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Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

I weigh 350 pounds. I'm very obese. I know this.

When I was a teenager, I looked at people who weighed 300+ pounds and though, how do you get that way. Don't you realize that you are gaining weight? Don't you know that you just have to eat less to lose weight?

Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate.

It doesn't even take that much extra food to gain a lot of weight. One extra piece of cake a week is a few pounds in a year. If you live a few years, it adds up. You gain weight in kilograms and lose weight in grams.

Hunger is a sensation that happens inside a person's body and mind. You cannot compare your hunger to my hunger.

So many diets talk about not being hungry while you are on the diet. I've been to dieticians and told them I'm hungry, and they suggest eating more protein or more fiber. That does help, but I still feel hungry.

There is a very good chance that someone is writing a reply with some suggestion as to how I should eat so that I'm not hungry. Thank you for the thoughts, but realize that you don't live in my body, you don't know how I feel, you don't know what I've tried.

Hunger sounds like a problem to people. Hunger feels like a problem inside the body. People still tell me I shouldn't be hungry. Maybe part of the solution is realizing that eating to satisfaction is ... bad for some people. Maybe it's Ok to be a little hungry.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts. I'm down 30 pounds from my max. I think I have a good mentality now, but it took years to get here.

View on HN

> Maybe it's Ok to be a little hungry.

This is the key. On evolutionary time scales, human beings have only very recently come to inhabit a world where regularly being able to eat to full satiation (and beyond) is commonplace. Being "a little hungry" is actually the typical condition under which most of our ancestors over many thousands of years have operated. Put an organism evolved to survive amid scarcity in an environment of abundance, and it's going to gain weight unless it comes up with a method for stopping at or before the earliest signs of satiety.

“Eating less often” is also the primary recommendation given by longevity researcher Dr David Sinclair regarding how we can live longer. Not because it stops you being overweight, but because it triggers hormetic adaptations in the body that ultimately extend your lifespan. So being hungry definitely isn’t bad.

Thanks for sharing. Here's my perspective as a lean person who has no problems literally starving themselves to do other things.

It does indeed sound like your hunger is more intense than my hunger. I think I benefit from a ton of experience in transitioning past "I'm very hungry" to "I'm fine" when I choose not to eat. There's a clear point (for me) when the body just says "oh we're not going to eat now? ok, I'll stop interrupting the brain with 'I'm hungry' signals." It just goes away and I'm no doubt in a caloric deficit.

Some of this is self-discipline, and some of it is an ability to find something more engaging/interesting than eating. If I push past the hunger threshold, it's easy to just not eat for a long stretch of time. Eventually, I notice that I'm extremely physically weak and mentally fatigued (but still not very hungry), and I realize that I have to eat, or it's going to start causing problems.

Anyways, take that for what it's worth.

I have the exact same experience with hunger. I’m only “hungry” for 10-15ish minutes max before the feeling disappears and the next time I eat is also to stave off the physical weakness.

I put “hungry” in quotes because what my overweight friends describe as feeling hungry I have only felt under the influence of marijuana, and what I describe as hungry is what they feel like all day other than right after a meal.

I haven’t found any literature on what drives human appetite that seemed non quackery science, but I’d be very intrigued whenever someone figures out what causes these different experiences

I've been on both ends of this. I was lean throughout college, gradually gained some weight after starting at Google and after a few years I was having trouble functioning after not having eaten for a while. I got some blood work done and everything was normal.

For me personally, I think it was completely driven by my mind. I was stressed while there and became further stressed when my willpower inevitably lost to my biology. Consistent, hard cardio; lowering my stress levels; and (most importantly) acknowledging and accepting that I don't have perfect control over the outcome were key to fixing it.

Another part of my experience is learning to differentiate feelings. I know what you are talking about, and I've felt that too.

It's hard to talk about this without getting circular.

Primary Loop: Hunger -> Eat -> Time -> Hunger -> Eat (loop)

Secondary Loop: Weight Gain -> Notice Weight -> Diet -> Gain (loop)

I don't have a conclusion to this, I'm still trying to figure it out.

In the primary loop hunger keeps you alive.

When you get hungry and eat and feel satisfied, that operates on multiple systems in the brain and body. There are lots of hormones that are flowing and telling body systems to do things and also telling your consciousness what your condition is.

I'm not prepared to talk about the psychology in depth, but I do know that it feels very un-natural to be in a calorie deficit. I know that having low blood sugar makes it very hard for me to think. At times it's felt like my body is telling me I'm going to die and it's been very hard to ignore that feeling.

I’ve never been on a calorie deficit and not been hungry.

Calorie deficits are always a little unpleasant imo. It’s just suffering through that to get to a place where you want to maintain (which is much easier).

I’ve lost 73lbs, 53lbs, 35lbs (different times and gained weight over years in between). Each time the calorie deficit sucked. There is a 3 day hump and two week hump of misery until you get kind of used to it sucking, but I wouldn’t say it’s ever great.

+1. I find drinking water and being hyper focused on a work or personal project distracts me enough from my tummy to get through those humps.

Same here. I've never been obese or anything close to it, but even just eating healthy to maintain my weight or lose a little weight can be unpleasant. That unpleasantness is amplified 3x if I'm spending my days aimlessly as opposed to hyper-focused on activities that put me into flow, e.g. a work project I care deeply about and that requires lots of coding.

This is also my experience -- but I'll also note that it was very subjectively different depending on how stable/appropriately-treated my mental health was at the time. That feeling of the deficit hit very, very different when I was dealing with depression/compulsive tendencies. Right now I'm in a much better place, losing weight at a nice pace, and it's shocking to me how much easier it is than it had been, how much less disruptive to my life. Yeah, the math may always boil down to calories-in-calories-out, but comparing my own subjective experiences, I can definitely believe that the same deficit can cause different amounts of misery for different people.

Hunger seems to be a signal your in a caloric deficit. Thus if you are trying to lose weight and are hungry, your are doing it right!

WHO recently released a report on obesity in europe[1]

Stressing, among other things, that obesity is a chronic disease starting very early in life, indeed even before conception, and cannot be treated as an individual failing.

They also point out that health professionals should focus not on weight loss, but on life long prevention of comorbidities. To which end various treatment options are available. Weight loss may be part of it, but as little as loosing 10-15% maybe enough towards that particular goal.

They mention some drugs that might have an impact on hunger.

Unfortunately, its a disease that is very hard to treat, and for cases of severe obesity, drastic measures like bariatric surgery may be the only option. An option well worth considering in light of the alternative if nothing else works though.

(My personal opinion is that some drastic diet intervention with focus on undoing the epigenetic damage from early life should be possible, and far preferable to the surgery option if at all effective, but the science is still being worked out on that one)

[1] https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-di...

The WHO and many other doctors have decided that widespread personal failings are beyond their purview to fix, and so redefined the definition. People simply refuse to take personal responsibility, and in the face of this the doctors are trying to help. Make no mistake: this is a personal failing and a societal failing. Just because a large percentage of people choose to fail does not make it any less of a failure.

