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Silentcontrol wroteWhat did you do exactly
Simply, weight loss means consuming less calories than what you burn. It is also 70% eating right, and 30% exercising. It is a new way of life, so get ready for change.

I don't want to confuse you with the talk about macros and whatnot; simply you have to eat the right amount of proteins, fibre, carbs, and good fats. As a general rule, stay away from anything that contains sugar and saturated fat (Remember, Sugar is the Devil. It got you to where you are and is your main enemy. Learn to HATE it. The human system cannot process refined sugar and will act wonky. Once you cut off sugar from your life, you will notice improvements in your body). This includes processed foods. Eat food with the least amount of processing; such as veggies, fruits, and fresh meat/fish/chicken.

Divide your food consumption to 5 meals per day: Breakfast, lunch, Snack, Dinner, Snack. Might sound alot, but here you must exercise portion control. This way your body is not in a hungry state and will burn fat through digestion of food.

If you went into a coma (God forbids), your body still burns 2500 calories per day just to keep your organs alive.

This means if you consume 1500-2000 calories per day, you will lose weight. Exercising can burn an extra 300-500 calories or even more depending on the intensity, and will speed up the fat burning process.

Please do start working out, the more muscles in the body, the more your metabolism goes up and can burn even more fat. Not saying go and buff up, but do some weight lifting as the muscle tearing will lead to muscle growth, and that will make your body a fat burning furnace.

Back to the foods:

Maximize consumption of proteins (such as eggs and low fat meat).

An egg has 100 calories

100 grams of chicken breast has 165 calories

100 grams of tuna has 185 calories

100 grams of rump/topside steak has 200 calories (can be much less depending on the cut)

100 grams of salmon has 200 calories

Fibre has zero. This means salads with alot of green leaves will make your body burn more calories to digest it than the amount of calories in it (given you use a reasonable amount of dressing).

An apple has 100 calories

Do all the maths and calculate your calories. Figure out a meal plan depending on the above.

Make steamed veggies your best friend (shove it all in a tupperware, microwave for 8-10 minutes, done), especially good 'ole broccoli. Broccoli is just magic at fat burning. It has only 35 calories per 100 grams. You will burn more calories digesting it.

See the rhythm now? See why you cannot trust most restaurants for preparing healthy food? You need to know all the details in what is in your food. Plan it and prepare it.
Silentcontrol wroteWhat did you do exactly
Forgive me if I write a long response again! I just do not have a simple "formula" or a trick to give you. I just think that at this time in my life some things happened and maybe some of the things or the combination of them helped me to succeed.

Around that time I also decided to take a step in my life and do something that I had been wanting to do for a while.
I don't want to go into details here - it is not a secret but it is a personal thing, it would not necessarily work for you - but the main idea is to take bold steps and do what you want to do - live your life.

I had tried to loose weight many times before that but with very little success.

I don't remember my maximum weight. Was it 107 maybe? or 109? Or maybe even 112? Something like that.

In the 3-4 years before that, I had steadily gained weight. My normal weight before was between 80 and 85.
In that period, I started to work as a freelance web developer, so I spent much time stuck in front of my computer.
In the last year or so, before loosing weight, I had also started smoking maybe 1 or 2 cigarette a day, really not much.
I used to eat out a lot with my girlfriend very often. She got fat too. I would joke that I should write a restaurant guide to Lebanon because we tried so many of them.

We also fought a lot. She has a tempestuous character. Sometimes I was angry and would just open the fridge and stuff myself then try to go to sleep - sort of comfort eating. I lived at my parents and they kept the fridge stocked with bread and good ham and cheese.

Around that time a few changes happened in my life. Me and my girlfriend we also broke up. We still spoke and fought, but eventually I succeeded to distance myself from the emotional turmoil and stop myself from getting angry and smoking a cigarette out of anger.
I started hanging out with a friend, go to the movies, etc. , and that gave me some things to look forward to.

I also adopted a cat!

I just decided to change my lifestyle, to stop taking unhealthy substances. So I was going to do it naturally.
I stopped smoking. I took advice from my cousin who told me of a diet, basically you eat salad once a day.

I started it. At night I would starve and dream about the salad that I was going to make the next day. Then I would wake up, drive to the supermarket and pick the vegetables that I dreamt of the night before, and do a HUGE bowl of salad.

I have noticed a few things:
- In the morning, I am not hungry, so I would delay my lunch as much as possible and would eat in the afternoon.
- After the lunch I got hungry, but then eventually I got used to it and then I did not want to eat any bread or sugar anymore after the salad diet.
- If you are hungry and do not eat, then your body eventually goes into starving mode, and you will actually stop being hungry.
- It was too difficult without any meat! So I would eat meat, mostly chicken, too. Raw meat is good too. I remember, once I went to KFC in the middle of the night and ate like 1/2 kilo of chicken.

I took some days off from my diet. I would sometimes crack and binge on everything there was in the fridge (cake, cheese, whatever). When this happens, I would "take the day off", and start again the next day.

I would take my weight every morning, and had this app on my iphone, where I would enter my weight and see the progression on a graph.

The progression was pretty obvious. I would loose a few kilos every week, sometimes 1/2 kilo a day and I would see it on the scale.

It is hardest at the beginning. As I saw the progression, I gained motivation, and I actually lost my cravings for bread and oily foods.
But the first kilos are also easier to shed then the later ones - physically.

I had a target of 75-80 kilos which I did not reach, and I stopped somewhere around 83-84. But I was still happy with that. It was also more enjoyable to be active now that I was much lighter, and I started doing some running.

