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

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#131

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #89

22c wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also seem to think that "calories out" == "exercise" which it doesn't. For example, if you ate gasoline encased in glass marbles, you'd be eating a lot of calories. The body wouldn't use much of it, though! It's not really widely understood how much the caloric content of our food is actually converted to fat.

Calories out means exhaling carbon dioxide (that's the end of the chemical reaction chain of burning fat). So exercise certainly helps.

Some types of exercise help me to mitigate hunger. Other types make me ravenously hungry and are detrimental to reducing caloric intake. The same goes for different types of food. Finding out what works and what doesn't took a while.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#132

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

jwiz wrote: post #58

8note wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

People who feel hungry fail at eating less in the long term.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#133

Post by sannee » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #102

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the right answer!

Why are they doing studies and not measuring lean mass vs. water vs. fat? Might as well have had shoes on the first weigh in and bare feet on the last one!

That would probably be way out of budget for them (and would discourage most participants if they had to pay for it themselves). Even here, a bioimpedance body composition thingy is like 10$ and a DEXA scan is around 35$.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#134

Post by throw0101c » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:11 PM 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.

> My favourite part of it is that it’s so simple you can barely call it a system.

Simply ≠ easy.

What to slow/stop/reverse climate change? Simple: "just" reduce carbon output.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#135

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #114

vorpalhex wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

To be honest, 'why, in the century in which most people had cheap, reliable food sources and motorised transport for the first time in history and many stopped doing manual labour did obesity start going up in many countries where people benefited from these changes?' doesn't seem like a question likely to have an especially counterintuitive answer. Ice cream may have existed in various forms for centuries, but the a…

What changed between the 1970/80s and now though?

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#136

Post by Retric » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

SyzygistSix wrote: post #132

jwiz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

People who feel hungry fail at eating less in the long term.

No diet gets around hunger because the human body tracks how fat it is not just the contents of the digestive system.

Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#137

Post by wrp » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123

wrp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we get into middle age, our hunger sensations grow more out of alignment with our body's caloric needs. I think the focus of most diet strategies is to find ways of minimizing hunger pains while keeping caloric input at or below maintenance level. Aside from calorie counting, which is very effective, the most important thing I found for avoiding discomfort is to go short on calories earlier rather than later in th…

> Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes. I drink a lot of black tea and use nicotine gums, and my hunger is... enough to keep my weight way higher than I'd like. So either I'm doing it wrong - perhaps it needs to be actual coffee and cigarettes[0] - or... I should never stop, because my baseline hunger must be off the charts. ---- [0] - Wouldn't be…

Yeah, you must be doing it wrong. :-)

The appetite-suppressant effect of nicotine is enhanced by caffeine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/)

Conclusion: Caffeine added to nicotine chewing gum appears to amplify its attenuating effects on appetite and the combinations of 1-mg of nicotine with caffeine seem to be well tolerated.

BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#138

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #136

SyzygistSix wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who feel hungry fail at eating less in the long term.

No diet gets around hunger because the human body tracks how fat it is not just the contents of the digestive system. Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry.

>Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry.

It does but there are degrees of hunger. The hunger I feel in the day before I eat is much easier to deal with than the hunger I feel after I have eaten a meal. The hunger I feel when on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with than if I have had bread/pasta/sweets.

I'm pretty sure that for me blood sugar levels, insulin, and hormones play a big part.There is an optimum diet and amount/type of exercise for me to feel less hungry and similarly there are foods and activities where I am almost certain to feel ravenously hungry despite eating more calories.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#139

Post by netheril96 » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

If we are talking about anecdotes, I took a lot of potassium when I was trying to lose weight in 2020. The two things were independent: I didn’t take potassium for weight loss, but they did happen at the same time.

The result: the weight loss was not any faster or less painful or more persistent than my other attempts.

Re: People took some potassium and lost some weight

#140

Post by Retric » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

SyzygistSix wrote: post #138

Retric wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No diet gets around hunger because the human body tracks how fat it is not just the contents of the digestive system. Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry.

>Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry. It does but there are degrees of hunger. The hunger I feel in the day before I eat is much easier to deal with than the hunger I feel after I have eaten a meal. The hunger I feel when on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with than if I have had bread/pasta/sweets. I'm pretty sure that for me blood sugar levels, insulin, and hormones play a big part.Th…

> The hunger I feel on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with

That’s a short term effect. Low carb diets are no more effective long term (3+ years) than calorie restriction.

Most people who lose significant percentage of body weight eventually start dreaming/fantasizing about food etc. It’s possible to push through this and maintain weight loss, but it’s relatively rare.