Thats one possibility. Or it could be the things in the report and the hundreds of cited papers. I guess time will tell.

Or it could be the things in the hundreds of papers from before 2005, when normalizing obesity was not politically expedient. All you have to do is live in any east Asian society for a period of time to understand that portion control and shame are extremely effective in preventing obesity in a population.

First generation Asian immigrants to the west generally do not become obese. They retain the ideas from their home country that being fat is shameful, and they retain their conception of a correct portion size. If they start getting even 3 kilos overweight, they take steps to undo that. The west has decided portions are to be huge, and is in the process now of destroying shame. Time has shown the results.

Unfortunately, doctors cannot do anything about widespread societal shift in attitudes toward health. All they can do is recommend what is most likely to actually help. While the correct answer is "stop eating so much; gather the willpower to be mildly hungry during the day; your entire mental conception of healthy food and portions has been fucked since birth," people won't actually listen to that. Thus, modern medical advice has been forced to basically admit that no one will ever lose weight in aggregate and begin making recommendations with that in mind. That doesn't make the older mindset incorrect, though. If a doctor could mind control you into being optimally healthy, there would be a lot less focus on "it's a disease; it's stress; you can't help it so just try to manage it best you can" and a lot more "stop constantly eating so many calories".

  > obesity is a chronic disease starting very early in life, indeed even before conception

I'm very curious about your thoughts on life before conception. Does the unborn infant soul inhere in the egg? And if it does, are you suggesting that some people are conceived with fat souls?

The report links to the science

But the basics of it is that paternal health impact sperm selection, and maternal health impacts the hormonal environment shaping genetic expressions of the developing child.

Have you read the linked article? What does "chronic disease" mean?

If obesity weren't linked to eating too much, how come there are no obese people in concentration camps?

I think this is correct for health concerns. I'm also motivated to enjoy nature by hiking, biking, skiing, etc, and I can't enjoy myself doing those things right now.

WHO will do everything and spread as much lies and stupid study to keep the half adult on hearth which are overweight and obese as captive costumers to bigpharma industry and industrialised food industry. So basically using them as a valid reference is stupid.

Source?

2 years of corona circus and explosion of obesity worldwide. https://www.who.int/health-topics/obesity#tab=tab_1

So promoting paper which relate to prenatale conditions which would leads to adult obesity is just a smoke screen to hide that the whole modern society is just a big pathology factory at mankind scale.

better make people feel they are cursed by gene than just realise that the real war on drug should be against sugar and vegetable oil than cocaine and majiuana.

The biggest cartel around are industrial food and stores where everybody shop everyday. Not talking about all the shitty food restaurant where you pay high price to destroy yourself. Most modern food are more dangerous for health than cigarettes. But still Smoke screen to keep Smart ass from silicon valley such as this website audience whe believe to be litterate enough into the blind spot of all the comorbidities of modern society. but as far as my comment hurts your feelnig keep minusing it to silent it and punish me to not be blind like you :)

signed: a carnivorous troll who lost 45kg and reversed prediabetic conditions/highblood pressure/sleeping apnea/chronic gout/oversweating by just eating meat. Not talking about my improved libido and my bigger penis (in the way i can now see my feet when i wash) And all this after 40yo. (yes im not a young idealist who believe he knows everything while most of his experience is reading ramdom stuf on internet).

The WHO report actually agrees with you on food cartel issue

well telling half truth doesnt mean you are honnest... Some stuff are so big that ignoring them is too difficult to ignore and would question others too easely on your motive. But Devil hides in details. Read their updated diet recommandation and understand that beside yelling with the herd about obesity epidemia, they are doing everything to promote it with their diet guidelines (based on vegan wokism).

Also it's not like nutrition heterodoxia haven't been warning since 50 years an this major health crisis. After year of promotion of modern diet from WHO and associates.

Now that you cannot go in the street without being surrounded by Obesity everywhere it's hard to play blind.

Also after 2 years of COVID, more and more peoples realised that OBESITY poses a threat by fragilizing society at global scale, as far as Obese peoples are weaker to fight against virus, and vaccines are less efficient on obese peoples. So basically they are weak and difficult to protect from common virus, especially respiratory virus.

Not forgetting about Diabetes type 2 (almost 1/3 of adult in the world has diabetic condition mostly due to overweight and obesity). Which calls about talking also on Diabete type 3 which is commonly named Alzheimer disease. Type 2 Diabetic have 6 times more chance to developp Alzheimer than non diabetic in the 10 to 20 years after start of their conditions.

So with more and more young starting to develop T2D around 20 years old, a good part of them will develop Alzheimer disease around 35-40 years old which will also have an huge societal impact. And even before that, cognitive performance are deeply tied to calories type of sources. Alzheimer disease just being the final stage of a long degradation process over decades due to abuses of bad calories. So basically cognitive performance are degradated long time before Alzheimer occurance.

everybody jokes about Karen, but nobody look at average karen's bodyshape...This could explain a lot.

This kind of hunger is what I've felt my whole life too, though my weight is still only in the overweight category. I can eat twice, three times what a normal portion is and still feel like I need to eat. I could easily eat multiple large pizzas by myself with no problem at all. There's a scene from The West Wing where the chief of staff describes his alcoholism and how people would ask him how could he drink so much and still want more. His answer is that he doesn't understand how anybody else could not want more. That it's the best thing in the world. And that's exactly how food feels to me.

A year ago I was diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive) and prescribed a very low dose of Vyvanse (amphetamine based). Suddenly it was gone. I'd want to eat at normal times, I'd eat a normal portion but I could easily walk away or I actually just didn't want more. I asked my wife, is this what other people feel like? It really rocked my world a bit. It's one thing to logically know that people experience reality differently, but I've rarely had such a stark example of it.

> A year ago I was diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive) and prescribed a very low dose of Vyvanse (amphetamine based). Suddenly it was gone.

Reduced appetite or appetite suppression is a very common side effect of those types of medications.

Yes, thanks I should have been more clear that I knew that going in. It was the contrast that surprised me. I wasn't sure if the original hunger was just my excuse for over eating, or something I was imagining. But after talking with other people who don't take ADHD meds, I found they had the same hunger level as I do on the meds, but naturally.

Chiming in to say I had the exact same realization after starting vyvanse. It’s helped me with my relationship to food, because now I know what it feels like to not clean my plate during every meal.

The most important thing anyone who wants to manage their weight has to realize is why they eat. You feel hunter but why?

Food is complicated and people eat for many reasons. People can eat because they're bored or they're anxious or even just to feel better, even briefly.

A healthy state to get to (which is easier said than done to be sure) is to treat food as fuel not as medicine or even a reward. You put gas in your car when it needs gas. Food should be the sam, ideally.

