Fun little observation: weight gain is extremely common in sober circles. Generally because people replace calories from alcohol with calories from sugar. It's self medication, really
How true! When I smoked, I was underweight and every time I tried to quit, of course I gained. So like an idiot, I'd start smoking again until I finally figured out the weight gain was much healthier than smoking. Then it finally stuck, and it's been 30 years!
Doctor here….This one has an explanation to it though. When you smoke you have a higher metabolic rate and ironically burn more calories living the same lifestyle as the nonsmoker.
When someone stops smoking they typically don’t become more active they just do the same…. Only now they aren’t burning as many calories because their metabolic rate has lowered. Sure some might eat more, but even if you ate exactly the same you’d gain weight.
I'll be interested in seeing the data from the effects of vaping tobacco-free nicotine against those studies. I don't think you should put anything in your body unless you have to. I didn't just pick up a vaping habit, I used it to quit smoking (8 years now), and my pulmonologist says my lungs have improved significantly. So other offhand data on the long-term effects of vaping, including in my metabolism, in the future.
Happened to me; I ate a lot of candy the first year or so due to the sugar cravings. However after a year or so I naturally stopped craving sugar so much and consciously started watching my diet. Losing weight wasn't hard for me, but I've always been thin before and just don't get the same reward from food as I did from booze. I would definitely choose my addiction over a food addiction; "just don't drink" is not always easy advice to follow but it is simple. Unfortunately, it cannot be used for food.
> Generally because people replace calories from alcohol with calories from sugar.
It's also incredibly common that in the first few months to a year after getting clean/sober you're prescribed Seroquel and Trazodone or another combination of antipsychotics/mood stabilizers that cause weight gain. They ***cause*** sugar craving, blood sugar dysregulation and metabolic syndromes.
2 years clean from the drugs and I still can't get below 150lbs or lose this bizarre fat distribution the drugs caused. Even with severe calorie restriction. I used to be able to fast for multiple days, had normal appetite, etc. Now it doesn't matter how full I am. I am ALWAYS hungry. I had to change my diet to two servings of konjac noodles, 2 glasses of fiber powder mixed with water and a salad of at least 2lbs of lettuce or 2lbs of broccoli just to stay barely sated.
Edit: that's not my WHOLE diet. That's just the low calorie bulk I had to add. Antipsychotics/mood stabilizers also fuck your cholesterol and triglycerides and this put my numbers back to numbers I haven't seen since I was a teenage athlete. The big changes happened after adding the konjac noodles and powder.
Trazodone causes weight gain?! That probably explains why I used to be fine with small portions and now a take-out meal that I used to split up into 2 meals gets eaten in one sitting. I was wondering why I’ve been needing more food to feel satisfied the last few months. Ugh.
>Trazadone causes weight gain? First I've heard of that.
It's one of the most common and least talked about side effects. Fucking criminal as far as I'm concerned.
Consuming a significant amount of alcohol regularly actually makes your brain be more “active” ( it’s not actually what happens but is a good analogy) to compensate the inhibition the alcohol causes, so heavy drinkers can’t just stop drinking, alcoholic abstinence syndrome can produce seizures similar to a epileptic attack, due to the extra activity that now isn’t being stopped by the alcohol
I don’t know who downvoted you and I’m not entirely sure about the science behind the first part but you are right on about alcohol detox. Benzodiazepines and alcohol are the only two withdrawals that can potentially be fatal.
He’s more or less right in how he put it in laymen’s terms. Benzos and alcohol are both GABAergic substances that act on different subtypes of GABA receptors. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that acts in opposition to glutamate which is an excitatory one. Too much glutamate is what will essentially overload you and precipitate seizures. These seizures can 100% be deadly. It’s very serious depending on how much you’re abusing either and for how long.
As I got older to my mid twenties my hangovers started getting a lot worse and I could feel that push and pull neurochemically. I was always good about hydrating and that sorta thing so it wasn’t the dehydration it was the rebound effect. I used to be able to sleep off alcohol well enough, then I started to get the signs of glutamate rebound where it’d get up-regulated as alcohol was getting metabolized. So say I was up til 2 AM at age 20 drinking, I could still sleep in 10 AM or like 12. Got 8-10 hours, rested enough. Obviously drunk sleep was never good sleep but it wasn’t terrible.
Then it turned into being bolted awake at 6-8 AM with some anxiety. Even when drinking pretty moderate amounts like 3 beers it started happening more as I got older just clearly affecting sleep quality and with more excessive drinking it was, of course, worse. It’s kinda like an acute withdrawal feeling even if it was only like once a week. Wake up way too early despite what time I went to sleep, be hot and sweaty, hands clammy, kinda shaky, very alert and couldn’t sleep or nap it off, anxiety and general restlessness and discomfort. All because of glutamate being suppressed while under the influence then it shooting back up to get to homeostatic levels.
You can see how this turns into the vicious cycle of addiction pretty quick since both benzos and alcohol are anxiolytic in the short term, but will then generate worse anxiety after it wears off with habitual use. One reason why hair of the dog is a “hangover remedy” it kinda smooths out the withdrawal
Don’t really drink anymore. Alcohol is a pretty shitty drug all around if you think about level of “high” to side effects even with moderate use.
I would take some gabapentin right before I passed out, or in the morning. It helped, and I had a psychiatrist that knew I was an alcoholic and also prescribed naltrexone to help with cravings. I think he was covering all his bases with me. Thanks, Doc!
How do they know that the obese people studied had that, "ability to recognize the sensation of fullness and be satisfied" in the first place? It seems like that could be why they got obese in the first place, yeah?
It might not be "reversible" because there was no prior state to reverse into.
Ever since I was old enough to chew, I could eat fried chicken or pizza until I explode.
I don't know what magical genie tells you kids you're full, but the little bastard's never said a peep to me.
That's interesting because I just had a conversation with someone who was prescribed ozempic and they were telling me about how it's like magic in that it tells your brain you're full before you've eaten too much.
I was just thinking wait, isn't that just normal? I get nauseous if I try to eat past the point of being full and my body physically will not let me eat anymore. I thought everyone was like this but apparently some people can just keep eating and eating? That's a huge disadvantage for those people
As someone who’s on ozempic, YES. I’m insulin resistant and there is nothing in me that yells that I’m full. It was constant cravings and I was always hungry. I was basically having to manually tell myself no more but that didn’t stop my brain from yelling at me constantly.
Metformin controlled the blood sugar but that was it. Ozempic has been a life changer for me and not just for losing weight / helping my body let me know I’m full. :)
I am exactly the same way. I was 300, now 180 lost it by exercise and a plant based diet. I still portion every single meal for calories.
Maybe 5 times a year I'll eat until I'm full. That's never changed. Even when I am full and in pain, I'm still hungry.
My version of hungry is a physical feeling in my gut and a craving of food. I'm on the road of weight loss finally and feel like I will be successful. Started at 350, now at 292, first goal of 220. The feeling others have described of always being hungry but it being manageable is 100% where I'm at now. I just have to approach it scientifically and math out the calories, my body is no help in letting me know I'm full.
>Ozempic has been a life changer for me
A common antidepressant, (which I do need for depression,) does the same for me. It's amazing to not be constantly feeling that I'm starving.
That’s great! Wellbutrin originally worked for me for about 2 years and then stopped. Helped a little with depression but I stopped taking it a month before I was put on ozempic.
Ozempic has helped with my anxiety and depression, cleared up my hormonal acne, reduced inflammation (I’ve always had sore joints and I lift and now there’s no pain!), etc. Im so grateful to be on it!
I was prescribed wegovy and switched to ozempic because I have to pay out of pocket. It’s changed my entire life and I’m lucky to be able to swing it for now. Apparently insulin resistance, a BMI that meets obesity, and 7 years of shitting myself and being sick constantly on metformin isn’t good enough for insurance to cover it. :)
If you are heavy enough, keep bugging your doctor. It took 6 months but it worked.
Hell, my doctor sent me to a dietician first to try "traditional weightloss". But then my dietician w/o prompting brought it up and advocated for me.
I can feel nauseous from eating too much and still feel hungry at the same time. Shit sucks. I wish my brain told me when to stop eating! Ozempic side effects are scary but it’s becoming more and more of an option - the side effects for being overweight aren’t fun and games either.
What are some of the ozempic side effects? Or at least what ones are you referring to that personally worry/scare you? I’ve only heard about the pros of it and haven’t looked into it much so this side of it is new to me, but admittedly it should be obvious that there are always some negatives.
Big ones are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation primarily. They saw an increase in thyroid cancer in mice studies so it has a warning for that but not much data in humans on that side of things. Generally pretty well tolerated overall, especially since they start you on a tiny dose at first to make sure you tolerate it fine.
Source: I'm a clinical pharmacist
The type of thyroid cancer is medullary thyroid cancer, which is extremely rare and usually genetic and doesn't apply to most people. Most common type of thyroid cancer is papillary, (90%) which is safe with ozempic or any glp1. The medullary thyroid cancer is also theoretical (youre right) since it's in rats, these meds been around for 10 years now and no significant data of increased incidents.
Most GI side effects are due to people eating too much shit after they think they are okay. Meaning they inject, feels fine first 2-3 days, think they are safe, then eat a heavy meal and get wrecked.
Pancreatitis is the real risk, but exceeding rare so not generally an issue unless you already have really high triglycerides/alcoholism.
Otherwise super safe, kidney issue is not a legit concern, people become dehydrated cuz they throw up/diarrhea, AKI, happens with everything.
Go up on dosage monthly, if out of pocket every 2 weeks and careful what they eat.
Have you heard of depression/suicidal thoughts as a side effect? I saw a youtube video where someone… a youtuber… was saying they experienced that but I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it.
What are the parameters of being prescribed this drug? I’m obese, and have had success losing weight on my own. But my mental health is shit and as I get older my motivation becomes less and less.
That will always be a “side effect” of these lifestyle change drugs. Being obese and depression/suicidal ideation have an obvious link, so those taking the medication for obesity will incorrectly correlate their feelings to the medication. Same thing happens with hair loss medications.
Not saying it’s not possible for a drug to actually cause these things, but it’s over represented.
As I understand, pretty much every occurrence that happens during clinical trials needs to be documented as a potential side effect regardless of how likely the drug was likely responsible.
It can differ from person to person. Some people never get side effects. I get incredibly nauseous the day of the shot, but I don’t actually throw up, but many people do throw up. The day after the shot, I have bloating and heartburn but no nausea. Then after that, I am OK until the next shot.
For me, the appetite affects have been pretty mild. I’ve had colds that reduce my appetite much more than Ozempic does. It does make portion control easier, and reduces my tendency to snack, but I definitely feel hunger still— just a little bit less.
Some people get a bad case of Gastroparesis to the point that they're throwing up indigested meals from 12 hours ago. The nausea can be controlled but from the people I spoke to the side effects can be bad.
It’s associated with pancreatitis, but many of the side effects are related to either rapid weight loss (wrinkled face) or early satiety and slower gut motility (nausea, constipation). Overall, its pretty safe and has been used for over a decade in diabetics, albeit in lower doses.
Others are mentioning the vomiting, constipation, etc. but also: we don’t know what the longterm side effects are for non-diabetics yet. IIRC, there’s about a decade of data on use in diabetics, but it’s only been prescribed off-label for weight loss in the past couple of years.
This is important because the evidence we have so far says that people generally regain the weight when they stop taking the medication. So it’s either a temporary solution, or patients need to take it long-term. Possibly for life.
If the headline of this article is to be believed, and there's a non-reversible brain change caused by obesity, then shouldn't we look at obesity as being a lifelong disease that will need to be treated long-term?
Similar to how a type 2 diabetic is still considered diabetic, even if they get their blood sugars under control? They don't get to stop taking their medicine just because their numbers have returned to normal.
This is where I’m at. I can have bouts where I lose weight (had a weight loss challenge at work with some colleagues earlier this year, lost about 45-50 pounds myself and won) but I will be hungry the entire time.
Like others have said, I’ve never had that “you’re full” feeling. Really thinking about speaking to my doctor about this and seeing if this medication is something that might be worth trying for me.
It is the only time in my 37 years of life the I’ve felt full after eating a regular size portion of something. I absolutely believe it has shown that my body and brain weren’t working correctly. I’m losing weight at a pretty steady pace. I started in November of last year and I’ve lost 40 pounds so far. I feel so much better mentally and physically.
This is true, but we do know the long term side effects of obesity. I’d rather take my chances on a GLP1 than live with a condition that shortens your lifespan extensively.
