[HN Gopher] The brain has a 'low-power mode' that blunts our senses
___________________________________________________________________
The brain has a 'low-power mode' that blunts our senses
Author : mikhael
Score : 167 points
Date : 2022-06-19 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| hkt wrote:
| Responding only to the title, my immediate thought was "that must
| be the mode I'm always in"
| gleenn wrote:
| Reminds me of the book "Thinking Fast and Slow", where the author
| describes the human brain as having two modes, the always on
| "fast" brain which makes lots of mistakes but doesn't consume
| much energy, and the more thoughtful but far more energy
| consuming "slow" brain. I'm not sure I agree with everything in
| the book, but it's some amazing food for thought and one of the
| highest rated books by the Hacker News community.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| One time I bonked so hard on a long ride that i lost color
| vision.
|
| Fastest orange juice i ever drank.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| ...sugar, sugar, sugar.
| rmoriz wrote:
| I temporarily lost part of hearing, too. Happend to me after
| casually biking in a fasted state after attempting a short but
| steep climb. When I was at the top, I made a break just to
| start getting into this bonk state rather slowly over the next
| approximately 5 minutes. I was still standing all the time not
| becoming unconscious. I thought of having a stroke or
| something. Scariest moment of my life so far.
| lupire wrote:
| The headline is obvious (have you tried sleeping?), but the
| article is about a specific mechanism for vision, not the general
| idea.
| aalaee wrote:
| fotta wrote:
| I get reactive hypoglycemia sometimes and when my blood sugar
| levels start dropping my vision starts blurring and I can't focus
| on anything. Eating something to bring my blood sugar back
| resolves it. This study was about longer term deficits but I
| wonder if it's the same mechanism I experience in short bursts.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| That's insulin resistance.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| You've got it backwards, insulin resistance causes
| hyperglycemia.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Not sure about that but it could certainly be pre-diabetes.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'm diabetic and experience the same thing with low blood
| sugar.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Recently didn't eat for 40 days and didn't notice this. Suspect
| there's some issues by putting the mice on calorie restriction vs
| fasting. Ie "the researchers fed the mice right before the
| experiments" - if you're in a fasted state and do introduce food
| you're going to create an insulin spike - if you were also
| previously calorie deprived you could go hypoglycemic right
| after.
|
| Going back as far as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment it
| appears in certain survival instances calorie restriction is
| worse than no calories. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...
| number6 wrote:
| Ok. How did you not eat for 40 days and why?
|
| I heard you can go without food for 30 days. My longest fast
| was 3 days and while I liked it, I function much better with
| food.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I did it back during Covid. I did it imperfectly (just water
| initially - don't do that, see below). It looked like a
| vaccine was two years out, getting covid was inevitable, and
| the outcomes of getting sick were not good for obese people.
| At 28 bmi I figured the best thing I could do was lose
| weight, wear gloves, mask up, not travel, and expose all my
| mail/packages to UV light. Made sense at the time with the
| lack of empirical evidence we had then and needed to work
| from first principles. This was March of 2020.
|
| Longer thread on the subject:
| https://twitter.com/pmg/status/1463309372793057285
|
| tldr; We store fat to get us through periods of lack of food.
| Bears do this too. We literally have a "machine" inside us
| that we evolved at great expense that gets us through periods
| of no food. Fat storage is an "extra" feature - not the
| default. Chimps and gorillas don't have it for instance - if
| you've seen one, they're basically ripped, no real fat
| storage - probably because we evolved on the savannas (or
| similar environment with seasonal food scarcity) and they
| evolved in the jungle where food was always present.
|
| Simple (not easy) fat loss guide: drink water, supplement
| with essential vitamins and minerals that you don't store
| naturally in fat (i.e. sodium, potassium, magnesium, b
| vitamins, and vitamin c). As I understand it, most other
| vitamins are fat soluble and thus...stored in fat. No, you
| don't lose much muscle (I lost 0.1%) - I believe because the
| body makes an exogenous amount of HGH when fasting (but not
| during calorie restriction). Currently of the mindset short
| term fasting (less than 7 days) is better than calorie
| restriction for weight loss. Long term fasting (15+ days) has
| mild negative outcomes but is an appropriate option when the
| alternative is death by "X" - included co-morbidities caused
| by long term obesity. Sustained vitamin deficiency over
| months or years (anorexia) can cause worse outcomes than
| obesity. A "one and done" fast is not that.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I've seen salt-water fast plans a number of times before
| and wouldn't mind trying one out since I do similar short
| experiments every now and them myself as well. Would you
| please mind explaining how you figured out dosage for
| everything you were taking, or what the doses were for you?
| I've tried a water fast before, but couldn't find a good
| spot between over-hydrated and under-hydrated.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I should just write a post.
|
| But at a high level.
|
| You BOTH look at recommended daily values AND listen to
| your body. NIH has a decent starting point. I.e.
| potassium is 4,700mg:
| https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-
| HealthProfession...
|
| There's also a fair amount of margin for error. A low
| effort is a salt supplement like this:
| https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Forza-Electrolytes-
| Flavoring-Un... + B complex + C vitamins like this:
| https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Bounty-B-Complex-Vitamin-
| Cell... - I don't particularly endorse any one supplement
| - just look up what are the essential vitamins and
| minerals on NIH
| (https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/vitamins-and-minerals)
| and supplement the recommended daily amounts for the non-
| fat soluble ones. You can probably do without the
| vitamins on a short fast but you will feel miserable
| without the salts.
|
| Your body is still "eating" - you're still having bowel
| movements for instance - but it's just eating your own
| fat stores which include some fat soluable vitamins. NB I
| did not look to see if I was getting _enough_ from this -
| but when I did my blood work a few times the only thing I
| was consistently low on was sodium and potassium because
| I was under supplementing on those because drinking salt
| water is gross (like I said, I did this imperfectly.)
