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by scarmig 1265 days ago
> 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.

4 comments

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.
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.
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?
> 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.

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.

> 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).