I'd like to share my experience. I've lost 50lbs twice in the past decade and I'm currently losing them again. Hopefully the third time is a charm.
What's different now is that I've done a lot of self-reflection. I now realize I have an eating disorder driven by a dopamine response to tasty foods, but unlike other people, my inner thoughts are similar to addicts, I presume, where my brain is deciding to binge the food that triggered that reward until I get stomach pains, which then nullifies the dopamine reward, so only then I stop eating. I've also learned the signal I get when I've had enough to eat and learned to not ignore it.
I've also realized that I stress eat, and particularly when I'm feeling down, probably to try to get temporary feelings of happiness as self-medication.
Losing weight is fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it, but keeping it off is less so. That's the most difficult aspect to manage about my life: to try to avoid excessive stress and general periods of unhappiness, so that I don't start using food as a source of dopamine, but since a lot of stressors are external, I feel like they're outside of my control, so my general strategy as of late has been to replace the source of dopamine to not be food related.
For example, exercising not only helps with losing weight, but it also curbs my appetite so I can fast during lunch without exercising much will power. More vigorous exercise induces runner's high, so it benefits both the efforts of losing the weight and the attempt to switch sources of feeling good.
Lastly getting satisfaction from shipping code is a productive replacement for the satisfaction I get from eating foods. That one is more tough to implement because eating provides immediate gratification, while shipping projects is a long endeavor usually. To counter that, I set bite-sized (ha) coding/learning goals for myself that I can complete fairly fast. That keeps my mood up for a bit.
Hopefully my experience will encourage others to reflect on their own reasons for gaining weight and try to address the root cause, not just the side-effect of increased weight.
This has been my realization as well. I've never experienced quitting smoking or drugs, so can't compare, but sugar withdrawals hit me HARD — it really made me reflect a lot.
From what I've read, recovering heroin addicts never really "recover", they just consciously don't consume heroin. I now see overeating the same way, there's no "cure", there's lifelong maintenance.
For me personally, eventually, carnivore diet has been a revelation and the only routine I can keep up without expending constant mental effort. It's impossible to overeat, and you feel amazing. As a result, you feel like shit on cheat days, so even though I still get to indulge in carbs from time to time, I don't feel the urge to continue eating them.
> to try to avoid excessive stress and general periods of unhappiness
This of course easier said than done, but that has been my experience as well.
Trying to lose fat, even in small amounts, was just a lost cause when everything else in my daily life is just stress upon stress, no time to cook, and the body always in emergency mode. And it made me really pissed at the "just meditate" or "just eat less and exercise more" crowd...it must work for some, but that's no magical advice.
Losing a measly 5% of fat only happened after rethinking my life, changing job, and basically our daily life as a whole family.
Seems to the only thing you need to change is to start doing some real sports(TM) instead of stuff you do just to lose weight. I mean sports that you will feel very bad for skipping, and stuff you can actually engage in few times a week. I'd recommend climbing for example (that's a serious gateway to permanent improvement of lifestyle for everybody I know including me, but its not panacea so other stuff may work for ya). That's a great way and first step to completely change yourself.
That's the core of most weight loss - if you want permanent results, you need to do permanent change in your habits, no way to hack around this simple fact of life (if you don't count pussies like Musk lacking any serious impulse control who eat copious amount of diabetes medications because... that really seems like a great idea along term, just ask any senior doctor in private).
Unfortunately I have to disagree. I started going to the gym 6 times per week in august 2023, my muscles are in way better shape than before, my heart is great, but the biggest weight loss was still at the beginning from diet.
It's a pain. I religiously go and alternate 3 HIIT sessions (shadow boxing/stationary bike) of 30 minutes, with strength training of 60 minutes (push, pull, legs).
The very rare times I skip have been when my legs are overly tired (boxing, bike, legs + 40 minutes walking 5 days per week it's a lot for muscles).
And yet, I'm struggling to lose the remaining weight. My hunger has increased with all the muscles, I am able not to gain weight only because I eat healthy, but the amount I eat increases. I can power through with will and a lot of water, but it's really hard.
I thought I would solve with sport but I didn't. I'm in good shape, but I have more weight to lose, it's annoying.
Have you had your T levels checked? And done bloodwork to check nutrient levels?
Low T can definitely limit the ability to be lean.
Other factors - over training (6 times a week would be pushing it for me years ago, today is 3-4 max). Poor sleep. Poor diet (carbs, crappy over processed foods).
Many many individual factors to consider. It's truly hard to generalize these things.
Yeah, which is also why it's hard to find any suggestions.
No I haven't had any bloodwork done related to nutrient levels, since I was always able to lose weight.
6 times per week is a lot, but it's the only way I managed to maintain consistency. As twisted as it sounds, it's way easier to go to the gym if I know I have to go every day rather than say "oh I'll anticipate the rest day to today" (and then I won't go the next day either).
On Sunday, when I rest, I feel zero guilt, my body is exhausted and I know I NEED that day.
Sometimes if I feel too tired I take an additional day, either Monday or Wednesday, depending when I discover my body can't handle anything else.
Poor sleep could be an option, hard to say. I have two children, sometimes I feel rested, but sometimes I don't sleep enough, in which case I'm hungry all day.
The diet is good, we are originally from Italy, so we cook all our meals. My wife is really good at cooking, that sometimes is a disadvantage too.
I find if I am running frequently, the alternative source of feel-good chemicals makes bad food less attractive. I find this a little surprising as I would have thought I would crave bad food more.
The only time I have been a normal weight has been when I am running and the exercise / less-craving combo worked well … while I kept the habit.
Running and exercising are not efficient ways to lose weight despite what the fitness and wellness industries would have you believe. And ironically the more overweight you are the less efficient it is. Great way to fuck up your joints or waste countless hours sifting through bro science and researching equipment you don't need.
It is great for keeping the weight off and enjoying life once you hit a certain point but should not be a chore as will power is finite and precious and at first you're spending it all on eating clean and walking and that is guaranteed to be enough over a long enough period.
Push too hard and you'll stall. just be patient and extremely consistent instead.
If you can go for a walk for 1-2 hours a day, just simply walk your way out of the problem. And if you "can't afford" to walk for 1 hour every day your life is already in shambles and you're not in a position to make other changes before you sort this out.
Eat clean. Walk. Be consistent. Be patient as it will take more than a year, the time delayed reward is the very crux of the matter. And don't stress, laugh more!
I find that exercising in water basically nullifies all those joint stresses you mention. Swim or water gymnastics. The main issue with swimming that comes to mind is with shoulders because it uses a lot of rotations.
> Eat clean. Walk. Be consistent.
That is basically it, wellness must be approached on many different angles. I'd also add sleep better, drink the required amount of water, refrain from using screens past a couple of hours before going to bed. But also, if anyone is clinically overweight, in which case is it a medical issue, to rely on professionals for help. Psychologist/psychiatrist to manage anxiety, doctors to help identify and treat hormonal related imbalances, instructors to help you execute physical activities without injuring yourself, a down to earth nutritionist (not some random influencer on the web with over 20k followers) to help you eat consistently.
I do realise that it is a lot to take in at once, but the thing is you can't do it at once. Start at some place, I'd recommend talking to a psychologist to come up with a plan that is tailored to your specific needs and habits. And then lean on the routine consistently and try to find comfort in the fact that you are in the process of getting better, effectively changing your relationship with everything you interact that gives you that dopamine boost.
> I do realise that it is a lot to take in at once,
Job #1: Shed the cognitive load. Feeling overwhelmed is why people despair and never get started.
You don't strictly need a psychologist or a psychiatrist (goodness gracious!) or a team of professionals for help. Not even a nutritionist. Stop reading about hormonal imbalances.
You don't need a complicated plan to start. Go. For. A. Long. Walk. Everyday. For. A. Year. It. Works.
That's the easiest most minimal change a person can make. No equipment, no plan, no procrastinating. That and switching to only drinking water and black coffee with no sugar.
Those two things are guaranteed to be enough to start the weight trending in the right direction and yet most people can't adhere to them consistently so anything more complicated is irrelevant.
