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Comment by projektfu | Hacker News Reader

I would push back and say that a lot of people didn't actually know that. They came up with elaborate reasons why eating less doesn't work, but keto works, or paleo works, or eliminating sugar works, or vegan works, or it's just physically impossible to lose weight.

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I am constantly arguing with all of my friends and family who believe primary way to loose weight is to exercise more.

Exercising is great, absolutely, but eating less is the actual primary method. While acknowledging complications of metabolism and psychology and weird states body goes through when it's hungry, primary part is to reduce calory intake vs expenditure.

So as snide and silly as it may be, in my neck of the woods, I would agree, lots of people don't believe eating less is the primary method of losing weight.

It’s just physics, really.

A bag of doritos is 200+ calories. The exercise involved to burn that off is running or walking multiple miles. It’s way easier in terms of physical expenditure to just not eat the doritos, or skip the sugary soda.

“You can’t outrun the fork.”

When I go hiking for a couple of weeks (with significant elevation gain each day), I eat like a pig. I mean, something like 5000 calories a day. I lose weight over that time. So it's possible to lose weight through exercise, however you really do have to spend a very significant chunk of each day doing it for it to work.

Not eating as much takes much less of your busy day.

If you are exercising on a caloric deficit, you are going to feel constantly tired and shitty. I find it way easier to just be on a caloric deficit.

this is not true; I do extended bikepacking trips nutrionally similar to the GP's experience and you feel amazing. Maybe your first time or the first day can be tough but the human body loves to move and consume. I think a good frame of mind is you're a high efficiency furnace pumping out the heat on a very cold day. but this machine actually heals & improves the more it's used!

That’s only true over a relatively short period.

Stuff you can do for a week doesn’t automatically extend to maintaining that over the next 50 years.

it's so much faster to do both at once though, and you retain more muscle mass during it and so on

so long as you can live like a monk and hit the gym every night for a few months it's pretty good. this is dependent on you being able to stand being hungry and cranky and going to bed exhausted for all that time though

In my experience the trick is just to have a small caloric deficit. Then you just feel moderately hungry from time to time, and it's very bearable. The downside is that to consistently maintain a small deficit you have to track your calorie intake quite precisely, which is a pain.

"you can't outwork a bad diet"

If I eat less, I feel shitty, tired and passive. I move less naturally, because it sux. When I exercise, I feel good, eat as much as I feel like and am keeping/loosing weight.

I do agree that losing weight is easier at first with just eating less, but to play the advocate role: you need a gap of about 3500 calories to lose a pound, but there's a hard daily floor of zero calories. You need to eat less over a long period of time (ideally the rest of your life) and exercise (or medication more commonly) is what keeps you going.

The calorie theory is the same theory that leads people to believe they can exercise to loose weight

The problem, as it is for a shitload of women, is that the delta between "Minimum amount of calories needed to not be somewhat malnourished" and "calories you eat now without losing weight" is sometimes zero. Short women working desk jobs are fucked

I was with a girl that barely ate, and couldn't get her weight down for about a decade because of that. Eventually she got really excited about a local dance studio and suddenly her weight dropped like a rock. She had to exercise more, but that was miserable until she found exercise that was effective and actually clicked, then it was trivial

Meanwhile it was trivial for me to eat less, because my budget should be around 1800 calories a day, and I was eating 3000. It's easy to cut out an entire bag of doritos. It is less easy to literally starve yourself.

People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts. My body was convinced I was starving while I was 50 pounds overweight and eating 2000 calories because I had previously eaten more. Your body did not evolve in an environment where that was ever the wrong thing to feel! "Please eat more or we die" is one of the most powerful biological signals.

That these medications cut that signal is entirely why they work! If people just "couldn't stop eating" then not having hunger or appetite signals wouldn't have worked either.

> People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts

When the body does not scream that murder, it is called anorexia. And it is much worst for your health then obesity.

Getting down to 1200 or 1400 calories is pretty restrictive yeah. You can't do it without counting and meal prep the same way you can go from 3000 to 2000 by skipping snacks

As soon as the diet requires cutting out a daily meal or changing the contents of meals in really harsh ways (like no bread) it's going to get on your nerves and make you neurotic.

