Hacker News Reader

Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

Have you every using a calorie/macro tracking app like My Fitness Pal or Cronometer? I was never successful losing weight until I scanned, weighed, and measured every single thing I put into my body and stuck to the target calories and macros entered into the app. Just being aware of exactly how much I was eating was often enough to find the motivation to control volume.

View on HN

>> I scanned, weighed, and measured every single thing I put into my body

Not being snarky, but is this truly "better" than a single weekly injection - 10 seconds and done for the week? I do think our wider society sees medications for overeating as "cheating". Perhaps we might benefit from rethinking that.

For preventable diseases in general, prevention and self control should be attempted before medication. There are health benefits besides being skinny, and all medications have side effects. There's nothing inherently wrong with medication, but addressing the root cause should be tried first, and then medication can be introduced if it doesn't work out. It's not an either-or, binary situation.

Self control has gotten harder as the foods on offer have gotten more sugary and dense compared to traditional foods. Produce is also less available and less nutritious than it once was.

No doubt.

I don't disagree. As I've gotten older though I am just increasingly convinced that for the regular person going about their life, the fight against cheap and terrible and calorie-laden - but tasty! - processed foods is not an even one. Perhaps some form of counter-balance is just not such a bad thing?

There is a reason for that perception. We are regularly finding out how there are damaging ripple effects from drugs that were claimed to be completely safe.

I would compare something like scale measurements to sex education. If kids were all exposed to some period of measurement of foods to learn what they were eating, it would stick. Studies show that ANY form of tracking causes people to make more mindful choices. Everyone I know personally that is taking these drugs uses it as a crutch entirely. They take it and make even worse food choices than before. It's very sad and I worry about the next issue they will cause with this behavior to then stack another medication on top.

There is one way it may be useful, even if only done for a short time: You may not be eating what you think you're eating.

I started doing it mostly out of curiosity, and it turned out one of the meals I thought it was high-calorie was actually lower than my other meals.

>is this truly "better" than a single weekly injection - 10 seconds and done for the week?

Yes, obviously. I'm stunned that it needs to be said, but since it apparently does:

1. You propose taking a medication regularly which is probably completely unnecessary, and paying for it regularly. (This was worse with "metabolism boosters" etc. since the patient would be paying for the medication to have the privilege of eating more, and thus paying more for the extra food.)

2. Knowing what you eat, and being able to denominate it in calories, is knowledge. I thought we were hackers here? My experience has been that ordinary people have some truly absurd ideas about how fattening certain things are or aren't, or about how much they're actually eating, or about what healthy daily intake ranges, portion sizes etc. look like. (They also have absurd ideas about how much it costs to "eat healthy", as well as about the connection between "healthy" food and caloric intake.)

But since when did techniques which obsessive systemizers like us use play out well with the general population..? We're not discussing what works well for a niche community of hackers, but what will work for the hundred million+ on a sustainable long term basis.

I think "perfect is the enemy of good" applies here. People en masse are not controlling their intake. They just aren't. They can't do it. We can rage about it and criticise - and many do for all the good that's doing - or we can explore options. Medications with few side effects have some appeal here. Evolutions will likely reduce those. Eventually that will not be a strong argument against the medication option is my prediction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com