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Comment by Aaronstotle | Hacker News Reader

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Maintaining a healthy weight is not that difficult FOR YOU. Many, many people struggle to control their weight. One day you might too.

I never had an issue with my weight until I had a thyroid infection around 30. I now have "normal" thyroid levels, but ever since then maintaining my weight take vigilance and lots of discipline. It's possible, but definitely "difficult".

I had a similar issue. I was over the weight I wanted to be, but not amazingly so. Then I had a thyroid issue, and I lost a bunch of weight; down to my target weight. Then, once the thyroid issue was treated, my weight rebounded well past it's starting point. I'm still trying to lose the extra weight.

That sucks. Best of luck. FWIW I have managed to get my weight under control, so hopefully it's possible for you too. But yeah, if it's anything like it is for me, it really is a challenge, just know your not alone.

I frequently wish I had measure of what my levels were before my thyroid went weird. "Normal" is a pretty wide range, it'd be nice to know how my currently levels compare to my previous "normal" even if just to confirm that something physically changed.

Why? How many calories do you eat in a day?

Have you ever tried to deliberately eat fewer calories every day than your body wants, for an extended period of time? Like, months and years, not days.

yes i intentionally eat healthy. I used to get breakfast smoothies and large portion breakfast and lunches. i put on weight, i cut that out and started to lose weight. i had butter with breakfast everymorning. atleast 100 calories, i noticed that was a mistake and cut it out. that isnt calories i need.

Your body wants about 1800-2200 calories. it doesnt need chips and soda and chocolate etc.. which push you above that

Your body wants your maintenance calories. If you are overweight for an any significant time, your body adjusts and will push you to consume your new maintenance calories. It takes a very long time for you body to adjust back down once you lose weight, which is why more often than not people gain the weight back.

What are you saying that based on? Your going to feel full and not get fat if you binge on brocolli. Not the same as reaching for snickers. If you reach for something healthy everytime your hungry instead of something sweet or extra fatty you'll lose weight. if you lose to much weight you'll feel bad. The way i understand what your saying is If you cut out 500 calories of sugary snacks and soda your going to crave 500 calories of turkey. I think thats false, thats based on my experience.

None of your business. I maintain a healthy weight. Even that is none of your business.

How many calories I eat does not change it being difficult to maintain.

There's a whole contingent of ignorant (but smug, of course) people who like to chant "just eat less" as if that simple biological truth is the easy answer. How nice it must be for them.

what are you sharing your personal anecdotes then as something conclusive about weight management. we know nothing about you except take your word that you eat healthy?

What would knowing my number change? If I say a number it becomes "just" eat less. With that just doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Just eat less may be easy for some people. It's extremely difficult for others. I shared my anecdote to point out that even within ones life it can change. It was not an invitation scrutinize my life. Too many people think the phrase "I have a hard time losing weight" is a justification to start quizzing people down about their habits and judging them. Fuck that.

Yeah if your eating 3k calories a day as an average height person it does invalidate what your saying. If your eating 1800 to 2k calories a day and still are obese then id consider what your saying. alot of people make poor food choices and dont eat clean. meals are filled with fats and sugar or they snack all day and dont just drink water

1) It really wouldn't invalidate anything. For some people eating less than 3k calories means being hungry all the time and that's really, really difficult for them. They'd lose weight, they'd be healthier, but that doesn't make it "easy".

2) You keep calling my obese, you clearly aren't considering what I'm saying right now, I doubt suddenly knowing my caloric intake would change that.

Eat 1lb of celery, you'll still be hungry after that? I doubt you'll get through it. That's 100 calories. If your hungry and eating alot your not eating filling food and there are to many calories in it. Fats and sugar and calorie dense. You can eat way to much and feel like you didn't eat enough. If your eating 3k calories and still hungry I don't think you're really trying.

I didn't call you obese, that's not how I was using "you"

When I asked what difference my caloric intake would make you responded:

> Yeah if your eating 3k calories a day as an average height person it does invalidate what your saying. If your eating 1800 to 2k calories a day and still are obese then id consider what your saying.

So I guess that was just a complete non-sequitur?

I'm not going to try eating 1lb of anything for obvious reasons, but I can tell you from experience if I fill up on greens I'll be hungry again in an hour. And I don't really care for greens. Constantly snacking on food I don't enjoy doesn't meet my definition of "easy". In fact it'd take a lot of discipline (wait isn't that what I said about maintaining my weight at the beginning?), and would be quite difficult. I believe it works for you though, because, surprise surprise, different people are different and have different experiences in life.

Idk how you can sit here and talk about struggling to manage your weight then say you dont like eating vegetables. start eating real food. stop snacking all day.

the real issue is you just want to eat foods that taste good all the time.

I never said I snacked all day. I said if I was going to get my calories from greens I'd need to in order not to be hungry. Once again not actually considering what I'm saying. Your just making whatever assumption if convenient to your worldview.

Less cognitive load... every meal -> "will the extra serving of chicken push me over my limit?" versus "it's tuesday, no food today." "it's wednesday. Dinner time."

I get extreme brain fog after about 16 hours of no calories, reducing overall cognitive ability more than planning out two days of food compared to just one

I was personally capable of tracking 100% of my caloric input and output to manage to a target weight. I lost 25% of body weight and kept it off for a long time (years).

However, now that I have a full-time job and am also primary caretaker for two young children under age 5 with minimal childcare, I have been unable to maintain the weight loss and I'm fairly close to lifetime maximum weight (at -5% right now).

I notice behaviors like eating snacks between meals (often high-calorie), eating the kids' leftover food when I clean it up, not tracking my calorie inputs, eating at meals until I'm full (which tends to lead to lifetime maximum weight quickly in my experience), and eating extra food at night after the kids go to bed. This all adds up fast.

A couple of years ago I read the literature about GLP-1 agonists and started thinking about drugs. The last time I asked, a couple years ago, my GP said she had never successfully gotten an Rx approved for GLP-1 agonists in a patient with obesity. I was also thinking about looking into cognitive behavioral therapy as this all feels like it's behavioral?

In general I prefer low-intervention approaches to medicine. I'd definitely rather rely on diet + exercise alone for weight loss. However, I just don't have the time in the day to lose enough weight - mechanically it just isn't working. It's frustrating because it used to. I'm pretty close to looking into the drugs again.

Hey, just curious if you noticed that they did exactly what you're suggesting, and then chose a different path the second time?

FWIW, I've found fasting to be pretty straightforward

This discounts cognitive process and the factors that influence it.

You can make the same argument for infidelity - just don't cheat on your spouse. Yet, infidelity is an incredibly complex issue that stems from multiple biological and social variables.

I'm not a big fan of taking drugs to treat weight. You could also treat infidelity with hormone treatments that remove all of your sex drive - but that's like putting out a fire with a bomb.

Much like with infidelity, I believe it's better to address the underlying reasons for weight gain and treat those, but we shouldn't be under any misconception that it's an easy problem.

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