This isn't an account of the cultural moment that indi-fashion hub Harajuku had before its gentrification by Major international brand stores, or a inane J-Travel blog complaining about being out of shape and there being too much walking, It's a possibly interesting story of personal growth only coincidentally related to Harajuku.

> Again, trying to literally count calories sucks and is demotivating. Setting up a rigid template for a week and then using it as a basic guide is sustainable and fun.

I lost a huge amount of weight when I was younger (From above 100 kg to 60 kg). I then added 15 kg back slowly, about 1 kg a month, while working out.

The most important thing I learned is that motivation is worth approximately nothing. It comes and it goes. It eventually becomes a job in itself to find it. If you base anything on it being fun and you being motivated, you'll fail.

What's free and sustainable is discipline. You don't weight and log your food because it's motivating and fun, you just do it. It's like brushing your teeth, it's something you have done for so long that it'd feel weird not to.

I don't think I've enjoyed squatting once in the last two years. I dread any session that involves squatting, but if it's gym day, I go to the gym, and if it's squat day, then I squat.

> and was amazed at how many calories I would have to eat in order to stay the same weight. It was huge.

Can someone explain this to me? I try to stay under 2000 calories. To me it means eating almost nothing. Let's say I have berries and yogurt. That ~300. Add a morning latte (no sugar). Now we're at 500. I've effectively had a tiny breakfast and already spent 1/4th of my calorie budget.

Taking what I just ate and multiplying by 1.5 x 2 meals are two more tiny meals and I've hit my limit. And that's no snacks and avoiding all sugar

The only way to make it lots is to eat heaps of veggies with no dressing / oil.

I think there's some evidence for this, and it's consistent with my experiences with myself and what I've seen in others.

It's basically the idea behind the motivation to change literature, that there has to be some point at which the person has to be on board and interested in the change. It may be the desire to change isn't a discrete thing, that something builds over time, and we just become conscious of it at a particular time, or only remember certain moments, or whatever.

There has to be an opportunity though as well, which is another point people get tripped up on and why they lose motivation. Even if someone wants to change, if they don't perceive it as being possible for whatever reason, correctly or incorrectly, the desire for change doesn't have an outlet. It may rise to consciousness and then be immediately quashed because there's nowhere to go.

A lot of the time I think that's the bigger obstacle; it's not being aware of some desire to change, it's having some sense that the change isn't possible or that they don't know how to go about it, which amounts to the same thing.

On the tracking point: I’ve found that a coding agent that can modify a file system (create and update CSVs) that’s accessible on both my laptop and phone to be the single best way to track things I’ve ever used. Bar none.

Even apps with the best UX, like Strong for tracking workouts, feel exponentially clunkier than having an agent that can answer questions, analyze pictures, and write things down on a persistent file in real-time.

When I start exercising and tracking how many calories I burn, I realize how hard it is to outrun your diet. Thinking, "This cookie would cost me 35 minutes on the treadmill," is a huge deterrent.

When I stop working out, I quickly forget what calories actually cost.

Ancient Greek philosophy on mind-body developmental balance can help. A physically fit human with no intellectual development and a propensity to follow orders might be the fascist reinterpretation of the classical Spartan ideal, but this would have been viewed as unbalanced aberration. Similarly, producing geeky nerds who can rearrange complicated equations in their head with ease but who can’t run a mile or lift heavy objects is just as undesirable.

This is a historically valid concept, not a convenient utilitarian fiction for the indoctrination of the youth into proper behavior. The idea was that γυμναστική (gymnastikē) and μουσική (mousikē) should be balanced for optimal human outcomes.

Plato’s Republic:

> “Those who devote themselves exclusively to gymnastic become more savage than they ought to be, while those who devote themselves to the other arts become softer than is good for them… The former, if they had no contact with the Muses, become filled with brute force and a mindless boldness; the latter, if they have no training in gymnastic, become cowardly and feeble in soul.”

I see this post is from 2024. Maybe I would have enjoyed the hook and enjoyed reading along to figure out what this "harajuku moment" was back in 2024. But since being exposed to AI slop daily, and having to scan through so much verbose AI outputs during day-to-day "coding", I've now started skimming so much that I got annoyed that it meandered, then just couldn't bother reading the rest of the post after I've figured out what the harajuku moment is.

It's like my brain is responding to blog posts now in the same way that people scroll past tiktok videos in the first few seconds if there isn't enough of a dopamine hit.

I used to enjoy longform content... alas.

> We all went down to Harajuku to see if we could see some artistically dressed youngsters

Over 95% of the people in Harajuku are tourists going there to do exactly that. Locals completely avoid the area.

> apparently, 10 pounds of weight loss is roughly a clothing size [XL → L → M]

What? This is so wrong I'm confused how it could have possibly made it in. As a 5'7" guy, I was a M at 145, and still an M when I hit 175, though at that point I was close to an L. There is no way I was 3 separate sizes during that time

As Nike might say… Just do it.

