[danielvaughn]

I was just saying the exact same thing to my wife yesterday. We’re both trying to lose weight, for the millionth time in the 20 years we’ve been together. Exasperated, I just said “I don’t get it. I was an artist who had no technical background, and was able to teach myself computer science and now I’m a highly successful engineer. I did that. And yet I can’t lose 10 pounds to save my life.”

It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

[scarmig]

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

When I started taking semaglutide, I finally understood it. I'd eat a salad... and be full and more than satisfied! I'd look at a muffin right after lunch, and go "eh, better things to do with my time" instead of immediately having an overriding desire to eat eat eat. Before, I could eat half a pizza and still be hungry (way out of what my body needs); now, a slice is more than sufficient and satiety lasts well into the next morning.

GLP-1 agonists makes eating healthy trivial and automatic, instead of a dieting state where you're thinking about food literally constantly throughout the day for months or years on end.

Too many people are convinced that everyone has the same subjective experiences of hunger and craving, but it's simply not the case. Some people implicitly hold this idea because it's a convenient ideology that allows people to morally congratulate themselves for having a functioning satiety circuit.

[rubicon33]

> Too many people are convinced that everyone has the same subjective experiences of hunger and craving, but it's simply not the case. Some people implicitly hold this idea because it's a convenient ideology that allows people to morally congratulate themselves for having a functioning satiety circuit.

Where does this line of thinking stop?

Is everything pre-determined by genetics?

Is everyone who is smarter than me, just actually lucky that their dopamine system works correctly, and mine doesn't, and hasn't since I was a very young kid?

I'm sure this response will get down voted but its an honest question. This line of thinking that everything is genetically pre-determined seems both accurate and somewhat depressing.

It means that if I'm skinny and can't gain weight, I need to take steroids and lift. Or if I'm fat, I should take a GLP-1 agonist. If I'm underperforming in my career or school, I should take adderal or similar pharma solutions.

What role does good old fashioned hard work and discipline have in this day and age?

[telchior]

Instead of thinking in terms of "everything", "everyone", etc, it may help to think in terms of bell curves and outliers on that curve.

Would you be willing to believe that, out of 7+ billions people in the world, there is at least one person whose brain is set up to constantly hammer them with feelings of hunger? (I'm not sure how a basic proposition like this could be rejected, since the chemicals and processes that govern hunger are something that science actually has some understanding of, and we also know that basically anything can go haywire.)

Next: if you can believe that one person is such an outlier, can you believe that hundreds are? Thousands? Millions? Whatever size that group is, it seems like a possible answer to your worry of when these lines of thinking stop. Perhaps some outlying group of people do actually need something more than "good old fashioned hard work and discipline", especially considering that thousands of years of people repeating such sentiments hasn't solved quite a lot of problems (beyond just obesity).

[BoxOfRain]

> there is at least one person whose brain is set up to constantly hammer them with feelings of hunger

Not only was there a fascinating example of this the unfortunate man was documented by a doctor of the era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare

[naasking]

> Next: if you can believe that one person is such an outlier, can you believe that hundreds are? Thousands? Millions?

Yes, those people exist as outliers. But a population-level outlier theory doesn't explain why obesity is growing in the population.

[scrollaway]

ADHD used to be only a tiny amount of outliers and is growing, thanks to the lifestyle we lead.

Obesity is similar. This feeling of hunger is thrown out of whack often not by genetic but by lifestyle. I’m lucky enough that I haven’t felt it all my life, but I have felt it during multiple phases of my life; i know exactly how eating the wrong kinds of food can teach your body to eat more than it needs and to adapt to that new number.

Our environment sucks ass.

[chownie]

> ADHD used to be only a tiny amount of outliers and is growing, thanks to the lifestyle we lead.

I think this might be a misunderstanding. Rates of ADHD may be higher but I think it's more likely we have an environment which now challenges people with ADHD more than in the past.

The advent of electrical lighting did not cause an increase in pattern-reactive epilepsy, it just created conditions in which pattern-reactive epilepsy were more likely to be triggered. I believe now is the same.

[naasking]

> ADHD used to be only a tiny amount of outliers and is growing, thanks to the lifestyle we lead.

That's speculative I believe. Last I checked, I think they chalked this up to better diagnosis.

[CadmiumYellow]

I've had the same experience and I agree. It's deeply ingrained but it's not hardwired so it can be changed, it just requires going against the grain in almost every area of your life in order to avoid being impacted by the modern food environment (in America at least).

[throw_pm23]

You make a sound argument, but it doesn't explain, why in one country 1% of the people are in this situation, and in another country 30%.

[watwut]

Given that those countries have massively different foods available, massively different environments available, require people to spend massively different amount of physical effort during the day, it would not be that shocking.

[borroka]

The statistical/genetic view of obesity and observed weight gain in general, which is useful in its descriptiveness, fails to explain, behaviorally, why people 30-40-50 years ago-I was young in one of those decades-were much less likely to be not only obese but also overweight. And while it is true that much more high-calorie food is available today than back then, a lot of butter was used, pasta and bread were widely consumed, and if one wanted to be fat, one could easily become fat.

If the problem was all in poor impulse control and hunger felt differently by some people genetically predisposed to feel it (but >30 percent in some states in the U.S. feel it that way?), there would have been many more fat people in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when highly palatable food became available. And, I reiterate, those who wanted to or had no problem getting fat could certainly do so. In fact, there were (some) fat people even then.

