In many obese people, the hunger is present even when they eat a nutritious meal at the appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight. Common advice is to say "this mix of macros or foods makes me satisfied!" and, well, that's great for you but not universal.
Yup..the high failure rate of dieting is true regardless of the type of food or the macros. Lecturing to 'just eat healthy' as the default mode of advice does not work for the large majority of obese people..this is supported by the literature and anecdotal evidence.
the problem is, obese or formerly obese people clan eat a lot of anything before the full feeling sets in, no matter what. Eggs, chicken..does not matter.
> It’s a daily struggle trying to NOT eat until literally feeling pain in the belly, and even then, I know if I wait 30 minutes more I can keep eating
Yes, but this is sort of the point. If we can make it not a daily struggle, probably a lot more people would be successful.
Generally, I think the solution of "just suffer" is a bad one. If people's solution requires a certain amount of pain, it's probably just a suboptimal solution, and we can do better.
Right, the body can choose to either convert surplus calories to fat or waste heat. The latter could explain how some individuals are much more resistant to weight gain than others. This is also supported by overfeeding studies, in which controlling for relevant factors, some people gain much more fat on a deliberate calorie surplus than others.
It should also just be obvious to people. The body, of course, has a choice in how it spends it's energy.
There have been studies on ababolics, synthetic testosterone, that demonstrate this. Taking steroids and doing absolutely nothing leads to more fat loss and more muscle gain than not taking steroids and working out. Which... yeah duh.
But people will still deny this, because of the implications. We all have different baselines, and nobody likes to hear that they got lucky in some ways. Everyone wants to believe the world and human condition is perfectly fair, so they feel that they deserve what they have.
Why would we think that? Tolerating discomfort seems to be a skill that anyone can develop with deliberate practice. Perhaps genetics imposes some upper limit, but just like in sports most people never put in the work necessary to even approach their genetic limit.
It's winter in the Northern hemisphere right now. Try going for a walk tomorrow deliberately undressed to the point that you're deeply uncomfortable but not risking serious injury or death. Anyone can do this, and over time it makes tolerating other forms of discomfort easier.
A constant issue here is that we keep calling this a 'weight loss drug' and society views being fat as a moral failing ant that you 'just don't have the will power' to overcome. We need to stop. If this is a lifelong drug it is worth it compared to the relatively ineffective, and just as lifelong, alternatives out there.
I have noticed much less moralizing over the issue now compared to 2-3 years ago. I think more people realize these drug are safe and effective and not 'taking the easy way out', but rather a treatment for a medical problem than just blaming laziness or gluttony.
I took chemotherapy for cancer treatment, and it was very effective. Chemo is not a root-cause solution. It's a shotgun solution, a hammer even. It just kills cells that look like cancer. It doesn't stop cells from being cancerous, or turn cancerous cells back into normal cells. It's also carcinogenic, meaning it actually causes cancer. I am now much more likely than the general population to develop another cancer.
But it also saved my life. We do not measure effectiveness of medicine by if you think it's morally just. Nobody cares what you think, actually. We measure it in the real world, by if it works.
But by god, I truly am struggling to switch the other way around, and it takes me months to adjust to the bulking cycle, even with the help of stuff like weed
You could just have good genetics in which your body is resistant to weight gain or you have a low appetite to begin with. As shown by the worldwide obesity epidemic, this is apparently quite an uncommon problem. 75% of country overweight or obese.
If normal resistance to weight gain or appetite lead to 35+ BMI then we would not have had the obesity epidemic, it would be just normal state for humans to be 200+ lbs weight just like it's normal to be under 7' height.
This moral judgement whereby losing weight is "good" in absolute, is such bullshit. For most of history, humans have fought starvation literally every day, and often had to make do with minimal caloric intake for weeks or months - in that context, genetics that kept you thin were definitely very bad.
ppl keep blaming this, but this is contradicted by shrinkflation, yet people still are getting fatter than ever. There is nothing to stop someone from buying more food to offset smaller portions.
Shrinkflation is typically a retail issue, where pricing per unit is a massive psychological factor and competition is fierce and immediate (literally the next shelf). For restaurants it's much easier to just raise prices, or to bulk up plates with cheap stuff like bread.
(and I do believe this is validated by the science, because you wind up with more fat cells when you first gain weight, which I guess is both relieving and terrifying.)
the data is pretty clear . the vast majority of dieters fail, even when the bar for success is set really low, like a 2-5% long-term weight loss of starting body weight for an obese person is considered a success.
I have observed that being addicted drugs gets way more sympathy than being addicted to food even though the neural pathways and other factors are the same.
Yup..the high failure rate of dieting is true regardless of the type of food or the macros. Lecturing to 'just eat healthy' as the default mode of advice does not work for the large majority of obese people..this is supported by the literature and anecdotal evidence.
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