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Maintaining weight loss

102 points by MattSayar 1y ago

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
All good tips but I think it really boils down to the last bit: sustainable changes. This doesn't help one understand how to differentiate a sustainable versus unsustainable change. In my experience, the single most important factor is realizing that the sensation of hunger is your primary enemy and that you can attack it head-on. Satiety is not dictated by how many calories you've eaten but (mostly) by the physical weight of your stomach. If your goal is to eliminate the sensation of hunger while consuming the least number of calories, the nutrition label tells you everything you need to know: eat a lot of low caloric density foods. What you'll find over time is that foods widely regarded as unhealthy are simply ultra-dense (e.g. peanut butter is an engineering miracle) while healthier foods tend to be extremely low-density (e.g. non-fat Greek yogurt and fresh vegetables). The biggest error I see in people dieting is thinking they just need to muscle through the feeling of hunger. It doesn't work in the long run. Accept that it's an important sensation but it's distinct from actual starvation, and address it directly!
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  > Satiety is not dictated by how many calories you've eaten but (mostly) by the physical weight of your stomach. If your goal is to eliminate the sensation of hunger while consuming the least number of calories, the nutrition label tells you everything you need to know: eat a lot of low caloric density foods. If that's all there is to it, can you just eat a little bit and then chug water until your stomach is convinced you're full?
  - russfink 1y ago
    Not recommended but “almost.” Eat a lot of watery foods - watermelon is the best: sweet, bulky, satisfying. Celery to hold that peanut butter. And like others said, go with protein.
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - f1shy 1y ago
    Just water is not recommended. 1- Would be too much. And 2- it gets absorbed too fast. But yes, it helps.
- rolisz 1y ago
  Or eat lots of protein. That makes you fill full incredibly fast.
- keybored 1y ago
  Eating high-fat foods makes me feel very full in my experience.
- dzink 1y ago
  Your brain needs protein and fat. Your brain tells your body when it is hungry and if the body doesn’t feed it, the brain is hangry. Protein satiates the brain and reduces cravings for less protein containing foods that the body will still eat in pursuit of satiating the brain.
- iwanttocomment 1y ago
  I regret to inform you that water, fiber content and weight don't move the bar on satiety for those chronically overweight. If so, we all could just down green beans or Metamucil and feel totally full. (Narrator: they were still hungry.) Similarly, we would all be eating pounds of cheesecake without feeling full. (Narrator: they did get full, but not after eating too much calorically.) Satiety is not dictated by weight. Please don't.
  - pazimzadeh 1y ago
    try coleslaw with a dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbes de provences. it's good takes up a good amount of space in your stomach
    - humanrebar 1y ago
      That might be a good tip, but people do get signals from their bodies when running a nutrient deficit. People crave calories when in a calorie deficit. And they crave carbohydrates, proteins, or fats when abstaining from them, at least some of the time.
      - pazimzadeh 1y ago
        yeah this would just be to help feel full. also don't underestimate the minerals that are in things that supposedly don't have nutrients, especially fiber
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
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  - deleted 1y ago
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- bregma 1y ago
  Satiety is mediated by cholecystokinin released in reaction to the presence of fatty acids and certain amino acids (partially digested fats and proteins) in the duodenum, or first part of the small intestines. That hormone stimulates the release of bile and pancreatic enzymes (necessary for the further digestion of fats and proteins) and also parts of your limbic system, which is the part of your brain that regulates satiety. In particular, it affects the ventromedial hypothalamus. In other words, fats and proteins satisfy your hunger. You can eat really dense carbohydrates until your stomach bursts (it won't but it might feel like it's going to -- it's the stretch receptors signalling your limbic system to stop or it's going to tell you to vomit) and you still won't feel satisfied. Slather a bit of (protein-rich high-fat) peanut butter on your celery sticks and you'll be fine. The best advice is balance.
- theoriginaldave 1y ago
  Back to the OP, the hunger and satiety signals are very complicated and only partially driven by the digestive track. I'm a fatty. I've lost a lot of weight but my body knows I used to be fat and it wants to be fat again. A very potent signal for hunger or fatigue is when your fat cells get small i.e. you've burnt a lot of fat, and your little fuel cells are feeling empty. Each shrunken fat cell sends out a chemical "feed me" signal. And they are very very persuasive. And the kicker is that when you fill them up, they want to be maintained at full. But if they're full too long, or get too full (persistently increase body fat by a few percent(, it triggers mitosis and you now have two half full fat cells who are both shouting "Feed me" To add insult to injury when you lose weight, you don't kill off fat cells, you just have a bunch of really hungry fat cells shouting for a cheeseburger. The nice thing about the GLP1 drugs is that they quiet the shouting. So you just don't get the demonic urge to feet all your wilting fat cells. The bad thing about it is that the shouting is still there, and as soon as you quit the drug, you can get overwhelmed and go back to overeating and your weight and percent body fat go right back up
deleted 1y ago
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strongpigeon 1y ago
While the key takeaways from the article are indeed good, I think the main problem is seeing weight loss as a phase. Your body weight is a result of your lifestyle. Going on a diet implies that it's just a temporary thing (which can be great to speed up the process), but it's no wonder that people often revert back to their previous weight. To lose weight permanently, you don't go on a diet, you change your diet. A friend of mine lost > 100 lbs over the course of 2 years by following a weight loss program with a heavy focus on education. The program made him internalize that he had to fundamentally change his life. He has since regained probably around 20 lbs over his minimum, but has maintained his new weight for > 8 years now and is living a life closer to what he wants.
jaggederest 1y ago
