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Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever. It was incredibly hard and took me a long time to lose 15 pounds as

Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever. It was incredibly hard and took me a long time to lose 15 pounds as a always had been skinny person whose weight slowly crept up. I've never been obese and I'm sure it's super challenging to change, considering how hard loosing 15 lbs was for me. But if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down.

yetihehe 1y ago
> Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever. That second part makes it harder. Losing weight was pretty simple for me, but maintaining that low weight was much harder. Someone said that it takes about half a year to form a habit. I maintained lower weight for about a year, then it came back.
- okwhateverdude 1y ago
  Adipocytes live like 10 years[0]. You need to maintain for a long time for those cells to die off. Otherwise, it is easy to regain. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  IME the key is a very simple mindset shift. People generally try to ignore or overpower the sensation of hunger. That is super, super difficult over long periods of time. Instead what they should do is very directly and explicitly manage that felt sensation. The key insight is that your sensation of hunger is primarily driven by the weight of your stomach (not the caloric contents or volumetric fullness of it). So the question is how do you increase the weight of your stomach (decrease sensation of hunger) without increasing caloric consumption. You just eat a lot of low caloric density foods! Divide calories by grams on the nutrition label. Lower is better. Replace as many items as you can in your diet with the nearest alternative that is of lower caloric density. Nonfat greek yogurt and seitan are the two biggest hacks ever. Adopting this mindset will also probably astound you how many calories modern engineering can fit into a gram. Would be a pretty great achievement if we had to trek long distances, but here we are munching on this stuff while sitting all day.
  - dahart 1y ago
    This is extremely good advice! In particular, I agree completely the key is to figure out mentally how not to frame the problem as a willpower issue or as overcoming hunger. That is a setup for failure and feelings of shame. Making it about self-control and avoiding temptation is the worst thing you can do. Yeah I instinctively did the same thing once I finally was able to bring myself to counting calories. Once you have a budget, you want to game the budget to feel full, so it makes veggies start looking a lot more attractive, and things like chocolate easier to avoid. For me one of the big byproducts of this thinking is that my feeling of fullness was mis-calibrated a little bit. As a result, when I’m full according to my calorie counter, I think about how what I’m feeling is not hunger but the correct level of full. I’m recalibrating what full means to me, and believe it or not it actually helps me to not feel like I’m trying to overcome hunger.
ido 1y ago
> if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down. Don't they only prescribe these for the morbidly obese? As someone "merely" overweight (BMI ~27) I'd like to try but I don't think I'm fat enough to get a prescription.
- cartermatic 1y ago
  For better or worse, most of the online pharmacies like Ro or Hims will prescribe it to anyone with a pulse. Some insurance companies don't cover it unless your BMI is over like 40.
  - ido 1y ago
    Pretty sure these aren’t available to me (in Germany), I will have to get an actual prescription.
- pkwy 1y ago
  I was around 27 as well. I’m a big guy with a muscular frame but put on extra weight over the last 2 years of intense company building. If you can get a prescription (Hims will prescribe) you may have to pay out of pocket, but worth it IMO. They may want you to be at 30 BMI, but that is easy to fudge on their intake (they won’t do any validation of your intake numbers). Commit to a few months of extreme dedication and let the financial impact be a motivator. Reassess progress towards your renewal (we did 3 months). It’s literally cheating, in the best way.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I think the definition of "fat enough" will come down quickly as these drugs become better understood. If the side effects are mild or manageable, why not prescribe it to anyone who even comes within striking distance of "overweight"? There are other kinds of medications, like those for high cholesterol, where it's a no-brainer to just start taking them when your cholesterol crosses some threshold.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    >no-brainer Many experts including cardiologists maintain that the current mainstream protocols for statin drugs do more harm than good.
EbNar 1y ago
Agreed. I lost about 10 kg back to ~60 kg of the teen myself (now I'm 50). It took quite a lot of exercise but that was the easy part. The most difficult part was avoiding eating off hours apart from avoiding alcohol and sugar altogether. Now. Maintenance is surely easier. On a side note, I keep exercising at least 2-3 hours per week and honestly I feel physically much better than I used to feel in my 30s.
- almost_usual 1y ago
  Alcohol destroys any diet. I’m amazed how much more energy I have and how much weight I’ve lost being sober.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    In my experience, beer is the biggest one. I got gout young (which my weight didn't help, but mostly truly cursed genes), and beer was/is a huge trigger. Turns out excruciating pain is a hell of a motivator, so all my beer consumption was swapped out for equivalent alcohol amounts of liquor pretty much overnight. I lost a significant amount of weight over the next year.
devoutsalsa 1y ago
What's working for me now is just deciding what I want to weigh, but I couldn't do that for years. First I had to learn to actually control my eating, like not eating every time I felt like stuffing my face, getting enough sleep so I wasn't constantly fighting urges, and figuring out how much I need to walk to burn off extra calories. 'Just eat less and exercise more' never worked because I needed to learn how to do these smaller skills myself first. Once I learned what it actually takes to eat less and actually exercise more, that simple advice started becoming possible. It's still a work in progress.

