[solarmist]

Note: This ignores the factors in the article to keep it simple, those affect many things which contribute to or decrease hunger, satiety, etc.

I think it's as simple as the availability and quantity of food in front of us at all times.

We're eating just as often as in the past, but portions (of everything) are so much larger and our bodies will eat more if it's available.

Satiety is always a lagging indicator to stop eating, so by default we'll over eat if we can. Combine this with food always being available and it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the trend is going to go.

This feels even more accurate to me as I've started doing alternative day fasting (because I'm about 50 lbs overweight), but I've been tracking my food intake on days I eat and I'm almost always eating 2500-3500 calories.

Stuff adds up quickly.

* 500 calories for a bowl of cereal with milk

* 1,000 calories for a sandwich from a sandwich shop

* 1,000 calories for dinner

* 500+ calories from drinks

And eating all of that doesn't make me feel stuffed. It's what makes me feel full. Which I know is a good bit more than "just enough" which I've done when I was working out a lot and watching every calorie I ate.

[dTal]

Jesus, all of those quantities are shocking to me.

A cup of cereal is under a hundred calories, and a cup of milk less than 200, so a bowl of cereal with milk should run about 2-300 calories. 500 calories is a Big Mac. Are you spooning sugar into it? Cream?

What the heck kind of sandwich has 1000 calories? Okay, a fully loaded footlong from Subway maybe, but you seriously have that for lunch? A normal sandwich, such as you might make at home, has 300-500 calories. No 6 inch sub has more than 600 calories. Why is your lunch the same size as your dinner?

1000 calories for dinner is more reasonable, but still - that's a huge dinner. That's like a generously large platter of spaghetti bolognese. I don't know how you could be hungry for that after downing an equivalent meal at lunchtime.

500 calories from drinks is truly horrifying because unless you're chugging milkshakes that's probably all high fructose corn syrup. A quarter of your recommended daily caloric intake, in the form of pure refined sugar! That's an express ticket to diabetes-ville right there. 4+ cans of coke daily is not a healthy intake.

I'm not trying to lay into you here. I'm glad you're experimenting with fasting. But, reality check - I would physically struggle to eat that quantity of food without being sick. I wonder if all that soda is messing with your appetite?

[amanwithnoplan]

As someone that eats (maybe I should turn that into "used to eat") a lot of cereal, knowing that they're pretty unhealthy for me, I did an experiment just now: I poured a large but not exceptional (for me) amount of cereal into my cereal mug, half an inch from the rim, and then poured it into a measuring cup. It came out to 1 3/4 cups.

Then I looked at the labels in my pantry: Store brand muesli - 330 kcal per cup / Kashi GOLEAN - 176 kcal per cup

I also looked up cereals I ate as a kid (I find them too sugary now): Frosted Mini-Wheats - 210 kcal per cup-ish / Cap'n Crunch - 150 kcal per cup / Froot Loops - 113 kcal per cup

These numbers are surprising to me but they probably shouldn't be. Despite Froot Loops being subjectively the most sugary cereal I've eaten and the muesli having a proportionally low amount of sugar, the density of the muesli (82g per cup!) compared to the Froot Loops (29g per cup) means that it's crazy calorie-dense per volume (which is how most people eyeball their cereal, I think).

Having eaten 600-700 kcal worth of cereal with milk just before I typed this, and not thinking that amount particularly remarkable (but the calorie count was surprising!), I'm starting to wonder how my weight has remained stable and well below average my entire adult life. I pretty much only drink water (and the cereal milk), so at least I have that going for me.

[barefoot]

I’ll bite, here are a few relevant observations.

I like honey bunches of oats cereal. It’s delicious. The variety I like is also ~200 calories _per cup_. That’s before adding milk of any kind. Add a little bit of milk and tip the box a bit more than usual (I imagine a lot of folks are not very precise when measuring breakfast cereal) and we’re easily sailing over 500 calories. I eat a modest 1700 calorie diet most days and I could easily crush 1,000 calories of this cereal without even feeling full.

Likewise for sandwiches. The best rated local sandwich shops near me offer a selection of (very likely) 1,000+ calorie sandwiches. They also do not list calories so my estimates are based on casually deconstructing them and plugging in constituent ingredients into MyFitnessPal ensembles with surprising results. It’s surprising because I’ve proven I can eat more than one without feeling full.

It doesn’t take a mad genius in an evil food lab somewhere underground to make food that’s guaranteed to derail a diet. The ingredients are cheap, easy, and abundant everywhere.

That’s the problem.

[solarmist]

It's not usually the main portions of food that's a problem. It's all the little things that are added to enhance the flavor.

The worst example I can think of is, one of my favorite sandwiches, Jersey Mike's Club sub. The "mini" is the size with a reasonable portion. It has Provolone cheese, mayo, bacon, and olive oil on it (if you get it "Mike's way") that takes it from 280 Cal to 640 Cal without changing size (visibly). But I don't always get the mini. Sometimes I get the regular which brings it up to a whopping 1,120 Cal.

And yes, there are plenty of times I'm not really hungry for dinner, but I'm so accustomed/habituated to eating dinner with my wife that I'll eat out of habit. I wasn't hungry, so I chose a small serving, but that still ends up being 500-600 Calories that I didn't need.

So that's 1,200 - 1,800 calories in two main dishes. It is way more food than I need? Do I feel stuffed after eating it? Not usually.

[dillondoyle]

Most people don't realize how many calories are in oil. Check out the label of your olive oil next time you put into a pan to cook.

