That's exactly how I came to lose all the weight I have - I started counting calories which caused me to treat it like a budget. I never deprived myself of what I wanted, but new if I splurged on supper I'd not be able to do as much dessert.

Unfortunately, the body itself is a complex system, and likes to throw curve-balls. Going by some of the things I've read over the years, it's clear the body has defense mechanisms against starvation - such as lowering metabolism and activity levels in lock step with diminished caloric input, or turning you into food-obsessed zombie, hardly capable of a non-food-related thought, until you feed the body enough to cancel red alert. Problem is, for some people, those defense mechanisms seem to kick in before they reach negative energy balance. As simple as calorie counting is, it's not helpful if the body hits the "override" switch before you reach Calories In < Calories Out.

I don't know if there's a solution for this case, but I suspect all the variety of diets is really just people doing a blind search in hopes of finding specific tricks that shut down the defense mechanism in subgroups of individuals.

(In a sense it's like a puzzle game: your goal is to sneak past a security system without raising an alarm. The security system consists of a great variety of sensors of all kinds - but only a random subset of them are in use, configured with random thresholds. Every player gets their own, unique puzzle.)

>lowering metabolism

I believe this has been debunked. Your calories out is a function of calories in (e.g., protein takes more energy to metabolize than, say, glucose), but your body doesn't really downregulate it's metabolism the way it's been touted in the past.

>search in hopes of finding specific tricks that shut down IMO, what consistently works is whatever "tricks" you use to reduce calories below what you burn. For some people, it's eliminating meat. For others, it's eating nothing but meat. For others, it's a flexible approach as long as they count calories. But the main commonality seems to be the reduction of calories (and movement away from the standard american diet).

The nutrition info is "in your face" for a reason. Use it.

How many calories on that bag of chips? On that big cookie you ate? On that fast food sandwich/burger?

On that soda which is 100% empty calories with a high GI?

The biggest fraud in nutrition has been replacing high-caloric food that actually help with satiety (high protein/"high" fat/high fiber content) with sugary crap

Simply ≠ easy.

What to slow/stop/reverse climate change? Simple: "just" reduce carbon output.

I like it because I don’t feel deprived. If I want something, I just fit it into the calorie budget. You pretty quickly learn that potato chips, soda, beer, and candy consume budget quickly and don’t fill you.

Fwiw it is how I and others I know have lost significant amounts of weight. There was a “keto” thread on hn the other day and holy moly was keto/calories in, calories out attacked and rebuked.

Also, our calorie furnaces all work a bit differently. Thermodynamics laws hold, but some of us have far wider margins for how generously our body will burn off or otherwise not hold on to those calories.

That’s always seemed like a nonsensical rebuttal.

Nobody is actually measuring how many calories they burn per day or the actual content of their food down to 4 decimal places, but you can quickly get a baseline based on comparing rates of weight loss and total calories consumed because the difference in died aren’t subtle. If 2100 calories doesn’t work fast enough try 2000...

It doesn't matter if you "have a slow metabolism" or whatever, because that just means you don't get to eat as much as someone else who weighs the same as you.

There are confounding factors so that you can't predict how much weight will be lost by a given calorie deficit. But that doesn't matter.

You will lose weight if you eat less.

I had (and still have to some extent) that same feeling you have but that's not hunger. For me, sometimes it was boredom, sometimes it was routine ("it's 6pm, dinner time!") or just straight up gluttony but that's not real hunger. Want to eat and need to eat are very different.

I'm saying all of this with a bag of cheezits next to me at 12am.

I am not diabetic btw, before hn not a doctor chimes in.

I think it is something to do with high cortisol levels caused by stress. I am currently experimenting with an extreme low carb diet, early results are showing some promise. I am using the better management of blood sugar to eat less early in the day, hoping this will force a lower calorie consumption

Long term weight loss requires you to accept being hungry.

It does but there are degrees of hunger. The hunger I feel in the day before I eat is much easier to deal with than the hunger I feel after I have eaten a meal. The hunger I feel when on a low carb diet is easier for me to deal with than if I have had bread/pasta/sweets.

I'm pretty sure that for me blood sugar levels, insulin, and hormones play a big part.There is an optimum diet and amount/type of exercise for me to feel less hungry and similarly there are foods and activities where I am almost certain to feel ravenously hungry despite eating more calories.

That’s a short term effect. Low carb diets are no more effective long term (3+ years) than calorie restriction.

Most people who lose significant percentage of body weight eventually start dreaming/fantasizing about food etc. It’s possible to push through this and maintain weight loss, but it’s relatively rare.