One thing that has certainly changed over the decades is the social acceptance of obesity and being fat in general. In my country, which is not the United States, people are still asked what happened when they put on a few visible pounds or promise to start working on it before anyone says anything.

I recently visited Buenos Aires and the difference in weight between women and men compared to what I see in the United States/California was hard to believe. It was quite surprising to see so many women and men young and old in good shape, or at least at a good weight.

But in the United States (and other countries) being fat and terribly out of shape is personally and socially accepted. Let me take an opposing and politically incorrect position for a moment, strange as it may seem: if I had a kid who was overweight, I would firmly tell him or her that he or she must lose weight. Would that work? It's hard to say, but it's something I wouldn't accept lightly.

But it's like the differences we see in the way people dress, even though clothes are not part of a physiological process that is apparently easy to hijack. How is it that people show up dressed in a way that 30-40 years ago would have appeared offensive to others-I'm thinking of going to the supermarket in pajamas. Well, for one thing, that way of dressing and showing up in public has become accepted. People of my parents' generation would have been ashamed to show up in public in pajamas. Ashamed to show up in public in pajamas. But nowadays, whether one considers the loosening of dress codes as good or bad, it is socially accepted and becomes almost a need. In fact, for the younger generation, what was once considered normal (for most people), such as making phone calls or being groomed, is almost physiologically intolerable.

[autoexec]

Lab animals kept on strict diets and routines for decades have been mysteriously gaining weight as well. (https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628)

There's more than just social acceptance of obesity and pajamas in the grocery store at work.

[borroka]

Increased calorie consumption is the offender, there is little doubt about that. By carefully measuring food, one loses and gains weight accordingly (taking into account age, physical activity, etc.).

The social acceptability of being fat leads to psychologically easier consumption of calories. Personally, if it were not for the shame I would feel, I would eat 1 kg of ice cream every night. I have a great appetite, but also a great capacity for restraint.

The "mysterious weight gain" not explained by calories is, at this point, rather speculative.

[scarmig]

I didn't say anything about genetics, though I wouldn't be surprised if that plays a part. Might be how you were raised. Might be simply your cumulative life path leaving you in a particular state. Might be toxins in the environment. It doesn't matter; in the existing present, people have wildly different responses to food and diet.

As for your actual question, it depends on the particular thing we're talking about. For obesity, we've tried telling people to do more hard work and discipline, and it's been a spectacular failure. Plenty of people who do work hard and have incredible discipline in other areas of their life fail when it comes to getting to a normal BMI. There are large subjectivities involved, but when I got down to a 22 BMI at one point via the hard work and discipline route, I was constantly overwhelmed with thoughts of food, literally every waking second; this was despite trying and adhering to probably a half dozen different diets. Most people able to maintain a constant 22 BMI don't experience this.

This also is more common in our current society, for whatever reason (likely not genes, since we're close enough to our grandparents), than it was historically. This isn't some natural state of affairs we live in.

So, bring on the drugs! If there are ones that help other things with minimal side effects, bring them on too. Everyone wins, because we end up with a better, happier, more productive society.

[depressedpanda]

> There are large subjectivities involved, but when I got down to a 22 BMI at one point via the hard work and discipline route, I was constantly overwhelmed with thoughts of food, literally every waking second; this was despite trying and adhering to probably a half dozen different diets. Most people able to maintain a constant 22 BMI don't experience this.

Out of curiosity, what kind of food were you obsessing over, specifically? Why were you craving that kind of food, instead of, say, lettuce?

[scarmig]

For me, it was primarily carbs. Not potato chips or anything particularly greasy, but things like tortillas, rice, noodles, bread, potatoes.

As to why, who knows. I'd be "starving" but have zero desire to eat lettuce, but then jump on the first chance I got to eat a couple cups of rice.

[depressedpanda]

Well, simple carbs (which includes sugar) are highly addictive, so I can't say I'm surprised. Your brain was trying to get you your fix by convincing you that you were starving. In contrast, if you were truly starving you'd eat anything -- including lettuce ; )

So, maybe you already tried that, but there's a psychological/addiction angle that's seldom explored when it comes to simple carbs and obesity.

That said, if there's a drug that you can take that'll numb those cravings down to a healthy level, there's nothing wrong with that.

[derefr]

"Hard work and discipline" are multipliers for the output of an otherwise-balanced brain and body chemistry. But they're no substitute for fixing that balance when it is imbalanced.

An analogy: "hard work" is what your car's engine does when you throttle it up. But that "hard work" isn't going to take you very far — or even in the right direction — if the car's wheels aren't aligned and balanced equidistantly on the car's axle. This "imbalance" will mean that any power put into the system, just gets shunted into running you faster and faster in circles, and/or into "spinning your wheels" and "burning out."

Bringing the car into balance is an overriding concern. You won't get anywhere without first doing that, no matter how hard you push the engine. Once you've done that, though, then the amount of power you're pushing through the engine — your "hard work and discipline" – becomes relevant.

[nerdbert]

Let's say there were a drug that made people motivated to study hard and get a lot of work done. Would the successes people reaped from that be less useful to themselves and people around them, than those which other people reaped from being natively predisposed in that direction?

[hypatiadotca]

If your eyes got bad, would you get glasses?

