[arkh]

> It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store.

It is their fault. But the recent development with anti-hunger molecules and their effect point to something many well wishing people don't want to hear: not everyone is the same regarding satiety.

It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself. It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza instead of feeling ready to puke it back out your body is asking for MORE. And not just this one day because you did not get a good breakfast in the morning. But every day. All day. "You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.

In a totally orthogonal subject, I used to have an untreated prolactinoma giving me 0 libido which may have started around my teenage years: I never understood why many people could not stop themselves from "thinking with their penis". Just "have some willpower, it's easy". Well let's just say 1 month after starting some treatment my view changed a lot. And it's not too hard to extend this kind of experience to other subjects regarding why people make bad decisions.

I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple month.

[malfist]

I really appreciate your empathy here. Nobody has the same biological factors nor the same hormones, so expecting everyone to have the same drive to consume a vice is just wrong. But at the same time, there is nuance here. Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.

But I don't know where that balance is, between empathy and tough love, but it's definitely a spectrum. Me personally, I'd prefer to fall on the side of too much empathy.

On your orthogonal subject, I had post-SSRI libido side effects (still highly recommend SSRIs, I'd rather have a low libido and alive than the alternative), without symptoms of ED, which is really hard to treat in men. I had good luck finding a doctor willing to write me a script for PT-141, and it was fantastic for me.

[Aurornis]

> Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.

Caloric restriction as the parent comment describes it is a strawman argument that people use to discredit diet advice.

Real dieting advice isn’t “eat 833 calories of pizza and then stop instead of eating the whole pizza”. Real diet advice involves picking better food choices first.

Pizza is a highly palatable, calorie dense food. If someone is feeling hungry after devouring an entire pizza, they need to stop eating pizza. They need more fiber, more filling foods, and foods that are less calorie dense. Even just picking foods that are slower to eat will make changes because our hunger and fullness signals aren’t instant. It takes some time for your body to process what you eat.

Counting calories does work if it’s done correctly, but modern dieting advice hasn’t been that reductive for decades.

[nearbuy]

You're not factually wrong, but framing this as a fight between calorie restriction vs healthy eating and siding with healthy eating isn't right either. Both methods work for some people. Both methods have low long term success rates because people struggle to stick with them.

Yes, intentionally restricting calories is hard for most overweight people. But eating healthy is also hard for most overweight people! And there's no guarantee it'll cause weight loss without calorie restriction. You can eat healthy foods and still have a large appetite and eat too much.

It's two different tools that each require different kinds of willpower. Sometimes one tool works better for some people. You can use both at once.

If there was an easy solution that worked well without willpower, we wouldn't have our current obesity rates. Hopefully the new weight loss drugs will help with this in the future.

[Projectiboga]

Another issue is the body goes on lockdown around 5 days in eating below weight maintenance. The trick may be to only diet 4 days a week in a row targeting a weight below current like 10 or 20 lbs lower and eat for current weaight the other 3 days. And it might be able to flip that once at desired weight.

[Funes-]

Craving more and more sugar (carbs) constantly is not the same as being hungry. That's why you can never have enough of it even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week. Hunger is a very straightforward physiological signal, not a psychological craving that stems from addiction. Anyone who's ever been addicted to anything would recognize that as food addiction, not "insatiable hunger". Once you start disciplining yourself with regards to diet, that's one of the very first things you automatically learn to discern. This realization usually comes to you very evidently, in a spontaneous manner.

[jrs235]

>a psychological craving that stems from addiction.

Additionally, for many who are overweight, I imagine eating is a coping mechanism to stress. Some folks turn to food, others shopping, others substances (drugs/alcohol), others sex, others exercise, etc. We all have "different" ways we deal with stress. Finding a healthier way can drastically improve one's life. UInfortunately for those that turn to food for stress "relief" likely get a double whammy if feeling/knowing/being overweight adds to their stress.

[thaumasiotes]

> even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week.

For reference, that amount of food is zero. You're already set for the week.

Animals don't operate like cars where they're constantly on the verge of death.

[Funes-]

To sustain itself... at the same rate it usually does (body fat, muscle...). My comment was extremely easy to grasp. Instead, you twisted what I wrote, clinging to a stupidly literal interpretation of it, and came up with a ridiculous reply, riddled with straw man fallacies. Good job (making a fool out of yourself while trying to one up a stranger on the Internet).