Just don’t be surprised when it takes the same effort over time to avoid gaining weight again. Because it might take slightly longer to kick in, but the same hunger will be back.

In particular there is a great misunderstanding with respect to the role of exercise. It’s not the calories you burn during the period of exercise, rather it’s the changes to your body that exercise causes that encourage weight loss.

The (over)consumption industry is trying to hammer home a message that basically boils down to 'calories model is not perfect, please do not moderate your consumption'. If forced hey are ok with you consuming 'different', but not with consuming 'less'.

The results can be observed every day on every street.

For example, if you ate gasoline encased in glass marbles, you'd be eating a lot of calories. The body wouldn't use much of it, though!

It's not really widely understood how much the caloric content of our food is actually converted to fat.

I think this is largely a myth. (The 1700 calorie end is vaguely plausible but not the 1300 calorie end). There was a good article posted here a while ago [1] which talked about this.

Now, it isn't necessarily easy to maintain a certain calorie count, in terms of either knowing how much you're eating or actually sticking to it despite hunger pangs. And some foods can help you feel fuller with less, you can have different balance of muscle vs fat at the same weight, etc. In those senses I agree with people who say calories in calories out isn't the whole story. But in the end, thermodynamics always wins.

Quote from the article:

> Starvation Mode is this wacky idea that if you eat too little an amount of calories for an extended period of time your body stops burning fat; in fact, it starts doing the opposite–you start gaining weight ‘even when consuming 800 calories’. Sound familiar?

> So, how much truth is there to this?

> Well, see, Starvation Mode is an odd one. Because, while it’s not entirely correct, it’s not entirely incorrect either.

> 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.

It goes on for quite some time, and it's worth reading, but I'll quote just one more part.

> This British actress was adamant she had a slow metabolism, turned out she was simply misreporting calorie intake.

> When she recorded her food intake via video journal, her intake, according to her, was 1100 calories. When they checked her actual intake (with doubly labelled water) it came to 3000 calories.

> Even when she was keeping a food diary, she misreported by 43%.

[1] https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/ discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31381410

I could do it for a few days but I probably couldn't keep it up for long. I'd throw up probably within a week from gradually basically not being able to keep up. I would still be full from the last one when it came time for the next one, and that would get a bit worse each day.

People are in fact different, and most Americans are like fish that aren't aware of water when it comes to their concept of what is a reasonable amount of food. They are swimming in it all day since birth, and these gross amounts seem normal.

I am thin and energetic. I burn my food. But fairly sedentary and lazy, IE, my job isn't chopping wood all day nor do I ever go to a gym. But I just have nervous energy and am very thin. I'm willing to do active things when there is something to do, I typically go up and down stairs with energy etc. I almost always feel grossly overstuffed after about the 2nd meal if I'm staying with other people and eating on their schedule for more than a day. Normally I just eat one not-large meal late at night and nurse one large (say 14oz) coffee most of the day.

So it's not a slow metabolism, at least as far as most cliche signs appear. When I do eat too much, I don't gain weight much. And yet, I just can not gag down a fraction of what everyone around me eats.

Oh and I'm American too. This isn't coming from an Asian or something when I said Americans. Mostly German & French ancestry. Raised in upper middle class, north east, moved around a out equal parts rural and urban. Basically I was raised in the same environment that I'm saying warped most Americans, and the same quality (good and bad ie processed) and quantity of food was available.

People simply vary and you just can't make many assumptions based on one's own experience.

Wait I just realized something ... unless capitalism has done it's usual thing and hotpockets are much smaller now than the last time I had one. In which case disregard. The more I think about it the more I fear this is entirely likely. :)

If you have that slow of a metabolism then you should either build more lean mass and get more active, which drives up the metabolism, or eat less. One way to eat less without feeling hungry is to eat bulkier food, more fibre, and lower GI foods. Since I started eating pure rye bread I'm much less hungry.

It worked for him

I can imagine it still helps a lot with weight loss, I myself lost ~20lbs a while back counting calories. But like a lot of diets that take some effort to maintain, seems like they probably aren't easy to keep up long term vs. generally eating more healthy and building habits around exercise.

1. calories in / calories out is true when calories are around what you need or below. If you go above, a lot it the excess calories will, for many of us, just leave unused.

2. Many people consume a lot morr calories than they think, but because of 1. it can hide itself.

When some of them cut a lot of calories (not count exactly how many they eat in total, but just cut the sugar Cola and the extra chocolate) they might still be above 0 because of the big breakfast, big lunch and too big dinner.

Eat less food.

Stopped snacking between meals, and ate a salad for dinner a few nights a week. Also, tried to reduce my meal size, in general.

