‘Anti-hunger’ molecule forms after exercise, scientists discover
med.stanford.edu
med.stanford.edu
I'm not less hungry, but I'm less hungry for nasty stuff, so from my perspective there seems to be a lot of truth in this!
Context: I'm natively extremely lazy (phisically, not intellectually), I find any phisical activity a pain an a nuisance, I derive zero pleasure from any kind of sport and phyisical exercise (except hiking and skidiving, but not the phisical effort aspects of them), the release-endorphines-on-effort circuit is 100% broken for me or I just lack the receptors for those endophins... eg. 100%-lazy-cat except not fat because genetically I come from a line of people slim-no-matter-what-we-eat. (Probably more average or atletic people's bodies just don't work like mine...)
My trainer and doctor say that we have various receptors in our bodies tuned for our current way of life and that diet and exercise re-program these receptors which, yeah, is what I observed as well.
RE: your lack of motivation for working out, I found it is related to the type of exercise. The start of my journey was a series of train wrecks. I constantly stumbled on 22-year old boys whose wisdom was "get on the bench press, bro!" which didn't work for me. It was almost harmful even.
After going to physiotherapy for a while I then started training under the tutelage of the same people and I am already better. They are very careful not to over-strain me, give me just enough cardio to keep my heart pumping but not to make me wanna die, exercises are carefully tuned to strain me a bit but never too much. They don't give me big pauses between exercises (60 - 90 seconds) however. Some exercises are mostly stretching and "activating" a certain muscle (meaning just exercising it a little without any strain).
Not sure I can translate that to a workout strategy for you but these items might help:
- Do 3 series of each exercise. If it's too much then 2;
- Do more reps per series;
- Rest until your heart calms down slightly but not beyond that;
- Introduce a hard cap on the workout session -- mine is 1 hour. This was a huge struggle because I wanted to do all the exercises but there's no way to fit all in 1 hour (did that mistake several times);
- Start with slight cardio -- 5 or 10 minutes. Don't make it the focus of the session, it's just to start you off (a mistake I made many times);
- The moment you start feeling a tormenting strain is the moment where you train for 2-3 more minutes and cut the session short;
- If that moment doesn't come, still stop at your time cap.
The main point is to feel energetic and rejuvenated after the workout. Not "OMFG I wanna die!". My trainer / physiotherapist / masseur told me this is an extremely common problem for men because a lot of them just hang out in the gym and their main motivation is show-off and competition with others. He says there's a million ways to make yourself feel better by exercising and honestly? I believe him because it is happening to me.
Finally, it's the most normal thing in the world to fine-tune the exercise session to your specifics and you shouldn't try and imitate other workout regimes if they don't work well for you. My trainer quickly found out I have strong arms, shoulders and upper back and is rarely giving me exercises for them -- just for maintaining them a bit. But my legs, abs and lower back are weaker so 80% of my exercises focus on that. Works great.
If you are willing to press on, I wish you good luck. I am exactly like you, I view physical maintenance as nuisance and it's not easy to change the mindset. But I already started having that little little voice in my head that's sometimes nudging me to do a session because I know it makes me feel a bit better after.
In programming terms, I'd say reduce the size of the program/tests until it's manageable for you. My trainer said it's much better to train every day for just 35-40 minutes compared to two workouts of our and half a week.
It also doesn't take a lot of time. About 45 - 60 minutes, 3 times a week. I can do it in my home gym as everything I need is a barbell, some weights and a bench/squat rack.
First time I actually have fun weight lifting/going to the gym.
But the simplicity is what made me stick with it in the beginning. It's a beginner's program and it's great at that.
I'll be switching to something more elaborate later down the road but for the time being SL is pretty good.
The only thing a workout has ever made me feel is sore and tired. Light or heavy, long or short, cardio or strength. Doesn't matter, that only changes how sore and how tired I am after, and how long those feelings last.
I'd exercise way more if I ever felt "energetic and rejuvenated" after a workout. The only thing keeping me doing it is knowing how critically important it is to me long term cardiovascular health.
Some context: I'm overweight and could definitely stand to be more active. But I do value exercise and a couple of months ago started going to fitness classes, have played sports casually but regularly in the past, used to regularly go to a gym, and have dabbled with a few different kinds of home workout, including running. The game aspect of sport is fun, but the physical activity involved still only left me sore and tired.
One thing I really have to assure you of however: there IS a way to feel energetic after a workout, you just haven't found it yet.
Had the same problem, eventually got fed up and went to physiotherapy and doctors to see if something's wrong with me -- and yes, actually there are a few things wrong with me that prevent me from reaping more benefits of exercise.
I'm working hard on addressing these deficiencies (one of them is a pre-diabetic condition; it's absurdly hard to reverse this thing).
Treat your health like a program that both has a bug and broken dependencies: you have to do a deep dive to solve the problem.
Please don't give up. The fight is very hard but the result is worth it. I'm probably 10% into my journey and I already know I'm never giving up.
What has changed is my appetite- an all day bike ride used to be followed by a giant pizza; now it’s just a normal meal. My all day hikes are somewhat challenging even wanting to eat. A variety of tastes at my disposal (sweet, salty, sore, bitter, savory, Unami) helps.
I’m almost 190lbs these days and muscular. I started out much lighter.
I do not want to feel sore or tired (I think "fatigued" might be a better word choice than "tired" here for what I was trying to communicate).
They are not pleasant sensations. They limit what other things I can do while experiencing them. Their presence is a negative reinforcement against exercising again. Plus I feel ripped off when so many others rave about how good exercise makes them feel while it just makes me feel crummy.
And the negative reinforcement isn't completely gone for me even today. I still mis-step sometimes and over-train a bit and then I don't want to do it for 5-7 days after. It's still a constant internal fight.
However, I'll still say that you haven't found what really works for you. My mother is 69 and she gets absolutely revitalized just by stretching for 25-30 minutes with almost zero strain or cardio. Weird, right?
It really depends on the person. There are almost no formulas.
You can find what works for you. Don't be discouraged to experiment -- pilates, light cardio (running, swimming, hiking, buying an elliptical at home, or a treadmill etc.), tai-chi / qigong, aerobics -- it doesn't matter what your thing will turn out to be. It is still out there waiting to be found by you.