|
| One shouldn't eat salt in pill form. I didn't try. But
| supposedly it burns your intestinal lining. Rather I'd
| mix a scoop of that into my black coffee, 4 times a day.
| If I had muscle fatigue I'd have more potassium. If I
| couldn't sleep, more magnesium. Light headed when
| standing? More sodium. This is the listening to your body
| part and if you're short on salts after two weeks you
| absolutely will know it. But, mixing salt in water is
| gross and drinking too much salt in too short of time
| period will give you the runs. Getting enough salt is the
| only "hard" part. You're still doing what one normally
| does as a human, just less.
|
| I think I got it down to 2L of water. Some casual cups of
| decaffeinated black coffee or tea. 4 thimble sized
| supplements of various salts.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Thank you very much for taking the time to explain the
| approach you took, it's much appreciated. Last time I
| tried a water fast I wrote it off as I just felt
| absolutely garbage a very short while in, but I now
| understand my approach to it was too simplistic. Your
| tips on when to supplement more of what are invaluable, I
| think you should definitely take the time to write this
| up as a post so it gets more visibility.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| If you lost less than .1% of your muscle mass that's
| abnormal. There are 100s of studies on people losing weight
| and they almost all lose some amount of muscle mass.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Did you feel very overweight at BMI 28?
|
| I have a BMI of 28.5 (6'0, 210 lbs) and I'm pretty lean,
| active, and healthy. I have denser bones and a bit more
| muscle than average, but my body isn't _that_ unusual.
|
| Good for you on using covid as motivation to get healthier.
| aeonik wrote:
| Honestly this is very impressive. You definitely have what
| it takes to survive an apocalypse. I also think that level
| of caution is warranted in an unknown pathogenic
| environment.
|
| Was food delivery not an option, or were you worried about
| that being a vector of transmission?
| jb1991 wrote:
| I read it as fasting was intentional to reduce BMI.
| sjtgraham wrote:
| It's easy, you just don't put food in your mouth for 40 days.
| You can go safely as long as you have body fat to spare. I've
| never fasted myself to the bone. I've fasted 30 days 5 times
| in my life, and the only reason I stopped each time was
| boredom. You miss out on a lot fasting, more social
| experiences than you realize revolve around sharing meals
| with friends.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Please don't talk about this nonchalantly - people reading
| this might try to do something similar and the results may
| be fatal.
| tines wrote:
| I didn't think this was true, because your body can't
| create all the chemicals it needs to continue to function,
| it has to get some from food. See something like https://ww
| w.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-52... for
| what I'm talking about.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Don't know why are being downvoted. This matches my own
| experiences. Then again, given people's general response
| when I bring this up it feels squarely in "What You Can't
| Say" territory[1]. I no longer bring it up in casual
| conversation.
|
| [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
| Retric wrote:
| People are downvoting because it's actually very
| dangerous. You can probably go 6 months without calories,
| but many people die on hunger strikes within 2 months
| because the body can't magic up salt etc. This is why
| starving people will eat leaves and dirt.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The reason is, in my opinion you both are achieving a
| feat that most people would be in awe of, but shrug it
| off as easy.
|
| "Anyone can go 30 days without food. No prep needed. No
| big deal. Gets a bit boring though."
|
| Extraordinary claims require a bit more of a story and
| context at least.
|
| The bar is higher online as an anyone can make an
| internet comment saying anything. Like "I wrestled a bear
| and won. Just gotta punch them right".
|
| Someone once said they did 3 days without food and I
| loved hearing about it. I would be happy if you brought
| it up in conversation about 30 days.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Oh yeah. That makes sense. Its super counter-intuitive.
| Running a marathon gets harder as the miles stack up.
| Huge respect for anyone that can do an ironman. Fasting
| starts out very hard and gets trivially easy by day 5.
| The accepted explanation is your body just taps out on
| making the hormone that makes you feel hungry (ghrelin)
| after 3~ish days. You don't actually get hungrier and
| hungrier until you're in supraphysiological amounts of
| pain. The need to eat just kind of fades away - so you're
| just literally doing nothing. It feels like a non-
| achievement.
| wincy wrote:
| I did three days fasting and thought I was going to die
| when I consciously decided I was going to break the fast.
| It was easy until that moment when it felt like all the
| hunger I'd ignored hit me all at once.
| number6 wrote:
| Food can not legally enter your body if you do not
| consent. Just say no!
|
| Yeah I know this joke. But 40 days is a long time. After
| 3 days I felt my mouth ake and my breath went sour and I
| was irritable. But Hunger wasn't even a problem.
| sjtgraham wrote:
| Days 3-5 are the worst then it really is easy (I'm not
| just saying that). After that, your only limitations are
| your tolerance for boredom and how much body fat you
| have.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| You need a lot of chemical elements to live, not just
| glucose.
| alar44 wrote:
| They likely had broth/tea/vitamins.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| keewee7 wrote:
| >My longest fast was 3 days and while I liked it, I function
| much better with food.
|
| Three days is the longest people should go for if they
| haven't tried fasting before and don't have experience with
| gradual refeeding. Any longer than five days and you risk
| running into the refeeding syndrome.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| There's a lot of people overindexing on the dangers of
| refeeding. It is important to factor in after a week
| (honestly more like 15+ days) but also trivially addressed.
| alecst wrote:
| This is something I hear repeated without hard evidence.
| Plenty of people do 10+ day fasts and don't get refeeding
| syndrome. I have never heard of it happening. While I can't
| prove it doesn't happen to some sensitive people in rare
| cases, my tendency is to think this is an urban myth. We're
| not talking about holocaust victims or hunger strikers.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| If you've practiced a normal diet and do a seven day fast
| you're going to be fine.