Correct - feeling hungry is part of it. It's the biggest (And only notable one IMO) downside. It's temporary, while the loss is happening. Stops once you stabilize.

Run too big of a deficit = become miserable = blame dieting and stop halfway. Simply pick a deficit you can continue for long; it's the solution!

Average woman may have TDEE around 1800-2000, she can eat 1700-1600kcal comfortably.

You know that if i remove 150kcal from your diet, your wouldn't notice? that's like 2 slices of bread. So the hunger suppression will never be a question for vast majority of fat people

150kcal deficit over a year = 7.1kg or 15.6 lbs lost! and 300kcal = 31.2lbs or 14.2kg!! all this without any injection or drug without any exercise or severe loss of lean masss

I mean, these things are multimodal. For most people it's easier to cut enough calories to lose weight than it is to exercise enough to lose weight (though both are physically possible). But, of course, if you are losing weight you should be exercising! It's the best way to retain muscle mass, which is vital for health.

I am sure that when I've lost weight it's more the portion control than the exercise - but the exercise is a critical component. When you go from being sedentary to doing even casual exercise you feel better and get more energy - which you can then use to be more active. Without some kind of virtuous lifestyle-change cycle you are likely not going to shift your body mass, kind of no matter what ultimately puts you over the edge.

I generally agree with you, but I do want to point out that while we often talk about losing weight, what we really want to lose is fat, and exercise absolutely can help with that. Past a certain point I've personally found it very hard to sustainably eat less, but easy to put on significant muscle at the same calorie budget, so while my weight has been stable for years, my body fat % has significantly decreased.

Exercise can also absolutely increase base metabolic rate leading to weight loss; you still have to put up with a calorie deficit, which is the hardest part of losing weight, but you won't need to change your actual eating habits as much, which can make the social aspect easier.

Another thing to note that what's required to lose weight is a calorie deficit, not just eating less. This is important, because the body will compensate for a reduced calorie intake by reducing energy expenditure in various subtle ways. Experientially this can feel like having no energy.

None of this changes the basic thermodynamics and reality that to lose weight a calorie deficit is absolutely necessary and that calorie intake is by far the more significant lever available (compared to expenditure), of course -- but again, I personally basically never see anyone dispute this, whereas I regularly see people in the "just eat less, fatty" camp gloss over or misconstrue these nuances as though acknowledging them constitutes a denial of CICO in the strict sense.

You build muscle in the gym and lose weight in the kitchen. It really is that simple.

"Eating less" as a strategy for losing weight is like "make a lot of money" is a strategy for becoming rich.

It certainly works, it is just an unhelpful strategy.

Nah, the better analogy is "don't spend more than you make".

No, now you're comparing two variables. That would be plainly analogous to "don't eat more than you burn"

...which is significantly more helpful. I can eat less and not lose weight if my reduction of intake still doesn't bring me below my caloric burn rate. Comparing the two is the most helpful, because a person can tailor it to their situation:

Am I spending loads on unused subscriptions or take out each month? Maybe reduce it. Or, I'm pinching pennies and could benefit with polishing my resume'/gaining certificates and applying for better jobs for the next undefined period of time.

As with food. With the caveat that you are tracking calorie intake and burn, not "food" intake and burn, volume and 'fill' aren't 1:1

I'd say that "eat less" and "make a lot of money" are both helpful, winning strategies but lack the tactical details necessary to bring them into effect. Agreed that it's not helpful to toss them out at someone as if implementation is easy.

Keto changes the way you feel about eating if you enter ketosis for long enough.

Fasting does too, for that matter.

Paleo is just trendy keto with some woo on top.

The don't use the same mechanism as glp, nor do they have same success rate, but similar idea.

Eliminating sugar makes it harder to consume a 64oz soda at 800 calories in 3 minutes and still be hungry.

Anywho, most diets achieve some weight-loss.

But! keeping your mind and body from demanding you eat more to return to homeostasis is actually the 2nd hard part, and the part that most people fail at. And we'll see how much glp losses are sustainable (without shots) here pretty soon.

