>But this intelectual knowledge doesn't really help if your body is telling you it's hungry all the time and it's hard not to eat something. Better choices can help, because different calories deliver different satiety; but some people don't get much satiety no matter what they eat.

Maybe try to figure out why you’re feeling hungry. Is it because you’re running a 1000 kcal deficit?

Can your body really tell whether you ate 200–300 kcal less today than you did yesterday?

Most of us can easily notice a 1000 kcal difference, but very few can reliably detect a day-to-day difference of just 200–300 kcal.

What are your maintenance calories? Are they around 1800 kcal, where even a 300 kcal deficit puts you on a 1500 kcal diet? That’s very little food for many people.

In that case, it may be better to focus on increasing your maintenance calories by becoming more active in daily life.

Deficit = TDEE - Intake

either drop intake or boost tdee or do both.

If you managed to boost your tdee to 2500kcal, now a deficit of 300kcal means you eat 2200kcal day to day and 2200kcal isn't very little food making diet easy to follow.

>There's a lot of variance among humans, but everybody seems to want a one size fits all approach to eating.

I think there isn't as much variance as people like to believe, how many people you see walking around you with 3 eyes? and 4 hands?

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toast0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Maybe try to figure out why you’re feeling hungry. Is it because you’re running a 1000 kcal deficit?

I know several people who are feeling hungry because they're not dead, regardless of how much calorie surplus or deficit they have.

We can do the same activities and eat the same meals and I'll be satied and they will be hungry. Or I can confuse the hell out of them when we do some big activity and I say "i'm not hungry, we worked too hard"... or when we miss a meal by several hours and I tell them "I'm not hungry anymore, it's been too long... but I should probably eat something"

> I think there isn't as much variance as people like to believe,

Oh sure, I don't think everyone is really a unique snowflake, there are patterns. You can find lots of people in these threads who have a broken hunger sensor. You can find lots of people in these threads that can manage this intellectually. I don't see a lot of people in these threads like me who keep a healthy(ish) weight because IBS punishes them for bad food choices, but I'm sure they're out there. Plenty of people out there where celiac drives their relationship between calories in and calories out.

Diet research would be a lot more interesting if there were ways to classify people by their 'metabolism type' and then see what can work for which type. Maybe there would be more reproducability that way, too.

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faangguyindia 8 hours ago | parent [-]

>I know several people who are feeling hungry because they're not dead, regardless of how much calorie surplus or deficit they have.

Are you saying 1000kcal vs 200kcal deficit makes no difference?

>Diet research would be a lot more interesting if there were ways to classify people by their 'metabolism type' and then see what can work for which type. Maybe there would be more reproducability that way, too.

You can easily track your maintenance calories, by tracking your weight vs intake overtime.

	▲	crooked-v 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I am a person like that. There is no "calorie deficit" involved. I can, if I let myself, eat 2000 calories of moderately bulky, high-protein food in a sitting and be vaguely hungry again in six or eight hours once my stomach's emptied out. The only reason I'm not whale-sized is active calorie-counting of every meal, every day.

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mattlondon 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Maybe try to figure out why you’re feeling hungry. Is it because you’re running a 1000 kcal deficit?

For me I always feel hungry. Always ready to eat more. Always.

It doesn't seem to matter what I eat or how much, I have no "off switch" apart from maybe being asleep. I sit at big family meals like Christmas or thanks giving and people around me are all "man I am going to pop if I have another bite" and yet I am still reaching for more while simultaneously thinking about what is for dessert. Once I start eating for the day, that's it game over I am going to be thinking about when I can eat next the entire waking time. I have done calorie counting for years (with deficits of usually around 400-800, tracking macros etc making sure I get enough protein) and am fairly active (running 20-25km a week, strength sessions 1-2 times a week) but even when I am not counting calories or especially active that doesn't stop me wanting to eat the whole damn time.

Dieting or not, exercising or not, it makes no difference I am always ready and willing to eat more. I am in a constant mental state of food binge.

I usually stop eating when the food physically runs out on my plate, so portion control when making meals etc needs to be airtight. I work at a BigCo where there is unlimited free food at every turn, so just going to get a coffee is a nightmare as you can imagine as I am surrounded by things to eat. Like e.g. on a bad day I might end up having 6 or 7 bananas a day just to avoid picking up a chocolate bar or donut instead. It's nuts (..and yes there are nuts too and also too easy to just grab a handful...)