As with many posts like this, it feels somewhat obvious that "stay active, sleep well, track your weight and calories, and don't go back to eating garbage" are pretty well understood. That said, this is an excellent summary of the research and underlying principles. I think the real challenge with significant weight loss is in being consistent and maintaining those things, which everyone is pretty silent on. Mental health and stress levels are the #1 factor in essentially all of those things and deserve more focus in the context of major lifestyle change. You emphatically cannot just willpower through a major change for the rest of your life, and given that, you have to find ways to reduce the active cognition component to a low-effort automatic cognition process. Setting yourself up for success through organization and routine, avoiding being around situations that cause overeating, not purchasing and keeping in stock foods that are problematic, peer and family support are all things that make a huge difference.
- donw 1y ago
  True across the board, and unfortunately the average lifestyle promoted here on HN is one of massive, unavoidable stress, both inside and outside of work. Fixing your diet is one of those sort of flywheel problems. It takes time to figure out what's both healthy and palatable for you, time and freezer and/or refrigerator space to do meal prep, time and energy to work out, and so on. All of those are skills that are hard at first. Even with YouTube, you don't go from "burns water" to "Michelin star bodybuilder meals" without a lot of practice. The better you get at all of that, the faster and easier it becomes, until you hit a point where it's just "how you live", and all that energy and time are again free to pursue other things. If you have money, sure, you can outsource a lot of that. Zuckerberg has a personal chef and dietician, as well as a handful of dedicated personal trainers guiding his fitness regimen. But most of us can't afford to invest $250k/year or more into that problem.
- toast0 1y ago
  I think "tracking your weight and calories" is useful, but only if you track it right. You could look at just raw numbers, but IMHO, first you want to be tracking for you, how many calories it took eating X to achieve satiety / feel not hungry. Then, hopefully, you can figure out how to meet your daily calorie needs/goals in a way that you don't feel hungry all day. It's hard to stick to your plan when your body is telling you it wants more. People's hungry signals are different, which is why one size fits all advice doesn't work. Personally, if I ignore my hungry signal for long enough, it goes away; this sounds like it might be good, but then I get all headachey and grumpy because I haven't eaten and there's no signal telling me to eat; so I've got to use my analytic brain for that (but it would rather take a break because I haven't eaten). Some people I describe that to think I'm crazy ... if they don't eat, the hunger signal just keeps getting stronger.
SoftTalker 1y ago
> Maintain (or gain) muscle mass Almost impossible to do while you're losing weight. You will lose muscle mass as well as fat. Not that you shouldn't start (or keep doing) weight training. And after you hit your weight loss goals, you'll need to eat more than base maintenance calories (and mostly in the form of protein) to gain muscle back.
- prepend 1y ago
  The key is maintaining or increasing muscle % of body weight. Of course you’ll lose muscle mass, along with everything else. But it’s possible to increase the percent lean mass and especially your muscle:fat ratio.
  - p1esk 1y ago
    I don’t understand this: if I’m fat and I start exercising without changing my diet, I should be losing fat and gaining muscle mass. As a result, my weight can be going down.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      If you don't change your diet, you will likely be building muscles, but your weight is unlikely to change. You can even _gain_ more weight once you start exercising. It comes down to math. An hour of resistance training is just 200-500 calories above the baseline. That's just one sports drink worth of energy.
    - theoriginaldave 1y ago
      I think when you're in an energy deficit (aka losing weight), your body will attempt to reduce energy demand by metabolizing materials from the body. It prefers to power the body from stored glycogen (carbohydrates), next it will try to metabolize stored fat, next it will go for protein sources (muscle and other tissues). In extreme deficits, it'll even start consuming material from the digestive track and other important stuff. Many people lose weight, get stronger, get faster and surprisingly lose muscle mass at the same time. But you can prevent that by eating enough protein, adding strength training, not overtraining or extreme deficit, fueling your workouts with carbohydrates, getting high-quality sleep, and minimizing non-meal, non-workout related simple carbohydrates. #TLDR When you walk down the street, your body is doing all these things mostly carbs, some fat and a little protein. When you start pushing yourself, you burn more energy but in similar ratios. After about 90 minutes or at higher levels of effort, you'll shift to burning more fat and even more protein if you reach ketosis, as your body conserves remaining carb stores for important stuff like thinking. AND as you exercise, especially as you reach your strength thresholds, you incur damage in your muscles. When you have your recovery meal/drink with carbohydrates after your workout , especially when resting, the insulin spike, triggers your body to consume protein to rebuild your muscles and add more mass/strength. But if your workouts don't include enough strength training, your body may not get the anabolic muscle building signal, and it may instead focus on reducing weight (via fat and muscle), or increasing nutrient and oxygen flow to the muscles (building hemoglobin, growing capillaries), increasing muscle activation and engagement (new neural pathways), and/or increasing energy creation capacity (growing more mitochondria or expressing more efficient chemical pathways). Which is why you can get faster, stronger with smaller muscles. So my recipe for building muscle while losing fat: * Strength train each muscle group in sets of about 10 for 80 reps per week (I shoot for 2 days, whole body, 4 sets of 10 reps). * Prepare for every workout with some carbohydrates and electrolytes * For workouts lasting more than 90 min, especially cardio/endurance, begin consuming carbs at 30 min and consume 90-12g/hr for high intensity (Zone 3 or higher) * Try to consume 2g of whole protein per kg of target body weight. Or 4g per kg of lean body mass. YMMV. these are all rules of thumb. * Wake up at the same time every day, and prepare for bed 9-10 hours before you have to wake up (have a last snack, some water, turn out the overhead lights, start relaxing) so that by the time bedtime rolls around you can fall asleep quickly and get 7.5-9.5 hours of quality sleep If you're really hitting it hard and you've induced severe muscle fatigue, bump up the protein intake and get more rest and recovery time.
