4 ms·

But it's not. What you're referring to, is the basic concept of thermodynamic calorie in/calorie out. Yes, you can "just" reduce food and lose weight if you hi

But it's not. What you're referring to, is the basic concept of thermodynamic calorie in/calorie out. Yes, you can "just" reduce food and lose weight if you hit deficit numbers. But if you don't do it correctly, you'll feel like trash, you'll suffer bad cravings, and put yourself in a stressful mental situation for days, possibly putting your job at risk. You have to: - Eat less than what you're already eating - But enough to nourish yourself so you keep being in good shape for your work and hobbies - Manage hunger - Make the change sustainable so you can keep doing it for the rest of your life. It's specially hard when your work is entirely sedentary, you live alone and, ironically, when you have a salary that let's you order food every day. A lot of people don't have it hard. Maybe because they have someone cooking for them at home, because they meal prep the entire week, or because their work is so physically intensive they can just wing it and burn everything with what they need to do for a living anyway.

kulahan 1y ago
Right, so exactly like I said, it's very simple. If you want to lose weight, reduce calories. If you add extra modifiers like "I want to feel great while doing it" and "I want to lose weight while sedentary" and "I want to continue eating whatever stupid thing I want" and "I need to be able to scroll tiktok for at least 3 hours, leaving no time for cooking", it gets much more complicated. Side note: LOL at "but if you're craving food you might get fired!!1!" - this is professional victimhood at its finest.
throwawaylaptop 1y ago
Inaccurate in my opinion. Let's say you eat 2500 calories a day usually. But you want to lose weight so you reduce it to 1800. Except your calories are from pop tarts. If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter. If you ate 1800 calories of pop tarts once a day in 1 hour, you might maintain weight or loose a little. Maybe. If you had 3600 calories of pop tarts in a few hour window, and then didn't eat again for 48 hours, you'd lose weight in a month. Insulin control is 99% of losing weight. Yes thermodynamic blah blah, but unless you pay attention to hormone control that controls metabolism in general, it's not going to work without insane willpower to keep your 'calories out' higher than your body wants. If you repeated the 3600 calories every 48 hours with beef instead, you'd lose weight like never before.
- XorNot 1y ago
  > If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter. This is thermodynamically impossible unless your daily calorie use is less then 1800 calories.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    Are you saying raising your insulin levels hourly, 18 times a day, will not do anything to your metabolism? Did you even read my post, or did you just instantly reply with the same pedantic reply which my post was specifically meant to address?
    - degamad 1y ago
      > Are you saying raising your insulin levels hourly, 18 times a day, will not do anything to your metabolism? What metabolic effect do you expect from raising your insulin levels hourly?
  - tjader 1y ago
    It is only thermodynamically impossible if you assume 100% efficiency in energy extraction from food, but in practice we only extract a very small amount of energy from matter. Thermodynamically you could extract ~10^12 kcal from a Pop Tart if you converted its mass into energy. Not that I agree that for a human metabolism meal timing makes much of a difference in energy extraction, but it wouldn't be thermodynamically impossible.
    - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
      It's insane to me that people keep talking about the energy in part. Forget that. Realize that WHAT you put in can change what energy out is. If I gave you 1800 calories of vodka at 8am, would your use the same amount of energy during the day, and even make it to your 7pm gym? No. Ok, well sugar isnt exactly the same obviously, but it can also affect what you do that day, how your body acts, your brain even. Your energy out gets totally messed with after you have tons of alcohol for obvious reasons. Something similar happens on sugar/spiked insulin levels. Can you willpower through it and increase your energy out by running til you drop dead and lose weight? Sure. But it's not easy. What's way easier is not having the insulin spike in the first place.
dawnerd 1y ago
That's exactly why I liked being on keto. Never felt hungry, had way more energy, mental health improved a lot. No other diet had those effects. I've been off it for a while and I feel gross again.
EPWN3D 1y ago
The first law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which your body is not. Yes it is true that, very broadly speaking, eating more results in weight gain past a certain point. But first principles are not the most proximate reason for that by a long shot.
gizzlon 1y ago
> Eat less than what you're already eating Not true for most people. You need to eat fewer calories, not less food. I counted calories for a few weeks an was very surprised.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
You can fill yourself up with lower calorie food too. Most people don’t eat enough vegetables. They basically take up space in the gut, make you feel full, while you get your 5 calories from an entire bowl of lettuce or whatever.