For me, I had a lot of success with intermittent fasting. This works for me. It may not work for you. But whether or not it works (and for some people it doesn't) one thing you do learn how much of hunger is just habit. Your'e used to eating a certain amount or at certain times. That feeling of feeling full actually isn't normal or even desirable. You'll be surprised at how little you actually need.

A good place to start is to inccrease protein consumption. A lot of high-calorie diets are surprisingly low in protein but really high in carbs (particularly sugar) and fat. It's actually much more difficult to overeat with high-protein. I've known more than a few people with weight issues who avoid eating protein just because of this.

Even small changes add up. Like people who scoop sugar and heavy cream into coffee and can end up consuming 700 calories per coffee multiple times a day. Drink black coffee. If you don't like that you should consider that you don't actually like coffee. You like coffee flavoured sugar and fat.

And if you don't like black unsweetened coffee, forcing yourself to drink it will actually kill your appetite. That's not such a bad thing.

But you need to figure out your relationship with food.

Also to increase fiber consumption. The modern diet is filled with foods that have their fiber removed and used as animal feed. Insoluble fiber fills you up psychically. Soluble fiber takes a long time to digest and helps regulate ones blood sugar. Have to get away from foods with a bad glycemic index as a start.

A shot glass (1.5oz) of half-and-half is 60 calories. Those little cups of creamer are 0.375oz.

You’re not taking a huge portion of your calories budget to have your coffee with cream. The sugar is a killer.

Do remember that, while it does make coffee insipid, the milk some people add in theirs is a good source of vitamins, calcium and protein. The fact that it has "calories" shouldn't deter them from using it, especially if, like most people (at least where i live), you aren't overweight, and do not need to reduce your energy intake

I do agree that coffee with milk has no taste tho

I do think coming to terms with hunger is a huge part of weight loss - its can be an absolutely uncomfortable, anxious, or dreadful feeling for many and its a wrecking ball to well laid plans.

Like most primal drives - once its present in my mind its not long before it blossoms into behavior.

When I'm losing weight, I treat hunger like any other non-constructive impulse (e.g. anger, sloth, apathy, negative self talk, etc...):

1) I try to prevent it by not putting myself into situations where my judgement is compromised. With hunger, this most often means never waiting too long to nourish - I've got to feed the body before the mind starts producing urges that aren't consistent with healthy outcomes. Less often, this means not being hung over and heading for a fast food breakfast.

2) I keep busy so there's not much cycle time in my brain for it to take root. Anything will do as long as its immersive. Sipping something with no or few calories throughout is helpful. The devil will find work for idle hands to do, they say.

3) When these don't do the trick, I respond to any emergent internal pleading directly. When I sense the familiar "but I won't be satisfied if I don't do X, and don't I deserve to be satisfied?" I respond as I would with my child or any other 3rd person who's about to abandon the plan - I reaffirm that we're all in this together and being satisfied is definitely the goal and one we're committed to and in this case satisfaction looks like weight loss, not nachos.

I don't win every time, but these generally get me enough wins to tip the war in my favor.

> 1) I try to prevent it by not putting myself into situations where my judgement is compromised. With hunger, this most often means never waiting too long to nourish - I've got to feed the body before the mind starts producing urges that aren't consistent with healthy outcomes. Less often, this means not being hung over and heading for a fast food breakfast.

Yup. In my case, I find that not having foods that "I shouldn't eat" (think sweets, etc) in the house at all is better than having to deal with my urge to eat those.

Also, tied to the previous point: don't go shopping for food when hungry. This helps with not having those foods in the house. "I'll control myself this time" has basically never worked for me.

So if you eat less, your body eventually adjusts so that you're satiated earlier. People say that your "stomach shrinks" when you eat less, but it's really just your appetite that does.

When you eat a meal you should also try eating slower, or having more frequent but smaller portions. Have you ever noticed that you're still hungry after a meal, but after a few minutes it goes away? That's because it takes ~20 minutes for you to feel full after eating.

There's also appetite suppressants (both naturally found in certain foods + prescription drugs), that can work wonders for weight loss.

Also, if you ever try fasting, usually your appetite is strongest for the first 2 days, then falls off. With natural fat stores + an intake of water/electrolytes/potassium/magnesium, you can fast for many days at a time without feeling hungry.

> So if you eat less, your body eventually adjusts so that you're satiated earlier.

I have heard anecdotes from people who say this is true and anecdotes from people who say it is very much not true. It is certainly more comforting to believe that people who've gained weight aren't permanently doomed to hunger, but I'd love if anyone could drop a supporting source.

+1 to this.

I am almost permanently hungry. It is extremely rare for me to feel full. My wife, friends, co-workers etc who eat the same meals as me (e.g. at restaurants or Xmas dinners etc) stop with comments like "man I am so full I could not eat another morsel!" yet I sit there with a clean plate thinking I could eat the entire thing again while also wondering what is for dessert. At home I will pretty much always finish off what my family leave on their plate.

I think I am just missing that gene or whatever that tells you you have eaten enough, kinda like how horses can eat themselves to death without a nosebag.

The only thing that has kinda worked for me is MyFitnessPal and eating sugar-free sweets or black coffee to distract my brain.

I don’t feel the need to comment on the GP because you’ve hit my anecdata on the head, I have to eat what other people consider a sickening amount of food in order to feel “full”. Luckily, also with MFP, I’ve done everything from six months of hardcore power lifting with at least 4500 calories a day, to 9 month cuts at a 1650 max. These days, with less time with two kids and a body hitting its mid 30s, I’ve learned my maintenance calorie amounts, combined with maintenance exercise to keep me at a decent lean level, but it means living with a mild perpetual hunger pang. The only way I’ve ever avoided it in the past is with a strict low carb diet, but again with young kids, it’s difficult to get everything perfect.

I have just accepted being hungry all the time. Lost 61 pounds in 6 months, still got 44 to go before reaching my ideal weight. Being hungry all the time became normal after 2 months. It was difficult, still is.

So, my diet plan was - eat less. And of that which I eat, avoid sugar like poison and avoid carbohydrates as much as possible, while still having at least some daily intake split between meals.

And regular blood tests and monitoring by doctors (endocrinologist, GP, cardiologist).

This worked for me. I lost 20 pounds in 30 days, which was my goal. Calories per day 808 average, 645 median. Persistent minor hunger in the afternoon, reduced with lots of carbonated drinks, sugar free jello, and a pickle or two.

How?

Not GP, and I've never done such aggressive diets, but I've found that eating * a lot* of protein really helps with not feeling too hungry.

Sure, it's still there, but I find it much easier to deal with than if I'm eating too much sugar.

I know that weight loss happens differently for different people, so read this or ignore this. Hopefully you haven't heard this exact take before, but with the number of people who dump advice on you when they think you're unhappy with your weight, you probably have at some point.

Keto has consistently been the most effective way for me to lose weight. More important than the actual diet though, was that it became clear to me that there was a difference between, "Hey, you were supposed to eat by now." hungry and "OK, I'm a bit dizzy and forgetful and need to get something in my stomach." Just knowing that there were two completely different hunger signals made losing weight a lot easier. I ignore the one that generally occurs at set times or after a certain period of time since the last meal and make sure I have something on hand to straighten things out if my blood sugar needs some support.