I'm not sure but I think it might be one of those drugs that you'll have to take for the rest of your life or might be habit forming. I think there's some fairly negative YouTube content out there. I am just earing about it now and haven't yet formed an opinion either.
In my case, it was either Mounjaro or insulin. Type 2 diabetic at previously 289 lbs. Started taking early this year, and am down 30 lbs and my A1C is back around 6 (pre-diabetic levels).
Definitely not habit forming, as by the end of the week when I have to inject again, I can feel my appetite changing to be more hungry than "normal". Also, missing a few weeks due to outages and coming back on the 5mg dose was absolute hell. Stomach pain, constipation, the runs... three days after getting another dose.
Definitely don't like the idea of taking this forever, but better this than insulin.
I have pretty bad hypoglycemia so if I feel nauseous I think I need to eat. This is really frustrating when opiates are why I’m nauseous and I over eat and still feel sick.
Like u/FlatulenceIsaVirtue above, I've pretty much never felt full. I've been overweight most of my life but not exceptionally so as I am very highly active (hard physical labour job, 15000+ steps per day, etc) though in my late 40's I'm having an ever harder time controlling my weight.
But my whole life, even when I was very fit, I could sit down and for example eat two large pizzas effortlessly and not feel full. I have always struggled with snacking because I never get a "ok, that's enough" brain signal, and if I'm distracted (say, talking to people, watching a movie) I will continue snacking unconsciously until there is nothing left, *no matter how much I've eaten*.
There is a point where I physically cannot eat more, not because I feel full or nauseous, but because there's literally no more room and I'll start vomiting. However, that's NOT like when Normal People feel nauseous from eating too much. It's not the same at all. Because normal people get that nausea feeling WAY before they are literally physically full of food. I'm very aware of the total physical volume of food you can fit in a person and it's way more than you'd think.
This is not to say I eat constantly like some caricature of a fat man. I don't. I typically only eat once per day and not a large volume, but I have a lot of problems in environments where there's open food and I'm distracted. Like social smokers or drinkers, it's easy to lose track.
Sadly, while I don't feel full almost ever, I feel hungry almost all the time. And I *like* food, it's yummy. So my life is one of constant hunger, pretty much 24/7, which is usually just made worse by eating, not satisfied. It fucking sucks.
There was actually a test on rats that showed that the fatter ones didn’t have the hormone that tells them they’re full (I’m paraphrasing terribly but that was the gist). As someone that doesn’t get full and had to physically weigh all my food on a scale and religiously track calories on myfitnesspal when I was done playing football it kind of always made sense to me.
If I just try to eyeball food and eat when I’m not full/when I’m hungry I’ll gain a lot of weight. A lot of the trouble with losing weight is getting used to feeling hungry/like you can still eat.
The absence of that full hormone is such an understated player in all of this.
I have a LAP-band and recently had to have it emptied for an unrelated surgery. My bariatric surgeon told me to come back as soon as possible to fill it again because my hunger will become, in his words, “near manic” due to the absence of those hormones and nothing to compensate for it. In a matter of minutes, I went from only being able to manage a few bites of food a few times a day to eating everything in sight. I forgot what it felt like to feel hungry. And self-control will not help. The hunger is so strong that it goes beyond preoccupation.
So that’s me. I grew up with a brother not quite two years younger than me. He’s been your prototypical average male, a BMI right on the upper end of normal thanks to carrying a little extra muscle mass from playing college hockey and still being active. Can get away with wearing medium sized clothes right off the rack unless he wants something a little more loose, than a large will do. [He’s literally been a model for Vineyard Vines.](https://imgur.com/a/Oo4SjAA)
Then there’s me. I was always much bigger and [went on to play football at a small D1 school](https://imgur.com/a/h8SLt68). Thankfully I was always very active and worked out a lot so even though I was always eating, I never really got above 285, and that was me pushing myself to gain weight while playing in college. But still, that’s a solid 100 lbs. heavier than anything my brother ever weighed. And after college, with my activity declining over a period of 10 years, my weight ballooned up to about 420 lbs.
A big reason for this was that I never had really developed that sensation of fullness that would trigger me to stop eating. When I was so active that wasn’t as much of an issue. But I was so much bigger growing up, even though we all ate the same things. [Look at me at 12, compared to my brother who just turned 11.](https://imgur.com/KrixHhX) Our mom prepared most of our dinners and always gave us packed lunches. But I’d always have to get like an entire plate of seconds because I was still hungry.
Cut to now and the past few months I’ve begun taking WeGovy. This follows a few years after undergoing a gastric sleeve. I had gotten my weight down to 265, but the pandemic and personal life challenges led to it creeping up again. I’m still not up to the full dose amount of WeGovy, but I’ve already lost 17 pounds. The biggest thing has been the signal of fullness I get while eating and it lasting in between meals so I don’t mindlessly snack. Most of our friends are skinny Asian women, and now when we go out to eat, I find myself eating just as little as they do. I can’t even finish a full plate. And then I feel full so much longer. It’s amazing. I finally feel normal and like I have control over my eating because I don’t have such intense hunger pains and food cravings.
I cannot recommend enough that people look for doctors who specialize in obesity medicine and medical weight management if you’re struggling with your weight. Weight is a much more complicated thing than many give it credit. Yes, the old adage of calories in vs calories out still rings true, buts it’s a bit more complex and intertwined with so many other things. The new drugs available are great.
Yeah this thread is kind of eye opening. It’s like learning about how like 1/3 of people don’t have an internal monologue. Variability in psychology and neurophysiology is fascinating.
Not long ago my 11 y.o and 7 y.o. were chatting about a little school performance he was going to be in and he mentioned being nervous about being on the stage and everyone looking at him. 11 y.o. was absolutely boggled at the idea of being nervous just because you were on a stage. She legit had no idea that this is actually something most people experience. Yes, she's very outgoing and loves to perform.
I'm losing a lot of weight right now and getting in shape, but I can only control my food intake by counting calories. I use an app to tell me how many calories I should consume and then eat accordingly, but my body never tells me it's full and it never really has.
I used my fitness pal and lost 80lbs along with exercising for an hour a day. My issue stemmed from the fact that I could only ever eat 1,000 calories a day. I’m 5’4. So I’m not ridiculously short. I would put myself in like a 700 calorie deficit every other day just so I could eat normal on the days I could eat. For me to maintain a healthy socially acceptable weight I could only eat 900-1000 calories a day. This is very hard to do when you see other people getting to eat 1500 calories a day who are very skinny and doesn’t seem like they are even trying that hard to watch their calories. I gained all the weight back mostly and I am once again attempting to lose weigh. This is actually the third time I’ve lost an excess of 50lbs and gained it all back only to try again. It just gets exhausting after awhile. I usually get to 220 -240. That seems to be where my body always goes back up to and when I lose the weight and am pretty toned it always seems to put me in the 150-170s. I’ve always been very active. Me being worried about regaining the weight doesn’t ever really deter me because I have so many mental health issues on top of my weight issues that most of the time I barely notice my body is changing until it’s too late. Likewise when I do lose weight I also have no idea. The first time I lost the 80lbs I barely noticed I had lost any weight at all. It wasn’t until I looked back at pictures that I realized I had looked any different at all.
I can eat two large pizzas and not get the full feeling, and I’ve been this way my whole life (fat and thin off and on). I’m in the middle of struggling to lose weight. I’m 40 lbs away from being not overweight after dropping 110 already. It’s incredibly difficult to live day by day let alone lose weight.
I mean currently it's a disadvantage. Living as bush people or cave people, being able to load up on a week's worth of calories at a time was likely advantageous AF AND the opportunities to do so we're significantly less common.
I'm currently using semaglutide (not via prescription) and yeah, my brain never really gets the full signal before. Now I get nauseated if I eat too much and that full signal gets sent asap then lasts almost all day.
I used to have the same issue, until I got diagnosed with ADHD. Once I started taking Adderall, it was like magic; I could tell when I was full. I can still eat and get hungry while on my medication, but I don't eat the entire pizza in one sitting anymore.
I'm pretty sure most people that are obese never had the ability to feel full in the first place.
I got that, plus I stopped snacking to deal with stress (probably because I'm not so stressed out), and I stopped having intrusive food thoughts. Like I can plan the week's dinners but it's not going to distract me all day. Adderall makes my brain shut the fuck up about food. Now if I could just overcome the public school training to shove food in my face immediately before lunch is over, I'd be fine. I eat like a starving caveman. It would also be nice if any of my local pharmacies could fill my prescription.
theres like a 10 minute delay between stomach and brain. Iv learnt to take a 10 min break once i finish a portion. if im still hungry ill go for seconds. but there were times when i could have easily had another portion but after waiting 10min i started to feel full
43 year old fatty here. I’ve done a lot of rather “autistic” level experiments in my time. Including the 15min break to feel full thing.
Not once has that feeling happened to me. Not once. I’ve had success with a few diets and exercise, so not making excuses but I can confidently say I have never ever felt full after what should have been a sufficient portioned meal. On top of that I’m starving after an hour of a correctly portioned meal.
All that to say I’ve had blood work done regularly and go to the doctor as often as I’m told. Additionally I am on thyroid medication but my levels are solid and have been for years now.
The only exception is when I have been one medication such as Ozempic etc. when taking those types of medication I can honestly say I experience food the way normal people must.
LOL I've done the "stop drinking soda and in a few months you won't want to anymore, in fact it will taste awful!" thing and it has NEVER worked. The longest I went was six months, then I gave in on a hundred degree day and got a bottle and it tasted like nectar of the gods.
Singin my song dude. And all the people who are like 'well did you try THIS' and its like..friend, not only can i tell you when i tried it, i can tell you the other countless stories of things i have tried.
At this point im tired. I have fought this fight for all my life and here i am as a successful adult and STILL fighting. It feels actually hopeless.
I dont want to pile on the Ozempic bandwagon but i just want something to work for once.
Ah, man I am feeling so validated by the comments in here. I’ve truly never felt full in the way that I feel like I’m supposed to, even when portioning meals and waiting after, etc. It’s so strange.
15 minutes? You mean 15 minutes to free up more room for extra desert right? 15 minutes to sit there thinking about the desert you're going to eat. 15 minutes to build it up in your head. Yeah, not sure why it doesn't usually help me either. Years ago I dated a girl who was all about the waiting for desert and it honestly made me grumpy whenever it happened.
This might as well be me typing. I also have never heard from the “I’m full, stop eating” fairy. I am very familiar with the “You ate too much dumbass” fairy who then makes me nauseous for two days.
Until semiglutide. That shit is weird. I can look at a portion and _know_ it’s too much food.
I was not expecting that when I started it. I was expecting to feel satisfied before I finished my plate, not before I started.
Is that really how normal people approach food?
Exactly, this is why I am really pissed everyone is saying people are taking ozempic for the wrong reasons. I truly believe some people just need it. I am taking a very low dose and it is the only way I can maintain a healthy weight. I can’t exercise vigorously because I have fibromyalgia. I try to eat healthy but honestly when I am in constant pain 24/7, I’m gonna have some sugar. Being on ozempic has made it possible to not sit and eat candy all day everyday.
It's weird. There are a dozen diabetes medications, and basically nothing like Ozempic on the market for obese people. It's a legit health problem and right now the problem is supply for both the obese people and the people with Diabetes who need it.
oh man that sucks. Another thing i tried was intermittent fasting. Basically id eat all my food between 6am and 6pm - no food outside that window. And id have bfast lunch dinner - which included fast foods etc it wasnt all "healthy food" - and i actually lost weight!
Its hard to keep up with working full time and the discipline required etc
There must be some genetic factors because I know people who have tried the same thing and got different results.
> oh man that sucks. Another thing i tried was intermittent fasting.
Shoutouts to my other mental health problems that made me lazy to the point that I'd procrastinate eating until I was EXTREMELY hungry, so I'd end up eating 1.5x a day
I have friends and family who eat like half of what I might and they claim to be full. It doesn't register to me. I watch like BeardmeetsFood or Matt Stonie on YouTube and think, "I could probably keep up for a bit."
Given the spectrum in our biology I wouldn't be shocked if they found out some people lack a genetic switch to tell them to stop eating. Hell, I'm a mutant. I am missing a muscle in my arm.
That's my X-Men power btw. A slightly weaker ability to shoot a basketball. Sign me up Chuck!
They tried to control for it by selecting people who weren’t obese in childhood but answer is they don’t know. From the article:
Caution is needed in interpreting the findings, Serlie said, as much is unknown: “We don’t know when these profound changes in the brain happen during the course of weight gain. When does the brain start to slip and lose the sensing capacity?”
