It has been several years, but I've played against Pushblocker

Your knees will eventually be also a pain in the ass literally speaking.

Cheers and good luck!.

Tbh it's either the knees or the lower back with the amount of weight there. I think heavyspin would be much healthier and also play at a much higher level if he loses like 60 pounds...

Try the carnivore diet or keto diet if you can handle it.  You may lose some power for a while as your body adapts but it will be helpful in the long run.

Off topic, but this company’s hq is just down the street from the Columbus Table Tennis Club... 👍🏼

My knees have given up , but only when I play TT. I can run, walk, cycle no problem, but the action of a f/hand loop, pushing off from the right leg is just a complete no no, so I just cannot play matches in the satisfactory way I want to play. So I have stopped. I hate it, but it is what it is.

It all began when I couldn't loop or move in a rally. I've blamed my condition for not having a decent forehand technique, but later on realized that it was my weight actually. No matter how hard I train, I couldn't complete certain strokes as my legs were planted at one place. Frustrated, I've started running in my apartment gym, doing squats to strengthen my legs about 8-12 mins every morning, maintained low carb diet (like quinoa,couscous instead of rice) and slowly noticed being flexible in the sport. Where after, Increased my exercise routine to around 15-20 mins every day, and in about 5 months lost about 20 kgs. Don't want to brag on it but it is the fact. Now a days, although I play almost every day, I'm not rigorously exercising as I used to, having cheat days and I'm pretty much stuck at 70-72 kgs for almost an year now. Anyways, It might seem hard the first few days as you start your weight loss journey, but its mind over matter. If your goal is to repair your body and stroke mechanism, punish yourself on treadmill for a decent amount of time every day and I guarantee you'll see results in the longer run. 

I live with knee, hip, back and shoulder issues from the follies of my youth.  Would suggest professional opinion such as a chiro depending on your issue, massage, ultrasound, back exercise regiment...may help relieve spasms.  

This is not meant to be medical advise.  I only play a chiro on mytabletennis.net 

I personally use a back stretcher and find it helps with my spasms if i do not have my stretcher i just use two thicker pillows and that works for me.

Also when I go to my gym, which isn't that often, I should stop putting arrogant 20 something year olds (who think they're strong) in their place by showing them that in my 50's I can still out-lift them. A fitness freak around my age told me that I inspired him to do strength training. He said "I can't lift half the amount you lift." I responded "That doesn't mean I'm in good shape. If we ran for 20 minutes on a track, I couldn't run half the laps you run." I plan to do more endurance and stretching exercises.

For my back I use the exercises from YouTube Tone & Tighten with the large foam roll. This helped a lot.

I am now at the point where I can play full top spin for 2 hours straight (but I still try to play like Mima Ito, not Ma Long).

Good luck !!

Losing weight isnt a big problem, but maintaining it over a long time is. One is a temporary restriction and the other is a lifestyle change. 

There is no magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqYyFo1DcL8&list=PLT4Yite3Tx5l-6aLLkv7fUubnmYz_THuW" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqYyFo1DcL8&list=PLT4Yite3Tx5l-6aLLkv7fUubnmYz_THuW

I lost 30lbs in the last year and a half and I can tell you that there is a lot of misinformation out there on how to lose weight and feel healthy.  Calorie deficits initiated the traditional way (eat less, move more) usually just acerbate problems with hunger hormones and are not sustainable.  That's one reason (in addition to my autoimmune issues) why I went keto carnivore and it has been one of the best decisions I ever made.

+1 and yes. Basically the food composition is very important. Basically you gotta ban all dessert/junk food/alcohol and other sources of empty calories (they contribute lots of calories without making you feel full which sucks), gradually reduce carb consumption like bread/rice/noodles and increase meat/vegetables consumption. 

Based on my personal experience, there are two ways of reducing weight that work for me:

1.  Intermittent Fasting (6 and then 4 hours eating window time):   I lost 13 kg in 1.5 months.   13 kg = 28.66 lbs.

2.  Keto diet:  I lost 16 kg in 3 months.   16 kg = 35.5 lbs.  I did not cut carbo entirely, just reduce it to minimum.

I have not tried other methods, but those two work well for me.  Intermittent fasting gives faster result, but keto diet is easier to do.   And healthier I think.

Oh I forgot to mention, I did not play TT but during dieting, I do RPM (that static cycling class).

I lost a good deal of weight eating meat and... chocolate! Yeah, yeah! 

