Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had this weird obsession with that Alone show, but there was an episode where one of the contestants decides her nutrition is messed up and she's going to eat the stomach contents of some wild hares she's trapped. She describes it as one of the tastiest meals she had the entire show. Literally half digested arctic vegetation. Your body rewards you for eating those things which satisfy your needs. McDonalds will…
One can and will lose weight (say, a 220 pound man) by eating two medium McDonald's Big Mac Menu a day (no sauce, diet soda option). It amounts to 1800 kcal per day. Being lean trumps quality of food and "healthy" whatever for health short-term. That's a set result at this point. That is, and this not medical advice, but something I have a done a few times while on vacation, you can do a 10-15-21 days of the above-me…
People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
261–270 of 350 posts
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#262I think the hungry bit is often under-discussed. I lost 75kg over 3 years, then put exactly 75kg back on over the 4 years after that. While losing weight, and keeping it off (for about 6 months), I was hungry all the time, every day. I hoped that my body would eventually "get used" to the new standard, but in the end (not conciously), I gave up -- it was too mentally tiring to be hungry whenever I was awake. I'm sure…
Your description of always feeling hungry after keeping it off is rather worrying to me, since I’m getting close to my target weight after a 1 year+ journey of diet and exercise. I do remember reading before that the fat cells that get created when you gain weight never really go away, they just “deflate”. So after you lose weight, you are more likely to gain the weight back than someone who is at the same weight now…
I was worried about all that stuff about the body never adapting back after being used to eating a certain amount but it just hasn't come up. Maybe that's more likely to happen if you go too fast. I've been keeping a steady pace of ~1.3lbs/week which is slow but easily sustainable.
It also helps hunger to eat more protein, not avoid fat too much, and avoid simple carbs.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#263I think the hungry bit is often under-discussed. I lost 75kg over 3 years, then put exactly 75kg back on over the 4 years after that. While losing weight, and keeping it off (for about 6 months), I was hungry all the time, every day. I hoped that my body would eventually "get used" to the new standard, but in the end (not conciously), I gave up -- it was too mentally tiring to be hungry whenever I was awake. I'm sure…
Your description of always feeling hungry after keeping it off is rather worrying to me, since I’m getting close to my target weight after a 1 year+ journey of diet and exercise. I do remember reading before that the fat cells that get created when you gain weight never really go away, they just “deflate”. So after you lose weight, you are more likely to gain the weight back than someone who is at the same weight now…
I definately give up at some point, then lived in denial for 6 months or so, by which point a lot of the damage was done (certainly psycologically). I don't know if I would have controlled it better if I saw the weight coming back on, but at least I wouldn't have been pretending otherwise.
I'm not losing weight again, and I've set a reminder to weigh myself (I've set it to weekly, I know some people do daily or whatever). I'm planning on that being active forever.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just "peer code review" from a good friend or someone working on the same project as you - a review from somebody who has a ton of stuff to review at once, in many different areas, and very limited time to do it.
That hasn't been my experience in academia. In peer review you can get very high quality feedback and critics. The system has been great for the overall quality.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s good you are honest with yourself about it. Unfortunately I don’t know what the solution is, if you find one let me know so I can pass on to my friends. I binge eat too; it’s just doesn’t take that much to get me full. If I had to eat more to feel full, I’d be fat too. Very few people have the willpower to stop eating while still hungry and with food in front of them.
Similar to substance abuse problems, people with overeating issues often have to "hit rock bottom" in order to gain sufficient motivation and discipline to sustain a permanent behavior change. This often takes the form of a serious medical crisis, or losing a valued personal relationship.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#266There's a really interesting study they did with pigs. They fed pigs four different diets that had the same amount of calories, but varying ratios of n3/n6 fats. The pigs with high n6/n3 ratio ended up much fatter and less muscular than the pigs eating a 1-1 ratio diet. It's a very neat demonstration that "all that matters is calories" is not true; your metabolism, and thus how you use the calories, is influenced by…
Very interesting! I've been reading up on nutrition recently and saw articles talking about this ratio, but they were focused on inflammation, not on body composition or hunger. tmjdev wrote: > If it was the ratio being studied, could you instead increase your n3 fat consumption? Some articles suggest exactly that: "To improve the ratio of omega-3 fats to omega-6 fats, eat more omega-3s, not fewer omega-6s." [1] If y…
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#267I think the hungry bit is often under-discussed. I lost 75kg over 3 years, then put exactly 75kg back on over the 4 years after that. While losing weight, and keeping it off (for about 6 months), I was hungry all the time, every day. I hoped that my body would eventually "get used" to the new standard, but in the end (not conciously), I gave up -- it was too mentally tiring to be hungry whenever I was awake. I'm sure…
I've struggled with the same issue as you and started really digging into the science of food and nutrition because I've had enough of yo-yo'ing.
