The Girls Chase Guide to Getting & Staying Slim

We were talking over on the forum about how people in general have gotten a lot fatter. In fact it is to the point that people often do not notice it. And you are not generally allowed to talk about it in polite company.

Some years ago, we had a great article on men's weight loss here from Eric Reeves. The tips in this article are different from the tips in that one. So for good measure I suggest you read that one too; then just pick the strategy that appeals to you most.

When I went to university, I put on a lot of weight. I was reed-thin when I started school at 19. I was so skinny then one of the grizzled old roughnecks in the auto shop I worked at used to mock my walk, hounding me about "Why do you walk like that, man? Like you're some big guy?" I was just thin.

I began to lift weights hard in college to bulk up. I consumed a lot of protein powder (which I don't recommend anymore), but otherwise ate almost straight junk food. Pizza, French fries, potato chips, cookies, soda, and a couple bottles of cheap Nikolai vodka every month rounded out my diet. I was at McDonald's, Burger King, or Wendy's almost every day of the week.

I did put on a bunch of muscle, but I also added a big, sloppy gut, and got fat in the face. As this happened to me, I did not really realize it, and nobody told me. It wasn't until I started to spend time around friends and girlfriends from the third world, mostly after I graduated college, that I found out I was overweight. They told me right to my face: they told me I was fat and pointed out my big gut ("Look at that belly!"). I'd spent much more time around Americans but none of them had ever said a thing to me about it.

It still took me almost a year once I realized I was fat to actually start to lose weight. I'd tried to before I succeeded, but none of the stuff I tried before I succeeded worked.

This post will give you everything you need to slim down to healthy weight and stay that way.

It gives you the stuff that I found that works (simple stuff), and leaves out all the complicated stuff people try and fail and multi-billion dollar industries exist to serve.

Mandatory disclaimer: I am not a doctor and this is not professional medical advice. Before you do anything that affects your health you should go and talk to your doctor first. Just be sensible.

 

The Fat Genes Thing

If you live in the West you have probably heard people claim they can't slim down because of their genes.

This is not the case for anyone. If you think it's the case for you, ask yourself:

• If you ate zero calories, would you lose weight? You would.

• What amount of calories between "zero" and the amount of calories you eat right now will allow you to lose weight without dying?

You shouldn't actually do the "zero calories" diet unless you are morbidly obese and have medical supervision. There's a fascinating story of a guy who lost almost 300 pounds by fasting for over a year, living off nothing but vitamins and his own body fat. This is super dangerous to do though; some people have had heart attacks attempting it, one died of a bowel obstruction, and others died during the refeeding after the long fast.

So, I obviously do not advise this. However, the story is there to illustrate that if you reduce your calories enough (at the extreme case, to zero; but you do not need to go anywhere near that extreme to lose weight), the fat comes off.

Calories are your body's fuel. Fat is the body's long-term fuel storage. If you want to lose weight, you reduce caloric intake enough that the body starts to burn its reserves (fat).

Also, I'll briefly address the 'beautiful at any size' nonsense. Most people don't really subscribe to this, and I assume even fewer of the readers here do. But just in case, let's cover it.

Getting slim and staying that way is a must-do for any man who wants success with women, his career, his health, and anything else. You will see a noticeable attraction bump with women when you go from 'overweight' to 'trim'. It is not difficult to do if you use the methods in this post; it is all about habits. Get the right habits in place and you will stay slim on autopilot. Fat around your midsection actually causes your brain to shrink, among all the other health problems it carries. And just in general it is sloppy and not a good look. It implies lack of concern, lack of discipline, and lack of self-value. While 'chubby' may be a good look in societies where famines occur and food is scarce (see: all those Renaissance beauty ideals), in a post-agrarian society where food is plentiful, and fat is easy to accumulate, and where staying slim is harder than getting fat (which is easy), slimness/trimness is the attractive look, fatness the unattractive one.

In general, in most societies, what is hard to get is attractive, what is easy to get is not.

Now let's talk about how to get that slimmed down physique.

 

Method 1: Portion Control

The simplest way to lose weight is to reduce your overall caloric intake, through portion control.

You can do this without even changing your diet. In 2008, I dropped most of my excess fat weight while eating a diet of McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Chick-Fil-A almost every day. I was very resistant to changing the actual foods I ate.

I have long disliked vegetables, and did not used to eat fruit. Meanwhile I loved dessert. I managed to keep eating all the foods I like while dropping my weight, simply by having better portion control.