All my main meals were carnivore, and if I wanted some treat or something else I ate chocolate (most all of it dark 50% - 88% - so I wasn't eating a few bags of snickers and reeses cups after a ribeye ) and cashews/walnuts/seeds/nuts. 

I've also tried the meat and goat's milk diet... basically now I try to make sure all of my actual meals are meat only, and have been trying to cycle in other foods to see what might work for me. 

What matters is just simple physics -calories in - calories out= your weight (I am not talking about eating junk by the way)

So use the diet that is the easiest to follow. For me, intermittent fasting works well, but it does not mean, that if my daily calories requirement for maintaining constant weight is 3000kcal, I can eat 3300kcal in my feeding window. I still have to eat 2700kcal in the end to loose weight.

So, if you don't have a good grasp how many calories what foods have, you still have to do your math. 

My diet is very consistent: oats for the breakfast, eggs and buckwheat for dinner, something different for my supper and cottage cheese for a late snack. Because I eat pretty much the same every time, I know how much calories I intake and don't need to make the calculations, but that's not for everyone , I suppose...

During intermittent fasting, I basically eat anything I want.   Now, the reason I tried intermittent fasting is that I tried to show my friends that it would not work.

But now I understand why it works.   After you fast for so long, when you break your fast, you will find that you can't eat a lot.  Your body just can't take it.   So I find that intermittent fasting makes you eat less food, thus your intake calories < < your burned calories.  During fasting, your body also burns fat as there is no fuel intake (food).

I usually start eating at 12:00 PM and eat everything I want until 6:00 PM.   When I started it, I eat from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM but I find it too easy.  You just basically skip breakfast.  So I stick with 6-hour eating window.   After 3 weeks (my body has adjusted well), my eating window is either 12:00PM - 4:00 PM   or   2:00 PM - 6 PM (4 hour eating window).   So, I eat only 4 hours a day, and fasting for 20 hours.

Starting from when you wake up, up to 12:00 PM, I drink few cups of tea (plain, without sugar).   Coffee is probably better because it can suppress your hunger better, but I don't drink coffee.   So I stick with tea.   So during intermittent fasting, you are allowed to drink tea or coffee or water, basically anything as long as it has ~zero calories.

I did not continue with intermittent fasting because my daily schedule often conflict with it.   I often have to meet clients and have lunch or dinner with them and it is really hard to stick to the schedule.

Keto diet is more suitable for my daily schedule.  I still can eat everything.   Usually you don't eat carbohydrate at all when you do keto diet, but in my case, I still eat a little bit of rice or potato, and still I lose weight.

The formula is actually calories IN < calories OUT.   That's all.

I forget to mention ONE THING !!!

I cut my sugar intake.

I could drink Coke or Pepsi 3-4 cans a day.   During Intermittent fasting or keto diet, I don't drink soda at all.   I also take my tea plain without sugar.  Well, sometimes when I really crave for soda, I drink a can, but probably only one can per week or per 2 weeks.

I think the culprit of weight gain is sugar.   Try cut your sugar intake and you will see wonder.  

If you read the label on food or drink at local supermarket, you will be surprised how much sugar each contains.

Mostly this is very true (especially the necessity of keeping track of caloric intake of what you eat) but there are some caveats.  It is not quite just simple physics because bodies are a bit more complex than furnaces (we have evolutionary adaptations that allow us to withstand famines and such).  Calories that lead to surges in insulin secretion do tend to lead to more efficient conversion to fats that are stored.  It is ok to eat carbs but you need to focus on carbs with a lower glycemic index.  So simple sugar is definitely your enemy, and whole grains are not, unless you eat way too much of them. 

Bottom line:  eat a bit less, eat like a type-1 diabetic when you do eat, and also get aerobic exercise.  TT alone is probably not aerobic enough.  Bicycles are good.

Of course if you simply reduce caloric intake by whatever method you will lose weight.  It's not that calories in < calories out is false.  But you can make it a bit less painful and lose more weight for the same amount of caloric restriction by reducing the glycemic index of the carbohydrates you eat (you want low glycemic index foods).  Actually what Simas eats fits right into that scheme.  Also if you don't increase aerobic work you will not maintain it over the long term.  You need some carbs to maintain ideal glycogen stores in your muscles so as to perform well in sports.  But ideally those come from complex carbs. 

Here is a better explanation of some of the physiology.  Still a bit simplistic but it gets the idea across.

