>if we could use leptin to increase dieting efficacy

it's called a refeed and bodybuilders have been doing it for decades to drop fat while maintaining muscle mass, you don't need leptin injections

some recent studies have backed up the bro science as well

>The researchers reported that 19 participants in the continuous diet group completed the study and lost an average of 9.1 kg furthermore, 17 participants in the intermittent diet group completed the study and lost an average of 14.1 kg (4).Hence, the authors concluded that greater weight and fat loss was achieved in the intermittent diet group (4)

Do you have a link to the full study, or a decent citation of it?

Thanks.

How frequently does one need to refeed?

Apparently "it depends":

> Perhaps providing more frequent diet breaks for athletes as they become leaner could improve fat loss efficiency, lean body mass retention, and mitigate fat loss plateaus. For example, beginning the initial phases of contest prep using a 4:1 ratio of diet: diet break, then moving to 3:1, then 2:1, and finally 1:1 may be more opti- mal than simply using a set ratio for the entire duration of the preparation; however, we can only speculate.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339949771_Effective...

What is a refeed?

Eating normal or excess calories, usually for a day.

Apparently specifically high carb, low fat.

Yep. Carbs cause a larger release of leptin than either fat or protein.

Of course, at some point the leptin system breaks down, probably due to desensitized receptors. But in a negative calorie state, you can take advantage of your leptin sensitivity.

UD 2.0 by Lyle McDonald is a good basic program that is built off the premise of carb cycling (and the effects on leptin and insulin).

"Beyond a certain point, your body senses the deficiency and decreases your metabolism. "

As far as I'm able to tell this is a myth. There isn't any scientific evidence supporting it, and quite a bit which implies it is impossible - if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would by default. Calorie consumption is necessary to sustain life.

This myth is usually perpetuated by people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think.

> people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think.

Absolutely. For instance only counting the calories of their scheduled meals, but "snacks don't count because its just a snack". Or counting a heaping plateful of spaghetti as a single serving because they put it on a single plate. Underestimating calorie counts is much more common than estimating it accurately.

Eat a few meals with a huge person who "just can't lose weight" and it will usually become obvious that they eat a huge amount of food.

I thought this too until I actually tried to lose weight. You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses.

Yes, some of it is willpower, and probably for lots of people it's entirely willpower, but there is definitely a metabolic component to it.

If you eat less than you expend you must lose weight, but it's naive to discount a decrease in the expenditure part as well. Keep in mind that just living requires the vast majority of your calories, and any exercise is a blip covered by a couple cookies.

People underestimate the variation in NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

Often on prolonged diets, your NEAT can unconsciously decrease from a series of small decisions like choosing to take the elevator when you usually take the stairs, parking nearer to your destination, etc. and even things like fidgeting less.

You can kinda get around this with things like step counters so you can track how many steps per day you normally walk, and then if you notice you're suddenly walking fewer steps, you can consciously choose to walk more to keep your activity level at your baseline.

For example, you might average 8,000 steps per day but after a few months on a diet, you find yourself walking 4,000 steps per day naturally so you can just choose to go out for a walk after dinner to maintain or increase your baseline level of activity.

When people talk about changes in metabolism, this is normally the culprit.

This is the answer. NEAT is generally the biggest lever you have to modulate caloric burn

> You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses.

You’re not losing a meaningful amount of fat in the first week. You’re just getting dehydrated.

I’ve seen this process up close multiple times. It usually starts with a dramatic weight loss goal like “I’m going to lose 2kg/week for a month.” The first few days of crash dieting seem to be working, then the rapid progress stops and it becomes clear that the original target is impossible. This makes it easy to justify quitting the diet altogether to oneself, which was always subconsciously the goal of this approach.

When I read "2kg/week", I almost jumped. That is a big number! Google tells me that 7,700 calories must be cut from your "normal diet" to lose 1kg of body weight. It would be an incredible feat of willpower to consistently cut 15,000+ calories per week from your "normal diet"!

It's not easy but certainly possible. For a reasonably tall male (higher calorie burn), being active (>15k steps a day) while eating around 1500 calories a day will lead to a deficit of up to 15,000 calories a week. Eating 1,500 calories per day is restricting but not starving, and burning 3,500 calories per day is a very active lifestyle but not some extreme sports or so.

But as others have noted, it often doesn't seem to be sustainable as your body will react to that kind of calorie deficit.

Cutting down to just essential amino acids and other essential nutrients like some select fatty acids, cushions, and minerals, isn't that hard if you can avoid carbs from getting advertised to you. Even a non-optimized protein source like eggs easily offers ~500kcal/day at sufficient protein levels, and sustained keto doesn't really include hunger feelings. It's not particularly healthy, but if the only way to keep up a significant caloric deficit is to see the rapid results of this kind of diet, it should still be healthier than morbid obesity.

That 7700 per 1kg figure is for Fat. However what you burn through first are Glycogen stores [1] which store about as half as much energy in the same weight as a more readily available form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen

Exactly, and I feel like that's subconsiously the point of setting a goal like that. It's unattainable, so by conflating it with weight loss in general, of course weight loss isn't possible, which is a sentiment you will see repeated quite frequently in any online weight loss discussion.

My max. sustainable weight loss rate seems to be about half a kilo a week. Any more and I start yoyo-ing.

Fasting makes the process easier.

Cut your food intake by 50% and start drinking water / coffee to combat hunger.

I know I am losing weight when I am hungry between meals, most of the time I eat because it’s time to eat.

Down 10 pounds in two weeks. It’s nothing special just eating what I should be eating in terms of quantity. Eating sweets? Skip a meal, etc.

I lost 40lbs effortlessly, eating as much as I wanted, and I've kept it for a couple of years now..

by switching antidepressants. the one I was on before caused weight gain and sugar cravings. I gained 40lbs when I started taking it and lost it when I stopped. I just suddenly found sugar and carbs unappetizing, whereas before I'd get intense cravings.

the experience further convinced me that weight regulation is metabolic or something. I used zero self-control, diet or exercise, and a chemical change brought me back to a healthy weight. my eating habits changed but it was subconscious, not willpower.

