Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

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Sure; it's a layered system, each one taking more effort or thinking than the other.

Easy diets: drink this shake 3x a day. Don't eat $food_category. Limit calory intake to $amount / day.

More complex: The above, plus macronutrients.

More complex: The above, plus micronutrients.

Add dimensions like lifestyle choices (vegetarianism, veganism etc) or food sensitivities (celiac, lactose intolerance).

I'm no diet expert and need to lose some weight myself but the main advice I'd give is to get stable first. Plan your meals, eat regular meals at regular intervals, keep excess / luxuries / "rewards" to a minimum. Only when you have reached a stable and sustainable pattern should you start to make adjustments. The problem with diets or major lifestyle changes is that they're hard to keep up, simply because they are so different from your usual. The shake diets generally don't work long term because people suffer and go back to their old habits, if not overcompensate because their body signals a deprivation of some kind.

Shakes don't provide satiety, most people will hate this and start eating something else within a few days.

I think it depends on the shake contents. Fiber addition is absolutely crucial for the satiety. Most of your soylent and equivalents include it. Doing an only-shake diet is indeed difficult for most people that want novelty in their food, especially if they are addicted to the dopamine hit from food.

I had to rethink my relationship to food in order to lose weight. Eating a soylent clone for the majority of my meals helped me to do that. Getting a gram-accurate scale for measuring food helped. Building a database in my head of calorie estimates of various foods helped when I was not at home. Double checking nutrition facts for fast food helped too. Really, I was raised by an emotional eater. And I didn't have the natural intuition about food that most people acquire from their parents. I had to unlearn all of that shit, and learn about nutrition, calories, macros, etc

Food is not a treat or a reward, it is fuel to live. Taking a more ascetic approach to food has helped tremendously. And if I know I am going to an engagement with rich foods, I'll even lightly fast before hand so that my calorie intake stays reasonable for the day. And of course, if I have a craving for something calorie rich, I try to make an effort to justify that intake with additional activity that balances things out.

The thing about satiety is that we've conquered food scarcity in the developed world. Feeling hungry is practically taboo and is used as an excuse to consume more, the longer the feeling is felt. When in reality, hunger should be used as a signal of how soon to eat, rather than how much. Hunger is not a pleasant feeling, but the world is also not going to end if you skip a meal or two, especially for the overweight people. Having proper emotional regulation around this is important, too.

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