Fat storage is regulated by various hormones. The most significant are insulin, cortisol, testosterone, estrogen and hormone-sensitive lipase. Hunger is caused by the release of the hormone gherelin.
The way to lose weight and keep it off permanently is to make permanent lifestyle changes that hack these hormones.
The first part is to drastically lower the production of hormones that trigger fat storage. Insulin seems to be by far the most significant. The best way to drastically lower insulin is to not eat, but the next best thing you can do (because not eating isn't really all that practical for most people) is to severely restrict carbohydrates. This means all carbohydrates, including those from fruits and vegetables. You mentioned lots of vegetables, including carrots - well, carrots are an extremely high-carbohydrate vegetable, they're almost like eating sugar. They'll give you an insulin boost and you'll feel hungry again very shortly after eating them. We've been duped by being told that "fruits and vegetables are good for us." The reality is way more complicated than that.
Cortisol is the stress hormone. While I don't buy claims that exercise results in weight loss (because I used to jog for an hour every single day, never ate junk food and was on a "well balanced" diet recommended by all the leading authorities and was still obese and couldn't lose weight) but exercise is great at reducing stress, and so it can help with weight loss ... just not as much as diet. Other ways to keep cortisol low are to make sure you're getting enough sleep and obviously reduce stressors in your life.
Testosterone and estrogen can also be regulated somewhat by exercise, as well as nutrition.
As for gherelin, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that gherlin is released by your fat cells when they start to deplete. It's your body's way of saying "I'm using stored energy, we better find some more." But the good news is that it seems to be temporary and insulin seems to be a factor here too.
When you eat, your body releases insulin to moderate the influx of new blood sugar. Your fat cells get a boost of new fat storage and the release of gherelin is suppressed. But as soon as your blood sugar levels come down and those fat cells start to empty rather than fill you get a new release of gherelin which makes you want to eat so you rinse and repeat. And people who get into a cycle of weight gain become resistant to both insulin and gherelin ... so your pancreas and your fat cells keep releasing more and more just to produce the same effect and a vicious cycle ensues and this is how people become morbidly obese.
So by drastically reducing your insulin levels by cutting carbs, intermittent fasting and filling up healthy fats ("unhealthy fats" like poly-unsaturated fatty acids; PUFAs have their own health problems associated with them) you cut off the production fat-storing hormones and you limit hunger hormone. Then you can restrict calories and not torture yourself. This doesn't mean that you won't ever feel hungry, gherelin production won't stop ... but it will lower and become temporary. You'll find yourself feeling hungry at certain points in the day but it goes away after a few minutes without eating anything.
Long term, once you've cut the weight, you can go back to eating more calories, but by changing your diet to consume very few carbs and to eat less in general (typically by eating once or twice per day) you keep insulin levels very low. The result is that you get the energy your body requires but it's using it rather than storing it as fat and you're not feeling hungry all the time. And you're much more likely to make a change permanently if it's comfortable and not torturing you.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's no surprise that people who eat less weigh less. The surprise, I think, is that people who are underweight are relatively sedentary. Maybe this is not that much of a surprise either though? I wonder how much of this has to do with muscle. BMI infamously ignores muscle mass. An interesting followup would be whether people with low body fat % are sedentary. My guess is that they aren't. Side note: maybe…
I am mostly sedentary, and maintain body fat below 10%. It's mainly genetics, and probably 20% diet.
A lot of guys severely underestimate their body fat %. Sub 10% generally isn't possible without heavy dieting unless you're still going through puberty; genetics has nothing to do with it.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alcohol and ice cream before bed will help you gain weight. Doesn't even have to be a lot - like one drink and 1/2-1 cup of ice cream.
Do you not consider an entire cup of ice cream a lot? I call it quits at one scoop personally.
Re: People with low BMI aren't more active, they are just less hungry, 'run hotter'
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
you missed the important point, IMO: being hungry. it's bizarre that we can be mechanically and nutritionally full yet still be hungry. These low BMI individuals were not hungry. WTF is going on with the hunger response being so messed up in a huge segment of the population?
It’s not messed up. It’s just maladapted to our food environment where there is high calorie, highly rewarding, cheap food available to us at all times. Countries where traditional diets predominate don’t have widespread obesity, and we can see obesity rise in developing nations as they adopt Western diets. Some people, including the Chinese-resident subjects of this study, have hunger responses that are not suscepti…
I visited China and they seemed to have plenty of access to high-calorie, highly-rewarding food. What's special about the temptations of our food system?