jackero 1y ago
Less obvious things that I’ve found over the years are: - Some people just don’t like to eat that much. They don’t actually have a faster metabolism. Eating is just a chore to them so they rarely do it. - Some people like eating more and may eat when bored. - If I’m busy working on something, I will go 12 hours without eating on accident. If I’m doing nothing at all, I may overeat. - Some people eat much faster than others. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating protein or fat if you inhale two steaks in 10 minutes. You already consumed too many calories. And because you ate double the amount of calories doesn’t mean that you will be full for double the time. - Some people who eat too fast do something called low-calorie volume eating so they eat fewer calories and this works better for them than eating protein and fat. - It’s true that exercise doesn’t make up for a bad diet. It’s easier to eat less. - There are days when I’m out playing sports for like 10 hours. I burn a ton of calories that does need to be made up by eating. - A lot of people did sports or were outside for hours growing up but don’t anymore due to lifestyle changes (kids for example). That’s an extremely major loss of a calorie sink that isn’t obvious. - Water weight is a thing but it really doesn’t matter in the long term. It’s more like an offset from your “real weight” but it can only get so far from it. Trends are better for tracking your real weight.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  > It’s true that exercise doesn’t make up for a bad diet. It’s easier to eat less. That one always gets to me, because it's not universally true. I get the point, and to some extend even agree with it. To me personally, especially when I was younger and had the time, working out more always felt much easier. Controlling what I eat has always been incredibly tricky, simply exercising to the point where it doesn't matter what I eat, fairly easy, it's just a matter of putting in the hours. Workout for 2.5 hours a day, plus 60-90 minutes transport on a bike, you can pretty much eat anything you like.
  - robrenaud 1y ago
    I recently got to know someone with a resting heart rate of 45, who will pretty frequently do 8+ mile trail runs and 100 mile bike rides. He is also an amazing cook who makes decadent and delicious foods. He says he consumes 4,000 calories a day. He still has a sizeable belly. I'd say he is at like 10/10 on exercise, but 3/10 on diet. I was surprised at his extreme cardiovascular fitness while still managing to be overfat.
bdz 1y ago
I’m on liraglutide (Saxenda) for more than a year now. I lost 68kg (150lbs) and incredibly easy to maintain my weight. I’m doing OMAD (1/23 intermittent fasting) and for me it’s pretty much the perfect meal plan. Not even a diet because I eat whatever I want, just roughly counting calories. My daily exercise is 1 hour walking in the morning and the evening too (~20k steps combined)
- FredPret 1y ago
  1/23? So you eat for one hour and then you're done for the day?
  - ffsm8 1y ago
    OMAD stands for "One Meal A Day"
    - m348e912 1y ago
      The one good thing about OMAD is that you can basically eat as much as you want and what you want during that one hour, and as long as that the only time you eat you will likely stay lean. I truly believe that this is the strategy that competitive eater/youtuber beardmeatsfood uses to stay lean while eating an immense amount of food in one sitting. I have been toying with a 8 hour eating window followed by ~40 hours fasting (basically an evening + a whole day) of not eating, and seen some positive results.
HiPhish 1y ago
Formerly fat person here. That article is just an overblown list of common sense advice to sell you some crap you don't need. Losing and maintaining your weight is actually really simple. Here is what worked for me (I am not a doctor): - First of all, drop sugar. Right now. Even if you are not fat, you should not eat it. It's not just extra calories, it's poison. Don't be like "oh, I'll just finish this stuff I still have around", throw it out. If your are only going to follow one point from this list, then let it be this one. - Forget about calories, a calorie is not a calorie. You cannot "work off" that cake your have eaten, your are not an oven. Calories are an upper limit (you cannot break thermodynamics), but the human metabolism is much more complicated than just balancing an equation. - Exercise is necessary, but not sufficient. That means you should exercise to get your metabolism going, but exercising itself will not let your lose weight. And when I mean exercising I don't mean you need to get a gym membership. Just going for a walk for half an hour or an hour is good enough for starters. - Fat won't make you fat. I grew up under low-fat propaganda, yet I kept getting fatter. Then when I increase my fat consumption I started losing weight. By fat I mean real animal fat from meat, not seed oils or other processed fats. - Eat real food. If you cannot tell what it's made from by looking at it, then it's not real food. - Processed fruits and vegetables are still processed food, and thus not real food. Don't be fooled by marketing, stuff like fruit juice is not healthy, no matter how many vitamin labels the manufacturer keeps putting on the packaging. - Caloric restriction works in the short term, but will drive you crazy in the long term. This is why people lapse eventually and regain all their weight. It is important to understand that obesity is not a "surplus of energy", it's a medical disorder brought about by disruption of your metabolism. I was able to keep eating and eating without ever feeling satiated. It is pure torture to be hungry with a full stomach. It was my body telling me "stop feeding me this garbage, give me real food". I have since been able to keep my weight and never feel hungry. It's only when I find myself unable to eat real food and lapse back into old habits that I start gaining weight again.
- homie 1y ago
  “Sugar is poison” is an absolutely insane claim to make
  - 1y ago
umpalumpaaa 1y ago
I found loosing weight was a lot easier than maintaining weight. When loosing weight you have a lot more wiggle room… As long as you are spending more calories than consuming you loose weight. It does not matter if you have a deficit of 20kcal or 200kcal. Maintaining your weight requires one to have 0 deficit in either direction.
- jmugan 1y ago
  It's also a lot more fun to lose weight than maintain weight
- kingstnap 1y ago
  Maintaining exact calorie in = out every day is a fools errand. You only need net zero averaged over weeks. Some days you have to allow eating more. Mainly because food is the original human social activity.
maxglute 1y ago