My brain doesn't produce the same amount of dopamine as a non-ADHD human's brain. It's morally neutral to fix that with medication, same as it's morally neutral to wear glasses, imo.

[not_kurt_godel]

Why are you more worried about "good old fashioned hard work and discipline" than taking a scientific and results-oriented approach to improve people's lives? Do you want to see people toil and suffer for its own sake?

[ithkuil]

Funnily enough one could argue that we're also biologically predisposed to apply certain moral judgements to the behaviour of other people and our own. After all, our environment of selection didn't include the ability to alter much of our body chemistry.

[pmarreck]

> Is everything pre-determined by genetics?

Well, much more is, than isn't, it seems. You may trim the sails, but life will provide you your wind direction... And in this case:

"As many as 400 genes have been shown to affect body weight in one way or another."

https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/blog/obesity-is-it-...

[tormeh]

We’re products of our nature and environment. Belief in free will, virtue, etc. are useful beliefs, but they’re also just not true.

[raspberry1337]

Free will is a product of our nature.

[tomp]

There is 0% chance that human genetics changed this much in the last 100 years (3-4 generations). Look at photos from 100 years ago, people were mostly thin.

So no, we’re not genetically predetermined to be hungry.

There’s something in our environment that’s messing with our circuits. Either some toxins (e.g. endocrine disrupters) or hyper palatable food (artificially engineered for max enjoyment and min satiety), or maybe something else.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

But this doesn’t dismiss the idea that some people are genetically predisposed to be far hungrier. While true cheap and abundant calories facilitate obesity, that probably synergizes with people who have naturally voracious appetites. Someone in the pre-industrialized past wouldn’t have been able to binge on so much calorie dense food, but they may very well have felt gnawing hunger more strongly than their peers.

[nunez]

I don't think _everything_ comes down to genetics, but a lot of stuff does, including the attributes you mentioned here.

[concordDance]

Genetics and microbiome are the biggest factors, but training, habits and environment (how accessible is that junk food?) also matters.

[tdeck]

> Too many people are convinced that everyone has the same subjective experiences of hunger and craving, but it's simply not the case. Some people implicitly hold this idea because it's a convenient ideology that allows people to morally congratulate themselves for having a functioning satiety circuit.

As someone who's always been thin and doesn't have a strong appetite, I couldn't agree more. I'm just enough outside the norm yo be able to recognize it.

There are times when I simply can't force myself to finish my food and it goes to waste, but the upside is that many people assume that people in my body fat range are somehow virtuous for not "overeating". That's not the case at all - I don't eat particularly healthy, don't have any particular exercise routine beyond walking, and I don't limit myself. I just get full quickly and have a metabolism that burns what I eat.

[scarmig]

I applaud that self knowledge.

It's always hard to know others' experiences. I have a friend who genuinely tried to help me lose weight in college with the typical advice and a lot of support: he had the strategy of just eating until he was full and then stopping, and he just couldn't get why that didn't work for me. But when he hit his 30s, he suddenly started ballooning up and suddenly couldn't put his strategy into practice, to his great frustration. Did his willpower dry up overnight? Nope; something else changed to upregulate his appetite.

(I pointed him to semaglutide, and he's already halfway to returning to his college weight.)

[wnolens]

I'm in a similar boat as you. COMPLETE opposite experience as other folks, to the point of pathology. I could not overeat to save my life. I cannot lift weights and expect any growth due to lack of caloric intake. When I try to exceed 2k calories in a day, I find myself so full I need to lie down and groan for an hour until things move and digest. Force any more down and I'll vomit. I cannot concentrate with a meal in my stomach, so I wake at 9, eat ~500cal at 1pm, and leave the rest til I'm done work at 8.

Sometimes I lose 15lbs when having a bout of constipation due to goddamn IBS.

Every person in my life, friend or foe or family or partner finds it clever and completely acceptable to tell me I'm "too skinny and need to eat more".

Others without my experience just don't get it. Glad these overweight folks have a tool to help them.

[sannee]

Since May, I have (very deliberately) put on ~16kg of mass, going from a BMI of 17.5 to 22.8. Started at around 2500kcal/day, currently at 3500kcal/day.

> I could not overeat to save my life

You are likely eating the wrong foods. It is _highly individual_ what kind of food can people eat in large caloric quantities. Start calorie tracking and experimenting more, you can figure this out. Some people do well with oatmeal (tastes like soggy sawdust to me), some with various nuts (peanut butter is a fitness industry staple), others make themselves milkshakes etc etc.

Progressive overload is key here, don't just expect to start eating 4000kcal/day, it is not going to happen (and would not be productive anyway).

> I cannot concentrate with a meal in my stomach

Same here. I feel like eating makes me lose about 10 IQ points, not great (though I am at a place in life where I can make this sacrifice). Maybe more sugar would be helpful here.

You may also find the /r/gainit subreddit englightening.

[wnolens]

Thanks! Congrats on the 16kg.

I've been trying to eat more since I was 20 (am 34 now). It's been getting more difficult as I get older, especially with the onset of IBS a few years ago - now more foods and what used to be regular quantities cause my stomach to balloon.

All my experimentation has landed me on.. a mostly meat diet. Which I don't love (it's expensive, kills animals, impacts climate) but I can digest it more easily than vegetables or grains.

