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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

Is there a person left on this earth that hasn't heard that obesity puts you at greater risk of a bad case of covid?

I agree that maybe health officials could use this as a good opportunity to encourage people to lose weight. But let's be realistic, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to lose serious weight. And don't we all know that harping on it even more will make very little difference?

I had a conversation with a group of friends and the comment came up that unvaccinated people were creating a serious burden on the healthcare system. Someone else said that obese people are putting the real burden and that is where we should focus out effort.

Both statements are true, but only one of those problems can be solved in literally a few minutes with a single shot that is already paid for by the government. I think we need to go for the low hanging fruit first when we are dealing with a global pandemic.

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No, it doesn't take a lot of effort to lose weight. Cut out sugared drinks for a start. How does drinking water instead of sugary crap take effort? Then stop shoving candy into your gob. How does that take effort? Then stop eating fast food. Then fast completely one day a week. When your body is accustomed to that, do it two days a week.

It is not hard to lose weight. The truth is, people just don't want to not do the things that make them fat.

Covid has hit those countries hardest that are most obese. Maybe those countries should take a good, hard look at their own, sick cultures and stop trying to export their disease around the world.

You don't even have to swap to water. Sugar free drinks are extremely good replacements for full sugar drinks.

Not so much. Sure, they don’t have the calories, but the human body still responds to them the same way it would to a sugared drink — it produces insulin. But if there wasn’t any sugar in the drink, then you don’t actually need that insulin.

Do that enough over a long enough period of time, and your body starts to become immune to the insulin it produces. And you become a Type 2 diabetic. And as a T2 diabetic, it becomes very easy to put on weight and very hard to lose it.

That’s not the only mechanism for becoming a T2, but it is a key one.

There are some issues with artificial sweeteners, but I don't believe that most of them cause an insulin spike. However, there have been studies indicating that some types of artificial sweeteners may make you more sensitive to real sugar, even in smaller amounts. There are also a lot of hypothesis about affecting gut biome and appetite.

This article from a Dr does a pretty good job of clarifying. https://www.imaware.health/blog/artificial-sweeteners-and-in...

This comment is just plain dumb. Sure the things you mention all help in losing weight.

But going by the fact that many obese people want to lose weight but still cannot do the things you mention shows that they are not easy.

I know it feels good to be judgemental and to sound tough, but you’re helping exactly no one with that attitude.

Why can't they do those things? All of them are easy steps. Sure, they take time, but so does the process of someone dropping a drug dependency.

It sounds a lot as though the obese then suffer a severe addiction if they can't make even small changes to their lifestyle in order to directly save and improve their lives on both short and long term scales.

If that's the case, shouldn't we be pressuring them to get help? Obviously i'm not sure how you feel about alcohol or opiate addictions, but assuming you think we should warn people of the dangers of drug overuse and addiction, shouldn't we do the same for the obese and their addictions?

Also, i am rather genuinely curious on one point:

What makes some people seem to have such a hard time compared to others? How come some people can consume the same food overall, but still maintain the ability to self regulate instead of greatly overeating?

I’m not a doctor or scientist but indeed, I could imagine that psychologically obesity is often similar to a drug addiction.

So yes, help similar to alcohol or drug addicts would likely help a lot.

But that’s the thing. For me it’s easy not to shoot heroin or drink 20 beers. For addicts it’s incredibly hard not to. And not for a lack of wanting to quit; they have a disease, maybe they’re on drugs to alleviate the mental pain of issues from their youth or whatever.

And just like anti drug advice isn’t “well stop putting that needle in your arm, simple isn’t it?”, anti obesity advice isn’t “stop putting that cheeseburger in your mouth”.

Fair perspective. What I felt compelled about is that it seemed like the message was "we shouldn't tell people to stop" simply because they won't comply, whereas to me applying social pressure is a part of the education and prevention, as well as motivating people to stop by annoyance and embarassment.

I'm a little short on time, so I'll also concisely say that at first I referenced addiction almost as if to show similarities and contrasts (i didn't fully consider it a real one), but now on further thought it really does seem like a true addiction...

Human bodies don’t actually work that way, regardless of whatever you might think from your personal anecdotal experience.

Claiming that this is a simple problem simply proves how willfully ignorant you are of the myriad of problems encountered and what kinds of solutions actually work.

If you think it’s so easy, then I suggest maybe you should go lose a few hundred pounds from your current weight, and come back and report to us on how that went.

We can wait.

It absolutely does and I would hazard a guess that you have never needed to lose a large amount of weight after being overweight for a while. First of all, all of those things you listed can be rather addictive. Secondly, you don't need any of those to become overweight. I don't eat candy, I only drink water, and I don't like fast food. But I have needed to lose about 20 lbs for a while now. It is very hard. Though, it was much easier when I was younger. For me at least, maintaining the weight I am at is not hard. But losing or gaining is very difficult.

The human body is very good at conserving mass. I can lose ~5 lbs easily - no problem, which is why maybe skinny people think it's so easy to lose weight. But once you really start cutting beyond a superficial amount, your metabolism starts to fight it. Hunger hormones ramp up, and your metabolic rate at rest starts to fall. Additionally, the lighter you get, the less energy you need to move. Your body goes into a kind of conservation starvation mode. Now the amount of food you are eating each day and have grown accustomed to eating is too much, you have to cut more or increase your workouts.

Add to all this the tons of unknowns about gut microbiome affecting mood, cravings, energy levels and a million other things and all the other factors that can come into play.

The only thing I mentioned that is hard to do (for some people, not for me) is fasting. It is also the most effective for losing fat and for resetting insulin sensitivity. Also, hunger hormones actually decrease over a (moderately extended) fast, and metabolism does not go down significantly.

I'm talking about a zero-calorie fast, just water / black coffee / tea.

The problems you describe apply to low calorie diets, not fasting.

I went from >95 kg to 70 using the methods described above. I held that weight for several years, and I can control my weight up and down by manipulating the number of days a week I fast.

I know that it is possible to consistently, reliably lose fat because I did it, and continue to do it when necessary. Lots of people have done the same.

People are good at finding reasons why they can't lose weight. The truth is, they just don't want to do what is necessary.

The hardest part of fasting is not physical but social. When you fast regularly over years, you experience how weird our culture's relationship with food is.

We do not eat because we are really hungry. We eat to be social or comfort ourselves or because we are bored.

Good on you for finding something that works for you. Hopefully it will continue to work for you. Because as you age, many things change.

Fasting does not work the same way for everyone. Which is why the many studies looking into fasting and weight loss don't show an across the board success and has a lot of variability. In fact, many meta-analysis show that intermittent fasting for 24 hrs up to 2 days a week shows about the same amount of weight loss as regular calorie restriction diets. They also show a similar dropout rate to other diets indicating that it is no easier than say an Atkins diet.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/...

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