[thaumasiotes]

Think a little further, and you might see that the amount you've recently eaten has very little relevance to how much you need to eat in the near future.

[Funes-]

You didn't get my comment it at first--it's fine, dude. Every other user understood it right away, so no problem.

[thaumasiotes]

What do you see as the significance of the qualifier "even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week"?

[pjc50]

> I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple months

Reverse ozempic!

This is a known side effect of anabolic steroids and various other drugs, btw.

[malfist]

I think "reverse ozempic" is called weed

[yamazakiwi]

I know you're joking but there is a study from the American Journal of Medicine concluding marijuana use was associated with lower levels of fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, and smaller waist circumference.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23684393/

[solumunus]

That’s interesting. I’ve gone hypo on weed quite a few times.

[vlan0]

While societal structures and corporate practices shape behavior, you're right, individuals still retain agency. But progress lies in fostering environments that support healthy choices while encouraging self-reflection and responsibility. Dismissing either side of the equation undermines effective problem-solving. ie, food deserts are real

[snozolli]

"You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.

My adult, reasonably fit weight was about 175 - 180. I got up to 215 back in 2018. I'm now back down to 185 and getting leaner. You know what I noticed? My hunger pangs were far stronger when I was fatter.

When people ask about losing weight, I say "make friends with hunger". I'm hungry for a significant portion of the day these days. For a few years there, I wasn't hungry because I was always proactively eating, and when hunger did hit, it was intense.

[mindslight]

So, this "hungry for a significant portion of the day", in the context of software development. Are you just supposed to throw in the towel on getting anything done, or write blublang with an endless stream of boilerplate, or what? Like I certainly get the experience of doing straightforward physical tasks and putting off eating, but it seems like a non-starter when you actually need to like, concentrate thoughtfully.

[snozolli]

If anything, my concentration and energy level are more consistent while hungry.

I wake up hungry, but I'm not in a rush to get to breakfast. I start feeling hunger again within a couple of hours after a meal, but I'm still at least a couple of hours from the next one. I often fall asleep slightly hungry.

Intermittent fasting might be a good idea if this sounds alien. At least you'll only feel misery for part of the day.

I read an article years ago about how the French eat at set times and don't snack between meals, and they don't accommodate snacking behavior in children. That's not to say the French are necessarily some ideal, but certainly Americans are always snacking, on top of everything that's been said about processed foods and ease of access to food. I recall always hearing about "starvation mode" and how you were somehow going to gain weight if you ever dared to let yourself become hungry, and I foolishly believed it.

[sevensor]

I’ve made friends with hunger, and it’s a weird head space. You begin to look forward to a good hunger the way you look forward to a good meal. Not any healthier than overeating in my estimation, and it puts you outside a lot of food oriented social interactions. Worth trying, if only to learn that mild hunger won’t kill you, but not a great lifestyle.

[mindslight]

My concentration is consistently terrible while hungry, to the point that I might as well just consider the time gone instead of even trying to write code or really even think about much of anything. That's my experience.

So while I don't doubt your experience (and it's great that you've figured this out for yourself), it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight.

[snozolli]

Like I said, hunger pangs were far worse when I was fatter.

That said, there's a spectrum of hunger. Have you ever been hungry enough that you thought about eating your own dog? I haven't, but I've read enough stories of humans surviving terrible conditions to know that it happens.

As for concentration while hungry, that honestly sounds like either a psychological addiction or something physiological like blood sugar levels.

it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight

I didn't say anything remotely like that.

[stewarts]

Prednisone can be a real doozy for some people along those lines. Anywhere from mild hunger all the way to rabid, unchecked hunger.

[casey2]

>not everyone is the same regarding satiety

There is no proof for this claim, nor can there be. "anti-hunger molecules" Are irrelevant. What is relevant is portion size, an individual is used to eating a portion size of x. There body is used to churning through all the physiological processes needed to digest (or not) y calories. If that individual ate x/4 over the course of a month their body would adapt to y/4 calories.

