[HN Gopher] The Science of Satiety per Calorie
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The Science of Satiety per Calorie
Author : rzk
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-10-22 20:35 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dietdoctor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dietdoctor.com)
| lopis wrote:
| I haven't tried the tool they advertise, but I imagine that
| people trying to bulk up might benefit from a diet of low satiety
| per calorie that maximizes protein intake. This would also be
| useful for people struggling with appetite due to illness. Not
| everyone worried about their diet is trying to lose weight. I
| wonder if they provide that?
| lukas099 wrote:
| Why maximize protein intake? Protein benefits cap out at a
| certain level that is far below maximal, _especially_ when
| "bulking".
| zwieback wrote:
| As a former Swabian I'm a bit hurt that those beautiful Brezeln
| get such a low score
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| It's odd to me that they do not aim to calculate a different sort
| of hedonic factor -- essentially how much pleasure you get from
| the food.
|
| And arrangement matters because I do not get the same
| satisfaction from chicken breast, flour, mozzarella, and tomatoes
| eaten individually than when made into a pizza.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Yes, and they've explicitly thrown out actually quantitative,
| objective factors ("carbs and glycemic index") for one that is
| purely subjective (and horseshit, to boot).
| gspencley wrote:
| After decades of struggling with weight, I no longer believe in
| the calorie religion. That's not to say that calories are useless
| or don't matter at all. I just think that calories matters a hell
| of a lot less than people are led to believe and that the idea of
| calories in vs calories burned is an oversimplification so
| extreme that it is useless, and can actually lead people to
| making bad diet decisions.
|
| I have put myself on extremely restrictive diets where I was
| consuming 1,000 -> 1300 calories per day. After a few weeks of
| initial weight loss, the rate of loss completely plateaued and
| maintained for long enough that if what we have been told about
| calories were true, my lived experiences would contradict the
| laws of physics.
|
| The human body is insanely complicated, and from what I've read
| in research, hormones seem to be the single biggest contributor
| to body composition and weight management. And for what it's
| worth, my thyroid is perfectly healthy. I'm not talking about
| people who have medical conditions impacting their hormones.
|
| Rather, consider that our bodies are basically chemical factories
| and when we ingest something, our digestive process is a process
| of chemical reactions. The particular chemicals and nutrients
| that we are deriving from foods can trigger or suppress certain
| hormones. When it comes to energy allocation, insulin is the most
| significant. When your blood sugar spikes, insulin is released in
| order to direct your cells to absorb that blood sugar. When that
| becomes saturated, your fat cells are going to begin absorbing.
| One of the reasons that a lot of people find success on extremely
| low-carbohydrate diets is that carbs tend to spike insulin.
|
| But there are other hormones that can impact weight as well, such
| as cortisol (stress hormone), ghrelin (hunger response hormone)
| etc.
|
| I'm convinced that the reason my ultra-restrictive diets saw
| plateaus despite sticking with them has to do with what I was
| eating and less to do with how much I was eating.
|
| I'm not an advocate for any particular diet. I have friends who
| have switched their lifestyle to a mostly ketogenic diet to great
| results. I've known other people who eat vegan and do well. I've
| done those same diets and not seen the same results. What ended
| up working for me (and only me) was largely eliminating plant-
| based foods. Given the fact that when I step outside, I am
| allergic to pretty much every plant that lives ... I wonder if
| there's some kind of mild dietary allergic reaction at play in my
| body when I eat certain plants. When I eat pretty much just meat,
| the weight starts to melt off, I gain muscle mass (makes sense -
| I'm consuming more protein) and I feel better. My wife can't eat
| the same diet, though. Gives her heartburn. For her, she seems to
| look and feel better on a more "Mediterranean diet."
|
| I'm not a fan of fad diets, I'm not an advocate of them. I think
| it's obviously about long term lifestyle choices. I just think
| that calories has become a sort of religious belief. I don't
| think we have ANY data that suggests "You can live on an all
| cheesecake diet and, as long as you restrict your calories, your
| body composition will be healthy baseline." And we would need
| that to be true in order for the calories in vs calories out
| hypothesis to hold. But research actually suggests the opposite:
| not all calories are created equal. I even recall a study that
| was shared on Hacker News a while back where they served two
| study groups the same daily calorie intake but they were
| different food types and they were able to observe differences in
| body fat accumulation in the different groups. I wish I could
| remember what to search for to dig that up.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| > my lived experiences would contradict the laws of physics.
|
| Unless you're the size of a small child or were in an extreme
| state of inactivity and low metabolism you were almost
| certainly were utilizing more than 1k calories per day. Where
| was this extra energy coming from if not from your body's fat
| reserves? This does indeed seem to violate the laws of physics.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| One thing that I almost never see counted in studies of
| weight loss is the energy acquired from breathing.
|
| We extract out oxygen from the air constantly. I tried to
| guestimate it once and came up with the rough number that
| it's possible as much as half of our total energy comes from
| the air.
