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Comment by LorenPechtel | Hacker News Reader

Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.

I wouldn’t phrase it that way. Relying on willpower is a recipe for failure. Humans generally don’t have enough willpower, it goes for most things, even when you don’t have strong physiological forces involved. The key to getting a diet to work is in figuring out how to not require willpower, which means thinking about it differently, forming new habits. Stress and social environment also need attention or they will steamroll your goals.

> figuring out how to not require willpower

This goes for coping with a lot of executive function problems and disorders.

Part of how I have to manage my rather severe ADHD is specifically crafting an environment that's as ADHD friendly as possible, much to my wife's dismay.

That means nothing can ever be hidden away or out of sight, otherwise I will immediately forget it exists. It means every bill must be on autopay, or it will not get paid. It also means living as minimally as possible, for me. Even something as "simple" to a neurotypical like washing dishes or doing laundry is a seemingly impossible mountain for me to climb. I solve that by owning as little as possible, and I also remove choices by, for example, just owning multiples of the same exact outfit.

The moment any sort of friction or context switching is involved in a task, I am going to fail, so I have to architect my life in a way that reduces friction as much as possible.

I also have ADHD and i also find living as minimally as possible very helpful. Could you elaborate on more of those tactics that work for you? I am also curious how you apply this to your work life

Basically things that eliminate friction. I wear only slip on shoes because having to tie & untie is friction. I replaced our kitchen cupboards with those glass window ones so I can see whats inside every cabinet without opening it. I have multiple laundry bins, so I actually don't put clothes away in a dresser when done. I just leave them in the bin, pull out what I'm going to wear, and then have separate bin(s) for dirty. Eliminates a huge friction point (folding & hanging) when it comes to doing laundry.

For work, that's mostly just luck. I'm a solo sysadmin for a non-tech company, and I work from home so I have a great deal of freedom. Outside of interruptions for help desk level tickets/emails (which suck and do throw off my flow), no one really oversees what I do and I set my own deadlines for the most part so I can work when and however it suits me to take advantage of days where I have good flow state.

Thanks. I'll also add a couple of my tactics for other ADHDrs out there: I only have black same socks, underwear and T-shirts so I never have to bothered by them. I replaced my coffee machine with a simple French press, so the cleaning and maintenance is quick and easy. I add every fixed-date event to my calendar so that I get a notification when something is due and don't have to remember it. I write everything down and make lists so I keep track of stuff. I try to reduce all the fluff from my life to simplify it, and I am extremely weary of getting new things, because each thing comes with responsibilities such as maintenance, cleaning, storing and of course using it. I basically want daily stuff to leave me the fuck alone and I feel like this frees up a lot of mental resources for me

This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.

It feels very different. Depressed people lack the motivation/energy to start exercise, fat people seem more in line with addiction in not being inclined to overcome short term craving for more feed.

While at a certain level of abstraction you can reduce both to A -> !B -> C, that generalization seems to obfuscate specific important differences that impact pathways to treatment. Craving is not the same as lacking energy. Craving, while subversive, energizes, depression does not.

If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different.

I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.

I hope you realize that what works for you and your body doesn’t work for everyone. Your experience is not universal. Your body chemistry and genetics are not universal.

When it comes to the most basic instincts, it is universal and genetic. We do not differ in that.

We can argue about whether or not punching yourself in the face will hurt, universally and for all, or we can acknowledge that arguing about this is picking the wrong level of information with which to take issue.

Kids often still need to learn that punching yourself in the face hurts.

It takes a tremendous amount the first 3-7 times. After that it is a learned skill.

The entirety of this thread is people thinking life is easy. Kill yourself or get over it, and I mean in a sentimental way.. (Not literally)

The only thing that helped my depression, apathy and executive dysfunction was realizing I was going to rot anyways, I was never going to be happy, so I may as well start the startup, go on runs, and succeed.

Let go of the expectation you will want to/be in the mood or feel good from it

Life is not chocolate malts and gummy bears

Curiously, if I'm busy I don't get hungry. I don't eat before going out dirt biking, and don't feel hungry at all until after the riding is done and the bikes loaded on the trailer and turning on to the road home.

Boredom snacking durring the work day kills me, maybe even slowly litteraly.

My suspicion as someone with lifelong weight struggles and having tried GLP-1 medication: overweight people require more willpower to lose or maintain weight relative to those of normal weight.

So the advise or admonishment of the normally weighted that losing weight "just requires willpower" is true but facile.

If we were to medically induce a constant feeling of hunger and insatiability into a person of normal weight, I'm sure they could keep the weight off, but would find that their willpower is highly depleted.

There are medications that cause increased appetite and weight gain (ex: some bipolar depression medications, prednisolone). This effect is so pronounced, that if a doctor sees the patient not gaining weight, they will suspect non-compliance and have to rule it out. Of course, some patients use extreme diet and exercise (willpower) to avoid these effects, but a normal person accustomed to expending a normal amount of willpower to maintain weight will find themselves gaining.

Over-eating is not strictly a choice. Corporations spend billions on manipulating the public because it works. Regulation is needed, not willpower.

I don't believe regulation is the answer. As I get older, I've become increasingly skeptical of any information coming from the government.

But somehow information from corporations is good and we should let me do whatever?

Your inference does not follow.

Overeating is often a coping mechanism. It’s really hard to displace unless your life is going fantastic. Even with GLPs.

To solve digestive problems, I managed to eat the exact same meal every single meal for 20 straight months. And it didn't help me lose weight.

So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.

I seriously dispute this. I spent weeks not being able to eat enough. I hardly lost weight despite being close to the optimal calorie range to do so.

You should try out for the "Alone" game show:

https://www.history.com/shows/alone

...not losing weight on a limited diet would be a huge advantage over the other players.

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