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Comment by fredleblanc | Hacker News Reader

I have a similar story I’ve posted about before. Cut sugar, made myself do 30 minutes of brisk activity each day, lost about 70 pounds.

Mind you, it got harder to do brisk activity as it went. What started as walking for 2 miles ended up being running for 5 miles. (5 miles became the target after a while so I stopped with 30 minutes. It would take 38-40 minutes at my best.)

Also got hit with COVID gain, so I’m back at it. Bought me a treadmill and am doing at least a 5k every day, training back up to at least 4 miles.

I found a lot of it was consistency. It felt like weight loss had an inertia to it. Took a while to really start losing, but once it started it was easy to keep dropping a pound per week. Even after stopping running for a bit, the weight stayed off for quite a while.

Anyway, good on you (us!) for regular exercise! It really can make all the difference.

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> Cut sugar

This is a much bigger factor than most people realize. I've kept track of my weight for almost ten years and found that the thing it correlates most with is my sugar intake. More sugar, more weight. The time matters too. Late-night sugar packs on the pounds more than mid-day sugar.

What makes it really insidious is that there's a latency of a week or more. The problem is not so much that sugar itself causes you to gain weight. The problem is that over time sugar actually changes your metabolism so that your body stores more fat. And even that does not happen directly. What sugar intake does is make you feel hungrier, so you eat more in general. It also lowers your baseline metabolism so you feel more tired in between sugar rushes. The net effect of all this is weight gain over a long period of time, and it takes a long time to undo the damage. Quitting sugar really is a lot like quitting smoking.

Another thing many people don't realize is that alcohol has much the same effect as sugar.

Another thing many people don't realize is that alcohol has much the same effect as sugar.

A bit of an oversimplification, but for the purposes of diet, alcohol effectively is liquid sugar. The top ten list of caloric density starts with fat and alcohol pulls up second place.

Yes, that's true, but it misses the point. Caloric density is not what matters. What matters is how hungry you feel. Fat provides (vastly!) more filled-up-feeling per calorie than sugar. So eating fat will help you lose weight despite the fact that fat has more than twice as many calories per gram. You'll feel fuller faster, so you'll eat less.

Sugar actually has the perverse effect of making you feel more hungry after you've eaten it. This is one of the things that makes junk food so addictive.

Is this context, wouldn’t lean protein be the smarter choice over carbs or fat? It has lower caloric density than fat but doesn’t increase ghrelin like carbs

All of this is subject to Ron's First Law: all extreme positions are wrong. Eating too much sugar is bad. So is eating too much far or too much protein. Carbs are generally bad, but simple carbs (and alcohol) are worse than complex carbs. Fiber and vitamins matter too. Just about the only hard-and-fast rule is that sugar and alcohol are bad for you and the less you eat of them the better, at least in terms of your physical health. Personally, I choose to trade off some physical health risks in exchange for some boosts to my mental health because I do love me a margarita now and again. All things in moderation, including moderation :-)

You’re absolutely right, but I think the moderation extends to sugar as well. Sugar can be used prudently and beneficially. E.g., eating sugar (or other fast digesting carbs) immediately after a hard workout will actually enhance recovery.

The key is that soda and juice both contain way more sugar than you should be consuming regularly. 1 can of Coke contains roughly 140 calories of sugar which is roughly 100% of your daily recommended sugar according to the American Heart Association. (a can of orange juice is 160, though some weird regulation means they don't have to count it as sugar). As such it is pretty much impossible to have a healthy diet that involves regular consumption of soft drinks. Once a week or so is OK, but more than that is probably bad. (unless you are exercising for more than 3 hours a day)

If we’re constraining it the average semi-sedentary lifestyle, I agree. My point was more to the “only hard-and-fast rule is that sugar and alcohol are bad for you and the less you eat of them the better, at least in terms of your physical health” bit.

To the original point, I don’t agree that hard absolute statements are really good guidelines as they tend to oversimplify. For example, I believe the best recovery was found with 3:1 carb:protein post workout consumption. The typical protein supplement is around 25g, meaning it would be combined with more sugar than is in a can of soda (usually dextrose because it has a higher glycemic response). Some athletes consume sugar regularly (notably, Floyd Mayweather). Point being, I don’t believe it’s a good hard rule to say you should limit sugar as much as possible, but rather the appropriate (and less satisfying answer) is “it depends on your goal”

Is this a real law? can't find anything online about either the law or its actual text

Do you mean Ron's First Law? I don't what you mean by "real law" in this context. It's obviously not a "real law" in the sense of being a law of physics or anything like that. It's a real aphorism, like Murphy's law, but obviously nowhere near as well know.

BTW, I'm Ron, the coiner of Ron's First Law, if that helps you put it in context :-)

>BTW, I'm Ron, the coiner of Ron's First Law, if that helps you put it in context :-)

I somehow guessed it, the moment I read it, though I didn't know your full name earlier, despite having read your comments on HN before.

Maybe because I've mulled making up such laws myself :)

Un bella domani, fratello!

(One fine day, brother. - From a Morris West novel. I think it is The Shoes of The Fisherman. Great read.)

What you need to look at to figure out what makes you feel full longer vs shorter is GI index of food.

Lower is better, makes you feel fuller for longer.

It's a measure of how fast glucose is released in your bloodstream. It can be one big hike (like from deserts), or evenly spread out over a longer period of time (Natural Muesli).

Isn’t Glycemic Load more important than Glycemic Index since it takes into account serving size? No one eats 100g of table sugar the same as 100g of Apples.

Is the implication that the real issue is calories or that alcohol and sugar have similar metabolic mechanisms? E.g., similar effects on insulin, blood glucose etc.?

That's just not true. Ethanol is ketone and is fine for diets like keto. It does not spike insulin.

The problem is that most alcohol isn't regulated the same way food is, and there is often a ton of sugar in it that is not required to be labelled. Beer, for example, has tons of carbs, and Captain Morgan is fulla sugar.

I drink a soft drink every afternoon at work, and when I fill the recycling bin after 3 months I think about how many calories are in that bin, actually inside me. 12 240-260 calorie drinks is nearly a pound of body weight.

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