For me, cutting out carbs and maintaining a reasonable calorie deficit works wonders. My mom can't sustain a keto diet very long and does super well counting calories. I've had friends in the past who maintained a healthy weight eating small, carby meals frequently in addition to exercise.

The actual combo of diet and exercise is very dependent on the individual, but I feel that knowing the difference between "hungry" and "need to get calories in to function" is a big advantage, however you get to that point.

a) Thank you for writing this. I'm also quite a bit heavier than whatever some random committee's idea of my "ideal weight" is and it's tough to navigate these types of threads.

b) assuming it was intentional and desired, congratulations on the loss

c) constant hunger has been a theme for me as well. Since getting medication for a mental health condition I've noticed that I'm not really hungry while it has effect but as soon as it wears off I want to eat everything, even if I've eaten a reasonable amount throughout the day. Fighting against constant hunger is _exhausting_ and I think people that say "it's just calories in and out" are just not experiencing it.

>People still tell me I shouldn't be hungry. >Maybe it's Ok to be a little hungry.

I think you're 100% on to something. We suffer from avoidance of discomfort, as demonstrated by our obesity and opioid epidemics. Facing that discomfort is usually the fastest path to growth in every aspect of life across career, education, diet, love, exercise.

We always try to find routes around discomfort. There're endless dating gurus promising to save you the potentially horrible pain of rejection, cosmetic surgeries, drugs, and avoidance options. None of these shortcuts work, instead resulting in addictions, cowardice, unfulfilled dreams and lives.

There's mounting evidence of the health benefits from calorie restriction, though autophagy and inflammation reduction. We evolved to have maintenance pathways only function in times of caloric deficit, and to eat when food was available. Now food is always available. I've found that taking coffee while I fast reduces the discomfort. Depending on the mechanism of action, this might decrease the benefits.

All of us have opportunities in our lives to practice equanimity with discomfort. There's no moral failure here. We can all support each other to face our discomfort as we endeavor every day to move a step closer to our goals.

Congratulations on your progress!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction#Life_exten...

Hey, I agree with you that it's different for everyone. Personally, if I've been eating too much and I try to eat a healthy amount I will always be a bit hungry for at least a few days - maybe longer -until my body adjusts to the new amounts. After a while it gets easier, especially if I'm smart in my food shopping.

Eating certain types of foods (the article calls them hyper-palatable) can also kick off feeling much more hungry. It's sometimes hard for me to get back into a healthy cadence, especially if I have stress in other areas of my life.

When this is going on I think a lot about Ego Depletion - the idea that willpower is a limited resource. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

I think it's definitely OK to be a little hungry, or even a lot hungry. In fact, when I'm feeling like I have some willpower to spare I go on a fast. I think it really helps me calibrate my internal tolerance for hunger. After a fast, the mild hunger I feel after eating an appropriately sized meal barely even registers as hunger.

Keep up the good work!

I think this is actually the most common experience. Everyone says they want to lose weight, but they just can't bring themselves to eat a sensible amount. Heck, I'm trying it now, writing down everything I eat, weighing myself each day, and it's still going pretty damn slowly.

> So many diets talk about not being hungry while you are on the diet. I've been to dieticians and told them I'm hungry, and they suggest eating more protein or more fiber. That does help, but I still feel hungry.

Have you thought about eating something that just has very few calories, in order to fill you up? Carrots have barely any calories and need a fair bit of chewing. Popcorn without salt/sugar/butter as well. Diet drinks or water.

What's helped me a bit is just looking at all the calorie labels on everything to get a feel for what the cost of each item is, then using that as a kind of "is it worth it" budget. A lot of things go out the door when you do that, but surprisingly some quite nice things stay on the menu.

> Have you thought about eating something that just has very few calories, in order to fill you up? Carrots have barely any calories and need a fair bit of chewing.

In my experience, this works kinda ok, but it doesn't actually feel like being full or sated. It feels like having a full stomach but still being hungry.

Isn't the feeling of having a full stomach what people normally mean by being full? I've never thought you could feel full bit hungry.

The other side of that is you can feel like you need to eat despite not actually feeling hungry. I've lost a bit recently, but not often with that hole in the stomach feeling. I still often get that "I should eat something" feeling while not feeling the physical "belly empty".

(Not GP) Apples make me hungry. No seriously. There's no fruit quite like apples that make my stomach sour for more food. It almost hurts. I can eat 4 apples and I'll be _stuffed_ but not _satiated_.

> Carrots have barely any calories and need a fair bit of chewing.

Not to undermine your point, because it's a good one, but the same guidelines should apply to anything you eat, even carrots. I was losing weight and tracking "calories" very closely. I started eating carrots for exactly the reason you mention and gained two pounds that week. At my next doctor visit, she told me she's never asked this question before, but "are you orange?" I was, from carrots.

Your hunger is partly driven by gut bacteria that want you to feed them. It is a genuine form of mind control. Your current mixture of biota aren't doing you any favors. It would be worthwhile to look into medical treatment that can kill them off and replace with a known good inoculation.

Commenting purely on my own experience.

I have found that my hunger is malleable. If I start eating breakfast, I will be hungry in the morning at around the time I started eating breakfast. But, if I stop eating breakfast and only do lunch and dinner, I will eventually lose my hunger for breakfast and have no problem coasting till lunch on nothing but a coffee.

It's really odd how much you (read: I; I obviously can't comment on other people, everybody is different) actually can bend your appetite. In Ramadan I can easily coast until 8-9 PM without any thoughts on being hungry until like an hour before I break my fasts. And I always do OMAD while fasting, so I dont eat breakfast before dawn.

If anything, diets should focus on the psychological factor more than the actual food, but then again, people have different levels of willpower. So telling somebody to stop eating too many calories is not only not helpful, it's also highly condescending.

My personal problem with eating is that I like eating large meals. I can't cut out liquid calories as I dont drink any of my calories. I can't cut out sweets, as I don't eat sweets in any substantial amount (maybe a single gummy bear a week?). I just like eating large meals -- and I would do so several times a day if it wasnt for the adverse effects on my body.

Also, I'm kinda proud of how I was practically bang-on on the calorie quiz in the article, except for the pizza. Apparently large means LARGE in the US lol. I was off by 500 kcal.

I'm pretty sure the article's numbers were UK ones, by the way - I certainly knew the UK Domino's large pizza number from personal experience, and the photos of e.g. peanut butter were ones I recognise from UK supermarkets.

yup, really interesting. It seems that hunger is tightly coupled with expectations.

Something else I have found interesting is that I will occasionally be really hungry, start cooking a meal, spend 30 minutes smelling all the things cooking, and then by the time I'm done cooking I've lost my hunger. It's as if my brain was tricked in to thinking that I ate and I'm satisfied.