You can always add more stuff on top later. To increase the likelihood of permanent adherence it is best to find the smallest most minimal actionable change and make it automatic so it doesn't cost you willpower.
As for exercising in water vs walking vs running vs anything - humans move incredibly efficiently in water and proper running technique is economical. You can walk for 2 hours or sprint for 10 minutes or run 5k in 30 minutes or splash around, the end result is the same.
You don't need experts or internet strangers, collect data on yourself experimentally:
Eat the exact same portioned meals every day and switch up these activities every two weeks to compare how many calories per minute you burn doing that particular thing your particular way.
> You don't strictly need a psychologist or a psychiatrist (goodness gracious!) or a team of professionals for help. Not even a nutritionist.
Maybe. Only a competent professional can tell you that. How could you otherwise tell if you need it or not? Yeah maybe someone healthy that wants to get a little healthier, but my entire argument was centered around people that are clinically obese. And even if you are apparently healthy, you would be surprised how bad the average American eat without realising it.
And an ethical psychiatrist can help alleviate the inevitable anxiety that comes from changing diet. Maybe people can hold a strict diet for a couple of months, but without getting their anxiety in check they can very easily slip back into old habits.
I mean, if I was talking about people with severe drug addiction I bet nobody would bat an eye about recommending specialists, so why do we treat eating disorders differently, when it is shown they mess with the same types of reward systems in the brain?
How about we split the difference and agree that you can go in search of any type of professional help so long as you park far away and walk 10k steps from your car to their office?
Note the word strictly. You don't strictly need them to walk and they can't do the walking for you. The walking can only help. It costs nothing, requires no equipment, nor planning.
I am saying that this is the easiest and most straightforward change anybody can implement, the best bang for the buck. A no brainer. Something you already know you should do. Now. Today. The pushback is about that. Don't condition walking on finding the perfect X first. Hope that is super clear.
For other readers: disregard the FUD above regarding running and exercising. Exercising generally curbs hunger, boosts mood and helps solidify adherence to good eating habits. It won't fuck up your joints if you very gradually increase your total exercising volume. For instance, start alternatively walking and running for half an hour three times a week (never getting winded in the process, stop running and start walking every time you start breathing hard), and from there add ten minutes of exercise per week. You'll do fine.
I find that exercise increases my hunger. I exercise quite a bit (5-8 hours per week) and it makes me eat more, not less. And I find that I need to channel this into food that meets my macros rather than junk, but if I don’t plan, I’ll end up with empty calories.
It surprises me to hear that people don’t get hungry when exercising and how energy expenditure curbs hunger for some people. I wish it worked like this for me.
I'm in the same boat in that I get hungry when I exercise, however I also seem to crave healthier foods when I do. For whatever reason, that protein + salad that wouldn't satisfy me prior to excercising perfectly hits the spot when I do. I have to guess there's a whole lot of biological signals + psychology happening there.
It is my opinion not FUD, I clearly mean well, and you read a lot of non existent negativity into my post and didn't understand the points made as written - the overall guiding principle should be whatever works for a particular individual.
> It won't fuck up your joints if you very gradually increase your total exercising volume.
Congratulations on more or less paraphrasing my point.
Somebody who is a couch potato who takes Nike commercials overly seriously is not unlikely to push too hard and injure themselves - extremely common for beginners. We are saying the same thing. Ease into it.
By developing the walking habit first you've also carved out time for such things, the most important thing is consistency.
Even minimal but consistent effort is better than going for a few runs here and there and not forming a routine around it.
I don't doubt you mean well, but you still spread FUD, right off the bat. And went on to give ok advice, I'll give you that, but still. You start off with "running/exercising is inefficient and will fuck up your joints", I'm saying do a run-walk-run and know that exercise helps adherence to a good diet. What do you think is the better advice?
Great. Call it what you will. The point is to find a maintainable cadence and avoid injury, you're not competing against anybody.
Whoever is reading this: You can get started with walking immediately, right now. Step away from the computer. Or you can get caught up endlessly debating which way is best and never actually get going.
I lift weights and run and highly recommend it for people who can find joy in it. It is strictly not necessary to do any of that to get started with losing weight.
Have some basic respect. You are reading this. Maybe other people reading this are also fully developed adults that don’t need your condescending instructions. And if you don’t want to be in a debate about “which is better” then don’t come in and rant that other people are giving poor advice.
> if you "can't afford" to walk for 1 hour every day your life is already in shambles
This “walk an hour a day” advice risks being in the “check your privilege” category. Also risks ensuring most people simply can't or won't take that advice.
For both health and weight, metabolism and heart matter. And there are reasonably effective approaches for those besides the standard jogging / running / biking / walking endurance tips.
One way I like, annoying because it's hard, while paradoxically easier as it requires willpower instead of time, is high intensity interval training or Tabata intervals.*
Both metabolism and heart health can be revved up with high intensity interval training (“HIIT”) in as little as 8 minutes 3 times a week (about 4 mins spent in anaerobic or about 4 periods of 30 seconds in VO2 Max range), ideally coupled with a few ‘repetitions’ of lifting weights.
After about six weeks of sufficient intensity, your body seems to decide you are going to keep demanding things from it. Heart feels less taxed, breaking out in sweat takes longer, you stop being out of breath as quickly, and weight starts to shed. After you maintain this a couple quarters, your body finds a new fitness equilibrium and even if you stop exercising, it stays ready for demand for another six months to a year.
There are other approaches as well besides this one. HIIT isn't for everyone, some people feel nausea at the intensity and are unable to make themselves exert enough to push the heart rate where it needs to be.
So-called “Blue Zone” longevity studies have shown one factor in common across several zones is steep hills and walking. Hill climbing (or stairs) several times a day on a daily basis won't necessarily push to VO2 Max but does seem to encourage similar system adaptations with similar long term health benefits.
It's a lot easier to spend 10 mins three times a week than an hour every day, so accessible it's almost embarrassing to not do it.
* WARNING: If you're not already fit, do not try this without talking to your doctor. And fit or not, don't do HIIT without a real time heart monitor with chest strap, about ~$30 for a Bluetooth ANT+ strap like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3A1EODO9M3B1/ ...
> It's a lot easier to spend 10 mins three times a week than an hour every day, so accessible it's almost embarrassing to not do it.
Indeed you can tradeoff time for intensity if you are so inclined and in fact what you describe is more optimal. I wrote this very thing in another comment.
Whatever works. Whatever the person is willing to actually do and stick to. Whether or not it is easier depends on the individual and where they are at, first you got to get an overweight beginner to do literally anything at all.
More than a few, but caveat emptor as most studies aren't for a long enough period, for enough participants, or for anyone between elite Olympic athletes and the morbidly obese. "Tabata" is a good keyword to use though.
On the other hand, who needs a study. Just start weighing yourself, then try a few minutes of HIIT a few times a week for 3 months. If it works, keep going. If it doesn't, just do more minutes more times a week of some other exercise.
Other than having a heart attack, what is there to lose?
Well if you have any favorites, I'd love to see them. I'm very interested in the research in this topic, and you're making bold claims that I haven't seen well supported in literature, but I've been less on top of the field over the last decade or so.
Building a strength training habit in particular is useful in this context (and many others) because if you do start gaining weight again, you'll end up gaining muscular tissue which is more metabolically active and beneficial in many other ways.
What about lack of sleep? When I don't sleep enough, I go on a hunger frenzy and there is nothing I can do about it. It helps eating veggies, but I just keep eating
This is old research (2018) that has been blown completely out of proportion by news media. It's one of several small studies that gets circulated from time to time as if it disproves that weight loss is possible or something, but it doesn't.
Look at the actual study details:
> Thirty-five (22 females) adults with severe obesity (body mass index: 42.5 ± 5.0 kg/m2) underwent a 2-yr WL program focusing on diet and exercise.
They only looked at 22 women with severe obesity on a rapid and aggressive weight loss program. Drawing conclusions from this tiny group and their abnormally aggressive program isn’t relevant to the average person trying to regulate their weight or steadily move toward a healthier weight target over many years.
Vox has an article on it supposedly working, but the results are not what anyone who is overweight would call successful.