as usual simple not easy etc... level1 figure out deficit/maintenance/surplus calories figure out what behavior changes to maintain consumption levels level2 (extra work, but really what it's at) figure out what how you want to look good naked... i.e. body composition figure out workout (usually lifting with some cardio) eat enough protein, eat other macros that can help you do your workouts. ironically dietting is the SIMPLEST... eat enough protein, fill the rest with what makes you feel "best" or helps "best" with your goal (exercise). This doesn't mean it will feel good depending on cut/bulk... just what feels least bad. Extra work from level2 can make level1 easier - more lean mass from work out-> more maintenance + tdee calories. The process might be easier if you're 25 BMI with 15% bodyfat than 22 BMI with 20% bodyfat. You'll look better too, which let's be real, is what people usually want. Then health. That's basically it. But MOST IMPORTANT to recognize that some goals are simply things you're too mentally/physiologically "weak" / incapable of doing. You may simply not be built for to learn behavior changes (i.e. appetite control) for low BMI/BF. Your genes may simply prevent you from building good FFMI to pull off certain build. This stuff is simple, but not easy.
layer8 1y ago
This is much more complicated than needed. Following the Hacker’s Diet [0] is simple to understand and sufficient, and yes, heed common-sense things like good sleep, some basic exercise, stress reduction, and eating healthy food. [0] https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
- carlcoryell 1y ago
  The combination of daily weigh-ins and the exponentially weighted moving average I learned from the Hacker Diet has been absolutely magic for me. It gives me helpful daily feedback signal in the noise of ~5lb daily weight variation. Beeminder has replaced paper graphs for me. Their new moving average isn't quite as helpful for me, but is still workable. I target rates of weight loss on the order of 0.35-0.50lbs/week.
- Izkata 1y ago
  Huh, this looks like the same thing I came up with about three years ago. I'd tracked my weight for a long time and only just started tracking calories, then a month or so in wondered if combining the two datasets would result in anything useful. After about six months there were some obvious patterns, and ever since a year in I've been able to control my weight however I want without much effort. One graph I have that I don't see on there is average-calories-per-day on the X axis and weight-change-per-week on the Y axis (scatter plot). Sticking a linear regression on top told me all those online estimators for how many calories you burn in a day are just wrong, at least for me.
  - layer8 1y ago
    That scatter plot is a nice addition. One property of the Hacker's Diet is that the absolute numbers don't really matter, as long as the weighing and calorie balance are roughly consistent. What's relevant for the feedback loop is the weight slope, and the target can be something like losing 15% of weight, and a 10% calorie deficit might get you there in n months.
TeaVMFan 1y ago
For the "logging" step, I created and rely on CalorieFreq, a local-first Java SPA: https://frequal.com/cf/ https://frequal.com/cf/ It is built on the Flavour framework: https://flavour.sf.net https://flavour.sf.net
oceanhaiyang 1y ago
Living in Japan made me get down to my all time lowest weight, returning to America made me shoot up past where I started… healthy lifestyle, lots of walking over driving, and healthy eating options is all it is!
- arp242 1y ago
  Incidentally, this came up on my YouTube the other day: How Japan escaped Obesity while America got Fat – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6Wq4KWu7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6Wq4KWu7M
poszlem 1y ago
15 years ago, I lost 32 kg. Ever since, I've been keeping a weight diary, weighing myself almost every day. I've now regained those kilos, plus an additional 15. The funny thing is that the yo-yo effect took 9.5 years to fully happen, and looking back at the entire 15-year span, it's perfectly clear. But year by year, I couldn't even notice it happening. I’d gain a few kilos, lose a few, gain again, lose again, except each time I'd gain slightly more than I'd lost. I don't have much more to add, other than it being really eye-opening how my body seemed to play the long game, eventually regaining all the weight I'd initially lost.
- testing22321 1y ago
  Your body didn’t play a long game, your mouth did. For all those years you’ve been consuming more energy than your body needs to run, so your body stored the excess for later.
  - poszlem 1y ago
    Thank you for this unhelpful response. Obviously my mouth was involved, but so were my brain, gut, and the rest of my body. The point I'm making is that I never consciously decided to gain weight. My body, however, seemed to have its own plan.
    - testing22321 1y ago
      My comment was helpful, because you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge about why you gained weight. Even your reply implies you think you need to consciously decide to gain weight for it to happen - which is very much not correct. You can’t fix something if you don’t understand the whys involved.
stavros 1y ago
I know all the theory, but how do I stop food noise? It's extremely annoying to always be thinking about food, no matter how full you are.
christophilus 1y ago
I will say that having switched to carnivore made a difference for me. It was hard for me to say no to junk food as a vegan or when on a healthy ”balanced” diet. With carnivore, the cooking is simple, the “no” is obvious, and the satiation lasts a long time. That said, it’s hard for me to think this is actually a healthy way to eat, after so many years being vegan, and I don’t know what the staying power will be.
znpy 1y ago
So we’re sharing anecdotes so here’s mine: the speed in weight loss matters, in the sense that faster weight loss might not be the best. Your body will try to regain weight if you don’t give it time to get accustomed to the new weight. In late 2020 / early 2021 i did the Dukan diet and lost ~10kg in like two months and a half, i lost like a kilogram (about two pounds) per week, my body was perfect. Then i stupidly eyed the next challenge (quitting smoking) and gained everything back (with intenterests, damnit). I should have really focused on consolidation, that for the dukan diet means slowly reintroducing other foods slowly to let your body get used to the new state of affairs. Last year started dieting again and i lost 10 kilograms again, over a year, by mostly eating less (i amicably call it “controlled malnourishment”). This time i’m not gaining it back and i think it’s because even in the weeks where I’ve exceeded, my body got time to get acquainted to the new weight. During this last year i hit a plateau as well… i just had to be patient.
naganotonicbuy 1y ago
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102 points by MattSayar 1y ago

