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I don't think that is quite right, at least from personal experience. I have a good weight and I feel it's almost impossible for me to gain weight. And personally, I don't really recognize the "I can eat forever" feeling.
I love food, don't get me wrong, but I eat some sort of meal and then once I feel it's enough so that I no longer feel ravenous, I just stop and go back to doing something else. Sometimes I'm even concentrating so hard on some other activity that I forget about eating.
For me, it's definitely not willpower. In fact, once I tried to gain weight (more muscle mass) by going to the gym and counting calories, eating a minimum amount every day over what I usually ate. What happened was that after a short amount of time, there came a day where I just didn't feel like eating.
In short, although I do believe willpower can help you lose weight, I sincerely doubt a lack of it is the only thing that causes people to be fat. I honestly think that people must have a different metabolism and/or a different desire to eat, because I find it very hard to ingest enough calories myself no matter how hard I try. My body just stops me from eating very soon, even though I know I theoretically could eat more.
What factors do you think are influencing your desire to eat more or less? Do you think those will change at all during your lifetime, or do you believe that those factors are entirely genetic?
Additionally, what do you think of the folks who were fat, who then got healthy, and remain healthy? It sounds like you don't believe they can exist, since "metabolism" is just different for everyone, or that if they do exist, they're doomed to failure, since it's encoded genetically and therefore only a matter of time until they "revert" back to their unhealthy state.
Finally, what should we do to the people who have these genetics that cause them to eat and/or gain weight with little or no control? If we could remove those genetics or alter them pre-birth, should we? As for the living people, they obviously cost more to provide healthcare to, so should we split them out from the non-obese-predisposed pool of people?
There is a lipostat or setpoint in the hypothalamus. It acts like a thermostat for fat. Fat levels are controlled by a homeostatic system, just like body temperature. The highest amount of bodyfat you've had will typically be the bodyfat your brain will defend. It not only does this by making you hungry, it also will downregulate your metabolism. So you become less active. Anyone who has been obese, is fighting their own brain to maintain fat loss. Losing fat is easier than maintaining fat loss. Semaglutide disrupts this system.
BTW, the mechanism of the setpoint is Leptin, a hormone secreted by fat almost exclusively. Muscle also releases Leptin, but in small amounts.
So if you cut the fat out, if you use liposuction, or you diet down slowly, or you diet down quickly, it doesn't matter. Your brain still knows how much fat you have, based on the leptin signals it gets. You cannot trick it.
The reason bariatric surgery is effective is that cutting out the stomach reduces the amount of ghrelin released, which is a hunger hormone that the brain sends the body. Again, disrupting the homeostatic system...which is the only effective way out of this mess.
I was expecting more people on hacker news to know about homeostasis of fat by now. Leptin was discovered 27 years ago.
I was expecting more people on hacker news to know about the existence of how eating works. The mouth was discovered... well, millions of years ago.
You don't seem persuadable, nor too interested in the science of the lipostat, so I'll just let you have the last word here.
Many, many people, billions of people, overcome their animal instincts every single day in favor of reason. Fat people can do this too.
I’m not so sure about that.
We haven’t evolved past our animal instincts and it seems like our conscious mind is only an additional layer on top of the “reptilian brain” - for lack of a better term. It has not replaced our base urges and our intrinsic motivational systems.
We are only sometimes able to shut down our unconscious urges. Even so, we may only be able to do that temporarily, as people fall off the wagon all the time. In fact going “cold turkey” seems like one of the most counterproductive things someone can do.
I feel like much of our ability to succeed via “mind over matter” has to do with our biochemistry rather than rational thoughts. Our motivational systems are ultimately controlled by neurochemistry. So there seems to be a lot more to this than just conscious mindset.
Well, as you said:
> It apparently changes quite a lot as different factors in your life influence you
As far as
> Additionally, what do you think of the folks who were fat, who then got healthy, and remain healthy? It sounds like you don't believe they can exist
There's no implication that they can't exist; just that it's myopic to assume that what worked for them will also work for other people who are fat, particularly when they've tried the same thing and report that it's failed.
> Finally, what should we do to the people who have these [factors] that cause them to eat and/or gain weight with little or no control?
Accessible GLP-1 agonists are a good start.