I eat fruit and a lot more vegetables now. However, when I first slashed my weight down, I did not eat any of those good foods, and my diet was comprised of junk food. I was still able to drop almost all the weight (and you will be able to too) by reducing my portion sizes small enough to let me slim down.

Here are the only steps you need to follow to get and maintain portion control:

1. Put together a Daily Caloric Intake spreadsheet. There are apps you can add to your smart phone that will do this for you. Or you can just use a spreadsheet, which is how I did it in 2008. Here's an example; you can just use this one, or you can make your own. If you use the one I linked you to, notice you add each food, the amount, then the calories. If you don't know the exact amount, take a best guess. Then use your favorite search engine and look up "food name" "calories". Multiple your serving size by the calories per serving and you know how much you consumed. Track every single tiny thing you eat or drink in here. You'll be amazed how many calories you're consuming. I had three huge 20 oz margaritas at a happy hour with coworkers after work one day, plugged them into the spreadsheet the next day, and discovered I'd drank about 5,000 calories between the three of those drinks. I never had a 20 oz margarita again. You'll discover drinks like this, or colas and other sugary drinks, are an easy way to reduce your calories. You just cut these beverages and switch to always drinking water instead. Voila, more room in the day for higher calorie foods you like.

2. Track your calories only (i.e., don't try to plan/cut) for a little while. For the first week or two, don't try to reduce your calories. Just track what you're eating. Track every little thing. If you have one M&M, put it in the spreadsheet. If you have a sip of someone's tequila, put it in the spreadsheet. After 1-2 weeks, you will know how much you're eating. In my case in 2008, I discovered I was eating 3300 calories per day. For my height, physique, and level of physical activity, I probably need 2200 to 2400 calories. So I was getting an extra 1000 calories per day. This is a lot.

3. Once you have your baseline, pick a daily caloric intake target. For me, I chose a level where I wouldn't be too hungry, but would run a deficit. I picked an ideal target of 1400 calories, with a soft target of 1800. I'd try to keep it to 1400 each day; but at most, I would not go over 1800.

4. Use portion sizes to help get there. Since I did not want to give up my fast food at the time, to stay within limits I had to cut my portion sizes. I went from getting a large fries, 10 piece chicken nugget, Coca-Cola, and large Oreo McFlurry at McDonald's to a small fries, 10-piece nugget, bottled water, and small McFlurry. I similarly cut portion sizes in other foods I ate.

5. Plan your day. I found I could really only afford to eat one meal out per day. So what I would do was if I knew I'd have fast food for lunch, I'd have a simple breakfast and plan to cook dinner at home. If I had plans to go out for dinner that night (on a date or with a girlfriend), I'd eat a small lunch at my desk at work instead of going out. A little planning will keep you within your caloric targets.

For the first two weeks following this plan, I had to deal with low levels of hunger in my stomach. After that, the feelings went away and I felt satisfied with what I was eating.

The stomach shrinks and grows, depending on how much food it's used to you putting in it. If you regularly stuff yourself, like I was in the early 2000s, your stomach expands, at which point it takes more for it to feel full. Once you stop eating as much, it will feel emptier for a while, and then it will shrink, at which point you will feel full eating less.

This only takes self-control at the very beginning. The first two weeks are the hardest. They are when you're going to feel a bit like an empty can when you're going to bed at night, and you'll have to deny yourself the full big portions of your favorite foods when you get takeout or make meals. Yet once you've adapted to the new portion sizes, it stops requiring self-control, and just becomes natural. Then you're fine.

For me, when I was on this program, I lost between 1-2 pounds per week. It took me around 3 months to lose all my excess fat weight (I was between 20 and 25 pounds overweight).

That might sound a little slow if you have a lot of weight to lose. But it's a healthy speed to go at, and allows your body time to adapt as you go from being a big guy to being a slim guy.

 

Method 2: Food Elimination

I am never a fan of fad diets. Probably because I am a picky eater and I can't just snap my fingers and change my diet, like some people apparently can. I can't just stop eating carbs and have that be okay. It takes time for me to replace foods.

I also have always had an extremely strong fondness of sweets, desserts, and junk food. It runs through my family, and in any event my parents were too liberal with my earlier diet. I spent much of my youth having people tell me I was going to die young because of my diet, which was I got off on a bit ("Ha! They keep saying that but I'm healthier than they are!").