All good tips but I think it really boils down to the last bit: sustainable changes. This doesn't help one understand how to differentiate a sustainable versus unsustainable change. In my experience, the single most important factor is realizing that the sensation of hunger is your primary enemy and that you can attack it head-on. Satiety is not dictated by how many calories you've eaten but (mostly) by the physical weight of your stomach. If your goal is to eliminate the sensation of hunger while consuming the least number of calories, the nutrition label tells you everything you need to know: eat a lot of low caloric density foods. What you'll find over time is that foods widely regarded as unhealthy are simply ultra-dense (e.g. peanut butter is an engineering miracle) while healthier foods tend to be extremely low-density (e.g. non-fat Greek yogurt and fresh vegetables). The biggest error I see in people dieting is thinking they just need to muscle through the feeling of hunger. It doesn't work in the long run. Accept that it's an important sensation but it's distinct from actual starvation, and address it directly!

yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
> Satiety is not dictated by how many calories you've eaten but (mostly) by the physical weight of your stomach. If your goal is to eliminate the sensation of hunger while consuming the least number of calories, the nutrition label tells you everything you need to know: eat a lot of low caloric density foods. If that's all there is to it, can you just eat a little bit and then chug water until your stomach is convinced you're full?
- russfink 1y ago
  Not recommended but “almost.” Eat a lot of watery foods - watermelon is the best: sweet, bulky, satisfying. Celery to hold that peanut butter. And like others said, go with protein.
- deleted 1y ago
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- f1shy 1y ago
  Just water is not recommended. 1- Would be too much. And 2- it gets absorbed too fast. But yes, it helps.
rolisz 1y ago
Or eat lots of protein. That makes you fill full incredibly fast.
keybored 1y ago
Eating high-fat foods makes me feel very full in my experience.
dzink 1y ago
Your brain needs protein and fat. Your brain tells your body when it is hungry and if the body doesn’t feed it, the brain is hangry. Protein satiates the brain and reduces cravings for less protein containing foods that the body will still eat in pursuit of satiating the brain.
iwanttocomment 1y ago
I regret to inform you that water, fiber content and weight don't move the bar on satiety for those chronically overweight. If so, we all could just down green beans or Metamucil and feel totally full. (Narrator: they were still hungry.) Similarly, we would all be eating pounds of cheesecake without feeling full. (Narrator: they did get full, but not after eating too much calorically.) Satiety is not dictated by weight. Please don't.
- pazimzadeh 1y ago
  try coleslaw with a dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbes de provences. it's good takes up a good amount of space in your stomach
  - humanrebar 1y ago
    That might be a good tip, but people do get signals from their bodies when running a nutrient deficit. People crave calories when in a calorie deficit. And they crave carbohydrates, proteins, or fats when abstaining from them, at least some of the time.
    - pazimzadeh 1y ago
      yeah this would just be to help feel full. also don't underestimate the minerals that are in things that supposedly don't have nutrients, especially fiber
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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bregma 1y ago
Satiety is mediated by cholecystokinin released in reaction to the presence of fatty acids and certain amino acids (partially digested fats and proteins) in the duodenum, or first part of the small intestines. That hormone stimulates the release of bile and pancreatic enzymes (necessary for the further digestion of fats and proteins) and also parts of your limbic system, which is the part of your brain that regulates satiety. In particular, it affects the ventromedial hypothalamus. In other words, fats and proteins satisfy your hunger. You can eat really dense carbohydrates until your stomach bursts (it won't but it might feel like it's going to -- it's the stretch receptors signalling your limbic system to stop or it's going to tell you to vomit) and you still won't feel satisfied. Slather a bit of (protein-rich high-fat) peanut butter on your celery sticks and you'll be fine. The best advice is balance.
theoriginaldave 1y ago
Back to the OP, the hunger and satiety signals are very complicated and only partially driven by the digestive track. I'm a fatty. I've lost a lot of weight but my body knows I used to be fat and it wants to be fat again. A very potent signal for hunger or fatigue is when your fat cells get small i.e. you've burnt a lot of fat, and your little fuel cells are feeling empty. Each shrunken fat cell sends out a chemical "feed me" signal. And they are very very persuasive. And the kicker is that when you fill them up, they want to be maintained at full. But if they're full too long, or get too full (persistently increase body fat by a few percent(, it triggers mitosis and you now have two half full fat cells who are both shouting "Feed me" To add insult to injury when you lose weight, you don't kill off fat cells, you just have a bunch of really hungry fat cells shouting for a cheeseburger. The nice thing about the GLP1 drugs is that they quiet the shouting. So you just don't get the demonic urge to feet all your wilting fat cells. The bad thing about it is that the shouting is still there, and as soon as you quit the drug, you can get overwhelmed and go back to overeating and your weight and percent body fat go right back up

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strongpigeon 1y ago

While the key takeaways from the article are indeed good, I think the main problem is seeing weight loss as a phase. Your body weight is a result of your lifestyle. Going on a diet implies that it's just a temporary thing (which can be great to speed up the process), but it's no wonder that people often revert back to their previous weight. To lose weight permanently, you don't go on a diet, you change your diet. A friend of mine lost > 100 lbs over the course of 2 years by following a weight loss program with a heavy focus on education. The program made him internalize that he had to fundamentally change his life. He has since regained probably around 20 lbs over his minimum, but has maintained his new weight for > 8 years now and is living a life closer to what he wants.