> The results at year eight are heartening. Eight years later and 50.3 percent of the intensive lifestyle intervention group and 35.7 percent of the usual care group were maintaining losses of ≥5 percent, while 26.9 percent of the intensive group and 17.2 percent of the usual care group were maintaining losses of ≥10 percent.
In layman’s terms, half lost nothing. Half of the losers lost so little that they wouldn’t notice. 1/4 lost 10%. Basically nobody who was obese reached a normal weight.
You don’t have to reach a normal weight to make a significant difference to your health and risk of death. Maintaining a 10% weight loss is absolutely noticeable in health measures.
> Individuals in the study were instructed to eat either low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets— about 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day for women and 1,500 to 1,800 for men.
If they're splitting groups, why didn't they bother having a control group with no diet change and only the study follow-up ?
I couldn't see any link to the actual study, was there more details ?
To my knowledge this mirrors the largest meta-analysis I'm aware of (JAMA? Probably way back in 2008 or so though, man I'm getting old) which showed that virtually all diets have a return to baseline weight by 2 years. Will see if I can find the citation. Do you have a recommended counter-example?
It's more useful to look at populations that reliably manipulate their body composition as a learnable, teachable skill like athletes in weight classes and bodybuilders.
The fundamentals have been known and practiced for decades at this point.
Even if the GP can't do that, it doesn't negate the fact that this research is for an extreme edge case and clearly doesn't extrapolate as the title implies.
TBF the research in this field is bound to be on cases that can't be extrapolated.
In contrast to more lab ready fundamental experiments on cell behaviors for instance, diet or metabolism need humans each living their own life and have too many uncontrolable factors to come out with a study that can withstand scrutiny.
Used to be 300lbs. Going down to 200 took 18 months of eating 400 calories as many days as I could endure, and fill myself with water.
It's a thankless process. You fight years of muscle memory that tells you that you should treat yourself. Your brain is telling you about all your cravings and how hungry you are. You could be happy and full right now.
Worse, when you eat, it'll take 30 mins for you to feel full. It's all stacked against you.
Eventually you reach your goal. What now? Can you treat yourself? Loosen up? Chill? The moment you do it's a slippery slope.
It's hard to maintain lost weight because your entire body is a machine that you have trained to want this, and happiness and success looks like learning to let go.
The determination and drive to fix it is very difficult. I can understand how the craving gets appealing with time as things have settled.
Almost certainly not. Vitamin supplementation would almost certainly be unnecessary if those 400 calories were reasonable, and even then a multivitamin is calorie free.
Fortunately now weight loss is basically solved due to ozempic and friends. Suspect a very large % of the population will be on these things indefinitely
> after 30 weeks, patients on Ozempic 0.5mg had lost 2.6 kg more than the placebo group, and patients on Ozempic 1mg lost 3.5 kg more than the placebo group.
That doesn't seem all that much weight loss to me, and it sounds far from being "basically solved".
Also, financing the drug seems to be an unsolved problem, except for the rich.
I am on Mounjaro 10 mg for the past 3 months. I have lost 20 pounds. So far so good, looking to loose more but I seem to have plateaued right now I have not lost any additional weight in the last month... would like to get to 170 which would be another 30 pounds. Luckily my wife works for a hospital and has excellent insurance which covers it. Most people have to pay equivalent to an expensive car payment for it.
> mean weight loss was 17.3% (SD: 9.3%) with [2.4mg] semaglutide and 2.0% (SD: 6.1%) with placebo
Re financing, they’re incredibly expensive in the US, but in the UK Ozempic ends up being ~£200 a month, and many people seem to find they save that much in food costs. Also this stuff is dead easy to manufacture, every pharma company seems to have their own version in the pipeline, and some of the very first versions (eg liraglutide, from memory) aren’t too far off patent expiry.
I wonder if this might mean that a version 1.x or 2 is somewhere in the pipeline with (eventual) better results to some nth degree. Really hoping we can get some more of these in the US and that the prices will come down as things change.
Wegovy, the weight loss indication for the same drug as Ozempic, has people titrate up to 2.4 mg/week. Ozempic is generally titrated up to 2 mg/week for T2D. The study you’re looking at used doses lower than is typical today.
To the extent that this phenomenon is true for a significant number of people, it aligns with a concept that I came across several years ago and have been living by ever since with good success: our decisions are driven mostly from our subconscious mind. When seen this way, there are good reasons why a person may be beholden to subconscious patterns that cause them to return to an above-average weight (and thus continue to produce hunger hormones even though they've eaten enough fuel for the body to function well): it can be dangerous to be in good shape - it can attract unwanted attention, attack, or expectations of capabilities that would make people see you as a threat. If a person has had some kind of trauma in the past relating to physical attack, gaining weight can be a way to become invisible, a non-threat, or better protected in the case of an attack. (FWIW this might explain cases where there are severe side-effects after taking drugs like Ozempic: the drug may be effective at blocking the hunger hormones of whatever it does, but if the subconscious pattern is still congruent with maintaining the higher weight level, it will fight back in other ways. The subconscious mind always wins, in my experience.)
That said, another factor can just be issues with the microbiome and digestive absorption: there are several conditions that can mean that even though a person has consumed enough food, the nutritional content is not absorbed into the body, due to the presence or colonies of organisms (bacteria, parasites, fungus) that consume the nutrients first), and/or digestive inflammation conditions that mean the nutrients just aren't absorbed, but the fat from the food is still stored. So, more food is desired in order to try to gain sustenance, even though it seems enough has already been consumed (though, issues relating to digestion can also originate in the subconscious mind, as the research behind YC company Mindset Health demonstrates – https://www.mindsethealth.com/research-outcomes)
> gaining weight can be a way to become invisible, a non-threat
I have become a little sceptical about this one because of how frequently I now see it claimed. While there might be real cases, it has become part of the therapy patter around weight-loss. It has become a "realisation" that rationalises someone's eating. It wasn't out of control, it wasn't about desire but an unconscious plan! It paints them as the noble victim and gives them a path to becoming more confident and slimmer.
It might even be a helpful mindset but I don't think it's the true mechanism which is more about attempting mood-repair and getting trapped in a food-addiction cycle. I have only ever seen how weight-gain becomes a pain that feeds the need for mood-repair rather than anyone reaching an unconscious victory of becoming invisible. I see the converse happen - when over-weight we feel painfully conspicuous, to an almost paranoid extent.
I think it becomes more convincing when women lose weight and get unwanted attention. When the conceived fix is to start eating, is that a rational reaction or the inner food-addict concocting excuses for an XXL pizza? I know when I break an addiction that inner-addict comes up with some hella bullshit.
Invisibility might be part of the spectrum of our mental state in weight-gain but I'm seeing this as a primary explanation spike way beyond what I believe is credible for an "unconscious plan" theory. Female obesity is greater than Male obesity but I expect that is due to the greater hormonal and child-birth challenges than this theory.
I just feel like this reply amounts to "there can't be a non-moralistic explanation for this, the moralistic explanation has to be the correct one".
I know that's an uncharitable oversimplification, but is there a way you can present your case without moralistic barbs like "the inner food-addict concocting excuses for an XXL pizza"?
And perhaps also include evidence rather than conjecture. My comment is consistent with the notion from evolutionary theory that our mind and body acts in accordance with what it determines is optimal for its survival, with the caveat that this can be complicated by factors like illness.
It is not a moralistic claim at all. Quite the opposite. It's a very common human struggle and to realise you are trapped in an addiction is the way to break free. Understanding that there it's something in the addictive substance that hooks humans, means it's not your fault. It lets you escape the crushing feelings of shame, blame and weakness. Better still, there are a lot of resources about recovering from addiction.
> "the inner food-addict concocting excuses for an XXL pizza"?
Ok so this is not a barb but jargon. Your inner-addict is a personification of the self-talk that tries to pull you back into an addiction. Your inner-addict is like the cartoon devil on your shoulder. You are not an addict anymore, but you still carry this annoying little inner-addict that you sometimes just have tell to shut the hell up.
