> basically the body fights hard against you as you try to lose weight by dieting.
I used to weigh 310lbs, now I'm 215lbs. All I did was count calories to maintain a deficit and the results were essentially the same as predicted by the math. I was a bit hungry sometimes at first as I adjusted to it but that's really it. Prioritizing protein and fat over carbs helps with that.
What ways does the body tend to fight against people?
Unfortunately there are people like me who don't only feel a bit hungry, when I eat at a deficit there are times where I get so hungry my thoughts are completely consumed by the hunger. The only way for me to successfully lose weight was to have days where I simply eat nothing at all.
Sounds counter-intuitive but after getting over the initial extreme hunger I found that the hunger sensations would diminish into a background noise, of sorts. That and the rules are easy to follow: eat nothing. When I'd eat at a deficit I'd frequently justify to myself that eating a little bit more than I was planning on doing was ok because it was only a little. And then I'd do that several times until I felt completely satiated, defeating the purpose.
The complete fasting approach is pretty common among Fellas I've spoken with. Lot of the guys have powerful "all-or-nothing" traits, where it feels easier to have a strict intense rule than a more nuanced approach.
The issue comes when you therefore become so hungry your body drives you to eat a lot of food all at once. But I'm interested that you notice your hunger sensations actually diminish over time.
This is what's known as an 'anecdote', and is at the crux of the issues surrounding men's weight loss. This approach, and other very obvious and straightforward ones do indeed work perfectly well for a fair fraction of the population, but they perform poorly for another large fraction, and fail abysmally for yet a third.
While there are no doubt plenty of people that could lose weight fairly readily if they gave it some basic effort, most of the people who are actively trying to do so (enough to pay for a service that supports that, for example) are in the second and third categories. And yet every time anyone posts in a non-dedicated forum anything about systems and plans to help that group solve their problems, there are a dozen people like you popping in to tell us "it's not that hard, just give it a try!"
I regularly make 60 mile bike rides, I can jog 10 miles (though I can't walk the next day when I do), I play tennis about 7 hours a week. I weigh 465 pounds. Trust me, I've tried the approach you're describing here. I once managed to hold onto it for 8 months, during which I lost about thirty pounds and then plateaued, while constantly fighting my body. I was sick twice as often as usual, and I had to carefully micromanage my calorie intake to make sure I had available calories for any physical activity I wanted to engage in, all while constantly battling cravings for dozens of foods _I don't even like_.
It would be a simpler world if all of us fat people were just fat because we're lazy, but the truth is that people vary really a lot, physically and metabolically. Your experience of the world is valid, but not universal.
That's what's known as an anecdote. This is what's known as a counterexample. And one thing is certain: No method has 100% success. To me the more important question isn't what percentage of cases something addresses, but whether it's a self fix where the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks of intermittent fasting are relatively low, and it may have side benefits like prolonged lifespan and slower telomere degradation as shown in animal models. The risks of essentially hacking your own insulin production to upregulate it if you're not diabetic are not nearly as well understood. On an individual basis, whatever gets you to where you're happy is great. Personally I've fasted every day my entire adult life and still have to work to keep weight off. But when someone puts a slick marketing package on fasting or drugs or surgery or anything else, I have to question whether they really have my best interests at heart. And usually the answer is obviously not.
I'm not arguing in favor of any particular approach (in particular the one posed by the original poster, which I have done zero research into). If and when they launch in a meaningful way I'll bother doing that research, but I am also a cynic about people offering to make a difficult thing easy for a recurring fee.
Sure. And well we should be. Identify what people view as a personal problem, then offer a solution. This is the second YC startup I've seen today that falls under the category of magic baldness cream.
For the vast majority obesity doctors, a medication-assisted approach is now the gold standard.
The program side is also no magic. We do tough work, but with a strong evidence base, a powerful support structure and we give ourselves enough time (12-month program). We focus on the root causes of poor metabolic health: stress, sleep, exercise, dietary. From both the behavioral & psychological angles.
This is what's known as an 'anecdote', and is at the crux of the issues surrounding weight loss.
Virtually every _controlled_ study shows that metabolic differences between adults are within a margin of +/- 15%, with essentially no way to eat the same amount of calories as a 200lb person and stay at 465lbs. Not least of which because your basal metabolic rate is much higher at that weight.
