Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

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Agreed.

Something I've noticed with "naturally skinny" people: They simply don't have the appetite of the obese. They don't need to self-regulate their eating, as they just don't have the desire to eat. Their sense of hunger is properly calibrated. If they eat a large lunch, they won't even be hungry at dinner time and might just have a snack if they eat at all.

As an obese over-eater, I'm insanely jealous. I'm almost constantly hungry. For me to lose weight, I have to ignore the literal pain in my stomach and the strong biological urge to eat. I literally just finished my lunch 45 minutes ago which consisted of a roast beef sandwich (with like 8 oz of roast beef) and some chips. About 800 calories. I'm still hungry.

I'm not dehydrated and confusing thirst with hunger. My urine is almost completely clear.

> I suggested eating hamburgers and pizza, and he said that he couldn't stand the taste. His lack of weight had little to do with self-control.

Absolutely wild. Maybe that's the next level of human evolution: To have a brain that understands that food will always be readily available in modern civilization and so finding high-calorie foods delicious and providing a dopamine hit for consuming them isn't necessary.

This.

People assume that hunger is the same for everyone, and that can be used to simply rank the level of willpower people are exerting against the drive. But it's not. Some people have different appetites which leave them skinny or permanently hungry. Some people can and do eat a lot more than others for less weight gain.

This is why the drugs are so effective: they're appetite suppressants.

The appetite is affected by your consumption.

Have you tried replacing by volume? E.g. fill your stomach with a large salad (which can include some meat if necessary). And if you get hungry in 45 minutes, just eat more salad? You may also find that cutting out carby/starchy food will make you less hungry (once you get past the initial withdrawal symptoms), as long as you keep your stomach "satiated by volume" with low calorie/high nutrient food.

Another trick is to try splitting that sandwich in two and eating the second half after 45 minutes (when you get hungry again).

100% this. I had a handful of tortilla chips last night and today I had hunger cravings despite not doing any activity. Once you realize the link, it's hard to ignore the obvious.

> I'm still hungry.

Hunger signals can be very confusing. Is it an actual hunger signal or is it a craving for another hit of dopamine? As a formerly morbidly obese person, who through deliberate fasting has tried hard to understand what actual hunger feels like, I have to admit I still don't trust my own instincts in that regard.

Sometimes what I fear the most isn't hunger, but the let-down that comes with not being fully satisfied.

As a formerly obese person, I'd say it's both for me.

Prior to taking Mounjaro, I was pretty much constantly hungry when it was objectively incorrect to be - for example I had just eaten literally 30 mins prior. This was usually accompanied with stomach rumbling and the weird hungry rain stick noise in the back of the neck (I don't know what causes this but it's not uncommon), so I'm pretty sure it was "real" hunger.

Since taking Mounjaro, it's much easier now to distinguish between really being hungry, and being, I guess, psychologically hungry. Sometimes, now, if I've had a hard day or am in a poor mood, I want to eat chocolate just to make me feel better. That's something I didn't really notice before, maybe because it was always masked/coincident with physiological hunger? Perhaps the psychological side drove me to eat more or less healthily for pleasure, but I was still actually hungry in the first place.

Agreed that you can feel the difference. Prior to the meds I would feel hungry, but after I wouldn't feel hungry anymore but bored. I'd have the instinct to eat, but I would think "Eh I don't want food, I'm not hungry" but I would still feel the urge to do something.

Yes, that is correct. Persistent hunger behaves in a manner very similar to addiction. The drives, behaviours and outcomes are the same.

So, as someone with DIRECT experience in this (from a family of morbidly obese people and on that route myself at one point), it's still completely self control. I totally understand what you mean by being able to consume anything and constantly hungry. This is a learned behavior; I'm sorry you learned it. I notice it with my children. My parents will want them to eat and they'll not want to. I just toss the food. My parents would force it on them were it not for my intervention.

The food must be tossed though because we have too much food in 2025, not too little. As i've explained to my parents and aunts and brother... if you consume the food you've not saved money by fully extracting the food's value. The food's value to your body is in a curve. Once you pass the nadir, the food becomes toxic. Thus, you are paying to kill yourself.

Anyway, yes, absolutely for someone with this learned behavior, it takes A LOT of work to unlearn it. It's taken me years and sometimes I still get the same hunger, but it dies down. You must understand that this ability to be hungry all the time is completely learned though. After several months of intermittent fasting very strictly, this finally went away. You must understand that you will feel incredibly free when one day you see something that tastes good, that you know tastes good, and don't feel the need to consume it.

Because of my DIRECT experience, I encourage others to pursue this path and do not give up. So while I understand completely where you are coming from, I also understand your friend's disgust over the pizza and hamburgers. This is the normal response to food, especially the highly greasy / sugary stuff like most modern food. The first time I had ice cream after a long no-carb diet, I could barely stomach it. Again, this is normal but no one told me that growing up; in fact, the opposite was encouraged.

> Absolutely wild. Maybe that's the next level of human evolution:

No it really just means you prioritize other things than filling your stomach.

One thing no one ever told me is that ... you don't have to eat. Indeed, on days where I do very little I barely eat anything. Again, that's NORMAL. It doesn't sound normal to many people because we were raised wrong. On days I do a lot of exercise or house work or physical labor (i have a desk job), then I eat more. That's normal. The eating three meals a day whether you need it or not is not normal at all.

If it's "completely self control" as you put it, why do appetite suppressants work? That suggests that hunger is at least a factor, no?

Because appetite suppressants remove the 'self' from the equation. They literally make it so the 'self' (whatever that is) is not in control. But that being said, if you take an appetite suppressant of your own accord (rather than doctor's orders), then you are fine. That's meta-self-control. For example, I know I am uncontrollable around chips. So... I stopped buying them and literally leave the room once I've had just a few. I cannot be around them. I know that and control myself.

A lot of the regain of weight after a diet is due to people starting diets due to doctor's orders and perceiving it as an intervention rather than as a 'rebirth' in a sense. I know there's a meme about vegans, but I don't blame them honestly. If you've ever been food addicted, finally getting it in control feels like a pseudo-religious experience.

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