But for me to start reaping even basic benefits I had to do no small amount of other things like stopping all dairy and most carbs, eating more veggies (which I still hate months later btw!), get various physiotherapy treatments -- electricity, laser, ultrasound -- and even take melatonin pills to attempt and make my sleep schedule less erratic. Only after persisting at maintaining like seven parallel operations, for weeks, did some first small positive effects of the exercises start to show.
It's a nasty grind. Think of it as overcoming huge negative inertia. It can be beaten but it can be an extremely thankless job for a good long while.
As a rather non-encouraging example, my wife had a friend who was fat and a bit unhealthy ever since she was a kid. When they were both 16 that girl figured she had enough and got a dietitian and a trainer and completely changed how much she eats, what does she eat, when etc., and also worked out 5 out of 7 days. It took her ONE YEAR of doing this, consistently and without skipping, to drop even one kilo and to start truly becoming healthy and losing weight. Ouch. But it did happen and she's completely transformed now.
Again, it's a grind. Motivating yourself to endure it is 50x harder than doing the exercises -- at least for me. My fight still continues (yep, even with the first positive results in). I hope yours will continue as well.
I personally really enjoy achieving things, so I put some ambitious goals on paper, staked my plan with some cash that would pay out to a close friend if I failed, and got to work. I paid out enough cash that it would hurt if I didn’t achieve my goal. I paid it up front and if I succeeded it would be handed back to me. And damnit I pushed hard to get that cash back!
Finally, I never would have done this without purchasing home equipment.
Exercises are typical compound weightlifting. Bench, squats, deadlifts, presses etc. set up home equip so I could fail on my last set of bench and recover (remove fear of failure).
Gained 12lbs pure muscle, dropped some fat, look better than I’ve ever looked.
Finally, I clearly upped my testosterone level a bit with the exercise, energy and behavior changes (all positive) were noticeable. Same with posture.
Just stick with it way past what you would normally do and you can reprogram yourself!
Just backing up what others are saying, I think it's a combination of it being an acquired taste, and also finding what works for you.
For me, I love swimming and cycling and get nearly all my cardio that way, but running or lifting weights? Just leaves me feeling defeated and in pain.
Problem is I fee either afraid I'm doing the exercises wrong so I stop doing them, or I find others impractical (eg. swimming or freediving).
Probably I should research into anaerobic that are actually considered helpful or somethig, since my brain seems to dislike the least these low-oxigen-effort types of exercises. Dunno...
It's frustrating because all the exercise advice I find seems targeted at people that are practically a whole different species from me...
That "hate" is just hormonal dis-balance. And yeah I know that explanation doesn't help because you can swear on everything that's sacred that this is exactly who you are and it can't be false... But yeah, it still is false and no that's not you. Hormones are a b1tch, a chemical programming agent that's specifically designed to lie to our brains. It's how we're wired.
Not trying to convince you of anything. I know how I felt 6 months ago and I know nobody and nothing could have changed my mind back then; I would have likely physically lashed out at somebody if they tried to press the matter even.
I am only here to tell you that it can get better even if you are 100% sure that it can't. That feeling is false and it's our brain trying to avoid a change and that's why it fills us with doom scenarios and unreasonable hate to the source of the change. It's still just a facade for "but I don't wanna, I am comfy now!" and that facade can fall relatively easily.
> It's frustrating because all the exercise advice I find seems targeted at people that are practically a whole different species from me...
Nope, you just don't belong to the statistically significant group, that's all there is to it. If you keep looking you'll find your exact alien homies. ;)
I on the other hand am usually ravenous soon after exercise.
When I run more than 20 km I get the kind of bottomless hunger I used to have as a growing teenager, but I try to fill up with reasonably healthy stuff (sometimes it's fried chicken though).
I can't say I'm surprised!
Can confirm your findings in me. After the lockdowns and the birth of my son I got a _lot_ fatter. Started exercising just 3 months ago. My cravings for fast food and snacks disappeared. My love for Bourbon is still there but I can control myself better and I don't drink anymore. Before exercise I would drink one bottle per week ... which was becoming very worrisome to me.
> the release-endorphines-on-effort circuit is 100% broken for me
I'm also the laziest person I know. My brother who's well read into this stuff tells me that once I keep up the exercise routine for some time the circuit should come back.
Now that you exercise, I'd hope this seems less excessive? When I take time off from running, I cut back on the alcohol hard else I feel like absolute shit.
Cardio and beers are what life is about.
I drink. Sometimes (rarely) maybe even the equivalent of a bottle per week. But let's not kid ourselves
It's also the getting used with the little monster, can state that from experience... to me at least alchohol was a must-have drug to reduce & control rage and aggresiveness induced by the little one and all the people that had to be around and be interact with... not a peoples person and my natural reaction to demanding people is to want to make them go away one way or another, with a great temptation to do so violently and permanently. (to clarify, was never angry or enraged when alone with the baby himself, taken alone the little thing was sweet af... only with all the people that seemed to suddenly go crazy and become extra "caring", "attentive", "demanding" or what not... I like babies, but I find other peoples' excessive reactions to them utterly disgusting... "baby brain" is a real thing apparently and it makes people uttely unsufferabe...)
Can't wait until the toddler starts school because then I can start again.
It's good to know that I'm not the only one, it's a bit sad to know that there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.
Not sure you should see it so negatively/defeatist. Maybe you just have not found the right thing yet that gives you joy. I discovered my love for road cycling only in my mid thirties and now derive immense pleasure from long rides totally exerting myself and burning 2000+ calories in many of those rides. Lost 10kg of weight and am fitter at 40 then I ever was before.
On the other hand, I've been a 3+ hour a week cardio guy for a decade and when I first got started at 20+ mile a week running, I would eat away any caloric "gains" by 2x. I no longer have those issues and, like others have pointed out, I tend to lose my appetite for awhile after a run/ride. The harder the effort, the less appetite I'll have.
It's not at all about eating, and I'm honestly not sure it'll help you, but the tag in the first article is:
If you can't find time to exercise, you'll have to find time to be sick.
