Low chance of obese people recovering normal body weight (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Low chance of obese people recovering normal body weight (2015)

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5 pointspaulpauper8 comments

As a software engineer, who spends large amounts of time sitting at a desk, I have struggled with weight management on/off over the years.

I've found that fasting, for 16-24-48 hours at a time, is simple, easily doable, and doesn't prevent me from sitting at my desk and getting work done.

After the fast is over, I switch back to normal meals and weight lifting.

For anyone else out there that needs to lose some pounds, you can do it. Find a method that works for you and do it.

> After the fast is over, I switch back to normal meals and weight lifting.

"weight lifting" is doing a lot of lifting here probably. Strength training and building muscle is so beneficial for weight loss/body building in the literal sense.

I'm not sure that fasting is a good long term solution for people -- it's hard to schedule around this without being in that very specific situation.

As you said though, it's on everyone to do what works for them, not what I say or anyone else says.

Isn't it all outdated now? Obesity is a problem of the past, just get on Wegovy. It improves everything in life and there are no downsides.

I know this is a joke, but you know what, it's actually kind of true now.

There are absolutely downsides to GLP1 drugs, but the way they work is well-studied, and with a low enough price and high enough availability (and a lot of luck to not have significant side effects), someone COULD get on them or some future better version of the drugs and have lowered/controlled appetite which enables them to lose weight over the long term.

Always taking the drug isn't ideal (and ideally you'd eventually get off), but it's better than the alternative.

Then again, I'm biased.

That was totally not a joke. I seriously think that public should revert to good old fat-shaming to coerce obese people to get on Wegovy (and yes, very obese ones will suffer side effects - how else do you expect to lose 20-25% of your body mass? naturally it has to be painful). Simply to reduce medical and social costs of obesity, these people need to be shamed into taking them. Obesity needs to be de-normalised socially so that people who are still obese, perceived as oddballs and finger-pointed at. Especially since in America, poor people are habitually shaming, and these days, when obesity is fixable with a guarantee by taking a $1300 drug, fat-shaming became poor-shaming.

As a matter of fact, if now in 2024 you are still obese, you are either poor, or you don't care.

Well, that's swung the other way very quick -- that's a pretty callous way to look at it IMO but to each their own.

Glad these drugs exist and are an option for people struggling with obesity though.

But this is among ppl are are not trying to lose weight though.

I read somewhere that a study was done, and people who eat instinctively ( without any sort of strategy to control calories ) on average, over ate by 100 calories a day.

3500 calories is the rule of thumb used by fitness enthusiasts to represent one pound of fat. Ignoring the fact that it takes about 2 calories per day to maintain 1 pound of body fat, eating an extra 100 calories per day ( half a can of soda +/- ) would result in 1 lb of weight gain in 35 days, or just over 1 month, without the person ever being aware they are overeating. Carry that forward for 10 years, and theres the extra 100 lbs many people are carrying.

This is a simple example, as other factors like processed vs unprocessed also come into play, but I think the point is clear:

Eating food without accounting for calories, is like running a business without accounting for the money. Both tend to not end well.

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