I think of it like an alcoholic. But an alcoholic can "go sober" and just cut it out and not get that first taste that leads to the spiralling binge. I've got to eat to stay alive though so every day I "fall off the wagon"

I am seriously considering the pill form now that is a thing. The refrigerated injections just seemed like they were incompatible with a normal busy life with travel etc

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faangguyindia 6 hours ago | parent [-]

If you've done all and sustainable dieting and workout has not done it for you, then i feel you maybe valid candidate for this drug. But i am refusing to believe average guy who is probably overweight by 22lb needs this drug.

	▲	mattlondon 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is not so much about being overweight (although I admit I am) it is about the constant overriding urge to eat eat eat eat eat all day every day. The constant feeling of wanting to eat, when I am going to eat next, what can I eat, what and where am I going to eat for my next meal, man oh man it would be nice to eat something with that next mouthful of coffee, I can go eat something as soon as this meeting is over, then I can eat again after that, then I can eat eat eat eat eat, then it's lunch, what am I going to eat for lunch? after lunch I have a meeting then i'll eat some more before another coffee when I can get some more to eat. Eat eat eat eat. Did anyone say snack? Eat. More. Eat eat eat eat eat. It's totally overwhelming and often hard to concentrate with this constant overriding urge to think about eating all the time. It's like gravity, inescapably pulling me in. People say "Oh I forgot to have lunch!" and it simply does not compute for me. How can someone forget?! Having lunch is my overriding constant nagging thought since having that last mouthful of breakfast. It only stops when I get to start thinking about eating dinner as soon as I have stopped eating lunch. Repeat. Every moment of every day. Eat. Eat. Eat. It's a like a stuck record or whatever. Over and over. I want to turn it off. I'd get it if I was solely existing on a diet of junk food that is designed to do this, but I am not. Since I've been tracking every last gramme of food I've been eating on and off for well over a decade I can tell you that it is very much "healthy" and low in processed and/or junk foods. I just never feel full and want to eat more.

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toasterlovin 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Maybe try to figure out why you’re feeling hungry.

For a lot of people, the reason they feel hungry is because the way their brain works is that they feel better when they feel full and their life sucks for some reason, so they want to feel better. Hence overeating. It’s entirely a psychological issue for a person like this. Counting calories is not going to help them. In fact, them even being able to maintain a calorie counting regime is downstream of resolving their anxiety/stress/depression. In other words, diet and exercise are not the beginning in the causal chain required for them to lose weight.

And you’re getting absolutely no traction in this thread because you’re completely oblivious to this. Which is common for someone for whom diet and exercise is easy to control.

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faangguyindia 6 hours ago | parent [-]

>For a lot of people, the reason they feel hungry is because the way their brain works is that they feel better when they feel full and their life sucks for some reason

i am not trying to gain traction, i already know what i am saying applies to vast majority of people and i've yet to come across people who feel 200-300kcal deficit is impossible to apply for them because of their insane appetite.

In most cases where people say this, they are sedentary so their TDEE is very low, applying deficit makes them end up in very low calorie zone where they feel miserable.

Why all these people who are failing can't actually define their fitness journey by putting some numbers into perspective?

because they calculated nothing, they just winged it. I am not denying that there aren't people who cannot control eatingg, there are but they are rare.

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toasterlovin 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You’re like a guy who’s confused why drug addicts don’t just try not taking drugs.

	▲	faangguyindia 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've helped many people lose weight, become jacked, and go from underweight to a healthy weight. I regularly hear from overweight and obese people who come to me, “I’m genetically predisposed to being fat.” Yet after a few months, we often make significant progress. Many of them have also tried “deficit dieting,” and it didn’t work for them. But when I looked more deeply into their methods, I found they had calculated their maintenance calories incorrectly. They were running huge, unsustainable deficits. They weren’t doing any Zone 2 cardio, which is an easy way to boost maintenance calories, and most of them were largely sedentary. Many times, their diet consisted mostly of packaged, processed foods, and they weren’t eating enough protein or healthy fats or vegetables. Simply fixing these issues led to major transformations. I’ve yet to come across someone who is truly resistant to these changes. I do not doubt existence of people who simply cannot sustain even a small deficit or people who have no control over their diet but i've among 1000s of people i worked on i never found even 1 such person. I keep an open mind maybe i'll eventually find such person, so far i've not.