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Comment by elxr | Hacker News Reader

> Personal discipline of caloric deficit

Or you can just eat whole foods and do exercise. If you're an able bodied adult with a job, a basic understanding of the effects of foods with unnaturraly high sugar content, and even a slight care about your looks; then you really don't need personal discipline beyond what day-to-day life requires.

Being fat honestly takes more effort than being at normal weight for someone who's 100% able-bodied.

Yeah GLP1s work, but it always boggles my mind how eager people are to jump on them over the alternative.

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What if you’re not able bodied?

Not my place to talk about.

> Or you can just eat whole foods and do exercise.

Why do you think people don't do that?

>Being fat honestly takes more effort than being at normal weight for someone who's 100% able-bodied.

This is nonsense.

Being fat takes literally no effort at all, all it takes is your discipline slipping a couple nights a week. Being a healthy weight takes (for some) perfect discipline every day, ignoring hunger, putting weight management before everything else in your life, etc.

I've worked physically demanding jobs in paralelll with both long distance running and weightlifting for about 15 years of my life, I've significant muscle mass and good enough cardio to run 15k any day without any particular prep, yet I've hovered around obesity mark for the last 10 years. And now as a parent, any effort to cook leaner food takes time I dont have, as does exercise.

I'm not on any weight loss drugs as I do not want to risk any negative side effects, already being a sleep deprived toddler-parent.

But life is short, and cutting weight can fuck with people mental and physical health a lot before things get better, so for those that need it, 100% do whatever it takes to get to a healthy weight first and then figure it out from there. Spending your 20s-30s-40s struggling and failing to keep a healthy weight is a slow death of its own.

60 years ago obesity in every stable country was a tiny fraction of what it is today. Are people 10-50x less disciplined today? Really? Or are there just more incentives for processed food companies to sell you their crap? Are quick dopamine hits so easily accessible that people are becoming less driven? Is mainstream society not pressuring obese people enough to change course for being unhealthy?

Yes there's WAY more distractions today, and all those factors make it harder to navigate life practicing healthy habits, but you still have agency. The natural state of the human body is to use calories. The brain alone burns an astonishing amount of calories just thinking. Also no one's force feeding you anything.

There's plenty of countries with a lower "quality of life" index that barely have obesity problems. Maybe the natural tendency of the human body is not to slowly get fat?

>Being a healthy weight takes (for some) perfect discipline every day, ignoring hunger, putting weight management before everything else in your life, etc.

Why does eating at maintenance calories require “ignoring hunger”?

If a guy is already 80 kg, at 10% BF, and their maintenance calories are 3,000 kcal, they can be perfectly happy and not in a state of hunger while eating 3,000 kcal.

I maintain 10% BF at an FFMI of 25; I am almost never hungry while eating at maintenance.

> But life is short, and cutting weight can fuck with people’s mental and physical health a lot before things get better, so for those who need it, 100% do whatever it takes to get to a healthy weight first and then figure it out from there.

Only if you are running massive deficits, which is what most newbies/crash dieters do. Emotional, knee-jerk-style dieting is not sustainable dieting.

“just”

It's not hard.

If you can wake up on time everyday, shower everyday, brush your teeth, read emails; how hard is it to not eat obviously trash foods?

Nobody's asking you to learn a high cognitive load skill or play a competitive sport. You don't even need consider counting calories. Just stop eating things that aren't single (or few) ingredient fruit, meat, rice, potatoes, eggs, dairy, tomatoes, coffee, etc. Eat till you're satiated. Avoid added sugar / any sweet condiments.

No processed foods 6 days of the week. Jog for 10 minutes on days you're able to. Bodyweight squats. Short sprints if you enjoy them.

See how simple/doable those steps are? If you have the money for GLP1s and a fancy gym membership then by all means do whatever works, but acting like being fat in a first-world country is a difficult problem to solve is just strange.

> Just stop eating things that aren't single (or few) ingredient fruit, meat, rice, potatoes, eggs, dairy, tomatoes, coffee, etc. Eat till you're satiated. Avoid added sugar / any sweet condiments.

sure! depends on the exact poll but 50% of americans have reported issues with being able to afford groceries. 1/8th of households have actual food insecurity. whatever, that’s not even the main problem i have with your reply

> See how simple/doable those steps are?

i’ve already lost weight without GLP-1s using food tracking, etc. you don’t have to condescendingly prescribe lifestyle changes to me. it wasn’t simple and often did not feel doable, even though i am able to brush my teeth every day (?)

the objection i have is pretending these are simple, repeatable, or obvious pieces of advice that can slot in to any ‘ol lifestyle if you just care how you look or whatever

i’m also amused you couldn’t help yourself from saying “just” again

> i’m also amused you couldn’t help yourself from saying “just” again

When most weight problems can just be fixed by just telling those people what's wrong with their diets, and actually offering them a simple solution, why not tell them that?

I'm also not American, and the people in my city I live in largely don't seem to have issues with not being obese, plenty also have food insecurity.

Food insecurity being equated to gaining weight is a hilarious leap in chain of events. Food education and upbringing, sure, but insecurity? Doesn't that mean food is harder to acquire?

> Food insecurity being equated to gaining weight is a hilarious leap in chain of events. Food education and upbringing, sure, but insecurity? Doesn't that mean food is harder to acquire?

nope. it’s literally called the “food insecurity and obesity paradox” and it’s observed in high-income countries [0][1][2][3]

maybe if you had ~just~ done some research you’d be better equipped to more empathetically consider other’s perspectives and experiences

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5394740/ [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circ.152.suppl_3... [2] https://www.jandonline.org/article/s0002-8223(07)01616-1/ful... [3] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/378/1888/202...

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