Virtually every study shows that overweight people significantly underestimate their input (whether intentionally deceptive or simply unaware) and overreport their physical activity, like "I can jog 10 miles", or "I play tennis about 7 hours a week", or "I regularly make 60 mile bike rides". If you do, you're the extreme outlier, and it doesn't change the data. Assuming you can do those things, you're almost certainly still in your 20s, and the health effects of your weight haven't really caught up with your body yet.
Very simply, it's far more likely that you miss some of the calories you consume, either because you don't actually weigh your food or you discount the signficance of "small" things. A pound of fat is 3500 calories. That's more complicated inside metabolic processes, but it means that "an apple a day" is 10lbs per year.
That isn't to say that "prescribe more medication instead of correcting the underlying issue" (trauma, self-medication, dopamine flush, whatever) is the answer, but that diets perform poorly for a large fraction and fail abysmally for another third because we are bad at tracking things, we are bad at being uncomfortable, and we bad at self control, etc. Diets do work. It's sticking to the diet and recognizing when you're off the rails which is difficult.
It's also difficult to acknowledge that this "diet" is not temporary and you can go back to old eating habits once the weight is off. The new caloric consumption is forever, because that's what brought you to the new homeostatis.
Diets don't fail because they're inherently flawed and the system is more complex than we think it is. Diets fail because people fail. "I tried and I failed, but I still do all this physical stuff or could if I wanted to" is dishonesty, whether intended or not.
Asserting that, for some unspecified (but large) fraction of the population, tracking your caloric intake and energy expenditure versus the number on the scale is inherently flawed is dangerous, misleading, and probably false. At least partly because overweight people may lie to themselves.
In this sense, and in the context of Fella, throwing more drugs at the problem isn't a solution any more than throwing additional hardware at an application because the developer insists that database indexes don't work everywhere. It's true, but requires extraordinary evidence, and should not be the baseline assumption.
It does look like Fella is addressing psychological issues which I think are huge. The issue if you deny that calories in v calories burnt is the essential metric is you end up with the problem with bariatric surgery where people literally eat to the point of severe pain and don't lose weight. It's why responsible surgeon always require significant calorie restriction weight loss before surgery.
I'm sorry this isn't clearer. The core part of the coaching program is focused on psychology: we even call it "psychological coaching" internally! That's the stress eating side, then also diving deeper into why we make the food choices & portion size choices we do.
My take: a approach focused only on changing behavior has good parts, but traditionally been way too much reliance on this and not enough on the psychological/cognitive side.
The thing is, if you speak to obesity specialist MDs, they really do come at this in a different way. They have a much more nuanced view of how underlying metabolism / biology interact with CICO.
I know personally because I used to believe a puritan CICO, but had a "viewquake" moment speaking with them and had to change a lot about what I believe!
Importantly they try to focus exclusively on practical solutions for the population: what will actually work in the world. They detach themselves from a lot of the moralizing we see.
Your attitude toward the topic is fairly typical, and pretty harmful. "Diets fail because people fail" is true, of course - my point is that people "failing" is not always (or even usually) a result of intrinsic weakness of willpower, but a result of substantial variation in the real world experience of maintaining a calorie-restricted diet.
As a thought experiment, imagine if, for every 100 calories of deficit in their daily consumption, a random tenth of the population felt substantial and increasing physical pain. Would you describe their inability to consistently lose weight as a 'failure' on their part? As essentially due to a lack of sufficient discipline? What if it were nausea? Exhaustion?
Now picture a world in which that is the actual norm, and those people are subjected to frequent ridicule for their lack of willpower and bombarded with the message that they are inferior because of it. If they'd just man up and stomach the pain for the rest of their lives, they'd have no trouble losing weight, it's simple physics.
This isn't an accurate representation of reality of course. I don't feel physical pain when I run a hundred calorie deficit, I just feel tired most of the time, and I lose the energy to enjoy physical pursuits. I'm confident that if I applied enough effort (again), I'd lose some weight (again), and keep it off for as long as I continued spending that effort. Again.
> Asserting that .. tracking your caloric intake and energy expenditure versus the number on the scale is inherently flawed is dangerous, misleading, and probably false.
That's not what I'm asserting. And I think that's been pretty clear, really! There are millions of fat people who are actively trying to be thinner in various ways and repeatedly "failing". Do you really think that telling all of those people to "just try harder" is a useful thing to do?
I don't personally expect drugs to be the answer to the problem, and I don't have any opinion on the "Fella" business model or likely effectiveness. My position this whole time has just been that fat people are mostly not fat because they don't understand that restricting calories will make them thinner. Understanding the actual reasons is important, and it's far more difficult to do when any real conversation on the topic is inundated with comments to the effect of "have you tried not eating as much? It's really easy, just eat less."