However, as I've aged, I've discovered as I eliminate unhealthy foods from my diet, one-by-one, and add healthy foods to my diet, one-by-one, my fat weight shrinks further and my health improves more.

Some of the foods I've cut, for instance:

• In 2008, I cut soda out of my diet almost completely. I also forbid myself from keeping potato chips at home; I could eat them outside, but could not buy bags of them for my apartment. I did this at the same time I watched my calories, and it coincided with me dropping all that weight, weight I have never put back on.

• In 2014, I had a slight gut again (not nearly as big as in 2008), and ended up traveling through part of the world where there was no fast food for two weeks. I could still get chocolate and eat all sorts of other delicious foods, just no fast food. Well, after two weeks, despite eating until I was full every day, my gut had grown noticeably smaller. I didn't have a strong desire for French fries (which I figured were the main culprit) after I returned to civilization, so I decided to try going without them. Even after I went back to eating at fast food restaurants, getting the same meals, except without French fries, the weight did not come back. I haven't had a French fry since then (except for a few the chef sneaked into some shwarma I ate in 2016 without my knowing).

• This year (2019) I decided to wean myself off sugary desserts. Which would basically have been completely inconceivable to me any other year of my life. I'm not even certain at this point if I will stick with it permanently; I just wanted to see how long I could go with it. So far I've been fully off sugary desserts for 3 months now. The cravings all stopped after the first 6 weeks or so. My gut got even slimmer as a result of the reduction in sugar. And I've taken up eating things like trail mix (with raisins instead of chocolate chips) and apples, which I did not used to eat really at all.

You don't have to start out trying to eliminate all the bad stuff.

Instead, pick one bad thing to knock out, or one good thing to add in.

This excellent long-term 2011 study discovered different foods have different impacts on weight change. On average, here's how much weight study participants gained or lost over the course of four years if they ate any of the following foods:

If you take a look at the four worst foods on that list they are (in order):

1. French fries
2. Potato chips
3. Potatoes
4. Sugar-sweetened beverages (cola, juice, energy drinks, etc.)

Boiled, baked, and mashed potatoes are actually only moderate weight gainers (0.57 lb). It's the deep-fried potatoes (chips and French fries) that pull up potatoes' overall average so high.

Also, refined grains (like white bread) are about the same for you (0.39 lb per serving per day) as sweets and desserts (0.41 lb per serving per day).

It's worth noting that both red and processed meats are on here. There's a lot of debate about whether you should eat red meat or not. This study finds it linked to weight gain. However, I am generally in favor of eating meat, especially if you want decent testosterone levels. I eat a lot of chicken, and have red meat once or twice a week.

Also notice the good foods on this chart:

1. Yogurt (-0.82 lb)
2. Nuts (-0.57 lb)
3. Fruits (-0.49 lb)
4. Whole grains (-0.37 lb)
5. Vegetables (-0.22 lb)

Yogurt obviously topping the scales.

The same study also found other factors having an impact on weight loss or gain:

• An increase in physical activity: 1.76 fewer pounds gained over 4 years
• An increase in alcohol consumption: +0.41 lbs gained over 4 years
• Sleep: under 6 hours or over 8 hours led to greater weight gain
• An increase in time spent watching TV: +0.31 lbs gained over 4 years
• Quitting smoking in the prior 4 years: +5.17 lbs in next 4 years
• Quitting smoking before the prior 4 years: +0.14 lbs in next 4 years
• Continued smoking: -0.70 lbs in next 4 years (possibly due to chronic disease)

I can tell you that as I've cut more of the 'bad' foods (except meats and non-fried potatoes, neither of which I will cut) and added more of the 'good' foods, it's gotten easier and easier and easier for me to maintain a consistently trim weight without fluctuations.

Until 2014 or so (when I cut fries), I used to sometimes regain up to 7 or 8 extra pounds, then have to lose them again. That has not happened since I removed French fries from my diet, even though until this year I was sometimes eating tons of desserts (but no soda, no French fries, and very few potato chips). Now that I've cut desserts, I lost another bit of the light layer of fat padding I had around my mid-section.

Eliminate bad foods gradually, including fried potatoes (chips, French fries), sugary drinks (cola, juices, energy drinks), white breads and pizza, and sweets and desserts. Doesn't have to be all at once; if you can eliminate even one or two of these, or restrict your intake of it (say by forbidding yourself from keeping it at home), you can make it much easier on yourself to maintain a reasonable, healthy weight.

