You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#241

Post by mpalczewski » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #157

mpalczewski wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity started to be a thing in the last 100 years. It wasn't evolution.

You misunderstood what I said. We evolved in a world where food was scarce, hence why we evolved to overeat once we do find food. In the past 100 years, food has no longer been scarce (for people living in a first world country), hence the obesity.

There's been an upper class for whom food wasn't scarce for thousands of years. Socrates wrote about it, and it was looked down upon as type of gluttony and quite unhealthy. However, even those upper classes, who didn't have any food scarcity did not typically get fat.

Blaming it on food scarcity isn't the whole story. It's not enough that food scarcity stopped. It wasn't carbs either, as there are cultures without carb scarcity that weren't obese(Though we do put corn syrup in everything now).

My guess is that it's a dopamine addiction. We understand that sometimes we must do things we don't like, but the idea of eatings things we don't enjoy scares many people.

It's also how corps package food, and the ones that make their foods the most addicting(the most dopamine -> the most pleasure) survive.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#242

Post by kaibee » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #218

csours wrote: post #73

I weigh 350 pounds. I'm very obese. I know this. When I was a teenager, I looked at people who weighed 300+ pounds and though, how do you get that way. Don't you realize that you are gaining weight? Don't you know that you just have to eat less to lose weight? Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate. It doesn't even take th…

I think this is actually the most common experience. Everyone says they want to lose weight, but they just can't bring themselves to eat a sensible amount. Heck, I'm trying it now, writing down everything I eat, weighing myself each day, and it's still going pretty damn slowly. > So many diets talk about not being hungry while you are on the diet. I've been to dieticians and told them I'm hungry, and they suggest eat…

> Have you thought about eating something that just has very few calories, in order to fill you up? Carrots have barely any calories and need a fair bit of chewing.

In my experience, this works kinda ok, but it doesn't actually feel like being full or sated. It feels like having a full stomach but still being hungry.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#243

Post by amatic » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #73

I weigh 350 pounds. I'm very obese. I know this. When I was a teenager, I looked at people who weighed 300+ pounds and though, how do you get that way. Don't you realize that you are gaining weight? Don't you know that you just have to eat less to lose weight? Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate. It doesn't even take th…

I used to think loosing weight was easy, and maybe it was when I was a skinny 20-something. Now at 35+ I'm skipping meals, reducing sweets and alcohol, and doing light exercise every day and it is still hard to just maintain the current weight, let alone drop a few kg. The thing that seems to help is fasting for a few days here and there.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#244

Post by satellite2 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

The (always ignored) corollary of all this, is that fat people with stable weight have appropriate diets.

People get fat by over indulging for short periods of time and then pay the price for very long time, even after correcting their behavior.

To actually have a calorie deficit for long periods is a considerable effort that most people cannot sustain.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#245

Post by stef25 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #142

rnd420_69 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost 60lbs in about a year almost exclusively based around a large amount of exercise. My diet was bad and I was eating far above 2000kcal on many days. I just exercised a lot. 1h of fairly intense cardio at least 6 days a week, though I would always round up to the next 10 min mark and do more like 70 or 80 min per day. Some days I would order pizza or something and some dessert in the evening when I knew this wou…

Depending on your weight, an hour of cardio is only 500 or so calories. Last night I showed my wife a hand with 5 Brazil nuts. That’s equivalent to a one mile run at my weight. Obviously different things work for different people, but no amount of cardio is going to offset a terrible diet for most people. Caloric deficit and intermittent fasting combined with exercise is the easiest and fastest way (imho) to get your…

My app and Google tell me running 6 miles in an hour burns 800+ calories.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#246

Post by jonhohle » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

drooby wrote: post #132

csours wrote: post #73

I weigh 350 pounds. I'm very obese. I know this. When I was a teenager, I looked at people who weighed 300+ pounds and though, how do you get that way. Don't you realize that you are gaining weight? Don't you know that you just have to eat less to lose weight? Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate. It doesn't even take th…

Commenting purely on my own experience. I have found that my hunger is malleable. If I start eating breakfast, I will be hungry in the morning at around the time I started eating breakfast. But, if I stop eating breakfast and only do lunch and dinner, I will eventually lose my hunger for breakfast and have no problem coasting till lunch on nothing but a coffee.