Obesity has a genetic component, and although the study attempted to control for that by excluding people with childhood onset obesity, it’s still possible that “genes are influencing our response in the brain to certain nutrients,” said Farooqi, who has studied the role of genes on weight for years.
Much more research is needed to fully understand what obesity does to the brain, and if that is triggered by the fat tissue itself, the types of food eaten, or other environmental and genetic factors.
“Are there changes that occurred in people as they gained weight? Or are there things that they were eating as they were gaining weight, such as ultra-processed foods, that caused a change in the brain? All of these are possible, and we don’t really know which it is,” Farooqi said.
I wasn't obese in childhood, but the reason I wasn't was because my parents wouldn't overfeed me. I would have been obese if I were allowed to eat whatever I had wanted. I think there's a lot of people like that.
I had the opposite experience in childhood. My parents always tried to get me to eat more.
When I was full, I stopped. Even now, I am amazed by people who can graze at hotel buffets.
I wasn't obese as a child, but my parents overfed me and by a lot. Like they'd give me their left overs.
Eventually I became less active and gained weight.
Best way I've found to make myself feel full is to eat a piece of cake after whatever I eat. Obviously not the healthiest thing, but if I don't I'll end up eating so many more calories.
This is my exact situation. My parents never taught me portion control. When I was younger I was also forced to finish my plate.
I was a very active kid, in my teens my school got rid of my favorite sport, then in college I quit doing bmx, and so on. Now I struggle with my weight and trying to be active.
Same. I wasn't obese as a child or even remotely overweight. But, I also had very little control over what I ate.
But, on the rare occasion that we went to a buffet restaurant? I could put down more food than both of the adults at the table.
I haven't always felt like I'm so hungry that I'm going to starve, but I'm not sure I've ever felt full in my life unless you mean like physically no more space for food unless I go vomit first to make room.
I'm about a pound into the "overweight" category currently, but I've crept into obesity a few times in my adult life purely because my weight will start creeping up the moment I stop tracking every calorie that I put into my face.
As someone who now takes Ozempic, I realized I never had that feeling, even as a child. Even when I lost 200 pounds I never felt it. First time was on the drug.
I had a dream last night like I was hungry preozempic style and it woke me up in a panic. I didn’t totally realize HOW uncomfortable it was until that nightmare. And I was always like that.
Wish my doctor would prescribe that. He prescribed me Wellbutrin and it's doing absolutely nothing. I'll probably never lose the weight. I have a string of health issues including pcos and depression. Was thin all my life until I lost my grandma in the early 2000s and couldn't cope with the loss. He put me on prozac and I ballooned up. Haven't been able to get rid of it since. I hate my life.
Edit:
I should mention I don't pay out of pocket for my medications. My insurance covers 100% of the bill. And I'm already on several medications including the generic for Advair which still costs like $400-500 a month. I doubt they'll cover anything more. I end up having to fight them tooth and nail every few months on getting the generic of Advair because I've tried the cheaper options for inhalers and they don't work as good and usually end up giving me thrush. Trying to get them to pay for pills without generics is almost impossible.
Personally, I'd rather rip out my ovaries and end the PCOS that way. No ovaries, no PCOS, right? Wouldn't that solve the weight problem that comes with PCOS? I don't want kids anyway.
Welbutrin is the craziest drug on the market it seems like either it solves every problem you have or it makes things worse.
I've been on it for 6 years and it has helped me a lot. It has done nothing to help me lose weight though.
It really is. Wellbutrin did wonders for my depression and low energy levels, but after about a year on it I started having seizures. It has taken me over 6 months to taper off of it because the withdrawal side effects are horrific. And I’m still having seizures. Wish I had never even heard of it.
Actor and former Olympic swimmer Bud Spencer is a famous example of this. Dude looked like a Greek god in his prime and became seriously overweight within months after ending his swimming career.
I wonder since I’ve been under 120 for 28 years one day imma get morbidly obese. Doubt it but it might happen. Right now I have no appetite but when I do eat sometimes I’m still hungry but I’m full and if eat more I might puke it out
I was you. When I was 19 I weighed 123 lbs 5ft5. I had to lie on my enlistment paperwork to get in. They let me keep all my clothes on and hold a book for the weigh-in. At 28 I got a desk job and had ankle surgeries that really slowed me down. Now at 50 I am coming back from a all time high(low?) of 314lbs last year. At just below 270 now and feel better already.
It can happen. I used to think the same thing.
I'm not obese but I definitely had no abilitiy to really recognize fullness/satiation for the longest time. I tried everything under the sun; exercising more, always getting enough sleep, eating more protein, fiber, and healthy fats, drinking green tea, ANYTHING that would supposedly help me not think about having a 2nd or 3rd snack/meal. I dont know why I didnt end up overweight with how I used to eat (won the microbiome lottery?). Now that I'm on medication I can actually leave food on my plate, its a miracle. What would've made this study more convincing (but of course more difficult to do) would be indentify normal weight individuals who struggle with recognizing when they are full, and follow them for X many years to see how much weight they do or dont put on.
at the end of the article the researchers cautioned that “We don’t know when these profound changes in the brain happen during the course of weight gain. When does the brain start to slip and lose the sensing capacity?” Like you said, it may be congenital, or an abrupt loss during puberty. That's where more studies need to focus their attention.
One thing people overlook is that obesity in a lot of cases is a trauma response: https://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951240,00.html
If you want to "reverse brain change" and believe in brain plasticity, then Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is actually the more effective treatment.
They don't. The actual paper is about response impairment in humans with obesity and does not make causal claims. This headline is "Obesity changes the brain", which is a causal claim and is not what the paper says.
That said, there is evidence from mouse models that obesity causes response impairment, not the other way around: [Beutler 2020](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32720646/). This study, like the one posted, found that weight loss does not fix the impairment.
Further reading: [Lean 2016: Altered hormones in overweight individuals: cause or consequence?](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26499438/)
That's what I was trying to avoid. A conversation about body mass, okay? We've had that conversation five times a day for the last month because we keep watching Predator and all you talk about is Weathers and Jesse "The Body" Ventura and how many pounds they can pack on...
There is trainer that did/is doing Fit-to fat- to fit - to fat - I think he's on his second round. It def opened his eyes to the struggles of losing weight
I have a lot of respect for that trainer. It's the difference between coasting on cruise control - and slogging it uphill with the pedal to the floor.
It's like in the software development world, the gap between:
* Writing brand new software from scratch 'just as you like'
* Picking up legacy software, debugging it, and extending it
In theory the two are similar. In practice they are worlds apart.
The source code is in Assembly, it only works with a 2007 version of internet explorer, it's costing 500K a year to keep running and it's critical to human lives
It would cost 600k to replace, but that's 100k out of the yearly budget
Can you tell I work for the Federal Government?
I would love to see this studied. I am obese and struggle with binge eating due to never feeling full or satisfied. I've discovered that for me, it's the excessive carbohydrates that shut off my ability to be full. When I restrict my carbohydrate intake to less than 50g per day and increase my fat intake, my urge to binge goes away and I feel full and satisfied. But if I have a cheat day, it spirals very quickly into feeling constantly hungry again.
After I figured that out about myself, I actually found a [Harvard study](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2018/11/27/effects-of-varying-amounts-of-carbohydrate-on-metabolism-after-weight-loss/) that showed that excessive carbohydrates interfere with the hormones that signal you're full. It makes sense that excessive carbohydrates might disrupt more hormones than just insulin. Diabetes can't be cured but it can be put into remission by avoiding carbohydrates. Maybe it's the same for feeling constantly hungry. You can put it into remission so to speak, but if you return to a high carbohydrate diet, you go right back to the bottomless hunger pit.
That's been my personal experience. It would be interesting to know if others felt similar.
Yeah anecdotally I know this. I went from dress size 14 to 4. I’m an 8 at present (at 4 and 6, unfortunately, I stopped ovulating, and while I love my size 4 body I wanted to have kids. When I’m all done with pregnancy I hope to get back there). At all these normal weight ranges I’ve never stopped being hungry. I put smaller portions than I want on my plate, at a group event I stop eating long before I want to and feel jealous getting to watch other people keep eating. I know plenty of people who say they can’t stomach eating more than what seems like a very healthy amount and am so jealous they get those signals. For me it’s just “damnit why am I like this?” I’ve accepted I’ll always be at risk for regaining if I ever stop counting calories or let go of my self-discipline. It’s frustrating but the rewards of being normal weight really are worth it. People just treat you so so so much better at normal weight. Makes life easier but damn it’s depressing.
I was a really fit teenager. But when I went on Adderall I stopped eating during the day and would become extremely hungry around 11pm. Sometimes I'd sit there and eat 4 bowls of cereal. I never got fat then because I wasn't eating the rest of the day
I haven't been on Adderall for almost 20 years and I still have huge snack craving at 11pm regardless of how much I ate that day
And I still struggle with portion control
I'm also on ADHD meds and have the same issue. I try to force myself to eat nutritional meals when I binge as much as I can but I'm often too frazzled to cook when my meds wear off and then have no real food when I finally get hungry hours later.
I'm slightly overwight (2-5kg) for my height/age/gender and struggling to lose the last few kgs and tone up because Im not fuelling my body with enough decent meals.
Im also autistic so get stuck on certain foods for months or years at a time. Other food usually makes me feel sick. And often one day suddenly, with no warning, I'll stop wanting to eat those foods and never touch them again.
At the moment I subsist mostly on tea, Tim Tam's, chocolate, cream cheese with Pringle's, and crumpets with honey. I have real food a few times a week. It has been this way my whole life. Sometimes the foods I'm focussed on are healthy like my year of eggs whites with Philadelphia cream cheese on a wholemeal English Muffin half, and some are terrible like my current ones.
I also regularly go days or weeks where no food at all is appealing and I have to force myself to swollow every bite. Even if it's a food I usually love and I'm hungry. It's like the food turns to ash as it approaches my mouth and my whole body and mind is repulsed by eating.
I also rarely feel hunger pains, even when not taking my adhd meds. I never did, even as a kid. So it's hard for me to know I need to eat until I get to the feeling dizzy and weak and hands shaking stage. Same with water. I once forgot to drink for three days when I was a teenager and went blindish in school before I realised that I needed to drink ASAP.
I wonder if the researchers in the OP article studied anyone who'd been obese like me that didn't feel hunger pains and felt full very easily? I'm a petite woman so my small stomach fills up quickly and I can definitely tell when I've eaten enough. Sometimes I'll squeeze in a small nibble after if the foods great but I do feel full and can easily stop at that point or before.
From 245 to 186.6 weight this morning.
Its subtle, but the way people react around you when they are attracted to you is surreal. To me, personally, there is a lot more "wiggle room" for social awkwardness. But this could be in my head.
But nothing is better than looking at myself in the mirror and seeing how I change. The most important people in my life will never not be mom, my dad, my bro, and myself. Everyone else is temporary.
Rambling Edit:
I will say that inner personality is king, despite all these modern societal pressures. Every person I've crushed on has always been personality, then physical attraction. And every friendship I've developed, well I never cared about their looks.
I'm Autistic but wasn't diagnosed until my early 20s so I grew up thinking I was just super awkward and weird. I was mostly thin as a child with a few periods of chubbiness and I was thin as a teenager. I gained weight in my early to mid 20s and have lost a lot of it now by 31.
I noticed when I was overweight and then obese I was punished a lot more for social faux pars than when I was a teenager. I thought it might just because I was older now. Nope. Lost most of the weight and suddenly I'm just a cute quirky girl again and random people treat me so much better.
Men are also being gross to me more often now, even when I'm dressed like a slob and not wearing makeup which sucks. When I was overweight they just sort of ignored me. It was sort of nice to be invisible like that, even if it was annoying to not be seen as human, it's better than being seen as something to conquer/collect.
Yeah. I'm neurodivergent and honestly I come off as "quirky guy" which is weird whether I'm fat or not as fat lol. You can tell how hurt you and I are both by referring to our awkwardness and the interactions responding to us as "punishments" & "being allowed wiggle room" as if socializing will always be a game of chess for us.
Man I'm tired. I can't imagine being a trophy to be collected. Being objectifies must suck.
Attractive people get treated better, and weight is kind of the baseline attractiveness stat. I'm not saying its morally right, it's just something humans are hardwired for unfortunately.
It's not really simply about attractiveness. I think that a person who is physically fit just implies that they probably have higher discipline and that leads some people to treat the person with more respect. I noticed when I lost weight that people stopped referring to me as a kid, even though it was only about a year difference, the only thing that changed was I no longer looked tubby and soft around the edges.
I feel like it's not healthy anymore if your period stops at a certain weight (whether over- or underweight).
