I’m a really dumb guy.
I need really simple and clear explanations of things or I don’t grasp them.
So in the past I tried to understand why I never lost weight even though I worked out. The answer was later found when I started losing weight by accident. At that time I came to the generalized conclusion that:
Bad food = stuff that comes in a box.
Good food = stuff that grows.
Is that generalized? YES! Is it accurate….well…I think yes! I bet some smarter person could run rings around me proving how XYZ food doesn’t grow, yet it provides ABC benefit because it has Beta Carbonutralized Bioflavayadda yadda yadda…
Well I’m not capable of understanding this smartness. I’m too dumb……so I’m going to try and simplify the weight loss process so even a dummy like me can understand:
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Here’s a horrible analogy that barely makes sense:
- The day starts and your car gas tank is half full.
- You fill up one gallon of gas at the beginning of the day.
- During the day you only drive a few miles and use maybe a 1/2 gallon of gas.
- Because you didn’t use up that whole gallon, your car is fatter than before!
However if you drove a lot and used several gallons of gas….
…end of the day your car has “lost weight”.
Damn that was a bad analogy! ….but does it make sense?
TO LOSE WEIGHT:
CALORIES IN < CALORIES OUT
(For you ultra-dummies that means: calories you eat are less than calories you use).
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The reason everyone says to cut out sodas and candy etc. for weight loss is this simple fact…THEY HAVE TONS OF CALORIES! Not only do they have lots of calories, they have EMPTY calories….meaning the nutritional value you get is nearly none, but you still get all the calories.
Enough pretending I know what I’m talking about and lets do some visual comparisons.
Let’s take a nice household candy bar such as Snickers (something I used to eat all the time):
Notice it has 220 calories…but there’s TWO “servings per container”. That means if you eat a full Snickers (who the hell only eats half??) you get a huge 440 calories for something that has virtually zero nutritional value and doesn’t get you full.
Until I took these pictures I never realized exactly how bad these (and other candy bars) are! Yikes!
Compared to one of my favorite fruits, clementines, the Snickers bar doesn’t really hold up. If I eat 3 clementines at once, that’s a lot of intake and I feel satisfied…and it’s only about 100 calories (roughly 36 calories per clementine)….plus I get a lot of nutritional value from them.
I can eat TWELVE clementines instead of ONE Snickers bar, get more nutrition and still consume LESS calories! Good god!
Starting to see why people tell you to cut out the junk?
Instead of eating that one semi-gratifying Snickers that DOES NOT fill you up, you can eat TWO clementines, ONE banana and ONE tomato…they will definitely fill you up, and they look nice too:
Yummm….and the best part is ALL OF THAT together adds up to only 153 calories and has tons of great nutritional value. I can eat that for lunch and get full!! You can even toss a handful of baby spinach on top and make it a salad.
Also instead of that ONE Snickers bar, you can eat ONE big apple and get:
Total calories: a few more than 65 (that was a big ass apple).
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So all you’ve got to remember is:
- Don’t eat so many calories.
- Processed foods usually have A LOT of them.
- Fresh stuff = Good.
That’s a list even I can remember.
What was learned here will be the basic premise of my Getting A Six-Pack Experiment which I will be doing all through April. I’ll replace all the bad stuff I was eating…with good stuff! What a novel concept!!
I’ll be eating very clean in April and will document a lot of stuff…hopefully something will be learned.