2 weeks is easy.

2 months is hard.

2 years is really hard

> 2 years is really hard

Yeah, loosing 2 kg/week for two years is physically impossible for almost all obese people.

My body weight would be negative before the first year ended.

If you have kids it’s beyond hard.

This is more or less what I do for a loss of ~3kg/month.

At least for me, we're talking massive amounts of water, by the way. ~500ml every 2-3 hours, all day for the whole time.

Ayran/yoghurt with more salt and water works better, likely because of the salt, but I've gotten too many small kidney stones that way - 100% sure, because I had to painfully piss them out and cut my urethra several times. And, well, yeah, bring a portaloo everywhere.

The hunger gets to me every week, though, in which case I found it's OK to eat a lot of protein/fat (eggs, cheese, meat) for a day. Well, by a lot I mean maybe 3 times the normal food intake.

500ml every 2-3 hours seems like a very normal amount of water.

I drink more water than most and I usually go through 4-5 litres in a regular work day.

2 weeks is a laugh

I guarantee that you're going to start seeing huge drop offs in another few weeks. 5lbs/week is significant, it's far more than would be expected with even a massive calorific deficit. You're losing water weight.

People area focusing on the 2 weeks thing but your approach is right, and I did something similar for about 6-8 months in order to lose 10kg and keep it off. I kept eating my regular food, just cut my portion sizes in half. It sucked… but it worked.

I think the main issue is just that "efficient" can misleading to dieters. It's not efficiency as in "do more with less," but rather, "do less with less."

As your body sheds fat, it no longer needs to expend energy building, preserving, and keeping your fatty tissue warm. JIT energy use instead of lossy battery storage. It doesn't further slow your metabolism beyond what you are genetically predisposed towards, but metabolism does slow (a little bit). Another way to think of this is, when you consume in excess of what you need for healthy living, your body begins consuming additional calories in order to build and support the additional long-term reserves you are creating and maintaining. We have decades of research supporting this notion (as well as common sense).

There may also be an aspect of "hibernation" that kicks in when dramatic caloric restriction is suddenly introduced. That is, you are further inclined to be less active as you lose weight quickly. I'm less certain of that, though.

"Do less with less" is a good way to put it. It can be helpful to look at the extremes- for example, people who are starving can end up with suppressed thyroid function (among other things). This appears to be adaptive; a hypothyroid state will tend to avoid building or sometimes even maintaining metabolically expensive muscle, overwhelming exhaustion will tend to suppress nonvital calorie expenditure, and even fidgeting behaviors can be suppressed. In other words, by reducing burn rate, you starve slower.

This is not something you want happening in a well-nourished individual. Beyond making you more likely to die to predation or accidents from severe muscle wasting, it also just feels horrible. There's a reason why people with untreated hypothyroidism (unrelated to starvation) struggle with exercise and weight loss.

I've also personally observed some people on... inadvisable extreme crash diets getting some weird bloodwork numbers. Like TSH spiking by a factor of 10- which, unlike the above starvation case which typically suppresses TSH, may imply malnutrition and inability to produce sufficient thyroid hormone. Their empirically derived caloric burn rate dropped by more than 30% over the duration of the diet, and a substantial amount of that was from dramatic muscle wasting. Not exactly ideal!

squinting hard enough there are some evolutionary mechanism at play, for example in times of famine(severe calorie restriction), menstruation will stop for female. Pretty sure sperm production also fall for men.

So the body has definitely way to sense and adjust in some areas.

> if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would by default.

Nobody suggested that the body "run itself more efficiently". They suggested that the body _do less_.

This would be like if someone suggested that you could reduce gas consumption by not driving across the state, and for you to dismiss their argument as impossible because you just can't simply increase the MPG of the car.

Of course, your statement is probably factually correct, but it's a non sequitur!

"Nobody suggested that the body "run itself more efficiently". They suggested that the body _do less_."

This is another way of saying the exact same thing. Increased efficiency is doing less work.

"Of course, your statement is probably factually correct, but it's a non sequitur! "

It's a synonym! We are saying the same thing.

> This is another way of saying the exact same thing. Increased efficiency is doing less work.

That's just not the definition of efficiency that I use.

Efficiency is a ratio of how much _useful_ work something does over how much energy it consumes. If you change the numerator _and the denominator_ in the same proportions the efficiency doesn't change. Therefore, we cannot use "how much work changes" as a short-hand to speak to a chance in efficiency, _unless_ we also note how the denominator is or isn't changing.

So, back to my analogy, the efficiency is the MPG and the "work" is the number of miles driven. Those are different things. You can reduce the number of miles you drive _without_ changing the MPG.

> We are saying the same thing.

From my definitions of words we are absolutely, categorically, not saying the same thing.

I understand you use a different definition. Now that you know my definition there should be nothing more for us to discuss.

Have a good one!

> Now that you know my definition there should be nothing more for us to discuss.

I disagree. The reason I disagree is the impact of the different definitions on the original statement I was challenging:

> if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would by default.

Using my definition of "efficiency", this statement strikes me as self-evidently true.

Using your definition of "efficiency", this statement strikes me as probably false and strongly contradicts my priors. After all, every system in the face of input energy restrictions must do less total work.

So, if I accept your definition (which I'm happy to do for the conversation, since it's just a semantic difference), I think this statement is much less likely to be accurate, and certainly isn't self-evident.

Uhhh

Output / energy is the consensus definition of what it means to be efficient. The commenter you are replying to is being kind, but I guess I’m a little more callous…

Are you comfortable continuing with such a confusing definition of efficiency?

My opinion is that you are not recognizing the value of operating in a less-efficient (lower MPG, more power) mode. We can all spend more or less energy in a day as a function of the things we do. To me, it seems like you’re not recognizing this fact.

I think what you're missing here is that upkeep (the numerator in your equation) is largely constant. It can change a little bit, but it can't go anywhere near zero. This is why it can be ignored.

As I said above, the bulk of calories consumed in a day for a typical person are upkeep, not exercise related. You do not need to factor it into the overall equation. The changes are not significant enough.