For example, this little devil might be pestering you non-stop (what might be called 'food noise' these days) but the funnier aspect I wanted to reference is how your inner-addict comes up with the dumbest reasons to break your sobriety. These absurd reasons just pop in your head and if you are not paying enough attention, you might believe them. However if you manage to take a beat, you can realise it's the most laughably absurd nonsense but you were nearly tricked e.g. "I will never be a great writer if I don't smoke", "it's amazing how little I crave a donut, I should eat one just to prove how much I am not interested in them", "I should celebrate my 100 days sober with a cocktail!".
You can see how "I should get fat again to not be seen" has the suggestion of one these absurd justifications. If someone has lost a lot of weight they will have been through absolute hell with months of deprivation and struggle. It's a massive achievement. A rationalisation to excuse throwing away all that effort is insane but that is how addictions work.
> consistent with the notion from evolutionary theory
Ok, kind of funny. Evolutionary psychology suffers from "just-so-stories". It is possible to tell a nice story, but they have no epistemic value because there is no limit to the number of nice sounding stories and they are untestable. "Consistent with evolution" should only be said as a punchline. To be blunt, the story itself is speculative Freudian subconscious schlock which is why I believe I hear something similar from those fresh from therapy.
I'll start by noting just how much of this argument relies on ridicule and ad hom attack:
- I guess you are not very familiar with addiction?
- Ok, kind of funny
- should only be said as a punchline
- To be blunt, the story itself is speculative Freudian subconscious schlock which is why I believe I hear something similar from those fresh from therapy.
Once that's distilled away, the substance of the argument turns out to be a false dichotomy: I.e. it's not the subconscious mind trying to achieve the outcome it perceives is best for survival, it's just addiction. There's no examination or even apparently much contemplation of what an addition actually is, from a physiological and psychological perspective. Addiction is asserted as the final answer, rather than the deeper question it really is.
Why is it that some people are addicted to eating "too much" food, whereas others are "addicted" to eating "too little"? Why do some people get addicted to drugs and not others in the same social group/class who experiment with the same drugs?
I've seen that up close, in social groups where there has been recreational use of stimulant drugs, with most people managing to keep it a recreational thing and grow out of it, but a minority, sadly, ending up in a downward spiral of addiction and dysfunction. I saw two of my closest friends from the mid 00s end up in prison that way. Another died in his 30s from alcohol-related illness, the only one of his social group who had a drinking problem even though all were routine social drinkers. Those guys were every bit as capable and privileged as everyone else in their social circles, but were carrying a lot of trauma and showing patterns of self-sabotaging behaviour, observable for the whole decade-or-so I knew them.
I know there's a lot of pop-sci claptrap around on the internet. I totally get that and understand the impulse to push back on that.
But I've been exploring this topic for almost 20 years in some ways, and I'm not beholden to the theories of any particular authority figures from the past or present; everything I understand is based on my own experience and experimentation and in what I observe in others close to me.
I've been going deep on subconscious work for over 12 years, and have demonstrable evidence of significant changes in behavioural patterns and impulses over that time. I've seen others achieve far better life outcomes from subconscious healing work than I've seen anyone achieve from conventional therapies and health treatments, including with fertility issues.
And yes I know this is all self-reported anecdata, without the backing of any large clinical trials - but who is even trying to research this stuff?
This 2018 paper [1], and other works by its authors [2,3,4] seem to be orbiting the topic.
But most of the health industry and broader society continues to handwave away the topic with dismissals like "it's just addiction", thereby avoiding the work of exploring more deeply what addiction really is and what opportunities there may be to discover and popularise more effective approaches for recovery.
Re-reading later, I recognise that “I guess you are not very familiar with addiction?” was perhaps not ad hom or ridiculing, but rather a suggestion that I haven’t personally experienced addiction.
For the record, I have certainly been addicted to things, yes.
I’ve never been significantly overweight fortunately, but over the pandemic I got about 20 lbs too pudgy, which proved frustratingly hard to lose. What finally worked was combining the Apple Watch (Fitbit is fine too) and a calorie counting app that track calories. The app (Yazio, there are others) took into account caloric expenditures beyond basic metabolic needs. That is, if one walks a mile as tracked by the Apple Watch, that’s an extra ~ 100 calories to eat.
Armed with these tools, I set a modest goal of 3-4lbs fat loss per month in Yazio. It worked. An unexpected positive outcome from this experience, is that I developed a much better intuitive sense of the caloric and nutritional value of foods and what activity levels I needed to maintain to stay at my desired weight. I recommend to give this approach a try.
Edit to add: These apps make an educated guess as to one’s basic metabolic daily expenditure. For reasons that aren’t clear, this estimate can vary as much as ~25% between persons. Therefore you may have to tweak the daily calorie goal. Second, weigh yourself every day. The weight loss goal of ~ 1lb/week is less than the daily variance in body weight due to hydration levels and so forth, so you will need to use a three or four day rolling average to keep track of your progress.
I quickly got sick of calorie counting. It got me thinking about food way too much (while hungry) when I do better not thinking about it. What I needed was very simply to be ok with the feeling of hunger. Whenever I felt hungry I would automatically head to the kitchen to look for something to snack on.
Now I generally eat pretty fixed calorie meals - 100-200 for breakfast for example and when I get hunger in between I just remind myself that I’m not on the verge of dying in the wilderness and that I can wait an hour for lunch. I also replaced any snacks and beers in the house with dried fruit, nuts, seltzer water because I know I’m lazy and will pick the easiest thing
This sort of worked for me too. Thinking of hunger as something to aim for - remaining hungry for an hour or to as an achievement was useful. The difficulty I had was avoiding satiating myself subsequently
I’m similar. Never been very over weight but I’ve put on 20ish lbs in the last few years. My wife and I started tracking calories and exercising a month ago and it has been so beneficial. I lost about ten lbs, but even better than losing the weight has been building a better intuition of what foods are calorie rich, higher in protein, etc.
Same. The best part is the education. I now am certain what my portion sizes should be, how much of each meal should be protein, how many calories are likely in the food I'm ordering at the lunch counter, etc. That information, and keeping it in mind the same way you might keep your budget in mind has made a big difference.
To me, what worked best is, yes, tracking calories, but also finding the foods that manager the hunger in the best way possible while also being as low calorie as possible.
Proteins and vegetables for the main servings, and green apples, oranges or tangerines for when I crave something sweet afterwards.
Beware of juices. Some of them have as mush sugar as a coke.
Picture me shocked. I walk 40 minutes 5 days/week (10 minutes steep uphill, 10 minutes steep downhill, 2 times per day), and I always counted that as 50 calories per "roundtrip".
It's really bothering that I've been struggling to get below 180 lb
Been doing that for 6 months, including food scale and myfitnesspal, I track every calorie (or I try, sometimes it's really hard to guess). I excluded the other variables, so my problem is with hunger, I need to address that
Haven't checked out MFP in a while but the perk of Macrofactor is that it calculates your TDEE for you and adjusts it as it changes so you know precisely how much to eat to maintain a given rate of weight change.
All hail our Lord and Saviour, the GLP-1 Agonist drug.
I’ve lost the weight I put on 20 years ago many, many times, and spent my every waking moment hungry. Now, I take a pill every morning, and eat like a regular human.
This is awesome -- I've heard it described as "food noise", and luckily I've never had to struggle with it, but hearing the anecdata is super amazing. They don't work for every single person, but there's no way GLP1s won't legitimately change the world. They already are.
How did you get into GLP1 RAs and where did you initially search for information about them? Was it a recommendation from your doctor?
Ha, I was going to start an info site just like yours, did the keyword research and registered some domain names, but other projects took precedence.
Like almost everyone else, I heard about them through the media, and then booked in to see an endocrinologist. Various subreddits have been great, with a particular shout out to the Mounjaro one
> Ha, I was going to start an info site just like yours, did the keyword research and registered some domain names, but other projects took precedence.
I'd love to hear about what you were going to do! If you want to chat I'd love to -- reach out to victor@<the domain> or admin@<the domain>.
> Like almost everyone else, I heard about them through the media, and then booked in to see an endocrinologist. Various subreddits have been great, with a particular shout out to the Mounjaro one
Yeah, there's a ton of great information on the subreddits -- I've found some to be more about encouragement, and then others to be more about fact finding (which I'm spending a lot of time doing now -- working on a research roundup for January 2024).