|
| So it's not always a violation of the laws of physics, but
| rather an equation where we're only counting half the
| variables.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Maybe you're trolling. But if not, ask yourself what is the
| oxygen reacting with?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Um, no. We require oxygen to release the electrons that our
| cells use to do work (ATP + oxygen = free electrons + waste
| products), but no one generates calories of energy from
| breathing without food.
|
| That has been tested for thousands of years, and it's
| technically called "starving to death".
|
| If you're suggesting the opposite - oxygen restriction -
| that is called "suffocating to death", and again, probably
| isn't an optimal weight loss plan.
| tekla wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/sep/22/gerardseenan1
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I completely believe that the key factor most diets ignore,
| even after explicitly telling you they are addressing it
| _unlike all those other diets_ , is the psychology of eating.
|
| I almost never eat out of hunger. I eat because it's noon,
| early evening, or I'm bored, depressed, socializing,
| celebrating, watching TV, or it's some other time I
| traditionally graze.
| tekla wrote:
| Study after study has shown that when people claim to be on
| very strict diets, but can't lose weight, they are outright
| lying about what they are eating or at least lying to
| themselves (a potato chip here, a candy bar as a treat for
| myself, this salad that has more cheese than lettuce is so
| healthy)
|
| There are no studies that have shown that calories in <
| calories out does not work.
|
| I was one of those people, until I got serious and weighed my
| food, didn't eat unless at a meal, and weight SLOUGHED off and
| my parents thought I had gotten cancer or a disease since how
| fast I lost weight.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| When I started weighing food and counting calories I found
| that is soooo easy to accidentally slip in a few 100 calories
| here and there without even noticing.
|
| That's all it takes to make a difference between losing or
| gaining. I added a mile or two walk every day to burn just a
| little more calories just in case. Ended up dropping 50 lbs
| in about a year without any suffering (and kept all but 10 of
| it off).
| rkomorn wrote:
| Yeah. You have to be so regimented for calorie counting to
| work "as counted".
|
| Weighing food, and being selective about what I eat, on
| top, really helps.
| ttoinou wrote:
| I have good news for you : there is nothing scientific in the
| "calorie theory". They pretend they're only using the physics
| concept of energy but it's all pseudo-science
| lopsidedmarble wrote:
| Failing the smell test.
|
| This feels more like someone trying to sell you something than
| help you find satiating foods.
|
| There really is only one study in the field of satiety:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15701207_A_Satiety_...
|
| Which to the articles credit, it links in reference '3', but then
| fails to use the data within.
|
| The journal article cites potatoes as having a Satiety Index % of
| 323+-51. The next highest is Ling Fish with 225+-30, yet TFA
| omits mentioning potatoes and chooses rather to harp on about
| protein protein protein which is very faddy diet advice across
| all major social media platforms at the moment.
| Ifkaluva wrote:
| Also none of their satiety scale illustrations show the humble
| white potato.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Focusing on reducing carbs and maximizing protein doesn't
| really seem faddish anymore. You don't have to go full Keto,
| but the carbs do spike your glucose and prevent your body from
| canabalizing fat for weight loss. At least reducing your carb
| portions is really effective. It took my clinical dietician 4
| meetings to get that into my head at least.
| lopsidedmarble wrote:
| The effectiveness or viability of protein maxxxing in diet is
| tangential to the stated goal of TFA: satiety.
|
| My point was more to say the 'protein all the things' angle
| of TFA has more to do with the popularity of this diet advice
| right now than anything informed by satiety research.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Yeah it's the substitution of low density carbs for
| calories with high density fats that really makes the
| difference in satiation. It really only works while in keto
| (because you are fully burning fat for fuel) otherwise you
| are just going to end up storing the fat as excess and your
| body will go after your own protein as a calorie source
| (which is very very bad).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Sure, I hope I didn't state otherwise. Prefer protein over
| carbs when you are hungry, if you have to eat carbs,
| consider really small portions so you don't spike your
| insulin too much. You basically eat all the veggies you
| want, and your protein budget is pretty generous as well
| although you still need to watch calories on it (150
| calories for 40g of protein is ok, but stay away from
| almonds).
|
| My problem was that I was still eating large bowls of what
| I thought was a healthy cereal, but even if the calories
| looked good on paper, the insulin spike was killing weight
| loss.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Potatoes are king of satiety.
|
| I dice up two giant baked potatoes for lunch daily and mix with a
| lean protein and some toppings like sliced jalapenos and
| sometimes Greek yogurt.
|
| At 3 PM, I drink a Premier protein shake but don't eat again
| until 7AM the next day, yet I am still full by bedtime. Breakfast
| is a larger protein shake with fruit or almond butter + almond
| milk.
|
| Easiest diet ever, and I feel great and hardly crave bread or
| sugar now.
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(page generated 2025-10-28 23:01 UTC)