"Starvation mode" theory is that the upkeep of the body changes significantly when calories are lower, preventing the body from losing weight. It's just not true. There are secondary effects (lethargy, no energy for increased exercise for athletes) but the vast majority of obese people do not exercise significantly to begin with so these effects can likewise be ignored. The baseline caloric upkeep -- which is something like 70+% of calorie burn for almost all fat people -- will never significantly change in terms of its efficiency. This is why you will always lose weight on a calorie restricted diet, even without exercise.

Hopefully this clears things up for you.

There is a surprising amount of upkeep that can be forgone if needed. Muscle, nail and hair growth, reproductive functions like menstruation or sperm production, reducing energy use in the brain (malnourished people often report brain fog). I've also read about slower healing and being more prone to infections, so there's probably some general system overhead that is cut.

Of course, this is no way to live long term, but in a starvation situation it makes sense to reduce energy demand to the absolute minimum

Yes, certainly. But those do not account for a significant change in the baseline consumption of calories. The baseline need remains significant, despite the body's attempt to cut corners. It's not a question of whether the body tries, it's a question of how effective it is -- and it's not very.

Those effects I believe are also correlated with extremely low bodyfat moreso than a calorie deficit diet. In most cases a healthy person's body will simply consume fat to account for a deficit in the diet.

We unfortunately have a lot of data about starvation. The effects on the body are very clear. Body fat will go first. Most americans are in absolutely no danger.

There was a recent discussion here about a nice article that went into this: https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31381410

I'll just quote the article:

> The correct part: When you reduce calories, more specifically as you begin to get leaner, there is, in fact, some slowing of metabolic rate.

> The incorrect part: Due to this low-calorie consumption your body decides fuck you and proceeds to enter this phantom zone of otherworldliness where the laws of thermodynamics cease to exist, resulting in no fat loss, or worse, gaining fat on some absurdly low number of calories.

This 'low-power mode' seems consistent with the idea your metabolic rate can slow a bit.

I read elsewhere that base metabolism varies between people by (iirc) ~15% even for a given weight/build due to genetics, weight training (as in its after effects, not the calories exerted during the workout itself), diet, etc. That's enough to be noticeable: 375 calories difference from a 2,500-calorie diet. It's not enough to back up "no matter how much I eat, I can't lose weight".

The actual reason for many is probably that with a high enough deficit, you can feel so tired that it's hard to burn the same amount of calories. Walking 20k steps per day is no problem for most healthy adults, at such a deficit it becomes really hard.

> The actual reason for many is probably that with a high enough deficit, you can feel so tired that it's hard to burn the same amount of calories.

Maybe, but for the folks most in need of weight loss, how active are they to begin with? Even for a fit person, it's often impractical to be active enough to make up for overeating. So while it'd be ideal to decrease intake without further decreasing activity, they'd still probably lose more weight by decreasing intake even if that brings activity to near-0.

> Walking 20k steps per day is no problem for most healthy adults, at such a deficit it becomes really hard.

Google Fit on my phone says I don't get 20k steps in, even though I run/jog four miles most mornings. I'm physically capable of moving more, but I have a full-time desk job, family responsibilities, etc.

I think the myth's origin is that if you start fasting/ really cut calories you'll notice a huge, immediate drop for a day or two - a lot of that being that you're losing water weight. Like going from a night of eating/ drinking, and then fasting the next day, I can see a 5 pound difference.

Then that stops, and suddenly your scale isn't showing you the same drastic win as the first few days. You might reasonably think "I guess my body has adjusted".

That isn't to say that your body doesn't change how it functions in order to save energy, obviously a lot changes when you've exhausted your glycogen stores. But I think a lot of the "drastic" results for people hitting a wall after a few days of fasting is based on that initial huge win.

> This myth is usually perpetuated by people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think.

Nonsense, the only places I've seen it are in popular scientific literature and in official recommendations, from dieticians and physical therapists. I don't know whether it's true or not, but my guess is you're probably wrong. The less someone eats, the more tired and weaker they feel, so they less they'd do, so the less energy they'd use. All kinds of feedback loops like that could happen. So it's definitely plausible.

"Popular" scientific literature, dieticians and physical therapists are demonstrably, profoundly unreliable sources. Besides, if you look around for opinions about the "starvation mode myth" you will find there is actually a lack of consensus.

If you believe this is wrong then I suggest trying to articulate why you believe it is wrong, rather than appealing to cherry-picked non-authority opinions.

The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are upkeep related and this upkeep does not change significantly based on our diet.

Exercise is certainly a factor, but it is orthogonal to the question of whether our bodies somehow stop burning calories while continuing to operate itself. Most people in these extreme circumstances do not significantly exercise at all.

Calorie restricted diets in a clinical setting where calorie inputs are strictly controlled will reduce weight 100% of the time.

> The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are upkeep related and this upkeep does not change significantly based on our diet.

I don't think people really appreciate this. Running only burns about 100 calories per mile. So if you run 5 miles, you've only burned the calories you would get from eating one muffin.

Many people will go for a walk around the block and feel like their getting into shape, but restricting calories is the only practical way to lose weight.

> Running only burns about 100 calories per mile

That’s only true for people who are both light and efficient runners.

A better rule of thumb, at least for men, is 1kCal/hour for zone 2 or light zone 3 training.

If you like metric, a good approximation is also 1 calorie per kilometer and kilogram of body weight. So a 80kg person running a 10k will approx. burn 800 calories.

Only an approximation but seems to roughly fit many "measurements" by smart watches for both males and females of different weight ranges.

Er, are we talking about same order of magnitude here? I notice that in USA, notably on food packaging, "Calories" (captalised) equals "thousand calories" (lower case). Elsewhere (including Japan), it seems that the kCals is used, avoiding confusion capitalisation.

Yes, a muffin is usually 300+ Calories or kCals and running a mile is ~100 Calories or kCals depending on your speed and weight.

North Americans typically just use Calories for food and excerise contexts. Small c calories is really just used for science.

Also said as “you can’t outrun the fork…”

>The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are upkeep related and this upkeep does not change significantly based on our diet.