|
| If you're anorexic, fast for 40 days, and don't
| supplement with salts (particularly potassium) you're
| going to have refeeding syndrome.
|
| If one's worried about it, just get ones blood work done
| before one starts eating again. It takes about an hour
| and will show you exactly what you are low on what to
| supplement to get to baseline. To the extent people are
| advising one not to do an extended fast without medical
| supervision - eh - basically the extent of the medical
| supervision is "let's run a panel every few days and see
| if anything is dangerously out of whack" - and maybe
| confine you to a hospital for the duration - but if
| you're not outside and walking a normal amount and say
| confined to a room you absolutely will lose a large
| amount of muscle.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| In this study that you did on yourself, did you rigorously test
| your visual acuity at regular intervals?
| Retric wrote:
| Be careful, it's believed ~40 days without food can kill you if
| you don't take supplements. People have gone for much longer
| while taking supplements including salt.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| This isnt a matter of believe. There are lots of prisoners
| who went on hunger strikes and perished from it. With them
| starting with a background of a normal western diet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike 45-73
| days till death with most lasting 60 days.
|
| Holger Meins lasted 58 days despite forced feeding.
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger_Meins
|
| List is obviously a lot longer but they offer a great dataset
| robonerd wrote:
| Excluding salt would surely be insane, you piss and sweat out
| a lot of salt and that needs to be replenished. I don't see
| any way around that.
| Retric wrote:
| Of course, but someone is going to take a multivitamin and
| assume that's enough.
| hrkucuk wrote:
| My speculation is that the brain activates the low-power mode
| when it really believes that the food is scarce. However a
| voluntary fasting, no matter how long, would not trigger a low-
| power mode since your mood is still very positive and self
| controlled.
| 0des wrote:
| What is the thing right before I fall asleep where any voices or
| noises are at booming volume? Is that my brain's last chance to
| alert me of a predator?
| braden-lk wrote:
| I get these, but for me it's not real-time noise. It's noises
| and voices I heard throughout the day. It feels like they're
| being replayed from a tape recorder right as I fall asleep.
| s__s wrote:
| I have a newborn and every night while falling asleep all I
| hear is his cooing and laughing on replay.
|
| It's sort of like when you play a lot of Tetris and you can't
| stop seeing the falling bricks as you fall asleep.
| throwaway3neu94 wrote:
| On two occasions, once after skiing for a week and once
| after playing flight sims an entire Saturday, I had an
| intense (and very nice) feeling of gliding down a
| (glide)slope as I fell asleep.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > It's sort of like when you play a lot of Tetris and you
| can't stop seeing the falling bricks as you fall asleep.
|
| Never noticed this from any single-threaded activity. But
| once I played two games in parallel for a few hours (two
| instances of wow) that had a direct impact on trying to
| fall asleep. The task-switching tried to check my other
| self, but there was no other instance to switch to.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I don't have anything to add other than that I have this too.
| It seems like it happens at exactly the point where I can
| either go to sleep or wake back up. Like suddenly all the
| volume rushes up and everything is at full intensity, and if I
| choose to sleep I guess it goes away. Super weird tbh
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Hypanagogic hallucinations. I don't know why or for what
| purpose they happen but that's the term.
| 0des wrote:
| They're things actually happening, they're just very loud.
| Someone speaking is like wearing headphones turned all the
| way up, is the best approximation for it. Is that still part
| of the definition of a hallucination?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Hmmm, I know what you mean. I've experienced both... hard
| to say if they're the same thing or not though... They're
| certainly triggered at the same point for me but not always
| concurrent, as I've had both in isolation as well.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Sounds similar to "auditory sleep start" aka. "exploding head
| syndrome". The sensation of falling which makes you twitch from
| your whole body is "sleep start" or "hypnic jerk" (who comes up
| with these names). There is also a visual version where one
| experiences flashes.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Interesting, I don't think I've ever experienced that (or even
| heard of it). Is that something you experience every night
| (assuming there is sound)?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not OP but I only have it when I sleep in the presence of
| voices
| SSLy wrote:
| This would explain why I've only experienced similar things
| on long bus rides from high school.
| wwilim wrote:
| Interesting, I have type 1 diabetes and I experience this during
| low sugar episodes.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| Psilocybin high powered mode
| dontcare007 wrote:
| More like running in neutral,.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The fact that leptin, not food, restored high-power mode makes me
| wonder if we could use leptin to increase dieting efficacy. I've
| read that there are limits to how much weight you can lose per
| week, no matter how much you restrict your caloric intake. Beyond
| a certain point, your body senses the deficiency and decreases
| your metabolism. If a person could restrict calories AND receive
| leptin injections, they could lose weight faster. (note, I am
| thinking about this in terms of helping the morbidly obese in
| dire circumstances.)
