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This is so true. The mental pressure your body brings to bear to try to reestablish the old equilibrium, and the emotional energy needed to withstand that mental pressure until your body accepts the new equilibrium, are incredibly hard realities of weight loss.

Unfortunately, when you mention these realities, people react very negatively. They say that if it's hard, then it's unhealthy and you're doing it wrong. They preach that it should feel easy and natural, as if that's a path forward. It isn't. It's the end goal, and the path is long and hard.

I think the thing is that different people are, well, different.

I talked about this a few weeks ago[1], but for me losing and maintaining weight actually is quite easy. I foresee no problems maintaining weight going forward because I managed to do that for 25 years without really paying much attention to it, and can easily identify the source of my weight gain. Even losing weight is just a few relatively simple adjustments to my diet.

But the reality for other people is very different.

Because I never had problems with my weight before I never really paid much attention to any of these discussion until a few months ago. I've been a bit surprised at the amount of aggression in some of these discussions at times (including on HN). It seems to me that people with different bodies and experiences are just talking past each other, and in addition to that there is a section of rather unpleasant people who are so high up on their moral high horse that they've become hypoxic.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44554154

> But the reality for other people is very different.

"Food noise" is the term people use nowadays.

Basically I'm always thinking about food. Always. It's a source of dopamine for me - I have others, but food is a constant.

It's like trying to get off a drug, but you still need to take that drug 3-5 times a day to not die.

Then there are people for whom food is just fuel. They can just ... stop eating. Or eat less. Food doesn't give them any pleasure, it's just a thing they have to consume to not die.

Changing the composition of your diet will do much to quiet this noise. If you’re eating a high protein diet with lots of fibrous vegetables, you will likely end up eating more food with fewer calories overall. And this type of food is very satiating - sometimes to the point that lack of appetite can be an issue.

No, unfortunately. I eat a very healthy diet and still struggle.

Hm. A "healthy" diet is a somewhat slippery concept. There are lots of diets that are healthy, but not optimal for supporting fat loss. Are you building each meal around a significant lean protein source, with a total protein intake somewhere in the vicinity of 0.8+ g/lb. of your goal body weight? And then for the remaining calories that are not protein, are you minimizing high calorie density foods (oils, butter, sugar, breads, pasta, etc.) and maximizing low calorie density foods (quinoa, oats, sweet potato, etc.)? And then finally, are you at a calorie intake that is 80-85% of your TDEE, and not lower?

Usually, this kind of diet plan results in eating a large volume of food that alleviates physiological hunger. Granted, it's not the kind of food that lights up most people's reward pathways. If you're fending off cravings for sweet treats and stuff, there are different strategies you can try to help with those. Sometimes it is best to just cut them out for a time, until the "addiction" breaks. But you can also try penciling them in at infrequent, scheduled intervals in highly regulated amounts.

I like everything you mentioned, no concern for me. Usually what kills me is my wife being very good at cooking (a blessing and a curse), along with infinite hunger when I sleep 6 hours instead of 9 (it happens).

The other thing is variety. If I keep eating the same stuff over and over, it becomes a problem.

Right bow I eat the following at most meals: 1 avocado (150g), 2 tomatoes, lettuce, 60g of greek yogurt, mustard, 200g egg white. That's 450 calories for lunch and 450 for dinner. Very filling.

For snack I eat 1 nectarine + 60g of greek yogurt and 20g of honey (1 spoon). This is very sweet and basically stops any craving for sweet, which is why I made the exception. It's high quality raw honey.

I do have 3 snacks per day usually, but it depends, sometimes one.

When I mess up big usually I eat very out of the line (e. g. A party) and then I'm still hungry after eating easily 3000 calories in one meal. This happens quite easily on the weekend unfortunately.

I have been losing weight with the previous diet though. I discovered it 3 weeks ago. It's about 90g of proteins per day, but I'm 80Kg, so under the numbers you reported.

Oh, at breakfast I eat 1 cup of milk with quinoa puffs (17g), which is about 180 calories total

Good info. A few thoughts come to mind:

- Great job with the measurement precision. That's a bit of lifestyle change people tend to avoid, but it really helps calibrate your understanding of calories and portion sizes.

- Do you actually enjoy the meals you're eating? I would have a hard time repeating that lunch/dinner meal, but I know everyone's taste is different.

- If you don't enjoy what you are eating, then Priority #1 is coming up with a different menu that you enjoy. It would also be good to have a LOT more variety than this, which you can do by coming up with a few different meals or meal components that you select and combine in a modular way.