We all know that "if you can't find time to exercise, you'll have to find time to be sick", but in practice we're either wired to overfocus on short term rewards, or we don't really have any connection or emapthy with our future self ("let that bastard rot and die if he ain't got a currage to put a bullet in his head when it gets too nasty") etc. etc.
It's easy to talk from the high horse when you've been blessed with a mind not made up of pieces that are always fighting with each other or always prone to focus on other more stuff more important than your health (yes, there are more important problems in the world than you and your health!)...
Going past that, into the a few hours of exercise or possibly 90 minutes of really intense exercise, I might feel ravenous again. Running a marathon? Eating a horse.
in other words, to me, there's just too many differences to make conclusions
recent periods:
1. a period of months of inactivity.
2. a period of multiple months of morning exercise (running soon after waking, before any food)
3. a period of multiple months of inactivity
4. a period of multiple months of running again
The pattern I experience is clear: during the periods of exercise, after morning running, I don't feel any need/urge to eat breakfast. Easily skippable.
During periods of inactivity, my body craves breakfast. Not skippable without significant willpower.
What gives me an appetite is weight lifting. I honestly don't get how people can't be hungry after lifting heavy. Could be psychological for me because I am also intent on building muscle, but still. My hunger after lifting is more visceral than my usual "gotta eat" feeling.
When it comes to human health, every subject is like that.
This is why we rely on randomized control groups, peer-review, and other mechanisms to reduce the chances of making wrong assumptions.
Here we are again, lecturing people on weight loss as if every human on the planet has exactly the same metabolism, instead of having different metabolic genes, different lines of mitrochondrial DNA, and our metabolism being moderated and modulated by single celled organisms that outnumber our own cells.
We don't have it figured out, and we're not going to figure it out by looking at hundreds of people and copycatting them. This is going to take double genetic testing for participant selection. One for the participant, one for a stool sample.
A longshoreman is strong because he spends all day shifting cargo around. Steve is big and buff because he tricks his body into thinking shifting cargo around all day is a likely scenario.
Muscle is expensive. The body is very stingy with keeping muscle you don't need on a regular basis. A gym visit is trying to simulate the behavior of all-day exertion without having to abandon all of the other activities you want to fill your day with.
I would hypothesize that recovery and digestion are two metabolically intensive activities that the body is unable to do them simultaneously, so it would make sense to suppress hunger while the body recovers itself from exercise.
Now, the supplement industry has made us believe that if you don't consume food within the magical anabolic window, you recovery will be impaired. Nonsense if you ask me.
Same with digestion. I found out the hard way that taking a walk after the restaurant is an awful idea. The body really needs a relaxed pose and to be not doing anything else for at least an hour after a meal (with slowed down metabolisms this can go up to 3h, sadly) so you can properly get your nutrients. Only then you should be doing another activity.
Hibernation and torpor cycles are alternating between metabolic modes that are tied to the seasons, seasons are tied to weather, and exercise levels are tied to the weather directly, and to seasons indirectly - I'm gathering roots today because the sun is out, but I'm not walking to the next village because we usually have snow storms this time of year, so I could get halfway there and then die in a blizzard.
The abstract mentions the effect also occurs on humans and horses, without further details if they were part of the study, or if is just well known. It could be a temporary effect.
If you are trying to lose weight, change diet before starting with exercise. When at the proper weight, use exercise to keep at the correct level.
Several studies compared two groups. One group changed just diet, and other used diet and exercise from the beginning. Faster weight loss noticed in the group just doing a diet change and not doing increased exercise.
The assumption that the increase of exercise, might call for additional cravings, even if of a different type of food.
[1] "...For weight loss, diet seems to be more effective than physical activity,"... "You have to do huge amounts of physical activity to lose weight, but you can get a better energy deficit just by cutting down on calories..." ...
"...So both diet and physical activity are important,"..."Diet probably more important for losing weight. Physical activity for keeping it off..."
[2] "...Despite the prevailing advice, exercise is pretty unhelpful for weight loss..."
[1] "Mayo Clinic Minute: Which is better for losing weight – diet or exercise?": https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...
[2] "Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies": https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-...
Did they track muscle mass? Because from personal anecdata: When I change diet and don't excercise I tend to lose "weight" faster (as weight on a scale) but a lot of that weight loss is from muscle mass. Just dieting makes me "skinny fat".
When I exercise (resistance training like weight lifting - cardio is uslesess) I tend to lose weight on the scale slower but I look better and my muscle mass increases. I also feel _way_ better than on a restrictive diet.
If a subject is already severely overweight, adding exercise could compound the risks.
From your reference.
>If a subject is already severely overweight, adding exercise could compound the risks.
I can see how this would make sense, but for people who are living a sedentary lifestyle and are only moderately overweight, I find it hard to believe that exercise is a bad idea, even if it were to somewhat slow their weight loss progress (and this is without getting into "weight" loss vs. fat loss, which is what really matters)
Personally, my own experience (and that of a few close friends) is that if you want to lose weight it's going to suck. No easy way to do it, you have to go hungry. There are some low-cal fruits and vegetables, or other things you can try to lessen the hunger. But this popular notion that you can just change a few things you eat and still eat 3+ meals a day on some special "diet" is wrong. I don't understand why it perseveres.
With sauna or sunbathing in the morning and exercising in the heat late afternoon I give myself two separate blocks without the constant hunger, between the two appetite suppression periods and the psychological boost of not wanting to waste all my painful effort it makes eating less possible if not enjoyable.
This seems to work great. Fewer cravings.
I've even taken a this a step further. Running on the first morning of a 3-day fast. Works the same.
Note: I wouldn't recommend doing the above without carefully managing electrolytes. But, anyone who's been keto successfully for more than a month should understand what I mean about managing electrolytes.
When you stop eating carbs, body uses carbs, carbs contain water, body removes water (think 4kg of water), the water removes electrolytes, you get "sick". A spoon of table salt in water fixed it once for me.
I notice a big difference in energy as long as I am drinking plenty of water and 1-2 of these per day, especially after a run.
https://drinklmnt.com/pages/ingredients
Bonking hard on a moderate intensity activity can be a symptom of a messed up metabolism which can't produce enough energy from stored fat. If you want to check for sure you can visit a sports medicine lab for a metabolic profile test where they measure how much fat versus carbohydrates you burn at various effort levels. The usual recommendation to shift your metabolism to be more fat adapted is to do a lot more long Zone 2 (below ventilatory threshold) workouts but it can take years to see major changes.