That’s now known as intermittent fasting. 16 hour fast followed by a regular lunch and dinner. You can even keep a typical caloric input, but the extended period of not eating consistently is enough to “trick” your body into going after fat stores. Front recent reading it’s equivalent to fasting two days for an entire week, but at least for me skipping breakfast is much easier. I’m not overweight by any measure, but am middle age skinny fat. Waiting until noon for my first calories has worked well to start eliminating fat from undesirable places without impacting other training.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#247

Post by telomero22 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #73

I weigh 350 pounds. I'm very obese. I know this. When I was a teenager, I looked at people who weighed 300+ pounds and though, how do you get that way. Don't you realize that you are gaining weight? Don't you know that you just have to eat less to lose weight? Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate. It doesn't even take th…

Your body craves carbohydrates, it's like an addiction. Overcoming that addition is all about training your willpower and delayed gratification.

It's the same as smoking. Strong willed people can stop smoking in a heartbeat. Weak minded people cannot, their minds are simply too weak to resist smoking and they need it every 2 hours. Same with eating.

Next time you feel that hunger feeling, out of spite just don't eat and the craving goes away within 1-2 hours and you'll get long term endorphins instead that make you feel good for your mind being stronger than that craving. It's not so hard, you just have to be a bit stronger than that desire.

You can also try fasting. Just don't eat for 24h and you'll feel a lot better than if you ate.

Some people simply cannot delay gratification, they need to be on their phone, watch tv constantly to get their dopamine hit. However, other people are able to delay gratification and get a much larger amount of endorphins and also the better ones.

It should become a habit to receive your dopamine hits from resisting the temptation and being stronger than this degenerate craving for unhealthy, processed food carefully designed to make the population addicted to their produce to buy more and more and eat more, so that they make more money.

There is a way to get out of this easily, don't eat any more sugar and carbohydrates, but plants and meat, which is the keto diet. It's very healthy and natural as well. You'll drop a lot of weight and you can still eat well.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#248

Post by pixl97 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #18

Sparkle-san wrote: post #4

This seems like a good primer on how to look at food differently. The problem with diets is that people relapse due to the fact that dieting is done through force of will and willpower is limited. For long lasting change, you need to reshape your relationship with food and be content with what and how you eat. Understanding some of the things in this article can be a good place to start.

Modern food is kinda weird in how high-energy and very energy-dense food is the default and cheap, and it somehow is more expensive to buy less calories.

2 primary reasons.

A reservoir of easy to store for long periods of time food source is a national security issue for every state, so it tends to be subsidized everywhere.

Stable foods can be shipped and stored more cheaply.

This coupled with the native desire for salty/sweet/fat puts the modern human at a terrible disadvantage in our current environment.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#249

Post by csallen » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #166

gonehome wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never been on a calorie deficit and not been hungry. Calorie deficits are always a little unpleasant imo. It’s just suffering through that to get to a place where you want to maintain (which is much easier). I’ve lost 73lbs, 53lbs, 35lbs (different times and gained weight over years in between). Each time the calorie deficit sucked. There is a 3 day hump and two week hump of misery until you get kind of used to…

+1. I find drinking water and being hyper focused on a work or personal project distracts me enough from my tummy to get through those humps.

Same here. I've never been obese or anything close to it, but even just eating healthy to maintain my weight or lose a little weight can be unpleasant. That unpleasantness is amplified 3x if I'm spending my days aimlessly as opposed to hyper-focused on activities that put me into flow, e.g. a work project I care deeply about and that requires lots of coding.

Re: You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)

#250

Post by Blackthorn » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #142

rnd420_69 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost 60lbs in about a year almost exclusively based around a large amount of exercise. My diet was bad and I was eating far above 2000kcal on many days. I just exercised a lot. 1h of fairly intense cardio at least 6 days a week, though I would always round up to the next 10 min mark and do more like 70 or 80 min per day. Some days I would order pizza or something and some dessert in the evening when I knew this wou…

Depending on your weight, an hour of cardio is only 500 or so calories. Last night I showed my wife a hand with 5 Brazil nuts. That’s equivalent to a one mile run at my weight. Obviously different things work for different people, but no amount of cardio is going to offset a terrible diet for most people. Caloric deficit and intermittent fasting combined with exercise is the easiest and fastest way (imho) to get your…

> Depending on your weight, an hour of cardio is only 500 or so calories.

That's a massive number of calories! Might not look like much compared to how much is in, say, a bagel, but use a calculator to figure out what your basal metabolic rate is (what your body consumes just you doing nothing, sort of) and you'll find that extra 500 gives you a ton of headroom in whatever your diet is. A week and a half of that would be a solid pound on it's own (yes yes a pound is less calories than 500x10.5, but weight loss is not 1:1 like that for many reasons).