That’s now known as intermittent fasting. 16 hour fast followed by a regular lunch and dinner. You can even keep a typical caloric input, but the extended period of not eating consistently is enough to “trick” your body into going after fat stores. Front recent reading it’s equivalent to fasting two days for an entire week, but at least for me skipping breakfast is much easier. I’m not overweight by any measure, but am middle age skinny fat. Waiting until noon for my first calories has worked well to start eliminating fat from undesirable places without impacting other training.

Firstly, congrats on the weight loss. 30 pounds is huge. It sounds like you're on the right track.

My thoughts on hunger: I used to treat hunger as if my body was signalling that it needed food right to survive. Then one day I got sick and couldn't keep food down -- even though I was hungry -- so I stopped eating. To my surprise, my hunger went away. After the sickness had passed, eating anything at all would give me tremendous heartburn, so I continued not eating for about another week. I found it unusual that I could walk the streets in a completely fasted state, my body cannibalising its own muscle and fat reserves, and not feel any hunger at all. To me, it demonstrated that hunger wasn't the 'you require food right now' signal that I thought it was. It must mean something else.

When I began eating again, my hunger returned.

I walked away from that experience with a recalibrated understanding of hunger. It now seems more like a suggestion from the body: 'this is the time that food is usually available, so you should eat if at all possible, because we can't be sure when food will be available again', rather than 'I require food right now to survive'.

I don't live in your body, know how you feel or know what you've tried. But I can share my experience as it seems similar and had an solution that was overlooked by multiple professionals.

While my situation may be different, it may still provide an insight on what kind of things to look at.

Turns out times I felt most hungry were times when my blood sugar was low. If I ever eat something with a high glycemic index without something with a low GI along side it then I am bound to have low blood sugar inside of a couple hours especially if it's for breakfast (even medium sweetness cereals are a no go for that). When I get low blood sugar I feel like eating a horse. Turns out that even a small amount of food will sate me if I am patient enough (difficult when your body feels like it is telling you that you'll die if you don't eat cake or drink juice).

Being autistic doesn't help, I often forget to eat until my blood sugar drops.

Yes, I've had problems with blood sugar spikes and slumps for a long time. Learning to control them has been a continuing effort.

> It doesn't even take that much extra food to gain a lot of weight. One extra piece of cake a week [...]

I honestly only say this in case it helps, and I'm firmly on the upper end of 'healthy' UK BMI so not in any health freak position of judgement by a long shot, but I last had a slice of cake months ago, so the casual 'just an extra slice of cake every week' really stands out to me.

(On a complete tangent I don't at all think regular cake eating is incompatible with a healthy diet, but I do think that in 2022 it's highly inversely correlated, and that going against that almost requires baking your own.)

I was raised in a family that used food treats as a reward. It was normal to have ice cream and cookies a few times a week. To be clear, I wasn't obese until after I moved out on my own, but part of the pattern was set.

I was raised in America where we are told that we can 'have it all'. If you don't order the large portion, people wonder what is wrong with you.

I'm not blaming my situation on these factors, but I do think they are important contributors.

> If you don't order the large portion, people wonder what is wrong with you.

I think if 'order the large' is an option, you're already ordering from a takeaway/in a 'junk food' place.

True, but it's worth realizing a few things:

1. It's ok to eat some "junk food" as part of your diet. That's not going to automatically kill your diet, if you still control calories. It might not be as satiating as eating other foods though, so it's worth experimenting with this. (personally I would still eat "junk food" on my diet and I enjoyed the extra flexibility).

2. Just cause you're eating junk food, since calories is what ultimately matters, it's still worth not ordering the large. Saying " well it's junk food I'm already lost" and then eating a larger portion is just making the sustain much worse than it needs to be.

3. Similarly, just cause it's a junk food place, doesn't mean there aren't better or worse options. I love McDonald's, and still eat there even when dieting to lose weight. But I'll eat only chicken nuggets, and skip the fries. Not nearly as good or healthy as eating other sources of protein, but definitely better than including an extra 500 calories of non satiating carbs.

I’ve been learning to bake and will make a batch of brownies or cookies at least once a week. It’s just my boyfriend and I that live together so it ends up being the equivalent of 2+ extra pieces of cake a week, probably. Now a dinner without dessert feels lacking.

I’ve been thinking about giving all but one serving away to friends each time I bake, but your comment reminded me that even one serving a week is likely more than I need.

Couldn't agree more with hunger being a sensation rather than a problem in its own right. I'd recommend a two or three day fast to almost anyone at least once in their life, to experience that feeling of "I am hungry, this is unpleasant, but it's not the end of the world".

> I'm down 30 pounds from my max.

Huge congratulations on the progress!

At my maximum I weighed 192kg.

Then I really tried to eat only salads and generally healthy things while doing a lot of sports.

I lost almost 95kg within less then 2 years and for most off the time, the hunger was gone.

At some point, the hunger came back however, and I'm back up to 160kg. It is a terrible feeling, and while it's possible to ignore it for a while... At least I cannot for months or even years. I'm not sure why it went a away before, but I wish I knew. Switching over to salad diet and doing sports doesn't seem to work by itself, at least not within a reasonable amount of time

First : a lot of love and empathy to you. I mean it.

Second : > Then I really tried to eat only salads and generally healthy things while doing a lot of sports.

Did you continue this after your weight loss ? If not, do you think you could (and not should) have done it ?

I’m from a different place : I weight "only" 93kg but I’m currently unable to loose anything. I just manage to keep it this way but watching my family tree in terms of obesity really scares me for what is to come.

For what it’s worth : I think buying a connected scale helped me a lot stopping my weight gain : you weigh yourself every morning and it allows you to clearly see the trend : up -> Pay attention to what you eat, stable -> ok, down -> nice. Generally when the trend goes up, I know I’ll eat less because it will be in my mind just before breakfast.

One suggestion, it's not just how much you eat but what you eat and when.

When dieting people generally want to loose weight from fat and not muscle.

Try to delay or skip breakfast if you can. It gives your body a longer overnight window for blood sugar to fall and start using fat stores to compensate.

Then try some low intensity exercise whilst you're in that pre-breakfast fasted state.

It's very important to keep the intensity low because you can only get so much energy from fat at a given time.

At higher intensities, in the absence of carbs, your body will break down protein i.e. muscle, for energy and you want to try to minimise this.

Give yourself some protein immediately afterwards to compensate for the loss as you can't totally avoid it. In the window just after exercise you should be able to absorb protein more efficiently.

When you want to do high intensity exercise make sure you have enough carbs to power that intensity. In cycling, we have the amusing phrase "avoiding the bonk".

The "bonk" being the point where you've used all your muscle glycogen stores and can't replace them. You generally slow right down, vision gets a bit blury and you get emotional as your body eats itself.

Everyone ends up doing it once but no one wants to do it twice. So eat carbs when you need to.

This.

It is the annoying, aggravating, all consuming hunger that is the cause, not a misunderstanding about how many calories are in what foods.