> Diets don't fail because they're inherently flawed and the system is more complex than we think it is. Diets fail because people fail.
The system includes the people. If the people "fail", that is relevant information, and should be used to evaluate the 'effectiveness' of the approach. The system is extremely complex, including as it does all of human psychology and physicality, and yet every one of these discussions is dogged by people like you, that think that the problem is just that people don't try hard enough.
Well sure they don't, that's also the reason they can't all bench 400 pounds - "hard enough" is the critical phrase here, and your language and attitude place all of the blame on the individual. It's a lot like explaining that depressed people are responsible for their own emotional state, and should just start exercising and cheer up - it's factually true, and yet also unhelpful, counterproductive, and insulting.
> Virtually every _controlled_ study shows that metabolic differences between adults are within a margin of +/- 15%, with essentially no way to eat the same amount of calories as a 200lb person and stay at 465lbs. Not least of which because your basal metabolic rate is much higher at that weight.
That sound a bit wrong to me. Fat needs energy to maintain itself? Isn't it just an energy store? If you're 465lbs with the same muscle percentage as someone 200lbs maybe that's how it works, but no one at 465lbs has less than 15/20% body fat.
That is true but I don't think that accounts for all the metabolism. There's probably something to say about having to maintain your temperature, but I don't know if it consumes more or less energy in general as fat isolates. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate) says that 70% of the metabolism comes from the organs, 20% the muscles and 10% thermogenesis. All probably grow as you gain weight, but I seriously doubt that an obese person weighing 400lbs consumes twice as much energy as someone weighing 200lbs. What I'm trying to say is that the idea that you have to eat enormous quantities of food to maintain a high weight seems wrong to me, and that simply saying that the person must be missing some calories that they consume or lying about their level of activity seems condescending to me.
To change the subject, do you plan on expending Fella to Europe at some point? I really like your approach.
Yep we're British founders so would love to expand to Europe in the future. Sadly won't be for a couple of years though - lots of work to be done first in the US!
> overreport their physical activity, like "I can jog 10 miles", or "I play tennis about 7 hours a week", or "I regularly make 60 mile bike rides". If you do, you're the extreme outlier, and it doesn't change the data. Assuming you can do those things, you're almost certainly still in your 20s, and the health effects of your weight haven't really caught up with your body yet
I'm 37, and 6'5". and if you're calling me a liar, you can fuck right off.
>within a margin of +/- 15%, with essentially no way to eat the same amount of calories as a 200lb person and stay at 465lbs. Not least of which because your basal metabolic rate is much higher at that weight.
I was not trying to indicate that the actual metabolic burn rate of humans varies by huge factors, "metabolism" is a colloquial term that encompasses a poorly defined set of features. The physical, psychological, and emotional components of your experience of a calorie deficit are what causes the experiential variance I'm describing.
Of course if I could eat a 2000 calorie diet consistently for a long period of time I would lose weight! I've performed that process numerous times, with various caloric deficits (my basal is a bit past 3k, so 2k is a pretty serious deficit - I wasn't able to hold that one past three weeks). This is when most thin people start rambling about "willpower", but maybe just skip that part this time? It's not useful to any of us actual fat people.
I said that you may be an extreme outlier. You're also larger than every NFL player in history, everyone in World's Strongest Man, etc. A 10 mile jog (let's say 80-100 minutes of uninterrupted running) is the sort of "I could eat 50 eggs" number people pull out.
At 6'5", you are an outlier. 2kcal is too low, much as it's too high for the average woman. This doesn't mean that metabolism is a "colloquial" term. It means that "the physical, psychological, and emotional components" is a long way of saying "it's hard", and "the experiential variance I'm describing" is "the payoff did not seem to be worth the cost".
In general, my post wasn't intended to be an attack on you. It's that "I cut calories and I lost weight" is not anecdotal. It's factual. The anecdote, if any, is "I'm larger than the largest professional athletes and I can still perform". Since it's hard to stick with cutting calories for many people, throwing drugs at it with Fella is not the right answer.
A holistic approach which addresses trauma, reasons for emotional eating, lifestyle replacements, recalibration of palate, satiation even at a deficit, and all the rest should be explored alongside drugs so "I cut calories and I lost weight" is easier to stick with.