Apparently it does if you went on too many yoyo diets. Look up reverse dieting to increase your sustaining calorie level again, it works in both directions. Its more or less the efficiency with which your metabolism functions

I liked Jeff Nippards Video with Eric Trexler on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiYJW9pViaM https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Trexler

From 2019

> dieticians and physical therapists are demonstrably, profoundly unreliable sources

They're certainly far better sources than unqualified randos on the Internet being that they're educated in specifically this. If you don't agree with that, then you're epistemology is completely broken. Of course, it doesn't mean they're right, but it does mean they're the best first approximation for someone who isn't themselves an expert.

The claim was about where this information is propagated, so don't start fighting with me about whether it's true or not, which I specifically did not make a claim on. Your original claim about who is propagating this information is just false. You're disagreeing with experts, not just "people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more than they think." It doesn't mean you're wrong, but it means you think you know better than people trained in this specifically, which you may or may not, throwaway09223.

I think you don’t much about how this works. The reason the body doesn’t just do this all the time is because when you lose weight in this mode your body begins to break down fat and eventually muscle. This is not a desired state for your body. These processes are far less efficient. And as noted in this article the body can reduce power in many ways to dampen the impact of these more inefficient and damaging processes. It’s advantageous to burn more calories when they are readily available.

These effects have been pretty well studied and while there are some small changes the body can make they are not significant. If you eat fewer calories you will lose fat.

"when you lose weight in this mode your body begins to break down fat and eventually muscle. This is not a desired state for your body. "

For the average american this is a highly desirable state. Almost all of us would be much healthier with a reduced calorie diet, with our bodies breaking down our excess fat.

The effect of muscle loss is overstated. There are many obese and out of shape people who paradoxically point to "muscle loss" as a reason for not eating healthy, but people who actually understand muscle -- bodybuilders -- are very familiar with bulking and cutting cycles. This is a very well understood dynamic.

Cutting yes, but note that cutting involves a very high protein diet in conjunction with continuing to lift weights. If a bodybuilder/powerlifter just stops eating and lifting, or even just stops eating, they will lose a large amount of muscle mass and/or strength along with the fat.

> For the average american this is a highly desirable state.

Poster means from an evolutionary point of view, not a societal/modern individual point of view.

Something very similar is claimed by Dr Mike Israetel. Specifically: after a prolonged period of a calorie deficit spontaneous activity (non-exercise active thermogenesis, NEAT) like walking around decreases, which accounts for a decent chunk of calories. On top of that the accumulated fatigue makes it difficult to train at high enough intensities to maximize muscle sparing. The end result is less weight loss, and less of that being fat.

His recommendation is that fat loss phases are kept at 6-12 weeks with a few weeks of maintenance to dump both physical and psychological fatigue and to resensitize for the next day loss phase.

So "decreased metabolism" is bunk, but as a model[1] it does a decent job of suggesting the correct action to take. Assuming calories are in fact under control: you're definitely right that a lot of people have essentially no idea how much they're eating.

[1][eta: after enough time on a deficit, or just a great enough deficit, calorie expenditure spontaneously decreases without much recourse other than going back to calorie balance for a while]

> if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would by default

Don't suppose you see the article you're commenting on.

No, this is called homeostasis— the ‘set point’ or 'settling point' idea. Your body only sees weight loss as a threat to survival and tries to achieve a balance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6039924/

I don't have citations so this is entirely armchair, but, a few hundred kcal under your maintenance is fine for weight loss, going too far below that is a crash diet; going back or above your maintenance needs then will lead to your body storing extra, because it believes times are bad.

One issue is that people go overboard with dieting, then any excess hits double. The other issue is that they go from one diet to the next, without ever establishing a stable baseline. You shouldn't try to lose weight if you don't even have a stable baseline yet.

> if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would by default

TIL that underclocking is apparently not a real thing, and also that the results that the scientists are seeing in the linked study are impossible.

The article literally suggests the opposite? Are you a GPT-3?

This diet trick does exist and it’s called eating eggs. :) The protein and fat in conjunction with leptin are highly satiating and are easier and cheaper to feed than the macros and chemicals individually.

I think satiety is way under talked about by people discussing weightloss.

From personal experience nothing made as much difference. I counted calories but switching to high satiety foods made it quite a lot easier.

High fiber foods take a lot longer to digest so make you full longer. Warm oats and pears are a great example.

https://www.fortitudenutritioncoaching.com.au/blog/satiety-h... is a reasonable overview.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/ is a satiety index of common foods which is really useful.

Eggs are completely non-satiating to me. I eat 20 eggs in one sitting and I feel hungry.

Well, not all of us can be Gaston. Most people cannot do that regularly without feeling full much sooner, and even you are better served eating those eggs than trying to feel full from massive quantities of starches.

20 eggs in one sitting?

Surely this is exaggeration?

I make a three egg omelette a few times a week, and it's quite filling. I could probably do six eggs without making myself sick, but not a dozen and definitely not 20.

> 20 eggs in one sitting? Surely this is exaggeration?

No, this is not an exaggeration. For reference, I am 1.73m and 65kg. When I eat eggs, in whatever form, boiled, fried, etc, I can keep eating them until my stomach is physically full, which takes about 20 eggs, but even then I still feel hungry and non satiated.

I've been trying to replace other things I eat with eggs, for the supposed health benefits, but I can't, eggs simply don't provide any satiation to me. And no, I don't eat massive quantities of other foods, it's mostly eggs I have this problem with. I can eat a single slice of home-made sourdough bread with a simple pate, and I feel much more satiated than after 20 eggs.

This is incredible.

(for lazy americans, this person is 5'8" / 143lb)

Like you, I have three egg omelettes a few times a week. The mental image of someone eating twenty eggs and still being hungry made me laugh out loud.

Reminds me of a story from my wife's grandmother

She was a doctor and had an obese patient who was struggling to lose weight, he complained that he had changed his diet to be very healthy but it still didn't help

gm: "ok let's start with breakfast, what do you usually eat?"

patient: "oh, just a plain omelette - I don't even use butter or oil!"

gm: "ok that sounds good, tell me exactly how you prepare it"

patient: "well, I crack 12 eggs into a pan..."