Oats are my everyday ~500cal first meal. If you find them unpalatable, try my recipe (it's literally my favorite thing to eat):

Combine in a jar night before and leave in fridge: 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1/2-1cup water/alt milk (amount depending on consistency you enjoy), half scoop flavorless protein powder, tbsp peanut butter, raisins, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, maybe 1/2 banana (if you need it to be a little sweeter).

I prepare mason jars with dry ingredients for the week, and add water to one or two every evening and put in fridge. Oat+raisin+pb combo tastes like my fav cliff bar. Banana + walnut are also amazing together.

I also recently got a vitamix and have been making vegetable smoothies midday to try and get more of them in my diet. I still cannot drink more than 500ml, else extreme fullness and bloating, but it's something. I'll add oats + avocado + protein powder to make it a meal with proper macros, but then I get to regular dinner time mostly full :)

Eating when full is a real bane for me. But there's bigger fish to fry in life, so I'll be a skinny guy.

[wrp]

I've known a few women with metabolism like yours. They actually had to work at keeping their body weight up. Their friends envied their slim figures, but it was a genuine health concern for them.

[Auracle]

I'm sorry, but I'm a decently in shape person that tried semaglutide for reasons other than losing weight and I disagree.

While I'm sure we all are a bit different satiety wise (and I've found it greatly depends on how much I've been eating overall recently), your experience on the drug is not what the rest of us feel like all the time. It's unfortunately normal for our biology to basically want to shove calories down our mouths all the time. I consciously pace my food intake every single day. I just had a huge plate of nachos, some christmas cookies, and a pickle...and I could still eat more. The only reason I ate that much is because I feel a cold coming on so I relaxed my usual limits.

The kind of "fullness" you get on semaglutide isn't natural. I've never felt like that my entire life. The closest thing would be after something like a Thanksgiving meal, but that's more of a "my stomach hurts" than "I really don't feel like I can put more in my stomach."

My sister in law is the skinniest, most in shape person I know. She's 35, has had 3 kids, and has abs, an ass she clearly worked for, etc. My wife (unfortunately) regularly compares herself to her and in this case also thinks like you, that it just comes naturally. She gave me her old phone so I could test some stuff on it as I don't have an Android phone handy. She didn't wipe it. MyFitnessPal was on there, and she was limiting herself to 1400 calories a day.

Almost all of us work for it. Truth be told, and please hold your downvotes for this, I get a little upset when the rest of you get to have insurance pay ridiculous sums of money for a medication that makes it easier for you than the rest of us, side effects aside, and you think it's simply evening out the playing field.

And it needs to be said in case my wife ever finds this: she's also ridiculously hot and even though she can't see it has, at times, been skinnier than her sister.

[_dain_]

>It's unfortunately normal for our biology to basically want to shove calories down our mouths all the time.

Not for me.

>I consciously pace my food intake every single day. I just had a huge plate of nachos, some christmas cookies, and a pickle...and I could still eat more. The only reason I ate that much is because I feel a cold coming on so I relaxed my usual limits.

This is completely alien to my experience.

I eat until I get full, then I stop eating. I do not have any difficulty whatsoever maintaining a healthy weight. I don't think about calories at all. I have no idea how many calories or nutrients are in anything I eat; I've never paid attention to the that part of the label. It does not enter my mind for even a moment.

Sometimes I exercise regularly, sometimes I slip and get lazy for a while. Sometimes I eat a lot of fast food, sometimes I pull myself together and make better stuff at home. Throughout all this, my weight does not noticeably budge at all. I've been 20-22 BMI for my whole adult life.

>Almost all of us work for it. Truth be told, and please hold your downvotes for this, I get a little upset when the rest of you get to have insurance pay ridiculous sums of money for a medication that makes it easier for you than the rest of us, side effects aside, and you think it's simply evening out the playing field.

I didn't work for it. It doesn't mean I'm a good and diligent person, it means I got lucky with my biochemistry and genetics. In another life, a different sperm would have met a different egg and I'd end up with different alleles and I'd end up fat.

It isn't fair that I'm living my life on diet easy-mode. If semaglutide can replicate this for people who aren't so genetically lucky, that's a fucking miracle.

[pneumic]

I was like this for a long time, then I got older. That said, you seem to be following your body's instincts well, so good for you.

[scarmig]

> I consciously pace my food intake every single day. I just had a huge plate of nachos, some christmas cookies, and a pickle...and I could still eat more.

You give some thought to it every day, but do you think about it every minute? You could still eat more, but do you still have the same intrusive hunger to eat that you did before you started the nachos?

> Almost all of us work for it.

Your claim here seems to be that you work for it harder than people who have less success. But do you have any actual evidence of that?

Like, can you truthfully say that to keep your presumably healthy BMI you overcome nearly constant thoughts about how hungry you are? Can you eat an entire pizza and still be hungry except it's physically painful to eat?

People vary in their experiences of satiety. Many people do manage to be thin without constantly feeling hunger; that's what being on semaglutide does.

[CadmiumYellow]

It's funny hearing people debate this topic on HN where the community skews heavily male. The vast majority of women have experienced both of these states of mind and in fact do so on a monthly basis. Three weeks out of the month I get hungry, I eat, I get full, and I don't feel hungry again or think about food at all for hours. You could put a cupcake in front of my face when I was full and I wouldn't even look at it. It requires zero effort to behave this way. Yet during that fourth week I get a constant gnawing feeling in my stomach that never goes away except in the first few minutes after eating something (usually simple carbs). I think about food nearly every minute of the day. Then one day it's like a switch flips and I'm back to having a perfectly normal appetite and satiety signals. It's an excellent lesson in how we're all at the mercy of our biology to some extent.