Honestly, if you compare Tim's pre-GPT writing style, to his current stylometrics, you'll see a remarkably delta. It's as if he suddenly decided to change his established writing style and voice right when LLMs become widely available.

What a coincidence!

>Can someone explain this to me? I try to stay under 2000 calories. To me it means eating almost nothing.

2000 is "almost nothing"? What are you used to eating? Is it regular natural food or food industry crap loaded with sugar and calories? Here's two examples of eating througout the day:

- 1 cup Greek yogurt + 3/4 cup berries (~230 kcal)

- 10.5 oz salmon + 5 oz baby potatoes + 5 spears asparagus (~750 kcal)

- 1 banana (~105 kcal)

- 7 oz grilled chicken breast + 3/4 cup cooked rice + - 2 cups vegetables (~585 kcal)

- 1 oz mixed nuts + 1 apple (~280 kcal)

OR

- 1 cup Greek yogurt + 3/4 cup berries (~230 kcal)

10.5 oz ribeye steak + 5 oz baby potatoes + 5 spears asparagus (~1,000 kcal)

- 1 apple (~95 kcal)

- 7 oz grilled chicken breast + 3/4 cup cooked rice + 2 cups vegetables (~585 kcal)

- 1 oz mixed nuts (~175 kcal)

Both are around ~2000Kcal. Are these "almost nothing"?

>Let's say I have berries and yogurt. That ~300. Add a morning latte (no sugar). Now we're at 500. I've effectively had a tiny breakfast and already spent 1/4th of my calorie budget.

Make the latte into a black and it's 0 calories. But even with latte, you consume 1/4 of daily calories, in one of the 4 (3 + snack) meal of the day. Sounds about right.

Note that the specified BMR is 2,900 in this article. If you are a heavier individual you tend to have a higher BMR.

A latte with semi-skimmed milk is closer to 100 (probably 125ish) than 200 calories in your example. A low fat greek yoghurt can be as low as 50 calories per 100g, so the 300 calories examples gives you 600 grams of yoghurt, quite a large portion.

The best way to hit a deficit though isn't to eat very little, its to eat satiating and/or high-volume food and add a small amount of exercise. For example potatoes will generally fill you up quicker than rice, pasta or bread for the same calories.

By eating different foods. I frequently get filling bento boxes in japan that are ~500-600 calories. And drinking when is extremely counterintuitive when trying to maintain/lose weight.

I think you're inflating your calorie count a bit: 200 calories of whole milk is like a 20 oz latte. 300 calories of yogurt and berries is like 12 oz of greek yogurt and a cup of berries. I'm not sure putting 1.5 lbs of stuff in your stomach for breakfast really counts as a small breakfast.

> avoiding all sugar

I don't think you understand macros if you think a breakfast of yogurt, berries, and milk is avoiding sugar. Berries are mostly sugar, and lactose is a sugar which makes up a significant portion of yogurt and milk's calories. Your breakfast is close to 50% sugar. I would hate to see what the macros look like when you're not "avoiding all sugar".

Also 150 calories of whole milk is 8 fl oz. How big is your morning latte? Milk is a great food for bodybuilding, because it's easy to consume a bunch of calories without feeling that full. This makes it less good when you're trying to lose weight.

I have one maybe one and a half meals per day which works great for me. I don’t think that works for everyone. I basically don’t eat anything from after dinner to lunch. I’m not explicitly doing IF or anything, it’s just an eating pattern I’ve settled on over the last couple of years and matches what we sort of did in our hunter gatherer phase.

I also have a sour-spicy tooth instead of a sweet tooth which means I’m naturally driven to snacks that are not calorie heavy.

Wonder what you need that latte for if you’re minding calorie intake. Black coffee is pretty easy to get used to and holds close to zero if not zero.

2000kcal is about 1.5kg of chicken breasts, or 2.3kg of potatoes. Vegetables are broadly not worth counting, as you likely won't be able to eat enough to make a difference.

That's a huge amount of food.

The bit preceding this quote is pretty relevant to the discussion, specifically about BMR and generally making the right decisions using a data driven approach.

You try to stay under 2000 calories. Why? Is this number backed with data and helping drive you towards a specific goal?

Consider that the author's BMR might have been higher than you think.

My weight loss diet is coffee for breakfast and lunch, then one large pizza for dinner. That's it.

I personally skip breakfast and just eat lunch and dinner.

I'm not very active, and I've found that doing that as well as not eating snacks, sugar, or having calories in drinks makes it pretty easy to roughly be calorically neutral day to day.

You’re only tracking one of the variables.

It’s the deficit that matters - the intake is not enough info.

2000 calories is also a laughable threshold. Is anyone saying that a 4'9" needs equal amount of energy to a 6'8"?