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.