Apparently they saw they were sold by the dozen and thought that was the suggested serving size

I once saw this documentary where a guy ate 50 in an hour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Hand_Luke

> I’ve read that there are limits to how much weight you can lose per week, no matter how much you restrict your caloric intake.

I've been fasting here and there and I'm down from 130Kg to 98Kg in about 5 months. Apparently your body handles that sense of deficiency better if you fast vs multiple small meals. Something about that large meal letting you experience the "I'm so full" feeling.

There's a study in the NEJM where they tested 3 meals a day vs one. The participants ended up at the same weight at the end, but with smaller waists and less belly fat for one meal a day.

It's all interesting albeit frustrating stuff...

Edit: https://sa1s3.patientpop.com/assets/docs/151222.pdf

I might be remembering the results wrong as I can't find the details in that study, I'm going off this video mainly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thgVz3837l0

If I'm wrong about the results it seems the other benefits make it worthwhile anyway, preventing diabetes etc

My own personal experience with fasting has shown that I can be quite functional without food. However, I can't really learn. So while I could code a whole day I couldn't read a new programming book.

Weight loss is such a well explored topic with high commercial demand that anything you've thought of has probably already been done. As far as drugs to speed up weight loss there's DNP, which actually works. It's justifiably banned though because it is easy to overdose on and die from overheating. Not a good way to go.

Morbidly obsese can just water fast. /r/fasting on Reddit is full of success stories.

There's also semaglutide, which was recently approved for weight loss. It's quite safe and reasonably effective, though using it currently requires a once-weekly injection and your insurance may not cover it.

(Rybelsus is a version of semaglutide available in tablet form, but it hasn't officially been approved for obesity yet.)

Just use a cheat day. This will help to keep the metabolism up and also psychological, because if you got desire to eat X, just put it on the cheat day list and eat it at that day. (If you keep fulfill your desires at the cheat day regularly, u develop trust in your list, which makes it even more effective).

You shouldn't go under 1 cheat day a week. See 4 hours body book for sources.

That probably won't work for everyone. Personally, the times I've had to diet down to a lower bodyweight, I find it MUCH easier to maintain that diet with 100% adherence. If I just abstain from calorically dense foods entirely, and mentally remove those things from the list I consider food, it's MUCH, MUCH easier for me to maintain the prescribed diet.

Otherwise, I will crave those foods. But if I just create a wall in my brain where I no longer consider such things food, it's way easier for me to stick to with way less willpower. It's like my brain recalibrates and shifts the whole baseline to a healthier level, rather than having to use willpower alone to keep my eating where it needs to be.

At the levels most people will be dieting, around 500 calorie deficit per day or less, you will wipe out an entire week of dieting with one cheat meal. This is how people stay fat. Cheat meals are idiotic and unsustainable. Just stop eating crap, and deal with it. Once per month if you must.

You’re implying a cheat meal of 7 x 500 = 3500 kcal. That’s… a lot.

It's a lot, but completely possible (Johnny Rocket's Bacon Cheddar double burger 3500kcal, Cheesecake factory Breakfast burrito 2730kcal, Sonic Pineapple upside down shake 2020kcal). These are one off dishes/items.. combined with a starter or dessert, snacking, or a "cheat day" you can exceed.

It's really not that much when you're fat. A Domino's medium pizza is over 1600 calories and I can eat that as a thin person. Add in soda, dessert, etc. And if you have a 'cheat day' which is a common pattern, then it's trivial.

I used to eat a medium pizza from there... after eating nothing the entire day. I do think it depends on what your cheat days look like, but I'd struggle to get anywhere near 3500 calories.

Yes, I know that Cheesecake Factory & such have some high calorie foods on the menu as a sibling comment mentions. I also know that I avoid that place like the plague because I hate wasting food and I can't even eat half of most of their dishes. The few times I have gone, I literally looked at the calories listed on the menu to find suitable items that I wouldn't end up wasting.

There's research in neurodietetics, for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105244/

I can't quite tell how strong each and every paper in the field is, nor would this be the place to do it, but what I recognize as their foundational observation that Holocaust survivors brains were roughly the same size as of normally fed people, while other organs shrunk, is quite striking.

I've noticed that when I'm tired mentally, closing my eyes for a while even if I don't sleep makes me feel better. I wonder if that's related by letting that part of the brain power down for a bit?

Yeah. Maybe my mom’s claim that she was just resting her eyes was valid. We always suspected she was unwilling to admit she was napping.

It’s leptin rescue for mice in torpor. Likely no applicability to humans.

That seems particularly important. Leptin is naturally released by fat cells, so I wonder how this would have impacted overweight mice, who may have already been naturally releasing this leptin - assuming that's how leptin works.

But also, no one should be fasting and eating nothing - they should make sure they're getting the necessary vitamins and minerals. Taking more leptin could make sense.

I read that the differences between metabolism speeds are nearly insignificant. Is where somewhere I can go to understand more about that? The general understanding between "fast" and "slow" metabolism seems to be a magic used to rationalize anything about the body, while one of my golden rules is to never trust any scale that lacks a base unit.

> while one of my golden rules is to never trust any scale that lacks a base unit.

BMR is a very real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

> It is reported in energy units per unit time ranging from watt (joule/second) to ml O2/min or joule per hour per kg body mass J/(h·kg).

There has been plenty of research into this, see this study into the variance among people for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15534426/

If you do the math, you'll find that the resting number of calories people burn will vary by a few hundred per day based on their metabolism.

I agree that there is too much woo around the science of weight loss but at the same time we don't need to act like there aren't real facts that we do know.

I asked and you delivered. I wasn't claiming there was an absence, I'm claiming that the general understanding isn't quantifying anything.

Thanks, this looks like a good starting point.

Yes, Leptin is the reason why cheat meals every 4 days are a win.

Note : i absolutely loved the book of "Tom Venuto - Burn the fat, feed the muscle".

Or they could water fast (under medical supervision). After a couple of days they won't feel the need to eat. They will lose a ton of weight.