I would have thought by now science would have a drug to modulate abnormal levels of hunger, but we still don't have one. And we don't know what causes them.

Amphetamines are that drug, but the side effects are awful.

Your body craves carbohydrates, it's like an addiction. Overcoming that addition is all about training your willpower and delayed gratification.

It's the same as smoking. Strong willed people can stop smoking in a heartbeat. Weak minded people cannot, their minds are simply too weak to resist smoking and they need it every 2 hours. Same with eating.

Next time you feel that hunger feeling, out of spite just don't eat and the craving goes away within 1-2 hours and you'll get long term endorphins instead that make you feel good for your mind being stronger than that craving. It's not so hard, you just have to be a bit stronger than that desire.

You can also try fasting. Just don't eat for 24h and you'll feel a lot better than if you ate.

Some people simply cannot delay gratification, they need to be on their phone, watch tv constantly to get their dopamine hit. However, other people are able to delay gratification and get a much larger amount of endorphins and also the better ones.

It should become a habit to receive your dopamine hits from resisting the temptation and being stronger than this degenerate craving for unhealthy, processed food carefully designed to make the population addicted to their produce to buy more and more and eat more, so that they make more money.

There is a way to get out of this easily, don't eat any more sugar and carbohydrates, but plants and meat, which is the keto diet. It's very healthy and natural as well. You'll drop a lot of weight and you can still eat well.

I don't think this willpower explanation quite fits the facts.

I can delay gratification. I can quit coffee cold turkey no problem. I skip breakfast to increase my fasting period. I don't need TV or Internet, I'd rather work on my lifestyle property. I almost never take pain pills, I see myself as stoic, I can do long duration exercise.

I can count calories and force my weight down from 100kg to 74kg by sheer willpower and focus on the issue.

And yet I can't effectively keep the weight off. Because the hunger is 24x7, and my ability to focus on the issue isn't 24x7... I have other things to do in life.

Ah yes, protein shakes are working wonders for that.

Especially in the afternoons, the craving for something sweet is the strongest. A protein shake completely satisifies hunger until dinner very well.

That way, you can have lunch, protein shake and dinner to get through the day very well and not binge on sweets.

I never have a craving for something sweet. Not since I was like 5 years old. I will eat sweets from time to time, but usually only when pressured socially to do so. Sweets seem repulsive to me, make my tonsils cringe. I haven't binged on sweets ever since that halloween stomach ache in 1976.

Glad that a protein shake works for you.

Long term endorphins from not eating?! Maybe once, the first time you ever successfully don't eat, but surely it stops being a surprise after the first time.

My experience is that hunger is a lot like the sensation you get when quitting smoking. And eating while hungry is definitely triggering the same stuff than smoking an overdue cigarette. It’s something in the throat that has must have neural connections in the upper back (at least for me!).

What I am trying now is to find hunger not too unpleasant. It feels unpleasant at first, then if you think about it, it’s not painful, it’s just different.

Like smoking, temptation is difficult to resist, so things like working in a place with no access to food is a must have. And filling days with activities which make you think about something else also works. I have really bad sleep sometimes, and when I do, my resistance to temptation is less efficient. So you need to know that kind of stuff about yourself.

I don’t know man, just do what you can.

Yup, exactly this. I quit smoking multiple times and dieted one time (lost ~20 pounds).

You have to "hack" your brain into enjoying the unpleasant sensation like it is something good. Even if you feel like the world will end, nothing happens.

Doing other activities help indeed, but in order to do this, you sometimes need massive changes in your daily habits/lifestyle. I feel like these changes are the hard to maintain part since you are constantly fighting to do "the right thing" instead of "the pleasurable thing"

P.S : I still smoke & overeat

Just a note, I've lost significant weight by having just one meal a day and snacking thru the day. The key is to plan your day's food and snacks and not to have extra food ready to eat. Why one meal? I found that every time I sat down to eat it would be a struggle not to over eat. So to reduce the possibility of over eating I only do it once a day.

Counting on willpower to help you lose weight is a lost cause for most people. The key is to put yourself in situations where you can't over eat and/or you have to follow what your past self thought was good for you.

Your weight loss should be gradual but consistent. People want to lose all the weight in a short time but they never reflect that it took years to gain the weight. It should take a while to lose it.

Maybe you should try embracing the hunger. I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum, too skinny. It was very difficult for me to gain muscle mass for the longest time. Eventually I came to enjoy the feeling of working out for the muscle soreness it caused. I still do not enjoy working out after 10 years, but I associate soreness with muscle gain and fitness, and so I enjoy it. If you are able to convince yourself that hunger is actually the feeling of yourself losing weight, it might be easier to embrace. Hunger can be torturous but it isn't dangerous.

> One extra piece of cake a week

So… I was never predisposed to put on weight, but as I got older I got less and less fit than I used to be. My doctor told me my cholesterol and triglycerides were up and suggested that I just stop eating desserts and candy entirely. It seemed impossible when he suggested it, but I’ve been able to stick to it for almost two decades now. When I made the decision that I just wasn’t going to have any more desserts, ever, it was much easier than it seemed it was going to be.

Periodic fasting for 24 hours (few weeks between) can improve health and help you gain mastery over your appetite.

Good luck with your journey. Years of life can be hard to change.

> There is a very good chance that someone is writing a reply with some suggestion as to how I should eat so that I'm not hungry.

I will write about a personal experience that has nothing to do with selecting different foods - intermittent fasting.

First I thought this was a torture people put themselves up to. Then a few friends tried it, said you get used to it, and this made me curious. I used to say black coffee was torture, until I stuck with it for a week and now I hate sugar in it - an eye opener that what I thought was an absolute truth about my preferences could be turned around with so easily.

So I tried intermittent fasting. The first few days sucked, I was uncomfortable and moody in the morning, and starving by the time of lunch. Then I got used to it, didn't feel hungry anymore and stuck with it for a year - lost 10 kgs whike barely* thinking about it.

* I didn't lose weight for the first month, then I realized I was over compensating with big meals and eating more junk (believing the fasting would compensate it - it didn't). After I got back to my regular habits when eating, the diet was a breeze.

I never had weight problems… I naturally started intermittent fasting without realising it was a thing! I never have breakfast (only an espresso), I have lunch around 1pm (usually one dish and no dessert), then dinner around 8pm (again usually just one dish) and that’s it. No snacks or other meals during the day!

> There is a very good chance that someone is writing a reply with some suggestion as to how I should eat so that I'm not hungry. Thank you for the thoughts, but realize that you don't live in my body, you don't know how I feel, you don't know what I've tried.

I completely agree with this. I still do want to chime in a little. Don't feel obligated to try any of this, maybe you have already tried. I have a hunch you've tried it already. Perhaps someone else hasn't and will try upon reading it.

One rather simple change in diet is volume eating. As in, eat food that fills your stomach, but does not contain (many) calories. A prime example is lettuce, broccoli, or practically any vegetable.