Oh, also, if you want to experience food noise, spend a day eating only fibre. It’s the kind of hungry where your tummy isn’t rumbling. Alternatively, nicotine withdrawal is a fine substitute experience.
The article says that once you’ve been fat once, you experience hunger more strongly for years afterwards, even if you lose weight. What exactly are you proposing we fix here?
We could start by talking about things that come in bags and boxes, and that consist of little beyond sugar, salt, and fat in as little matrix as necessary to support the addictive effect.
The dark pattern of food. Honestly, that first kidney stone was a godsend, however unpleasant; having to be extremely intentional about salt got me off all that junk except for old times' sake, and set me up to discover how pleasant things can taste when you can actually taste them.
That one change also
made more of a difference in my ability to lose and keep off weight than did quitting a 20-year, pack-a-day smoking habit.
Quitting smoking added about ten pounds. Having to get serious about eating well took off fifty. This stuff is a problem.
We won't fix that problem at a societal level, of course, because that's no longer something this society can achieve. But we could.
No, that [edit: culture, that is] seems to be what keeps other cultures thinner than ours. People from them move here and tend to promptly start getting fatter, so on a population level greater individual willpower doesn’t seem to be the answer.
So the way to reverse the ever worsening obesity trend in the US (and elsewhere, though we’re leading the charge) was “fix culture”. That’s very hard (it’s not even entirely clear exactly which bits would have to change) and basically nobody (who had a prayer of making a dent in the problem) was seriously trying.
But now we have the “sell everyone drugs” option which is actually gonna work, relatively easily and quickly compared with the sole plausible alternative. We lucked out.
You also seem to have misunderstood the question. We have millions that have the problem already, for whom it was never going away with "simply eating better".
This is resetting obese people to the baseline, not preventing obesity in the first place. We still have that problem, and that does require a culture (or rather regulatory) fix.
GP's point is that fixing culture is approximately impossible. Culture evolves, but we have little direct control over it. But fixing something that is merely biology, now that is possible, because it takes science, engineering, and then you eventually get a direct solution that scales.
If only we knew exactly what in the culture we need to fix. There are a lot of theories. Something in our environment has broken the homeostasis which worked for the last million years.
What kind of food is available, and in what quantities eould be a place to start.
I'm not a US resident so I can only give a view from my trips there, so forgive my limited nuances. Also I speaking generally, culturally, individuals can (and do) behave counter-culturally.
A) there's a general focus on money. Sure money is important everywhere but in the US its different.
B) Time is money. I've heard that a lot too, and seen the effects. Longer working hours, very limited holidays, working on weekends and so on.
C) this leads to "convenience" and "labor saving " as key priorities. So supermarkets (are big so you can get everything, and also have the illusion of choice) stock a lot of "convenient" foods - typically processed and high in sugar. (Factory food is cheaper, see A)
D) Americans are trained young to like "sweet" and lots of things have lots of sugar. It starts with drinks (sodas, coffee), and then things like candy [1], bread, microwave meals, restaurants, salad dressings, and so on. If the French can be said to add butter, well Americans add sugar.
E) walking. Is slow, takes time, costs money. Better to drive. Which means everything is optimised for driving. Which makes it hard to walk anywhere.
None of this is easy to change at a cultural level. It's literally baked into every part of society and the environment.
[1] chocolate is an interesting example. In Europe 75% cocoa chocolate is common, 95% sells enough that its easy to get. The really cheap "dark" chocolate is around 45%. Whereas in the US its "candy" - pretty much all sugar, coloured brown occasionally. Same with coffee - of course lots of people drink coffee with sugar here, but small, strong, no sugar is also very much a "thing". Those who take sugar seem to take "less".
Maybe we could punish the bad actors who spent decades lobbying so they could sell more and more addictive food products to our population, or maybe at least we could stop subsidizing them so much?
The incentives are so fucked. Now we have basically the entire healthcare industry and the entire pharmaceutical industry relying on the food industry to keep us loaded with addictive garbage that wrecks our health. There is to much money to be made in the US by keeping people unhealthy which is probably the main reason we're not getting universal healthcare any time soon.
Countries with better healthcare actually have an incentive to keep their population healthy. In the US, it's the exact opposite.
IMO food companies should be allowed to sell addictive garbage to people who want it, but they should also be on the hook for paying for treatments. Then maybe we'll start seeing treatments that actually cure rather than address symptoms short term. The same should really be true for every industry that sells addictive crap.
I think the whole “high sugar/calorie food is prevalent and cheap” is a symptom of relatively wealthy counties that have leisure time.
I feel like if bad food wasn’t so cheap and we worked 7 days a week, that would “fix” our culture.
But since the cat’s out of the bag, I don’t see us going back to constant work. We seem to like leisure time and sugar is really cheap. Even in “poor” countries, diabetes is creeping up because we’re getting the processed foods from Europe and the US.
Not celebrating overeating. Not having highly processed food that’s designed to make people eat too much. Not pouring tons of sugar or salt into everything. Serving normal portions in restaurants Not feeding kids candy bars that are four times as big than what I had as a kid. Learning cooking. Not exactly rocket science.
Long term fix for all people,
rather than a pill for one person.
In addition you have to eat a lot of unprocessed food to get fat, where here I define unprocessed food is something you killed or foraged for (or mass produced equivalent), and not refined in any way.
A strawberry for instance.
Eat 1000 calories of rump vs. a small Pizza for example, which would make you want to eat more?
The broken satiety mechanism is a result of hormone imbalance caused by a poor nutritional diet. Highly processed foods, an overabundance of sugar, artificial sweeteners, salt, and refined vegetable/seed oils, a carb-heavy diet, deficiency of essential micronutrients, and so on causes deleterious effects on the human body.
People need to eat less junk and eat more natural whole foods.
One of the best ways to maintain I've experienced is to just keep track of your weight every single day. And trying to do it while knowing daily fluctuations don't matter much, but that if over time you've gained a few kgs, you need to figure out what happened wrong and how to fix it.
I had a daily habit metric to "eat well" but that was much more complex and mentally taxing, so I simplified it to "track your weight" which is just a minute of concrete simple investment every morning. Of course, weight isn't the only thing that matters, but if mostly you're eating healthy and quantity is the only issue then it's a useful metric to track.
I never understood why “weight” is such a strong proxy to “fitness” in the popular mind.
I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more.
Some of my friends who are fitness buffs track weight too but seek “gainz” not weight lossesss…
I guess BMI is slightly better but not that great. I hope people come up with a better stat that encourages us to be “healthier” instead of lighter.
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit.
You can’t visually spot a couple pounds difference when it’s spread over your entire body, but the scale will reveal it. Visual alone is a very lagging indicator.
Furthermore, visual checks are prone to drift over long periods of time. Weight (fat) gain doesn’t happen suddenly, so relying on visual indicators is prone to error.
It’s not hard to see why people use the scale. It’s a precise device with a short feedback loop and the numbers don’t lie. People aren’t dumb, if they gain muscle they will update their target weight.
Because in a country like the US where half the population is obese, the biggest health marker they need to improve is body fat percentage, and there's no easy way to measure that accurately and directly, the most convenient proxy is weight.
I enjoy strength training and would recommend it to anyone, I've put on roughly 25 lbs of muscle in the last ~18 months. Realistically however it's very easy to put on fat as well when you're going for gains. If you're a typical American fatty who's sitting at 40% body fat you're probably out of shape, you probably don't know how to lift with good form, you don't know what a good routine looks like, you're probably prone to injury if you push it too fast, the thing to focus on today is probably to clean up the worst offenders in your dietary habits and lose a few pounds. Weight lifting in my opinion would be #2 after that for immense and varied benefits but it's a slower burn.
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more.
I completely agree, but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.
> but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.
Way too many people try to discredit BMI by bringing up the hypothetical trained weightlifter example.
It is possible to have a moderately low body fat percentage (12-15%) and fall into the overweight BMI category if you're very trained and muscular, but the number of people in this situation is very small. Moreover, they're well aware that BMI is not a useful indicator for them.