> It's that "I cut calories and I lost weight" is not anecdotal. It's factual.
It simplifies the problem though, because for many, that approach has side-effects that seriously affect quality of life, like sleep, concentration, mood swings, depression etc.
Speaking of depression, I often get a similar vibe in those threads, where undoubtedly someone will jump in and say "all you have to do is lift heavy weights and change your diet a bit". It feels like they haven't experienced what other people have, so their advice sounds tone-deaf, a version of "let them eat cake".
> Since it's hard to stick with cutting calories for many people, throwing drugs at it with Fella is not the right answer.
If it works, it's great. Because obviously the "just change your life to be like me and hope for the best" approach doesn't work for most people, or they'd do it.
If calorie restriction is causing those side effects, it is an indicator that the person is "doing it wrong" by either restricting their intake far more than is healthy or more likely their diet is very sub optimal (eg, 100% carbs causing blood sugar to spike and then crash when they "run out" of calories).
These are problems of application which are easy to fix with a food journal and perhaps a bit of research, not really a great argument against calorie restrictions effectiveness.
I've wanted to bring up how physicians treatment of depression has radically changed in the last few decades (to have a much greater appreciation of the medication-assistance), but I didn't want to bring it up myself as I thought it may be too confusion/controversial.
Honestly this is a pretty good description of the Fella program: "A holistic approach which addresses trauma, reasons for emotional eating, lifestyle replacements, recalibration of palate, satiation even at a deficit, and all the rest."
We designed Fella because "throwing drugs at it" is not the best solution for patients.
The crucial difference to your approach is the addition of the medication. Which if you speak to any obesity specialist MD, is exactly what they'd recommend: pharmacotherapy + psychological & behavioral intervention.
Please do not let moral posturing cause you to underrate the importance of a holistic approach which includes medication-assistance.
> Please do not let moral posturing cause you to underrate the importance of a holistic approach which includes medication-assistance.
I get that you're a founder. It would be great to not cast aspersions on people. "I think your approach sucks" is not "moral posturing", and I'd question how many ethical doctors would recommend something insurance will not cover with an unknown end date to the treatment plan as "pharmacotheraphy" out of the gate.
For those who cannot gain muscle mass, injecting testosterone would also work (and would work for weight loss). Messing about with the endocrine system is tricky. Your body is really good at homeostasis. It's also really good at saying "welp, I guess that's covered, so I'm good" when exogenous sources of hormones are introduced.
Is this part of the treatment plan? What about diabetic patients (who appear to be a small part of the studies leading to approval)? How are you going to control for hyperglycemic ketoacidosis?
What's the long term effect of this on alpha cells and pancreatic health? How long is the titration for normal pancreatic function to resume? When exogenous glucagon is removed, what are the hunger levels of patients? Bounceback effect on weight if appetite is increased in the meantime?
Yes, use every tool in your toolbox, but there are a lot of unanswered questions about the medication in question, and a lack of insurance coverage. I've been overweight. Your body is not a formula in the "I calculated CICO, and...", but it does follow basic rules in a "I tracked my calories religiously, and over the last 2 weeks, my average daily intake was X, and the scale change was Y, so I need to modulate intake/activity up/down/stay the same" until you reach your goal.
That's hard for some (many) people. It's also completely sustainable. We want an "easy" way to do things. Sometimes "easy" things have detrimental effects in the long term, which are not apparent during clinical trials or short (let's say 3-5y or less) term, medically speaking.
Doctors would recommend pharmacotheraphy for obese patients because the health effects of being obese are dramatic, and almost certain to be worse than whatever the health effects of the drug are, because they have relationships with the vendors, because they are not sure whether the patient could affect the same change in health without them, etc.
However, if presented with the choice of "Patient X is able to achieve the desired outcome without the addition of medication", that would be the choice every time. You can filter that through the scale to "Patient X is unable to achieve the desired outcome without incurring significant financial burden/hardship by taking a new-to-market drug with unknown long-term consequences and an unpredictable prognosis once pharmaceutical intervention ceases, but the outcomes are so much better that this risk is warranted", which seems to be close to the starting point of the pitch here.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is not the greatest venue for comments like the last one in that chain (yours) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28261777). People here want to know how it works, why it works, what your pitch is, why we should recommend it, etc.
I am not your target demographic and never would be for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that I've been a competitive athlete in weight-class based sports for almost my entire life (outside of the 5-6 year period where i stopped training and became obese). I am here commenting, though, and you can make a fair guess about who I know based on the demographics of the US and their intersection with the market demographics of software engineers. Lots of overweight people with the kind of income which could afford this.
