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People took some potassium and lost some weight

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Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#51

Post by fbdab103 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #34
credit_guy wrote: post #4

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…

But potassium salt is just not that risky. I bet Tylenol or Ibuprofen are riskier. I doubt it. Potassium chloride is the active ingredient in lethal injections, too much and it will stop your heart.

Intravenous potassium is significantly more hazardous than orally consumed.

Wikipedia lists the LD50 of oral potassium at 2.6 g/kg. Meaning your standard 70kg dude would have to eat 182 grams (6.4 oz Freedom Units) to hit that limit. Which would be just beyond horrible to attempt to consume that in a sitting.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#52

Post by trashface »

dplgk wrote: post #33
trashface wrote: post #7

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"…

I'm similar. Do you get low blood sugar easily? It seems like people who's bodily readily release insulin (maybe too much) have a hard time gaining weight. Explains why prediabetics gain weight?

I'm not sure if I get low blood sugar. I'm sure if I ate ice cream every day I could gain weight, as I was overweight most of last decade. But now I generally don't eat a lot, little bits throughout the day. I lost my weight with diet and dedicated exercise over a year ago. Then I mostly stopped exercising except for walking, but still kept losing weight. I mostly stabilized around 150, but I have dropped below it a few times (when I do, I sort of binge at my families house). Pretty sure my diet is protein deficient as well (little meat) explaining my muscle issues but then I've always had an extremely hard time putting on muscle, low testosterone probably.

Was just thinking that, if potassium is implicated as some kind of weight-loss amplifier, and I am already not eating a lot, then it might push my weight down further than I want.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#53

Post by mikojan »

> Previously, we did a potato diet study and found that on average people lost 10.6 lbs over 28 days of potato diet, even though most of them took multiple cheat days. This was a pretty strong effect, so naturally we started wondering, why does it work?

Why would you recommend people go on a potato diet without a working theory on why people should go on a potato diet?!

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#54

Post by xcrunner529 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #9
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

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…

Yep I was “cutting” (restricting calories in a way to try and lose fat to become more tight and muscular looking) and lose 15 lbs and still had a pizza every week.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#55

Post by 8note »

Retric wrote: post #28
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

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…

> some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those calories. 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 differ…

The missing measurement is how many calories you poop, and what relationships exist between what and how much you eat to the amount of calories you poop

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#57

Post by vorpalhex »

notahacker wrote: post #23
vorpalhex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 people that saw the most weight loss were those that also claimed the supplements reduced their appetite looks like supporting evidence for the placebo/weight-tracking effect to me (and if there is an actual mechanism linking potassium intake and appetite, it might be one which only affects the subset of people in a study with a high dropout rate that had something particularly wrong with the levels of potassium…

> why America's obesity rise can't be linked to the rise in average calorie consumption

I think most (certainly not all) folks agree with the general "people gain weight because they're eating too many calories". I think the interesting question is "Why did people seem to start doing this now?"

Ice cream and butter and so on are not new inventions. We as a species have never hurt for desserts or calorie dense foods. So what change is it in our environment which seems to be causing the increased intake in calories?

And some of the usual suspects that get trotted out: sweetened soft drinks served in huge quantities for basically free, extremely processed foods with surprising calorie density that still leave you hungry, maybe changes in some of the ingrediants we're using, so on.

I suspect, given that lots of intelligent people have worked really hard on this and haven't landed on an obvious single answer, that it's a big combination of things. The more I talk to obese people the more I'm convinced there's some sort of sociological or psychological element as well as a food element.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#58

Post by jwiz »

8note wrote: post #55
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those calories. 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 differ…

The missing measurement is how many calories you poop, and what relationships exist between what and how much you eat to the amount of calories you poop

You just track calories in, and weight. If you stop losing weight, reduce calories in.

It doesn't matter if you "have a slow metabolism" or whatever, because that just means you don't get to eat as much as someone else who weighs the same as you.

There are confounding factors so that you can't predict how much weight will be lost by a given calorie deficit. But that doesn't matter.

You will lose weight if you eat less.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#59

Post by elchief »

akira2501 wrote: post #50
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #37

Random potassium trivia: Pot ash manufacturing was an extremely important industry in many countries worldwide from the 1400s-1800s, and potash a highly valuable trade commodity. Mainly for it's use in agriculture as a fertilizer because potassium is an essential plant nutrient. Potash was originally made from wood ashes by soaking the ashes in liquid and drying it out, leaving an alkali potash residue. Nowadays it i…

> Pot ash manufacturing was an extremely important industry Still is if you have a Dwarf Fortress running.

Still is if you live in Saskatchewan

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#60

Post by eitland »

dgfitz wrote: post #17
Waterluvian wrote: post #9

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.

I think I realized two things a while ago:

1. calories in / calories out is true when calories are around what you need or below. If you go above, a lot it the excess calories will, for many of us, just leave unused.

2. Many people consume a lot morr calories than they think, but because of 1. it can hide itself.

When some of them cut a lot of calories (not count exactly how many they eat in total, but just cut the sugar Cola and the extra chocolate) they might still be above 0 because of the big breakfast, big lunch and too big dinner.

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