A 6 foot tall person would have to weigh 221 pounds to get all the way into the "obese" range of the BMI scale. A 6' tall man weighing 221 pounds with low body fat percentage is a seriously fit individual, not someone who casually goes to the gym several times a week. I don't think people realize how hard it is to get to this level of fitness.
BMI really isn't a bad for the average person, even if they lift weights.
You seem to describe using BMI in casual conversation or as a personal goal but there are other issues.
Doctors use BMI as a filter for medications, surgery and such. With increasingly tele-medicine, I only get to fill my height/weight in a box and not treat a doctor to the gun show.
I don't know what other uses it has - insurance maybe, medical fitness standards for jobs etc.
Other criticism is about not capturing the variation between different ethnicities or builds so applying a numerical limit can be quite prejudicial.
On the otherhand, in some cases, weight is weight. There are some things where body-mass, muscle or fat, increases the relevant risk.
Its more about incentives. If I’m trying to chase the weight number obsessively, as is the case with my level of OCD, I’ll be prone to eat less, run more or do other things to loose weight. But I don’t want to loose weight, I want to look good and be healthy. And I don’t really like myself in that life - worrying about this almighty number, and measuring my actions to change it usually makes my life less worth living.
When I concentrate my efforts to general health/happiness - e.g. eat less carbs, move around more, stand in front of a screen instead of sit in front of one, go dancing … just try to increase “healthiness” level as I see it, I can actually enjoy life more.
I mean I love eating out, especially when I travel, and trying to eat less on a vacation is not fun at all.
But if I go hiking/social dancing/just walking about, suddenly I can do that and have more fun and am still be “fit” as per my personal definition.
I like to think about it in terms of system. I don’t want to loose weight now cause I know I’ll immediately gain it back the moment I get tired/bored/depressed. I want to build a habit (system) that would naturally bring me to my goal without exerting much willpower.
And chasing weight has never given me personally enough of a mental boost to keep at it in and off itself.
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit.
Who are you going to believe, the scale or your lying eyes?
It's kind of crazy how much weight you can gain without noticing it in the mirror. It's a combination of frog-boiling and the very weird psychology of self-perception. Modern stretch fabrics add to this curse lol. Back in the day your very non-stretchy denim would raise an alarm bell.
If you are trying to do something, lose fat, gain muscle, the scale is a simple measuring tool for what the eyes can't see.
Bodyfat percentage is usually a good indicator, but an even better one is what percentage of your bodyweight you can deadlift. A healthy adult should be able to deadlift their bodyweight. A fit adult: 1.5x. 2x is the line for really being strong (or thin and strong!)
While probably a very good indicator, I refuse to deadlift out of principle. You have to be _really_ careful especially as you get more fit, as one mistake and you just wreck yourself for life.
And I’m not particularly risk averse (went on a motorbike ride in the mountains of vietnam last year). Just don’t see the gainz from that particular exercise worth the risks.
I would like to dispel this myth that deadlifts are dangerous. They are a very natural movement that strengthens a huge percentage of the muscles in the body. What's dangerous is doing very heavy deadlifts with poor form.
The solution is to just keep your lifts light and do higher reps, most exercise bros are simply too macho to admit that you can lift surprisingly light weights and still get muscle growth with a much better safety profile, especially as a non-advanced lifter. Sure get a trainer to show you how at first, but it doesn't take a lot of training to be able to deadlift your body weight many times with complete safety. All the risk is in pushing the weight and reps harder than you should and unfortunately a lot of exercise programs emphasize constant progression in terms of weight.
Once you know this exercise you're able to safeguard like half of the muscle mass on your body from atrophying for the rest of your life which is an enormous health benefit. Doing safe, light-to-moderate deadlifts for decades is the way to not be a brittle dude at 78 and not have your musculoskeletal system fall apart, it is not necessary to become a power lifter.
I love motorcycling too, but I'm cautious. As long as you build your strength carefully and lift with good technique, you'll not injure yourself. Same principles apply. Know what you're doing, have good fundamentals, and don't take unnecessary risks.
Sounds like you’re buying into fear mongering on deadlifts, frankly. You do have to have good form, but it’s not some insurmountable task. And a singular injury is extremely unlikely to ruin your back forever.
There’s also multiple variations or techniques to make them safer. RDLs, using a lifting belt, lighter weight and more reps, to name a few.
Speak for yourself. I think there’s strong correlation between people who have deadlift home gyms and good health. So therefore, the average person should have this setup :)
All joking aside, it’s pretty easy to have a kettlebell or some other heavy thing to lift every day. Not the same as deadlifts, but still fits into the “lifting heavy things above your head” category that weights are good for.
I suspect one strategy won't work for everyone, but it certainly works for me as a motivator. Or to put it another way, when I weigh regularly my weight trends down, when I don't it trends up.
Of course it goes without saying that standing on the scale has no direct impact on my weight. What I eat, and how much of it I eat, is the crucial factor. (I exercise 4 days a week as part of my regular schedule.)
When it comes to "what" it will vary for everyone. For me it's limiting sugar (not eliminating, just being aware, and keeping that down when I can) and also limiting carbs like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes. Again I've not gone for elimination, but just greatly reduced that good group.
I eat very little restaurant good, and practically zero fast food, so that likely also plays a part.
The important thing is to change slowly to something thats a new norm that's sustainable in the long run. It's not a diet in the sense that im not going hungry. It's just replacing one food with another so that I get more of grid and less of that.
I love bread, potatoes, and chocolate. So I get those every few days. Just perhaps in more moderation than before, and not with every meal.
I'm losing about a pound every 2 weeks which seems nicely balanced.
It's both. You get to thinking about whether that extra slice you want but don't need is worth changing the trend, and it starts giving you the habit of 'nah'.
Granted, this works well for me both because I know how often I can indulge myself and get away with it, and because I'm fairly vain about how I look. No idea if results are likely to be the same for someone not sharing both traits, but I've shed and kept off close to 20% of the 281lb I topped out at during the pandemic, which at least corroborates that this can support both reduction and maintenance.
Somewhat tangent - I've lost about 20% on semaglutide. What I discovered, since I lost quite a lot of muscles as well, my lower back pain, related to crack in one vertebrae, got really bad. Once I reached my weight goal (just a hair above "normal" weight, coincidentally where I plateaued), I started weights lifting, starting at very low numbers, and keeping semaglutide at about half dosage. It seems to help so far.
Just something to consider for someone who need to lose a lot of weight and who has some underlying condition. It is still worth it in my opinion, just not as painless as one could think.
So a bit late but this is definitely a thing, but as far as I know, with any kind of rapid weight loss, the loss of muscle "lean mass" can be an issue.
Did your doctor warn you by any chance about the cracked vertebrae and the interplay with losing weight/muscle? I'm assuming not but that is definitely not the kind of pre-existing condition that someone might notice (though I'd hope a doctor could notice/forsee that)
Starting to pair lifting weights with the treatment seems to be what everyone is suggesting is figuring out now, much like you did[0]. Along with that, probably some remodeling of eating habits is required (instead of just eating less).
What works for me: counting calories. I use the MacroFactor iOS app. Set a modest deficit goal and stick to it on average. It's ok to splurge sometimes.
Cronometer.com is my go-to since it's free and it breaks down micronutrients into little progress bars. I also like that it's a website as well as a phone app so I can enter/modify my foods from the laptop.
I don't know if my experience is worth anything here.
But I lost a ton of weight doing cardio and going on a vegan diet. It was hard to put the weight off for long though. I also lost a lot of muscles and became "skinny fat". At some point, I hit a plateau and just couldn’t lose more fat despite a 500-1000 daily calorie deficit. It was unsustainable and probably unhealthy.
I did some research and switched to weight lifting and eating 20-30% of my calories in protein. Also, I increased my calorie intake to break even. The weight is staying off and I feel healthier and stronger.
Edit: I did go off my vegan diet when I switched my exercise strategy from cardio to weight lifting. I don’t have any diet restrictions. But I generally eat healthy food because the high protein diet generally makes me only eat whole foods such as chicken, vegetables, grains.