Regardless, this technology is good and we should subsidize everyone getting to a healthy weight. Searching for reasons they are actually morally inferior or stupid is counterproductive.

True that. I think that many people who use GLPs to find a healthy weight will be on them, possibly intermittently, long term. It may be possible to retrain their eating habits, but I would not bet on it for most people.

> we'll see how much glp losses are sustainable (without shots) here pretty soon.

Will we?

The idea is to be on them for life; I don't know that I've seen anyone recommend differently.

I've seen GLP drugs recommended for up to a year after the target weight has been reached, but generally not for life if taken specifically for weight loss. Diabetes is another matter.

isn't it widely accepted that supressed appetite (i.e. what makes glp work) is ONLY sustainable on the shots, and that you're on them for life?

This is true for diets too. You have to keep doing whatever the new behavior is to keep it up.

So maybe the goal is use the drugs to shift your lifestyle to eating less, having less food in the house, and being more active and then wean off it

I’ve never really understood the whole lifestyle thing. Maybe it is just simply habit and ritual for some people, but doesn’t seem to be the case for most.

I’ve lost weight many times, maintained the weight loss for long periods of time, but I’m just constantly hungry throughout. It never gets any easier. I’m physically just very hungry - my belly is constantly rumbling to the point that people comment on it, and I get the weird sizzling noise in the back of my neck. I’ll maintain this - for years sometimes - but eventually, like almost everyone who loses weight, something inevitably happens and I fall off the wagon.

I’m on the drugs now and all the grumbling and side effects of being hungry have gone away. Even the ones like being tired, getting sick all the time and having thinning wiry grey hair, which would happen in the past whenever I cut back food.

they do slow your metabolism so that probably explains the hair and stuff

the lifestyle habit and stuff to me is eating the same thing every morning or getting used to falling asleep hungry, those kind of adjustments. doesn't mean you get less hungry eventually

and then if anything changes (move, new job, new friends start coming over more and you want to be social) you'll fall out of the habits naturally. you can only do it as long as you can do it

This isn't true once you've achieved your target weight through a calorie deficit.

Deficit and hence suffering no longer applies; you continue eating at maintenance, which is very comfortable.

I will counter-pushback. I don't think I have encountered a single person in the past 15+ years who denied or was unaware of the basic thermodynamics of "calories in, calories out". What I do see time and time again is people with manageable appetites pushing "just eat less" with keyword "just", acting as though people's failure to do so secretly reveals a preference to be overweight.

People who do keto, paleo, eliminating sugar, vegan or whatnot do this as a strategy for eating less, through a variety of mechanisms, generally some combination of attempting to stabilize blood sugar to forestay cravings, eating fewer meals, or eating less calorie dense foods (you have to eat a lot of vegetables to get fat!)

Most people lack patience and can't reason well about calories, weight movement, and water weight fluctuations.

A deficit so small that most users won't even know that they are at deficit!

You know that if i remove 150kcal from your diet, your wouldn't notice? that's like 2 slices of bread. So the hunger suppression will never be a question for vast majority of fat people

150kcal deficit over a year = 7.1kg or 15.6 lbs lost! and 300kcal = 31.2lbs or 14.2kg!! all this without any injection or drug without any exercise or severe loss of lean masss

The idea that "most users" won't notice the absence of 2 slices of bread per day strikes me as unlikely.

I agree sort of, but the argument here is do the simple thing, like "eat less". There; we're done - ha! My initial reaction (and also with the chose boring tech) is that's not the solution, that's where you start LOOKING for the solution! So boring is great, simple is fantastic - from a position of understanding. Too many people jump onto any "new thing" - diet, technology, whatever - because it's easy and right in front of them. Simple is often neither.

I would push back against your pushback and say nearly everyone knows that, it's just the brain is great at making excuses when things are physically difficult.

They did that because the other thing didn't work. It doesn't matter that the reason it didn't work is that they can't do it: the implication is identical.

Don't underestimate how impossible it can be to force your own body into a new behavior pattern.

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