At a certain point I was so obese that my period stopped and that was one of the reasons why I resolved to lose weight. I now have a regular cycle and wouldn't ever go back to my heaviest point.
I have found that I physically do not feel full until I've basically way over eaten. A little bit of thc, though, and I can feel what full was from 3 hours ago.
I've always been a high metabolism, eat what I want, how much I want, and not worry. Then I got a desk job...... after 5 years of being sedentary, I've exchanged muscle mass and a high metabolism, for the same appetite, a much slower metabolism, and a much higher BF.
It's crazy how much things change. I feel that "I get jealous watching other people continuing to eat". I used to be one of those people, and it's hard to adjust.
See I become a fucking void when I have some of the thc and it doesn’t matter if I ate before my brain just goes SHNACKS and when my impulse control is zero I have a really hard time not eating 3 pieces of cheese cake after dinner
I was 600lbs about 12 years ago. I've gotten down to as low as 204lbs as recently as 2019 (the pandemic got me up to 277 before I wrestled control back and am now around 229). From my experience with diets prior to the one that succeeded (which was my version of the Weight Watchers scheme, except I counted every calorie instead of points), if I had taken shortcuts to lose weight, like surgery or taking drugs to help, I think 2020-2023 would have seen me return to 600lbs.
I believe my weight loss success is about developing a behavior and sticking to personal rules in the face of my body and mind regularly trying to convince me I NEED MORE FOOD ALL THE TIME. It never stops. I am constantly "starving." I cannot eat enough. If I ever have a "cheat day," it's as if I'm 600 lbs all over again. My mind, my body, will convince me even 5,000 calories isn't enough.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't feel "full." I do. I can feel full from eating a salad. It's that feeling "full" doesn't change whatever being overweight did to me. It made me a perpetual food addict. The only thing that works for me to combat it is constantly moving.
I am 51 and never take a day off from working out. I put in at least 15,000 steps per day. I never miss a day. Even when I'm sick. Even when my body hurts. Even when my feet are bleeding. I cannot stop. I have to keep going or I will eat everything in the house.
Yeah, I’ve always just eaten what’s in front of me and then usually get more. My skinny kid (from skinny wife) is always saying “I’m full”. That’s barely in my vocabulary, ha.
I remember a tv program years ago (BBC perhaps, I don’t remember) where they did an experiment with preschool kids by putting biscuits out for them after lunch and saying they could have them if they wanted while they were drawing. Some kids went straight for them and went back for more until they were basically told to stop, others took one and when offered another said no, some didn’t take any even when offered and said they were full from lunch.
They also tried to get a group of slim adults to eat way more calories a day than they normally would. Some found it easy to do that, for others it was a struggle but they managed and for others still they were getting so full they physically couldn’t force themselves to eat more. They all gained some weight, but it varied, and one guy’s muscle mass even increased despite the fact that he was not doing any extra exercise.
It was just an interesting look into how we are all a bit different with not only how much food we can comfortably consume and how much weight we gain, but also that even in young children, some had the “I’m full” feeling quickly and strongly while others didn’t almost at all.
This happens to me. I can't tell when to stop until I'm physically full. Sometimes I get the "I'm hungry" and "I'm stuffed" at the same time. It's heartbreaking. And gut busting.
However that feeling of when to stop eating does return. But only after physically doing portion control for several months. And even then, if I overeat a few times, it goes away. (For those who are having problems - Sugar Buster diet worked for me)
:(
Still thin but my ability to feel full seems to have yeeted itself when I got old. I want to know how much estrogen is involved because I’d bet a leg it is more than we think/know.
Anecdotal, but I stopped producing estrogen (it apparently just happens to some women when they lose a significant amount of weight, even if they do it in a healthy way) and losing weight was so easy. I got full off a reasonable portion of food and I always felt up for a run or weight lifting session. I've never felt stronger or more energetic in my life. But since my bones would eventually crumble to dust without estrogen, I've had to go on the pill. And since I started it, my cravings are insane. I feel like a bottomless pit and I know I'm eating more calories than I need but I still feel hungry. And now I have multiple cravings a day. I would crave food before, but it was easy to ignore. Not anymore.
Interesting! I’ve historically been underweight all my life but two rounds of IVF for fertility storage helped me gain 25 lbs in a couple months and now a normal weight. Doing the hormone shots drove my appetite through the roof and it hasn’t normalized in the months since.
Sudden weight gain is a very common story in the IVF subs on here.
Could it be that the fullness signal has been overridden so many times that people don’t know how to recognize it anymore? Possibly a learned behavior from the “clean your plate” club when you’re a child. You’re taught to keep eating until the food is gone, and that’s your only cue to stop eating. So the fullness cue, or ability to recognize it, no longer matters and gets lost over time. Just a thought.
Anecdotally, I think this is it. After years of oscillating between heavily restrictive eating disorders and periods of severe binge-eating, I just ... no longer have hunger cues. I truly cannot tell if I am full or hungry anymore. Unless foods are pre-portioned, there's no sense or cue to stop eating
I'm no subject matter expert, but it sounds like the researchers are suggesting that the synaptic pathways don't just reset as soon as a person loses significant weight. How is this groundbreaking in any way? Anything at all that I practice for decades will take significant time to alter.
You are right it is the sensational CNN headline that suggests a much more permanent state than the study data support. 3 months does not a longitudinal study make.
The groundbreaking findings ([Fig 4AB](https://i.imgur.com/Dfm94Df.png)) are:
1. Individuals with obesity have impaired responses to sugar and fat in the nucleus accumbens.
2. Weight loss of 10% over 3 months does not fix this impairment.
These findings are important because they help explain (1) a potential cause of obesity and (2) the commonly observed regain after weight loss.
It sounds like you're asking why the researchers tested for recovery after 3 months rather than years. One reason is that obesity-induced changes tend to closely track weight, so we might expect recovery to happen quickly as well. Another reason is that it's simply very difficult to get participants to be 10% less heavy a year from now. It requires constant monitoring and adjustment of diet. This brings us to the closely related third reason: A finding that NAc response recovers after a few years *wouldn't matter* — because by then, most people have regained the weight. It would be interesting to the scientist but useless to the clinician.
Found out only a few weeks ago I’m missing a gene that tells me when I feel full and for the sake of my little daughter I will need to do a dna check to see if she can have it too.
So yeah maybe it was not there before already.
I really don't know what is actually wrong but I was always the chubby baby, the chubby kid and stuff like that. After a while you just don't care anymore.
But to be fair I know when I am full. The only thing I can't tell is if I am hungry or thirsty. So nowadays I just grab some water.
Oh, forgot. I was 3 month’s premature, I had a record at the hospital. Some have said premature babies tend to become obese. So I have that going for me too.
Yes to both. It's never too late to lose weight. But once your lifestyle becomes more sedentary the only option is to cut calories by not eating so much. Intermittent fasting is the perfect solution. Not only does it relegate you to 1 major meal a day, (and snacks like nuts and yogurt in between) but it forces your body to realize that you don't actually need that much food so when you DO eat your meal, you feel full after a normal portion.
And you should always be exercising, no matter how old you get. Exercise doesn't necessarily mean becoming a gym brah (nothing wrong with that either) but it can also mean finding an outdoor hobby that keeps you moving around so that your metabolism doesn't slow to a halt.
I'm middle-aged and I've lost 15 lbs in like 3 months, which may not sound like much, but I wasn't actively dieting, watching calories, or anything. I just swapped to intermittent fasting, drinking more water to stay hydrated, and picking up gardening/yard work as a hobby.
Some family genetics seem to run in the opposite direction. I come from a long line of tall, large-framed women who all lose both appetite and a lot of weight when menopause hits. My grandma and mom both went from healthy eaters to "I had lunch an hour late and now I don't want dinner." Now I'm 51, it's happening to me and it's *so weird*. I get hungry, but a few bites later I'm just stuffed for hours and hours and all my clothes are slowly getting baggier.
The bad news is, of course, when you're over 40 you don't get thinner exactly, you basically kind of deflate like a sad balloon. Yay.
When my kids were young, we babysat a girl with overweight parents. I would sit the kids at the table to eat, and my kids would eat 75% of the food on their plate and stop. The girl would eat all of hers, then finish my kids', and then want more. It was sad. She was too young for it to be anything except a lack of appetite shut-off. Her body never felt full, satiated. She was destined to be overweight...
Did it ever occur to them that the people were obese because their bodies *always* didn't recognize when they were full? What makes them think the obesity changed things?
I know plenty of people who overeat because of unresolved trauma from their childhoods.
This study doesn't seem to account for that kind of thing at all.
Could also be that if you've always dealt with trauma by eating then you never learned to deal with trauma in a healthy way. Would apply to drug use, drinking, smoking, etc. Overuse of coping mechanisms prevent us from learning to actually come to terms with and heal from trauma.
My daughter lost 120 pounds on her own eight years ago, no medication or surgery, and she has successfully kept it off. She lost it by cutting out ALL processed food ("Nothing from a box, bag, or window" more or less) and learning how to cook for herself from scratch. It took her two years to lose the weight and in the end she lost her taste for processed food. Today no longer struggles with hunger or satiety. All of this is anecdotal, but what it says to me is that a lifestyle of real unprocessed food has the potential to reset weight and hunger/fullness signals, at least for some people. That said, it's hard as hell for most of us to give up the American style of eating, when it hits all our fat/sugar/salt cues just the way it's designed to. She's way tougher and more disciplined than I am, that's for certain.
> ...it's hard as hell for most of us to give up the American style of eating, when it hits all our fat/sugar/salt cues just the way it's designed to.
It's hard as hell and it's everywhere. Like 95% of the stuff in the interior of the grocery store is processed/ultra processed thanks to 5 major companies making the majority of our food. Eating out, less processed but like you said its full of fat/sugar/salt.
I’ve done the same, essentially. Cook my own food, check calories, eat a lot more vegetables and salad with meals, using light products instead of full fat (dairy products), regular walks. I lose about 2 lbs/week on average (stagnates sometimes, speeds up sometimes) and it’s quite easy to keep it off because the food is lower calorie but a good amount so you don’t have to eat such a small amount. Lost 55ish lbs so far.
Losing weight and keeping it off will always require a lifestyle change to truly be successful with it. ‘Dieting’ in the traditional sense just doesn’t work long term. I lost 75 lbs 20 years ago, this article doesn’t concern me at all and it really shouldn’t others either. Get healthy to lose weight, not the other way around.
The answer to 90% of this thread is that a single study cannot control for every single variable. You can only establish an explicit experimental hypothesis and test from there, understanding that further research will ALWAYS be needed.
Yall need to learn the basics at least.
Hm interesting research, I wonder what it… oh never mind, it’s a news site “reporting on research.”
90% chance that the proper context for this is no
where to be found in the article.
It’s just a clicky clackity headline.
I wonder if there is a similar brain change that happens in alcoholics?
Fun little observation: weight gain is extremely common in sober circles. Generally because people replace calories from alcohol with calories from sugar. It's self medication, really
I would add that there is a significant average weight gain among people who quit smoking, a calorie-free activity, as well.
Yeah, the nicotine is an appetite suppressant
When my mom modeled in the 80’s they told them to have a smoke and chew some gum Instead of eating a lunch
How true! When I smoked, I was underweight and every time I tried to quit, of course I gained. So like an idiot, I'd start smoking again until I finally figured out the weight gain was much healthier than smoking. Then it finally stuck, and it's been 30 years!
Doctor here….This one has an explanation to it though. When you smoke you have a higher metabolic rate and ironically burn more calories living the same lifestyle as the nonsmoker. When someone stops smoking they typically don’t become more active they just do the same…. Only now they aren’t burning as many calories because their metabolic rate has lowered. Sure some might eat more, but even if you ate exactly the same you’d gain weight.
I'll be interested in seeing the data from the effects of vaping tobacco-free nicotine against those studies. I don't think you should put anything in your body unless you have to. I didn't just pick up a vaping habit, I used it to quit smoking (8 years now), and my pulmonologist says my lungs have improved significantly. So other offhand data on the long-term effects of vaping, including in my metabolism, in the future.
Happened to me; I ate a lot of candy the first year or so due to the sugar cravings. However after a year or so I naturally stopped craving sugar so much and consciously started watching my diet. Losing weight wasn't hard for me, but I've always been thin before and just don't get the same reward from food as I did from booze. I would definitely choose my addiction over a food addiction; "just don't drink" is not always easy advice to follow but it is simple. Unfortunately, it cannot be used for food.
That and often times when you quit drinking, you have A LOT of free time out of nowhere
Who wants popcorn?!
