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Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

I can only speak for myself, but I stopped being obese and out of shape when I stopped being broke.

I began to eat fewer calories of higher quality food, hit my macros, and prevented muscle loss by going to the gym a few times a week.

It was a feedback loop with my social environment. Expectations of me changed when I finished school, and I didn't really think anything of it until I saw some results which only reinforced the new habits. Everyone was supportive and from there lots of other stuff in my life got cleaned up as well. I don't even drink as much as I used to.

I can't be alone in feeling this way. For me it was finding good people, being happy with my career, and not being so stressed out all the time as a result.

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After 10 years of natural lifting, my maintenance calorie at sub 20% body fat is higher than when I was obese, normalized/settled at ~35% body fat around the same weight. Easier to maintain weigth and appearance than ever. And apart from hammering down some protein shakes, I eat whatever, like obesity days. That said eating clean does do wonders for my performance and energy levels. Ozempic probably has much greater gen pop appeal since it's a pill, and probably what one needs to stay on if they need to stablize below their natural setpoint. But sometimes I wonder if segments of population wouldn't be better off with a few dollars of testosterone and one day at gym a week before resorting to Ozempic. If only more longintunal research was done on moderate test usage. Arguably most slight-modest overweight people would look much better recompositing to more muscle at their current weight. That said I do have make an slight effort to be 5-10lbs shy of my setpoint weight during less active periods of winter. That few extra lbs is when I start experiencing health issues like gastric reflux and increase in blood pressure.

This is, regrettably, unattainable for many in the US (economy).

High stress, poor sleep quality, alcohol abuse, and obesity all reinforce each other in a feedback loop. Breaking out of that vicious cycle often requires a complete lifestyle change including a new environment and different friends.

Well yeah. I moved away to a different region of the country and into a nicer neighborhood.

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