7 ms·

> basically the body fights hard against you as you try to lose weight by dieting. I used to weigh 310lbs, now I'm 215lbs. All I did was count calories to main

> basically the body fights hard against you as you try to lose weight by dieting. I used to weigh 310lbs, now I'm 215lbs. All I did was count calories to maintain a deficit and the results were essentially the same as predicted by the math. I was a bit hungry sometimes at first as I adjusted to it but that's really it. Prioritizing protein and fat over carbs helps with that. What ways does the body tend to fight against people?

zinclozenge 5y ago
Unfortunately there are people like me who don't only feel a bit hungry, when I eat at a deficit there are times where I get so hungry my thoughts are completely consumed by the hunger. The only way for me to successfully lose weight was to have days where I simply eat nothing at all. Sounds counter-intuitive but after getting over the initial extreme hunger I found that the hunger sensations would diminish into a background noise, of sorts. That and the rules are easy to follow: eat nothing. When I'd eat at a deficit I'd frequently justify to myself that eating a little bit more than I was planning on doing was ok because it was only a little. And then I'd do that several times until I felt completely satiated, defeating the purpose.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  The complete fasting approach is pretty common among Fellas I've spoken with. Lot of the guys have powerful "all-or-nothing" traits, where it feels easier to have a strict intense rule than a more nuanced approach. The issue comes when you therefore become so hungry your body drives you to eat a lot of food all at once. But I'm interested that you notice your hunger sensations actually diminish over time.
  - andi999 5y ago
    Isn't it actually well known that you are not hungry when fasting (after a couple of days)?
    - rich-cartwright 5y ago
      Yep I've just been reading up on this now actually: ghrelin & leptin changes after day 2 of a fast.
speeder 5y ago
I will use myself as an example: I have Hashimoto disease, and even treated my metabolism can get so slow that I need to eat so little that I start to have nutrient deficits, for example one of the past dieting attempts resulted in hair loss, brittle nails, cracking skin, because I needed so little calories that when I consumed exactly what I needed, I ended with a protein deficit. Only solution I found that worked was go for pure weightlifting, literally train as if I was aiming to he an Olympic champion, and even then I still ended overweight (I am 1.75m tall, smallest weight I managed, that was then I was training heavily and had a diet that was almost 100% protein, was 98kg)
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  That's interesting. That weight isn't necessarily unhealthy if it's largely muscle from all the training. Did you end up with a low body fat percentage despite the weight?
  - mylons 5y ago
    i’m in a similar spot as the OP. lifting helps, but i’m still pretty fat. 5’11” 250lbs. worksets are 355lb squat, 225lb bench, 425lb deadlift, 175lb overhead press. it’s hard to tell i’m strong, but i’m slightly more slender at this weight than i was before lifting. it definitely helps with aches and pains i used to have, primarily back pain.
    - rich-cartwright 5y ago
      Those are some tasty numbers.
      - mylons 5y ago
        haha, thanks. happy with the strength, not happy being 250lbs.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Really interesting to know, thank you.
faichai 5y ago
Losing weight is essentially a stress on the body, the response of which is to produce a lot of cortisol, which in turn can mess with testosterone and other hormones. For me the caloric restriction leads to so much cortisol that I can’t really sleep properly no matter how much I try to exhaust myself. Keto seems to be kinder (in week 3, of trying it for the 3rd time, previous times unsuccessful). But too early to say for sure.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the relationship between caloric restriction and cortisol production. Your statements and anecdotes seem to be well supported by the literature. > Starvation caused a rise in plasma cortisol [...] but no change in total urinary cortisol metabolites. [1] > very low calorie diet (VLCD) did not alter plasma cortisol and markedly reduced cortisol metabolite excretion [...]. [1] > Overall, caloric restriction significantly increased serum cortisol level in 13 studies (357 total participants). Fasting showed a very strong effect in increasing serum cortisol, while VLCD and LCD did not show significant increases. [2] > The meta-regression analysis showed a negative association between the serum cortisol level and the duration of caloric restriction, indicating serum cortisol is increased in the initial period of caloric restriction but decreased to the baseline level after several weeks. [2] [1] Influence of short-term dietary weight loss on cortisol secretion and metabolism in obese men https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandra-Johnstone/publication/8885300_Influence_of_Short-term_Dietary_Weight_Loss_on_Cortisol_Secretion_and_Metabolism_in_Obese_Men/links/0c960525c45cd881d6000000/Influence-of-Short-term-Dietary-Weight-Loss-on-Cortisol-Secretion-and-Metabolism-in-Obese-Men.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandra-Johnstone/pub... [2] Systematic review and meta-analysis reveals acutely elevated plasma cortisol following fasting but not less severe calorie restriction https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10253890.2015.1121984 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10253890.2015.11...