You make the exact same argument but don't seem realize it. The drug you seek is called dieting. Alternatively you can believe the unscientific fantasy that buddist monks who starve themselves to death just have tons of anti-hunger molecules or were born with a genetic disorder that gave them max satiety points.And you can just ignore bodybuilders who claim to think about food all 24/7 (why would they be buddists if they started out aesthetic anyways? self selection? stop coping we all more or less have the same brain, all life has a massive disposition towards feeling hunger, these desires only grow in size and complexity as life gets more complex)

[immibis]

We shouldn't need to prove that not everyone is the same regarding X, for any value of X...

[Aurornis]

> It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself.

This is another strawman argument. Good meal planning and dieting advice starts with your grocery list and the contents of your refrigerator. It’s not “just eat less”, it’s “stop buying those foods you know are terrible and replace them with something else”

> It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza

Again, this is setting up a strawman argument. There are more foods available to us than an entire pizza. You have to make a series of decisions that leads to buying a whole pizza. If you think that pizza is full of engineered, addictive chemicals and you also know that you’re going to be hungry after eating it, why is it what you choose to eat?

This is the problem I was trying to describe: It’s really convenient to blame addictive food chemicals and other external factors for everything, but in the process people are wiping away any sense of choice and accountability for their actions.

For what it’s worth, I am hungry virtually all of the time. It was a running joke with everyone since I was a kid. I learned early on that I need to modulate my diet at the source, otherwise my weight goes up before I know it. Changing my shopping list and planning where to eat before I’m hungry makes all the difference.

[GoToRO]

Beeing fat is the same like your experience. Beeing fat means you are ill but very few people treat it as an illness. What illness? Your gut stopped working. Because it doesn't absorb any vitamins and minerals you get these crazy cravings. Your brain is making you eat more to compensate. Of course, not more crap, but that it's your choice.

[hammock]

How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?

[arkh]

> How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?

When entering the office of an endocrinologist for something unrelated they asked if I was there for some thing (which I guess was "prolactinoma") which was not the case; they still told me to get my prolactin levels checked because I had "the body for that". Their guess was right. I was really lucky as usually it is diagnosed in men when they start losing peripheral vision or producing milk.

[swat535]

I don't have prolactinoma but I got tested for it. I had low libido as a man with ED problems, I went to a Urologist and he prescribed a whole bunch of tests which includes checking your Prolactin levels as well as SHBG, FSH, LH,Testosterone, E2 etc.

I suppose an Endocrinologist would run the same tests.. in my case I had Secondary Hypogonadism and was put on HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) which resolved my Testostrone issues and libido and improved my sperm count as a nice bonus.

But I digress, the point is that if you suspect any issues, go see a doctor!

[steve_adams_86]

In my 20s and early 30s I was extremely fit, and I loved exercising. I was compassionate, but didn't really get why overweight people refused to exercise. I thought, man, they just need to give it a chance.

One day I got pneumonia, and it was a pretty severe case. It damaged my lungs and even my nerves in my neck, making it hard to lift my arms for weeks. I couldn't run 1km let alone 30km (which previously would have been a nice Sunday for me), and I couldn't even comfortably stretch or warm up.

No big deal I thought, I'll bounce back.

The funny thing is, when exercise actually feels awful, it's way harder. I didn't bounce back. On top of that, I developed depression. Not like... I was a little sad that I couldn't exercise. More like I was using exercise to help keep something pretty awful at bay, and with no defences against that and my health declining, it got reeeally bad.

I then went on to gain a LOT of weight. I went from a muscular, lean 180lb at 5'10" to a less lean and more fat 225lb. I tried to manage it, tried to exercise, eat less, all of it.

Something had changed, though. A threshold was crossed. My momentum was suddenly frozen by sickness, and then barely thawed at all over the following months. Everything I was previously escaping was then easily able to overtake me. The urge to eat more? Easy to give in to, now. The urge to sleep longer? Yes please. That voice in my head telling me today's not a great day to exercise? No longer a whisper but a relentless droning until I gave up the idea. Then it's replaced with compounding shame.

It gradually dawned on me that my previous fitness, while great and all, was not afforded to me by my own virtues as opposed to the lack of virtues among my overweight friends. It was far more circumstantial than I realized. Once I got that ball rolling (which I'd accomplished through fixation and ignoring all kinds of other important stuff in my life, for what it's worth) it was relatively easy to keep it going. Once it had stopped, I was just like them. Often even worse.