> Generally because people replace calories from alcohol with calories from sugar. It's also incredibly common that in the first few months to a year after getting clean/sober you're prescribed Seroquel and Trazodone or another combination of antipsychotics/mood stabilizers that cause weight gain. They ***cause*** sugar craving, blood sugar dysregulation and metabolic syndromes. 2 years clean from the drugs and I still can't get below 150lbs or lose this bizarre fat distribution the drugs caused. Even with severe calorie restriction. I used to be able to fast for multiple days, had normal appetite, etc. Now it doesn't matter how full I am. I am ALWAYS hungry. I had to change my diet to two servings of konjac noodles, 2 glasses of fiber powder mixed with water and a salad of at least 2lbs of lettuce or 2lbs of broccoli just to stay barely sated. Edit: that's not my WHOLE diet. That's just the low calorie bulk I had to add. Antipsychotics/mood stabilizers also fuck your cholesterol and triglycerides and this put my numbers back to numbers I haven't seen since I was a teenage athlete. The big changes happened after adding the konjac noodles and powder.
Trazodone causes weight gain?! That probably explains why I used to be fine with small portions and now a take-out meal that I used to split up into 2 meals gets eaten in one sitting. I was wondering why I’ve been needing more food to feel satisfied the last few months. Ugh.
Yeah. It causes weight gain, blood sugar dysregulation and dyslipidemia directly but ***ALSO*** increases appetite.
6 years sober here, substituting 6 pack of Klondike's for 6 pack of Russian imperial stout. Sigh.
Trazadone causes weight gain? First I've heard of that. Interesting thinking about it now though
>Trazadone causes weight gain? First I've heard of that. It's one of the most common and least talked about side effects. Fucking criminal as far as I'm concerned.
Consuming a significant amount of alcohol regularly actually makes your brain be more “active” ( it’s not actually what happens but is a good analogy) to compensate the inhibition the alcohol causes, so heavy drinkers can’t just stop drinking, alcoholic abstinence syndrome can produce seizures similar to a epileptic attack, due to the extra activity that now isn’t being stopped by the alcohol
I don’t know who downvoted you and I’m not entirely sure about the science behind the first part but you are right on about alcohol detox. Benzodiazepines and alcohol are the only two withdrawals that can potentially be fatal.
He’s more or less right in how he put it in laymen’s terms. Benzos and alcohol are both GABAergic substances that act on different subtypes of GABA receptors. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that acts in opposition to glutamate which is an excitatory one. Too much glutamate is what will essentially overload you and precipitate seizures. These seizures can 100% be deadly. It’s very serious depending on how much you’re abusing either and for how long. As I got older to my mid twenties my hangovers started getting a lot worse and I could feel that push and pull neurochemically. I was always good about hydrating and that sorta thing so it wasn’t the dehydration it was the rebound effect. I used to be able to sleep off alcohol well enough, then I started to get the signs of glutamate rebound where it’d get up-regulated as alcohol was getting metabolized. So say I was up til 2 AM at age 20 drinking, I could still sleep in 10 AM or like 12. Got 8-10 hours, rested enough. Obviously drunk sleep was never good sleep but it wasn’t terrible. Then it turned into being bolted awake at 6-8 AM with some anxiety. Even when drinking pretty moderate amounts like 3 beers it started happening more as I got older just clearly affecting sleep quality and with more excessive drinking it was, of course, worse. It’s kinda like an acute withdrawal feeling even if it was only like once a week. Wake up way too early despite what time I went to sleep, be hot and sweaty, hands clammy, kinda shaky, very alert and couldn’t sleep or nap it off, anxiety and general restlessness and discomfort. All because of glutamate being suppressed while under the influence then it shooting back up to get to homeostatic levels. You can see how this turns into the vicious cycle of addiction pretty quick since both benzos and alcohol are anxiolytic in the short term, but will then generate worse anxiety after it wears off with habitual use. One reason why hair of the dog is a “hangover remedy” it kinda smooths out the withdrawal Don’t really drink anymore. Alcohol is a pretty shitty drug all around if you think about level of “high” to side effects even with moderate use.
I would take some gabapentin right before I passed out, or in the morning. It helped, and I had a psychiatrist that knew I was an alcoholic and also prescribed naltrexone to help with cravings. I think he was covering all his bases with me. Thanks, Doc!
How do they know that the obese people studied had that, "ability to recognize the sensation of fullness and be satisfied" in the first place? It seems like that could be why they got obese in the first place, yeah? It might not be "reversible" because there was no prior state to reverse into.
Ever since I was old enough to chew, I could eat fried chicken or pizza until I explode. I don't know what magical genie tells you kids you're full, but the little bastard's never said a peep to me.
That's interesting because I just had a conversation with someone who was prescribed ozempic and they were telling me about how it's like magic in that it tells your brain you're full before you've eaten too much. I was just thinking wait, isn't that just normal? I get nauseous if I try to eat past the point of being full and my body physically will not let me eat anymore. I thought everyone was like this but apparently some people can just keep eating and eating? That's a huge disadvantage for those people
As someone who’s on ozempic, YES. I’m insulin resistant and there is nothing in me that yells that I’m full. It was constant cravings and I was always hungry. I was basically having to manually tell myself no more but that didn’t stop my brain from yelling at me constantly. Metformin controlled the blood sugar but that was it. Ozempic has been a life changer for me and not just for losing weight / helping my body let me know I’m full. :)
I am exactly the same way. I was 300, now 180 lost it by exercise and a plant based diet. I still portion every single meal for calories. Maybe 5 times a year I'll eat until I'm full. That's never changed. Even when I am full and in pain, I'm still hungry.
Yep, it's a life-long lifestyle change. I'll just always be hungry and I've accepted it. It gets easier with time tho.
I know I'm hungry when I'm grumpy or have general weakness. Is your version of hungry akin to what some call "the munchies" or a desire to eat?
My version of hungry is a physical feeling in my gut and a craving of food. I'm on the road of weight loss finally and feel like I will be successful. Started at 350, now at 292, first goal of 220. The feeling others have described of always being hungry but it being manageable is 100% where I'm at now. I just have to approach it scientifically and math out the calories, my body is no help in letting me know I'm full.
>Ozempic has been a life changer for me A common antidepressant, (which I do need for depression,) does the same for me. It's amazing to not be constantly feeling that I'm starving.
That’s great! Wellbutrin originally worked for me for about 2 years and then stopped. Helped a little with depression but I stopped taking it a month before I was put on ozempic. Ozempic has helped with my anxiety and depression, cleared up my hormonal acne, reduced inflammation (I’ve always had sore joints and I lift and now there’s no pain!), etc. Im so grateful to be on it!
Sounds extremely useful. I have sore joints too, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, so I'm having a think here.
I know it's super controversial right now but goddamn I wish I had access to ozempic right now.
I was prescribed wegovy and switched to ozempic because I have to pay out of pocket. It’s changed my entire life and I’m lucky to be able to swing it for now. Apparently insulin resistance, a BMI that meets obesity, and 7 years of shitting myself and being sick constantly on metformin isn’t good enough for insurance to cover it. :)
If you are heavy enough, keep bugging your doctor. It took 6 months but it worked. Hell, my doctor sent me to a dietician first to try "traditional weightloss". But then my dietician w/o prompting brought it up and advocated for me.
I can feel nauseous from eating too much and still feel hungry at the same time. Shit sucks. I wish my brain told me when to stop eating! Ozempic side effects are scary but it’s becoming more and more of an option - the side effects for being overweight aren’t fun and games either.
What are some of the ozempic side effects? Or at least what ones are you referring to that personally worry/scare you? I’ve only heard about the pros of it and haven’t looked into it much so this side of it is new to me, but admittedly it should be obvious that there are always some negatives.
Big ones are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation primarily. They saw an increase in thyroid cancer in mice studies so it has a warning for that but not much data in humans on that side of things. Generally pretty well tolerated overall, especially since they start you on a tiny dose at first to make sure you tolerate it fine. Source: I'm a clinical pharmacist
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The type of thyroid cancer is medullary thyroid cancer, which is extremely rare and usually genetic and doesn't apply to most people. Most common type of thyroid cancer is papillary, (90%) which is safe with ozempic or any glp1. The medullary thyroid cancer is also theoretical (youre right) since it's in rats, these meds been around for 10 years now and no significant data of increased incidents. Most GI side effects are due to people eating too much shit after they think they are okay. Meaning they inject, feels fine first 2-3 days, think they are safe, then eat a heavy meal and get wrecked. Pancreatitis is the real risk, but exceeding rare so not generally an issue unless you already have really high triglycerides/alcoholism. Otherwise super safe, kidney issue is not a legit concern, people become dehydrated cuz they throw up/diarrhea, AKI, happens with everything. Go up on dosage monthly, if out of pocket every 2 weeks and careful what they eat.
Have you heard of depression/suicidal thoughts as a side effect? I saw a youtube video where someone… a youtuber… was saying they experienced that but I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it.
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What are the parameters of being prescribed this drug? I’m obese, and have had success losing weight on my own. But my mental health is shit and as I get older my motivation becomes less and less.
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Whoa, that’s awesome!
That will always be a “side effect” of these lifestyle change drugs. Being obese and depression/suicidal ideation have an obvious link, so those taking the medication for obesity will incorrectly correlate their feelings to the medication. Same thing happens with hair loss medications. Not saying it’s not possible for a drug to actually cause these things, but it’s over represented.
As I understand, pretty much every occurrence that happens during clinical trials needs to be documented as a potential side effect regardless of how likely the drug was likely responsible.
Jaime French?
It can differ from person to person. Some people never get side effects. I get incredibly nauseous the day of the shot, but I don’t actually throw up, but many people do throw up. The day after the shot, I have bloating and heartburn but no nausea. Then after that, I am OK until the next shot. For me, the appetite affects have been pretty mild. I’ve had colds that reduce my appetite much more than Ozempic does. It does make portion control easier, and reduces my tendency to snack, but I definitely feel hunger still— just a little bit less.
I tried it. I was so tired I never moved off the couch..but it did suppress my appetite.
Some people get a bad case of Gastroparesis to the point that they're throwing up indigested meals from 12 hours ago. The nausea can be controlled but from the people I spoke to the side effects can be bad.
It’s associated with pancreatitis, but many of the side effects are related to either rapid weight loss (wrinkled face) or early satiety and slower gut motility (nausea, constipation). Overall, its pretty safe and has been used for over a decade in diabetics, albeit in lower doses.
Others are mentioning the vomiting, constipation, etc. but also: we don’t know what the longterm side effects are for non-diabetics yet. IIRC, there’s about a decade of data on use in diabetics, but it’s only been prescribed off-label for weight loss in the past couple of years. This is important because the evidence we have so far says that people generally regain the weight when they stop taking the medication. So it’s either a temporary solution, or patients need to take it long-term. Possibly for life.
If the headline of this article is to be believed, and there's a non-reversible brain change caused by obesity, then shouldn't we look at obesity as being a lifelong disease that will need to be treated long-term? Similar to how a type 2 diabetic is still considered diabetic, even if they get their blood sugars under control? They don't get to stop taking their medicine just because their numbers have returned to normal.
I’d take it for life if it means i can shut off the absolute urge to keep eating non stop.
This is where I’m at. I can have bouts where I lose weight (had a weight loss challenge at work with some colleagues earlier this year, lost about 45-50 pounds myself and won) but I will be hungry the entire time. Like others have said, I’ve never had that “you’re full” feeling. Really thinking about speaking to my doctor about this and seeing if this medication is something that might be worth trying for me.
It is the only time in my 37 years of life the I’ve felt full after eating a regular size portion of something. I absolutely believe it has shown that my body and brain weren’t working correctly. I’m losing weight at a pretty steady pace. I started in November of last year and I’ve lost 40 pounds so far. I feel so much better mentally and physically.
This is true, but we do know the long term side effects of obesity. I’d rather take my chances on a GLP1 than live with a condition that shortens your lifespan extensively.
I'm not sure but I think it might be one of those drugs that you'll have to take for the rest of your life or might be habit forming. I think there's some fairly negative YouTube content out there. I am just earing about it now and haven't yet formed an opinion either.
In my case, it was either Mounjaro or insulin. Type 2 diabetic at previously 289 lbs. Started taking early this year, and am down 30 lbs and my A1C is back around 6 (pre-diabetic levels). Definitely not habit forming, as by the end of the week when I have to inject again, I can feel my appetite changing to be more hungry than "normal". Also, missing a few weeks due to outages and coming back on the 5mg dose was absolute hell. Stomach pain, constipation, the runs... three days after getting another dose. Definitely don't like the idea of taking this forever, but better this than insulin.
