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Comment by maztaim | Hacker News Reader

For me, quitting tobacco was simple, don’t use. Quitting alcohol was simple. Don’t drink. I cannot simply abstain from eating. I can relate to the struggles and feelings from this article.

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Cannabis made me lose 20kg in a short span (~2 months). But the main reason was extreme loss of appetite. I cooked normal and after 40% of a plate I was full.

You do this for a few days and then you start changing your cooking habbits. This was a year ago and I've held the weight since and simply started eating less. My old eating habbits did not make me gain weight though as my old weight was constant for 10 years.

My main liquid is 98% water. I cant stand soda unless its mixed with 90% water.

Tea is a nice alternative to water, and I say this as someone who doesn't like most drinks other than water.

There's a huge variety of tastes among green teas, white teas, oolong, black teas... Specific tea variety, different locations where the plants are grown, different manipulations, all concur to a lot of different tastes. However, a lot of people I've met just say it tastes like "earthy/dirty water"

Why would anyone drink tea when there's coffee!?!

Which one you prefer is just a matter of taste.

But also, you can stay sufficiently hydrated by drinking just tea. Trying that with coffee will skyrocket your caffeine intake to unhealthy levels.

Also, caffeine is addictive. As someone who is severely addicted to caffeine, I really recommend not getting addicted. Try to drink tea without caffeine, even if you "don't mind" the caffeine in black/green/white tea.

A warm drink is something I hate. No tea/coffee for me. Ice tea is something I would still thin with 90% water + 10% ice tea

> There's a huge variety of tastes

And a lot of those are not "tea" (with theine/caffeine), they're herb infusions such as mint, hibiscus, chamomile, etc. You can drink as much as you want without getting the typical caffeine buzz.

I particularly like the Morocco Mint & Spices that Lipton sells.

Decaf: Organic peppermint tea.

Caf: Turkish Caykur Rize tea with a tiny bit of sugar or honey, and boiling water.

You don't need to abstain. You can either eat less or simply eat more low caloric food (greens, potatoes, lentils, etc)

Except stopping is much harder than not starting. I can relate, I can go weeks/months without drinking. But then I have a beer and it turns into 10+ before the night is over.

I'm lucky I don't have the problem with food, because you cannot just avoid it like other "bad habits".

"You don't need to abstain". This is the beginning of my message

The point is that black and white, all or nothing is easier for many to stick to. It’s easier to not be tempted by a cigarette if you never see one or hang out with someone who smokes. With food, you can’t take approach.

That is fair but you can't pretend all food is bad when that's not true. That is what I took issue with. You can eat as many greens and lentils as you want. No such thing with cigs

The fact you can’t pretend _is the point_. A blanket policy of “no and never” that works well for other addictions or compulsions can’t be applied to food. :)

As a counter-factual, imagine if every time you wanted to smoke you had to decide if one particular type or brand of cigarette was good for you.

Many people find "cold turkey" to be an effective way to discontinue bad habits or addictive behaviors. It's brutal, but carrying it out is simple and binary.

You can't do that with food. Your only choice is to develop moderation, restraint, and discipline. You're forced to always be around temptation. To always indulge at least a little, but hopefully somehow not too much.

This is much harder to do. And you have to keep doing forever — even when you're tired or stressed or bored or whichever feelings trigger your bad habits. For life.

"Eat less" / "eat veggies" is a mechanical solution to an emotional and physiological problem. The GP is highlighting that some tools we apply to similar problems can't be applied here, and so we see poor results and higher recidivism.

But we can presumably learn to abstain from eating certain things. Like sweet food and sweet drinks. Or certain foods with high fat content. We can learn to eat some things rather than others. It hard to get fat from eating too much of a healthy diet.

> I cannot simply abstain from eating.

Eating is usually (insert a number of asterisks) not a problem, more often than not it is snacks snacks.

The problem is twofold. First, snacks are typically extremely calorie dense. Even a small snack can easily offset caloric deficit coming from reduced portions. Second, leptin, the satiety hormone, is barely secreted from carbs, which are again calorie dense and main ingredient of snacks.

With these two in mind, it is no coincidence that it is hard to not overconsume snacks and snacks quickly lead to caloric surplus.

I mostly agree, though you could generously say the analogy would be "don't consume high-cal/low-satiety junk foods". I don't think one needs to deprive themselves forever of any indulgence to lose weight, but maybe some find it easier to fully abstain.

You could split eating into meals and snacks. And for snacks, you can totally quit it. And according to my experience, it's the snacks that cause the extra weight.

So quick snacking.

Eat only every other day? Fast one week on and off? All entirely possible.

Do you have friends or family? This is a ridiculous proposal for 99.9% of people.

Just don't eat when they do? Its not hard to say no, I do that a lot.

Nice! Given that good advice is something that people can follow, this is still terrible advice.

See, that's the real mental fat trap in my experience. Nobody's actually going to force feed you if you simply turn down food or eating.

You can recognize foods that trigger the addiction cycle and quit those.

It can be this simple if you eat a controlled diet. Say Soylent or similar only for 3 months. Compliance is very easy to detect at least

Truth, but I also argue that I am not addressing the underlying emotional traps that I attempted to escape using tobacco and alcohol. Those same mental/emotional traps just shifted/intensified with my eating. Perhaps it is that simple, but I also feel it’s important to address the root factors, which I haven’t, admittedly.

Controlled diet + controlled exercise. Freshly prepared daily full-day meals delivery + personal trainer at the gym 2x/week combo is the only thing that ever worked for me. And it worked every time (3 times) in different countries. I would get fat again in between those periods, like I am now, after staying in a rural area without those facilities.

yuck - while the soylent diet might be efficient on short term, it's not sustainable. It's harder at first to eat better, healthier foods (more vegetables and fruits, meat and eggs, less fried foods and stuff with a zillion additives or refined sugars) but so much easier to maintain once the habit is formed. Stuff yourself with whole foods 80% of the time, it's going to be ok to eat a burger with fries or a pizza every now or then, and it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. Bonus: you'll feel the difference in energy levels.

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