[paretoer]

Having lost 30lbs so far in 2024, you are highly under estimating the devastation of our gluttonous foodie culture.

All the factors you mention I suspect are completely meaningless in comparison to consuming excess calories and I am pretty sure research would back this up.

I was starting to have various health problems a year ago this time that have all gone away literally like magic.

I think what you are talking about is actually a form of denial. Blaming meaningless variables we can't control so we can ignore the fat elephant in the room right in front of us.

[inglor_cz]

"I am pretty sure research would back this up"

Don't be so sure. We don't really know what messed up with our satiety/hunger signals.

"our gluttonous foodie culture."

Our which one? Obesity is a global problem, not a specifically American one. You will meet a lot of obese people in Brasilian favelas or rural Serbia, not exactly places that have "foodie culture".

"Having lost 30lbs so far in 2024"

I am not trying to discourage you, but the main stumbling stone with obesity is not losing the weight, but keeping it off for years. Your comment would carry a lot more weight (pun intended) if you lost that weight in 2020 and kept it off until today.

[consteval]

> We don't really know what messed up with our satiety/hunger signals

Opinion: nothing. Our hunger/satiety signals are normal and evolutionarily advantageous. What changed was the access, and composition, of food.

Food is tasty. Like really tasty these days. High fat, sugar, salt. And it's super duper easy to get. This stuff is designed to perfect target your brain and make you say "mmm".

You wanting to eat more makes sense because these foods are highly, or over, nutritious. Cavemen didn't have fried chicken, they barely had chicken - they had nuts. This wanting to eat more and more is evolutionarily advantageous. Because you don't know when your next meal is. You should be greedy, eat as much as you can and as often as you can. I mean, look at dogs. Give them infinite access to foods and they will eat themselves to death. Sure we're smarter but much of this stuff is at a level below the brain.

For all of human history I'm sure this functionality was a very good thing. Now that we have food surplus... not anymore. And to top it off, for the first time ever, we don't need to move to live. People are sedentary. So we don't even offset this effect with movement.

It seems to me the human brain/body is incompatible with modern human life. We're broken. We're exploitable by addiction at every turn. The solution might be to change our brains. Ozempic seems to help a lot - less drinking and smoking too.

[arde]

It's probably the carbs.

[jasonvorhe]

I don't understand the reply, tbh. I didn't imply that people in the West tend to eat too much.

I'm actually baffled that anything I mentioned would be considered "completely meaningless".