jaggederest 1y ago

As with many posts like this, it feels somewhat obvious that "stay active, sleep well, track your weight and calories, and don't go back to eating garbage" are pretty well understood. That said, this is an excellent summary of the research and underlying principles. I think the real challenge with significant weight loss is in being consistent and maintaining those things, which everyone is pretty silent on. Mental health and stress levels are the #1 factor in essentially all of those things and deserve more focus in the context of major lifestyle change. You emphatically cannot just willpower through a major change for the rest of your life, and given that, you have to find ways to reduce the active cognition component to a low-effort automatic cognition process. Setting yourself up for success through organization and routine, avoiding being around situations that cause overeating, not purchasing and keeping in stock foods that are problematic, peer and family support are all things that make a huge difference.

donw 1y ago
True across the board, and unfortunately the average lifestyle promoted here on HN is one of massive, unavoidable stress, both inside and outside of work. Fixing your diet is one of those sort of flywheel problems. It takes time to figure out what's both healthy and palatable for you, time and freezer and/or refrigerator space to do meal prep, time and energy to work out, and so on. All of those are skills that are hard at first. Even with YouTube, you don't go from "burns water" to "Michelin star bodybuilder meals" without a lot of practice. The better you get at all of that, the faster and easier it becomes, until you hit a point where it's just "how you live", and all that energy and time are again free to pursue other things. If you have money, sure, you can outsource a lot of that. Zuckerberg has a personal chef and dietician, as well as a handful of dedicated personal trainers guiding his fitness regimen. But most of us can't afford to invest $250k/year or more into that problem.
toast0 1y ago
I think "tracking your weight and calories" is useful, but only if you track it right. You could look at just raw numbers, but IMHO, first you want to be tracking for you, how many calories it took eating X to achieve satiety / feel not hungry. Then, hopefully, you can figure out how to meet your daily calorie needs/goals in a way that you don't feel hungry all day. It's hard to stick to your plan when your body is telling you it wants more. People's hungry signals are different, which is why one size fits all advice doesn't work. Personally, if I ignore my hungry signal for long enough, it goes away; this sounds like it might be good, but then I get all headachey and grumpy because I haven't eaten and there's no signal telling me to eat; so I've got to use my analytic brain for that (but it would rather take a break because I haven't eaten). Some people I describe that to think I'm crazy ... if they don't eat, the hunger signal just keeps getting stronger.

SoftTalker 1y ago

> Maintain (or gain) muscle mass Almost impossible to do while you're losing weight. You will lose muscle mass as well as fat. Not that you shouldn't start (or keep doing) weight training. And after you hit your weight loss goals, you'll need to eat more than base maintenance calories (and mostly in the form of protein) to gain muscle back.

prepend 1y ago
The key is maintaining or increasing muscle % of body weight. Of course you’ll lose muscle mass, along with everything else. But it’s possible to increase the percent lean mass and especially your muscle:fat ratio.
- p1esk 1y ago
  I don’t understand this: if I’m fat and I start exercising without changing my diet, I should be losing fat and gaining muscle mass. As a result, my weight can be going down.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    If you don't change your diet, you will likely be building muscles, but your weight is unlikely to change. You can even _gain_ more weight once you start exercising. It comes down to math. An hour of resistance training is just 200-500 calories above the baseline. That's just one sports drink worth of energy.
  - theoriginaldave 1y ago
    I think when you're in an energy deficit (aka losing weight), your body will attempt to reduce energy demand by metabolizing materials from the body. It prefers to power the body from stored glycogen (carbohydrates), next it will try to metabolize stored fat, next it will go for protein sources (muscle and other tissues). In extreme deficits, it'll even start consuming material from the digestive track and other important stuff. Many people lose weight, get stronger, get faster and surprisingly lose muscle mass at the same time. But you can prevent that by eating enough protein, adding strength training, not overtraining or extreme deficit, fueling your workouts with carbohydrates, getting high-quality sleep, and minimizing non-meal, non-workout related simple carbohydrates. #TLDR When you walk down the street, your body is doing all these things mostly carbs, some fat and a little protein. When you start pushing yourself, you burn more energy but in similar ratios. After about 90 minutes or at higher levels of effort, you'll shift to burning more fat and even more protein if you reach ketosis, as your body conserves remaining carb stores for important stuff like thinking. AND as you exercise, especially as you reach your strength thresholds, you incur damage in your muscles. When you have your recovery meal/drink with carbohydrates after your workout , especially when resting, the insulin spike, triggers your body to consume protein to rebuild your muscles and add more mass/strength. But if your workouts don't include enough strength training, your body may not get the anabolic muscle building signal, and it may instead focus on reducing weight (via fat and muscle), or increasing nutrient and oxygen flow to the muscles (building hemoglobin, growing capillaries), increasing muscle activation and engagement (new neural pathways), and/or increasing energy creation capacity (growing more mitochondria or expressing more efficient chemical pathways). Which is why you can get faster, stronger with smaller muscles. So my recipe for building muscle while losing fat: * Strength train each muscle group in sets of about 10 for 80 reps per week (I shoot for 2 days, whole body, 4 sets of 10 reps). * Prepare for every workout with some carbohydrates and electrolytes * For workouts lasting more than 90 min, especially cardio/endurance, begin consuming carbs at 30 min and consume 90-12g/hr for high intensity (Zone 3 or higher) * Try to consume 2g of whole protein per kg of target body weight. Or 4g per kg of lean body mass. YMMV. these are all rules of thumb. * Wake up at the same time every day, and prepare for bed 9-10 hours before you have to wake up (have a last snack, some water, turn out the overhead lights, start relaxing) so that by the time bedtime rolls around you can fall asleep quickly and get 7.5-9.5 hours of quality sleep If you're really hitting it hard and you've induced severe muscle fatigue, bump up the protein intake and get more rest and recovery time.