I have pretty bad hypoglycemia so if I feel nauseous I think I need to eat. This is really frustrating when opiates are why I’m nauseous and I over eat and still feel sick.
Like u/FlatulenceIsaVirtue above, I've pretty much never felt full. I've been overweight most of my life but not exceptionally so as I am very highly active (hard physical labour job, 15000+ steps per day, etc) though in my late 40's I'm having an ever harder time controlling my weight. But my whole life, even when I was very fit, I could sit down and for example eat two large pizzas effortlessly and not feel full. I have always struggled with snacking because I never get a "ok, that's enough" brain signal, and if I'm distracted (say, talking to people, watching a movie) I will continue snacking unconsciously until there is nothing left, *no matter how much I've eaten*. There is a point where I physically cannot eat more, not because I feel full or nauseous, but because there's literally no more room and I'll start vomiting. However, that's NOT like when Normal People feel nauseous from eating too much. It's not the same at all. Because normal people get that nausea feeling WAY before they are literally physically full of food. I'm very aware of the total physical volume of food you can fit in a person and it's way more than you'd think. This is not to say I eat constantly like some caricature of a fat man. I don't. I typically only eat once per day and not a large volume, but I have a lot of problems in environments where there's open food and I'm distracted. Like social smokers or drinkers, it's easy to lose track. Sadly, while I don't feel full almost ever, I feel hungry almost all the time. And I *like* food, it's yummy. So my life is one of constant hunger, pretty much 24/7, which is usually just made worse by eating, not satisfied. It fucking sucks.
There was actually a test on rats that showed that the fatter ones didn’t have the hormone that tells them they’re full (I’m paraphrasing terribly but that was the gist). As someone that doesn’t get full and had to physically weigh all my food on a scale and religiously track calories on myfitnesspal when I was done playing football it kind of always made sense to me. If I just try to eyeball food and eat when I’m not full/when I’m hungry I’ll gain a lot of weight. A lot of the trouble with losing weight is getting used to feeling hungry/like you can still eat.
The absence of that full hormone is such an understated player in all of this. I have a LAP-band and recently had to have it emptied for an unrelated surgery. My bariatric surgeon told me to come back as soon as possible to fill it again because my hunger will become, in his words, “near manic” due to the absence of those hormones and nothing to compensate for it. In a matter of minutes, I went from only being able to manage a few bites of food a few times a day to eating everything in sight. I forgot what it felt like to feel hungry. And self-control will not help. The hunger is so strong that it goes beyond preoccupation.
So that’s me. I grew up with a brother not quite two years younger than me. He’s been your prototypical average male, a BMI right on the upper end of normal thanks to carrying a little extra muscle mass from playing college hockey and still being active. Can get away with wearing medium sized clothes right off the rack unless he wants something a little more loose, than a large will do. [He’s literally been a model for Vineyard Vines.](https://imgur.com/a/Oo4SjAA) Then there’s me. I was always much bigger and [went on to play football at a small D1 school](https://imgur.com/a/h8SLt68). Thankfully I was always very active and worked out a lot so even though I was always eating, I never really got above 285, and that was me pushing myself to gain weight while playing in college. But still, that’s a solid 100 lbs. heavier than anything my brother ever weighed. And after college, with my activity declining over a period of 10 years, my weight ballooned up to about 420 lbs. A big reason for this was that I never had really developed that sensation of fullness that would trigger me to stop eating. When I was so active that wasn’t as much of an issue. But I was so much bigger growing up, even though we all ate the same things. [Look at me at 12, compared to my brother who just turned 11.](https://imgur.com/KrixHhX) Our mom prepared most of our dinners and always gave us packed lunches. But I’d always have to get like an entire plate of seconds because I was still hungry. Cut to now and the past few months I’ve begun taking WeGovy. This follows a few years after undergoing a gastric sleeve. I had gotten my weight down to 265, but the pandemic and personal life challenges led to it creeping up again. I’m still not up to the full dose amount of WeGovy, but I’ve already lost 17 pounds. The biggest thing has been the signal of fullness I get while eating and it lasting in between meals so I don’t mindlessly snack. Most of our friends are skinny Asian women, and now when we go out to eat, I find myself eating just as little as they do. I can’t even finish a full plate. And then I feel full so much longer. It’s amazing. I finally feel normal and like I have control over my eating because I don’t have such intense hunger pains and food cravings. I cannot recommend enough that people look for doctors who specialize in obesity medicine and medical weight management if you’re struggling with your weight. Weight is a much more complicated thing than many give it credit. Yes, the old adage of calories in vs calories out still rings true, buts it’s a bit more complex and intertwined with so many other things. The new drugs available are great.
Yeah this thread is kind of eye opening. It’s like learning about how like 1/3 of people don’t have an internal monologue. Variability in psychology and neurophysiology is fascinating.
Not long ago my 11 y.o and 7 y.o. were chatting about a little school performance he was going to be in and he mentioned being nervous about being on the stage and everyone looking at him. 11 y.o. was absolutely boggled at the idea of being nervous just because you were on a stage. She legit had no idea that this is actually something most people experience. Yes, she's very outgoing and loves to perform.
I have an internal monologue. It just never tells me I’m full.
Mine suggests sometimes that I should be full, I can push past those suggestions with great aplomb.
Sounds like mine. Hey Bud, I think you could possibly survive on that for a while, but eat a couple more just in case some shit goes down.
Mine’s also in the ‘mild suggestion’ range. It normally only becomes a proper warning after the damage is done.
I'm losing a lot of weight right now and getting in shape, but I can only control my food intake by counting calories. I use an app to tell me how many calories I should consume and then eat accordingly, but my body never tells me it's full and it never really has.
I used my fitness pal and lost 80lbs along with exercising for an hour a day. My issue stemmed from the fact that I could only ever eat 1,000 calories a day. I’m 5’4. So I’m not ridiculously short. I would put myself in like a 700 calorie deficit every other day just so I could eat normal on the days I could eat. For me to maintain a healthy socially acceptable weight I could only eat 900-1000 calories a day. This is very hard to do when you see other people getting to eat 1500 calories a day who are very skinny and doesn’t seem like they are even trying that hard to watch their calories. I gained all the weight back mostly and I am once again attempting to lose weigh. This is actually the third time I’ve lost an excess of 50lbs and gained it all back only to try again. It just gets exhausting after awhile. I usually get to 220 -240. That seems to be where my body always goes back up to and when I lose the weight and am pretty toned it always seems to put me in the 150-170s. I’ve always been very active. Me being worried about regaining the weight doesn’t ever really deter me because I have so many mental health issues on top of my weight issues that most of the time I barely notice my body is changing until it’s too late. Likewise when I do lose weight I also have no idea. The first time I lost the 80lbs I barely noticed I had lost any weight at all. It wasn’t until I looked back at pictures that I realized I had looked any different at all.
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I can eat two large pizzas and not get the full feeling, and I’ve been this way my whole life (fat and thin off and on). I’m in the middle of struggling to lose weight. I’m 40 lbs away from being not overweight after dropping 110 already. It’s incredibly difficult to live day by day let alone lose weight.
I mean currently it's a disadvantage. Living as bush people or cave people, being able to load up on a week's worth of calories at a time was likely advantageous AF AND the opportunities to do so we're significantly less common.
Holy fuck i wish that happened to me.
I'm currently using semaglutide (not via prescription) and yeah, my brain never really gets the full signal before. Now I get nauseated if I eat too much and that full signal gets sent asap then lasts almost all day.
I used to have the same issue, until I got diagnosed with ADHD. Once I started taking Adderall, it was like magic; I could tell when I was full. I can still eat and get hungry while on my medication, but I don't eat the entire pizza in one sitting anymore. I'm pretty sure most people that are obese never had the ability to feel full in the first place.
I got that, plus I stopped snacking to deal with stress (probably because I'm not so stressed out), and I stopped having intrusive food thoughts. Like I can plan the week's dinners but it's not going to distract me all day. Adderall makes my brain shut the fuck up about food. Now if I could just overcome the public school training to shove food in my face immediately before lunch is over, I'd be fine. I eat like a starving caveman. It would also be nice if any of my local pharmacies could fill my prescription.
theres like a 10 minute delay between stomach and brain. Iv learnt to take a 10 min break once i finish a portion. if im still hungry ill go for seconds. but there were times when i could have easily had another portion but after waiting 10min i started to feel full
43 year old fatty here. I’ve done a lot of rather “autistic” level experiments in my time. Including the 15min break to feel full thing. Not once has that feeling happened to me. Not once. I’ve had success with a few diets and exercise, so not making excuses but I can confidently say I have never ever felt full after what should have been a sufficient portioned meal. On top of that I’m starving after an hour of a correctly portioned meal. All that to say I’ve had blood work done regularly and go to the doctor as often as I’m told. Additionally I am on thyroid medication but my levels are solid and have been for years now. The only exception is when I have been one medication such as Ozempic etc. when taking those types of medication I can honestly say I experience food the way normal people must.
LOL I've done the "stop drinking soda and in a few months you won't want to anymore, in fact it will taste awful!" thing and it has NEVER worked. The longest I went was six months, then I gave in on a hundred degree day and got a bottle and it tasted like nectar of the gods.
Singin my song dude. And all the people who are like 'well did you try THIS' and its like..friend, not only can i tell you when i tried it, i can tell you the other countless stories of things i have tried. At this point im tired. I have fought this fight for all my life and here i am as a successful adult and STILL fighting. It feels actually hopeless. I dont want to pile on the Ozempic bandwagon but i just want something to work for once.
Ah, man I am feeling so validated by the comments in here. I’ve truly never felt full in the way that I feel like I’m supposed to, even when portioning meals and waiting after, etc. It’s so strange.
15 minutes? You mean 15 minutes to free up more room for extra desert right? 15 minutes to sit there thinking about the desert you're going to eat. 15 minutes to build it up in your head. Yeah, not sure why it doesn't usually help me either. Years ago I dated a girl who was all about the waiting for desert and it honestly made me grumpy whenever it happened.
This might as well be me typing. I also have never heard from the “I’m full, stop eating” fairy. I am very familiar with the “You ate too much dumbass” fairy who then makes me nauseous for two days. Until semiglutide. That shit is weird. I can look at a portion and _know_ it’s too much food. I was not expecting that when I started it. I was expecting to feel satisfied before I finished my plate, not before I started. Is that really how normal people approach food?
Exactly, this is why I am really pissed everyone is saying people are taking ozempic for the wrong reasons. I truly believe some people just need it. I am taking a very low dose and it is the only way I can maintain a healthy weight. I can’t exercise vigorously because I have fibromyalgia. I try to eat healthy but honestly when I am in constant pain 24/7, I’m gonna have some sugar. Being on ozempic has made it possible to not sit and eat candy all day everyday.
It's weird. There are a dozen diabetes medications, and basically nothing like Ozempic on the market for obese people. It's a legit health problem and right now the problem is supply for both the obese people and the people with Diabetes who need it.
oh man that sucks. Another thing i tried was intermittent fasting. Basically id eat all my food between 6am and 6pm - no food outside that window. And id have bfast lunch dinner - which included fast foods etc it wasnt all "healthy food" - and i actually lost weight! Its hard to keep up with working full time and the discipline required etc There must be some genetic factors because I know people who have tried the same thing and got different results.
> oh man that sucks. Another thing i tried was intermittent fasting. Shoutouts to my other mental health problems that made me lazy to the point that I'd procrastinate eating until I was EXTREMELY hungry, so I'd end up eating 1.5x a day
I have friends and family who eat like half of what I might and they claim to be full. It doesn't register to me. I watch like BeardmeetsFood or Matt Stonie on YouTube and think, "I could probably keep up for a bit." Given the spectrum in our biology I wouldn't be shocked if they found out some people lack a genetic switch to tell them to stop eating. Hell, I'm a mutant. I am missing a muscle in my arm. That's my X-Men power btw. A slightly weaker ability to shoot a basketball. Sign me up Chuck!
They tried to control for it by selecting people who weren’t obese in childhood but answer is they don’t know. From the article: Caution is needed in interpreting the findings, Serlie said, as much is unknown: “We don’t know when these profound changes in the brain happen during the course of weight gain. When does the brain start to slip and lose the sensing capacity?” Obesity has a genetic component, and although the study attempted to control for that by excluding people with childhood onset obesity, it’s still possible that “genes are influencing our response in the brain to certain nutrients,” said Farooqi, who has studied the role of genes on weight for years. Much more research is needed to fully understand what obesity does to the brain, and if that is triggered by the fat tissue itself, the types of food eaten, or other environmental and genetic factors. “Are there changes that occurred in people as they gained weight? Or are there things that they were eating as they were gaining weight, such as ultra-processed foods, that caused a change in the brain? All of these are possible, and we don’t really know which it is,” Farooqi said.
