a bit shit sometimes. It’s very hard to just sit around and snack and converse and feel like it’s all alright.

I’d be curious to hear other people’s experiences.

Do you think it’s made your life better? Are you doing anything as a result of that realisation?

I started overeating in childhood, by the age of 12 I was nearly 220lbs. I spent my teenage years overweight and by my early 20s I was obese and just over 300lbs. I managed to the lose the weight upon that realisation and got down to 180lbs at 24. I also got into the gym and exercise, for years I battled binge episodes and overeating, but continually found ways to compensate. I gained weight back, I then lost it. I gained nearly 50lbs during the Coronavirus Pandemic and gradually lost it from 2022 - 2024.

Last year at 35 years old, I decided to try and get into the best shape of my life. I had a health scare and realised that I had to start making changes now before I get older. I lost around 20lbs and really got into good shape both lifting and cardio. I was proud, I avoided temptations and found ways to fit in the occasional treat to my goals. Then came Xmas where I just ate whatever I wanted. I put away at least 6000kcal that day. Not bad, but not great either. I thought I’d be fine, I got back to my diet, I had a few more lbs I wanted to shift. For a few weeks it was fine, but then in February I began to have full on days of binging, 6-7000kcal interspaced with days where I was well over my calorie targets. I have tracked every binge to the best of my ability and I’m disgusted by them. The worst part is, I rarely enjoyed them, never too the opportunity to have nice meals or order take out, just binged on supermarket goods, cereals or whatever sugar was around.

Every time I have felt like I’m getting momentum I end up overeating or having a binge. I lost weight and I’m so close to thinking about maintenance and the boom!! Another two lbs I’ve gained from binging that I’ve got to work off again. On Thursday I was 186lbs, today I’m 200lbs from three days of overeating - 5000, 7500 and 5000. I feel horrible, I am exhausted from all the food I’m carrying and the major sugar crashes. I feel resentment and disappointment, but equally anger.

I’m angry that I have to be so fucking perfect, that my health and avoiding consequences of my choices earlier in life require so much activity, attention to healthy eating and calorie counting. I can’t stop because if I do, it all goes out the window. I watch the whole world around me eating what they want and not giving a shit, whilst I subject myself to a living hell to try and reduce my risks of heart disease, cancer and anything else that comes ringing with a waistline that isn’t “lean”.

I do three hours of cardio a week only because the WHO deems it necessary for adults to be healthy. I lift simply to preserve muscle and strength, knowing controlled weight gain is never going to be an option for me. My life is horrible, I am burdened by food noise and now the 15lbs I’ve gained the last three days is going to stick around unless I go back to eating boring volume foods and a high protein diet with a deficit.

I look at all these idiots talk about how weight loss is willpower. I have more willpower and commitment than most people will ever find, yet it’s always beaten by this stupid disorder.

This sucks.

Several years ago I encountered a guy on a train ride from Birmingham to London. He was about 30 years old and dressed like you’d imagine a glam rocker from the 1970s. He spent the entire journey rolling cigarettes (he rolled dozens) and licking the colours of a family pack of skittles he had on him. Between these quirks he would sing along to well known hits by girl bands and loudly shout “shagger” abruptly every so often.

I still think about this guy to this day. He got off at Kings Cross and just sorta disappeared.

I’m taking about the travelling pitch-up ones and not Blackpool or anything like that.

My own experiences have been pretty negative over the years. It feels like the people running them are out to squeeze as much money out of families and unwitting youngsters as they can.

My partner’s Facebook feed has recently been flooded with reels of women who document their beanpole partner’s extreme eating habits. It’s usually regular guys, not typically hardcore (if at all) gym goers who are regularly putting away (apparently) 5k kcal and more, with little to no change in their weight or appearance.

It got me thinking about how many people I know in real life who claim ridiculous calorie intakes, but when ovens, eat far, far less.

Of the most hardcore bodybuilders (natty or otherwise) who are pushing the 300lbs mark, there’s a couple who are consuming 6k or more in the offseason, given their size and output, I can understand their astronomical energy needs.

But asides from endurance athletes or people doing a lot of cardio, there’s no normal sized people I know who have these purported “what my husband eats” calorie needs. Certainly not any natural bodybuilders.

So are there any outliers, are there any at all in natural bodybuilding? Do you know any legit outliers?

According to research, the average Brit consumes around 6000kcal on Christmas Day, in tandem with an entire month of decadence during December. The calories in restaurant and takeaway menus have been rising each decade, with more frequent and greater consumption of eat out food than ever before.

But there is also research to suggest modern Brits are becoming more health conscious particularly around celebrations, they are drinking less and there is a growing number of gyms and fitness establishments popping up.

So anecdotally how does this impact you? Does your weight fluctuate each year?

I’m a long time player of Team Fortress 2 which features the Demoman character who is reportedly from Ullapool. This has extended to one of his armaments known as the “Ullapool caber”. This got me interested in the actual place, which I was surprised to find out was incredibly scenic, albeit nondescript.

Wikipedia and the usual sources don’t say much about it, it really does appear to just be a fishing village and tourist hotspot.

It makes me wonder why the Demoman’s hometown was chosen as Ullapool!

For me it was how I view obesity, given the rise in number of people who are obese and a growing number of medical interventions.

For a long time I believed obesity was some kind of lack of self control or personal choice. This held even with my own weight struggles where I punished myself for overeating or failing to maintain a certain weight.

