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Wellness Wednesday for March 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I have to say, it's incredible how well semaglutide is working for me. Literally the only effect I notice is a massive decrease in general hunger and a massive increase in how full I feel after every meal, with no side-effects that I can notice. No more desire to go buy chocolate bars each time I pass by a convenience store. No more finishing a 12 incher from subway and still looking for stuff to eat. No more going to sleep hungry. The other day at subway I finished half of my sandwich and was absolutely amazed to find out that I didn't especially want to eat the second half. To be clear, I still get hungry, it's just that my hunger levels now automatically lead to me eating 2000 calories per day, instead of my old 3500.

I'm simultaneously amazed that I finally found the solution that I've been looking for, and angry at the prevalent "willpower hypothesis of weight loss" that I've been exposed to my whole life. I spent a decade trying to diet with difficulty set on nightmare mode, and now that my hunger signalling seems to have been reset to normal levels, I realise just how trivial it is to be skinny for people with normal hunger levels. All the people who teased me in high school didn't somehow have more willpower than me, they were fucking playing on easy mode!

Glad it's working for you! Honesty, that sounds amazing.

I've become a convert to "set point theory" of hunger and, with a convert's fervor, I now view the opposite view as imbecilic and harmful. Almost no one can sustain weight loss for long periods of time via calorie counting and exercise. The fact that so many people believe otherwise is troubling. How long can a society be so obviously wrong and double down on failure? At least several decades, apparently.

In good news, we finally have something which actually works. As this becomes widespread, I expect obesity to peak soon and then decline - similar to the decline in HIV deaths starting in the 1990s. Life expectancy will increase as well.

As for myself, since I'm only about 20 pounds over my ideal weight, I'll hold off for a few years just in case there are unknown risks.

I'm aging. In order to prevent weight gain I have given up on breakfast and eat a light lunch. I know a much older and equally lean man who follows similar routine. It obviously and unambiguously works.

Eat less to lose weight, eat more to put on weight. I purposefully ate more while I lifted. I now have a kid and a busy life and cut back on eating.

How long can society be obviously right but people pretend otherwise in order to excuse personal failings leading to the unavoidable consequences?

Would I be correct in saying that your body's natural hunger cues aren't working and you have to exercise willpower to control your weight?

While this may be relatively easy for you, it is probably only because your set point is near your current weight. For people whose set point is much higher, the difficulty is extreme. Imagine being hungry all the time and having no energy. People's bodies will fight to maintain a high weight and energy levels will plummet to reduce expenditure of calories.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230306231743/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html

Let's say you are a 160 pound man who can maintain his weight with a 2000 calorie diet. How would you feel at 1200 calories? That is the level that some people have to maintain to not gain weight. The difficulty level varies greatly.

I know that intermittent fasting is kind of a fad right now, but following the above program only skipping the lunch about every second day seems to work OK for maintaining a deficit without being obtrusively hungry -- after a week or so the "hungry" signal just seems to kind of recede into the background.

1200 calories every single day does seem extreme -- but is this really a common setpoint for a ~160 lb male?

1200 calories every single day does seem extreme -- but is this really a common setpoint for a ~160 lb male?

No. That would be an extreme case.

I'm suggesting that the grandparent is able to use his willpower to maintain a low weight because his body wants 2050 calories and he only gives it 2000, and that this is something that can be achieved.

A formerly obese person might need to sustain a 1200 calorie diet to maintain the same figure, which (from experience) means being hungry nearly all the time.