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Or they could water fast (under medical supervision). After a
| couple of days they won't feel the need to eat. They will lose
| a ton of weight.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| > I've read that there are limits to how much weight you can
| lose per week, no matter how much you restrict your caloric
| intake. Beyond a certain point, your body senses the
| deficiency and decreases your metabolism.
| nebulousthree wrote:
| The point is that there's a distinct physiological
| difference between no calories and some calories
| bergenty wrote:
| That's only true to a certain extent. After a certain
| point, no calories just equals rapid fat burning
| guerrilla wrote:
| No, not just fat, but all kinds of tissue including
| muscle.
| donkarma wrote:
| Muscle is only burned when you are out of fat.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| This is not true at all. There's perhaps a preference
| toward fat but muscle wasting absolutely occurs during
| fasting, and often at a relatively significant rate.
|
| If you were to "run out of fat" entirely, you'd simply
| die with fairly significant caloric reserves in the form
| of muscle. This is not what is observed.
| gilmore606 wrote:
| This is very much not true; I lost over 100lbs and saw
| the evidence in myself, before I adjusted and started
| eating a high protein low calorie diet. If you don't
| consume protein and don't work out, you will lose muscle
| mass, even if you have fat to burn. This is because
| muscle tissue is expensive to maintain; the body tends to
| reduce it if it's not being used.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| I also tried water fasting. Lost both fat and muscle (and
| I still have plenty of fat)
| LegitShady wrote:
| your body is constantly using protein to maintain your
| muscle. When you starve your body of protein, you lose
| the ability to maintain your muscle, and your body begins
| to lose muscle as well, even though it does a bunch of
| stuff to try to stave that off.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Right. So you're not actually burning muscle - instead of
| fat - per se. Instead muscle wastes as the body isn't
| maintaining it.
|
| While it's not a controlled study, History Channel's
| "Alone" (reality survivalist show) always touches on lack
| of food and its affects.
| staticassertion wrote:
| That seems particularly important. Leptin is naturally released
| by fat cells, so I wonder how this would have impacted
| _overweight_ mice, who may have already been naturally
| releasing this leptin - assuming that 's how leptin works.
|
| But also, no one should be fasting and eating _nothing_ - they
| should make sure they 're getting the necessary vitamins and
| minerals. Taking more leptin could make sense.
| blowski wrote:
| I don't understand this obsession with finding secret tricks to
| dieting. The root problem is the abundance of cheap, overly
| processed food being advertised to people with a lack of
| willpower. Until we tackle those core problems, everything is
| pointless, because finding a workaround means enabling yet more
| of the bad behaviour.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Advertising is only part of the problem, as is accessibility
| and price. You don't grow obese by eating a candy bar once a
| week, you have to turn your unhealthy food consumption into a
| pattern and patterns of behaviour are inherently difficult to
| change.
|
| You can remove all advertising for candy and fast food and
| most people will still not lose any weight. At best you'll
| prevent new obesity cases by a tiny margin.
|
| When actively trying to lose weight, the body and mind
| resist. Partially because change is hard, partially because
| you're running your bodies on fewer calories on purpose.
| There is the ever present feeling of "I could go for a quick
| snack but I really really shouldn't".
|
| I don't believe there will ever be this One Secret Trick That
| Doctors Hate to losing weight (except for getting dangerously
| ill, perhaps). However, if research like this can lead to
| ways to reduce some of the symptoms of cutting calories, I
| think the world might become a lot healthier.
|
| There is also always the risk of this being exploited, of
| course; I'd imagine some less than humane leaders would be
| all to pleased if their working populace wouldn't be
| complaining about hunger all the time. The brain exhibits
| this behaviour for a reason, probably a good one, and
| surpressing it willy-nilly can only end in disaster.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The "trick" is to eat whole foods that will make you feel
| full even when eating less.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| It's quite simple to understand. An individual has a much
| greater control over their diet and activity than they do
| over the multifaceted forces that have lead to the current
| food situation in the West.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I don't understand the obsession with not seeking effective
| medical solutions over impossible solutions that feel moral
| like changing human nature or society to be less obesogenic.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "people with a lack of willpower"
|
| Well, people who lack willpower still want to solve their
| weight problem. They can't use willpower because they don't
| have it. This is why they look for secret tricks.
|
| Not so complicated.
| 988747 wrote:
| Solution to weight problem that I found is simple, even if
| somewhat expensive: dietary catering (as in: having ready-
| made meals delivered to your doorstep).
|
| The problem isn't usually quantity of food, but quality.
| Having 5 pre-packaged, healthy, low GI meals delivered
| makes it quite easy to follow the diet. Also, you don't
| even have to reduce calorie intake in the beginning: feel
| free to order 2500-3000 calorie option, if you so wish. You
| won't be losing any weight on that, but at least your
| metabolism, your glucose levels will stabilize. Then, after
| 2-3 weeks adjustment period, change your calorie intake to
| 1500 calories and continue for another month or two - the
| results are almost magical.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I wonder if it would make sense to have the government
| heavily subsidize healthy, low GI, low calorie density
| meal preparation and delivery, bringing it down to the
| cost of the cheapest junk food?
|
| I imagine it would be expensive, but only as expensive as
| food and delivery of it, and would reduce much more
| expensive health care costs, right?
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| There are so many different ways to address mindfulness
| around eating. I'm glad you found one that works well for
| you! I'm a big fan of meal prep and portion control.
| Casual servings often end up being several times larger
| than necessary. I agree with you that practicing
| deliberate portioning is really important.
|
| Another big issue is condiments. It's really easy to add
| a few tbsp of dressing to an otherwise healthy meal,
| which can add a few hundred "hidden" calories.
| BariumBlue wrote:
| I've had similar results! At first when I tried
| monitoring my diet, I assumed that 2600 calories/day with
| exercise would be good enough, but I was only losing
| ~1lb/month. It did make it way easier for me to
| transition to 1.5-2k calories though, I'm not sure I
| could've done that from the start.
|
| And it's definitely easier to feel satisfied off low cal
| food if it's nutritious - smoothies with protein powder
| and greens? Filling and diet friendly (esp if no milk).
