3 ms·
Before making a reply, please consider that I know that not all of these points apply to every person. I think most of them apply to most people with chronic ob
by csours 4y ago
Before making a reply, please consider that I know that not all of these points apply to every person. I think most of them apply to most people with chronic obesity.
When I was a teenager, I wondered why smart people could ever be fat. It's so easy to see how to lose weight.
The answer is: Your body is very very good at maintaining energy balance. You are not bad at losing weight, your body is very good at holding on to energy stores.
Diet and exercise do not fix hunger. When you lose weight, your body tries really hard to get it back. Many interventions can show a short term improvement, long term improvement is very very hard.
Book suggestions:
Pontzer "Burn"
Guyenet "Hungry Brain"
Intervention suggestions:
Control your food environment - if it's within reach you'll eat it soon. If it's in your house, you'll eat it eventually.
Learn to enjoy the food you eat - savor the first few bites, eat slowly. You don't need to eat a lot to enjoy what you eat.
You don't have to empty your plate, or you can get a to-go box.
Protein and Fiber are good.
Sugar and salt taste very good and will make you eat more. Do not buy sugary or salty snacks, or limit the amount that you buy.
Sugar is a triple threat (at least): The calories are empty; Blood sugar crash drives hunger; sugar causes both medium and long term metabolic changes.
Hunger can be put into two big buckets: Energy Balance and Food Pleasure. Energy balance is the hunger you get when you haven't eaten for a while, or after exercise. Food Pleasure is the temptation of snacks, and the drive to continue eating tasty food after you are full. You will need to learn to address all of these.
If medically feasible, try fasting for a couple of days, to prove to yourself that you can survive hunger.
Exercise is very good for your body, but it won't do much for losing weight. It is technically possible to outrun your diet (for a week or two, for extremely healthy people), it is impossible to outrun your body's response to calorie deficit.
"Losing weight" is a terrible goal for most obese people. "Reducing body fat mass" is a much better goal. Those sound like exactly the same thing, but consider that a daily fluctuation of even 1% (up to 3% is realistic) will hide the realistic fat loss of 5 ounces. Adding muscle as you begin to exercise will also make the number on the scale bigger.
GLP-1 works, but it can be very unpleasant. It will not fix your food behaviors when you go off the meds, you need to learn to manage hunger and your food environment.
I'm down 40 pounds from my max, and I've maintained for about a year now. I wish you all success.
- algoatecorn 4y ago>You don't have to empty your plate, or you can get a to-go box. >Protein and Fiber are good. These are big. I'm from the American South, and you are taught to eat until you are full. We should be taught to eat until we are not hungry. Two different things. Protein is highly satiating and every gram of protein in lieu of fat is a good thing. 4cal/gram vs 9cal/gram Fiber is highly underdosed in American diet, leading to all sorts of issues over the long run
- px43 4y agoFiber makes you less hungry and is completely antithetical to how the modern food industry operates. One huge pet peeve of mine recently is when I'm shopping for high fiber foods, these days everything claiming to be high fiber is also loaded with sugar because "zero net carbs". Oatmeal has good fiber, but it's nearly impossible to find sanely portioned oatmeal that isn't loaded with sugar. Some foods like almonds have a ton of fiber, but they load them up with salt to trick your brain into eating a ton of them. It seems like you either have to make everything from scratch yourself, which is a huge time suck, and really bad for portion control, or you stick to the over-processed junk food that stores will sell you, and spend all your energy practicing will power not to succumb to the evils of modern food science.
- algoatecorn 4y agoYea it is extremly difficult to consume even the recommended amount of fiber of 20-30g, which is still lower than the optimal amount of >40g
- derekp7 4y agoDon't forget habits. Breakfast before leaving for work (even if you aren't hungry), lunch at noon, and dinner when you get home. And the 2:30 pm snacks. And the morning coffee loaded up with cream and sugar. One thing that I found works for me is to adjust some of these habits. So even though breakfast is still done at the same time, I adjusted it to be only unsweetened steel-cut oatmeal (7 minutes in the electric pressure cooker). That gives me 180 calories, or I can add a cup of frozen fruit which brings it to 230 calories. If I find that it doesn't hold me over till lunch, I'll add a pat of butter (about 70 calories I believe). For lunch, when at home I switched to having very specific items rotate through, each one chosen for the calorie count and how much it fills me up. If at the office, and if part of a group lunch where I'm not as selective, I may choose those days to skip dinner (or have a very light dinner). My biggest habit to break was to cut out a snack before going to bed (don't eat anything after 7:00 pm). But instead switch to herbal tea, or if I wanted to munch on something grab some hot peppers (gives my mouth some entertainment without calories) or a carrot or two.