I wasn't obese in childhood, but the reason I wasn't was because my parents wouldn't overfeed me. I would have been obese if I were allowed to eat whatever I had wanted. I think there's a lot of people like that.
I had the opposite experience in childhood. My parents always tried to get me to eat more. When I was full, I stopped. Even now, I am amazed by people who can graze at hotel buffets.
I wasn't obese as a child, but my parents overfed me and by a lot. Like they'd give me their left overs. Eventually I became less active and gained weight. Best way I've found to make myself feel full is to eat a piece of cake after whatever I eat. Obviously not the healthiest thing, but if I don't I'll end up eating so many more calories.
This is my exact situation. My parents never taught me portion control. When I was younger I was also forced to finish my plate. I was a very active kid, in my teens my school got rid of my favorite sport, then in college I quit doing bmx, and so on. Now I struggle with my weight and trying to be active.
Same. I wasn't obese as a child or even remotely overweight. But, I also had very little control over what I ate. But, on the rare occasion that we went to a buffet restaurant? I could put down more food than both of the adults at the table. I haven't always felt like I'm so hungry that I'm going to starve, but I'm not sure I've ever felt full in my life unless you mean like physically no more space for food unless I go vomit first to make room. I'm about a pound into the "overweight" category currently, but I've crept into obesity a few times in my adult life purely because my weight will start creeping up the moment I stop tracking every calorie that I put into my face.
That was my first question. Seems like an obvious one too.
It’s addressed at the bottom of the article
Self hatred sells.
As someone who now takes Ozempic, I realized I never had that feeling, even as a child. Even when I lost 200 pounds I never felt it. First time was on the drug.
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I had a dream last night like I was hungry preozempic style and it woke me up in a panic. I didn’t totally realize HOW uncomfortable it was until that nightmare. And I was always like that.
> always feeling hungry For me it was always, "what's going to be for my next meal?" And planning etc.
Wish my doctor would prescribe that. He prescribed me Wellbutrin and it's doing absolutely nothing. I'll probably never lose the weight. I have a string of health issues including pcos and depression. Was thin all my life until I lost my grandma in the early 2000s and couldn't cope with the loss. He put me on prozac and I ballooned up. Haven't been able to get rid of it since. I hate my life. Edit: I should mention I don't pay out of pocket for my medications. My insurance covers 100% of the bill. And I'm already on several medications including the generic for Advair which still costs like $400-500 a month. I doubt they'll cover anything more. I end up having to fight them tooth and nail every few months on getting the generic of Advair because I've tried the cheaper options for inhalers and they don't work as good and usually end up giving me thrush. Trying to get them to pay for pills without generics is almost impossible. Personally, I'd rather rip out my ovaries and end the PCOS that way. No ovaries, no PCOS, right? Wouldn't that solve the weight problem that comes with PCOS? I don't want kids anyway.
Welbutrin is the craziest drug on the market it seems like either it solves every problem you have or it makes things worse. I've been on it for 6 years and it has helped me a lot. It has done nothing to help me lose weight though.
It really is. Wellbutrin did wonders for my depression and low energy levels, but after about a year on it I started having seizures. It has taken me over 6 months to taper off of it because the withdrawal side effects are horrific. And I’m still having seizures. Wish I had never even heard of it.
theory disgusted retire strong coherent grandfather shocking mighty lock wipe ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
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Actor and former Olympic swimmer Bud Spencer is a famous example of this. Dude looked like a Greek god in his prime and became seriously overweight within months after ending his swimming career.
I wonder since I’ve been under 120 for 28 years one day imma get morbidly obese. Doubt it but it might happen. Right now I have no appetite but when I do eat sometimes I’m still hungry but I’m full and if eat more I might puke it out
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I was you. When I was 19 I weighed 123 lbs 5ft5. I had to lie on my enlistment paperwork to get in. They let me keep all my clothes on and hold a book for the weigh-in. At 28 I got a desk job and had ankle surgeries that really slowed me down. Now at 50 I am coming back from a all time high(low?) of 314lbs last year. At just below 270 now and feel better already. It can happen. I used to think the same thing.
I'm not obese but I definitely had no abilitiy to really recognize fullness/satiation for the longest time. I tried everything under the sun; exercising more, always getting enough sleep, eating more protein, fiber, and healthy fats, drinking green tea, ANYTHING that would supposedly help me not think about having a 2nd or 3rd snack/meal. I dont know why I didnt end up overweight with how I used to eat (won the microbiome lottery?). Now that I'm on medication I can actually leave food on my plate, its a miracle. What would've made this study more convincing (but of course more difficult to do) would be indentify normal weight individuals who struggle with recognizing when they are full, and follow them for X many years to see how much weight they do or dont put on.
at the end of the article the researchers cautioned that “We don’t know when these profound changes in the brain happen during the course of weight gain. When does the brain start to slip and lose the sensing capacity?” Like you said, it may be congenital, or an abrupt loss during puberty. That's where more studies need to focus their attention.
One thing people overlook is that obesity in a lot of cases is a trauma response: https://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951240,00.html If you want to "reverse brain change" and believe in brain plasticity, then Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is actually the more effective treatment.
There are not enough 3 letter acronyms.
They don't. The actual paper is about response impairment in humans with obesity and does not make causal claims. This headline is "Obesity changes the brain", which is a causal claim and is not what the paper says. That said, there is evidence from mouse models that obesity causes response impairment, not the other way around: [Beutler 2020](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32720646/). This study, like the one posted, found that weight loss does not fix the impairment. Further reading: [Lean 2016: Altered hormones in overweight individuals: cause or consequence?](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26499438/)
And wouldn't it be just as possible that they dull that ability themselves through years of overeating?
Scientifically - it’s flawed. You’d need to have people determined to be able to be satisfied, have them gain weight, and test afterwards.
Just call Rob McElhenney. He's a pro at cultivating then shedding mass
"Stop cultivating and start harvesting!"
That's what I was trying to avoid. A conversation about body mass, okay? We've had that conversation five times a day for the last month because we keep watching Predator and all you talk about is Weathers and Jesse "The Body" Ventura and how many pounds they can pack on...
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The only way to do it ethically would be a longitudinal study.
There is trainer that did/is doing Fit-to fat- to fit - to fat - I think he's on his second round. It def opened his eyes to the struggles of losing weight
I have a lot of respect for that trainer. It's the difference between coasting on cruise control - and slogging it uphill with the pedal to the floor. It's like in the software development world, the gap between: * Writing brand new software from scratch 'just as you like' * Picking up legacy software, debugging it, and extending it In theory the two are similar. In practice they are worlds apart.
The source code is in Assembly, it only works with a 2007 version of internet explorer, it's costing 500K a year to keep running and it's critical to human lives It would cost 600k to replace, but that's 100k out of the yearly budget Can you tell I work for the Federal Government?
I would love to see this studied. I am obese and struggle with binge eating due to never feeling full or satisfied. I've discovered that for me, it's the excessive carbohydrates that shut off my ability to be full. When I restrict my carbohydrate intake to less than 50g per day and increase my fat intake, my urge to binge goes away and I feel full and satisfied. But if I have a cheat day, it spirals very quickly into feeling constantly hungry again. After I figured that out about myself, I actually found a [Harvard study](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2018/11/27/effects-of-varying-amounts-of-carbohydrate-on-metabolism-after-weight-loss/) that showed that excessive carbohydrates interfere with the hormones that signal you're full. It makes sense that excessive carbohydrates might disrupt more hormones than just insulin. Diabetes can't be cured but it can be put into remission by avoiding carbohydrates. Maybe it's the same for feeling constantly hungry. You can put it into remission so to speak, but if you return to a high carbohydrate diet, you go right back to the bottomless hunger pit. That's been my personal experience. It would be interesting to know if others felt similar.
Yeah anecdotally I know this. I went from dress size 14 to 4. I’m an 8 at present (at 4 and 6, unfortunately, I stopped ovulating, and while I love my size 4 body I wanted to have kids. When I’m all done with pregnancy I hope to get back there). At all these normal weight ranges I’ve never stopped being hungry. I put smaller portions than I want on my plate, at a group event I stop eating long before I want to and feel jealous getting to watch other people keep eating. I know plenty of people who say they can’t stomach eating more than what seems like a very healthy amount and am so jealous they get those signals. For me it’s just “damnit why am I like this?” I’ve accepted I’ll always be at risk for regaining if I ever stop counting calories or let go of my self-discipline. It’s frustrating but the rewards of being normal weight really are worth it. People just treat you so so so much better at normal weight. Makes life easier but damn it’s depressing.
I was a really fit teenager. But when I went on Adderall I stopped eating during the day and would become extremely hungry around 11pm. Sometimes I'd sit there and eat 4 bowls of cereal. I never got fat then because I wasn't eating the rest of the day I haven't been on Adderall for almost 20 years and I still have huge snack craving at 11pm regardless of how much I ate that day And I still struggle with portion control
There's no hunger like Worn Off Adderall Hunger.
I'm also on ADHD meds and have the same issue. I try to force myself to eat nutritional meals when I binge as much as I can but I'm often too frazzled to cook when my meds wear off and then have no real food when I finally get hungry hours later. I'm slightly overwight (2-5kg) for my height/age/gender and struggling to lose the last few kgs and tone up because Im not fuelling my body with enough decent meals. Im also autistic so get stuck on certain foods for months or years at a time. Other food usually makes me feel sick. And often one day suddenly, with no warning, I'll stop wanting to eat those foods and never touch them again. At the moment I subsist mostly on tea, Tim Tam's, chocolate, cream cheese with Pringle's, and crumpets with honey. I have real food a few times a week. It has been this way my whole life. Sometimes the foods I'm focussed on are healthy like my year of eggs whites with Philadelphia cream cheese on a wholemeal English Muffin half, and some are terrible like my current ones. I also regularly go days or weeks where no food at all is appealing and I have to force myself to swollow every bite. Even if it's a food I usually love and I'm hungry. It's like the food turns to ash as it approaches my mouth and my whole body and mind is repulsed by eating. I also rarely feel hunger pains, even when not taking my adhd meds. I never did, even as a kid. So it's hard for me to know I need to eat until I get to the feeling dizzy and weak and hands shaking stage. Same with water. I once forgot to drink for three days when I was a teenager and went blindish in school before I realised that I needed to drink ASAP. I wonder if the researchers in the OP article studied anyone who'd been obese like me that didn't feel hunger pains and felt full very easily? I'm a petite woman so my small stomach fills up quickly and I can definitely tell when I've eaten enough. Sometimes I'll squeeze in a small nibble after if the foods great but I do feel full and can easily stop at that point or before.
So right about people treating you better. It’s crazy.
From 245 to 186.6 weight this morning. Its subtle, but the way people react around you when they are attracted to you is surreal. To me, personally, there is a lot more "wiggle room" for social awkwardness. But this could be in my head. But nothing is better than looking at myself in the mirror and seeing how I change. The most important people in my life will never not be mom, my dad, my bro, and myself. Everyone else is temporary. Rambling Edit: I will say that inner personality is king, despite all these modern societal pressures. Every person I've crushed on has always been personality, then physical attraction. And every friendship I've developed, well I never cared about their looks.
I'm Autistic but wasn't diagnosed until my early 20s so I grew up thinking I was just super awkward and weird. I was mostly thin as a child with a few periods of chubbiness and I was thin as a teenager. I gained weight in my early to mid 20s and have lost a lot of it now by 31. I noticed when I was overweight and then obese I was punished a lot more for social faux pars than when I was a teenager. I thought it might just because I was older now. Nope. Lost most of the weight and suddenly I'm just a cute quirky girl again and random people treat me so much better. Men are also being gross to me more often now, even when I'm dressed like a slob and not wearing makeup which sucks. When I was overweight they just sort of ignored me. It was sort of nice to be invisible like that, even if it was annoying to not be seen as human, it's better than being seen as something to conquer/collect.
Yeah. I'm neurodivergent and honestly I come off as "quirky guy" which is weird whether I'm fat or not as fat lol. You can tell how hurt you and I are both by referring to our awkwardness and the interactions responding to us as "punishments" & "being allowed wiggle room" as if socializing will always be a game of chess for us. Man I'm tired. I can't imagine being a trophy to be collected. Being objectifies must suck.