| Water? Low cal, but you'll definitely still feel
| cravings.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Someone made an idle, curious comment and you called it an
| obsession.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It often isn't lack of will power, but other issues. Nobody
| wants to be overweight or obese, but people suffer from all
| sorts of other issues that make it harder for them to get
| their life in order.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I dunno man, I've been super fat all my life, except in
| college when I decided to get in shape
|
| I developed a healthy diet and healthy habits, and was able
| to get down to a healthy weight.. but staying there
| required a constant influx of willpower. If I only ate
| enough food to stay at a low weight, I was hungry all the
| time. (Eventually I ballooned back out, although now I'm
| losing weight again since I've realized that Morbid Obesity
| is no place for old men)
|
| I think there is a systems issue at work. My body is just
| calibrated to hog food until it gets pretty fat, and then
| it'll stay there unless I do something out of the ordinary.
|
| Telling fat people to get their shit together _can_ work,
| the same way telling poor people to learn to code works. (I
| don 't think that thin people are thin because they're
| hungry all the time and they overpower those urges, the
| same way poor people aren't necessarily all bad people who
| piss away all their money)
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Yeah this aligns pretty well with the research.
|
| There's a lot we don't know. But it definitely does
| appear that a lot of obese people have some sort of
| homeostatic miscalibration on where their body's set
| point is for weight. The mechanisms involved there are
| numerous and complex. It's quite possible that there's
| something simple going on that could be adjusted in the
| future to get a person's weight set point down, and from
| there it's quite likely that they will be able to
| autoregulate. Conversely, it's really hard for any
| intervention to succeed long-term when a person's weight
| doesn't match this internal set point.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > some sort of homeostatic miscalibration
|
| Possibly leftovers of a highly adaptive mechanism that
| let some of their ancestors survive times of extreme
| famine?
| confidantlake wrote:
| I agree with this. As a non overweight person I don't
| feel hungry all the time.
|
| However, I don't think it is genetics can explain why the
| obesity rate has exploded in recent decades.
|
| Seeing friends and family members that are overweight,
| they tend to have some similar habits. They consume a lot
| of liquid calories, ie sodas, fruit juice, sugar in
| coffee etc. They also eat calorie dense foods, ie ranch
| dressing, fast food, cookies while consuming fewer fruits
| and vegetables. They also tend to not consume as much
| protein and are usually fairly sedentary.
|
| I don't think blaming individuals does much good, but at
| the same time I don't think some people are just doomed
| to be fat. If everyone around you is eating healthy non
| calorie dense food and walking a lot you probably will
| too. Conversely if everyone around you is eating high
| quantities of processed food while being sedentary you
| probably will too.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I doubt that lack of willpower is often the issue. Even a
| slightly more efficient metabolism can lead to 5 lbs per year
| of additional weight with no increase in caloric consumption.
| That adds up quickly.
|
| Properly balancing caloric efficiency at a young age is
| probably far more effective long term and honestly likely
| more pragmatic.
| crdrost wrote:
| The metaproblem is that you're thinking of this as a systems
| problem, the people who irk you are thinking of it as
| isolated--an isolated closed-box test, no less.
|
| Like, most people in this discussion would not think of
| mental-health therapy as a diet plan, but if you're thinking
| in terms of the systems involved then that seems more likely
| to generate more weight loss than any fad diet over a long
| run.
|
| It's just really tempting to be reductive.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > most people in this discussion would not think of mental-
| health therapy as a diet plan
|
| Absolutely.
|
| "Just eat less" is not a viable strategy for a parent
| working 60-70 hours per week who needs to eat a high
| calorie diet, among other unhealthy practices, just to stay
| barely functional to support their family.
|
| Or someone who is so exhausted by their work just to keep a
| roof over their head that they have no mental energy to
| think about shopping for different food, preparing it, and
| so on.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > eat a high calorie diet, among other unhealthy
| practices
|
| Eating a high-calorie diet is not unhealthy.
| cjohansson wrote:
| Very good points, I'm saving that text in my library
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't believe you don't understand why people would want to
| find easier ways to lose weight.
| honkler wrote:
| You're trying to treat cancer with bandaids
| notnaut wrote:
| If there were a bandaid cure for cancer, we'd use it.
| blowski wrote:
| Absolutely. But there isn't a bandaid for either cancer
| or obesity.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Of course there isn't. That's why we're still looking for
| one.
|
| Looking for easy solutions is very understandable, re:
| the original topic.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| +1. People seem to think that, since _they_ had to suffer
| through diet and exercise to lose weight, everyone _else_
| should have to suffer equally; for some reason people
| think it 's "unfair" to lose weight through e.g.
| medications. This makes no sense, and it isn't consistent
| with how we treat any other illness.
| effingwewt wrote:
| We have band-aids for _both_.
|
| Both cancer and weight loss are filled to the brim with
| pills that do absolutely nothing.
|
| Thousands of expensive treatments, no cure (for cancer at
| least, I believe the weight loss pill industry os 100%
| fraudulent).
|
| Saw some pill adverts the other day at a restaurant as
| the tv played. The pill promised to help lose weight
| without diet or exercise.
|
| At the end of the commercial it was explicitly stated it
| workwd if used in conjunction with _diet and exercise_.
|
| This is what the US has become.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Thousands of expensive treatments, no cure (for cancer
| at least,
|
| Immunotherapy is pretty damn close to a cure, with very
| few side-effects. It costs a couple of hundred quid a
| session to administer, which of course costs the patient
| nothing.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Not in the US. Here it's almost certainly a death
| sentence, and unless you are rich it will most certainly
| bankrupt your entire family.
| cjohansson wrote:
| Even if you eat healthy food you still need willpower to
| prevent yourself from eating too much. But it's a easier
| problem
| gustavpaul wrote:
| After moving tk the USA I was shocked to find that fast food
| (mcD, burger king, etc) was cheaper than buying fruit and
| vegetables. In South Africa anything that tastes good costs a
| lot more money, so you're naturally more inclined to eat
| healthy - or eat nothing but meat, which is how my
| demographic solved that problem. Also, try and find granola
| or cereal without sugar, corn syrup, or dextrose (low fat or
| sugar free products all seem to contain dextrose, which is
| like "super sugar", congrats food industry on selling that
| one.)