Sports drinks can be helpful to keep you going when you're struggling, but they tend to contain a lot of sugar and aren't ideal for daily consumption.
As far as I can tell, this is mainly a problem due to modern farming practices resulting in less nutritious produce; there have been studies done on the vitamin mineral content of food over the last century, and there has been a steady decline in a number of different nutrients, including potassium.
The trouble is, it's also hard to supplement. To avoid stomach issues, over the counter potassium supplements are limited to 99mg in the US, which is only a few percent of the recommended daily intake. If anyone has any good suggestions on how to regularly get enough potassium, I would love to hear them.
I can easily not eat for three hours after exercise. Actually, I experience no hunger at all.
Could just be conditioning. Sample size of one.
I found that I recover from quite intensive sets faster when training fasted. The decline in performance I experience can be explained by my age and, frankly, that I do not exercise regularly enough.
But when I walk in the mountains for full days (8-12 hours per day), I don't have much of an appetite, especially after two days. I almost have to force myself to eat a real lunch and dinner, though I tend to frequently eat small quantities of dried fruits.
I believe this could be the main reason why its almost impossible to eat at a caloric defecit (with surplus protein) and train anabolically at the same time. Some people are able to do that, it's just very rare.
Heavy weights induces a deep visceral hunger that I can only describe as the hunger that you feel when your body is depleted and is starting to burn fat stores. It’s different to the usual hunger pangs. Anyone else felt it? It makes me double over sometimes and I completely lose track of what I was doing whenever I get those pangs. I almost always follow up with a heavy meal.
I'm not sure it has anything to do with burning fat stores though, because I don't get the same feeling after say, a 3-day water fast. At that point I'm definitely hungry, but don't have the same insatiable food craving.
In fact, when I was experimenting with extended fasting, the only reason I stopped at 3 days is because I was lifting lighter weights every day and hit a point where my strength was physically depleted. I could only do about 3 reps instead of finding 15+ easy. Hunger wasn't really a problem after the first day of getting used to it.
Do you exercise regularly? If so how does your appetite feel between sessions (while youre recovered)?
When I switched over to cycling, anywhere from 150-250 miles a week, my appetite went through the roof, and I just inhale food constantly.
As an aside, I found my tastebuds get extremely, extremely sensitive right after a spirited bike ride. Sometimes things I thought that tasted pretty good suddenly had certain flavor profiles ultra amplified and overpowering. Other times, food & drink that tasted weird would become absolutely delicious. But even an hour later, after satiating the post-bike-ride appetite, that very same food or drink could taste significantly different. Like Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing IPA, man, it can taste like 2 vastly different beers. Doesn't make me wanna become a foodie per se but it does make me think that my body craves and rewards me for eating after a spirited ride.
CNDP2, the enzyme that helps make lac-phe (N-[(S)-lactoyl]-L-phenylalanine) needs manganese as a cofactor.
https://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/Q96KP4
If you are deficient in Manganese, or need more Manganese because genetics, they you will not make as much lac-phe after working out.
And indeed they find that manganese deficiency is related to metabolic disorders.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article-abstract/115/7/919/47559...
From personal experience I recommend saturated fat (mostly from beef tallow) as an anti-hunger molecule. With as little as possible omega-6 in the diet. And carnivore. Works wonders. My satiety base level is now set so that I get down to ~12% bf in a reasonable time when I'm above that. Could also bulk up to a powerlifting competition on this diet no problem when necessary.
Not that good advice I guess?
Most people don't have the dedication of a body builder carefully eating only patties from the burgers. Which would probably work.
Biology is complicated and different people will have different results. I'm glad it's working for you but please exercise caution before assuming it will help everyone. You also might want to get your kidneys tested.
https://www.renalandurologynews.com/home/news/nephrology/chr...
N=1 anecdotes are not worth the energy discussing them.
Her son (my father), lived 55 while smoking a pack a day since his 20s.
--
Also, what is keto diet? I've seen keto diets made of mostly meat and organic vegetables, and keto diets made of fat bombs and almond flour pizzas.
Keto and low carb these days have stopped meaning anything, often doesn't even mean "healthier".
My N=1 anecdote is a counterexample that has medical research to back it up. Or are you discrediting the person's anecdote about a carnivorous diet being healthy?
Anyway, the long term effects are not that worrisome since virtually no one will stick to a diet this strict. I wouldn't also recommend strict keto or carnivore because without carbs most people will lack the oomph for a good workout.
1. In every health thread we should post a picture of our body
2. Find a doctor that agrees with your opinion. Whatever it is you will find one.
3. I/we usually take harder things than the keto/carnivore thing (trust me)
4. Many things that we've been told our lives has been a lie. Maybe the keto/carnivore is also like that.
5. Please gather all your docs and start a thread on twitter with the "top" keto researchers (@nicknorwitz, @KetoCarnivore, @ChrisPalmerMD, @realDaveFeldman some that I follow)
6. High carb is killing the developed world. Please exercise caution.
> 2. Find a doctor that agrees with your opinion. Whatever it is you will find one.
I don't want a doctor to confirm my bias. I want a doctor to give me objective data about my health.
You randomly got one that confirmed your bias.
See Virta Health for FDA approved example. It's progressing slowly.
If you are open minded for real check the book "Brain Energy" https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Energy-Revolutionary-Understand...
When I listen to someone tell me objective data I'm confirming a bias I never had to begin with? The amount of projecting you're doing is extraordinary. If a doctor told you your kidneys were failing after getting them tested (I already linked the research for you to read, but clearly you're afraid of information that doesn't confirm your bias), would you then go find a doctor that tells you your kidneys are fine? Your fear of information is literally going to kill you. This is the mentality that leads to anti-vaxxing.
> If you are open minded for real check
This is ironic since you're not even open-minded to listening to a doctor, or medical research, or anything that disagrees with what you already think you know.
You are a perfect example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
In my case, I've improved my health care issues given to me by my parents with keto/carnivore.
