long story short i lost 85 pounds over the course of just a few months, i gained muscle mass through it all. it all started from a medical condition and ended with me having this diet, which in no way was extraordinarily well planned:

i have a bowl of oats each morning
i eat unlimited amounts of as many different veggies as possible throughout the day, that is dressing free salads, veggie shakes and such
if i get really hungry over the course of the day i eat more oats
each evening i prepare a meal for my family when we are all together that is typically fish, but also sometimes red meat and so on. its always homemade, its never processed.

and then i do not eat anything for the next 12 hours.

sugar is never allowed, ever, no alcohol and no restaurant food.

i went from a peak hospital reading of 268 to a stable 177-183, as it happens during these months i tore an abdominal muscle playing sports so exercise was kinda not possible. every single thing in my blood tests went better than normal, my fasting blood glucose is at the extreme low end of normal, sometimes in the 60s . my heart rate dropped from the 90s to 60, what happened in my body ancient people would call a miracle.

its not keto, its not vegan, but its pretty much knocking on the door of both, and it changed my life. help me understand why, if you kindly would.

during the peak of the weight loss it was visible day to day, absolutely everything got better, right down to my johnson, and while i have a great sense of why, i truly want other intelligent people to comment.

It never hurts to consult your doctor, you lost 85 lbs successfully, what is the problem ?

If the fast weight loss was caused by some type of illness, then it would be a problem.

However, if he had a blood test and there was nothing wrong, I guess he'll probably be ok.

thanks for your replies.

If you ever want to go mad, try to delve deeply into the topic of what is the most healthy diet. You will find apparently intelligent, well read, well meaning people advocating everything from vegan to carnivore diets, with studies to back it.

You will find sulforaphane described as everything from the best thing ever to an anti-nutrient.

Heres what every well meaning, well read, apparently intelligent person agrees on, regardless of their position on "healthiest diet":

sugar is bad
processed food is bad
"bad" oils are bad, as in any processed oil
fried food is bad, unsaturated oils oxidize at temp etc
nobody in any of these camps counts calories

Those are very dumbed down bullet points, but frankly they are the things that everybody of any position on this matter agrees on. Just a thought. Beyond those points there is massive disparity in thoughts and position, even among well studied, well intentioned, intelligent people. Those are the common points, they probably, thus, form a pretty good starting point.

And if anybody wants to really go mad, its probably all about gut health. The gazillion things that live in our guts. I lack the energy to post at length about it just now, but there are cases of people receiving fecal transplants to address a cdif infection and subsequently shifting towards the body comp of the person they received the transplant from. There are cases of people becoming their own brewery after antibiotics (which, presumably, wiped out the gut microbiome) and consumption of brewers yeast so they would actually get "drunk" from eating carbs (google it).

Although I remain unsure of what happened to my body, and much of what I post would just be musings or speculation, it is true that it started with antibiotics (so presumably a wiping of my gut microbiome) and (possibly) a new microbiome formed from the new diet. But...

The bullet points above are probably a pretty darn good starting point for the venture of weight loss.

You are eating less calories than you burn. This resulted in weight loss.

Edit: And not to burst your bubble, but most ancient people, like the Greeks, would know this isn't a miracle. It was known weight loss and a different diet could control "the honey disease," or as we know it, diabetes.

I don't have a bubble. I'm literally an interested, fascinated, traveler on this weird journey. But thanks for the comment, I will read about the honey disease.

and, no, its not that simple (as calories in calories out). Its just not. Not all calories are equal. I do not mean to post demonstrative things because I'm lost in this amazingly broad world of deciphering what diet is best, but no, I don't have a bubble. The bullet points offered above are the best distillation of the material that I can offer right now.

Unless you have celiac disease or another malabsorbtion disorder, CICO.

A pound of fat is 3500 kcal.

Some foods are more or less calorie dense. Some foods are more or less satiating. Your body requires certain nutrients and cannot make them itself. But a calorie is a calorie. A calorie is just a unit of energy.

Humans are amazingly adaptive. Right now I'm cycling through fad diets, and one thing I can tell you is that a diet with minimally processed foods and complete nutrition is the optimal diet. It doesn't matter if it's vegan. It doesn't matter if it's keto. It doesn't matter if it's a carnivore diet. It doesn't matter if it's cooked or raw. As a person who's living it right now, I can tell you this is the case. (And thank you for the reminder to finish up the vegan video tomorrow.)

There are definitely benefits to following certain diets for certain goals... More lean mass, a healthy pregnancy, better per mile run times, etc. And humans are great at surviving eating garbage. The idea we can survive off of processed snacks and fast food is pretty crazy when you consider what's in it, but you are poisoning your body, right?

You seem like you're in a really good place, and congrats on your accomplishments. Are you looking to lose more weight? Maintain?

I can't argue that. Its one of the things I put that everybody in all of the different camps agrees on. No fake food (including sugar).

A couple things are worth nothing if anybody out there is curious...

1. My girlfriend tried my diet after seeing what it did to me. I was very fat when I started it, and she was a gym rat. The kind of person that would literally take the stairs and not the elevator just to get more excercise on top of 3-4 times a week of an extreme sort of workout and going to the gym most every day too. She was extremely far from obese. She lost almost 20 pounds, says she feels better, and looks 10 years younger. Interestingly, due to the birth of our daughter and her taking a new job the amount of exercise that she did during this period dropped by at least 75% and possibly 90%. She reports she hasn't weighed this little since high school and shes still pretty much ripped so it wasn't muscle loss.

2. my previous diet was basically restaurant food, too often including a brewski. Its worth noting that I am possibly more photosensitive than I used to be. 2-3 times per winter (I live in a northern state), I have typically visited a tanning booth for the shortest time they offer because frankly it makes me feel better (emotionally). I'm far from a "tanner", just 2-3 times per winter. When I was still extremely sick I did this and it went fine. On the new diet I reacted fairly badly to a short tanning session, which was a first for me in my life. My consumption of plant based foods went to an all time high, probably by 20 times, and its possible that this newfound sun sensitivity is related to that.

Aside from that, more or less every bodily function that I can think of got better.

The third thing worth mentioning is that she copied a supplement program I set up for myself that, to distill a long story into a short one, was more or less aimed at raising glutathione levels in the body. Theres reason to believe the supplements may have played a role as a couple of them have blood sugar moderating effects.

I remain unsure of what the best diet plan is and unsure of exactly what happened here, but thats probably a decent summary of the info.

And it definitely wasn't calories in/calories out, neither one of us ate any less than we wanted or counted a single calorie. The 12 hour fast each day rule was used by both of us. I'm pretty sure thats an important part.

just an update, my weight loss has settled to 90 lbs, im stable at 172 to 176 , i still follow only these rules:

1. no sugar
2. no deep fried food (so basically no restaurants)
3. no processed food, no oil enters my mouth but the slightest bit of olive oil. unlimited butter is ok.

And thats it. no sugar. ever, all oil is bad if processed. those 2 rules basically changed my life. Im Norwegian so I am probably not low on lactase. i send you all back to the microbiome, my dinner tonight qs all the kids are gone was half a gallon of whole milk. And thats it.