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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

There's also a strange satisfaction when skipping one or two meals. Even though you feel craving food for a little while, there's a feeling of being light, lean and sharp, even mentally.

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This just isn't the case for me. I don't wake up when I skip breakfast, and if I don't eat throughout the day, I invariably end up exhausted by 3pm only to wake right up 45 minutes after dinner. I don't doubt your experience, but I certainly don't share it.

No problem, biology is so complex and vast, we're all gonna have differences. Thanks for replying.

God I wish all internet discussion was like this

[God denies your wish]

I use emacs AND vi.

facetiousness aside, it's really cool to have others return on experience. Even though I kinda made a blanket statement originally, I wasn't trying to enforce my opinion, it was more of a regular result I tried to share.

Try fasting for a day or 2, after reading up on it. It will reset the 'need to eat' training. Humans eating more than once or t2ice a day os a rather recent phenomenon.

Caveat; fasting functions differently for women and men. Women may actually damage their hormones if they aren’t careful fasting in a way that doesn’t happen with men.

Source please? I have looked and nothing I have found suggests damage, and more research is needed.

What kind of exercise do you get?

I’m not OP, but:

1. Food intake varies for me, but generally I don’t eat until noon, or sometimes even until 6pm. I generally don’t force this; I’m hungry right now, I’ll often eat right now. 2. (1) has been the case for years, both when exercising regularly and when not. Right now I happen to be exercising regularly. On Saturday I woke up feeling good, so I drank some water and got on the rowing machine to do a half marathon. That was with no food since the evening before, and no water during — it took 1:45, which is a moderate pace for me. After that I still wasn’t very hungry.

That is for certain! Some of my best days are often just one large early dinner, and nothing all day except lot of fluids and sleeping on six or seven hours. There's something synergetic about not sleeping way too much and not eating that awakens the inner "animal" and keeps the mind alert.

I think so. "Alert" is probably the proper idea, when you're hungry but cannot eat, your brain will seek satisfaction elsewhere, and all this mental energy can be channeled into another activity (a bit like how people get very very active for a few days when they stop smoking cigarettes)

I have a theory that our natural state is “hungry”. We haven’t evolved past a time where getting enough food to be “full” would be a pretty rare occurrence. Everyone’s obsession with being perfectly comfortable at all times is why such an incredible amount of people die of obesity and its comorbitities every year in America.

Yeah I think so too. We were not made for comfort (especially not that amount, not that often), there needs to be a cycle between getting satisfaction and waiting/working for it.

Plenty of people lived entire lives without being hungry most of the time, but also without obesity being common.

My theory is fairly broad and vague, but your comment has taken those two things to an extreme.

I'm just pointing out that your theory is trivially disproven.

An excess of comfort is probably still bad, but I doubt it's the main cause of obesity.

It all hinges on how we define comfort. A comfy villager 500 years ago, with fruits and meat nearby was probably never really hungry, but, I'd argue:

- never the amount of processed calories at hand - had to consume these calories on a regular basis.. no vehicles, no powered tools except the occasional mill, most things required walking of lifting

Obesity in the US didn’t really start taking off until the 1970s. There are plenty of people still alive from the before times. I believe that studies have been done, and people aren’t generally less active now than they were then.

But the generations prior didn't necessarily have a car. And a lot of jobs were manual labour.

I know that since I dropped using a car I'm living very different days. Less fat, better cardio, more calm.

On reddit there was post where a group of gastroenterologists answering questions. One comment from the doctors was, paraphrasing: "let your stomach growl it's needed for the health of your gut".

I have a high metabolism but a low desire to eat sometimes. I force myself to eat three meals a day. Could be a mental problem I don't know. But my point here was that I feel the complete opposite to this.

You should get into weightlifting.

I do and I do get stuff like OP, overeating for weightlifters that aren't professionals is stupid really long term strategy, you just expose your body to much more toxins in food and degrade whole body faster (without even going into supplements part).

Ie today I skipped breakfast since I was too busy with work and kids, no ill effect mentally. But if for example my wife would do the same, her sugar levels would drop low and she would be easily irritable, and generally would suffer quite a bit.

Good point. I've been working out more often. Lifting weights, calisthenics. It definitely does help me get in three meals a day more often, but not consistently.

Skipping meals also helps counter jetlag. Something about not eating keeps you alert.

> There's also a strange satisfaction when skipping one or two meals.

Is this a fact or your personal experience?

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