Hope you do the same.
Note: you never mentioned anything about yourself, not what you eat or train or anything. Just the cancer and the paper.
The paper you linked had nearly everything wrong starting from the high protein, the acidosis thing, the meat/eggs being associated with diabetes, the doctor recommending vegan.
You forgot your friend's dad.
The ONLY way to know something is to become an expert yourself. If you do keto for several years, you will see that I'm correct.
But you can't compare several years of experience with just reading a paper.
I'm talking what I do for several years and progress while you link to a paper that is clearly wrong to anyone knowing keto basics.
You are a midwit! Also see the "Ackchyually meme". It happens often with people with no real world/life experience beside reading title of papers thinking they're smart.
Cheers.
The paper is still wrong.
Even keto/carnivore can help with delusions/schizophrenia/bipolar: Dr. Chris Palmer - 'The Ketogenic Diet in Neurology and Psychiatry' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUtwr_6sFw4. He is a doctor, try watching the video.
But, being a midwit is genetic. No cure for that. I'm sorry.
Your ability to incorrectly read what I wrote so many times is impressive. My friend's dad isn't dead.
You have demonstrated more than once a complete inability to fact check the most basic things, and yet you pontificate as if you are an expert. Have you ever considered you may have accidentally gotten many of your other assumptions wrong? If your worldview is anything like this conversation, it's built on incorrect assumptions and you being confident about something objectively false. You are demonstrating that you have the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader and expect me to take you seriously.
You've already discredited yourself multiple times. I don't respect you enough to read your sources, the same way you can't even correctly read the sentences I write. If you are so sure you are right, why do you care what I think? I never claimed to be struggling with my health, and yet you keep offering advice on how to improve it. You are having an argument with yourself and you don't even recognize it. It's obvious you don't listen, but you need therapy.
I hope you get the help that you need, but something tells me you'd refuse it even if it were available.
I've read that each kidney has a seven fold overcapacity for what people need. So if the kidneys are damaged something majorly bad had to have happened.
Kidneys are also involved in blood production along with bones.
Not sure why: if it is the low carb aspect or just eating less.
I am basically a N=1 experiment to see what works for me in terms of management. I see a psychologist and have started meditation too to have another iron in the fire.
Yeah I’ve done lots of blood tests. Those make me look like a 20yo athlete :-). I am not.
I love it when someone say you should see a doctor! If only … I could see just one. I probably have seen 10. I love it when one doctor shakes their head about what the other one said.
But r/cfs is actually more useful for knowledge (doctors are good for getting tests done, I had blood tests, brain scan, sleep study, lime tests) and I guess as a sanity check.
> Where are you going to get all your micronutrients from?
In the meat. You have to look at the bioavailability of stuff from plants and how much they have per-gram and per-calorie.
There are books/people/forums to follow if you want to try. Don't try it blindly/stupidly but go to a forum and ask basic questions.
facepalm Good luck hitting the RDAs for the following using only the meats you described:
* Vitamin C * Vitamin E * Vitamin K * Calcium * Magnesium
I hope beef liver is in your daily diet, otherwise you're also going to come up short in a bunch of other micros. If you're also strength training you also need to go above the RDA for certain micros (e.g, Vit C, B vitamins, Calcium, ...) making it even harder.
This diet is pure pseudoscience.
I eat full lamb but will consider going mostly muscle meat, will have to find some good deal first.
> This diet is pure pseudoscience.
We've been told that all our lives. It feels that way. I'm sorry. I don't listen to general advice though. Till now it's been going ok.
Join https://old.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/ and give it a try! Who knows, maybe I'm right ;)
The only way that RDAs are even remotely useful is if one is eating a standard diet where many vitamins and minerals are of lesser bioavailability as they are in the form of meat. In terms of vitamin C, there's a reason why meat eaters don't get scurvy, which is that meat contains other compounds that make the need for exogenous vitamin C much less necessary.
That is precisely why RDAs are mostly nonsense. Absolute values for micronutrients mean very little when you don't account for the food substrate, cofactors, an individual's overall health, what a person weighs, what their body composition is, etc.
Somehow, humans (the Homo genus, to be exact), got away without RDAs for millions of years. And they ate lots of meat.
> I hope beef liver is in your daily diet, otherwise you're also going to come up short in a bunch of other micros.
No, humans do not have to eat organ meat. There is no evidence for this. Skeletal muscle and fatty tissues, particularly that from large ruminant animals, provide everything that a human body needs to function optimally.
> If you're also strength training you also need to go above the RDA for certain micros (e.g, Vit C, B vitamins, Calcium, ...) making it even harder.
The human body does not contain an RDA meter. As I already discussed, RDA is an opinion that only makes sense when a certain set of vitamins and minerals are viewed in isolation. The RDA and RDI hypotheses fall apart when all the other variables of human diet and health come into play.
> This diet is pure pseudoscience.
Yeah... I guess stable isotope data is pseudoscience as well, but RDA is rock solid. Right.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.13011
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
However, nature dominates nurture almost every time. So a good hormonal profile is of course more important than diet. I know guys who eat trash but maintain sub-10% bf physique and deadlift 300 kilos. They do it with some genetic luck and steroids.
The thing is, I’m not comparing myself to Brian Shaw or Larry Wheels or anyone else eating 5,000-10,000 calories a day with steroids.
Um, define difficult?
I even recognise one of the poster's nicknames here for trying to push some insane (to me; I would say it will be a fluke of nature if this person gets beyond 65 y/o) meat/fat only diets on HN.
An unacceptably selfish attitude in 2022 where industrial-scale mass production of meat foods are literally making our planet unlivable at alarming rates.
As a conscious human being within civilized society you have a responsibility to do the right thing, even if it means taking on a little discomfort in the short term.
Your happiness has less priority than our survival as a species.
Said the next Hitler/Mao/Stalin...
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin D
- Zinc
Most vegan food products available in supermarkets, if you notice the labels, include B12 and Vitamin D supplements at a minimum.
"Top5 Nutrient Deficiencies On A Plant Based Diet": https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/blog/the-top-5-deficiencie...
Zinc is very easy to get outside of meat products, nuts and oats provide plenty of zinc.
