I've been consistently underweight for the last 20 years of my life (BMI 17.9) and this describes my experience. I tend to be on the warm side, am not particularly active, generally have two or three meals a day and experience no urge to snack. Now that I'm getting towards 40 my "setpoint" weight seems to be creeping up and I may soon cross the line to be consistently on the low-end of "normal." I am still deciding how much energy (if any) I want to devote to keeping where I am now.
People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
231–240 of 350 posts
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are trying to convince everyone that the fruit & veg & lean meats is every bit as enjoyable as a steak and piece of cheesecake. It may be for them, but as a rule I have my doubts.
There are some fruits and vegetables and lean meats (which absolutely includes "leaner cuts of steak with the fat trimmed off") that I quite sincerely like as much as junk food, if not more. Two pan-fried salmon fillets and a big bowl of brussels sprouts with butter beats the pants off even a pretty good burger-and-fries, the main downside being the prep (and, well, the cost for most people). A pound of fresh strawbe…
I agree that a salmon filet is tasty. I don't often eat a pound of strawberries though. Both of those are too expensive to eat regularly, and like you said a salmon filet is a lot of effort compared to a burger.
> I'll have the cheesecake if I really feel like it.
That tells me the writing on the wall, and let me be clear about this, the writing is what needs to be written and what people need to read - you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it. It's a game of weighing the pros and cons and learning to be satisfied with what you know you should have instead of turning around one day and loving the healthy food more than the unhealthy.
Just as an aside: > I assert most people will enjoy a baked potato with a bit of butter (~1 cal/gram) about as much as garlic bread (~3 to 4 cal/gram).
You're discounting the calories / gram of butter in your first calculation and including it in the second.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#233Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Wegovy (semaglutide) are the new class of weight loss drugs.
And their results, crush anything before them.
Once the price point of these medications come down, you're going to see a massive movement towards these solutions for long term weight loss.
It's clear that motivation, accountability, peer pressure simply aren't enough for long term success in keeping weight off.
By long term success, I mean decades of keeping the weight off.
The abysmal dieting numbers prove this.
The Neuroscience of Obesity | Peter Attia, M.D. & Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was 16, I was playing varsity basketball, baseball, track and was working on a farm doing heavy work all summer. Per the doctor, I was obese. My wife was obese because breasts. BMI is bullshit imo, it has some general value but creates a lot of distress for people, especially women.
BMI is pretty good for populations. If you are standing in front of your doctor and he or she is telling you that you are obese because of your BMI score and not actually measuring you (like with calipers), I’d probably look for a new doctor.
Calipers are not the proper medical standard of care for measuring body composition. They don't produce accurate, repeatable results. The current best practice for most patients is a DXA scan.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> losing body fat means that you must continuously make choices that decrease your comfort in some way - eating fewer highly rewarding foods, maintaining a state of hunger, increasing activity level Not necessarily! I've successfully lost a lot of body fat (~50 pounds over the last 18 months) by deliberately changing my diet to eat more foods (that I like) that are lower in energy density than what I was eating befor…
You just restated what the OP said, but tried to paint it somehow in a more positive light. You yourself stated you are "eating fewer ... highly rewarding foods". So what exactly are you contradicting in their statement?
He said that he eats fewer _stereotypically_ high-reward foods because he eats other high-reward foods. How do you interpret that as equivalent to "continually decreasing comfort"?
The pt is that the reward function isn't static, and you can move yourself to an equilibrium with as much utility/comfort that is much healthier.
This has been my experience too. Eg, I'm almost a little grossed out by the proportion of refined carbs on the plates of some of my friends: not only is it unhealthy, it's the most boring part of the meal (to my palate)! And my habituation to sugar has gotten low enough that things taste much sweeter to me than they do to most people.
If anything, this has _increased_ the reward I get from eating, since their unfettered preferences need to be consciously constrained by awareness of their health, while mine line up pretty well.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#236>'run hotter'
That is interesting ja. "generally(red-hearing word when speaking about science)" men I see don't get as cold as females in 'general' (PC/Wokeness be dammed - we talking about proper bro-science here) even though it's not unusual for females to carry more fat (waiting for internet gods to smite me), which is associated with with better heat isolation.
With that in mind, I've noticed I am unusually immune to cold, like my fellow country folks will usually ask me if I know its winter (or some smart comment like that) cause I will be in shorts + t-shirts + sandals most of winter (South African Winters on average about (-2 To 8 Celsius)
For anyone noticing this pattern of fashion (short+ sandals) yes I"m a white-male-Afrikaans-South-African. In winter when it's really really cold (Ragnarok levels) we will consider wearing socks with said sandals :)
PS. As a interesting side note. I did do a 23andMe test and nothing out of the ordinary. Yes my ancestors are from Europe 91.2% I'm French-German decent.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some fruits and vegetables and lean meats (which absolutely includes "leaner cuts of steak with the fat trimmed off") that I quite sincerely like as much as junk food, if not more. Two pan-fried salmon fillets and a big bowl of brussels sprouts with butter beats the pants off even a pretty good burger-and-fries, the main downside being the prep (and, well, the cost for most people). A pound of fresh strawbe…
I agree that a salmon filet is tasty. I don't often eat a pound of strawberries though. Both of those are too expensive to eat regularly, and like you said a salmon filet is a lot of effort compared to a burger. > I'll have the cheesecake if I really feel like it. That tells me the writing on the wall, and let me be clear about this, the writing is what needs to be written and what people need to read - you're making…
> you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it.