Similar. Current evidence-based recommendation for daily protein intake is 1.6g protein per kg of target body weight. Not that any of that will solve the issue raised in the article: persistent up-regulated hunger signal sensitivity and down-regulated satiety signal sensitivity.
> Current evidence-based recommendation for daily protein intake is 1.6g protein per kg of target body weight
That measure is for when you are specifically looking to build muscle I believe, which might be a bit orthogonal to direction you want to go (if for weight loss).
It is also, IMO, a lot of protein to consume a day. I personally have never done that level of protein intake, ever, but I know a few who have, its an insane (to me) amount of protein powder, chicken, and broccoli (or alternatives) you have to consume, every day. If the goal was sustainability, it's definitely not possible for average people.
> It is also, IMO, a lot of protein to consume a day. I personally have never done that level of protein intake, ever, but I know a few who have, its an insane (to me) amount of protein powder, chicken, and broccoli (or alternatives) you have to consume, every day. If the goal was sustainability, it's definitely not possible for average people.
Yeah, I don't get it either.
If you exercise regularly and you're going on a cut, 1.6kg is a good target to maintain muscle mass. That said, in order for you to reach this point, you already have to be very good at regulating your food intake.
Otherwise, .9g per kg is a much more realistic target for the 90%+ of people who are simply trying to be fit.
Research shows that 0.8g per kg of body weight is the absolute minimum recommended for individuals with minimal physical activity. If you are attempting to become fit, research suggests you want at least 1.3g per kg for moderate activity.
Honestly 1.6g per kg isn’t that much. It’s much more than most people are used to, but it’s not like you need protein shakes and chicken breast only. It just requires you to not consume all your calories in carbs and fat, which is a lot easier.
No, I went off a vegan diet. Switched to eating a lot of egg whites, chicken and some fish. Occasionally red meat. Also drinking lactose free milk with my coffee and eating cheese sometimes.
It’s hard to get enough protein from a vegan diet and without enough protein, it’s harder to decrease fat %.
Also, I have a problem digesting beans so one of the main source of vegan protein is not practical for me.
I’m on a break even calorie diet right now and keeping the weight off. I’m also still breaking personal records at the gym despite maintaining the same weight which suggests my body is still getting lower in fat %.
It’s trivial to get plant protein. Extra firm tofu, tempeh, seitan, and TVP rival meat, though they tend to be novel for most people here. Certainly were for me.
I agree that it’s possible to eat enough protein on a vegan diet.
But it’s easier to do it on a non vegan diet.
For example, chicken has higher protein per 100g than tempeh while having lower calories. In addition, I could also drink whey protein which is cheaper, and have higher protein per calorie than vegan protein powder.
My goal was to lose weight and get visible abs. It’s just easier to do it on a non vegan diet.
It's harder to do it on a vegan diet if you don't eat high protein foods, and those foods might be novel to you, sure. But you said "It’s hard to get enough protein from a vegan diet", not "I was unwilling to eat the food". So of course I'm going to step in.
Protein density isn't all that different, but seitan and tvp are even more dense per calorie.
- extra firm tofu 14g protein, 130 cal. 0.11g/cal
- tempeh 51g, 510 cal. 0.10g/cal
- chicken breast 27g, 184cal = 0.15g/cal
- chicken thigh 28g, 240cal = 0.12g/cal
- seitan 21g, 106cal -> 0.20g/cal
- tvp (soy chunks) 50g, 330cal = 0.15g/cal
TVP is cooler than it seems if you were to google it. You basically treat it like dried ground beef in a bag. It's also ultra-cheap. For example, you'd dump it into a bolognese pasta sauce instead of ground beef and it comes out the same.
That statement usually comes from a misinterpretation of PDCAAS which only measures the limiting amino acid in a food. If you put any weight behind PDCAAS, then you have to grant that plant proteins have perfect PDCAAS scores if you eat more than one plant.
But there's research on strength performance outcomes on plant protein, those eating enough plant protein in total don't have any different outcomes. I don't see why this would move the needle for you.
Thanks for this list. In 2014, I switched to a vegan diet with a heavy emphasis on restricted oil consumption too, and the weight peeled off. I originally did it for dietary/health reasons, but over the years I've developed more of an ear for the ethical reasons too. I never have felt like I'm not getting enough protein, but occasionally when conversations like this come up, it's nice to know what's out there. I'd never heard of TVP.
Also curious about this. I don't eat meat (but I do eat dairy when my stomach lets me) and it's very difficult for me to get enough protein... mostly because the protein-rich meat-free options mess me up in high quantities. But there's gotta be some good option out there that I'm missing!
Maybe try Soylent & Co. My favorite is Mana. Been drinking it for a while now, seems to be really good for you. Very convient too. Should be way more popular I think.
Ooh, thanks for the rec! I'd like to try something in that vein after my gut and I are on better terms, but it's hard to choose from all the brands out there. I've never heard of Mana till now but it looks less funky than some of the alternatives (Huel... lol).
I was able to keep weight off long term with the Dr. Fuhrman diet - really unpleasant diet because you stay away from processed foods, which takes extra shopping and cooking efforts. The positive side was that it made me feel much younger, more energy, better sleep, all around good except for the effort.
I'm not familiar with the diet but I think this is an excellent highlight of why weight loss is not a one-method-suits-all approach.
Personally I dislike processed foods, and I love cooking from scratch. It's the time my brain is switched off and I'm literally creating something delicious. I cook for 5 adults, 4 times a week, and it takes about 30 mins to an hour.
I'm not saying you should like it, we're all different, but it's handy I enjoy it because it definitely helps with weight management.
It's hard settling for lower caloric consumption to maintain lower body weight without large life style changes (duh). For the last 10 years I settled for eating what my body desired + lifing heavy and being 30 BMI at 15% bodyfat instead of previous 35%. Now aging is starting to catch up to me, blood pressure and heart burn increasing at same legally obese BMI. Currently skipping a couple meals, do a little fasting to get around to 25 BMI, but really just waiting of better diet drugs.
The fact that gaining weight is a one-way door in this way makes it more important for young people than things like starting a 401k. It's so much easier to proactively improve your diet and exercise when you still have your natural thinness than after all your hormones want you to be larger. You know the fat monster is coming for you within ten years if you do not, and it will never really let you go.
Doing it solo may be harder. I suspect there's a mutual CBT effect of buddying up to maintain a healthy diet stance. Certainly my partner and I manage "maybe not another serving" policing better between us than on our own.
Which doesn't alter that the underlying satiety signals aren't good, it's just that a conscious override option has some reinforcement.
Remind me of interesting research we did as a postdoc. Weight loss (and also maintenance) are generally better when clustering different strategies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30096203/
What worked for me:
- quit sugar
- quit processed foods
- avoid fried food
- little fat (even the healthy ones)
- no nuts/seeds
- lifting weights
- little cardio
I have completely changed my life in one year.
It has been a very tough path, mostly socially, going out and not having a beer, burger… social pressure… but when you believe in eating healthy everything goes smooth. Also measure the results, once you get 12-15% of body fat, you may be gaining muscle weight.
The goal should be changing your lifestyle to one that is healthy and sustainable.
That sounds great, but I haven't found it to be sustainable. I also avoid fried foods, sugar, processed foods. I only eat meat twice a week. I count every gram of saturated fat I eat, and keep it under 10 grams per day. I eat nuts every day, for breakfast and/or afternoon snack -- I find the unsaturated fats and proteins prevent hunger. I also drink protein shakes (1-2 per day).
The main problem I faced was giving in “just this time”. Fat and sugar are addictive and when you fall, it makes it easier to fall again.
About healthy food, I had overweight and I mostly ate “healthy food”. I needed to go to a nutritionist and ask him why.
This is what O was eating a year and a half ago:
Breakfast: two bread slices with avocado.
Meal: mostly salads with lettuce, tomato, tuna, avocado, carrots, salt, vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. (I really wanted to lose weight).
Dinner: chicken, sushi, eggs… normally I would add a handful of seeds/nuts.
This is what my nutriotionist told me: you have been eating quite healthy, the problem are the fats: too many healthy fats (extra virgin oil, avocado, nuts… nuts have a lot of fats).
