I think newcomers are a bit too quick to jump into intermittent fasting, keto, et Cetera, and my suggested alternative diet strategy for beginners

First I'm just gonna say I understand keto and intermittent fasting both work. I lost a lot of weight on intermittent fasting and I still loosely follow an IF lifestyle. But I lost weight and was happy on intermittent fasting because it works for my body, even now that I don't intentionally do it, I just naturally gravitate towards fasting for most of the day, it's what makes my body feel good. If you've been dieting for a while or have been into fitness for a while this isn't aimed at you (other than providing criticism if you wouldnt mind), this is aimed at beginners wanting to make a change.

I see newcomers on this subreddit and other similar subreddits come new to dieting and they're dead set on keto or intermittent fasting, for no reason, they could have never dieted a day in their lives but they know for sure that's what they want to do. I understand the need to make yourself feel like you're putting in the most effort possible to losing weight, and I understand youve probably seen friends and cowowrkers make great progress with keto or IF, but you don't need to make a drastic change in your lifestyle to lose weight, you just need to make better choices. Track everything you eat in a typical day and analyze it, look for easy to avoid calories.

Say you wake up and have a 3 egg cheese omelette, then you have a burger and fries for lunch, lasagne and a salad with dressing and cheese for dinner, a chocolate bar for dessert, and some potato chips later on in the night. I estimated this day of eating using MyFitnessPal and it came to around 3400 calories, I have a pretty fast metabolism and this would put me at a surplus, I would gain weight if I ate this. Now, if you made these substitutions and changes on this day: 1 whole egg and two egg whites with fat free cheese, no cooking oil/butter, a homemade turkey sandwich (including cheese and ketchup) with some rice cakes, pasta with chicken breast and light pasta sauce, low calorie salad dressing and no cheese, and a low calorie high fiber brownie for dessert, popcorn as a snack later on. If you made those changes that day would be at 1770 calories. You get to have roughly the same volume of food and the overwhelming majority of people would be able lose weight on this, a lot could even add more calories and still lose weight plenty fast. Obviously some people will need less calories to achieve their results in a reasonable timeframe, but y'know, just an example.

So what seems more sustainable and easier to start, fasting for 20 hours a day, eating no carbohydrates, or just eating basically the same day of eating with a bit of planning and substituting?

Again, I'm not saying keto or if are necessarily bad, but for the average person I really believe you're much better off just generally opting for low calorie dense foods and keeping as close to your normal "non-diet" "diet" as possible. Now if you try this and find it doesn't work so good, maybe you'll like keto or IF or something else way better, by all means I think IF and keto are healthy, but if you can lose weight and be happy without changing your lifestyle in a big way I think that's the way to go

submitted by /u/FlightLeaderTeerts
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/hh2elt/i_think_newcomers_are_a_bit_too_quick_to_jump/