  - rich-cartwright 5y ago
    Great links.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
lharries 5y ago
Great to hear you've had success. [1] is an interesting paper which gives you some hormonal examples. Effectively when you try and lose weight your body responds by increasing the hormones associated with greater satiety and weight regain. And these change may persists for a while — this papers documenting the change lasting past a a year. This will very by person however so if you have something which works for you keep going. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22029981/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22029981/
bserge 5y ago
Extreme hunger, like others said. I'd class it as a subset of impulsive behavior, which is basically your primitive brain doing it's caveman shit and not listening to you, the conscious mind. Apparently some people don't have this problem, which makes me incredibly envious (or would if I could feel anything). It's this nagging thought of "JESUS CHRIST YOU'RE GONNA DIE IF YOU DON'T EAT A LOT RIGHT NOW!" I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep. Counting calories didn't work btw. It actually made it worse as my primitive brain would know it's "starving".
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Said like a true Fella. I hear this a lot.
- rubicon33 5y ago
  > I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep. I too have experienced this sensation my whole life under such situations. In fact, one of my favorite things to do in life is go for a 6-7 mile run, come home and lift weight for an hour or two... then... wait until I'm hungry (usually about 45 min) and eat an insane amount of food. The food tastes 10x better, and the sensation when eating it is pure bliss. Always have felt great doing that, and I'm really skinny. We clearly don't have any idea why some people can do that, and others cant. It's probably not until we understand that difference that we'll have any sense what metabolically is happening.
  - issa 5y ago
    As someone whose weight has been all over the place in my life, I really appreciate hearing this. I've known it is true forever, but it is rare to hear other people saying it. There is much more to weight than calories in/out. Some people can skip a meal without noticing, others count the minutes until the next meal. I always flip it on its head. For some reason it is easy for people to understand that certain people would have trouble gaining 20 pounds, others could do it in a month easily. But when you talk about losing 20 pounds, people start talking about willpower.
jjeaff 5y ago
I used to be able to do that in my twenties. Now, in my thirties, it appears I have lost that ability. Cutting my calories seems to causey body to go into a sort of hibernation where it becomes more efficient and conserves more calories. In other words, my metabolic burn rate at rest and while active seems to go down significantly.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Important that you bring up the age factor. We're doing more research now with our doctors on how best to adjust treatment based specifically on male hormonal changes with age.
nevinera 5y ago
This is what's known as an 'anecdote', and is at the crux of the issues surrounding men's weight loss. This approach, and other very obvious and straightforward ones do indeed work perfectly well for a fair fraction of the population, but they perform poorly for another large fraction, and fail abysmally for yet a third. While there are no doubt plenty of people that could lose weight fairly readily if they gave it some basic effort, most of the people who are actively trying to do so (enough to pay for a service that supports that, for example) are in the second and third categories. And yet every time anyone posts in a non-dedicated forum anything about systems and plans to help that group solve their problems, there are a dozen people like you popping in to tell us "it's not that hard, just give it a try!" I regularly make 60 mile bike rides, I can jog 10 miles (though I can't walk the next day when I do), I play tennis about 7 hours a week. I weigh 465 pounds. Trust me, I've tried the approach you're describing here. I once managed to hold onto it for 8 months, during which I lost about thirty pounds and then plateaued, while constantly fighting my body. I was sick twice as often as usual, and I had to carefully micromanage my calorie intake to make sure I had available calories for any physical activity I wanted to engage in, all while constantly battling cravings for dozens of foods _I don't even like_. It would be a simpler world if all of us fat people were just fat because we're lazy, but the truth is that people vary really a lot, physically and metabolically. Your experience of the world is valid, but not universal.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Really nicely put.
- O_H_E 5y ago
  Oh Wow, just wow. You just explained and expanded on my thoughts and conversations about my ADHD very well.
  - rich-cartwright 5y ago
    Interesting parallel.
- noduerme 5y ago

