[wutbrodo]

> you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it.

Chiming in as someone whom the GP comment resonates with: the point here is that you literally come to enjoy it less. The natural amount that you would eat isn't constrained entirely by health choices. I find finishing a single slice of cheesecake to be overwhelming: a second one would be actively unpleasant.

If you were following your assumptions here to their conclusions, you would conclude that people who eat unhealthily would eat cheesecake 24/7 if it weren't for conscious health choices. This is trivially untrue, no?

The original claim was that losing weight requires constant extra discomfort, and GP's (and my) claim is that this is false: you can move yourself (with initial discomfort) to an equilibrium that's more comfortable _and_ healthier than the status quo.

I feel the discomfort of constraining myself much less often now than I did when I ate like you. This is again trivial: if your preferences are aligned with healthy eating, you need to push against them less.

[convexfunction]

For whatever it's worth, I don't feel like I actually had to adapt my tastes at all in order to eat healthier. The main hurdle was figuring out how to prep in a way that's easy enough that I'll actually bother.

[wutbrodo]

I wouldn't describe myself as actively adapting my tastes: I just ate better and eventually noticed my preferences shifting. I assume it's some combination of my brain getting more sensitive to the stimulus (of eg sugar), my gut changing, and my better diet reducing cravings.

[SketchySeaBeast]

> I ate like you

That's a weird judgement to throw in the midst. I haven't laid claim to my eating habits. I've had great success in losing weight in the past as well as recently by changing my eating habits for the positive. I just wanted people to realize that it's not always just a matter of learning to love yummy veggies and forgetting about icky cheesecake.

> if your preferences are aligned with healthy eating, you need to push against them less.

Agreed - but people have to accept that their preferences aren't always and possibly not ever going to align with healthy eating.

[wutbrodo]

> That's a weird judgement to throw in the midst.

Sorry, I wasn't implying anything by this. Just absent-minded phrasing.

> people have to accept that their preferences aren't always and possibly not ever going to align with healthy eating.

Sure, I think it's possible some people can't make it through the transition to healthier preferences. That doesn't suggest that the original claim in the thread is correct.

The comment you originally responded to claimed that convexfunction was "restating" the claim that weight loss is pure effortful discomfort (from the top of the thread). Your response was that you doubt that healthy food can taste as good as junk food[1]. In the comment I responded directly to, you say that having cheesecake occasionally is evidence that a healthy person eating less cheesecake comes from conscious healthy effort.

These claims are what I'm pushing back against. I use way less willpower on food now than when I was a junkier eater[2].

[1] Note that the issue here might be that your definition of weight-loss-promoting foods is askew. Steak is a pretty reasonable part of a weight-loss diet, as long as you're not mindless about the quantity. As with the cheesecake example, eating the right amount of steak is a way more pleasant experience than eating too much.

[2] though thankfully never as bad as the avg US upper-middle-class diet