[Auracle]

I’m a male with hormonal issues and I’ve also taken growth hormone peptides that make you ridiculously hungry. I’m no stranger to how hormones can affect our bodies. All I’m saying is that the type of satiety you get on semaglutide isn’t natural and I’ve never felt it before in my life.

[CadmiumYellow]

Oh I definitely believe you on that. I haven't taken semaglutide myself but from what I've read it seems to increase satiety by slowing digestion, which is why it has nausea as a side effect, and I can't imagine that that's the same as the normal feeling of satiety you get from eating reasonable amounts. Did it make you less hungry in a sick way rather than a neutral way, maybe?

[runnerup]

> Can you eat an entire pizza and still be hungry except it's physically painful to eat?

Same as the other poster, yes, but I can also still eat more without pain if it's a Large Domino's Pepperoni Pizza. If it's the Dominos "Deep Dish" though, that's my maximum. I can regularly put away a large Little Caesars pepperoni without trying, it's just a "normal meal".

The difference between me and people fatter than me is that after a large meal like this, my body stops "demanding" food for 1-2 days. Thats what keeps my weight in a +/- 3 lb range.

I know the difference because every once in a blue moon after I turned 30, my body's hunger signals will make me un-satiable. The experience of suddenly being unable to diet was jarring. I've managed to fix that somehow, thankfully. But it was very, very clear over several weeks that dieting was entirely beyond my control no matter how much willpower I had.

[Auracle]

What semaglutide does is make the idea of putting more food in your stomach when it’s full…not nauseating, but something akin to that. It’s hard to describe. It almost feels like theres just no more room and the food will come back up. The main point I’m trying to get across is that (probably, sample size of 1) isn’t how healthy weight people feel.

And yes, I could easily eat more than one pizza. It’s a habit to simply stop at a few pieces, or more if I haven’t eaten much that day.

I’ve also taken growth hormone peptides that make you insatiably hungry. Literally insatiable - far beyond what I assume could be natural. I still usually limited myself. If I needed more I made popcorn or something and then went to bed hungry.

[tomp]

> Can you eat an entire pizza and still be hungry except it's physically painful to eat?

Yes. Except that it’s not physically painful not to eat (that would happen probably at 1 1/2 pizzas, but I almost never go there).

I’ve been feeling this way and limiting my food intake since teenage years (almost half my life). Sometimes more, other times less successfully (six pack to love handles, but never beyond that).

[Blackthorn]

> I get a little upset when the rest of you get to have insurance pay ridiculous sums of money for a medication

If this was well and truly about the money you'd support it, because it's going to be cheaper than paying for long-term medical costs of obesity.

[Auracle]

Yeah, and that's a definite bonus. It's the attitude I've read from people taking it that grinds my gears - when I read the semaglutide subreddit it was full of people saying "oh, so this is what skinny people feel like."

No, how you feel on the drug isn't how most of us skinny people feel. I'm probably somewhat uniquely qualified to make that distinction at the moment. The rest of us have worked hard our entire lives to stay skinny and now you all get a cheat. It's one thing if you recognize it, but it's beyond annoying if you don't.

[scarmig]

> The rest of us have worked hard our entire lives to stay skinny and now you all get a cheat.

Someone could just as easily say that you've had access to a cheat your entire life and are now bitter other people have access to it. The fact that you have a stronger satiety response does not mean you are morally superior or are more entitled to a healthy life than others.

[Auracle]

They could say that but they may very well be wrong. Obviously we can’t switch bodies and say, but I’m a non-diabetic person of a healthy weight that’s taken semaglutide. All I’m saying is the “full” you get when taking that drug was absolutely foreign to me.

[fn-mote]

> The rest of us have worked hard our entire lives to stay skinny [...]

Disagree.

I am skinny.

I spent almost no time thinking about it.

I eat whatever I want. If I overeat, my body feels bad... it tells me to stop.

After fasting 24 hours, my hunger turns off. I have no cravings. I am not eyeing chips and cookies with lust. I do not dream of roast chicken dinner.

Our human experiences of hunger and satiety differ more than I ever would have imagined.

Now should I look for a moral judgement? On me? On you?

I think I'll find something more positive to do with the rest of my day.

[JeremyNT]

> Almost all of us work for it. Truth be told, and please hold your downvotes for this, I get a little upset when the rest of you get to have insurance pay ridiculous sums of money for a medication that makes it easier for you than the rest of us, side effects aside, and you think it's simply evening out the playing field.

I don't really think this is a healthy way to look at it.

Yes every day is a struggle for most of us. I've been in the "healthy" BMI for a majority of my adult life, but only just barely. This requires constant effort and work for me. I assume that most "fit" people are similarly fixated on the quest to remain healthy.

But clearly, there's "something" that we have which makes it possible for us to succeed at this, which people who do not succeed lack. I don't begrudge them taking a shortcut, and I don't mind if they never understand my version of the struggle here, because I don't claim to understand theirs.

Fundamentally, we need to understand that our physiology has not evolved in a situation where we are both sedentary and have unlimited, good tasting food at our disposal, and any tools we have to make this situation easier should be embraced.

