4 ms·

Diet control is the most effective way to lose weight, though not necessarily easy for people and exercise is the best way to improve health and fitness. Strang

Diet control is the most effective way to lose weight, though not necessarily easy for people and exercise is the best way to improve health and fitness. Strangely, I find my appetite is suppressed immediately after doing a bit of cycling, but I'm sure I make up for it the following day.

LoganDark 3y ago
When I started ADHD meds I lost like 10lbs in a month due to eating way less. I think I'm now 20lbs under where I started after 3 months or so and I think that's where it's going to stay. I'm not one to worry too much about my weight, it's just something my doctor told me because he weighs me every appointment.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Yes, various mental conditions and drugs can significantly affect our weight through poorly understood indirect means. A common example is lithium, often given to people who suffer from bipolar disorders - it has a significant effect on weight, typically causing many kilos of weight gain. It's very funny to see people then claim that the story stops at CICO or that your calories in and/or your calories out are entirely within your conscious control.
  - msy 3y ago
    The evidence of anything other than simple CICO is marginal in both quality and impact. Sure, all sorts of things might make you feel hungrier or make you want to eat more or less but whether you actually gain weight or not is a product of how much food you put in your mouth and how much you move. But this is not a popular fact when everyone wants an excuse for failures of attention, discipline and willpower. Only real exception here are medications that affect water retention, but that is entirely separate to fat gain/loss.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      CICO itself is actually at best an approximation, since neither CI nor CO are measurable, especially in any kind of real-world setting. Eating less and working out more will lead to reduced weight loss, but how people may be able to achieve this, especially on the long term, is unclear. The evidence for any kind of nutrition finding is slight. CICO has the advantage that it matches very basic thermodynamic principles, so it has to be true to some extent. But beyond this basic level, all you get in reality are some broad strokes. We know how much calories maximum can be extracted from a piece of food. We know how much energy minimum you need to consume to perform a particular excercise. But no one really knows how much calories one particular person will actually get from eating one particular piece of normal food, no one knows how much it will actually vary between people, no one knows what might affect that difference. No one also knows how much energy you'll actually use for doing a particular exercise given efficiency losses from your movements; and no one actually knows how much energy your body is passively consuming - nor everything that affects both of these. Beyond the problem of actually measuring CICO, there is the additional problem of treating humans as fre will agents when it comes to food, when we know full well we are biological machines that have biological imperatives. We may be able to suppress our base instincts to achieve longer term goals, but this ability is obviously limited. Things like appetite are not within our control, and our ability to prioritize the longer term goal versus the short term need that our body is signaling is also obviously limited. And not only are these limited, we know very well that they are affected by all sorts of internal processes. There are many psycho-active medications that are very very strongly proven to have an effect on appetite (lithium, SSRIs), as are certain diseases (thyroid issues for example). But sure, keep blaming people for their diseases. It worked great for curing AIDS, so I'm sure it will work on obesity any day now.
    - scrollaway 3y ago
      No. The evidence largely points to CICO being harmful bullshit. Reducing things to thermodynamics is not useful to people trying to lose weight. Any more than talking about the speed of light is useful to people trying to run faster. Metabolism influences passive weight loss. Fiber influences caloric absorption. Muscle mass influences calorie burn. Gut microbiome impacts fat and caloric absorption by the body. Food quality and type influences all of the above. Say it with me: CICO is harmful, reductive bullshit. If it helped you lose weight, great; it doesn’t help most people though and there is an obesity epidemic to handle.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > or that your calories in and/or your calories out are entirely within your conscious control. Yeeeep. Stimulants make me lose track of time and also forget to eat. Even when I start getting hungry, I don't feel the actual urge to eat anymore. and there's also the thing where putting a certain amount of stuff into your mouth doesn't necessarily guarantee a corresponding CI, and CO varies based on basically anything you do.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    CICO is what matters for weight. But CICO is obviously not entirely under conscious control, and there are a ton of factors that change it. One of the easiest ways to increase basal metabolic rate is to be colder. But it's not that much easier than being hungry. It's so easy to "cheat" and put on a sweater, or turn the HVAC to a higher temperature. Just as it's easy to serve a slightly larger portion, or have a snack.
    - zosima 3y ago
      Technically of course the correct formula is: weight = starting mass + mass added - mass lost. And just as it's completely obvious, I also think it's completely useless for understanding how to live a good life at a desired body weight. There is clearly a lot more going on, as can be seen by the plethora of different medications, organisms and substances that cause weight change in every conceivable direction.
  - throwaway02sfv 3y ago
    Sorry, but what's CICO?
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      Calories In, Calories Out - a way of describing what affects weight. Depending on context, it can either refer to the general idea that weight loss/gain depends ultimately on how much you eat vs how much exercise you get, OR to the more specific idea that nothing except calories really matters and factors like medication, psychology etc are to be ignored, since you can always just decide to eat less.
Tade0 3y ago
I found that after doing one of my bi-weekly cycle runs I simply sleep better and therefore feel less hungry during the next the day. Also despite hydrating there's slightly less water in my body, so I appear somewhat leaner.