When you're hungry try eating a large salad (a clean one that is, no sauces, or oil). When eating dinner add a large portion of broccoli, raw spinach, cauliflower. Try grilling or steaming vegetables.

In normal dishes try and replace as many ingredients with lower calorie alternatives, especially oils when cooking. These calories add up, quickly.

The above doesn't mean you cannot eat heavier sources of protein, fats, and carbs. Please just keep eating those, in balance. In balance meaning there's no need to have more grams of fats per day than a healthy weight in kg (e.g. 80kg -> 80 grams). Same story for proteins, but at a moderate ratio of 1-1.6 grams per kg body weight. Feel free to play with carbs.

> Hunger sounds like a problem to people. Hunger feels like a problem inside the body. People still tell me I shouldn't be hungry. Maybe part of the solution is realizing that eating to satisfaction is ... bad for some people. Maybe it's Ok to be a little hungry.

Strong agree with this. Funnily enough it's often thirst, which feels similar.

> When you're hungry try eating a large salad (a clean one that is, no sauces, or oil).

This is very important. The same goes also for many kinds of sauces added to meats. They are very, very tasty. But aside from their calories, a critical issue I have with them is that they interfere with your sensation of satiety. They just make you want to keep on eating. In my case, this tends to mess with my "hunger" signal: I get the feeling I haven't eaten enough, or I get hungry shortly after the meal. It's usually not actual hunger (I just ate a steak or whatever), but it does make me think of food and give me random cravings.

This basically never happens when I eat my food nature. [0]

I think this mechanism is a big factor in people's objections around "being hungry all the time". And yes, it's very distracting if you need to work, and even more so if you're just hanging out with nothing to do.

---

[0] I actually tend to liberally add "dry" condiments (think pepper, oregano, etc). The taste is, of course, orders of magnitudes less "intense", but they don't mess with my feeling full after a regular meal.

It's depends on habit. People are not used to being actually in empty stomach since childhood.

Eating all the time makes our brain want food all the time. I did intermittent fasting and now I'm completely okay not eating during that time. For other times it becomes easy, after not eating like before.

The food doesn't have to be calorie heavy. Replace with meat, nuts, vegetable, fruits (not juice).

I used to think loosing weight was easy, and maybe it was when I was a skinny 20-something. Now at 35+ I'm skipping meals, reducing sweets and alcohol, and doing light exercise every day and it is still hard to just maintain the current weight, let alone drop a few kg. The thing that seems to help is fasting for a few days here and there.

It's an individual struggle for many. Although I'm rather close to the weight I want to be(now) I struggle and have struggled with hunger too. My weight has gone up and down, I too have tried many things. The struggle with hunger is similar regardless of weight, until I get really quite lean.

I have gone from being in perfect control of my weight(I had to make weight for a sport), to being completely out of control(because the stuff that used to work didn't anymore), to being in control again(new stuff worked), to loosing some of the control(because it stopped working, but I found new stuff before it got out of hand again).

Everyone is different, different stuff works for different people and you yourself are different people when your weight changes significantly, as you age, and as your environment and knowledge changes.

Things that effect hunger: fewer bigger meals (unless it doesn't and you do better with more small meals). Protein, fiber (generally less hunger for most people), carbs (varies), fats (ditto). Avoiding trigger foods, (there are some foods and different for everyone, that once you eat a little it causes more hunger and triggers into more eating). Psychological tricks: (1. realize that a state of being somewhat hungry all the time is the normal state that humans lived with for thousands of years, 2. realize that you can burry yourself with work as a good distraction from hunger and get a lot more done at the same time. 3. Realize that "Hunger is the best spice" - Epictetus 4. Every time you catch yourself thinking about the costs of dieting(hunger), make sure you spend even more time thinking about the benefits. Exercise: figure out what exercises increase and decrease hunger for you, today. Liquid calories: your body doesn't register them and sometimes registers them negatively, best avoided all together. If you need a treat, prefer the ice cream over the milk shake. Cinnabon's highest calorie item is a drink.

I wish you the best, I hope something I said may help.

> There is a very good chance that someone is writing a reply with some suggestion as to how I should eat so that I'm not hungry.

Actually I was wanted to ask the opposite: what prevents you from letting yourself go hungry a fraction of the day? You might get a stomachache for a bit, I know, but have you tried and seen any consequences beyond that? Note I'm not suggesting "eat absolutely nothing the whole day", but like if you cut your portions into a half or a third of the usual (or eat fiber/etc. so as to at least fill your stomach)... is that going to actually cause you any problems beside a bit of stomach pain? (and might trying a mild pain reliever like acetaminophen potentially help with that until your body gets used to it?)

You could ask the same of someone addicted to smoking or cocaine or whatever. Every fibre of your body is telling you to go eat/smoke/get high etc. It is an all consuming urge that relentlessly interrupts whatever else you are trying to do or think about. You literally cannot stop thinking about your next think you are going to eat.

For me, it is not even physical stomach ache as you suggest, it is the mental aspect of total and complete brain derailment until you go eat something.

I guess I could ask someone to lock me in a room or something. That is not practical though as unlike smoking or drugs you need to eat something to stay alive - you cannot just go 100% cold turkey to try and break the addiction because you need to eat eventually.

> You could ask the same of someone addicted to smoking or cocaine or whatever.

That comparison with addiction to illicit drugs always perplexes me, because those drugs are clinically known to cause physical addiction to that substance, but that's not the case for (most?) food.

I do get the thing about it completely consuming your brain though (and being doubly painful if your stomach's in pain) even if it's a different phenomenon than drug addiction, so I'm not discounting that at all.

It sounds like this is something you've tried in the past. Have you given your body enough time to adjust when you've tried this? From what I know, when people start to fast (note I'm not suggesting you fast—just cut your portions > 50%), it's way more painful in the beginning (both physically and mentally) than it is, say, 2-3 weeks later. If you haven't tried this, do you think you could give yourself a chance and just tolerate it for (say) 3 weeks? I wonder if having a definite end date to look forward to might make it easier for yourself to convince your brain to tolerate some hunger?

Of course this has been tried. I think you are doing people a disservice (and with respect frankly it is quite insulting) by thinking they have not tried to use simple will power. People are on diets for years (potentially their entire adult and lives) - of fucking course people have tried giving their bodies time to adjust.

If it was just a matter of waiting a few weeks then we'd not have an obesity epidemic in the west, nor would the huge huge huge dieting industry exist.

Sorry, I didn't mean this to be insulting. The reason I was suggesting tolerating some of the pain to give your body time to adjust is that I've actually seen some people (obviously not everyone, just some subset) who don't do that, responding that they fear letting themselves feel hunger for a few days is to much of a health risk (because otherwise why would their body feel hunger/pain, etc.). You might believe everyone tries this but it's simply not the case. Of course lots of people really do try everything and still gain weight, but for every stage in the process there are some who don't give it a chance (and not all unreasonably either), and I've seen that for this one in particular, hence why I brought this one up.