If you eat foods with lots of simple sugars, like sucrose or corn syrup, the blood glucose levels rise quite quickly shortly after eating.  This stimulates maximal insulin secretion.  This in turn stimulates a lot of glucose uptake into fat cells, and (especially important) it stimulates those fat cells to covert the glucose to fat.  Of course some is also taken up into liver and muscle and converted to glycogen, but mostly it goes to fat.

By contrast you eat complex carbohydrates that take longer to be digested, the rate at which blood glucose rises is much slower so you get substantially less insulin secretion.  Less is then converted to fat.  Diabetics are always advised to eat that way because what is left of their insulin signaling systems cope with it better.

So, 1000 calories of some complex grain like quinoa is not so bad, and 1000 calories of Coke is really bad.

Pure keto is pretty hard to sustain. But some versions of reduced carb/paleo seem to work pretty well for a lot of people.  Serves the same purpose of reducing insulin secretion.

The point I was making, is that intermittent fasting does not work by itself, what works is eating less, and intermittent fasting is the way to achieve that and without a lot of suffering  

Another bad thing (besides high GI) about simple sugars full junk foods, that it is calorie dense, so you eat it, get a lot of calories in a small piece, digest it fast and want to eat again. And as a rule, junk food, besides sugars, are full of fats (saturated)... Try eating the same amount of calories by eating apples 

Another thing (or maybe more like a theory), that some fasting is in general a good thing for your overall longevity and vice versa... (Baal, do you know David Sinclair and if you do, what do you think about him?)

I am also going to a gym for some weight training to add more lean muscle mass, so to achieve that I still have to be in a caloric surplus... so my thinking is maybe I can have the best of both worlds: be in a total daily caloric surplus by eating more calorie dense food during my feeding stage and fasting during fasting stage, for stress the cells and force them into regeneration mode... Don't know if that could work, need to do some research on that (by that I mean googling   )... Baal, what is your take on that?

Don't eat carbs at night, don't eat them in the morning, don't eat after 6pm, don't eat high fat... only eat high fat and on and on it goes... if there was anything actually proven for everyone, there wouldn't be a need for new fad diets every 15 minutes. 

Goes back to the age old advice... take what works for YOU and forget the rest. 

You can literally find good studies for any diet, and within 1 minute of google searching... find another study or expert saying it's total shit. 

I am not a high level athlete but all I will say is that my TT performance is close to its best ever and I have not had any significant amount of carbs in the one and a half years, in fact I played the last NA teams mostly eating meat and fasting.  I can't make any serious pronouncements from n=1 studies on a non-elite athlete such as myself, but I just want to say that I am a bit suspicious of the idea that the carbs are as necessary as people think if someone spends a long enough period fat adapted with very little carb intake.

Agreed.  That is why dietary studies that aren't tightly controlled are largely shit.  People don't realize unfortunately that this is the kind of crap that dominates the news on diet.  The most clinically researched diet is actually the low carbohydrate diet, because one of its advocates was so into clinical trials that he needed to perform some just to keep himself honest and credible.  Yet given how people write about diets in the press, you would think that low carb diets are a fad and that far less rigorously researched diets like vegan or weight watchers or the standard American diet are built on sound science (there is little research or science on *any* diet),

I tend to agree with this, actually.  A lot of nutritional studies that get picked up in media are pretty horribly designed and the media reports fall into the correlation = causation fallacy every time. 

One thing for sure, weight loss is one of the hardest things anyone can do because are brains are programmed to resist it.  I also suspect (which is not the same thing as knowing) that there are many underlying reasons why some people pack on weight (people are heterogeneous). That would mean that different people may respond better to different kinds of diets.  NL's diet would definitely eliminate most insulin surges.  Physiologically it would definitely work.

By the way, when I wrote "perform well in sports" I should have written "endurance sports" like running or cycling.  In a sport like TT even on pretty much carb-free diets you will have enough muscle glycogen to do ok.  The only thing is that most people find it really hard to maintain an extremely low or no-carb diet for very long. 

It is true, that's why in the previous post, I wrote the type of diet that WORKED for ME.

And in the beginning, I followed intermittent fasting to prove that it was wrong.   So I was surprised that it actually works for me.

I agree also that there are many new ways of dieting that being published every week.  But in the end, you have to choose what works for you.

I forget to mention ONE THING !!!

I cut my sugar intake.

I could drink Coke or Pepsi 3-4 cans a day.   During Intermittent fasting or keto diet, I don't drink soda at all.   I also take my tea plain without sugar.  Well, sometimes when I really crave for soda, I drink a can, but probably only one can per week or per 2 weeks.