[pjc50]

> she was limiting herself to 1400 calories a day

This is closer to disordered eating than healthy eating.

> The rest of us have worked hard our entire lives to stay skinny and now you all get a cheat

Ah, the student loan forgiveness argument, and the pro-spanking argument: I suffered, so you should as well, because suffering is intrinsically moral and pleasure is bad.

[Auracle]

> This is closer to disordered eating than healthy eating.

I believe she was losing what little weight she gained during pregnancy.

It’s not about suffering. Like I said, as long as you’re aware of it I don’t really care past the fact that I’m paying for it with my insurance premiums…but as someone else pointed out, it should be cheaper in the long run.

[kmmlng]

I'd be very careful with this kind of reasoning. We just do not know the insides of others peoples heads. How can you rule out that there are differences between peoples appetites?

Personally, I eat when I am hungry. My body typically generates hunger signals around the times I routinely eat. At other times I'm usually not hungry. Sometimes, I'll eat just for taste, but that is rare. I've had periods of time where I was trying to gain weight for fitness reasons and it was a real struggle. My natural state is to be skinny and it's quite hard for me to deviate from that. There a plenty of people like me and there are also plenty of people who tend to be overweight unless they actively fight it.

Clearly there are differences. There are extremes and their is a continuum between those extremes. You can exert some amount of willpower to change your position on the continuum, but the closer to the extremes you are, the harder it will be to arrive at a "normal" position.

And this is just inherent feelings of appetite. Some people may additionally be subconsciously eating to fill some kind of emotional hole or trauma. There is a lot going on and I wouldn't want to be too quick to judge.

[Auracle]

Right, I’m sure there are extreme outliers on each side, but when half the population is fat it’s clearly not just that. The only point I was really getting at is that semaglutide doesn’t make you “feel like all those skinny people do and look how easy they’ve had it.”

Apart from people like you, perhaps. I also have a friend like that but he has pretty severe untreated ADD so I think that plays a part.

[LouisSayers]

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

It's honestly just what you're used to.

If you eat tonnes of sugar and fat then that's what you crave.

If you cut sugar out of your diet, after a while the amount of sugar you used to eat will taste wayyy too sweet. Same with fat - eating chips for example will leave a gross fatty taste in your mouth.

99% of food bought out will have a whole lot of oil, fat, and sugar in it.

Eating healthy starts by controlling what goes into your own food. Cook and prepare meals yourself. Once you're in the habit of doing this you simply start to replace bad food for good.

Don't buy junk in the first place, then you won't eat it. Always shop for food when you've already eaten (and thus not hungry). Slowly reduce / eliminate the amount of fatty and sugary food in your meals. Just drink water (seriously, just water, no sweeteners).

Combine that with an exercise routine and you'll be set.

[tptacek]

This would be more persuasive if it wasn't more or less the opposite of what current nutrition research suggests about fat and satiety.

[depressedpanda]

Fat and non-satiating carbs in combination (e.g. chips) is bad because you will consume loads of calories without feeling full. Most seed oils (i.e. fat) actually seem to be quite unhealthy. If people avoid that shit when being told to avoid fat in general, I think it's actually a net positive.

Apart from them seemingly equating fat and sugar as equally bad, the comment was spot on.

[tptacek]

"Potato chips are bad for you" is a noncontroversial statement. "If you want to lose weight, avoid fats", on the other hand, is deeply controversial and probably wrong.

[nordsieck]

I think that many people discover a particular diet that works for them psychologically and expect that to be the case for everyone.

I do wish that more people understood the basic research on satiety, though. I suspect more diets would be successful if people were eating ~2g of lean protein per kg of goal weight along with a lot (I'm not sure if people have studied amounts here) of dietary fiber.

[moring]

This is exactly what helped me get my weight down: Lots of protein (whey / casein powder is pretty cheap nowadays if you search online; the exact formula is irrelevant unless you are doing top-tier bodybuilding; I'd suggest casein since it digests more slowly so it keeps you "full" for a longer time, and for me this seems to work) and lots of dietary fibers (wheat bran; drink a lot of water and eat it piece by piece over time; getting a lump of this stuck in your throat really sucks...)

Other than that your comment seems to contradict itself, I'd fully agree.

[nordsieck]

> Other than that your comment seems to contradict itself, I'd fully agree.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

[moring]

I meant that you stated,

> I think that many people discover a particular diet that works for them psychologically and expect that to be the case for everyone.

and then did just that for a high-protein, high-fiber diet. OTOH, that worked for me too, so it is certainly something to try.

Re-reading your comment though, I realized that I probably misunderstood it and that you were referring to independent research that came to the same conclusion.

[LouisSayers]

When I said fat I was thinking of the types of fats you eat when eating out.

Lots of deep fried, Canola oil or vegetable oils, bacon etc.

I agree that "fat" isn't harmful, but I do think people get a taste for the nasty ones.

[tptacek]

"Deep fried" is a problem because it almost always saturates carbohydrate-heavy food in fat. There's no debate about whether potato chips are probably just as harmful! But it turns out: the baked potato chips are just as harmful. Vegetable oil on its own is probably not a problem at all. Research on ketogenic diets suggests bacon simply isn't a problem: it's an extremely high-satiety food (it's physically difficult to eat a lot of it!).