> I’ve read that there are limits to how much weight you can lose per week, no matter how much you restrict your caloric intake. Beyond a certain point, your body senses the deficiency and decreases your metabolism.

The point is that there's a distinct physiological difference between no calories and some calories

That’s only true to a certain extent. After a certain point, no calories just equals rapid fat burning

No, not just fat, but all kinds of tissue including muscle.

Muscle is only burned when you are out of fat.

This is very much not true; I lost over 100lbs and saw the evidence in myself, before I adjusted and started eating a high protein low calorie diet. If you don't consume protein and don't work out, you will lose muscle mass, even if you have fat to burn. This is because muscle tissue is expensive to maintain; the body tends to reduce it if it's not being used.

This is not true at all. There's perhaps a preference toward fat but muscle wasting absolutely occurs during fasting, and often at a relatively significant rate.

If you were to "run out of fat" entirely, you'd simply die with fairly significant caloric reserves in the form of muscle. This is not what is observed.

your body is constantly using protein to maintain your muscle. When you starve your body of protein, you lose the ability to maintain your muscle, and your body begins to lose muscle as well, even though it does a bunch of stuff to try to stave that off.

Right. So you're not actually burning muscle - instead of fat - per se. Instead muscle wastes as the body isn't maintaining it.

While it's not a controlled study, History Channel's "Alone" (reality survivalist show) always touches on lack of food and its affects.

This just seems like a roundabout way of saying: water fasting results in loss of muscle and fat tissues. By the internal logic of this thread, and since I don’t see any way to intake protein on a water diet, where is the nuance?

they're splitting the hair between "muscle wasting" and "burning muscles". I don't know if its a question of internal logic or not. They are separate things, and when you fast your body does some stuff with HGH (which can skyrocket hundreds of percents) which I've read is supposed to reduce some of the expected muscle loss.

They're technically correct, the best kind of correct (?)

We completely agree - I was forcing myself to be less blunt, frankly. Well put.

The gist of my point is, the body can't use muscle as a replacement for fat. The best it can do is not invest in muscle upkeep, and redirect that energy / resources elsewhere.

I also tried water fasting. Lost both fat and muscle (and I still have plenty of fat)

This isn't true. Your metabolism does slow down but it never slows down 1 cal per cal of food restriction. You always lose more weight the less you eat.

I don’t understand this obsession with finding secret tricks to dieting. The root problem is the abundance of cheap, overly processed food being advertised to people with a lack of willpower. Until we tackle those core problems, everything is pointless, because finding a workaround means enabling yet more of the bad behaviour.

Advertising is only part of the problem, as is accessibility and price. You don't grow obese by eating a candy bar once a week, you have to turn your unhealthy food consumption into a pattern and patterns of behaviour are inherently difficult to change.

You can remove all advertising for candy and fast food and most people will still not lose any weight. At best you'll prevent new obesity cases by a tiny margin.

When actively trying to lose weight, the body and mind resist. Partially because change is hard, partially because you're running your bodies on fewer calories on purpose. There is the ever present feeling of "I could go for a quick snack but I really really shouldn't".

I don't believe there will ever be this One Secret Trick That Doctors Hate to losing weight (except for getting dangerously ill, perhaps). However, if research like this can lead to ways to reduce some of the symptoms of cutting calories, I think the world might become a lot healthier.

There is also always the risk of this being exploited, of course; I'd imagine some less than humane leaders would be all to pleased if their working populace wouldn't be complaining about hunger all the time. The brain exhibits this behaviour for a reason, probably a good one, and surpressing it willy-nilly can only end in disaster.

The “trick” is to eat whole foods that will make you feel full even when eating less.

"people with a lack of willpower"

Well, people who lack willpower still want to solve their weight problem. They can't use willpower because they don't have it. This is why they look for secret tricks.

Not so complicated.

Solution to weight problem that I found is simple, even if somewhat expensive: dietary catering (as in: having ready-made meals delivered to your doorstep).

The problem isn't usually quantity of food, but quality. Having 5 pre-packaged, healthy, low GI meals delivered makes it quite easy to follow the diet. Also, you don't even have to reduce calorie intake in the beginning: feel free to order 2500-3000 calorie option, if you so wish. You won't be losing any weight on that, but at least your metabolism, your glucose levels will stabilize. Then, after 2-3 weeks adjustment period, change your calorie intake to 1500 calories and continue for another month or two - the results are almost magical.

I wonder if it would make sense to have the government heavily subsidize healthy, low GI, low calorie density meal preparation and delivery, bringing it down to the cost of the cheapest junk food?

I imagine it would be expensive, but only as expensive as food and delivery of it, and would reduce much more expensive health care costs, right?

I've had similar results! At first when I tried monitoring my diet, I assumed that 2600 calories/day with exercise would be good enough, but I was only losing ~1lb/month. It did make it way easier for me to transition to 1.5-2k calories though, I'm not sure I could've done that from the start.

And it's definitely easier to feel satisfied off low cal food if it's nutritious - smoothies with protein powder and greens? Filling and diet friendly (esp if no milk). Water? Low cal, but you'll definitely still feel cravings.

There are so many different ways to address mindfulness around eating. I'm glad you found one that works well for you! I'm a big fan of meal prep and portion control. Casual servings often end up being several times larger than necessary. I agree with you that practicing deliberate portioning is really important.

Another big issue is condiments. It's really easy to add a few tbsp of dressing to an otherwise healthy meal, which can add a few hundred "hidden" calories.

I don't believe you don't understand why people would want to find easier ways to lose weight.

You’re trying to treat cancer with bandaids

If there were a bandaid cure for cancer, we’d use it.

Absolutely. But there isn't a bandaid for either cancer or obesity.

Of course there isn't. That's why we're still looking for one.

Looking for easy solutions is very understandable, re: the original topic.

+1. People seem to think that, since they had to suffer through diet and exercise to lose weight, everyone else should have to suffer equally; for some reason people think it's "unfair" to lose weight through e.g. medications. This makes no sense, and it isn't consistent with how we treat any other illness.