yetihehe 1y ago

> Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever. That second part makes it harder. Losing weight was pretty simple for me, but maintaining that low weight was much harder. Someone said that it takes about half a year to form a habit. I maintained lower weight for about a year, then it came back.

okwhateverdude 1y ago
Adipocytes live like 10 years[0]. You need to maintain for a long time for those cells to die off. Otherwise, it is easy to regain. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover
sorcerer-mar 1y ago
IME the key is a very simple mindset shift. People generally try to ignore or overpower the sensation of hunger. That is super, super difficult over long periods of time. Instead what they should do is very directly and explicitly manage that felt sensation. The key insight is that your sensation of hunger is primarily driven by the weight of your stomach (not the caloric contents or volumetric fullness of it). So the question is how do you increase the weight of your stomach (decrease sensation of hunger) without increasing caloric consumption. You just eat a lot of low caloric density foods! Divide calories by grams on the nutrition label. Lower is better. Replace as many items as you can in your diet with the nearest alternative that is of lower caloric density. Nonfat greek yogurt and seitan are the two biggest hacks ever. Adopting this mindset will also probably astound you how many calories modern engineering can fit into a gram. Would be a pretty great achievement if we had to trek long distances, but here we are munching on this stuff while sitting all day.
- dahart 1y ago
  This is extremely good advice! In particular, I agree completely the key is to figure out mentally how not to frame the problem as a willpower issue or as overcoming hunger. That is a setup for failure and feelings of shame. Making it about self-control and avoiding temptation is the worst thing you can do. Yeah I instinctively did the same thing once I finally was able to bring myself to counting calories. Once you have a budget, you want to game the budget to feel full, so it makes veggies start looking a lot more attractive, and things like chocolate easier to avoid. For me one of the big byproducts of this thinking is that my feeling of fullness was mis-calibrated a little bit. As a result, when I’m full according to my calorie counter, I think about how what I’m feeling is not hunger but the correct level of full. I’m recalibrating what full means to me, and believe it or not it actually helps me to not feel like I’m trying to overcome hunger.

ido 1y ago

> if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down. Don't they only prescribe these for the morbidly obese? As someone "merely" overweight (BMI ~27) I'd like to try but I don't think I'm fat enough to get a prescription.

cartermatic 1y ago
For better or worse, most of the online pharmacies like Ro or Hims will prescribe it to anyone with a pulse. Some insurance companies don't cover it unless your BMI is over like 40.
- ido 1y ago
  Pretty sure these aren’t available to me (in Germany), I will have to get an actual prescription.
pkwy 1y ago
I was around 27 as well. I’m a big guy with a muscular frame but put on extra weight over the last 2 years of intense company building. If you can get a prescription (Hims will prescribe) you may have to pay out of pocket, but worth it IMO. They may want you to be at 30 BMI, but that is easy to fudge on their intake (they won’t do any validation of your intake numbers). Commit to a few months of extreme dedication and let the financial impact be a motivator. Reassess progress towards your renewal (we did 3 months). It’s literally cheating, in the best way.
ryandrake 1y ago
I think the definition of "fat enough" will come down quickly as these drugs become better understood. If the side effects are mild or manageable, why not prescribe it to anyone who even comes within striking distance of "overweight"? There are other kinds of medications, like those for high cholesterol, where it's a no-brainer to just start taking them when your cholesterol crosses some threshold.
- hollerith 1y ago
  >no-brainer Many experts including cardiologists maintain that the current mainstream protocols for statin drugs do more harm than good.

EbNar 1y ago

Agreed. I lost about 10 kg back to ~60 kg of the teen myself (now I'm 50). It took quite a lot of exercise but that was the easy part. The most difficult part was avoiding eating off hours apart from avoiding alcohol and sugar altogether. Now. Maintenance is surely easier. On a side note, I keep exercising at least 2-3 hours per week and honestly I feel physically much better than I used to feel in my 30s.

almost_usual 1y ago
Alcohol destroys any diet. I’m amazed how much more energy I have and how much weight I’ve lost being sober.
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  In my experience, beer is the biggest one. I got gout young (which my weight didn't help, but mostly truly cursed genes), and beer was/is a huge trigger. Turns out excruciating pain is a hell of a motivator, so all my beer consumption was swapped out for equivalent alcohol amounts of liquor pretty much overnight. I lost a significant amount of weight over the next year.

devoutsalsa 1y ago

What's working for me now is just deciding what I want to weigh, but I couldn't do that for years. First I had to learn to actually control my eating, like not eating every time I felt like stuffing my face, getting enough sleep so I wasn't constantly fighting urges, and figuring out how much I need to walk to burn off extra calories. 'Just eat less and exercise more' never worked because I needed to learn how to do these smaller skills myself first. Once I learned what it actually takes to eat less and actually exercise more, that simple advice started becoming possible. It's still a work in progress.