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "Beyond a certain point, your body senses the deficiency and
| decreases your metabolism. "
|
| As far as I'm able to tell this is a myth. There isn't any
| scientific evidence supporting it, and quite a bit which
| implies it is impossible - if a body could run itself more
| efficiently then it would by default. Calorie consumption is
| necessary to sustain life.
|
| This myth is usually perpetuated by people who believe they are
| on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating more
| than they think.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I think the main issue is just that "efficient" can
| misleading to dieters. It's not efficiency as in "do more
| with less," but rather, "do less with less."
|
| As your body sheds fat, it no longer needs to expend energy
| building, preserving, and keeping your fatty tissue warm. JIT
| energy use instead of lossy battery storage. It doesn't
| further slow your metabolism beyond what you are genetically
| predisposed towards, but metabolism does slow (a little bit).
| Another way to think of this is, when you consume in excess
| of what you need for healthy living, your body begins
| consuming additional calories in order to build and support
| the additional long-term reserves you are creating and
| maintaining. We have decades of research supporting this
| notion (as well as common sense).
|
| There may also be an aspect of "hibernation" that kicks in
| when dramatic caloric restriction is suddenly introduced.
| That is, you are _further inclined_ to be less active as you
| lose weight quickly. I 'm less certain of that, though.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| squinting hard enough there are some evolutionary mechanism
| at play, for example in times of famine(severe calorie
| restriction), menstruation will stop for female. Pretty
| sure sperm production also fall for men.
|
| So the body has definitely way to sense and adjust in some
| areas.
| rossnordby wrote:
| "Do less with less" is a good way to put it. It can be
| helpful to look at the extremes- for example, people who
| are starving can end up with suppressed thyroid function
| (among other things). This appears to be adaptive; a
| hypothyroid state will tend to avoid building or sometimes
| even maintaining metabolically expensive muscle,
| overwhelming exhaustion will tend to suppress nonvital
| calorie expenditure, and even fidgeting behaviors can be
| suppressed. In other words, by reducing burn rate, you
| starve slower.
|
| This is _not_ something you want happening in a well-
| nourished individual. Beyond making you more likely to die
| to predation or accidents from severe muscle wasting, it
| also just feels horrible. There 's a reason why people with
| untreated hypothyroidism (unrelated to starvation) struggle
| with exercise and weight loss.
|
| I've also personally observed some people on... inadvisable
| extreme crash diets getting some _weird_ bloodwork numbers.
| Like TSH spiking by a factor of 10- which, unlike the above
| starvation case which typically suppresses TSH, may imply
| malnutrition and inability to produce sufficient thyroid
| hormone. Their empirically derived caloric burn rate
| dropped by more than 30% over the duration of the diet, and
| a substantial amount of that was from dramatic muscle
| wasting. Not exactly ideal!
| stakkur wrote:
| No, this is called homeostasis-- the 'set point' or 'settling
| point' idea. Your body only sees weight loss as a threat to
| survival and tries to achieve a balance.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6039924/
| dataangel wrote:
| > if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would
| by default
|
| Don't suppose you see the article you're commenting on.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > if a body could run itself more efficiently then it would
| by default.
|
| Nobody suggested that the body "run itself more efficiently".
| They suggested that the body _do less_.
|
| This would be like if someone suggested that you could reduce
| gas consumption by not driving across the state, and for you
| to dismiss their argument as impossible because you just
| can't simply increase the MPG of the car.
|
| Of course, your statement is probably factually correct, but
| it's a non sequitur!
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "Nobody suggested that the body "run itself more
| efficiently". They suggested that the body _do less_."
|
| This is another way of saying the exact same thing.
| Increased efficiency _is_ doing less work.
|
| "Of course, your statement is probably factually correct,
| but it's a non sequitur! "
|
| It's a synonym! We are saying the same thing.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > This is another way of saying the exact same thing.
| Increased efficiency is doing less work.
|
| That's just not the definition of efficiency that I use.
|
| Efficiency is a ratio of how much _useful_ work something
| does over how much energy it consumes. If you change the
| numerator _and the denominator_ in the same proportions
| the efficiency doesn't change. Therefore, we cannot use
| "how much work changes" as a short-hand to speak to a
| chance in efficiency, _unless_ we also note how the
| denominator is or isn't changing.
|
| So, back to my analogy, the efficiency is the MPG and the
| "work" is the number of miles driven. Those are different
| things. You can reduce the number of miles you drive
| _without_ changing the MPG.
|
| > We are saying the same thing.
|
| From my definitions of words we are absolutely,
| categorically, not saying the same thing.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I understand you use a different definition. Now that you
| know my definition there should be nothing more for us to
| discuss.
|
| Have a good one!