zinclozenge 5y ago

Unfortunately there are people like me who don't only feel a bit hungry, when I eat at a deficit there are times where I get so hungry my thoughts are completely consumed by the hunger. The only way for me to successfully lose weight was to have days where I simply eat nothing at all. Sounds counter-intuitive but after getting over the initial extreme hunger I found that the hunger sensations would diminish into a background noise, of sorts. That and the rules are easy to follow: eat nothing. When I'd eat at a deficit I'd frequently justify to myself that eating a little bit more than I was planning on doing was ok because it was only a little. And then I'd do that several times until I felt completely satiated, defeating the purpose.

rich-cartwright 5y ago
The complete fasting approach is pretty common among Fellas I've spoken with. Lot of the guys have powerful "all-or-nothing" traits, where it feels easier to have a strict intense rule than a more nuanced approach. The issue comes when you therefore become so hungry your body drives you to eat a lot of food all at once. But I'm interested that you notice your hunger sensations actually diminish over time.
- andi999 5y ago
  Isn't it actually well known that you are not hungry when fasting (after a couple of days)?
  - rich-cartwright 5y ago
    Yep I've just been reading up on this now actually: ghrelin & leptin changes after day 2 of a fast.

speeder 5y ago

I will use myself as an example: I have Hashimoto disease, and even treated my metabolism can get so slow that I need to eat so little that I start to have nutrient deficits, for example one of the past dieting attempts resulted in hair loss, brittle nails, cracking skin, because I needed so little calories that when I consumed exactly what I needed, I ended with a protein deficit. Only solution I found that worked was go for pure weightlifting, literally train as if I was aiming to he an Olympic champion, and even then I still ended overweight (I am 1.75m tall, smallest weight I managed, that was then I was training heavily and had a diet that was almost 100% protein, was 98kg)

jimmaswell 5y ago
That's interesting. That weight isn't necessarily unhealthy if it's largely muscle from all the training. Did you end up with a low body fat percentage despite the weight?
- mylons 5y ago
  i’m in a similar spot as the OP. lifting helps, but i’m still pretty fat. 5’11” 250lbs. worksets are 355lb squat, 225lb bench, 425lb deadlift, 175lb overhead press. it’s hard to tell i’m strong, but i’m slightly more slender at this weight than i was before lifting. it definitely helps with aches and pains i used to have, primarily back pain.
  - rich-cartwright 5y ago
    Those are some tasty numbers.
    - mylons 5y ago
      haha, thanks. happy with the strength, not happy being 250lbs.
rich-cartwright 5y ago
Really interesting to know, thank you.

faichai 5y ago

Losing weight is essentially a stress on the body, the response of which is to produce a lot of cortisol, which in turn can mess with testosterone and other hormones. For me the caloric restriction leads to so much cortisol that I can’t really sleep properly no matter how much I try to exhaust myself. Keto seems to be kinder (in week 3, of trying it for the 3rd time, previous times unsuccessful). But too early to say for sure.

criticaltinker 5y ago
Thanks for pointing out the relationship between caloric restriction and cortisol production. Your statements and anecdotes seem to be well supported by the literature. > Starvation caused a rise in plasma cortisol [...] but no change in total urinary cortisol metabolites. [1] > very low calorie diet (VLCD) did not alter plasma cortisol and markedly reduced cortisol metabolite excretion [...]. [1] > Overall, caloric restriction significantly increased serum cortisol level in 13 studies (357 total participants). Fasting showed a very strong effect in increasing serum cortisol, while VLCD and LCD did not show significant increases. [2] > The meta-regression analysis showed a negative association between the serum cortisol level and the duration of caloric restriction, indicating serum cortisol is increased in the initial period of caloric restriction but decreased to the baseline level after several weeks. [2] [1] Influence of short-term dietary weight loss on cortisol secretion and metabolism in obese men https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandra-Johnstone/publication/8885300_Influence_of_Short-term_Dietary_Weight_Loss_on_Cortisol_Secretion_and_Metabolism_in_Obese_Men/links/0c960525c45cd881d6000000/Influence-of-Short-term-Dietary-Weight-Loss-on-Cortisol-Secretion-and-Metabolism-in-Obese-Men.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandra-Johnstone/pub... [2] Systematic review and meta-analysis reveals acutely elevated plasma cortisol following fasting but not less severe calorie restriction https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10253890.2015.1121984 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10253890.2015.11...
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Great links.
rich-cartwright 5y ago