Getting that hungry feeling between meals that I would always satisfy meant I was creating a deficit.

Find something that works for oneself.

Keto works for some people. Just reducing plate size helps for some.

Personally I skip breakfasts (I love breakfast, but it is not worth the brain fog that I personally get later in the day) and most workdays I just drink 1/2L of whole milk, preferably cold.

I get plenty enough energy from dinner and now I can also enjoy some snack in the evening together with my family.

Typically I just drink 0.5L of milk and walk 2-4 km.

For me personally this works well, I don't get hungry either as long as I know I am not going to eat.

This is one of the useful lessons of age: you essentially get to experience living in more than one body within your lifetime. Younger-me would have posted the same confident advice as you did, and it would have seemed just as intuitively obvious - how could it be wrong when I experienced it myself! But in practice for someone with a different metabolism (at any age) it’s deeply unhelpful, even demoralizing.

that’s what my girlfriend said: “Can’t lose weight after a certain age”

She looked at me one day when I was down around 25 pounds and declared “It does work”

Next thing I know, she lost 15 pounds.

When I want to lose wait I just stop eating lunch until I start to feel it makes me sluggish. I can tell I should probably eat but that’s an easy to ignore signal.

My ex girlfriend felt hunger as an all consuming normal activity ending feeling.

Aside from calorie counting, which is very effective, the most important thing I found for avoiding discomfort is to go short on calories earlier rather than later in the day.

I've read surveys on how French women stay thinner on average and it boils down to having just a coffee and cigarette for breakfast and maybe even lunch. Both caffeine and nicotine suppress hunger. I don't recommend smoking, but I rely a lot on coffee sometimes.

And yes, the famous "breakfast of champions" as it used to be known. I don't smoke either but do need several mugs of tea to get me through.

I drink a lot of black tea and use nicotine gums, and my hunger is... enough to keep my weight way higher than I'd like. So either I'm doing it wrong - perhaps it needs to be actual coffee and cigarettes[0] - or... I should never stop, because my baseline hunger must be off the charts.

----

[0] - Wouldn't be the first time people, including scientists, confuse tobacco (a processed product whose consumption involves smoke and complex chemical reactions releasing a lot of biologically active substances) with nicotine (a single chemical that is one of the many things you ingest when smoking).

The appetite-suppressant effect of nicotine is enhanced by caffeine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15955118/)

Conclusion: Caffeine added to nicotine chewing gum appears to amplify its attenuating effects on appetite and the combinations of 1-mg of nicotine with caffeine seem to be well tolerated.

BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.

> BTW, I've found black tea to be not as effective as black coffee as an appetite suppressant.

I wonder what the mechanism of action is for most people. For me, black coffee hardly does anything stimulation-wise, but is an excellent laxative, and half the time makes me feel generally unwell. I suppose these effects do suppress appetite.

Same here. I lost 30 Kg since Jan 2022 when I suffered a heart attack and was installed 2 stents (one more necessary but too risky at the moment). Still need to lose some more weight, although it is becoming more difficult, but counting calories does indeed work. I succeeded only because my soon-to-be wife helped me immensely, or I would have failed miserably if left by myself.

However, if you want to be able to maintain that long-term, you need to figure out what to eat so that you get the right balance of carbs, sugars, fats and protein. If you don't then you're either gonna be continually hungry or malnourished (or probably both).

By using the app long-term I developed a set of recipes (that can be modified so I don't get bored) which make up my foundational diet. This is now sustainable without the app, and without cognitive load or will power.

Yes, I don't think there's anyone that will dispute this. Weight loss is pretty simple.

However, it's definitely not easy. "Just keep your calories below X" is way easier said than done. It's like saying: "Everyone can run an ultramarathon, just keep putting your foot in front of the other until you're there. It's really simple."

As an anecdote, my weight doesn't change much regardless whether I eat 1500 or 3000 calories a day. I'm overweight, but eating 1500 calories is pretty negligible to my weight loss, and I generally have to embark on those more extreme diets to change anything.

For the most part, this is a myth, just like the idea that one's metabolism slows as you age.

What can happen is your behavior modifies. E.g., if you eat more, you unconsciously fidget more and burn more calories.

Most people (even dietitians) are not good at gauging their calorie intake. Unless you are weighing all your portions, it's more likely that measuring error is the culprit, not that you can double your calories consistently and not gain weight.

Not for me. I tried it for about a month, and it was the opposite of fun. I hated having to keep track of everything I ate. I hated trying to figure out how many calories were in homemade meals. I hated measuring things out to know how many servings I was eating.