Oddbean

I was up and down 3 times through my 20s, much larger swing from tops to bottoms than you and I have kept it off for 6 going on 7 years now. Again others I know who did similar were all health scares who internalised that being way over weight was going to cut years off their lives, successfully keeping weight off means behavioural changes not just crash dieting or exercise sprints now and then. Wouldn’t look to the likes of Kissinger - those people have access to things you and I do not have. Not just the best doctors money can buy, but you think he’s going on a waiting list if he needs a new kidney? I doubt it.. NZ life expectancy may not have dropped but excess deaths have increased post Covid (AUS & NZ were the only two countries that had a positive correlation between lockdowns and death rates to my own chagrin - every other country showed negative correlations). They also don’t have the obesity rates of the US - sure the Māoris are fatties but they’re not meaningfully shifting national level stats whereas in the US it’s all major demographics that have seen obesity skyrocket in the past 30 years, far ahead of other nations who are all getting fatter but at slower rates. We’re never going to get answers from “public health” about any of this given how ideological and captured they are and as your health is directly tied to your life and no-one else’s, it’s incumbent on individuals to make changes rather than wait for approved scientists who are captured and provably full of shit to come up with things.

I have no faith in public health either. Almost all of science has been corrupted. Besides the woke nonsense, drug companies pay to buy the research that sells their drug, and journals don't publish negative results. It's a giant clusterfuck that only has the form of the real science that came before it. I won't take any drug that came to market after about 1995. I know several people who got real fat and came back down again. But they don't have genetic obesity, it was a situation (usually depression) that they resolved and then the fat came back off. But hell, I hope nothing I said make you think you can't win. Keep on winning. I'm impressed and I'm probably wrong. I just say what I think and usually people correct me.

I was 215lb with zero muscle. I started fasting a day a week and sometimes longer, started chewing my food 10x more, eating lots of rice, peanut butter, vegetables, and cut out ALL sugar and bread, mostly because poverty but also health. I got down to 135lb and I was eating constantly. I think fasting, chewing more, and removing all sugars were the big helpers. Everyone is different. Experiment!

I don't eat sweet things. But I do eat bread, and some potatoes. I could cut those out. But from experience it won't matter much. I'll try the chewing thing I guess. And I'm due for a fast again. I'm sure if all the food was removed from my house I would be hungry but have no choice, so the weight would come off. I could probably do that too. But then I couldn't program gossip very effectively - my amygdala would interrupt me every few minutes, begging me to go eat something.

Try strict carnivore if you don’t want to be hungry. You can eat as much as you want, your body will struggle to overeat meat and fat and soon enough your portion sizes will come down - have to be strict on the no carbs part though which means having protein heavy snacks available like dried meats.

I just had another gout attack. Nope, I'm done with this. No more carnivore shit. My body cannot hack it. I've been skipping days. I didn't eat from Sunday dinner to Tuesday breaskfast. On Wednesday I only ate dinner and it was a ketogenic dinner. On Thursday I had bacon, lamb beans, salads. Then this morning I was fasting again whe the gout attack hit. Undoubtedly from the meat I ate yesterday. Most people should try carnivore but it is simply not for me. At least not in my current condition. I will have to lose weight the hard way.

When I did that, yeah. The only way I’ve found to lose weight without too much effort is eliminate all sugar and don’t bring many carbs in the house. Intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore are all great but take more effort. If I avoid sugar and empty carb BS, and I stay a little active, I’ll lose weight slowly. If I want to get shredded, I have to work way harder.

I can lose weight, I don't need advice for that part. But if I go below about 90kg then I get hunger (hollow stomach rumbles and amygdala interruptions of my concentration) which is difficult to tolerate with while programming a computer. I can't live well with that constant hunger. Being fit is nearly intolerable. It isn't a problem of getting there, it is a problem of being there. People have suggested that a carnivore diet or ketogenic diet prevents the hunger, but my body can't handle it right now. People have suggested that regular exercise fixes this too, and that is at least somewhat true, so I need to work out precisely how I'm going to do that given some situational hurdles. But it only helps to a limited degree, so there is a minimum weight that I can sustain without suffering and again I'm estimating that to be about 90kg. And my original point with this thread is that some people's bodies fight hard to maintain a certain minimum weight, and it's a genetic thing, and going below that is kind of like holding your breath... you can do it, but you'll give in eventually.