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Now that you know my definition there should be nothing
| more for us to discuss.
|
| I disagree. The reason I disagree is the impact of the
| different definitions on the original statement I was
| challenging:
|
| > if a body could run itself more efficiently then it
| would by default.
|
| Using my definition of "efficiency", this statement
| strikes me as self-evidently true.
|
| Using your definition of "efficiency", this statement
| strikes me as probably false and strongly contradicts my
| priors. After all, _every_ system in the face of input
| energy restrictions _must_ do less total work.
|
| So, if I accept your definition (which I'm happy to do
| for the conversation, since it's just a semantic
| difference), I think this statement is much less likely
| to be accurate, and certainly isn't self-evident.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _people who believe they are on calorie restricted diets,
| but who are actually eating more than they think._
|
| Absolutely. For instance only counting the calories of their
| scheduled meals, but "snacks don't count because its just a
| snack". Or counting a heaping plateful of spaghetti as a
| single serving because they put it on a single plate.
| Underestimating calorie counts is _much_ more common than
| estimating it accurately.
|
| Eat a few meals with a huge person who "just can't lose
| weight" and it will usually become obvious that they eat a
| huge amount of food.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I thought this too until I actually tried to lose weight.
| You measure everything you eat, and you lose weight for a
| week or so, and then you get tired, and irritable, and
| progress greatly slows down, stops, or reverses.
|
| Yes, some of it is willpower, and probably for lots of
| people it's entirely willpower, but there is definitely a
| metabolic component to it.
|
| If you eat less than you expend you must lose weight, but
| it's naive to discount a decrease in the expenditure part
| as well. Keep in mind that just living requires the vast
| majority of your calories, and any exercise is a blip
| covered by a couple cookies.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Fasting makes the process easier.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| For some people. I'm one of those. When I eat, I'm fine
| adding healthy things to the food I want to make/order,
| and I'm fine cutting back certain ingredients like sugar
| in my cooking, but I'm not going to order the salad when
| I want to eat the trout or steak. Fasting side steps
| that. For other personalities, restricting elements is
| easier.
| what-the-grump wrote:
| Cut your food intake by 50% and start drinking water /
| coffee to combat hunger.
|
| I know I am losing weight when I am hungry between meals,
| most of the time I eat because it's time to eat.
|
| Down 10 pounds in two weeks. It's nothing special just
| eating what I should be eating in terms of quantity.
| Eating sweets? Skip a meal, etc.
| TylerE wrote:
| 2 weeks is easy.
|
| 2 months is hard.
|
| 2 years is _really_ hard
| moron4hire wrote:
| 2 weeks is a laugh
| guerrilla wrote:
| > This myth is usually perpetuated by people who believe they
| are on calorie restricted diets, but who are actually eating
| more than they think.
|
| Nonsense, the only places I've seen it are in popular
| scientific literature and in official recommendations, from
| dieticians and physical therapists. I don't know whether it's
| true or not, but my guess is you're probably wrong. The less
| someone eats, the more tired and weaker they feel, so they
| less they'd do, so the less energy they'd use. All kinds of
| feedback loops like that could happen. So it's definitely
| plausible.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "Popular" scientific literature, dieticians and physical
| therapists are demonstrably, profoundly unreliable sources.
| Besides, if you look around for opinions about the
| "starvation mode myth" you will find there is actually a
| lack of consensus.
|
| If you believe this is wrong then I suggest trying to
| articulate why you believe it is wrong, rather than
| appealing to cherry-picked non-authority opinions.
|
| The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are upkeep
| related and this upkeep does not change significantly based
| on our diet.
|
| Exercise is certainly a factor, but it is orthogonal to the
| question of whether our bodies somehow stop burning
| calories while continuing to operate itself. Most people in
| these extreme circumstances do not significantly exercise
| at all.
|
| Calorie restricted diets in a clinical setting where
| calorie inputs are strictly controlled will reduce weight
| 100% of the time.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| >The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are upkeep
| related and this upkeep does not change significantly
| based on our diet.
|
| Apparently it does if you went on too many yoyo diets.
| Look up reverse dieting to increase your sustaining
| calorie level again, it works in both directions. Its
| more or less the efficiency with which your metabolism
| functions
|
| I liked Jeff Nippards Video with Eric Trexler on the
| topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiYJW9pViaM
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Trexler
|
| From 2019
| dahfizz wrote:
| > The vast majority of calories our bodies burn are
| upkeep related and this upkeep does not change
| significantly based on our diet.
|
| I don't think people really appreciate this. Running only
| burns about 100 calories per mile. So if you run 5 miles,
| you've only burned the calories you would get from eating
| one muffin.
|
| Many people will go for a walk around the block and feel
| like their getting into shape, but restricting calories
| is the only practical way to lose weight.
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| Er, are we talking about same order of magnitude here? I
| notice that in USA, notably on food packaging, "Calories"
| (captalised) equals "thousand calories" (lower case).
| Elsewhere (including Japan), it seems that the kCals is
| used, avoiding confusion capitalisation.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yes, a muffin is usually 300+ Calories or kCals and
| running a mile is ~100 Calories or kCals depending on
| your speed and weight.
|
| North Americans typically just use Calories for food and
| excerise contexts. Small c calories is really just used
| for science.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think you don't much about how this works. The reason the
| body doesn't just do this all the time is because when you
| lose weight in this mode your body begins to break down fat
| and eventually muscle. This is not a desired state for your
| body. These processes are far less efficient. And as noted in
| this article the body can reduce power in many ways to dampen
| the impact of these more inefficient and damaging processes.
| It's advantageous to burn more calories when they are readily
| available.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| These effects have been pretty well studied and while there
| are some small changes the body can make they are not
| significant. If you eat fewer calories you will lose fat.
|
| "when you lose weight in this mode your body begins to
| break down fat and eventually muscle. This is not a desired
| state for your body. "
|
| For the average american this is a _highly_ desirable
| state. Almost all of us would be much healthier with a
| reduced calorie diet, with our bodies breaking down our
| excess fat.
|
| The effect of muscle loss is overstated. There are many
| obese and out of shape people who paradoxically point to
| "muscle loss" as a reason for not eating healthy, but
| people who actually understand muscle -- bodybuilders --
| are _very_ familiar with bulking and cutting cycles. This
| is a very well understood dynamic.