jackero 1y ago

Less obvious things that I’ve found over the years are: - Some people just don’t like to eat that much. They don’t actually have a faster metabolism. Eating is just a chore to them so they rarely do it. - Some people like eating more and may eat when bored. - If I’m busy working on something, I will go 12 hours without eating on accident. If I’m doing nothing at all, I may overeat. - Some people eat much faster than others. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating protein or fat if you inhale two steaks in 10 minutes. You already consumed too many calories. And because you ate double the amount of calories doesn’t mean that you will be full for double the time. - Some people who eat too fast do something called low-calorie volume eating so they eat fewer calories and this works better for them than eating protein and fat. - It’s true that exercise doesn’t make up for a bad diet. It’s easier to eat less. - There are days when I’m out playing sports for like 10 hours. I burn a ton of calories that does need to be made up by eating. - A lot of people did sports or were outside for hours growing up but don’t anymore due to lifestyle changes (kids for example). That’s an extremely major loss of a calorie sink that isn’t obvious. - Water weight is a thing but it really doesn’t matter in the long term. It’s more like an offset from your “real weight” but it can only get so far from it. Trends are better for tracking your real weight.

mrweasel 1y ago
> It’s true that exercise doesn’t make up for a bad diet. It’s easier to eat less. That one always gets to me, because it's not universally true. I get the point, and to some extend even agree with it. To me personally, especially when I was younger and had the time, working out more always felt much easier. Controlling what I eat has always been incredibly tricky, simply exercising to the point where it doesn't matter what I eat, fairly easy, it's just a matter of putting in the hours. Workout for 2.5 hours a day, plus 60-90 minutes transport on a bike, you can pretty much eat anything you like.
- robrenaud 1y ago
  I recently got to know someone with a resting heart rate of 45, who will pretty frequently do 8+ mile trail runs and 100 mile bike rides. He is also an amazing cook who makes decadent and delicious foods. He says he consumes 4,000 calories a day. He still has a sizeable belly. I'd say he is at like 10/10 on exercise, but 3/10 on diet. I was surprised at his extreme cardiovascular fitness while still managing to be overfat.

bdz 1y ago

I’m on liraglutide (Saxenda) for more than a year now. I lost 68kg (150lbs) and incredibly easy to maintain my weight. I’m doing OMAD (1/23 intermittent fasting) and for me it’s pretty much the perfect meal plan. Not even a diet because I eat whatever I want, just roughly counting calories. My daily exercise is 1 hour walking in the morning and the evening too (~20k steps combined)

FredPret 1y ago
1/23? So you eat for one hour and then you're done for the day?
- ffsm8 1y ago
  OMAD stands for "One Meal A Day"
  - m348e912 1y ago
    The one good thing about OMAD is that you can basically eat as much as you want and what you want during that one hour, and as long as that the only time you eat you will likely stay lean. I truly believe that this is the strategy that competitive eater/youtuber beardmeatsfood uses to stay lean while eating an immense amount of food in one sitting. I have been toying with a 8 hour eating window followed by ~40 hours fasting (basically an evening + a whole day) of not eating, and seen some positive results.

HiPhish 1y ago

Formerly fat person here. That article is just an overblown list of common sense advice to sell you some crap you don't need. Losing and maintaining your weight is actually really simple. Here is what worked for me (I am not a doctor): - First of all, drop sugar. Right now. Even if you are not fat, you should not eat it. It's not just extra calories, it's poison. Don't be like "oh, I'll just finish this stuff I still have around", throw it out. If your are only going to follow one point from this list, then let it be this one. - Forget about calories, a calorie is not a calorie. You cannot "work off" that cake your have eaten, your are not an oven. Calories are an upper limit (you cannot break thermodynamics), but the human metabolism is much more complicated than just balancing an equation. - Exercise is necessary, but not sufficient. That means you should exercise to get your metabolism going, but exercising itself will not let your lose weight. And when I mean exercising I don't mean you need to get a gym membership. Just going for a walk for half an hour or an hour is good enough for starters. - Fat won't make you fat. I grew up under low-fat propaganda, yet I kept getting fatter. Then when I increase my fat consumption I started losing weight. By fat I mean real animal fat from meat, not seed oils or other processed fats. - Eat real food. If you cannot tell what it's made from by looking at it, then it's not real food. - Processed fruits and vegetables are still processed food, and thus not real food. Don't be fooled by marketing, stuff like fruit juice is not healthy, no matter how many vitamin labels the manufacturer keeps putting on the packaging. - Caloric restriction works in the short term, but will drive you crazy in the long term. This is why people lapse eventually and regain all their weight. It is important to understand that obesity is not a "surplus of energy", it's a medical disorder brought about by disruption of your metabolism. I was able to keep eating and eating without ever feeling satiated. It is pure torture to be hungry with a full stomach. It was my body telling me "stop feeding me this garbage, give me real food". I have since been able to keep my weight and never feel hungry. It's only when I find myself unable to eat real food and lapse back into old habits that I start gaining weight again.

homie 1y ago
“Sugar is poison” is an absolutely insane claim to make
- 1y ago

umpalumpaaa 1y ago

I found loosing weight was a lot easier than maintaining weight. When loosing weight you have a lot more wiggle room… As long as you are spending more calories than consuming you loose weight. It does not matter if you have a deficit of 20kcal or 200kcal. Maintaining your weight requires one to have 0 deficit in either direction.

jmugan 1y ago
It's also a lot more fun to lose weight than maintain weight
kingstnap 1y ago
Maintaining exact calorie in = out every day is a fools errand. You only need net zero averaged over weeks. Some days you have to allow eating more. Mainly because food is the original human social activity.

