Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mikekchar 2701 days ago
If I'm 6'4" and 20 years old, I can probably eat 2500-3000 calories a day and stay slim. If I'm 5'10" and 50 years old, I can probably east about 1900 calories a date a stay slim.

It is a huge difference. But, it doesn't matter. Some people can eat more than others and not get fat. There is no justice in the universe ;-). Whether it is some gene, your body size, your age or something else, it doesn't matter. Eat too much and you will get fat. Don't eat too much and you won't get fat.

That last bit is super important. There is no illness that causes people to starve to death even when obese. Your body is a factor, not an excuse (Ha ha! Here I am quoting Arnold!)
1 comments
yetihehe 2701 days ago
> Don't eat too much and you won't get fat.

Just invent flying cars, that will solve some problems. Easy, right? The "HOW" is a problem, not "what is needed". When obese people don't eat too much, their body thinks "I don't have enough, time to enter energy saving mode and increase hunger".

link
orwin 2701 days ago
I wasn't obese, but overweight (10 to 15 kg above the baseline for my height), and i did had craving i thought i could not stop. A 3 day diet made me understand that the feeling of hunger is just that, a feeling, and some willpower was needed to ignore that.

Hormonal imbalance caused by overeating was in my case worst than the hormonal imbalance caused by lessening the amount of food i ingested, so it wasn't this hard to stop. Also my life improved a lot around that time (credit, job, appartment, relations), this might have helped too.

link
mikekchar 2701 days ago
That is not established. I have never seen a study that says that obese people are hungrier than non-obese people. There isn't even a way to establish a baseline.
link
yetihehe 2701 days ago
If I eat enough to sustain my obese body, I'm not hungry anymore. If I try to eat less, I'm hungry. I successfully lost 10kg, and first 5kg was even easy. I thought at start "ehh, that hunger is only a feeling, I can continue like that", but I couldn't and I'm back where I started. Just eating less may work for some people, but not everyone.
link
AstralStorm 2701 days ago
There are at least 3 hormonal ways, but such blood sampling is prohibitively expensive for now.

Of course it'd be better I'd you could just read it off neurons, too hard though.

link