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Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

(www.nature.com)
263 points paulpauper | 2 comments | 14 Apr 25 04:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.413s | source
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wonderwonder ◴[17 Apr 25 12:27 UTC] No.43715803[source]▶
I always used to think negatively about people that were severely overweight (still do unconsciously if I'm being honest) as I always attributed their obesity to lack of will power. I'm a huge proponent of better living through chemistry (steroids - with frequent blood work, nootropics, whatever) and recently I decided to get my abs back. I hopped on some compounded semiglutide and was blown away by the change in my attitude towards food. I had always snacked at night after the kids went to bed and had built up about 25 pounds over the past decade. I was able to drop it all in 3 months without any sort of dieting, I just ate when I was hungry. Decided to not eat after 6:30pm and just did it, no issues while on the semiglutide.

Really changed my attitude about food, and my body and minds interaction with it. A lot of this is subconscious and really hard to get control of. The fact a chemical compound was able to change my mental relationship with food also put an interesting spin on my ideas about consciousness and self control as a whole. We are just slaves to our biological processes.

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monkeycantype ◴[17 Apr 25 12:42 UTC] No.43715972[source]▶
I had this same experience, but I have not continued to take the medication after a short experiment. I found I could get a similar outcome (subjective experience) through my food selection Today I’ve eaten around 2kg of vegetables today (zucchini, capsicum, eggplant, cauliflower, spinach) all of which was under 500 calories, and I’ve eaten fish. If I eat a massive amount of vegetables and get ~200g protein, I don’t feel I’m depriving myself and am satiated on under 2000 calories, previously I would typically eat over 3000 on a normal day.

As for people lacking willpower, the genetics of hunger mean all of us experience vastly different levels of hunger. You might be interested to read about the family in Pakistan who could not produce a relevant hormone leptin, and the toddlers driven to fighting by insatiable hunger to steal food from each other, and the dramatic change in their lives after medical intervention with leptin injections

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1. wonderwonder ◴[17 Apr 25 13:16 UTC] No.43716362[source]▶
My brother's family has done something similar although in a different direction. They have been strictly carnivore for several years now. Able to eat large amounts of food while keeping calories low and feeling satiated. It's worked well for them.

I'll look at that study you mentioned, thank you.

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2. monkeycantype ◴[18 Apr 25 06:34 UTC] No.43725580[source]▶
leptin deficiency is rare, so supplementation does not produce an effect in most people.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199909163411204

There is more information about the family involved out there, but I can't remember where I read about it.

A thing I found interesting about the genetics of hunger, is the concept of mongenetic, v polygenetic traits Monogenetic traits - a variation in a single gene is has an observed often severe impact. Polygenetic traits - variations in a large number of genes and environmental are contributing In reality these traits exist on a spectrum of severity. The more sublte the impact of a gene the more people you need to study to tease out the influence of the gene, so monogenetic traits tend to be discovered first.