I no longer expect people to put the fork down, or just get up and go for a run. Is it necessary? Yes, 100%. There's no other solution. Is it easy? Evidently not at all, no.

I've come to realize it's largely about support networks, too. We are often ashamed, self-isoalting, and left to our own devices. We have no one giving us tough love on a regular basis, motivating us, helping us to get that ball rolling, supporting us through our shame. We are often so isolated in that suffering.

So that's my novel about being a smug fit person who got a little fat and realized he was a self-involved jerk. Now I understand the problem a bit better. It's hard. Very easy to criticize, very hard to support and solve.

If you have an overweight loved one, part of their solution might be in you. People are not islands.

[pizzadog]

This comment is super relatable. Thanks for sharing your story. I had a similar issue with pneumonia changing me from a gymrat grinding out PRs to someone forcing myself under the bar 3 times a week at best. It makes sense obviously in retrospect but your lung capacity is something everyone absolutely takes for granted. Those first few sessions back in the gym trying to deadlift and then running to the bathroom feeling the urge to puke because I was so winded were terrifying. It definitely humbles you and even if you have the empathy beforehand it really underlines how important it is to remember that people are living completely different lives.

As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance? I've been swallowing the bitter pill that is an enforced cardio regime but man it is really, really not fun to brush up against that bad feeling in your lungs. Speaking of empathy, it's starting to make me understand why people get so obsessed with following snake oil health trends - I've been experimenting with pretty much everything under the sun out of desperation for this one.

[steve_adams_86]

> As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance?

Not really. I'm 38 now and I haven't made it back to previous levels of fitness, and I suspect I might not in some ways. Recovery was way faster than I expected once I gave it a chance, though. And it is despite not being as disciplined as I should be. It made me realize building fitness while you're young is huge; it lets you build it back a lot easier the second time around. Even so, I eventually kind of hit a wall where getting back has been a lot slower. I rapidly recovered maybe half-way, then it was back on a slower track. My deadlift feels frozen.

I have some thoughts about this, though. I'm starting to think attaining that level was never the point. While I was grinding out PRs, the primary side effect of that journey was a dramatically improved quality of life which I wasn't fully aware of until I lost it... And I could have had that same quality of life (minus the odd injury, too) without pushing nearly so hard or getting so far. Realizing that, I let myself worry less about numbers or how I compare to others and focus more on how something will tangibly benefit me. Lifting more will offer very limited tangible benefits according to my experience (lifting couches easily is nice and all, but rarely useful, and they can only get so easy to carry...)

Really it's about losing the ego for me. There were days I should have been climbing stairs at the park like my elderly neighbour, but I felt sorry for myself, embarrassed at my ability, and did nothing instead. Fit in the exercise and movements you can manage, not the ones you believe you should be able to do. Not pushing your limits in a specific way doesn't equate to never progressing or taking care of yourself. In fact, so much of this is psychological, I'd posit that humility will ultimately lead to improving your fitness simply because your ego won't hold you back so often. It's practically inevitable that we'll experience setbacks; what matters is how we respond to them, not how much we can lift the day after.

The worst thing to do is nothing at all. I must have lost 20lb of muscle and gained ~60lb of fat. Muscle is coming back, but the fat is stubborn.

Where I am recently vs where I left off (1RM):

Deadlift 402.5 --> 360 (was exciting to put 8 plates on again!)

Squat 320 --> 265

Bench 245 --> 210

Run (best distance) 43km --> 12.3km (could improve, but don't really focus on it anymore)

Run (best pace for 10k) 4:17/km --> 5:42/km

Maybe something like 75% of the way back? Worse if you factor in sane baselines rather than assuming starting from 0. When I started trying again, these numbers were abysmal. My running pace was close to 7:00/km and it hurt like hell. My deadlift was under 200 on a 5x5 program, vs ~310 today.

Also... Maybe it was nerve damage, but any overhead exercise is trash and not recovering. I used to clean well over my bodyweight and it was an exercise I really loved. These days I struggle to throw 130lb over my head, and I went from pull ups doing ~20 reps with 45lb strapped to me to struggling to pull off 10 reps with no weight.