Be sure to have at least something like 30 minutes 2 days out of 3 where you do sport (workout, whatever you like) and really sweat. Your smart watch can help you doing it with gamification/challenges/you name it.
It is simple, very simple, the hard part is to just do it and keep doing it.
Exercise is not how you lose weight, changing your diet up to and including fasting is. Exercise is good for you in a whole lot of other ways, but the idea you can outrun a bad diet is pretty thoroughly debunked at this point.
Is this just bad measurement or is there anything to that?
Sorry, but the term dirty bulking, and the existence of "eat big to get big" videos among the body builder community shows that many in the high end to elite strata of weight training not only just don't eat clean, but they also get their enjoyment and muscle from the absolutely nasty food they eat as part of it (... Yes and roids)
I'll get hungry of course, but in a way where I'm more happy just eating some reasonable amount of actual food instead of stuffing myself with a bag of crisps or worse.
This might also be psychological; it feels good after exercising so I feel more inclined to stay on the path.
The result, either way, is that while I know from experience that just changing my diet works to lose weight, it becomes a lot easier to keep it up when also exercising.
Perhaps you can't "outrun" a bad diet, but you can certainly out-lift it.
Weight training leads to stronger muscles, stronger muscles spend more energy, more energy spent leads to losing weight.
> 10 pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories [1]
50 pounds of fat burns 100 calories per day.
10 pounds of muscle burns 50 calories per day.
If you lose 50 pounds of fat and replace it with 10 pounds of muscle, you're net 50 calories per day. About 1/10th of a Starbucks muffin.
Not eating a Starbucks muffin is the same as having 90 extra pounds of muscle. You'd have to look like John Cena for this to make any difference whatsoever. But you're never going to look like John Cena unless you adjust your diet.
The only way to lose fat is to change your diet.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/features/8-ways-to-burn-c...
Who said anything about resting? I'm talking about exercise. The more you exercise, the more muscle you build, which makes you spend more energy while exercising.
Do you have any idea how much bodybuilders eat, without gaining any significant fat?
> The only way to lose fat is to change your diet.
False. You can lose fat by exercising, without changing your diet whatsoever.
Again muscle vs fat don't change significantly that quantity of calories burned, unless you have some citations.
> False. You can lose fat by exercising, without changing your diet whatsoever.
Not in any practical sense. Most folks don't have the time to run a five-miler for each muffin they eat in a given day.
This advice is just not useful. It's technically correct but totally unhelpful. It's basically the tautology: 'once you've lost weight you've lost weight.'
Why would I need citations for simple physics equation? A person with stronger muscles will lift more weight more times than a person with weaker muscles. Since more energy is needed to lift more weight, more energy will be expanded.
Can you point out the mistake in my reasoning, please?
> Most folks don't have the time to run a five-miler for each muffin they eat in a given day.
You are completely missing my argument. I am not saying that your average Joe can spend all the energy he eats through running. I am saying that your average Joe can start going to the gym, develop muscles, and eventually gain enough muscles to be able to expand as much energy as he eats. At that point, he will start losing weight, even if he's eating the same amount of food that he was eating before developing muscles.
> It's technically correct but totally unhelpful
That's totally your opinion, unless you have some citations.
And then my wife had to go on an extended elimination diet to deal with gastrointestinal issues and I joined as moral support. In the space of a month, with absolutely no exercise happening, I dropped 10kgs. And I don’t think I’d ever felt healthier. As soon as I got back to running I was as quick as I’d ever been, no great surprise I guess given how much lighter I was.
Turns out the biggest impact I could have on my health was being more conscious of what I was eating. I couldn’t out run what I was putting in my mouth, no matter the distances I was putting in.
It works like this: If you're unfit, your capacity for output during exercise is less. If you're fitter, your capacity for output during exercise is higher.
An unfit person doing exercise, will therefore burn significantly fewer calories than someone who is fit if they exercise for the same duration at the same perceived effort.
If I go for a hard 1 hour bike ride, I burn 3 cheeseburgers. An unfit person will struggle to burn much more than 1 despite working as hard as they can.
What getting fitter enables you to do is increase the output without it feeling harder, either through increased duration or increased speed/power/etc.
Be wary of using heart rate as an indicator of this - it varies massively between people, and approximating energy output from it is not much better than using math.rand(). If you’re training to the same heart rate but your speed is going up, you can say you’re improving, but you can’t apply an absolute measure to it with any accuracy.
1. https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=165843261
I exercise in fasted state, 14-18 hours of fast. If exercise is especially hard, I found food not attractive at all, neither how it looks or how it smells. I have to force myself to eat when this happen and usually eat less.
On bright side, I've found that I recover faster after exercise bouts when I'm in fasted state.
I also have to note that was not the case when I was younger and performed my training routines after being fed. When I exercised being fed I experienced hunger and wanted to eat.
I find this article annoying. It should come as no surprise that there is a mechanism for suppressing appetite during physical activity. There is only so much blood to go around and both digestion and exercise place demands on the blood supply.
It would be a hardship to place both demands on the body at the same time consistently.
Why is it annoying? confirming unsurprising results is important.
I hate the tendency to frame everything in terms of a pill to fix our problems and/or a get rich quick scheme as a substitute for trying to figure out how to live right.
I imagine the research is good and useful. Pity about the way it’s been presented.
In 2 months I dropped 30 lbs, how was by fasting. I would only eat 1 big meal a day, as in drink coffee in the morning, not have a snack (fiber bar) until after 5PM (assuming 9-5 schedule) and then eat around 9PM/few hours before sleep. (means 1200-1500 calories per day vs. 2400+). The figure to keep in mind is a lb of fat is 3500c. Counting calories matters.
The hard thing is sticking to it (obviously) as I rebounded and I gained that weight back already. I sit at a desk/don't really go outside much. You will feel a hunger pang and you will want to eat, but it will pass.
I used to work next to a gym so it was easy to work out, I would just go to the gym after work, at times I would even work out as long as 4 hrs in a row. I was super cut back then, lifting. But the gym is now 5+ miles away from me one way and I used to go there 4-5 days a week. I could drive that but nah... 20 minutes of driving and 1-2 hrs at the gym that's a lot of lost time. Plus I used to go late at night/early morning so I had the entire gym to myself, I didn't have to wait for the squat area or bench, etc...