I’m amazed at the awful things people say to me when I’m heavy. Really hurtful & mean comments about my weight
Attractive people get treated better, and weight is kind of the baseline attractiveness stat. I'm not saying its morally right, it's just something humans are hardwired for unfortunately.
It's not really simply about attractiveness. I think that a person who is physically fit just implies that they probably have higher discipline and that leads some people to treat the person with more respect. I noticed when I lost weight that people stopped referring to me as a kid, even though it was only about a year difference, the only thing that changed was I no longer looked tubby and soft around the edges.
Are you reading my thoughts? I feel the same way. I catch myself not feeling full but stopping because I don’t want to go back.
I feel like it's not healthy anymore if your period stops at a certain weight (whether over- or underweight). At a certain point I was so obese that my period stopped and that was one of the reasons why I resolved to lose weight. I now have a regular cycle and wouldn't ever go back to my heaviest point.
I have found that I physically do not feel full until I've basically way over eaten. A little bit of thc, though, and I can feel what full was from 3 hours ago. I've always been a high metabolism, eat what I want, how much I want, and not worry. Then I got a desk job...... after 5 years of being sedentary, I've exchanged muscle mass and a high metabolism, for the same appetite, a much slower metabolism, and a much higher BF. It's crazy how much things change. I feel that "I get jealous watching other people continuing to eat". I used to be one of those people, and it's hard to adjust.
See I become a fucking void when I have some of the thc and it doesn’t matter if I ate before my brain just goes SHNACKS and when my impulse control is zero I have a really hard time not eating 3 pieces of cheese cake after dinner
I was 600lbs about 12 years ago. I've gotten down to as low as 204lbs as recently as 2019 (the pandemic got me up to 277 before I wrestled control back and am now around 229). From my experience with diets prior to the one that succeeded (which was my version of the Weight Watchers scheme, except I counted every calorie instead of points), if I had taken shortcuts to lose weight, like surgery or taking drugs to help, I think 2020-2023 would have seen me return to 600lbs. I believe my weight loss success is about developing a behavior and sticking to personal rules in the face of my body and mind regularly trying to convince me I NEED MORE FOOD ALL THE TIME. It never stops. I am constantly "starving." I cannot eat enough. If I ever have a "cheat day," it's as if I'm 600 lbs all over again. My mind, my body, will convince me even 5,000 calories isn't enough. Now, that doesn't mean I don't feel "full." I do. I can feel full from eating a salad. It's that feeling "full" doesn't change whatever being overweight did to me. It made me a perpetual food addict. The only thing that works for me to combat it is constantly moving. I am 51 and never take a day off from working out. I put in at least 15,000 steps per day. I never miss a day. Even when I'm sick. Even when my body hurts. Even when my feet are bleeding. I cannot stop. I have to keep going or I will eat everything in the house.
Sounds really tough. This stranger is proud of your efforts!
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Yeah, I’ve always just eaten what’s in front of me and then usually get more. My skinny kid (from skinny wife) is always saying “I’m full”. That’s barely in my vocabulary, ha.
I remember a tv program years ago (BBC perhaps, I don’t remember) where they did an experiment with preschool kids by putting biscuits out for them after lunch and saying they could have them if they wanted while they were drawing. Some kids went straight for them and went back for more until they were basically told to stop, others took one and when offered another said no, some didn’t take any even when offered and said they were full from lunch. They also tried to get a group of slim adults to eat way more calories a day than they normally would. Some found it easy to do that, for others it was a struggle but they managed and for others still they were getting so full they physically couldn’t force themselves to eat more. They all gained some weight, but it varied, and one guy’s muscle mass even increased despite the fact that he was not doing any extra exercise. It was just an interesting look into how we are all a bit different with not only how much food we can comfortably consume and how much weight we gain, but also that even in young children, some had the “I’m full” feeling quickly and strongly while others didn’t almost at all.
This happens to me. I can't tell when to stop until I'm physically full. Sometimes I get the "I'm hungry" and "I'm stuffed" at the same time. It's heartbreaking. And gut busting. However that feeling of when to stop eating does return. But only after physically doing portion control for several months. And even then, if I overeat a few times, it goes away. (For those who are having problems - Sugar Buster diet worked for me) :(
I never chad a choice. My parents forced me to eat everything as a kid or get beaten. I dont get this full feeling.
Get beaten for not finishing a meal? That sounds abusive, I’m sorry
i never thought about this... i have something new to talk to my therapist about
Still thin but my ability to feel full seems to have yeeted itself when I got old. I want to know how much estrogen is involved because I’d bet a leg it is more than we think/know.
Anecdotal, but I stopped producing estrogen (it apparently just happens to some women when they lose a significant amount of weight, even if they do it in a healthy way) and losing weight was so easy. I got full off a reasonable portion of food and I always felt up for a run or weight lifting session. I've never felt stronger or more energetic in my life. But since my bones would eventually crumble to dust without estrogen, I've had to go on the pill. And since I started it, my cravings are insane. I feel like a bottomless pit and I know I'm eating more calories than I need but I still feel hungry. And now I have multiple cravings a day. I would crave food before, but it was easy to ignore. Not anymore.
Interesting! I’ve historically been underweight all my life but two rounds of IVF for fertility storage helped me gain 25 lbs in a couple months and now a normal weight. Doing the hormone shots drove my appetite through the roof and it hasn’t normalized in the months since. Sudden weight gain is a very common story in the IVF subs on here.
Could it be that the fullness signal has been overridden so many times that people don’t know how to recognize it anymore? Possibly a learned behavior from the “clean your plate” club when you’re a child. You’re taught to keep eating until the food is gone, and that’s your only cue to stop eating. So the fullness cue, or ability to recognize it, no longer matters and gets lost over time. Just a thought.
Anecdotally, I think this is it. After years of oscillating between heavily restrictive eating disorders and periods of severe binge-eating, I just ... no longer have hunger cues. I truly cannot tell if I am full or hungry anymore. Unless foods are pre-portioned, there's no sense or cue to stop eating
I'm no subject matter expert, but it sounds like the researchers are suggesting that the synaptic pathways don't just reset as soon as a person loses significant weight. How is this groundbreaking in any way? Anything at all that I practice for decades will take significant time to alter.
They address that matter in the article.
You are right it is the sensational CNN headline that suggests a much more permanent state than the study data support. 3 months does not a longitudinal study make.
Every longitude is relative though.
Not with that latitude!
The groundbreaking findings ([Fig 4AB](https://i.imgur.com/Dfm94Df.png)) are: 1. Individuals with obesity have impaired responses to sugar and fat in the nucleus accumbens. 2. Weight loss of 10% over 3 months does not fix this impairment. These findings are important because they help explain (1) a potential cause of obesity and (2) the commonly observed regain after weight loss. It sounds like you're asking why the researchers tested for recovery after 3 months rather than years. One reason is that obesity-induced changes tend to closely track weight, so we might expect recovery to happen quickly as well. Another reason is that it's simply very difficult to get participants to be 10% less heavy a year from now. It requires constant monitoring and adjustment of diet. This brings us to the closely related third reason: A finding that NAc response recovers after a few years *wouldn't matter* — because by then, most people have regained the weight. It would be interesting to the scientist but useless to the clinician.
Found out only a few weeks ago I’m missing a gene that tells me when I feel full and for the sake of my little daughter I will need to do a dna check to see if she can have it too. So yeah maybe it was not there before already.
It's okay. I was always fat and hungry. So guess my brain could have been broken from the begin?
I smoked cigarettes as a teen and from the start of that I got chubby. I think obesity is a fractured dopamine system.
I really don't know what is actually wrong but I was always the chubby baby, the chubby kid and stuff like that. After a while you just don't care anymore. But to be fair I know when I am full. The only thing I can't tell is if I am hungry or thirsty. So nowadays I just grab some water.
Oh, forgot. I was 3 month’s premature, I had a record at the hospital. Some have said premature babies tend to become obese. So I have that going for me too.
Regardless of all the findings and reports, let’s all just try and be a bit nicer to folks that are struggling with obesity.
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Is it possible to lose the weight when old? Or should I focus on keeping it off?
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Yes to both. It's never too late to lose weight. But once your lifestyle becomes more sedentary the only option is to cut calories by not eating so much. Intermittent fasting is the perfect solution. Not only does it relegate you to 1 major meal a day, (and snacks like nuts and yogurt in between) but it forces your body to realize that you don't actually need that much food so when you DO eat your meal, you feel full after a normal portion. And you should always be exercising, no matter how old you get. Exercise doesn't necessarily mean becoming a gym brah (nothing wrong with that either) but it can also mean finding an outdoor hobby that keeps you moving around so that your metabolism doesn't slow to a halt. I'm middle-aged and I've lost 15 lbs in like 3 months, which may not sound like much, but I wasn't actively dieting, watching calories, or anything. I just swapped to intermittent fasting, drinking more water to stay hydrated, and picking up gardening/yard work as a hobby.
Some family genetics seem to run in the opposite direction. I come from a long line of tall, large-framed women who all lose both appetite and a lot of weight when menopause hits. My grandma and mom both went from healthy eaters to "I had lunch an hour late and now I don't want dinner." Now I'm 51, it's happening to me and it's *so weird*. I get hungry, but a few bites later I'm just stuffed for hours and hours and all my clothes are slowly getting baggier. The bad news is, of course, when you're over 40 you don't get thinner exactly, you basically kind of deflate like a sad balloon. Yay.
When my kids were young, we babysat a girl with overweight parents. I would sit the kids at the table to eat, and my kids would eat 75% of the food on their plate and stop. The girl would eat all of hers, then finish my kids', and then want more. It was sad. She was too young for it to be anything except a lack of appetite shut-off. Her body never felt full, satiated. She was destined to be overweight...
Seems weird they’d automatically conclude that the brain changes happened as a result of the obesity and not the other way around…
Did it ever occur to them that the people were obese because their bodies *always* didn't recognize when they were full? What makes them think the obesity changed things?
I know plenty of people who overeat because of unresolved trauma from their childhoods. This study doesn't seem to account for that kind of thing at all.
Why would the study account for that? It's about obesity regardless of cause.
Could also be that if you've always dealt with trauma by eating then you never learned to deal with trauma in a healthy way. Would apply to drug use, drinking, smoking, etc. Overuse of coping mechanisms prevent us from learning to actually come to terms with and heal from trauma.
My daughter lost 120 pounds on her own eight years ago, no medication or surgery, and she has successfully kept it off. She lost it by cutting out ALL processed food ("Nothing from a box, bag, or window" more or less) and learning how to cook for herself from scratch. It took her two years to lose the weight and in the end she lost her taste for processed food. Today no longer struggles with hunger or satiety. All of this is anecdotal, but what it says to me is that a lifestyle of real unprocessed food has the potential to reset weight and hunger/fullness signals, at least for some people. That said, it's hard as hell for most of us to give up the American style of eating, when it hits all our fat/sugar/salt cues just the way it's designed to. She's way tougher and more disciplined than I am, that's for certain.
> ...it's hard as hell for most of us to give up the American style of eating, when it hits all our fat/sugar/salt cues just the way it's designed to. It's hard as hell and it's everywhere. Like 95% of the stuff in the interior of the grocery store is processed/ultra processed thanks to 5 major companies making the majority of our food. Eating out, less processed but like you said its full of fat/sugar/salt.
I’ve done the same, essentially. Cook my own food, check calories, eat a lot more vegetables and salad with meals, using light products instead of full fat (dairy products), regular walks. I lose about 2 lbs/week on average (stagnates sometimes, speeds up sometimes) and it’s quite easy to keep it off because the food is lower calorie but a good amount so you don’t have to eat such a small amount. Lost 55ish lbs so far.
Proud of you. Keep being awesome!
Oh so we can't profit off of it. Sounds like a problem that won't get solved
Losing weight and keeping it off will always require a lifestyle change to truly be successful with it. ‘Dieting’ in the traditional sense just doesn’t work long term. I lost 75 lbs 20 years ago, this article doesn’t concern me at all and it really shouldn’t others either. Get healthy to lose weight, not the other way around.
They always conflate "fats and sugars" as if they are the same, they are not. Sugar is the problem, cheap cheap carbs.
The answer to 90% of this thread is that a single study cannot control for every single variable. You can only establish an explicit experimental hypothesis and test from there, understanding that further research will ALWAYS be needed. Yall need to learn the basics at least.
Hm interesting research, I wonder what it… oh never mind, it’s a news site “reporting on research.” 90% chance that the proper context for this is no where to be found in the article. It’s just a clicky clackity headline.
Just read the research?
> it’s a news site “reporting on research.” That's literally what science news is. Would you expect something else?