Like many people on HN, I read a lot. I'd hazard to guess that I come across many more startup ideas and news articles than most people I know, and I do bring them up in conversation. Fella is the sort of thing which I could recommend (well, "here's now insulin/leptin/glucago intersect as part of the HPS axis, and there are GLP-1 analogues, with this startup which may be able to help"), but I'm unlikely to if it leaves a bad taste in my mouth as yet another shill for medicating the symptoms instead of addressing the cause(s).
If I see responses like "this is the sort of stuff our customers talk to their doctors about" and not "this is why you should become our customer", I'm gonna write you off, and that's probably a fair assumption for HN in general. The comments are not the place for elevator pitches, marketing, etc. It reads like "I'm happy to answer your questions once you pay me, but not here".
> I cut calories and I lost weight" is not anecdotal. It's factual
I think perhaps you're misunderstanding what "anecdote" means? Anecdotes can certainly be factual - the point is not that it's false, it's that it's not sufficiently representative. In particular, I wasn't challenging his assertion that cutting calories allowed him to lose weight, only the implicit claim that doing so is a universally straightforward and successful approach to effecting actual weight loss.
> and all the rest should be explored alongside drugs
Well yes! That's my position! I don't think "drugs will solve this problem", I think the problem is solvable, and that we need to understand it and its context better in order to do so. I'm a tinkerer, I've been experimenting with my own habits, diet, and activities constantly trying to better understand how I can be healthier and still happy, and there have been some real gains from that process.
I feel like (a) you don't agree with the approach Fella is taking (which is fine, you've clearly looked into it more than I have), and (b) you've decided that my opinions about the effectiveness of diets are somehow "on their side". I think I've been really clear about this, but I have no stake in their game, aside from being excited to see that people are trying to do something other than convince fat people that this diet will totally work (and if it doesn't it's because they were yet again bad people that deserve to be fat.)
> "the physical, psychological, and emotional components" is a long way of saying "it's hard", and "the experiential variance I'm describing" is "the payoff did not seem to be worth the cost".
Not even close. But you seem intelligent, so I'm left wondering if you're intentionally misinterpreting me to score some kind of internet points?
The intent of those phrases is to emphasize that the costs to the humans involved vary. They are different. So yeah, "the payoff did not seem to be worth the cost", in the same sense that a man with a bad knee would evaluate the cost/value of paying for a taxi differently.
Extreme hunger, like others said. I'd class it as a subset of impulsive behavior, which is basically your primitive brain doing it's caveman shit and not listening to you, the conscious mind.
Apparently some people don't have this problem, which makes me incredibly envious (or would if I could feel anything).
It's this nagging thought of "JESUS CHRIST YOU'RE GONNA DIE IF YOU DON'T EAT A LOT RIGHT NOW!"
I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep.
Counting calories didn't work btw. It actually made it worse as my primitive brain would know it's "starving".
> I've experienced it after hard days at work (construction), multi hour lifting, cycling 50km. Same shit every time. Surprisingly, unlike what my dumbass brain says, I don't die if I eat only a little and just go to sleep.
I too have experienced this sensation my whole life under such situations. In fact, one of my favorite things to do in life is go for a 6-7 mile run, come home and lift weight for an hour or two... then... wait until I'm hungry (usually about 45 min) and eat an insane amount of food. The food tastes 10x better, and the sensation when eating it is pure bliss.
Always have felt great doing that, and I'm really skinny. We clearly don't have any idea why some people can do that, and others cant. It's probably not until we understand that difference that we'll have any sense what metabolically is happening.
As someone whose weight has been all over the place in my life, I really appreciate hearing this. I've known it is true forever, but it is rare to hear other people saying it. There is much more to weight than calories in/out. Some people can skip a meal without noticing, others count the minutes until the next meal.
I always flip it on its head. For some reason it is easy for people to understand that certain people would have trouble gaining 20 pounds, others could do it in a month easily. But when you talk about losing 20 pounds, people start talking about willpower.
I was questioned in high school in the 90s whether I had an eating disorder. I just ignore hunger until it goes away... I simply don't want food. I don't like to eat around other people, either. When I do eat, around 2am every day, I've really looked forward to it so it's pleasurable. But as a functional alcoholic I fully understand counting the minutes to something. This where "eating disorder" self control comes into play. I think of myself drunk just like I think of myself fat with a face covered in food in front of other people, and it's been enough to stop me for 20 years from hitting the bottle until work is over. On the subject of self control, everyone is a hero if you can find any at all.