(QUOTE)

I think that cutting our 3 or 4 cans of soda was the main reason you lost weight.  

Probably.....

I thought quite a bit before deciding to respond to this.  Part of the reason why people find it really hard to maintain a low carb diet is that they are told that the carbs are necessary to maintain optimal health.  I do accept and admit that the carbs are enjoyed by most people but even in cases where someone has and wants to enjoy a low or zero carb diet, you find some expert or doctor telling them that they need the carbs to be healthy. 

To explain my perspective let me give an example. There are many people for example who do the Atkins diet and experience the great satiation of the induction phase and lose lots of weight.  Then Atkins then tries to reintroduce carbs to find your level of tolerance.  Some people would happily remain on the induction diet if they were told it was okay for them to remain there and infact, that is how some of the zero carb advocates got to their regimens.  Being told you need the veggies and carbs to live (which is not obviously true if there is truth to it) is not an insignificant part of the problem.  Social situations and carb desires (or addiction if you are so inclined) play a role.  But if you have experienced the satiety of a low carb or zero carb diet, you will see that the biggest barrier is not usually the desired, it is people always telling you you need to eat some veggies or fruits even when you have no real inclination to eat them.

When I tell people that most of what they consider hunger is really a mild or serious hypoglycemic episode, they don't understand.  That said, for me, the alternative to being extremely low carb is pain in my joints etc. So my motivation is probably higher than most.

Lastly, there are quite a few low carb endurance runners and cyclists.   The key is to go through a lengthy adaptation period.  When I first played TT on this diet returning from my break I felt like shit And was still convinced that carbs were required if I trained hard.  But over time my body has gotten better and better at it.  If you make someone who plays or Trains at a high level on cycling or running do big tests after following the diet for a month or two, you are going get significantly suboptimal results in my experience even if they are not considered as such. After 6 months to a year, things are much closer to where you will end up.  

Although on the same token, I think the average person vastly overestimates how much they need the carbs and worry about their "lifts" or what have you, decreasing a bit as a result. 

And I agree with NL's sentiment, that often someone might even discover a diet they enjoy and works for them... but some new study comes out saying, hey stupid! You cant eat like that because sammy sixpack says it's bad for you!! 

You broke rule #46 of my bestlifediet!! Buy my course!! So the person stops their successful diet and goes back to binging, when told they cant continue for whatever reason. 

Well there are a couple of zero carb body builders who eat high protein and relatively high fat diets - the main exponent of the zero carb diet on youtube does a lot of workouts on youtube.  The one thing with lifting is that there are often steroids involved, so unless you know who is clean and who is not, you might be ascribing to one thing what is really the result of another.  But eating a lot of meat will give you definition and muscle even if you don't do anything that really facilitates hypertrophy.  I know that from personal experience.

I always assume any decent looking person with a well-developed body and a YT or insta following etc. is definitely on gear 

Same thing with actors miraculously putting on muscle for a role in a few months, following some wonderfully wholesome diet and workout program 

My point isn't that you can't build muscle or strength on the ZC/LC, just that it doesn't appear to be the optimal or fastest way. But again for amateur/dabblers, I don't think it would matter much because even on a high carb diet they'd still struggle - but LC generally allows people at least to not be overweight on top of it. 

I understand what you are saying.  My point is that the optimal or fastest way has a lot of asterisks attached to it.  We have to know fairly well what the core causal factors are before we speak on optimization.  If someone is gaining weight and strength but condemning themselves in later years to diabetes or other side effects, is that optimal?  

People also believed for a while that it was not best to be low carb as an endurance athlete and some researchers still avidly try to prove this.   A lot of stuff comes from analysis of people who have not been allowed to actually try a low carb or zero carb diet for a long enough period to make a difference.

I don't know about other sports but road cyclists would suffer horribly on that diet, especially in stage races.  Geardaddy if he is around can confirm.

But anyway, as NL points out, he has a special motivation for being able to maintain a diet that most people can't do.  Severe pain and disability is a pretty good motivator.

one thing for sure is that losing weight however you manage to do it can reduce TT-induced injuries a lot.

I saw a road cyclist in YouTube who says the diet improved his performance.  He may be lying but he may also not be.  Like I said, it is something that everyone who has not given themselves a period to adapt says will never work.  Then they do it and get surprised when their performance is very close to and sometimes even better than what they had before going on the diet.