Update: a new study, showing what we already knew: you overeat and gain weight eating heavily processed foods, even when eating the same amount of calories and macro nutrients. The study authors provide a helpful graph of the changes in body weight on matched ultra-processed vs. unprocessed diets here:

 

A Note on Exercise

Sometimes I go to the gym and I see an obese person on a treadmill.

That makes me feel a little sad. I tried that myself in the past too.

When I'd started to realize maybe I was getting a little fat, but before I'd figured out the stuff in this article, I heard cardio was good to help you lose weight.

I was already in the gym 3 days a week, for a total of about 5 hours, lifting heavy weights to failure. I figured if I mixed some intense cardio in, that might push me over the hump and slim me down.

So I began to do 20 minutes of intense cardio the other two weekdays when I wasn't lifting. Every Tuesday and Thursday I'd go to the gym and run as hard and fast as I could for 20 minutes, to the point of complete exhaustion. I've always hated running, but I stuck at it for four months.

After four months, I checked my weight: unchanged.

I kept lifting, because I was doing that for muscles, not to lose weight.

But I didn't see a reason to continue the cardio anymore. I couldn't figure out what happened though.

Later on I discovered while exercise overall is great and good for increasing your metabolism (i.e., getting your body to burn more calories and burn them faster), exercise itself does not really burn a whole lot of calories.

You burn a total of 270 calories running at 6 mph for 20 minutes like I did in my treadmill days. That's only a quarter of the 1100 extra calories per day I was eating. I'd have needed to run on the treadmill to the point of exhaustion four times a day, every day, simply just to keep the weight I had and not put on more.

You should exercise. It does help with losing weight, by speeding up your metabolism. And it makes you stronger and healthier, and it might make you more attractive to women (to a degree).

However, for slimming down and dropping that excess weight, it is all diet.

It is calories in, and calories out.

If you put too much fuel in the tank, your body stores it as fat (backup fuel).

If you don't put too much fuel in the tank, your body doesn't store any of it. Or it may even need to burn some of that backup fuel (your fat weight).

Do not think exercise will do it for you if you are trying to slim down. It is 100% food.

And not all calories are equal. Calories from carbohydrates are worst. e.g., white bread, pasta, pizza, anything with refined sugar in it, like cakes, cookies, donuts, or candy bars. Also drinks like beer, which is the worst alcohol if you don't want to be fat. Beer and other alcohol also contain phytoestrogens, which feminize men and can lead to things like testicular dysfunction, even in moderate amounts.

That doesn't mean don't consume these things at all (though any you can eliminate, that's great). But it does mean to moderate your intake of them if you want to keep your weight within a reasonable limit.

 

Staying Slim

Staying slim is only difficult when you do things like try to deprive yourself of a lot of foods you want, and force yourself to eat a bunch of foods you don't. I am not a fan of 'dieting' for this reason; all you're getting with it is short-term gains that'll soon disappear.

If you have some reason to need to be slimmer than usual a few weeks or months down the line, then can put more weight on later, then dieting can be okay. You just need to understand going in that it is a short-term, temporary thing you're doing.

If what you're after are more permanent gains, then you need to build new habits around food that will get you there.

The best two habits around food are:

1. Portion control

2. Eliminating bad foods

Both habits make it easy to get and stay slim. Because they replace old bad habits (like "always have way too much food for lunch" or "chow down on candy bars after a meal") with new good habits (like "always order no more than X amount of food" and "if still hungry after a meal, have yogurt or an apple as snacks").

It takes a little time to build new habits. However, once built, they take next-to-no energy to maintain and will keep you slim on autopilot.

The benefits of not carrying a lot of excess fat weight around are all things you want.

You have more energy. Your thinking is clearer. You're healthier. You give yourself fewer long-term health problems (like the elevated heart disease and cancer risks you get as your midsection expands). You respect yourself more. You take more pride in your appearance. Others respect you, and think better of you. Women find you more attractive. It's easier for you to look good in attractive clothes.

The steps you take to get and stay slim build good habits and teach discipline. And they give you a chance to see yourself succeed at something many other people do not.

If you've got a little extra on the midsection or around your face and neck, slim down a bit.

The benefits are worth the short-term cost of smaller portions or subtracting a food from your diet. Once a little time has passed, you'll get used to the smaller portions, or won't miss the eliminated food.

And from that point on, maintaining what you've got is just easy.

Chase