- Your diet lacks carbohydrates, except for sugary snacks (honey + fruit). I suspect that this, combined with the fact that you're eating the snacks up to 3 times a day, is sending your blood sugar up and down repeatedly rather than allowing it to stabilize. I would consider redistributing these snack calories to your lunch and dinner meals, making them more balanced and larger, and NOT eating in between. It seems counterintuitive, but eating more frequently can actually result in more hunger and cravings compared to eating less frequently.

- An example of a balanced meal could be a bowl with 100g of grilled chicken breast, 200g brown rice, 150g avocado, a generous heap of steamed carrots, broccoli, spinach, etc., and some soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, or other seasoning. That works out to about 630 calories, 34g of protein, 26g of fat, and 66g of carbs.

- I only count ~1500 calories in your set menu (assuming 3 snacks). Assuming you are an adult male, that is aggressively low! It's not surprising that you feel an urge to overindulge on weekends. Have you calculated your TDEE?

Thank you for the response! Let me answer:

> Great job with the measurement precision. That's a bit of lifestyle change people tend to avoid, but it really helps calibrate your understanding of calories and portion sizes. I am either "very hungry" or "lightly hungry", so calculating calories does help understanding if I urgently need a big salad rather than trying to eat just one chicken breast (and end up binge-eating right after)

> Do you actually enjoy the meals you're eating? I would have a hard time repeating that lunch/dinner meal, but I know everyone's taste is different.

I started this diet 1 month ago and I really enjoyed it. So far I could eat this for a long time, but this does assume I vary my diet on the weekend, I cannot probably eat the same dish forever. Either way, it has to vary since avocados become bad at the end of september, so I need something else. I did notice I feel a lot more full with avocado over chicken breast though, not sure what's causing the difference (even for the same amount of calories, which means a lot more chicken)

> Your diet lacks carbohydrates, except for sugary snacks (honey + fruit). I suspect that this, combined with the fact that you're eating the snacks up to 3 times a day, is sending your blood sugar up and down repeatedly rather than allowing it to stabilize. I would consider redistributing these snack calories to your lunch and dinner meals, making them more balanced and larger, and NOT eating in between. It seems counterintuitive, but eating more frequently can actually result in more hunger and cravings compared to eating less frequently.

Maybe. Remember that nectarine is _a lot of fiber_ with a bit of sugar. The greek yogurt has no fat so it's mostly protein, and then of course the honey is sugar, so in my mind it might balance out. I do feel calm after the snack for a good chunk of time based on my standard, but it could be. Preparation time unfortunately is relevant for snacks, this is very fast to make.

> - Your diet lacks carbohydrates, except for sugary snacks (honey + fruit). I suspect that this, combined with the fact that you're eating the snacks up to 3 times a day, is sending your blood sugar up and down repeatedly rather than allowing it to stabilize. I would consider redistributing these snack calories to your lunch and dinner meals, making them more balanced and larger, and NOT eating in between. It seems counterintuitive, but eating more frequently can actually result in more hunger and cravings compared to eating less frequently.

Tomatoes have carbohydrates, that's often overlooked. I do eat this way because I assume I'll mess up one day, but it's worth a shot adding more carbohydrates and see if it calms hunger.

> I only count ~1500 calories in your set menu (assuming 3 snacks). Assuming you are an adult male, that is aggressively low! It's not surprising that you feel an urge to overindulge on weekends. Have you calculated your TDEE?

I had a way heavier diet made for me by a doctor (~1100 calories), which was great for losing weight (1.2 Kg per week) but sustainable only for ~4 weeks at most, however that was for a completely sedentary lifestyle. Now I go to the gym 5 times a week (for the last 2 years) and I'm consistent, so when I attempted that diet I got an incredibly strong headache that calmed down immediately as soon as I introduced more food in my stomach. That kinda scared me, so I can't do that diet anymore. This diet I made it up by trial and error, based on how my body reacted. One day I tried that salad and I think for the first time in ages I said "oh wow, I felt full for multiple hours". I don't think that ever happened

I don't know what a TDEE is, but I am 80Kg * 175cm, so I'm overweight, but do consider a chunk of it is definitely muscles (I lift weight 3 times a week and do HIIT 2 times a week)

> Food doesn't give them any pleasure, it's just a thing they have to consume to not die.

There are very few, if any, people like that; almost everyone enjoys nice food. The major exception being people with eating disorders.