Bacon might be a problem for other reasons; for instance, maybe the CVD correlation with saturated fats will pan out. But in terms of basic metabolism, appetite, and hunger, the current trend seems to be away from the idea that people should avoid bacon-like fats.

I'm not here to say "bacon is the answer" so much as to say that your original post, suggesting that there's a simple nutritional answer to this problem, is both glib and not especially well-informed. The truth is: this stuff is very complicated, and there's a lot of uncertainty.

[LouisSayers]

Aren't baked potato chips generally cooked in oil?

I agree that nutrition is complicated, and I am in no way an expert, but I really don't think we need to get so complicated to live a moderately healthy lifestyle.

In general most people know what foods they should be avoiding. I'm not saying stop eating avocados and almonds (although I've heard avocados use a ridiculous amount of water to farm). I am saying maybe don't chow down on potato chips, pizza and then eat a muffin - and then repeat roughly the same diet the next day... when I think of fatty foods, these are the types of food that come to my mind (and I'm assuming that's what comes to mind for the general population as well).

Of course if we go down a technical track or move away from the general population nutrition gets complicated super quickly.

On the subject of vegetable oils, this is why I say to avoid them - https://chriskresser.com/how-industrial-seed-oils-are-making...

Lastly, bacon is delicious.

Here's some more of my non-expert opinion: delicious things should be eaten in moderation.

[tptacek]

It's complicated.

People with satiety issues (for instance, with hormonal disregulation, issues with insulin resistance, etc) aren't necessarily as well served by the "everything in moderation" message.

Food cravings aren't purely intellectual any more than needing to urinate is; intellectually, I can hold it until I find an acceptable bathroom, but physically, the severity of the urge and thus the energy required to regulate it varies based on how much liquid I've consumed, how long I've been waiting, and whether anything I drank is diuretic.

Similarly: depending on your hormonal profile, different foods will probably have different impacts both on satiety (the feeling of being full, of additional food being a welcome stimulation) and on "cravings". Some people can eat a "balanced" diet in moderation, across all the macronutrients, and be just fine; some people will consume simple carbohydrates (bread, rice) and immediately have an urge to eat more, as a dose-dependent response to the carbohydrates they've consumed.

For those people, "eat a little of everything, don't overdo it on the bacon" might not be good advice. There is in fact not that much evidence that eating bacon (or other high-fat, high-protein foods) is especially bad for you. But those foods also tend to quickly produce satiety, and they don't seem to generate food cravings directly in response to their consumption. Maybe for them the bacon, cheese, and eggs is a good call, as long as they're steering clear of the carbohydrates. It's a very big open question right now.

(Again: I'm only considering the goal of minimizing caloric consumption --- weight management --- not other food health considerations.)

Different people are different, and one of the things we are probably getting very wrong in dealing with nutrition is trying to come up with a single set of guidelines for everybody.

[raspberry1337]

There's no conclusive single position of "current nutrition research".

[tomp]

Citation?

[tptacek]

Every study done on ketogenic diets, for starters.

[wink]

I don't buy that line of reasoning. I'm personally going between "I don't crave sweets at all" for weeks to "give me everything we have at home and when I go for groceries I will buy more". Maybe there are people who keep certain preferences or bodily functions for years, I am not one of them. My need for sleep is also drastically going up and down in bouts of months (when I need 8h, I need 8h and 9h is better, and when I am fine with 6h I am fine with 6h or if need be 5h, this changes every few months and then stays for a few months, not limited to a certain time of the year).

[heavyset_go]

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

Learn to cook well so that eating out would result in lower quality meals compared to what you could make yourself.

Once you're controlling what goes into your meals, instead of outsourcing it, that makes it easier to control portion sizes, how much fat/oils go into things (I've found that restaurant dishes have an absurd amount of fat in them even when eating at "good" places), how things are sweetened, what you can use as healthier substitutes and what not.

You can eliminate almost all sugars with low to zero calorie substitutes, you can replace bread/panko/etc with low-carb flours, if you're frying you don't need more than a teaspoon of cooking oil, many sauces you can learn to make yourself instead of buying corn syrup and soybean oil-laden sauces from stores, etc.

Make it a rule to not buy things that come in boxes, buy fresh or flash frozen ingredients and make things from scratch. Stay in the produce, meat and fish sections of the store and ignore everything else outside of things like spices, frozen vegetables and protein.

Give yourself some leeway, too. You don't want to go into an all-or-nothing mindset, because that might lead you to giving up on eating healthily altogether if you break your diet. If you can find a way to treat yourself with something healthy that you like, that would be great. Sometimes I crave pancakes, despite them being nearly 100% carbohydrates. I eventually ended up with a recipe that substitutes wheat flour with almond and coconut flour, and to replace the syrup, a berry sauce reduction sweetened with erythritol. Barely any carbohydrates and the berry sauce is better than maple syrup, IMO, and goes with a lot of different meals.

tldr: reduce the opportunities to eat unhealthily, and increase the opportunities to eat healthily, even if you don't take those opportunities all of the time.

[etothepii]

There's a lot of words here so you took some time to write this.

Who is it for?

Why do you think this is a new/novel idea the person you are replying to, and others reading it, has/have not heard before?

[le-mark]

Indeed!

> Sometimes I crave pancakes, despite them being nearly 100% carbohydrates. I eventually ended up with a recipe that substitutes wheat flour with almond and coconut flour, and to replace the syrup, a berry sauce reduction sweetened with erythritol. Barely any carbohydrates and the berry sauce is better than maple syrup,

This reads like an elaborate troll, at that!