I'm not doing that anymore, and I'm not really interested in getting body-building sculpted, just toned/visible muscle/low body fat. So I'm doing that at home, got some bands/one of those multi-use pull up bars... but diet is the main thing... if you have low body fat you will look better than with a lot... as in good chin definition, no gut... I have this personal denial going on where I wear baggy clothes/saying "I'm not THAT overweight" but I am by about 40lbs. Film yourself externally to see.
I guess this really only matters if you care about external appearance/say trying to attract someone else, gotta meet them/be on their level.
I am in my later 20's, 6ft weight should be around 210 but I'm at low 260s as of this moment. Was high 230, low 240s in Feb. My problem is I binge eat when I'm bored/watch TV.
Last thing I'll mention, I also include some back stretching/exercise, light to keep the back strong since I sit on a stool all day (office chair but back broke off).
Indeed, there is some science which suggests that fasting plays an important role in long-term homeostasis -- particularly when it comes to managing cellular senescence and insulin resistance[1]. I'm only a layperson, but I feel like there's a pretty clear parallel that can be drawn between exercise and fasting here; Human body metabolism developed in an environment where both of these processes would reliably play out over time, so it seems to follow that each would contribute important functions to the overall metabolic process.
Fasting is just a rapid way to lose weight and in my case above it's not crazy, you're still eating daily, not starving yourself for days on end. And for me it helps me keep my energy levels up/focus by delaying eating.
Regarding my binge eating (fast food) habit that's my "exciting thing" on the weekend with some shows, I can still do that however not "fast food". For example I usually would buy/eat:
- a large quarter pounder deluxe meal (burger and fries)
- a fish fillet sandwich
- a mcchicken, a mcdouble
- large shake/or caramel frappe
I think when I binge like that it's 3000-5000 calories in one shot. That's why my weight gain is so rapid/bad. I would do that a few times in a week of different chains.
So in order to still have "fun" on the weekends, I will get some prepared/frozen meal like those skillet pasta... I'm not saying it's much better... but that's my junk food avoidance/fun food. Otherwise I usually eat the same thing everyday: fiber bar snack, then rice, chicken, frozen veggies meal (only because I don't like cooking).
The standard of being “in shape” has gotten so absurd, and the nonlinear payoff around fitness so steep at the “maybe doing some pretty extreme shit” cutoff that I’m personally surprised I have t just given up, and it seems a lot of people have.
I don’t know if it’s TikTok, or Marvel movies, or whatever: but “fucking mutant superhero” used to one among many attractive archetypes.
I don't diet anymore, I've started intuitive eating and my diet has improved over all. I eat variety now, more vegetables and lots of protein. I also have carbs, and dessert with I want it. I've also started doing things for the experience rather than to make my body look a certain and ultimately unattainable way. I don't focus on how I look anymore, I focus on being strong. I am now highly active and doing activities I never thought I would be capable of in my fat body. I take dance classes four times a week, I lift weights, and I am starting Lyra and aerial classes. I also don't step on scales anymore. But I can tell you I haven't magically shrunk. I guess what I'm trying to say is... Any standard of "in shape" can be impossible for any person. We aren't all meant to look that same and I think that people are caring less about being overweight because it should never have been a limiting factor to you enjoying your life, being active, and being well loved by the right people.
Is that actually true though? Take a look at the photographic evidence of hunter-gatherers. They all largely look the same physique wise.
I think there is a good argument, at least from an historical/anthropological perspective, that that is how we are all meant to look.
I think this would need more development. What do you mean by "hunter-gatherers", and what photographic evidence we have.
For instance there's African societies which would fit the "hunter-gatherer" label (for instance the Akan in Ghana) and they're not all looking the same.
You were on a very good path when doing keto, but why did you starve yourself?
There are two kinds of diets that lead to healthy weight loss: 1) low-fat high-carb 2) high-fat low-carb
Pick one and stick with it.
But god help you if you will mix large amounts of carbs and fats.
Your only mistake is that you starved yourself on keto, people have extreme success on keto/carnivore. No need to starve yourself.
You are responding to a description of pain and suffering through all kinds of diets....with a push to do more diet.
And that, without any better argumentation than "There are two kinds of diets that lead to healthy weight loss". At this point it's just plain evil.
Obesity leads to an early death.
"Evil"? Trying to show a person that his mistake was starving himself when he thinks that keto was the problem is evil? Since when is pointing out mistakes that a person can use to correct himself evil?
You truly have a warped worldview.
If someone is fat his diet must be changed. There is no other way. If you belive that diet==starvation than you understand nothing about dieting.
For example, people on a good keto diet do not even remotely starve, are fully satiated (after the first 14 days that the body requires so adjust to this diet, which is an annoying period) and lose a lot of weight.
So does a lot of things, including eating disorders and living a miserable life in the first place.
From the parent's post, it's clear that dieting has done significant damage, and they got better when they stopped caring about that "Obesity leads to an early death." mantra:
> I still have palpitations sometimes, and I will never know what damage yoyo dieting for years did to me. [...] I don't focus on how I look anymore, I focus on being strong.
On your general stance on the subject:
> If someone is fat his diet must be changed. There is no other way.
This is a text book example of dogma. and if you really meant it, I guess there will be no amount of discussion that actually leads to anything productive on either yours or my side...
Obesity is the easiest preventable thing under your control that you can directly influence to assure that an early death does not come, you are coping and desperately trying to twist what I said.
>From the parent's post, it's clear that dieting has done significant damage
His incorrect dieting did the damage. You can drive a car well or you can drive it without a drivers license and crash in the first wall and kill yourself. You are again conflating legit dieting with incorrect dieting.
>This is a text book example of dogma. and if you really meant it, I guess there will be no amount of discussion that actually leads to anything productive on either yours or my side...
I cannot write here what I truly wish to say in regards to this comment as it would get me banned.
There is no other way to reduce fatness other than with a diet change. You do realize that what you wrote makes no sense? How do you expect someone to lose weight without changing his diet? Unless you have a device at home capable or breaking the laws of physics, which I doubt. Exercise is hardly of any help for fat loss.