There are different levels and kinds of hunger. When I do what you suggest my brain and body don't work very well. After some time, blood sugar gets low and the glycogen stores in the liver are depleted. At this point my body tells me I'm dying. Obviously I've gone through this and lived.

My main point is that people will give mechanical advice for losing weight, but it's very hard to tell someone what feelings they will go through. It's very hard to tell someone else what 'normal' should feel like for them.

I wrote a long comment, but I kept erasing it because I don't really want to come across as trying to give medical advice, or telling you how to feel. I'm just hoping that the medical assessments you're describing (about glycogen, risk of death, etc.) are accurate ones given by your doctor in response to cutting your portions, not your own personal extrapolations or speculations—otherwise you might be letting your fears harm you rather than help you.

If there's one thing I've learnt about hunger it's that not all hunger is real.

You have to think to yourself, am I hungry, or am I bored/idle?

I find keeping yourself busy/no snacking or food at desk etc helps a lot. It may be different for other people but if I get up and walk around a bit/stretch I usually realise I'm not hungry, just for some reason sitting & idling too long make me feel like food.

Another big one is hydration, drinking enough water helps a lot, count coffee, etc as a - for the amount of water you drink. If I'm a little peckish and I realise I haven't had enough water, just drinking half a glass usually staves off the feeling of hunger.

Try fasting. I would get hungry 1-2 days in but then it subsides (don't overdo it... I think I did 3-4 days max).

Or try eating more protein. 1kg of chicken breast (1600 kcal). I couldn't (but I'm "normally sized" and my stomach is as well)

Just a theory. May be you are hungry because the bigger you get the more food is needed to maintain the energy levels at current weight? If you tend to over eat even 50% of the times, you are now getting bigger, and more hungry(to maintain the increasing weight) in a never ending loop?

I don't have a solution for this. But it does look like to reverse this you will have to do the exact opposite. Like under eat a little and exercise enough to burn calories, and go into this loop?

Next time you are hungry: take a hot bath with epson salts, while you read aloud. After your body is warmed up, do 30 minutes yoga. Followed by 10 minute guided meditation. Boho Beutiful has a Youtube channel where you can find Yoga/meditation vides. This routine will improve focus and mental clarity and help with the cravings while also being great for stretch. Can do it in the morning or at night, or even repeat it through the day instead of sitting at the computer.

I think you just need to accept living with hunger. As in be hungry constantly and just learn to live with it. This is the only method by which I've ever successfully lost weight. Go at a large forced deficit. After a week or so you get kind of used to being hungry (your hunger decreases, but it never goes away) and it becomes easier, but it's never totally easy.

Some people are able to avoid hunger by sticking to certain foods, but that's never worked for me.

People like to come up with all kinds of 'tricks' to lose weight without feeling hungry. To me it sounds like trying to gain muscle in the gym without feeling fatigued or sore. Just be hungry and deal with that feeling. It's okay to feel discomfort. I'm hungry right now but I have decided writing a post on HN is more important than eating immediately; fat people should decide that losing weight is also more important.

Same boat. I got over this once but fell back. I'm 'only' 70lbs overweight but food is an addiction for me. One I need to survive. Very hard.

You're not really hungry, you're a sugar addict.

I know that doesn't solve the problem. But try treating this as an addiction, it will help.

It makes 100% sense to be hungry while you are on diet. The opposite would be surprising.

But you are even hungry now that you are not on a diet. Do you prefer to be hungry and obese or be hungry and not be obese ? Not saying that it is just something that you can decide like that. But I would understand your point if you were not hungry now, but you say this is not the case.

I have a pet theory that obesity is linear to tastey food. As we have sugar and tastey food readily available it's far easier to continue to consume. I catch myself eating a whole bag of cereal, even though it's not fulfilling, simply because it tastes good and I'm hungry. If instead my only options were healthy foods I'd eat a lot less.

I definitely think this is a huge factor for me. I have access to really amazing food and it's difficult to choose not to partake.

have you gone more than 2 weeks on a restricted diet (<1000 calories/day)?

in my experience, 2 weeks is about the boundary for when the body decides it's going to adapt its hunger point to the new realities. unfortunately, it shifts back much quicker, or at least seems to do so since we're usually not paying as much attention then.

Same. Had to go on keto and it was tough the first couple days but now I struggle to eat enough as crazy as it sounds. I’m just not hungry like I used to be. Consistently losing 2lbs a week. Hope you stick with what works for you!

My friend, I suggest seeing an obesity medicine specialist. There are medications that can help. Insurance more than likely will cover it. Obesity is no joke and leads to (or complicates) a vast array of medical issues.

Try different cousins, as many different new fruits, spices, etc as you can, along with vitamins and minerals.

To me, this sounds like your body wants something and it never gets it.

Have you tried Saxenda or similar? It was a life changer for me.

Good luck, I also struggle with weight and it's clear there's something we have not figured out yet.

> You gain weight in kilograms and lose weight in grams.

Ultra false. It takes years to get fat while in few months you can lose a significant amount.

Where did you get the idea that hunger should be avoided at all cost? I'm almost always hungry.

Oh, I've thought about this a lot too. I know there are cultural and psychological components, and that is my main point. Everyone's experience and expectation are different.

> reply with some suggestion as to how I should eat so that I'm not hungry

Not to be that guy... but are you eating low calorie dense foods or high calorie dense foods?

The article points out that an Apple and a Donut have roughly the same volume, but an Apple is half the calories.

Also, as the article suggests, cutting out liquid calories (that don't satisfy hunger) are easy first steps.

I promise you that someone thirty pounds down from their max knows all the "easy first steps". Please consider why you are choosing to be that guy.

> Please consider why you are choosing to be that guy.

I am trying to be helpful?

I've gone down to ~9% body fat, so I have experience with the "hard last steps." For me, the "first steps" were not easy and much harder than the last steps.

Why do you obey your body?

how tall are you?

6 foot ish - 185 cm

You will not die over night if you restrict calories, if you read the article you would have saw what the author wrote about the Minnesota starvation study. This tells me you have not ever tried to restrict calories and you lack the disciple or mental fortitude to cut out low density, high calorie foods such as the “cake” every week you referenced. Why not try replacing the junk food cake with steamed broccoli and fruit??

I’m sorry but I ballooned to 250 during COVID lockdown and am back to a healthy weight by lifting heavy in the squat rack (starting strength + 5x5) and eating nutritious foods at a deficit.

Until you try this or try and determine you have a medical condition and seek treatment (hyperthyroidism), you get 0 sympathy from me. Consider this some tough love from someone who put in the hard work to turn their life around.

I believe in you, please try change your mentality you are limiting yourself from any progress in weight loss and can only blame yourself.

“Anyway, now I realize that I am hungry. It never goes away unless I eat a significant amount of food. My body told me to eat, so I ate.”

Hunger =/ I NEED to eat to make this feeling of discomfort go away

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