kulahan 1y ago

Right, so exactly like I said, it's very simple. If you want to lose weight, reduce calories. If you add extra modifiers like "I want to feel great while doing it" and "I want to lose weight while sedentary" and "I want to continue eating whatever stupid thing I want" and "I need to be able to scroll tiktok for at least 3 hours, leaving no time for cooking", it gets much more complicated. Side note: LOL at "but if you're craving food you might get fired!!1!" - this is professional victimhood at its finest.

throwawaylaptop 1y ago

Inaccurate in my opinion. Let's say you eat 2500 calories a day usually. But you want to lose weight so you reduce it to 1800. Except your calories are from pop tarts. If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter. If you ate 1800 calories of pop tarts once a day in 1 hour, you might maintain weight or loose a little. Maybe. If you had 3600 calories of pop tarts in a few hour window, and then didn't eat again for 48 hours, you'd lose weight in a month. Insulin control is 99% of losing weight. Yes thermodynamic blah blah, but unless you pay attention to hormone control that controls metabolism in general, it's not going to work without insane willpower to keep your 'calories out' higher than your body wants. If you repeated the 3600 calories every 48 hours with beef instead, you'd lose weight like never before.

XorNot 1y ago
> If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter. This is thermodynamically impossible unless your daily calorie use is less then 1800 calories.
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Are you saying raising your insulin levels hourly, 18 times a day, will not do anything to your metabolism? Did you even read my post, or did you just instantly reply with the same pedantic reply which my post was specifically meant to address?
  - degamad 1y ago
    > Are you saying raising your insulin levels hourly, 18 times a day, will not do anything to your metabolism? What metabolic effect do you expect from raising your insulin levels hourly?
- tjader 1y ago
  It is only thermodynamically impossible if you assume 100% efficiency in energy extraction from food, but in practice we only extract a very small amount of energy from matter. Thermodynamically you could extract ~10^12 kcal from a Pop Tart if you converted its mass into energy. Not that I agree that for a human metabolism meal timing makes much of a difference in energy extraction, but it wouldn't be thermodynamically impossible.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    It's insane to me that people keep talking about the energy in part. Forget that. Realize that WHAT you put in can change what energy out is. If I gave you 1800 calories of vodka at 8am, would your use the same amount of energy during the day, and even make it to your 7pm gym? No. Ok, well sugar isnt exactly the same obviously, but it can also affect what you do that day, how your body acts, your brain even. Your energy out gets totally messed with after you have tons of alcohol for obvious reasons. Something similar happens on sugar/spiked insulin levels. Can you willpower through it and increase your energy out by running til you drop dead and lose weight? Sure. But it's not easy. What's way easier is not having the insulin spike in the first place.

dawnerd 1y ago

That's exactly why I liked being on keto. Never felt hungry, had way more energy, mental health improved a lot. No other diet had those effects. I've been off it for a while and I feel gross again.

EPWN3D 1y ago

The first law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which your body is not. Yes it is true that, very broadly speaking, eating more results in weight gain past a certain point. But first principles are not the most proximate reason for that by a long shot.

gizzlon 1y ago

> Eat less than what you're already eating Not true for most people. You need to eat fewer calories, not less food. I counted calories for a few weeks an was very surprised.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

You can fill yourself up with lower calorie food too. Most people don’t eat enough vegetables. They basically take up space in the gut, make you feel full, while you get your 5 calories from an entire bowl of lettuce or whatever.