Being fat isn’t an illness in the same sense as we normally define it. It’s a conscious decision making process that is self-inflicted. It’s lazy to turn to medication just because the real method is difficult. Most medication has side effects, deal with the root issue instead

1. By your logic, is type 2 diabetes also not an illness, since it's caused by excess sugar consumption?

2. Why is it wrong to solve problems the easy way? Why should people have to follow the "difficult" path of dieting if an easier method exists? That's not being lazy, it's being smart by avoiding unnecessary effort.

3. Many diets also have side effects (e.g. hunger, fatigue). But regardless, if people would rather experience side effects from medication than go through the difficult experience of dieting, why is that wrong?

1. Ok sorry, I’m not trying to rigorously define what an illness is, I’m just saying obesity is categorically different because it’s self inflicted and reversible

2. It isn’t wrong in every situation, just in this particular one the motivating factor is lack of willpower, prioritization and education. There isn’t an “easy way” as of right now. If one comes along it will also likely carry side effects

3. Its usually ill-informed because the difficulty of dieting is a known one and steps can be taken to alleviate or bypass these issues. Usually medication with outsized effects have proportional side-effects. And we don’t always know what they are. I don’t leave out the possibility that someone could invent a pill that causes huge weight loss with little side-effects, but I would bet a lot of money against it

"I’m just saying obesity is categorically different because it’s self inflicted and reversible"

I encourage you to examine the implicit judgement and bias within this statement. When you say "self inflicted," are you suggesting that people should simply exercise willpower and change their behaviors? What if they cannot, either because they do not know how, or because there are related psychological problems intersecting with their weight issues?

Is depression self-inflicted? What about depressive eating patterns, resulting in weight gain? We know that being overweight is almost universally disliked. We know that most people expend great amounts of time and money on ineffective solutions.

Saying "it's self inflicted" ignores that most overweight people are not able to solve their eating disorder. It's inaccurate, in exactly the same way that it would be inaccurate to dismiss depression as "self-inflicted." Food is tied to very deep motivators within the human brain. Empirically we can very clearly see that most people are not capable of resolving these issues on their own. Generally speaking, it's a symptom of a psychological disorder.

You’re right it’s a bit harsh. I admit I don’t fully understand the reason why obese people can’t climb out of the hole they’ve dug. It’s psychological like you said but also societal (food is becoming less nutritious, as well as readily available empty caloric foods). If people lack the ethic to revert course then we need to start fixing the underlying issues causing people to overeat to such an extent in the first place.

I still think it’s helpful for people to know that their weight issues are usually fixable as long as they have the determination and desire, there’s people that do this every day and share their journey

Sure, finding the right method to solve an issue is important. I agree fixes with their own problems (medication) shouldn't be viewed as a panacea.

Hey, have a good one!

> It’s a conscious decision making process that is self-inflicted.

I doubt very many people make a deliberate conscious decision to gain excessive amounts of weight, especially if they're dieting. You can argue that people should be making a conscious decision to navigate the labyrinth of data, misinformation, scammers, etc to try to learn what they actually need to do to lose weight successfully but I think most people just eat what they like best from what's available when they feel like eating and are more often than not surprised at the weight they gain. Even animals in research labs on strictly controlled diets who have had the same food intake and lifestyle for decades have been unexpectedly gaining weight.

I think it's safe to say that there's a lot more going on with weight gain than lazy people making a conscious decision to be fat and a lot more involved in losing that weight. Anyone can starve themselves, but loosing weight while staying healthy isn't always so simple. Changing a person's habits and lifestyles aren't always simple either. If medications can help, people should absolutely use them.

We have band-aids for both.

Both cancer and weight loss are filled to the brim with pills that do absolutely nothing.

Thousands of expensive treatments, no cure (for cancer at least, I believe the weight loss pill industry os 100% fraudulent).

Saw some pill adverts the other day at a restaurant as the tv played. The pill promised to help lose weight without diet or exercise.

At the end of the commercial it was explicitly stated it workwd if used in conjunction with diet and exercise.

This is what the US has become.

> Thousands of expensive treatments, no cure (for cancer at least,

Immunotherapy is pretty damn close to a cure, with very few side-effects. It costs a couple of hundred quid a session to administer, which of course costs the patient nothing.

Not in the US. Here it's almost certainly a death sentence, and unless you are rich it will most certainly bankrupt your entire family.

What on earth are you on about? The US has the highest rates of cancer survival in the world.

Edit on top because this is very close to me and makesy blood boil.

Right now this is what's going on. My best friend John lives with his grandmother Connie who raised him. Last November, so 7+months now, she found out she has lung cancer. Doesn't smoke, but that doesn't matter.

Connie is the sweetest woman and reminds me of my Grandma. Not a mean bone in her body, would do anything for you.

She had to wait ~4 months to get the referral from her doctor. Once she had that she could begin oncology.

3 months later she still can't get an appointment. Connie has tried and called repeatedly, as has John and his other family members.

They are broken watching her waste away, and she can't even get in to begin assessment much less treatment.

So tired of people with statistics which can be and are gamed, or people with money and insurance assuming everyone does.

Connie is going to die, she knows this, and her last few months are nothing but terror and frustration and sadness all around.

Original comment+My 3 family members who died to cancer. Being in the cancer wards and oncology centers and getting to know lots of patients.

This is the reality. If you have money and insurance cancer will break you. If you have nothing it is almost a guaranteed death sentence.

But hey, you've got a statistic!

Response to the edit:

Yeah that sucks, but your experience doesn't define the broader landscape.

I had a sister with cancer, and we were very, very poor when she was diagnosed. She still managed to get treatment and make a full recovery, albeit we did end up with a good deal of medical debt. Nonetheless, she lived.

Why does your anecdote carry more weight than mine? It doesn't. I understand you're going through a very difficult time but the solution is not to deny statistics and established facts in favor of your poor experience. People die, it sounds like your family is genetically predisposed to lethal cancers.

Yes as it happens statistics are more accurate than anecdotes, especially if they're well documented and proven like this one.

Cancer isn't trivial to treat, people are going to die from it. Just, less people in America compared to other countries.