The alternative are surgeries: but think about it: would you rather correctly adjust the food you eat or would you rather have a piece of you cut out and risking god knows what side effects of mutilating your body for having delusions of how mother nature designed the human body?
Do you know this from experience or are you just assuming that because controlling your weight is easy it must be for everyone?
Simple->complex is orthogonal to easy->difficult.
To each their own, there's a lot of ways to look at any single situation.
Obesity is not a disease, it's a condition. The distinction is important. Some disease can be caused by excessive obesity, but being obese doesn't force getting these diseases.
Here we don't know anything about someone on the internet, and there's no way for us to claim that they will have any critical disease due to their potential obesity. They might be perfectly fine for the rest of their life as they are now. Some studies actually find a longer lifespan for people lightly in the "overweight" zone.
Basically, reducing weight might not benefit everyone "overweight" person.
On the "easiest" part...living a less stressful life is also easy, and can be done by not stressing on diets...
> There is no other way to reduce fatness other than with a diet change.
My complaint is not as much on the "how" than on the "why". From the info we got, there just is no reason to reduce fatness in the first place. And then, if there were actual reasons, the solutions should be adjusted to those reasons. If it's heart diseases, there are more efficient means to prevent them (e.g. increasing exercice, or changing life habits like sleep patterns or reducing salt/adjusting water intake, etc.).
If we really care about health, there is no universal advice.
Obese people are the only group of people that routinely die young.
Have you ever sought therapy?
Why didn't you continue keto without starving yourself?
I was 6'4", 240lbs, with a body-fat percentage under 15%. Athletes routinely exceed that level of fitness, few others do. In the 90s I would have been the cut of an NFL tight-end.
But in my vicinity were guys who were fucking shredded. Younger and older. Those guys were taking something. Anabolic steroids? Not sure, but fucking likely.
Now I've got 10-15% less muscle mass but am up to 260lbs. So my body fat percentage has slowely but surely crept above 20%. And the guys at the gym are even scarier than 3 years ago. Blowing joints on absurd weight and being back at it 1-2 weeks later.
Is this because of the Internet? Maybe. But you don't need the Internet to have it all around you.
And it's not all about the fat. People have become horribly weak because of their sedentary lifestyle. Sit at a desk for 8h, sleep 8h, sit on the couch for 2h for entertainment, sit while eating for 1h.
And it's perfectly understandable that people want to take care of their body more than they care about other things. It's the only thing that is truly theirs and no amount of money can fix it if you don't take care of it.
In my case, I was well past the "obese" point on the BMI scale, but not "morbidly obese" yet. I thought I was overweight, but not badly so.
Then I stopped and took a good look at my BMI and where it should be, and decided to diet. I lost some weight myself, and then went to a doctor who prescribed a drug to help me. I ended up losing almost 70 lbs. I've gained about 20 of that back now, but I've been holding (or slowly slipping) for quite a few years now, and still want to lose again.
I look at old pictures of myself and I'm horrified at how fat I was. But at the time, I didn't see a problem.
I've been thinking for a while that male people mostly did not receive attention at all from the whole body-positivity movement. Which is very relevant, because a lot of people strive for a physical condition which might simply be unachievable, or they try to reach such body shape in unhealthy ways (i've so many friends start using wey powder as a significant part of their nutrition without consulting their doctor and/or a nutritionist).
In general I think male people would generally benefit from some body positivity...
I know it affects me. Looking at media 20-30 years ago I don't this was as prevalent.
It's all steroids. Hours of training and some super rigorous diet plan is all a ruse. It's steroids.
People have recovery time, hours of intense training a day is physically not possible, atleast not in the way which would build muscle for the type of shitless shots.
Mentioning hard work is completely unnecessary, it is a given.
Following the programme and rep-ing till failure isn't necessarily particularly "hard work" especially if you're roided up.
The difference between using and not using roids & PEDs is so massive, that all this mentioning of "hard work" is extremely disingenuous.
It's just steroids & PEDs all around wherever you look.
Getting to low BF% is all very doable though, just keep your carb intake to bare minimum.
But getting the shredded/body builder look people asociate with weightlifting?
Most of the time that shit is just pure steroids and unachievable naturally outside of some very rare 0.01% specimen.
And thus the missing component ultimately is roids really.
Because if you don't use roids, by far most people can't get roided tiktoker/marvel super hero look. Hard work or not.
The fact is, that most actors in those movies get there very quickly, relatively speaking and they do use roids. With some very, very rare exceptions.
The hard work isn't the missing component, the roids is the missing key component.
I wonder if we could just induce a little healthy endorphin addiction is less fit people to prime them? Haha
I definitely crave horrible sugary food and salt from doing like a 3h ride... but between rides when Im recovered I often wont even want a snack or anything if offered.
I've found that two things cause massive hunger in my case: a diet rich in added sugar/salt and being tired. The latter usually comes after extended exercise, so appears to be counterproductive for weight loss. Other benefits still apply though.
Just dropping added sugar/salt now that my child eats solid food helped a lot though. One benefit is a heightened (or actually: not dulled) sense of taste.
I'm currently on a "cheat week" and it's already getting annoying that food doesn't taste as good.
Dietitians say this again and again: even the best diet is no good if you can't keep to it.
If you're in shape and get enough sleep a moderate amount of exercise shouldn't make you tired. Being a parent might contribute more to the tiredness though
So a lot of folks on here are talking about the effects of exercise and stuff like endorphins.
Andrew Huberman sums it up best
1. Dopamine and testosterone are closely linked 2. Effort releases dopamine and testosterone 3. Don't spike dopamine before or after effort, let effort spike dopamine 4. Testosterone makes effort feel good (Testosterone makes you feel good) 5. Winning increases testosterone, in all venues 6. Losing decreases testosterone, in all venues
[1] https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/herman-pontzer-expla...
Stimulants of all kinds suppress appetite.
Since "Phenylalanine is a precursor for tyrosine, the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), epinephrine (adrenaline), and the skin pigment melanin..." combining it with lactate destroys this adrenaline high.
I don't know if you can outrun a bad diet, but maybe you can lift it.