| blindmute wrote:
| Cutting yes, but note that cutting involves a very high
| protein diet in conjunction with continuing to lift
| weights. If a bodybuilder/powerlifter just stops eating
| and lifting, or even just stops eating, they will lose a
| large amount of muscle mass and/or strength along with
| the fat.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > For the average american this is a highly desirable
| state.
|
| Poster means from an evolutionary point of view, not a
| societal/modern individual point of view.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I think the myth's origin is that if you start fasting/
| really cut calories you'll notice a huge, immediate drop for
| a day or two - a lot of that being that you're losing water
| weight. Then that stops, and suddenly your scale isn't
| showing you the same drastic win as the first few days. You
| might reasonably think "I guess my body has adjusted".
|
| That isn't to say that your body doesn't change how it
| functions in order to save energy, obviously a lot changes
| when you've exhausted your glycogen stores. But I think a lot
| of the "drastic" results for people hitting a wall after a
| few days of fasting is based on that initial huge win.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| This isn't true. Your metabolism does slow down but it never
| slows down 1 cal per cal of food restriction. You always lose
| more weight the less you eat.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I read that the differences between metabolism speeds are
| nearly insignificant. Is where somewhere I can go to understand
| more about that? The general understanding between "fast" and
| "slow" metabolism seems to be a magic used to rationalize
| anything about the body, while one of my golden rules is to
| never trust any scale that lacks a base unit.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > while one of my golden rules is to never trust any scale
| that lacks a base unit.
|
| BMR is a very real thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate
|
| > It is reported in energy units per unit time ranging from
| watt (joule/second) to ml O2/min or joule per hour per kg
| body mass J/(h*kg).
|
| There has been plenty of research into this, see this study
| into the variance among people for example:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15534426/
|
| If you do the math, you'll find that the resting number of
| calories people burn will vary by a few hundred per day based
| on their metabolism.
|
| I agree that there is too much woo around the science of
| weight loss but at the same time we don't need to act like
| there aren't real facts that we do know.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I asked and you delivered. I wasn't claiming there was an
| absence, I'm claiming that the general understanding isn't
| quantifying anything.
|
| Thanks, this looks like a good starting point.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This diet trick does exist and it's called eating eggs. :) The
| protein and fat in conjunction with leptin are highly satiating
| and are easier and cheaper to feed than the macros and
| chemicals individually.
| 4ad wrote:
| Eggs are completely non-satiating to me. I eat 20 eggs in one
| sitting and I feel hungry.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Well, not all of us can be Gaston. Most people cannot do
| that regularly without feeling full much sooner, and even
| you are better served eating those eggs than trying to feel
| full from massive quantities of starches.
| bebna wrote:
| Just use a cheat day. This will help to keep the metabolism up
| and also psychological, because if you got desire to eat X,
| just put it on the cheat day list and eat it at that day. (If
| you keep fulfill your desires at the cheat day regularly, u
| develop trust in your list, which makes it even more
| effective).
|
| You shouldn't go under 1 cheat day a week. See 4 hours body
| book for sources.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| That probably won't work for everyone. Personally, the times
| I've had to diet down to a lower bodyweight, I find it MUCH
| easier to maintain that diet with 100% adherence. If I just
| abstain from calorically dense foods entirely, and mentally
| remove those things from the list I consider food, it's MUCH,
| MUCH easier for me to maintain the prescribed diet.
|
| Otherwise, I will crave those foods. But if I just create a
| wall in my brain where I no longer consider such things food,
| it's way easier for me to stick to with way less willpower.
| It's like my brain recalibrates and shifts the whole baseline
| to a healthier level, rather than having to use willpower
| alone to keep my eating where it needs to be.
| blindmute wrote:
| At the levels most people will be dieting, around 500 calorie
| deficit per day or less, you will wipe out an entire week of
| dieting with one cheat meal. This is how people stay fat.
| Cheat meals are idiotic and unsustainable. Just stop eating
| crap, and deal with it. Once per month if you must.
| layer8 wrote:
| You're implying a cheat meal of 7 x 500 = 3500 kcal.
| That's... a lot.
| Nowado wrote:
| There's research in neurodietetics, for example
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105244/
|
| I can't quite tell how strong each and every paper in the field
| is, nor would this be the place to do it, but what I recognize
| as their foundational observation that Holocaust survivors
| brains were roughly the same size as of normally fed people,
| while other organs shrunk, is quite striking.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >if we could use leptin to increase dieting efficacy
|
| it's called a refeed and bodybuilders have been doing it for
| decades to drop fat while maintaining muscle mass, you don't
| need leptin injections
|
| some recent studies have backed up the bro science as well
|
| >The researchers reported that 19 participants in the
| continuous diet group completed the study and lost an average
| of 9.1 kg furthermore, 17 participants in the intermittent diet
| group completed the study and lost an average of 14.1 kg
| (4).Hence, the authors concluded that greater weight and fat
| loss was achieved in the intermittent diet group (4)
| hammock wrote:
| How frequently does one need to refeed?
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| What is a refeed?
| jonahx wrote:
| Eating normal or excess calories, usually for a day.
| jolmg wrote:
| Apparently specifically high carb, low fat.
| narrator wrote:
| Weight loss is such a well explored topic with high commercial
| demand that anything you've thought of has probably already
| been done. As far as drugs to speed up weight loss there's DNP,
| which actually works. It's justifiably banned though because it
| is easy to overdose on and die from overheating. Not a good way
| to go.
|
| Morbidly obsese can just water fast. /r/fasting on Reddit is
| full of success stories.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| There's also semaglutide, which was recently approved for
| weight loss. It's quite safe and reasonably effective, though
| using it currently requires a once-weekly injection and your
| insurance may not cover it.
|
| (Rybelsus is a version of semaglutide available in tablet
| form, but it hasn't officially been approved for obesity
| yet.)
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