This diet is a little extreme and harsh on the body, so I would not automatically recommend it. But the advantage was that I could see my quick progression and it kept me motivated.
5 months later
op
I've been going through a new diet for a month now: Keto diet ( ketogenic)
it is a low carb, moderate protein, high fat diet.
I must say this is the best diet I've tried, not only because it is effective, but you dont have to feel hungry all the time like I do with other diets.
Look it up, it is very healthy and it will change your perpective on fats.
Metalloy wroteop
I've been going through a new diet for a month now: Keto diet ( ketogenic)
it is a low carb, moderate protein, high fat diet.
I must say this is the best diet I've tried, not only because it is effective, but you dont have to feel hungry all the time like I do with other diets.
Look it up, it is very healthy and it will change your perpective on fats.
Metalloy can you share what you're eating on a typical day? I'm trying to do keto as well. I'm afraid I'm eating more protein than needed. And that is really bad as excess protein can be transformed into glucose.

What high fat foods do you consume?

I'm 177cm and 95KG. I do work out intensely and have some muscle definition.

Breakfast: 3 eggs (half teaspoon olive oil) - or - halloum cheese pan grilled (half teaspoon olive oil) with some watermelon
Lunch: 300g salmon/steak/chicken breast/tuna - or - minced meat with eggs with sauted zuchinni/avocado salad/sauted spinache/zoodles/rocka salad
Snack: dried almonds and pecans
Dinner: Alternatives like lunch
Supplements: Whey protein shakes during breakfast and dinner (after workout)
Coffee: Full fat milk latte

Trying to consume less than 1700cals to lose weight.
Mr. Class
you are eating 300g of meat for lunch and for dinner(600g in total)? plus protein shakes? you are way beyond keto limits for protein.
If i were you i would let go of the protein shake completly, and reduce my meat consumption; PS: you really dont need any shakes to bulk up.

my most important advice would be to limit your number of meals to 1 or 2 meals that are not so far off; it is common practice now to limit all your calorific intake in a window of no more then 6 hours a day; look into intermenant fasting.

Now for source of fats:
1) olive oil 2) coconut oil 3) butter 4) ghee(animal not vegetable) 4) fatty meats 5) awarma 6) eggs 7)nuts and nutty products (flour and butter) 8)full fat dairy ( cheeses, cooking cream 9) Tahina 10) avocado 11) others

what to look for in fats is to avoid transfats completly, so deep frying in vegetable oil is a no go, whether it is canola, corn, soy or any of these common frying oils you need to avoud and that is for health reasons; you are relying on fat now as source of energy so you need to get the best.

protein:
any protein source is good but just dont consume too much; try to limit yourself to a 100g to 120 g of protein per day

carbs:
in general no fruits, anything tropical just forget about it, like pineapples, bananas, mangos... you can add to this list apples, pears and anything similar.
you can have some type of berries but watch your macros, same goes for some other type of fruits like melons.
you can have lots of veggies as long as it is not starchy ( good bye potatoes) but you need to be careful from 2 main ingredients in our daily food, onions and tomatoes, watch out how much you consume of it.
what you really need to include in your diet are herbs which will fill all your vitamins needs even better than fruits.
other common keto ingredients are cauliflower and broccolis; look into cauliflower rice as replacement to regular rice.

it goes without saying: no rice, cereals, sugar, breads...

what about sweet cravings? you need to get healthy sweetners:
1) stevia ( powder or liquid) 2) stevia+ glycerite; 3) erythritol; 4) xylitol; 5) others are available
try to avoid aspartame (sweet n low) there is some debate on how healthy it is
Common flour replacements are coconut flour and almond flour.
i would recommend also getting unsweetend cacao powder ( i use hershey's)

I hope this helps, and hope i havent misspelled an ingredient or 2.

if you guys are interested maybe I can start a new topic with more explanation and go through the basics of it all.
I have lost close to 6 kg the last 2 months and I have a similar diet, but I think more sustainable long term in this country. I generally have 2 meals a day--each meal consists of some protein and veggies, but I try to make the diet a big more agreeable by either eating some fruit or sweets immediately after the meal (not every meal though). What you want to do is make sure you have enough fats and protein in your system so your body doesn't suffer through insulin spikes which leads to your body storing fat and that make you hungrier from the spikes in sugar in your system. And IMO, if you can eat something sweet occasionally, it takes away any binges you may accrue later and some of the artificial stuff is worse than the real stuff.

Breakfast in this country is most difficult especially if you are on the go. Low carb solutions are only going to be found from home or with a little more work (labneh, using cucumber or lettuce instead of bread, etc)

As for protein, if you work out, you should be aiming for 1 to 1.2 g of protein for each kg of body weight---if you don't, somewhere between .5 and 0.6 grams for each kg of your body weight should be fine. Too much protein wont kill you, but may hurt your kidneys so make sure to drink lots of liquids and as with other stuff, if you consume too much, it will turn into fat.
I want to calrify that keto is perfectly doable in Lebanon, you just need to understand what ketogenic diet really is and adapt your meals accordingly. in fact, a lot of our cuisine is keto friendly if you just omit rice and bread from your eating habits and go back to old school cooking and by that i mean bring back the ghee and butter to your cooking.

in regards to fruits and sweets, you just simply cant have them as they simply take you out of ketosis. I agree that some artificical sweetners aer as bad or worse than sugar, that's why i mentioned some of the sweetners that are agreed by nutrionist as being healthy; and dont be scared of the names, most of these are natural products, they are sugar alcohols ( hence they end with-ol) and are calorific but our bodies dont process such compounds thus they are considered nutrionally none calorific while still having that sweet taste; so you get to eat some keto friendly sweets without sugar spikes.