You're basically saying "Well I know people that died from this very lethal disease here in the US, therefore other countries must be so much further ahead". Which isn't really logically coherent.

The metaproblem is that you're thinking of this as a systems problem, the people who irk you are thinking of it as isolated—an isolated closed-box test, no less.

Like, most people in this discussion would not think of mental-health therapy as a diet plan, but if you're thinking in terms of the systems involved then that seems more likely to generate more weight loss than any fad diet over a long run.

It's just really tempting to be reductive.

> most people in this discussion would not think of mental-health therapy as a diet plan

Absolutely.

"Just eat less" is not a viable strategy for a parent working 60-70 hours per week who needs to eat a high calorie diet, among other unhealthy practices, just to stay barely functional to support their family.

Or someone who is so exhausted by their work just to keep a roof over their head that they have no mental energy to think about shopping for different food, preparing it, and so on.

I have more energy and can work more hours since I switched to a Keto diet.

I think it's probably the other way around: you fix your diet first, and mental health will improve as a result.

> eat a high calorie diet, among other unhealthy practices

Eating a high-calorie diet is not unhealthy.

It often isn't lack of will power, but other issues. Nobody wants to be overweight or obese, but people suffer from all sorts of other issues that make it harder for them to get their life in order.

I dunno man, I've been super fat all my life, except in college when I decided to get in shape

I developed a healthy diet and healthy habits, and was able to get down to a healthy weight.. but staying there required a constant influx of willpower. If I only ate enough food to stay at a low weight, I was hungry all the time. (Eventually I ballooned back out, although now I'm losing weight again since I've realized that Morbid Obesity is no place for old men)

I think there is a systems issue at work. My body is just calibrated to hog food until it gets pretty fat, and then it'll stay there unless I do something out of the ordinary.

Telling fat people to get their shit together can work, the same way telling poor people to learn to code works. (I don't think that thin people are thin because they're hungry all the time and they overpower those urges, the same way poor people aren't necessarily all bad people who piss away all their money)

I agree with this. As a non overweight person I don't feel hungry all the time.

However, I don't think it is genetics can explain why the obesity rate has exploded in recent decades.

Seeing friends and family members that are overweight, they tend to have some similar habits. They consume a lot of liquid calories, ie sodas, fruit juice, sugar in coffee etc. They also eat calorie dense foods, ie ranch dressing, fast food, cookies while consuming fewer fruits and vegetables. They also tend to not consume as much protein and are usually fairly sedentary.

I don't think blaming individuals does much good, but at the same time I don't think some people are just doomed to be fat. If everyone around you is eating healthy non calorie dense food and walking a lot you probably will too. Conversely if everyone around you is eating high quantities of processed food while being sedentary you probably will too.

Yeah this aligns pretty well with the research.

There's a lot we don't know. But it definitely does appear that a lot of obese people have some sort of homeostatic miscalibration on where their body's set point is for weight. The mechanisms involved there are numerous and complex. It's quite possible that there's something simple going on that could be adjusted in the future to get a person's weight set point down, and from there it's quite likely that they will be able to autoregulate. Conversely, it's really hard for any intervention to succeed long-term when a person's weight doesn't match this internal set point.

> some sort of homeostatic miscalibration

Possibly leftovers of a highly adaptive mechanism that let some of their ancestors survive times of extreme famine?

That's at least partially true, but there are serious issues with that explanation if you want to explain all of the effect. In particular, there really does appear to be something different going on in the last 2-4 decades or so affecting people's internal set points. When you compare to other recent historical times where there was also an abundance of food, people were self-regulating better than they are now.

There actually is a fix for your particular issue (and indeed this would help many people).

You just need to eat nutritiously dense, high fiber foods that have low caloric density to fill you up.

So a diet heavy in vegetables and whole foods would keep you full without keeping you at a heavier weight.

This would allow you to maintain a caloric deficit to get to your goal weight without going hungry, and once you get to your goal weight you can just reintroduce other foods that are more calorically dense if you'd like.

There's a subreddit filled with examples of this kinda thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/Volumeeating/

Thanks man. I did notice that when I moved to Japan for a few years, I lost a pretty decent amount of weight just from the different habits

I'll check that out for sure.. right now I'm in the honeymoon phase of dieting, where I can lose weight by just switching from sugary soda to sparkling water and staying away from American restaurants

It's quite simple to understand. An individual has a much greater control over their diet and activity than they do over the multifaceted forces that have lead to the current food situation in the West.

If you find a secret trick to dieting, it literally could not matter less that you are "enabling yet more of the bad behavior". Being thin isn't some magically ennobling activity, and the only reasons one might prefer weighing less are practical (health, comfort, appearance, etc depending on the person). A hypothetical magic diet pill would solve 100% of these issues, and would in fact render tackling those core problems useless. Does such a pill exist? Well obviously not, but that's a very different claim from the one you made.

After moving tk the USA I was shocked to find that fast food (mcD, burger king, etc) was cheaper than buying fruit and vegetables. In South Africa anything that tastes good costs a lot more money, so you're naturally more inclined to eat healthy - or eat nothing but meat, which is how my demographic solved that problem. Also, try and find granola or cereal without sugar, corn syrup, or dextrose (low fat or sugar free products all seem to contain dextrose, which is like "super sugar", congrats food industry on selling that one.)

I doubt that lack of willpower is often the issue. Even a slightly more efficient metabolism can lead to 5 lbs per year of additional weight with no increase in caloric consumption. That adds up quickly.

Properly balancing caloric efficiency at a young age is probably far more effective long term and honestly likely more pragmatic.

I don't understand the obsession with not seeking effective medical solutions over impossible solutions that feel moral like changing human nature or society to be less obesogenic.

Even if you eat healthy food you still need willpower to prevent yourself from eating too much. But it's a easier problem

Tackling the "core problem" of "all life has evolved to build a surplus of energy given a surplus of resources over the course of the lifetime of our universe" feels way harder to solve through willpower than addressing the biology directly.

Someone made an idle, curious comment and you called it an obsession.

Very good points, I'm saving that text in my library