*A thread on avoiding overeating in late adolescence, 20's and 30's*

It's very easy to overeat! Let's say every single day starting from the age of 15 y, you manage to eat half roti 'extra' among 3 to 5 meals you might eat in a day. That's roughly 25 calories more than needed.

Life goes on. There will be lot of stress. Stress of cracking entrance exams, finishing academic courses, then of getting a job, perhaps of doing well at job to remain relevant, get promotions. Somewhere you get married. Stress continues. To be able to make down payments.

To be able to repay loans. All along you've been eating that half additional roti because food is a reward for you? It gives you a bit more 'me time' without feeling guilty about it? [I'm not even adding smoking / alcohol to the mix].

Hopefully, in mid-30's (like I did) you find some semblance of financial security and guilt-free time to spare for yourself. Let's see what that half extra roti has done. You would have cumulatively take in 1.83 lakh extra calories.

Assuming all those calories have gone into synthesising fat within the body, and that 1 g of fat is 'made' from 9 calories, you would have gained 20.3 kg weight!

Now, look around! Isn't it almost a given that most people start out as lean in their late adolescence, but would have become visibly obese by the time they reach their mid-30's? Or if not, they would have grown a pot belly? While there are many contributors to this.

E.g., developing diabetes and/or insulin resistance, but even those factors need you to actually consume additional calories to make fat from. I hope I've convincingly illustrated that one can accumulate 20 kg of body fat by just eating half a roti extra for 2 decades.

So, now that you're in mid-30's and you decide to set things right with your body. To lose all that fat, you'll need to start creating calorie deficit, or simply put, take in fewer calories than what your body expends everyday.

A calorie deficit of 500 per day is considered healthy (source: several YouTube videos. Sorry!). Is it easy to create this kind of calorie deficit? No! You can 'burn' more calories (typically, exercise) or consume less of them, or both.

It's not easy to burn calories through exercise. E.g., 30 min of vigorous walking typically won't burn more than 200 calories. Also, once you reach mid-30's you suddenly realize you no longer have the same flexibility or joint strength as before.

Few weeks to a month will be spent only doing exercises that condition your joints for stresses more than what they would have been used to for years. If you skip this part, your progress will be plagued by injuries.

So, you'll have to cut down on your food intake, and *also* burn more calories by exercising. At this stage, your body will protest. It's like increasing the work load of an employee despite a pay cut (instead of an increment)!

So, although up to 500 calorie deficit per day is healthy, it's typically not sustainable. Plus, if you're a vegetarian, you cannot effectively cut calories without going into protein deficit. ( https://twitter.com/KetPan/status/1368584853940146180?s=20 )

So, you end up with a typically sustainable calorie deficit of 250 calorie per day. From here the arithmetic is not all that difficult. You had gained 20.3 kg over 2 decades by eating 25 calorie extra.

Now you're creating 10 times the calorie deficit, so you'll lose all that weight in 1/10th time. That's 2 years. I don't know how this might sound, but, 2 years of constantly going 'slightly hungry', and on top of that summoning enthusiasm to do 'some' exercise isn't easy.

I was motivated to do this thread few days back. It was one of those rare occasions when I'd skipped exercising on a day, the next day I got relieved from work early, deliberately ate a hearty meal in the afternoon, and could sleep in the evening. Result?

I could go through my exercise routine with much greater 'energy' (enthusiasm). It was after very long I felt that I was not punishing myself by exercising. It's then I realized how arduous the journey of losing all those decades of accumulated fat actually is!

On a typical day I eat modest breakfast, very little lunch, return home, grudgingly do exercise, and end the day with a hearty dinner. I've been doing this since mid-November 2020. I've deliberately not been pushing myself to the extent that my routine would become unsustainable.

I've not lost much weight, but I've certainly lost a lot of body fat, and gained muscle mass. A week back I realized I've lost 1" waist. It might not sound much, but at least for me losing waist without getting into an unsustainable crash dieting has been impossible in the past.

Anyway, back to the original point. If someone would have explained the arithmetic of how overeating even a 'bit' everyday leads to weight gain that's extremely difficult to reverse to a 20 year-old me, I'd have been very grateful to them, and would have found the advice useful.

And, that's the purpose of this thread.

But, how does one know one is overeating at the age of 20? It's easy to get rough idea of nutrient content of most of the things we eat. And, how does one calculate daily calorific requirement?

That's lot more challenging. One can rely on fitness bands, but they can be both inaccurate as well as imprecise. But, if one can afford them and use them, they can be useful. Perhaps the most reliable way is to check one's weight under constant conditions every few months.

If there is creeping weight gain (tangible, but seemingly not alarming, e.g., 500 g in 6 months), then you're likely in calorie surplus (and, on your path to obesity).

And, it's time to somehow manage to eat that half a roti less.

I'm not a professional nutritionist, endocrinologist, or fitness expert. So, take my opinion with all that in mind.