Chiming in as someone whom the GP comment resonates with: the point here is that you literally come to enjoy it less. The natural amount that you would eat isn't constrained entirely by health choices. I find finishing a single slice of cheesecake to be overwhelming: a second one would be actively unpleasant.
If you were following your assumptions here to their conclusions, you would conclude that people who eat unhealthily would eat cheesecake 24/7 if it weren't for conscious health choices. This is trivially untrue, no?
The original claim was that losing weight requires constant extra discomfort, and GP's (and my) claim is that this is false: you can move yourself (with initial discomfort) to an equilibrium that's more comfortable _and_ healthier than the status quo.
I feel the discomfort of constraining myself much less often now than I did when I ate like you. This is again trivial: if your preferences are aligned with healthy eating, you need to push against them less.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just restated what the OP said, but tried to paint it somehow in a more positive light. You yourself stated you are "eating fewer ... highly rewarding foods". So what exactly are you contradicting in their statement?
They are trying to convince everyone that the fruit & veg & lean meats is every bit as enjoyable as a steak and piece of cheesecake. It may be for them, but as a rule I have my doubts.
They do it that way. It does not have to be. You just gotta eat different highly rewarding foods.
E.g. do eat that steak. But without a BBQ sauce you bought. Just salt and pepper is great actually. But a butter and cream garlic sauce (no sugar) is also awesome. Maybe some blue cheese on top instead?
Skip the potato. Just that steak with some nice caramelized onions or veggies you like as a side. But that's not even needed.
Highly rewarding I can tell you. Yes it's not sweet and rewarding. It's not carb loaded rewarding but it's absolutely delicious, fills you up for a long time. Yes this is going in the Keto carnivore direction so might not be for you but having eaten Keto (with less than 20g of carbs a day) I can tell you it was absolutely great and rewarding taste wise as I could finally enjoy cream based sauces and bacon again instead of low fast sugary stuff that makes you hungry again after an hour.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#239The study was underweight bmi vs healthy bmi. Nothing about overweight bmi, which I would assume is the trifecta of overeating, little activity, and slower metabolism. At least that is my personal experience in going from overweight to healthy bmi. Really not surprising that people that eat less have lower bmi and higher metabolism than people that eat more with a slower metabolism but who are more active.
When I was 16, I was playing varsity basketball, baseball, track and was working on a farm doing heavy work all summer. Per the doctor, I was obese. My wife was obese because breasts. BMI is bullshit imo, it has some general value but creates a lot of distress for people, especially women.
When I was 16 I waffled between the top edge of healthy and the bottom edge of overweight, according to BMI. When I dropped into the top edge of healthy I had a 6-pack. I wasn't even that muscular, just broad-shouldered.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. I stay thin because I'm always watching what I eat and keep a mental note of how many calories I've had that day. If I'm trying to lose a few pounds I have to actually record my calories so I know when to stop eating. I can eat pretty much non-stop. I could eat a large pizza myself, and 30 minutes later eat another. The grass is always greener. Some people wish they could eat as much as me so they could…
> I could eat a large pizza myself, Sure you could. But do you actually do that often ? If you eat like me, you're eating two large pizzas a night two or three times a week. If you stay thin, I guarantee you don't eat as much as me. At least not unless you have an activity level comparable to an actively training Olympic athlete.
I don't think the problem is as black and white and as you think. Some people can eat large amounts of food and not gain weight, even relative to their activity level. I do agree that those people won't be able to eat in the same quantity as people that generally struggle with weight and that their desire to eat seems to end quicker than some others.
I think most people 'eat until not hungry.' For me, my default is 'eat until full' which I'm not sure is the same at all. I think it's primal programming to eat until full for many of us, because 10k years ago that might have meant surviving or not.
I am usually in 'want to eat' mode. If I eat something, I might put that mode on pause for a few minutes, depending on how much, but I'll be there before the next meal. Then, I convince myself I'm going hungry, so the next meal I'll over eat. This cycle increases my stress level, which leads to more eating.
I find that doing any physical activity outdoors reduces my desire to eat immensely. I don't mean a 5-15 minute walk, I mean being outside for a couple hours or more. My body seems to have two modes, eat mode and work mode. Sitting at a computer is what's causing my problems IMO. I have a low-stress job, but I think the very nature of a computer job creates some kind of primal-stress.