> Why is it completely unhelpful? The corollary is that if you adjust your intake to X (where X might have to be determined empirically for the individual), and use planning and your conscious brain to know when and what to eat, you _will_ lose weight.
People talk about how hard it is to lose this way, but although I've tried diet after diet, I only recently understood intuitively the reverse: why some people can't understand how difficult it is for some. When I moved to a new area this year and went to a new GP, he wanted to talk about my weight, of course (I'm 42, but everything else about my health was quite good). I explained that I had managed to lose about 50 pounds since my peak in 2012, through various diets like intermittent fasting, keto, and sometimes just counting calories for a bit. He suggested I try an appetite suppressant. I scoffed a bit, saying that my problem wasn't that I was too hungry, since I rarely ate so infrequently as to experience hunger. Instead, I said, my problem was that I ate when I was bored, or when friends were, or ate to improve other experiences like TV or movies, or just because it had been a while and I felt increasingly that I "ought" to eat. He didn't argue with me, but just mildly pointed out that it might well not work, but why not give it a shot for a few weeks and see? So I agreed. That was three months ago, and on the appetite suppressant I've lost another 50 pounds. But that's not my point, exactly.
My worldview around food has changed. Before, I assumed that people who were thin were either heroically couting every calorie they ate, or had some weird biology that meant that they couldn't gain even when they tried. I think both of those sets do exist (since I know people in each), but now I realize that there is a large group of people out there who simply don't care about food that much. I didn't even understand that I had this constant drive to eat until it vanished; I'd never not experienced it, as far back as I can remember. I didn't know what people were talking about when they talked about appetite, because the only thing that ever changed was hunger, until I started taking the suppressant.
"but now I realize that there is a large group of people out there who simply don't care about food that much."
This. I used to be a member of this group. In college and early twenties, I had friends who didn't care about food.
Now most of my friends only focus seems to be food, how to eat it properly, how much to eat, where to eat, what is healthy. It is frustrating sometimes but it is hard to find friends in mid 30s who are into playing sports, bars, pool, and video games as much as me.
The drug is phentermine. It has at least three positive effects: appetite suppressant, stimulant, and a separate "weight loss" factor. The "drug facts" include a statement that after accounting for the first two, it is not understood how phentermine causes weight loss. It also has a list of side effects, one of which is that it raises blood pressure, so if someone has blood pressure issues already, this isn't something your doctor is likely to want you to take. Fortunately, I don't have that problem.
A fourth effect that it seems to have is to make exercise stop being terrible, which was a whole other revelation for me separately from the one I talked about, above. I've taken stimulants before, and none of them ever made me eager to go run around and do physical activity; phentermine has. I'm not sure if they classify this under the stimulant effect, though.
In January 2012, I was about 380 pounds. I'd hovered around 335 for years, and the higher figure was shocking enough to me that I immediately went to a ketogenic diet intermittent fasting, and shed about 65 pounds in six months. It then became quite difficult to continue the loss, and I stopped trying so hard. On February 9, 2015, I was 336. I started keto again and lost about 10 pounds through mid-May, which was when I finally had that meeting with my new GP, where I talked about being discouraged because keto wasn't working the way it had three years before. :)
People talk about how hard it is to lose this way, but although I've tried diet after diet, I only recently understood intuitively the reverse: why some people can't understand how difficult it is for some. When I moved to a new area this year and went to a new GP, he wanted to talk about my weight, of course (I'm 42, but everything else about my health was quite good). I explained that I had managed to lose about 50 pounds since my peak in 2012, through various diets like intermittent fasting, keto, and sometimes just counting calories for a bit. He suggested I try an appetite suppressant. I scoffed a bit, saying that my problem wasn't that I was too hungry, since I rarely ate so infrequently as to experience hunger. Instead, I said, my problem was that I ate when I was bored, or when friends were, or ate to improve other experiences like TV or movies, or just because it had been a while and I felt increasingly that I "ought" to eat. He didn't argue with me, but just mildly pointed out that it might well not work, but why not give it a shot for a few weeks and see? So I agreed. That was three months ago, and on the appetite suppressant I've lost another 50 pounds. But that's not my point, exactly.
My worldview around food has changed. Before, I assumed that people who were thin were either heroically couting every calorie they ate, or had some weird biology that meant that they couldn't gain even when they tried. I think both of those sets do exist (since I know people in each), but now I realize that there is a large group of people out there who simply don't care about food that much. I didn't even understand that I had this constant drive to eat until it vanished; I'd never not experienced it, as far back as I can remember. I didn't know what people were talking about when they talked about appetite, because the only thing that ever changed was hunger, until I started taking the suppressant.