[heavyset_go]

I'm really just that cringey IRL.

[heavyset_go]

I am sorry that my post bothered you, I will keep your sensibilities in mind the next time I choose to share personal experiences on HN.

[jallen_dot_dev]

I'll take a wild guess and say it's for those who "cannot fathom how people [eat healthy]."

[heavyset_go]

You got it.

[astrange]

“Has a high amount of fat” isn’t the same thing as “unhealthy”. “Has a high amount of calories” isn’t either.

Wanting to lose weight isn’t necessarily about health, and eating a lot of fat is an effective way to lose weight.

[heavyset_go]

Eating a lot of fat is an effective way to lose weight, I agree.

However the fats used in restaurants are often used for frying, and likely have been used repeatedly for many hours. Oils used for frying can quickly produce compounds that are not great to consume, like various aldehydes, VOCs, free radicals etc[1]. If they've been used for hours, the chances of those compounds being in your food are high.

They are often low quality, as well, like soybean oils that can be high in fats that can be unhealthy in excess and might contribute to CVD.

I bring up the fat thing not because I think fats are the reason why people gain weight, I'm well aware of how high fat low carb diets are effective. I bring it up because restaurants often put fats into food you might not put it in at home, and the food can soak a lot of it up, turning what might be a 500 calorie dish into something that's 1200 calories or more. If you're trying to watch what you eat, eating out can make that hard because you don't know exactly how much food you're actually eating, and you can't really rely on nutritional breakdowns you might find online or from the establishments themselves.

The foods the fats are in also seem to be high in carbohydrates, which isn't great for ketosis.

I also bring it up because of Ulillillia's decision to degrease the pizzas that were the only thing he ate. By doing that he was able to lose weight while literally only eating pizza for every meal for years.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32818910

[soheil]

It will be painful.

That's probably the most important lesson you need to learn before starting.

1. log your weight everyday on a graph

2. eat very small portions, no carbs

3. when hungry force yourself to drink a large glass of water

4. drink hot tea at scheduled intervals

5. eat lots of popcorn, get the raw grains from Safeway and put them in microwave for 4 mins in a large bowl with a cover

[raspberry1337]

Popcorn has loads of carbs, and low satiety. Eat boiled potatoes.

[huffmsa]

A potato is far more energy dense than popcorn. 2 cups of popcorn looks like a good amount of food, but it's only ~150cal. A good way to trick your brain into thinking it's doing a lot of eating.

Source: worked for me. And is a basically daily staple

[danielvaughn]

why hot tea?

[mstipetic]

You've trained your gut biome to expect a certain composition of foods, it takes a bit for it to calibrate to something different. After a few weeks you can easily get used to different types of food.

[naasking]

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

There are some simple tricks you can try if you're currently maintaining a stable weight. The simplest is to get slightly smaller plates. Your brain will naturally try to visually match what your old portions looked like on the old plates, but now the plates are smaller so you're eating a bit less.

No other change in behaviour is needed to see some benefits, but of course going for a half hour walk after dinner and shifting more of the food you put on that plate towards greens also helps.

[danielvaughn]

Ironically, we're just about to buy smaller plates for a completely unrelated reason. We moved into a new apartment and the cupboards are more shallow than our previous place, and our plates don't allow the doors to close all the way. So we're buying a smaller dish set that will fit. I hope that helps!

[paul7986]

I was diagnosed with something a few years ago which if I didn't change my diet (no beef, pork, fried foods, no foods with preservatives, low to no salted foods, increase water intake to 3/4 a gallon a day & started eating fresh fruit)that in ten to 20 years id be stuck in bed too tired to do anything/ enjoy life.

For me that forced me to eat healthy daily and it has almost healed my affliction upon religiously following such a diet.

[astrange]

What do “preservatives” have to do with it?

Most nutrition advice is so bad you basically shouldn’t believe anything anyone tells you, including, especially if it’s from an expert.

[jononomo]

Just eat only liver, eggs, and ribeye steaks -- you can absolutely stuff yourself and you will lose weight. The problem is that as a society we are sending the wrong message about what healthy food is -- nothing from a plant is really good for humans to eat. A diet of only red meat, however, will not only get you in phenomenal shape, but it will also clear up a dozen other major and minor health issues. It is the perfect human diet and it is a tragedy that this is not understood.

[SamPatt]

I support anyone experimenting with their diet to see what works for them, but I wouldn't be so confident about extreme diets like carnivore working for everyone.

Nothing from a plant is healthy? That sort of absolute statement flies in the face of history and common sense and I can't imagine it's true for all humanity.

[danielvaughn]

I honestly love the idea of individual experimentation. Like, there has to be a not-quite-scientific-but-almost-scientific approach that people can reasonably handle on their own. I'd love to see a book that outlines how to find the right diet that works for you. Like an operational guidebook showing you how to cut out specific foods, and how to watch for and observe changes to see what the effects are on your body.

[astrange]

Hope you don’t have hemachromatosis.

[jononomo]

Next you'll be warning me about scurvy, lol

[erfgh]

You just don't want it bad enough. You like food more than you like being thin. That's all.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

There’s clearly more to motivation, dependency, and even addiction than just how “bad enough” someone wants something.