Hacker News Reader

Comment by Joof | Hacker News Reader

After dieting for about a week, I became accustomed to it and no longer feel hungry. I actually feel a little sick if I eat anywhere near as much as I used to. Lost 20 pounds in the last 2 months, which honestly might be a bit too fast, but it's hard to complain.

I like to cook and eat a pretty wide variety of food which helps. Dal Bhat (lentils with curry spice eaten by Tibetan mountainers) has become one of my staples. Strength training is also important, but I don't expect to get stronger; just maintain. I still drink a fair amount of beer 1-3 days a week and occasionally eat poorly with friends (maybe every other week), but it hasn't seemed to be a big problem.

View on HN

If you tried anything for 2 months please don't talk about results. Talk about results in 2 years. Most people don't make it over 6 or 12 months. Also look for having experienced at least one life shaking event and still be on it a month or two later. That kind of event would having your dog die, losing your job, being for some reason required (and unwilling) to move to another town/country, having a wife/gf break up with you, etc.

Without sufficient time investment and having been through situations where you simply don't have discipline for a few months, anything you do has no value and no proof. Because if you fail in these two terms you will end up with more weight than before your attempt.

I suppose that's fair.

However; it doesn't really feel like discipline -- it's just how I eat at this point. I can report back in a few months, I imagine I'll have to start working my way back to eating enough to gain strength again around then. I experienced an event to the scale of my dog dying last month, but I imagine a divorce could be somewhat more taxing.

I don't think your challenge will be discipline, willpower or handling stress but simply overcoming the body's hormonal response to dieting.

I have frequently cut bf for sports using a range of diets (keto, low fat, IF). I actually enjoy dieting - the precision, the discipline, the visible progress, going to bed every night "a winner" etc. When dieting I don't crave junk and the hunger pains quickly go away... however, after 16 weeks on a strict diet when my bf approaches 10%, that is when I get ambushed by a terrible appetite for junk. I will wake up at 02:00 with a knawing craving for donuts or other foods that I don't even enjoy. I won't be able to sleep and have to lie there for hours fantasising about them. I can brute force my way through it for a couple of miserable months but the appetite stays until I have regained bf at which point I lose interest in junk food again.

You are on the easy bit for now but the consequence of fat loss is that at some point, your body will flip the ghrelin switch and you will become an unstoppable eating machine until you have yoyo'd back to or beyond your starting position. In my experience, the rebound is related to time and bf rather than the actual dieting method. Its probably genetic, i.e. some people won't experience this but I think most do which is why most attempts at fat loss don't stick.

I wish I could up vote your comment more! have been on off diets for many years and I recognize this pattern. though I do not need to reach bf 10% in order to get the appetite :(

I feel if I eat lunch before the gherlin hits hard my mood is much better in the afternoon.

Maintaining sub 10% bodyfat sounds like quite a task. I'm sure some athletes can do it. I'm probably just below 20% and hadn't exercised until roughly 2 months before starting a diet (started strength training), so I have some wiggle room. Even so, people like myself seem to have difficulty maintaining the loss after the fact, which concerns me.

My suspicion is that There's so much conflicting information on weight loss that I'm not sure if it will work, but my plan is to start tapering off the diet 50-100 calories a week as I approach that point to determine my new maintainence intake and maybe speed metabolism back up.

However; after a little research, I think my current diet may be succeeding (in short-term) largely from a large increase in resting metabolism from strength training (and no longer eating a surplus to build that muscle).

It would be great to see how your life continues. I certainly read everything here about weight loss.

I'd like to reflect a bit on your notice how stress relates to weight gain. In my personal case I noticed a while ago that "usual" day-to-day stress in the office or at home indeed increases my willingness to eat more. But! The extreme stress, like falling in love or really deep shit at work make my feeling of hunger disappear. Last two month I have one of these situations and I lost almost 30 pounds (I'm obese person, my "normal" weight is 230 pounds). My food preference have changed - instead of high-carb I switched to carbs only at breakfast, low fat at lunch and dinner food, almost unconciosly. Though as my life gets back to normal now, I feel that the hunger creeps back and maybe adding some fat to my meals would help to keep from the spiralling downward into usual high-carb diet.

You are right, extreme stress makes you lose weight as long as it occurs. But it also makes you drop a bunch of your daily routines. Or at least that's what it does for me. The most successful run at weight loss for me was completely destroyed when I went to another country for a year of exchange studying. In that time other things were more important and after that I never picked up my habbits from before again, sadly.

A big life event can be used to great effect (and for giving up smoking). Once you get through it (and it's never quite as hard as you fear), you demonstrate to yourself that nothing can stop you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com