[iamthemonster]

In a sense you are right, but it is VERY easy to get yourself accustomed to larger portions. I would have absolutely no problem eating a 1000 calorie dinner, even a 1500 calorie dinner. Carbs and dairy are very easy to eat a lot of without noticing.

Your body is incredible at adapting, and it's happy as pie to adapt to a high calorie diet. A few months ago I started calorie counting rigorously and was shocked at how many calories I was casually consuming in what I felt was a normal diet.

The easiest switch I made (and I acknowledge it's not for everyone) is having precisely the same breakfast and lunch every weekday which is a 300 calorie breakfast and 500 calorie lunch. Only one milky coffee per day (in Australia coffee is often made with all milk, no water).

If you come home from work having eaten 800 calories then it's no great hardship to keep within 1000 calories in the evening. But if you've had 1500 calories before 5pm you're stuffed.

[solarmist]

Breakfast (560 - 640 Cal)

* Two servings of frosted mini-wheats (120g - 400 Cal)

* 1 or 1 1/2 cups (240/360 ml - 160/240 Cal) of whole milk

To fill out a day when I was eating super carefully my lunches (1/2 each) would be 1 cups of steamed broccoli and 1/2 a Turkey sandwich.

Lunchs Total (566 Cal) - 1/2 per lunch

* Broccoli (200g - 72 Cal)

* 2 Slices Oroweat whole wheat bread (200 Cal)

* 4 oz deli Black Pepper Turkey (164 Cal)

* 2 Tsp whole grain mustard (30 Cal)

* 1 Tbsp Miracle Whip (25 Cal) / 1 Tbsp Mayonnaise (100 Cal)

Pair that with a dinner of Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie (600 - 930 Cal)

* 10 Oz Chicken Pot Pie (600 Cal) / 15 Oz (930 Cal)

So without any snacks or beverages that puts me at 1,726 Cal - 2,136 Calories.

If I had a glass of milk with lunch and dinner and some Almonds for a snack (1 oz 175 Cal) that would add another (495 - 655 Calories).

Total of 2,221 Cal - 2,791 Cal.

And this is me watching what I eat, but just getting a little sloppy around snacks and beverages. I could easily blow past that by having a Red Bull or soda. Maybe some dessert at some point in the day. It could be easy to add another 1,000 Cal.

[nmfisher]

I don’t mean to sound rude, but frosted cereal, miracle whip and pot pie are not indicators of a good diet.

Once you start eating whole foods (mostly meat, vegetables, nuts and eggs), you’ll realize how easy it is to lose weight (particularly once you start exercising). I think the trouble is that most people have conditioned their tastebuds to respond to highly processed food, so they think they can’t eat “normally”.

[solarmist]

Bullshit. It was honestly one of the hardest things I've ever done. I would spend a few hours a week planning meals and shopping. And then cooking for another 2 hours each day. (Yes, I realize this is pretty standard, but I'm not interested.) I don't enjoy cooking for myself (I don't mind doing it for friends and whatnot though). I did it for three years consistently to lose my last 30 lbs (and got under 10% BF @ 160 lbs.), but I hated having to think about food all the time.

Finding, shopping, choosing and cooking whole foods was the biggest pain in the ass I had when I was single. I don't mind eating healthy, but I hate the work that goes into it. And given the choice I'm going to throw butter, honey, mayo, avocado, etc onto whatever I'm eating to make it tastier.

Is my diet unhealthy? Yup and I know exactly how unhealthy it is. But I love sweet things. That's just something I've come to accept.

Did my tastebuds adjust when I ate healthier? Also, yup, but and I was fine with it at the time. When I met my wife my eating habits slowly got worse until I didn't think about my food choices at all and just when with whatever sounded good at the moment and that was also fine.

But I've learned over the last 10 years that thinking about food constantly (in order to consistently eat healthy) multiply that by two with because my wife's food preferences are vastly different than my own and it's a burden I don't want.

All that is what lead me to alternate day fasting. This is a much easier choice than watching what I eat (I'm being a bit hyperbolic for effect, I'm adjusting my diet too, but not drastically like in the past). I eat enough every other day to sustain myself at a nice 170 lbs, so that's just what I'm going to do. I actually don't find it a burden at all to not eat for a day.

[Edit: Also, food choices were pretty random off the top of my head, but still you picked on the miracle whip, but not the mayo?]

[nmfisher]

I'm not saying you can't keep your weight in check on that diet if you do ADF. I'm saying that your diet is far from normal or healthy - which you yourself admit. Sugar-frosted cereal in particular is just downright terrible. No-one should think of that as "normal".

[rkk3]

Drinking 500+ calories a day is almost 1.5lbs a week, cutting that alone would contribute a lot to weight loss. Try drinking a gallon of water a day instead.

[solarmist]

Yup. Totally. I don't actually do that any more.

But it wouldn't be unusual for me to have three cans of soda a day if I'm not paying attention. Two during the work day and one with dinner, so that's still 500 Calories.

In the last year I've figure out one of the causes for this. I'm, apparently, very sensitive to the flavor of water.

I picked up a home reverse osmosis filter and my water consumption has gone back through the roof and soda consumption down to 1 every few days just because I like the flavor.

[PeterisP]

Calories from drinks are a good example of stuff with a very different balance between calories and satiety, the carbs in drinks don't really create a feeling satiety even if consumed in huge amounts but do provide loads of energy.

Eating 500 calories worth of non-starchy vegetables, on the other hand, would be much harder, because you would feel stuffed.