To concretize, pleasure breaks down into two categories: physical pleasure and emotional pleasure. The former includes being full instead of hungry, etc. The latter includes happiness, joy, serenity, etc.

So you need to realize that attaining certain kinds of desires lead to maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, and adjust your desires accordingly.

If you just pursue whatever you happen to desire without reference to any further standard, which is hedonism, you will not maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

For instance, I may not feel like exercising or going on a diet, but if I realize that those things will maximize my pleasure, then I now have the ability to desire to do them, because they are a value to me.

When you suggest "utility" as a better word, you are begging the question. Utility for what? To whom? Why would one kind of thing constitute utility, and not something else?

The answer is that there is only one kind of ultimate, inherent utility for a conscious being: pleasure. Everything else that has utility has utility for the sake of pleasure.

Let me know if you have any thoughts and want to continue the conversation.