A lot of this is mental. It really helps to deliberately shift your identity to match your target weight. Instead of thinking of yourself as a 220 pound person who has forced themselves to 180 through deprivation, you think of yourself as a 180 pound person who eats what a (healthy) 180 pound person would eat. The old lifestyle and food choices are something you have to detach from because they are gone forever. If you don’t do this, you’ll continue to feel as if you’re in a transient space, and that increases the lure of familiar old ways.

Agree 100%. The best time to lose weight is making good choices during the 30 minutes you spend grocery shopping each week. Much easier than try to make a healthy choice every minute of every day at home.

I think "tracking your weight and calories" is useful, but only if you track it right.

You could look at just raw numbers, but IMHO, first you want to be tracking for you, how many calories it took eating X to achieve satiety / feel not hungry.

Then, hopefully, you can figure out how to meet your daily calorie needs/goals in a way that you don't feel hungry all day. It's hard to stick to your plan when your body is telling you it wants more.

People's hungry signals are different, which is why one size fits all advice doesn't work. Personally, if I ignore my hungry signal for long enough, it goes away; this sounds like it might be good, but then I get all headachey and grumpy because I haven't eaten and there's no signal telling me to eat; so I've got to use my analytic brain for that (but it would rather take a break because I haven't eaten). Some people I describe that to think I'm crazy ... if they don't eat, the hunger signal just keeps getting stronger.

I mean, sure. But doing it poorly always comes before doing it well. So, the best advice for people that aren't aware of how much they eat is fine to start at anything basic. Probably the more basic the better. Though, as you note, that will be different for different people.

That last is notable. I agree that personal signals are very different between people. But so is basic capability to track things.

What is truly obnoxious here, is that what works for you will also not be static. Expect that what worked for you now will someday not work.

True across the board, and unfortunately the average lifestyle promoted here on HN is one of massive, unavoidable stress, both inside and outside of work.

Fixing your diet is one of those sort of flywheel problems. It takes time to figure out what's both healthy and palatable for you, time and freezer and/or refrigerator space to do meal prep, time and energy to work out, and so on.

All of those are skills that are hard at first. Even with YouTube, you don't go from "burns water" to "Michelin star bodybuilder meals" without a lot of practice.

The better you get at all of that, the faster and easier it becomes, until you hit a point where it's just "how you live", and all that energy and time are again free to pursue other things.

If you have money, sure, you can outsource a lot of that. Zuckerberg has a personal chef and dietician, as well as a handful of dedicated personal trainers guiding his fitness regimen.

But most of us can't afford to invest $250k/year or more into that problem.

I wholeheartedly agree that mental health and stress levels are the primary determiner in whether you'll succeed with maintaining a good diet and an exercise routine. Just to make things more complex, though, my experience after two years of daily workouts and strict dieting is that exercise, eating clean and sleeping well are the primary drivers of good mental health in my life. It's absolutely a feedback loop. If you set yourself up for success, you'll tend to spiral upward as your metabolism improves, your sleep gets better and your blood sugar is no longer the primary cause of an emotional rollercoaster. Conversely, if you think that you can make the base mechanical changes without re-engineering your entire life you're not very likely to succeed and your success will plateau early.

In recovery, particularly AA, there is the concept of a "dry drunk" who is, eli5, a person who is trying to quit using by simply not using anymore and not examining themselves or their surroundings to determine how they ended up there in the first place. Addiction as a disease is a good model for empirically researching treatments on a population scale but for an individual in recovery it's much more effective to realize that addiction is who you are and the process is about changing yourself, not just being the same guy but without the drug. When I got clean I had to quit my job, ditch a lot of my friends, totally reengineer my life because staying clean is a matter of moments that could break one way or the other and the best way to ensure they never break the wrong way is two-pronged: you maximize the odds of you making the right choice and you minimize the number of times you have to choose.

This idea also works for diet and exercise: a gym membership is good, but an exercise bike in the basement means you don't have to go through all the intervening steps between "I should work out" and actually doing the thing. By the time you've started to try to talk yourself out of it you're already doing it. It's easy to eat cookies and hard to eat celery. But it's easier to eat celery from your fridge than it is to go to the store to get cookies. All of these things help you make choices that support your goals and not make choices that are detrimental to them. Eventually those choices go from efforts of will to part of who you are. I'm not fat me having a salad, I'm the guy who eats salads. I'm not checking out the gym, I'm the guy who works out. I'm not just not high today, I'm Sober and so are all of my friends. I'm a Sober man and a member of a Sober community.

I wouldn't just describe it in terms of mental stress, but in terms of physiological free energy.

I find that the less I eat, the more I need to sleep and the less energy I have for cognition. I also get sick more easily (less energy for the immune system no doubt).

However I have the opposite problem of being underweight.