People took some potassium and lost some weight • Hacker News Board

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#61

Post by scottlamb » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:22 AM UTC

alwayslikethis wrote: post #42

scottlamb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ketogenic or low carbohydrate diets greatly reduce the feeling of hunger and allows you to be burning fat directly most of the times. I assume this accounts for its effect on weight loss: even without counting calories directly, you are eating fewer calories.

I've been doing low carb myself and think this makes sense. Less insulin spiking => more manageable hunger. It's not magic, though. If you're trying to lose significant weight, you still have to make peace with hunger. And low carb—particularly strict keto—can lead to accidental micro nutrient deficiencies, so I track nutrition anyway, even after reaching my fitness goal.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#62

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

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.

Too much $anything, and it will stop your $something you need to live.

Having said that, most by mouth potassium supplements are delayed release so you don’t get it all at once (and absorption already slows things down a lot).

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#63

Post by zeroonetwothree » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #22

dgfitz wrote: post #17

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…

Your metabolism doesn’t use 100% of the energy content of food. It’s actually quite hard to tell the true calories you will get from any give food, it probably depends on many individual factors of both of the human and the food.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#64

Post by eitland » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

melling wrote: post #27

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 didn’t even count calories and lost 30 pounds last year. 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.

Exactly.

Find something that works for oneself.

Keto works for some people. Just reducing plate size helps for some.

Personally I skip breakfasts (I love breakfast, but it is not worth the brain fog that I personally get later in the day) and most workdays I just drink 1/2L of whole milk, preferably cold.

I get plenty enough energy from dinner and now I can also enjoy some snack in the evening together with my family.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#65

Post by xvilka » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

> We probably will not follow up on this study at 6 months and 1 year, since the average weight loss was so small. It seems unlikely that 0.89 lbs of weight loss will be statistically detectable several months later.

Don't waste your time following this diet, there are better and more effective ways.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#66

Post by JackFr » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:39 AM UTC

actionablefiber wrote: post #25

paulpauper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason is that it works well enough, most of the time, for most people. If you are trying to lose weight, you do not need an exact formula to compute the derivative of your weight with respect to time; you need a mental model of your diet and metabolism that moves you toward your goal. CICO basically tells you to look at your two most important levers for doing that (how much you eat and how much you move) and ad…

But people have an extremely poor mental model of calories out.

In particular there is a great misunderstanding with respect to the role of exercise. It’s not the calories you burn during the period of exercise, rather it’s the changes to your body that exercise causes that encourage weight loss.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#67

Post by andreareina » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #13

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“130 calories? That’s so expensive." That's exactly how I came to lose all the weight I have - I started counting calories which caused me to treat it like a budget. I never deprived myself of what I wanted, but new if I splurged on supper I'd not be able to do as much dessert.

My favourite part of it is that it’s so simple you can barely call it a system. The diet industry/community really disinterests me because there is so much complexity.

Unfortunately the simple thing is hard. To the extent that every system that isn’t counting calories works, it works by manipulating appetite and satiety to induce a spontaneous reduction in consumption. People will jump through all sorts of hoops to not feel deprived.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#68

Post by scythe » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC

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.

Potassium chloride is used in lethal injections to the tune of 75 mg/kg. For a typical adult, that's an injection of 4-6 grams all at once. You could never eat that much in a sitting: it would taste horrible and probably cause immediate vomiting, and still it's not so readily absorbed through the gut anyway. See:

https://research.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SOP-KC...

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#69

Post by srcreigh » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC

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"…

The article describes an initial test where people ate 2000 calories of potatoes every day and lost weight. The potassium experiment was a follow-up.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#70

Post by teeray » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 4:49 AM UTC

eloff wrote: post #15

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…

That’s also how I manage my weight. After a while you don’t necessarily need to count everything, you get pretty good at just estimating. I know if I have some drinks, I tend to go over budget and I compensate by trying to have a subsequent day under budget, or do some more exercise. I like it because I don’t feel deprived. If I want something, I just fit it into the calorie budget. You pretty quickly learn that pota…

That’s what drives me crazy about calorie counter apps. They demand perfection which is just totally unreasonable in the messy world. I can’t tell you exactly how many cups of fries are on my plate, or what that sauce is made out of. So you have to guess, but they treat that guess as exact. It would be nice to have a fuzzier counter which keeps track of how sure you are and produces error bars.