maxglute 1y ago

as usual simple not easy etc... level1 figure out deficit/maintenance/surplus calories figure out what behavior changes to maintain consumption levels level2 (extra work, but really what it's at) figure out what how you want to look good naked... i.e. body composition figure out workout (usually lifting with some cardio) eat enough protein, eat other macros that can help you do your workouts. ironically dietting is the SIMPLEST... eat enough protein, fill the rest with what makes you feel "best" or helps "best" with your goal (exercise). This doesn't mean it will feel good depending on cut/bulk... just what feels least bad. Extra work from level2 can make level1 easier - more lean mass from work out-> more maintenance + tdee calories. The process might be easier if you're 25 BMI with 15% bodyfat than 22 BMI with 20% bodyfat. You'll look better too, which let's be real, is what people usually want. Then health. That's basically it. But MOST IMPORTANT to recognize that some goals are simply things you're too mentally/physiologically "weak" / incapable of doing. You may simply not be built for to learn behavior changes (i.e. appetite control) for low BMI/BF. Your genes may simply prevent you from building good FFMI to pull off certain build. This stuff is simple, but not easy.

layer8 1y ago

This is much more complicated than needed. Following the Hacker’s Diet [0] is simple to understand and sufficient, and yes, heed common-sense things like good sleep, some basic exercise, stress reduction, and eating healthy food. [0] https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

carlcoryell 1y ago
The combination of daily weigh-ins and the exponentially weighted moving average I learned from the Hacker Diet has been absolutely magic for me. It gives me helpful daily feedback signal in the noise of ~5lb daily weight variation. Beeminder has replaced paper graphs for me. Their new moving average isn't quite as helpful for me, but is still workable. I target rates of weight loss on the order of 0.35-0.50lbs/week.
Izkata 1y ago
Huh, this looks like the same thing I came up with about three years ago. I'd tracked my weight for a long time and only just started tracking calories, then a month or so in wondered if combining the two datasets would result in anything useful. After about six months there were some obvious patterns, and ever since a year in I've been able to control my weight however I want without much effort. One graph I have that I don't see on there is average-calories-per-day on the X axis and weight-change-per-week on the Y axis (scatter plot). Sticking a linear regression on top told me all those online estimators for how many calories you burn in a day are just wrong, at least for me.
- layer8 1y ago
  That scatter plot is a nice addition. One property of the Hacker's Diet is that the absolute numbers don't really matter, as long as the weighing and calorie balance are roughly consistent. What's relevant for the feedback loop is the weight slope, and the target can be something like losing 15% of weight, and a 10% calorie deficit might get you there in n months.

TeaVMFan 1y ago

For the "logging" step, I created and rely on CalorieFreq, a local-first Java SPA: https://frequal.com/cf/ https://frequal.com/cf/ It is built on the Flavour framework: https://flavour.sf.net https://flavour.sf.net

oceanhaiyang 1y ago

Living in Japan made me get down to my all time lowest weight, returning to America made me shoot up past where I started… healthy lifestyle, lots of walking over driving, and healthy eating options is all it is!

arp242 1y ago
Incidentally, this came up on my YouTube the other day: How Japan escaped Obesity while America got Fat – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6Wq4KWu7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6Wq4KWu7M

poszlem 1y ago

15 years ago, I lost 32 kg. Ever since, I've been keeping a weight diary, weighing myself almost every day. I've now regained those kilos, plus an additional 15. The funny thing is that the yo-yo effect took 9.5 years to fully happen, and looking back at the entire 15-year span, it's perfectly clear. But year by year, I couldn't even notice it happening. I’d gain a few kilos, lose a few, gain again, lose again, except each time I'd gain slightly more than I'd lost. I don't have much more to add, other than it being really eye-opening how my body seemed to play the long game, eventually regaining all the weight I'd initially lost.

testing22321 1y ago
Your body didn’t play a long game, your mouth did. For all those years you’ve been consuming more energy than your body needs to run, so your body stored the excess for later.
- poszlem 1y ago
  Thank you for this unhelpful response. Obviously my mouth was involved, but so were my brain, gut, and the rest of my body. The point I'm making is that I never consciously decided to gain weight. My body, however, seemed to have its own plan.
  - testing22321 1y ago
    My comment was helpful, because you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge about why you gained weight. Even your reply implies you think you need to consciously decide to gain weight for it to happen - which is very much not correct. You can’t fix something if you don’t understand the whys involved.

stavros 1y ago

I know all the theory, but how do I stop food noise? It's extremely annoying to always be thinking about food, no matter how full you are.

christophilus 1y ago

I will say that having switched to carnivore made a difference for me. It was hard for me to say no to junk food as a vegan or when on a healthy ”balanced” diet. With carnivore, the cooking is simple, the “no” is obvious, and the satiation lasts a long time. That said, it’s hard for me to think this is actually a healthy way to eat, after so many years being vegan, and I don’t know what the staying power will be.

znpy 1y ago

So we’re sharing anecdotes so here’s mine: the speed in weight loss matters, in the sense that faster weight loss might not be the best. Your body will try to regain weight if you don’t give it time to get accustomed to the new weight. In late 2020 / early 2021 i did the Dukan diet and lost ~10kg in like two months and a half, i lost like a kilogram (about two pounds) per week, my body was perfect. Then i stupidly eyed the next challenge (quitting smoking) and gained everything back (with intenterests, damnit). I should have really focused on consolidation, that for the dukan diet means slowly reintroducing other foods slowly to let your body get used to the new state of affairs. Last year started dieting again and i lost 10 kilograms again, over a year, by mostly eating less (i amicably call it “controlled malnourishment”). This time i’m not gaining it back and i think it’s because even in the weeks where I’ve exceeded, my body got time to get acquainted to the new weight. During this last year i hit a plateau as well… i just had to be patient.

naganotonicbuy 1y ago

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