21–30 of 156 posts
90% of the water I've drunk for the last 2 years has been either been bore water in the mountains, or rain water. It's had no impact on my weight,
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lost 50 pounds in 2020 with this one trick: I counted calories and stayed under 2100 per day. I didn’t even pay attention to what kinds of food I ate. That came automatically as I would look at a treat and think, “130 calories? That’s so expensive.” I naturally learned what foods made me feel full for longer. It was fun. Diet can be complicated, but I have a feeling that for most of us, it really doesn’t need to be…
I’m quite surprised you haven’t been accosted with the “calories in, calories out isn’t real” yet. Fwiw it is how I and others I know have lost significant amounts of weight. There was a “keto” thread on hn the other day and holy moly was keto/calories in, calories out attacked and rebuked.
Also, our calorie furnaces all work a bit differently. Thermodynamics laws hold, but some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those calories.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without a placebo or control group, these numbers aren’t really useful. They are. In general with drugs, you want evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the benefits outweigh the risks. And double blind studies are the way to go. But potassium salt is just not that risky. I bet Tylenol or Ibuprofen are riskier. These guys put the result out there. They explain the protocol (increase dose only if absolutely comfortab…
The question is not "is this a low risk intervention". It's "is this a placebo, an effect of weight tracking, or an effect of potassium?" If it is due to tracking your weight and you just tell people to take potassium, they will not lose weight.
The dropout rate is significant too, both in general and in the specific case of this being a self-selecting sample of readers of a blog promoting fringe theories around weight loss(1). One way to get a statistically significant sample for a weight loss treatment being apparently effective is for people to be most likely to drop out of an experiment without submitting any further data the day the scales give them the disappointing news that they've put the pounds they lost back on again.
Potassium is apparently already marketed as a weight loss supplement, so I'm guessing there are other studies of varying but generally better quality floating around though...
(1)its rather tortuous reasoning why America's obesity rise can't be linked to the rise in average calorie consumption has been posted on here before...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m quite surprised you haven’t been accosted with the “calories in, calories out isn’t real” yet. Fwiw it is how I and others I know have lost significant amounts of weight. There was a “keto” thread on hn the other day and holy moly was keto/calories in, calories out attacked and rebuked.
Thermodynamics is thermodynamics. However what I think people are meaning to argue is that “just don’t eat as much” can be akin to saying, “just stop being depressed.” It can basically be impossible if not dangerous for some. Also, our calorie furnaces all work a bit differently. Thermodynamics laws hold, but some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thermodynamics is thermodynamics. However what I think people are meaning to argue is that “just don’t eat as much” can be akin to saying, “just stop being depressed.” It can basically be impossible if not dangerous for some. Also, our calorie furnaces all work a bit differently. Thermodynamics laws hold, but some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those…
exactly, I don't get why so many people who are presumed to be smart always default to this oversimplistic assumption, ignoring that food consumption and calorie burning are as biologically-driven as almost everything else in life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m quite surprised you haven’t been accosted with the “calories in, calories out isn’t real” yet. Fwiw it is how I and others I know have lost significant amounts of weight. There was a “keto” thread on hn the other day and holy moly was keto/calories in, calories out attacked and rebuked.
Then why not just eat nothing? That way you only have to focus on the calories out portion? Obviously, some people find it much harder at this than others. Some average-sized adult males get overweight with just 1300-1700/calories a day due to slow metabolisms or other genetic factors.
I think this is largely a myth. (The 1700 calorie end is vaguely plausible but not the 1300 calorie end). There was a good article posted here a while ago [1] which talked about this.
Now, it isn't necessarily easy to maintain a certain calorie count, in terms of either knowing how much you're eating or actually sticking to it despite hunger pangs. And some foods can help you feel fuller with less, you can have different balance of muscle vs fat at the same weight, etc. In those senses I agree with people who say calories in calories out isn't the whole story. But in the end, thermodynamics always wins.
Quote from the article:
> Starvation Mode is this wacky idea that if you eat too little an amount of calories for an extended period of time your body stops burning fat; in fact, it starts doing the opposite–you start gaining weight ‘even when consuming 800 calories’. Sound familiar?
> So, how much truth is there to this?
> Well, see, Starvation Mode is an odd one. Because, while it’s not entirely correct, it’s not entirely incorrect either.
> The correct part: When you reduce calories, more specifically as you begin to get leaner, there is, in fact, some slowing of metabolic rate.
> The incorrect part: Due to this low-calorie consumption your body decides fuck you and proceeds to enter this phantom zone of otherworldliness where the laws of thermodynamics cease to exist, resulting in no fat loss, or worse, gaining fat on some absurdly low number of calories.
It goes on for quite some time, and it's worth reading, but I'll quote just one more part.
> This British actress was adamant she had a slow metabolism, turned out she was simply misreporting calorie intake.
> When she recorded her food intake via video journal, her intake, according to her, was 1100 calories. When they checked her actual intake (with doubly labelled water) it came to 3000 calories.
> Even when she was keeping a food diary, she misreported by 43%.
[1] https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/ discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31381410
Any time you have people start tracking their weight, it’s not surprising that they might start paying attention to their diet and lose some weight. Without a placebo or control group, these numbers aren’t really useful.
I lost 50 pounds in 2020 with this one trick: I counted calories and stayed under 2100 per day. I didn’t even pay attention to what kinds of food I ate. That came automatically as I would look at a treat and think, “130 calories? That’s so expensive.” I naturally learned what foods made me feel full for longer. It was fun. Diet can be complicated, but I have a feeling that for most of us, it really doesn’t need to be…
Eat less food.
Stopped snacking between meals, and ate a salad for dinner a few nights a week. Also, tried to reduce my meal size, in general.
Getting that hungry feeling between meals that I would always satisfy meant I was creating a deficit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m quite surprised you haven’t been accosted with the “calories in, calories out isn’t real” yet. Fwiw it is how I and others I know have lost significant amounts of weight. There was a “keto” thread on hn the other day and holy moly was keto/calories in, calories out attacked and rebuked.
Thermodynamics is thermodynamics. However what I think people are meaning to argue is that “just don’t eat as much” can be akin to saying, “just stop being depressed.” It can basically be impossible if not dangerous for some. Also, our calorie furnaces all work a bit differently. Thermodynamics laws hold, but some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those…
That’s always seemed like a nonsensical rebuttal.
Nobody is actually measuring how many calories they burn per day or the actual content of their food down to 4 decimal places, but you can quickly get a baseline based on comparing rates of weight loss and total calories consumed because the difference in died aren’t subtle. If 2100 calories doesn’t work fast enough try 2000...
seems too good to be true. If this was possible it would would be all over the news. Pharma companies have been looking forever for non-stimulant supplements that induce weight loss without the side effects of conventional weight loss medications. Given that such a drug would presumably be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in sales owing to the widespread obesity epidemic, there is great incentive to find one, ye…
If its the potassium, you could test the idea with something else like bananas. I remember hearing years ago that Weight Watchers had reformulated their diet and one of the changes was that you could eat "unlimited" bananas. My personal anecdote is I eat a lot of bananas (at least one a day almost every day) and a few potatoes and I'm actually having a bit of trouble keeping my weight _high_ enough (150lbs for 5'10"…