Only add protein shakes when you are trying to gain muscle and you are not able to add normal proteins. I started on protein shakes once I was slim and not able to eat that much food to gain muscle.
A year later I am fully conscious of what I eat. I can have eventually a burger, but I am fully aware that it is really unhealthy.
My proteins today are mainly chicken and salmon, carbs: quinoa, rice, lentils… and almost no fat (I’m trying to get my fat % to 12… it’s quite difficult)
Also read all packaged ingredients you will find nasty surprises in form of fats and sugar in diet / “high protein” meals.
I don't have a problem with food addiction or cravings, so I am fine to eat a huge burger here and there. Since I don't have this particular addiction problem, I use the "elasticity of willpower" a lot. E.g. if you restrict yourself too much you might rebound the other way, so I give in to desiring a burger in a controlled manner, I don't crave it for the next week.
As for what is not sustainable: for diet, quitting things cold is not sustainable, as small portions will not hurt me and not cause me to crave them. Instead I end up giving up on quitting them, and then they are no longer controlled by portion size.
I do have problems with limiting alcohol and nicotine, so I don't even have 1 sip/drag of those items, so I do know what addictive behavior is.
My cholesterol dropped from 250 to 200, and I do expect it to fall further as I shave off more rough edges from my diet.
What "shaving the rough edges off" looks like is making a slightly healthier choice on my 2 meat meals per week, e.g. single patty burger, skip the cheese, or have a 4 oz steak. Drinking only half the mango lassi, or skipping the milkshake.
I also dropped from 215 to 205 lbs. 200-205 lbs is my healthy weight, with 11-13% body fat.
This tracks with food writer Michael Pollan's advice for eating a healthy diet. In his view, healthy eating for most people means sticking to a limited set of rules and habits, without overcomplicating the affair. The main rules are [1]:
"1. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
2. Eating healthy is common sense. Don’t make it complicated.
3. Avoid processed foods and ingredients you don’t recognize.
4. Use meat for flavor, not the main course.
5. Pay more, eat less."
While diet can be a contentious issue (with debates on meal timing, how many meals per day to eat, how much fat versus protein versus carbohydrates to eat per day, etc.), I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Pollan's central message that you eating healthily largely means limiting portion sizes and choosing fresh food over processed meals.
No one has a perfect, comprehensive explanation for why so many people today are overweight and obese. I believe, and I am far from being the only one, there is a cultural component and a caloric component. Real life is not black and white, and it is more accurate to see the evolution of norms and diet as a shift in statistical distributions.
The caloric component is easy to explain. Today, it is very easy to overeat without realizing it from the point of view of hunger. A Frappuccino, or whatever they call it, can provide 1k kcal, with no impact on satiety. On the contrary, because of the combination of sugar and fat, one may feel hungrier than before when swallowing that Mocacchino.
For my grandparents, who were born before World War II, it was much more difficult to take in calories. Even if they wanted to, it was hard to overeat (for a historical overview on the availability of calories, you can read the book "Escape from Hunger and Premature Death" by Fogel).
The cultural component may seem more difficult to explain, but I think we can easily see how cultural relativism has strengthened in the last 3 or 4 decades. "Am I fat? Who cares, whatever. Haha." "Do I go out in pj for a "grocery run"? Who cares, as long as I'm comfortable."
And this is particularly evident in the United States. If you go to some of the more European parts of South America, Europe or some Asian countries, you see far fewer obese and overweight people. They could certainly gain weight from the standpoint of caloric availability, but they tend not to. Because certain cultural and religious norms are still strong, and people who gain weight are frowned upon. Although I am concerned, from a cultural point of view, about the rotundity of the current pope. Times are changing.
Third, there is an issue of self-esteem. The man or woman of the current times see themselves as unworthy, as spectators of the real life lived by other people. When they go from pants size 32 to 34 to 38 to 42, they are not shocked, they are not horrified, they are not concerned for themselves, for their families, for their ancestors, but they take it with the word that best characterizes the philosophy of our times, "Whatever." Judging was bad, but is not judging better?
The atomization of the modern human being, lonely, mistreated at work, by partners--whether true or false, and also thinking that a bit of all of us are victims and victimizers--who realizes that he or she will be forgotten the first weekend after they die, leads to having little incentive to dress "properly," to be (reasonably) athletic, strong or fit, to be virtuous. One takes more pride in the new car one has bought than in the body one has built, living "on the rebound" the lives of celebrities who ignore our existence.
But all our lives are important, especially to ourselves, and this is the first realization we should have when we start losing weight, or when we decide it is time to put the fork down.
Any time an article like this comes up, all I have to say (as a one time fat boy) is:
How bad do you want it?
Do you want six pack abs? Do you want cake? Pick one, unless you are REALLY lucky. And if you clicked that link, you probably aren't. You could also risk whatever a Tijuana pharmacy has on offer but that's another can of worms.
It's harsh, but if you want a certain body, you won't be able to consume whatever you want. Alternately, you can consume whatever you want and accept the body you have. No judgement here, so long as you are happy with yourself.
One can still consume whatever is desired, but in much smaller quantities than desired.
For instance, I have been obese for many years. Then I have succeeded to lose (after several failed attempts) more than one third of my initial body weight.
After that, I have changed completely my eating habits, otherwise I would have reverted immediately to my old weight. Now I have been controlling my weight accurately for more than a decade.
I am still eating cakes, but only cakes that I cook myself from known ingredients, and only twice per week (Sunday and Wednesday) and in a quantity that keeps the daily intake of sugar for those days no greater than 40 to 50 grams.
With these exceptions, I do not eat any kind of food with added sugar, so now if I happen to taste some of the industrially-produced sweet food that I liked before, it feels much too sweet, while some vegetables with low sugar content, like onions or red bell peppers, feel quite sweet.
However many months have been needed until overcoming the addiction to sugar.
I had a similar weight loss journey and agree with much that you are saying. Especially the sweetness of vegetables. I remember making a Bolognese with carrots and onions ages ago, not long after kicking sugar, and finding it too sweet for my palate.
> It's harsh, but if you want a certain body, you won't be able to consume whatever you want.
and that's why the pharmaceutical companies are forever looking for a drug which makes you lose weight, but also allows you to eat anything (while remaining safe and side-effect free).
This is pure garbage. Making an effort to live a better life does not always follow a linear trend. There will be times when some make progress and then revert. But it's entirely about your mindset and intense self-reflection. If one lives in a completely pleasure-inducing life, sure, eating every food under the sun seems better. Yet, a self-reflective person would realize the reasoning behind losing the weight in the first place and why they should continue to stay in that state. It's a paradigm shift in the mind that must happen to maintain the loss in weight. Not the reverse.
What's different now is that I've done a lot of self-reflection. I now realize I have an eating disorder driven by a dopamine response to tasty foods, but unlike other people, my inner thoughts are similar to addicts, I presume, where my brain is deciding to binge the food that triggered that reward until I get stomach pains, which then nullifies the dopamine reward, so only then I stop eating. I've also learned the signal I get when I've had enough to eat and learned to not ignore it.
I've also realized that I stress eat, and particularly when I'm feeling down, probably to try to get temporary feelings of happiness as self-medication.
Losing weight is fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it, but keeping it off is less so. That's the most difficult aspect to manage about my life: to try to avoid excessive stress and general periods of unhappiness, so that I don't start using food as a source of dopamine, but since a lot of stressors are external, I feel like they're outside of my control, so my general strategy as of late has been to replace the source of dopamine to not be food related.
For example, exercising not only helps with losing weight, but it also curbs my appetite so I can fast during lunch without exercising much will power. More vigorous exercise induces runner's high, so it benefits both the efforts of losing the weight and the attempt to switch sources of feeling good.
Lastly getting satisfaction from shipping code is a productive replacement for the satisfaction I get from eating foods. That one is more tough to implement because eating provides immediate gratification, while shipping projects is a long endeavor usually. To counter that, I set bite-sized (ha) coding/learning goals for myself that I can complete fairly fast. That keeps my mood up for a bit.
Hopefully my experience will encourage others to reflect on their own reasons for gaining weight and try to address the root cause, not just the side-effect of increased weight.