Comment by flocciput | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flocciput | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

For one of my friends, metformin was the key for finally losing weight. It got their insulin resistance under control, which had been causing them to crave food constantly throughout the day, way more than someone with normal insulin sensitivity. They never realized most people are not constantly hungry and thought people who were thinner just had way better impulse control or something, and that giving into that craving was some kind of personal failure of willpower, etc etc. When in reality it would've taken drastically more willpower for them to try to eat the same amount of calories a day that I do, because of this underlying biological situation.

The thing that gets me about all this, though, is how long it took for them to find a doctor that recognized what they needed in order to lose weight was treatment for the insulin sensitivity, rather than admonishments to "eat less." There must be so many other people with a treatable condition being written off in the same way.

When someone "eats less", insulin sensitivity also improves, in theory. But the catch is that situation represents a vicious cycle: if you just eat less, you also get less nutrients, and it may be not sustainable if you eat highly-processed foods lacking the nutrients in the first place.

So a better idea is to eat less + consume more vitamins + consume more natural foods (to get those vitamins). Junk food + metformin combo works to some degree but in the long run it is more like a hack than a proper fix IMHO.

Your body is also not designed to lose weight. And will quickly adapt to the reduced calorie count and halt weight loss.

I’ve done a lot of self work in this area and honestly glp-1 drugs and metformin provide a pretty serious ability to make weight loss manageable.

Intermittent fasting is also an effective way to deal with insulin sensitivity but it does involve a large lifestyle switch.

>Your body is also not designed to lose weight. And will quickly adapt to the reduced calorie count and halt weight loss.

thermodynamics be damned

Can you explain how it conflicts with thermodynamics if the body reacts to a lower energy intake by spending less energy?

They can't because some people have a block in their thinking process that prevents them from rationally contemplating any thought that goes against their own prejudices.

They'll scream CALORIES IN CALORIES OUT until they die from apoplectic rage rather than accept any concept that considers that there are more fine-grained factors at play in weight loss.

Saying CICO is the only thing that matters is like saying "Apples fall from trees because of gravity" is the grand unified theory of the universe.

Learning to eat healthily is a skill. It's a separate skill to learning to eat less.

I don't think any amount of junk food would get you adequate nutrition. So reducing the amount of junk food is a great first step.

You can take a multivitamin, it'll be enough to survive. Later, once you've established a decent calory baseline, you can start to optimize your good for nutrition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com