Are you proposing the people who succeeded at those two steps have something chemically the others didn't? Or what alternative explanation would you provide that explains the different outcomes?
Chalking it all up to willpower is, however, unconvincing. When I managed to get down to ~22 BMI awhile back using the willpower approach, I spent literally every moment distracted and obsessing over the food I couldn't have, for months on end. That's not something that most people at 22 BMI do (unless you think that they also use their willpower to quash the constant intrusive thoughts). It's not a huge leap that others who struggle with getting to a healthy body weight experience something similar, especially because it's what they report happening. I wouldn't be surprised if the people who fail outright have even stronger cravings than I did.
There's just too much evidence supporting the idea that actively eating less and continuing to do so is a successful strategy for losing weight, combined with the obvious fact of simple human biology that eating involves consciously taking food and putting it into your mouth (sleep-eating notwithstanding).
It would be an interesting test to correlate obesity with other non-food related willpower tasks. If the correlation was high, on a population level I'd lean more toward willpower being the dominating factor; if the correlation was low, more toward the catchall non-willpower factor.
Further, your experimentation has a flaw; no two things carry identical risk factors and "willpower" factors. Food, as anything, is unique, so the idea of comparing it to other willpower exertions isn't relevant.
So, you're backing away from the idea that people who struggle with weight lack willpower and are shifting to the stance that they lack some hunger-specific willpower that's unrelated to anything else meaningful?
That's completely indistinguishable from the idea that some people feel hunger more than others.
I do believe fat people can get healthy and remain healthy, and I only meant to say that "metabolism" and desire are mediating but not wholly determining factors.
As for the people who can't stop eating, I don't propose to "do" anything with them. I don't believe in altering genetics or using advanced technology to solve the problem. I don't think we should split them out in terms of healthcare either because that would be cruel. I might also have some predisposition to some other costly condition like heart disease and then I would be in another "more expensive" group and just not know about it because it's not visible like obesity.
It's in fact a yes/no question.
My reading of OP's comment is that for some people, it is easy to lose weight. For others it is hard. I agree with this (while still saying that I believe that people have agency over their own weight and that willpower is a learnable skill).
There is no doubt that being fat or not fat is absolutely a function of how much you eat (and to a lesser extent, exercise), and that how much you eat is a function of willpower.
The question is the other parts of the functions. For some people, they can eat as much as they like without getting fat. Others get fat eating less than average.
For some people, it takes a lot of willpower to eat less. For others, it takes less willpower. Someone who's 5'5" will have a harder time becoming a pro-basketball player than someone who's 6'5". Doesn't mean they can't do it with a lot of effort and willpower.
So no changes of mind are needed, the answer to your question is 'no', because I already believe that willpower is learnable (and if I understand correctly, so does OP).
There are no other ways to see this. You don’t subconsciously eat, that’s not really a thing.
A person might be able to learn some level of willpower but still lack a sufficient amount to prevent them from eating.
Yes. But for some people, that training will be very easy, and for others, the training will be hard. My point does not contradict yours, it adds to it.
To put it another way, system 1 will eat until its full, system 2 knows what a calorie is, and at least vaguely understands how many calories are in what you just ate against what you need to survive.
Skinny people are not smarter, they’ve either never had an impulse to eat more in the first place, or are able to react to the impulse with the part of the brain that reasons.
Applying critical thinking (as opposed to applying inhibitory control) is only useful against obesity insofar as you can make changes to your lifestyle and diet. Lots of people know what a calorie is yet still fail to lose weight, because intellectually understanding something doesn't mean you can do it.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...
My position at the moment is that different obesity interventions work for different people. Obesity is the result of a huge number of different factors such that no single intervention will work for everyone. An obvious example would be an obese patient with thyroid problems, vs an obese patient with sleep apnea: both sleep and thyroid function can cause weight gain, but they have different treatments. I don't think we should ignore a drug that works well in some stubborn cases, just because other cases can be fixed with lifestyle and diet changes.
(I say this as someone who lost 15kg, went from obese to normal, and has kept it off for years by occasional calorie tracking. Most evidence suggests this doesn't generally work for obese patients.)
Except that it does, for literally every single one of them. They simply don't do it.