Have you heard of Pavlovs Dog, that started salivating when he rang a bell? Normally it's seen as an example of conditioning. But I think it's an illustration of something I noticed in my own life: That the primary cause of hunger feelings is expecting a treat.
When I haven't eaten in a while and know food isn't coming, I don't really feel hungry, I just feel tired.
It's hard to say, but probably not more than a month. I think I compensated a bit by saving some calories to eat directly before bed, but there was definitely some time of simply powering through it. If the Fella plan makes things like this easier then that sounds pretty cool.
Water helped to an extent. I believe at some point I just lied there for a while and didn't give in. Eating just a little but not enough to not have a deficit anymore also helped. I've done this whole thing very slow and steady in general, and I think that helps with consistency.
Someone here or on reddit once had a problem with their mind keeping them up for either hunger or to check their phone or something, and they started doing pushups every time it happened, and some part of the brain learned the association and cut it out. I never did that but it might be worth trying.
I will use myself as an example: I have Hashimoto disease, and even treated my metabolism can get so slow that I need to eat so little that I start to have nutrient deficits, for example one of the past dieting attempts resulted in hair loss, brittle nails, cracking skin, because I needed so little calories that when I consumed exactly what I needed, I ended with a protein deficit.
Only solution I found that worked was go for pure weightlifting, literally train as if I was aiming to he an Olympic champion, and even then I still ended overweight (I am 1.75m tall, smallest weight I managed, that was then I was training heavily and had a diet that was almost 100% protein, was 98kg)
That's interesting. That weight isn't necessarily unhealthy if it's largely muscle from all the training. Did you end up with a low body fat percentage despite the weight?
i’m in a similar spot as the OP. lifting helps, but i’m still pretty fat. 5’11” 250lbs. worksets are 355lb squat, 225lb bench, 425lb deadlift, 175lb overhead press. it’s hard to tell i’m strong, but i’m slightly more slender at this weight than i was before lifting. it definitely helps with aches and pains i used to have, primarily back pain.
Losing weight is essentially a stress on the body, the response of which is to produce a lot of cortisol, which in turn can mess with testosterone and other hormones.
For me the caloric restriction leads to so much cortisol that I can’t really sleep properly no matter how much I try to exhaust myself.
Keto seems to be kinder (in week 3, of trying it for the 3rd time, previous times unsuccessful). But too early to say for sure.
Thanks for pointing out the relationship between caloric restriction and cortisol production. Your statements and anecdotes seem to be well supported by the literature.
> Starvation caused a rise in plasma cortisol [...] but no change in total urinary cortisol metabolites. [1]
> very low calorie diet (VLCD) did not alter plasma cortisol and markedly reduced cortisol metabolite excretion [...]. [1]
> Overall, caloric restriction significantly increased serum cortisol level in 13 studies (357 total participants). Fasting showed a very strong effect in increasing serum cortisol, while VLCD and LCD did not show significant increases. [2]
> The meta-regression analysis showed a negative association between the serum cortisol level and the duration of caloric restriction, indicating serum cortisol is increased in the initial period of caloric restriction but decreased to the baseline level after several weeks. [2]
Anecdotally: I also used to struggle to sleep when I was dieting. My sensation was intense hunger when I was in bed where I couldn't stop thinking about food in the kitchen.
I used to be able to do that in my twenties. Now, in my thirties, it appears I have lost that ability. Cutting my calories seems to causey body to go into a sort of hibernation where it becomes more efficient and conserves more calories.
In other words, my metabolic burn rate at rest and while active seems to go down significantly.
Important that you bring up the age factor. We're doing more research now with our doctors on how best to adjust treatment based specifically on male hormonal changes with age.
[1] is an interesting paper which gives you some hormonal examples. Effectively when you try and lose weight your body responds by increasing the hormones associated with greater satiety and weight regain. And these change may persists for a while — this papers documenting the change lasting past a a year. This will very by person however so if you have something which works for you keep going.
I used to weigh 310lbs, now I'm 215lbs. All I did was count calories to maintain a deficit and the results were essentially the same as predicted by the math. I was a bit hungry sometimes at first as I adjusted to it but that's really it. Prioritizing protein and fat over carbs helps with that.
What ways does the body tend to fight against people?