From my researching around, it seems that genetics play a huge role in which diet works best for you. I don't advocate people eat any such way or claim one is better than the other. 

There is a literature in sports science on this that backs up what I say.  One guy on youtube means nothing, and to be convinced I would need actual numbers like sustained power/kg, VO2 max, stuff like that.  Not just "I go faster".  In fact, I would need a controlled study with a minimum of 10 people per group, and I would need some really careful testing of outpubts. On the converse, there is another notorious cycling youtuber who goes to the other extreme and says that people should only eat very high carb vegan diets. A lot of what he says in his videos is nonsensical. 

Of course you could be right that people just don't stay on it long enough to adapt to maintain good glycogen stores based entirely on amino acid and fat metabolism. From what I know about energy metabolism (and I teach this stuff) makes me think a no-carb diet would be a bad idea for that sport.  I don't want to argue though.  The fact is that the vast majority of people will not stay on a no-carb diet for a long time.  

But a low carb diet is still probably the best option people have for reduction of adipose tissue and weight loss.  Again, reduction of insulin surges.

This is a pretty good video that summarizes some of the science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_O1R4MHNe0" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_O1R4MHNe0

I don't think that it is hard to cut carbs because of that. I'd say it's the opposite, the main discourse now is that you should cut carbs, especially simple carbs. That's all over the place (by the way, I am not saying that experts saying to cut carbs (simple) are wrong.) 

The problem with cutting carbs is evolutionary -it's beneficial for our survival to take foods that are easily digestible and give us quick energy and that's why we like the sweet taste. Long long time ago, there were not a lot of such foods (basically ripe fruits) and our energy expenditure was high. Now the times have changed. We still have evolutionary preference for quick energy foods, but we don't have the same energy expenditure and the food is very available..

What I do, I simply don't buy such foods when shopping (ok, I must confess -if I go shopping before my training I buy a chocolate waffle, but I eat it before training ) and when I am at home and after my meal I want something comforting I simply don't have anything. Then I start searching my cupboards for the nth time, but if I haven't left anything there, there is nothing to find  -that's how I solve my junk food problem. To make shopping easier, there are such advises as planning before going shopping and going with full stomach. But I don't follow that.

My point is that even diabetics are told to eat carbs when carbs are part of the problem with the condition.  While there is a popular message to limit carb and sugar consumption, it is not as consistent as you might think.  The food pyramid spells this out.  It also isn't made clear that there isn't a huge distinction between carb and sugar consumption.  When people asked how much sugar I was taking, they never asked how much rice I Was eating.

Finally, fruits have been bred for sweetness over time.  Modern fruits aren't what fruits used to be like.

If you eat like a diabetic, you will probably lose more weight for a given amount of calorie deficit than otherregimens.  But you still need a calorie deficit.

Can you provide the studies that show that many people struggle to eliminate an entire food group and that our brains are hard wired not to do it?  Or is this something you are just certain of?

https://www.dietdoctor.com/keto-mcardles-disease-becoming-fat-adapted-provided-constant-source-energy" rel="nofollow - https://www.dietdoctor.com/keto-mcardles-disease-becoming-fat-adapted-provided-constant-source-energy

Not sure if there are a lot of trials for this - but this is what tends to happen if you go low to zero carb - lots of things get better, experts stuck in calorie deficit models have no explanations, and then they wonder why people become more and more skeptical about doctors.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200401184008.htm" rel="nofollow - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200401184008.htm

Personally, low carb diets are easier for me and there are lots of randomized trials showing they work, especially in people with type 2 diabetes.  

Not long ago I read an article in British Medical Journal outlining the history of low fat diets and how badly that classical advice still spewed as gospel by registered dieticians has failed to deliver on most of its desired endpoints including improvements in blood glucose or lipids.   I'll post it later.

mts388 wrote: Plants like animals are living things.

Bacteria are also living thing. What's important is do they have a wish to live?

I don't think animals have a fear of dying as such (as a constant long term persistent feeling and as a wish to live. They don't think in concepts, but we do and have). They have instincts and an instinct to survive which activates during dangerous moment and so on. So I am not sure if you killed an animal instantly and not painfully without letting him anticipate the coming danger, harm would be done. Animal farming is a whole other story. They are suffering there and because of that it's terrible.

Plants are not physically capable of scurrying off when in danger.  Its the degree of consciousness which I believe is lower in plants than it is in the animal kingdom.