I guarantee you an arbitrary amount of money my group will be >10% lighter than your group after 6 months.
Would it blow your mind to hear I agree, and never said anything to the contrary? Probably, if you weren’t feeling defensive.
Honestly it sounds like you think people who are overweight have "failed" in some way, as I don't believe that at all. "Taking injections weekly" is also doing something about their obesity, which is just fine with me, I'm simply explaining how "willpower" is also a viable possibility. There's no need to take injections if you learn more about willpower and strengthen yours over time, and this is supported by a cornucopia of recent and sound science.
A failure of willpower is not a failure of moral character, why do I even have to say that?
This whole "intellectual willpower" thesis is so stupid it's insulting.
What's insulting is to take away the accomplishment of the fat folks who got healthy by claiming it was just their genetics that let them stop being fat, but also somehow their genetics that caused them to get fat in the first place?
I'm not insulted by anyone who discounts the effort I put into getting fit though. Weight and genetics and willpower are all confusing concepts and it's understandable to not be willing to attribute it all to willpower.
I will say that it is almost discouragingly hard to maintain this level of discipline for many years though. My body does seem to fight me in ways other healthy weight people don't seem to deal with. So while it does come down to my willpower to stay the course, I also admit that if I were to have an unexpected life event that caused me to fall out of my routine it might lead to weight gain again.
I quit the medication and promptly went back to 22. no willpower involved.
I'm sorry you have to struggle against your body. your body makes it a fight requiring massive willpower, mine doesn't - it's just down to genes or something.
This sentence is the problem; you didn’t “develop a sweet tooth” like you grow a tumor, you out sweet things in your mouth by choice. You had agency, you made that decision.
Stop avoiding your role in your weight, stop pretending someone else was in control of your decisions. It was you, you did this to yourself.
Craving sweets is a well-documented side effect of mirtazapine, I'm not sure why you're having trouble accepting that.
First, willpower is absolutely a trainable skill. In the late 90s there was scientific support for the idea that willpower was a limited resource. The let people choose weather they wanted to eat a healthy snack (radish or cucumber, I think) or a cookie, then after that had them solve an impossible puzzle. People who ate the cookie kept trying almost twice as long as the healthy-snack group. They took it to mean that willpower was limited and the healthy-snack group had used it up in resisting the cookie. More recently this was disproved and an even stronger conclusion was reached - The reason why the stop exerting willpower is that they _believe_ it is a limited resource. People who don't have that idea, tend to stay in it longe.
Second, it's not exclusively willpower that keeps people healthy - things CAN get easier or harder. People who are already obese, for instance, will have a hard time loosing weight and an even harder time staying lean - because the body is indeed pushing towards that same body-fat content.
It gets easier when you avoid a situation where you need to exert the willpower in the first place. I recall a study where they seated kids in a room with a marshmallow and if they didn't eat it for X minutes, they'd get another one and then they could eat two - The kids who were allowed to leave the room for the X minutes (and did leave) had much higher success rates than the ones who chose (or were forced) to stay in the room.
I also recall some neurochemistry that makes it easier to do hard things (like working out) in the morning that later in the day.
People also tend to operate in absolutes - stay on a strict regiment of calorie counting until that one weak moment when they have a cookie. And now they're completely off because, well, they're streak was broken or because they tell themselves "I failed so I can't do it."
None of that should discount the effects of willpower. But the degree to which people need to apply it varies a lot. Just like it's easier for a non-smoker to not pick a cigarette than it is for a chain-smoker going a-pack-a-day. If someone is in the hard-to-lose weight category, I empathise - you have your work cutout for you. But training your willpower is the only long-term sustainable way to do it.
This isn't how it is for me. Of course I've had the "I could eat forever, so let's not" thoughts before, but only in certain contexts like if I'm at a buffet dinner. Ordinarily I just get full and then stop. No mental pep-talk needed.
I've noticed in these discussions, people think how it is for them is how it is for everyone else. They use the same words to mean different things. Look carefully through all the comments here and you'll see that "full" seems to have very different meanings to different people. "Willpower" is another one.
Nobody can give an objective meaning to these terms, or it doesn't even enter their minds that they might need to, because "obviously" everyone else experiences the world in the same way. It's like the blind men of Indostan.
See also: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...