lharries 5y ago

Great to hear you've had success. [1] is an interesting paper which gives you some hormonal examples. Effectively when you try and lose weight your body responds by increasing the hormones associated with greater satiety and weight regain. And these change may persists for a while — this papers documenting the change lasting past a a year. This will very by person however so if you have something which works for you keep going. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22029981/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22029981/

bserge 5y ago

Extreme hunger, like others said. I'd class it as a subset of impulsive behavior, which is basically your primitive brain doing it's caveman shit and not listening to you, the conscious mind. Apparently some people don't have this problem, which makes me incredibly envious (or would if I could feel anything). It's this nagging thought of "JESUS CHRIST YOU'RE GONNA DIE IF YOU DON'T EAT A LOT RIGHT NOW!" I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep. Counting calories didn't work btw. It actually made it worse as my primitive brain would know it's "starving".

rich-cartwright 5y ago
Said like a true Fella. I hear this a lot.
rubicon33 5y ago
> I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep. I too have experienced this sensation my whole life under such situations. In fact, one of my favorite things to do in life is go for a 6-7 mile run, come home and lift weight for an hour or two... then... wait until I'm hungry (usually about 45 min) and eat an insane amount of food. The food tastes 10x better, and the sensation when eating it is pure bliss. Always have felt great doing that, and I'm really skinny. We clearly don't have any idea why some people can do that, and others cant. It's probably not until we understand that difference that we'll have any sense what metabolically is happening.
- issa 5y ago
  As someone whose weight has been all over the place in my life, I really appreciate hearing this. I've known it is true forever, but it is rare to hear other people saying it. There is much more to weight than calories in/out. Some people can skip a meal without noticing, others count the minutes until the next meal. I always flip it on its head. For some reason it is easy for people to understand that certain people would have trouble gaining 20 pounds, others could do it in a month easily. But when you talk about losing 20 pounds, people start talking about willpower.

jjeaff 5y ago

I used to be able to do that in my twenties. Now, in my thirties, it appears I have lost that ability. Cutting my calories seems to causey body to go into a sort of hibernation where it becomes more efficient and conserves more calories. In other words, my metabolic burn rate at rest and while active seems to go down significantly.

rich-cartwright 5y ago
Important that you bring up the age factor. We're doing more research now with our doctors on how best to adjust treatment based specifically on male hormonal changes with age.

nevinera 5y ago

This is what's known as an 'anecdote', and is at the crux of the issues surrounding men's weight loss. This approach, and other very obvious and straightforward ones do indeed work perfectly well for a fair fraction of the population, but they perform poorly for another large fraction, and fail abysmally for yet a third. While there are no doubt plenty of people that could lose weight fairly readily if they gave it some basic effort, most of the people who are actively trying to do so (enough to pay for a service that supports that, for example) are in the second and third categories. And yet every time anyone posts in a non-dedicated forum anything about systems and plans to help that group solve their problems, there are a dozen people like you popping in to tell us "it's not that hard, just give it a try!" I regularly make 60 mile bike rides, I can jog 10 miles (though I can't walk the next day when I do), I play tennis about 7 hours a week. I weigh 465 pounds. Trust me, I've tried the approach you're describing here. I once managed to hold onto it for 8 months, during which I lost about thirty pounds and then plateaued, while constantly fighting my body. I was sick twice as often as usual, and I had to carefully micromanage my calorie intake to make sure I had available calories for any physical activity I wanted to engage in, all while constantly battling cravings for dozens of foods _I don't even like_. It would be a simpler world if all of us fat people were just fat because we're lazy, but the truth is that people vary really a lot, physically and metabolically. Your experience of the world is valid, but not universal.

rich-cartwright 5y ago
Really nicely put.
O_H_E 5y ago
Oh Wow, just wow. You just explained and expanded on my thoughts and conversations about my ADHD very well.
- rich-cartwright 5y ago
  Interesting parallel.
noduerme 5y ago