LoganDark 3y ago

When I started ADHD meds I lost like 10lbs in a month due to eating way less. I think I'm now 20lbs under where I started after 3 months or so and I think that's where it's going to stay. I'm not one to worry too much about my weight, it's just something my doctor told me because he weighs me every appointment.

tsimionescu 3y ago
Yes, various mental conditions and drugs can significantly affect our weight through poorly understood indirect means. A common example is lithium, often given to people who suffer from bipolar disorders - it has a significant effect on weight, typically causing many kilos of weight gain. It's very funny to see people then claim that the story stops at CICO or that your calories in and/or your calories out are entirely within your conscious control.
- msy 3y ago
  The evidence of anything other than simple CICO is marginal in both quality and impact. Sure, all sorts of things might make you feel hungrier or make you want to eat more or less but whether you actually gain weight or not is a product of how much food you put in your mouth and how much you move. But this is not a popular fact when everyone wants an excuse for failures of attention, discipline and willpower. Only real exception here are medications that affect water retention, but that is entirely separate to fat gain/loss.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    CICO itself is actually at best an approximation, since neither CI nor CO are measurable, especially in any kind of real-world setting. Eating less and working out more will lead to reduced weight loss, but how people may be able to achieve this, especially on the long term, is unclear. The evidence for any kind of nutrition finding is slight. CICO has the advantage that it matches very basic thermodynamic principles, so it has to be true to some extent. But beyond this basic level, all you get in reality are some broad strokes. We know how much calories maximum can be extracted from a piece of food. We know how much energy minimum you need to consume to perform a particular excercise. But no one really knows how much calories one particular person will actually get from eating one particular piece of normal food, no one knows how much it will actually vary between people, no one knows what might affect that difference. No one also knows how much energy you'll actually use for doing a particular exercise given efficiency losses from your movements; and no one actually knows how much energy your body is passively consuming - nor everything that affects both of these. Beyond the problem of actually measuring CICO, there is the additional problem of treating humans as fre will agents when it comes to food, when we know full well we are biological machines that have biological imperatives. We may be able to suppress our base instincts to achieve longer term goals, but this ability is obviously limited. Things like appetite are not within our control, and our ability to prioritize the longer term goal versus the short term need that our body is signaling is also obviously limited. And not only are these limited, we know very well that they are affected by all sorts of internal processes. There are many psycho-active medications that are very very strongly proven to have an effect on appetite (lithium, SSRIs), as are certain diseases (thyroid issues for example). But sure, keep blaming people for their diseases. It worked great for curing AIDS, so I'm sure it will work on obesity any day now.
  - scrollaway 3y ago
    No. The evidence largely points to CICO being harmful bullshit. Reducing things to thermodynamics is not useful to people trying to lose weight. Any more than talking about the speed of light is useful to people trying to run faster. Metabolism influences passive weight loss. Fiber influences caloric absorption. Muscle mass influences calorie burn. Gut microbiome impacts fat and caloric absorption by the body. Food quality and type influences all of the above. Say it with me: CICO is harmful, reductive bullshit. If it helped you lose weight, great; it doesn’t help most people though and there is an obesity epidemic to handle.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > or that your calories in and/or your calories out are entirely within your conscious control. Yeeeep. Stimulants make me lose track of time and also forget to eat. Even when I start getting hungry, I don't feel the actual urge to eat anymore. and there's also the thing where putting a certain amount of stuff into your mouth doesn't necessarily guarantee a corresponding CI, and CO varies based on basically anything you do.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  CICO is what matters for weight. But CICO is obviously not entirely under conscious control, and there are a ton of factors that change it. One of the easiest ways to increase basal metabolic rate is to be colder. But it's not that much easier than being hungry. It's so easy to "cheat" and put on a sweater, or turn the HVAC to a higher temperature. Just as it's easy to serve a slightly larger portion, or have a snack.
  - zosima 3y ago
    Technically of course the correct formula is: weight = starting mass + mass added - mass lost. And just as it's completely obvious, I also think it's completely useless for understanding how to live a good life at a desired body weight. There is clearly a lot more going on, as can be seen by the plethora of different medications, organisms and substances that cause weight change in every conceivable direction.
- throwaway02sfv 3y ago
  Sorry, but what's CICO?
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    Calories In, Calories Out - a way of describing what affects weight. Depending on context, it can either refer to the general idea that weight loss/gain depends ultimately on how much you eat vs how much exercise you get, OR to the more specific idea that nothing except calories really matters and factors like medication, psychology etc are to be ignored, since you can always just decide to eat less.

Tade0 3y ago

I found that after doing one of my bi-weekly cycle runs I simply sleep better and therefore feel less hungry during the next the day. Also despite hydrating there's slightly less water in my body, so I appear somewhat leaner.