I am now viewing it as a disease, one that is created by our environment and where the “eat less, move more, weight loss is simple” advice simply doesn’t work unless it’s paired with medical interventions. There’s a huge difference between somebody who can stop drinking as much and lose half a stone and the person who’s been 5+ stone overweight for years and who’s mind and body screams at them with food noise and an inability to feel full or nourished by food when they make any kind of progress.

I suppose at a basic level, I get it, there’s cams and levers that specialised machines use that that take away the limitations of human leverage. You can therefore train much harder and go to failure more easily on machines, whereas barbell or dumbbell lifts are harder to take to failure with load that challenges you.

But what is the limiting factor for free weights? Is it a leverage and gravity disadvantage that needs to be overcome with tons of volume?

On one hand I’m beating myself up about the idea of “how strong does one need to be to keep improving physique?” I know anecdotally that I’ve never made much progress on physique when training predominantly barbell lifts, but I’ve also never taken them far enough (450/275/525) where I can really rule out their ability to improve physique.

There’s strong in the sense that one person can leg press 700lbs for reps, but struggles with 250 for reps on the Squat unless they really dedicate an enormous amount of resources to it. 700lbs for several reps and close to failure is much more of a quad stimuli than a knee buckling set of 3-5 reps on Squat. But then one may do the lifts anyway and have a weak as piss Bench by some standards, but have a huge chest from pushing Dips, Chest Press and Flyes hard. So is that poverty bench serving anybody anything by training it?

So the loss of the larger body of volume you can squeeze out of machines worth trading in for barbell and/or dumbbell lifts at much lower loads and weeks of block training to try and make improvements?

How much should somebody say, be able to Bench or Deadlift before we write-off free weight effectiveness as a builder in people who struggle to progress them?

Thoughts?

I have been a labour voter since I was able to vote. I initially voted labour because most of my family did, but in recent years I voted them because I felt they best represented me, and presented the fairest policy to the most people.

Today I voted for the SNP.

In the past, I have voted No for IndyRef, I also loathed Nicola Sturgeon’s entire premiership, and have continually disagreed with the vast majority of historic SNP policies.

However, I have seen the UK turn into something that barely resembles what I once knew. Leaving Europe and enabling cretins like Farage, Bojo, and co to rise through the ranks has seemingly invited a culture war. We are also seeing regular depraved actions by members of communties, as well as rampant xenophobia.

I want to rejoin Europe, I want no part of the shitfest that Starmer is brewing out of Westminster, and I don’t want my local area to be ran by far right nutcases advocating for impossible economic policy and blaming problems on immigration. If that means voting for the SNP, I’m happy to do so.

A vote for Labour is a wasted vote.

By “opportunity of a lifetime” I’m talking about unconventional paths to fame or fortune.

Growing up in the UK there were always tall stories of people who randomly met millionaire businesspeople that took a liking to them, and decided to fund a loose business idea they had.

Could also class an opportunity of a lifetime as people who’ve landed a prestigious position in an unconventional way such as tracking down the CEO and giving them a firm handshake and a gumption promise.

I’ve been tracking calories with a high degree of precision (always using scales, similar foods day to day, etc) for over a decade, when I’m fairly active (3-4x lifting and 6 hours of dedicated cardio a week) outside of my desk job as a 30s male at 183cm and 80-85kg bodyweight, my maintenance is in the region of 3200-3700kcal a day. This has been ratified with algorithmic tools like MacroFactor demonstrating this.

I don’t think I’m anything special, this is just the reality of being fairly active and slightly above average height. I have also observed that the rate in which many people lose weight when they track calories based on an assumed TDEE is much, much higher than the purported deficit. Again you can see tons of examples with smart apps that show average deficits. This suggests that a good number of people have higher TDEEs than they assume/report.

On the flip side, I’ve also tracked days where it’s all fallen apart or where I’ve eaten whatever I’ve wanted. There have been such days where I’ve eaten very low volumes of nutrient dense food in favour of calorie dense snacks and drank high calorie drinks and maybe had a restaurant meal too - nothing abnormal against the backdrop of the behaviours of others around me - and I’ve tracked upwards of 5000kcal on days like that.

I note a lot of people report that they couldn’t possibly eat that amount of food, but the fact remains that many people do, and those who aren’t tracking aren’t actually seeing how much they do eat.

So I guess my point is that I think many people underreport both their calorie reqirememts and consumption - even on anonymous forums, perhaps to avoid embarrassment or judgement. I know that without any context as to the activity I do that people (especially those who eat way more than me periodically) would raise eyebrows and say stuff like “that’s too much”, etc if I told them my calorie needs.

So could this actually be the case? People feel pressured by societal factors and underreport?

My wife comes across obsessed with how she is perceived at work. She works a remote job and is always getting me to check the messages she sends to people, just in case she sends something that could be misconstrued. It is never the case that she does send anything to that effect, but this is part of a pattern that now concerns me.

A year ago she admitted having had a fleeting crush on her boss (a guy she has never met in person and who keeps all his employees at arms length) and she seems particularly anxious about how he feels about her, whether he considers her up to the job, despite always getting excellent performance reviews.

She has also had rants and gets upset or angry if he doesn’t respond immediately or timely to her queries at work. To me this seems similar to a teenager having a mood swing because a guy won’t text them back.

I am not worried about what this means with regards to our marriage, we have always been open about this stuff, but there are aspects of my wife that I struggle to understand and would like to understand them objectively so I am able to approach conversations more supportively. Any thoughts?

Thanks

TL;DR: My wife is obsessed with how she comes across at work