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> Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.

Of course there is: http://www.nwcr.ws/Research/published%20research.htm.

Here's a good question: other than the fact that these people lost weight, what is identifiably unusual about them?

Was going to link to the National Weight Control Registry, thanks! I'll just add that all those studies in GP seem to prove is that A) weight loss programs (especially fad diets) don't work and B) it is a psychological issue. There are plenty of people on MFP, /r/loseit or just counting calories themselves that have successfully kept off weight for years. I'm one of them.

In case someone out there is serious about losing weight and not making excuses, here's how you calculate your actual TDEE: https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_h...

Many times I'll read a story of someone who lost weight and kept it off. And then they detail their pre weight-loss diet and I think, well of course you were overweight. You were inactive and had a terrible diet (sugary drinks, processed foods, etc). You started getting some exercise and learned a few things about nutrition and the weight fell off.

But then there are others who seem to do everything right and are over weight in spite of that.

For example. I was never overweight as a kid and relatively active. In college and for the start of my career, I stopped being active and my diet was awful (e.g. I thought a large Jamba Juice smoothie and a carrot cake was a healthy breakfast choice). My weight ballooned up to almost 190 lbs (20+ lbs overweight), my blood pressure went up, I started having rosacea.

I started running and fixed my diet. Quickly my weight dropped down to 150 and I've kept it in the 140-150 range for over a decade. The other health issues cleared up as well. But it wasn't hard work for me. Being thin is my natural state if you will, and I had to do everything wrong to stay overweight.

My wife meanwhile continues to struggle with her weight. She's successfully lost weight through extremely diligent calorie counting, but after a year or so she starts to put it back on. I have never counted calories. Our diets are similar (in kind, not quantity of course, she eats much less than me). She is active, but not quite as active as me. So similar diet and life styles, but my weight stays off and hers does not.

Hereditarily, no one in my family is over weight. There is obesity on both sides of her heredity.

And I see this playing out in our kids. My son has an athletic build and will probably never have weight issues. My daughter takes after her mom and it will take a life time of diligence for her to remain at a healthy weight.

It seems that some people are optimized for famine, and some for feast. :-(

Obviously there are a lot of factors involved in the growing obesity crises. But I feel for people who struggle with their weight despite doing all the right things, I really do.

The food tastes too damn good! I've only been overweight because of binging and poor eating. I've never eaten in a normal, healthy way, and gained weight.

Calories are such that if you screw up once per week (birthday party, company event, family dinner) that could mean you gain weight if you eat regularly the rest of the days.

> "It seems that some people are optimized for famine, and some for feast. :-("

You're actually onto something there! I don't know if you've read much about epigenetics, but if a person experiences a famine, it can "switch on" prepare for famine genes in their descendants. It's fascinating stuff.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25884-famine-puts-nex...

> Our diets are similar (in kind, not quantity of course, she eats much less than me).

Maybe. I've heard this sort of story before, and I don't tend to believe it. It's hard enough to estimate how much you are eating yourself, and comparing against others is even more error-prone.

I'm facing a similar situation, but I'm loathe to start counting calories just to confirm my hypothesis. Being forgetful and apathetic about meals almost certainly contributes to why I've maintained a healthy weight. I worry that the rigor required for proper observation will change my behaviour.

The poster above linked this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, says that while the 10,000 people tracked in the registry are a useful resource, they also represent a tiny percentage of the tens of millions of people who have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight. “All it means is that there are rare individuals who do manage to keep it off,” Brownell says. “You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

That just described reddit subs focused on weight loss.

> they also represent a tiny percentage of the tens of millions of people who have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight.

They also represent an unknown number of people who do keep off weight successfully, but never report in, for whatever reason. As just one example, I asked for an application and when it came I realized I did not qualify for the registry as I don't have a before photo.

> “You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

Anti-dieters love to trot this out, but they have no evidence to back it up. There are plenty of people who log in MFP, check to see if what they are contemplating ordering fits their budget for the day, then go about the rest of their lives. It takes all of a couple of minutes. There are other people who just more carefully mind what they eat, listen to their body, have changed habits (eg, cutting out soda) and never even track calories. I'm one of them.

As for spending an hour a day on exercise, that's not unreasonable. Most people spend multiple times that amount of time on things like TV or web browsing. It's also not mandatory for weight loss.

Broken record strikes again:

Why was this downvoted?

Rather than just positing the question, share with us why you think it shouldn't have been downvoted. And explore reasons—even if you don't agree with them or think they're groundless—why someone might downvote it. Of course there are those out there who downvote for reasons we think are frivolous: they're not likely to respond to your comment anyway.

The guidelines ask us not to comment on being downvoted: I think in general this should extend to commenting on other's downvotes as well: it makes for boring reading. You mention this yourself—it's a broken record. If you are going to do so, put some effort in to make the comment worthwhile. It's also a good exercise in improving discourse, if that's something you're interested in.

I kind of agree with you but doing that would turn a a genuine question into a high school hand-in complete with a discussion of the results.

I will likely consider your opinion next time I'm tempted to point out that someone is downvoted for seemingly no good reason and with no explanation.

But I am not sure of the outcome - I would like others to defend me when I am accused or picked on for no good reason. Basically I'm doing to others what I hope they would do for me.

But I am not sure of the outcome - I would like others to defend me when I am accused or picked on for no good reason.

Right, and by providing a explanation than just posing the question, you're doing a better job of doing exactly that—showing why you think it shouldn't have been downvoted—while also contributing to the conversation. In my experience, the people who are responding to such questions are not the people who have downvoted—they're doing some version of what I've outlined above. If you have no idea why something might be downvoted, it likely would be good for you to stretch a bit and imagine how someone else might read or take the comment you're referring to. It'll likely make you a better comment writer and reader.

Ok, you convinced me, thanks for taking the time.

I'll try that next time I guess.

And thank you for being open to trying it! You'll be helping make HN the better for it.

Thanks for following with a citation, but I am well aware of that research. The national weight control registry is a heavily self selected group of people who have already lost significant weight before joining - therefore weeding out most of the failure rate. And even then, only 20% of their audience lost over 10% of their initial body weight and kept it off for one year.

That's not relevant. You said:

> you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.

To refute this, it's sufficient to present a counterexample. Since many studies exist, and they are reputable, the only argument is whether the people in them are average.

You say they are not, because they lost weight. But that cannot be your whole argument, because if we assume average people don't lose weight we assume the premise you have taken up to prove.

So again: other than the fact that these people lost weight, what exactly is exceptional about them?

That's not how reputable or study works. You can't call something a study where people self-select in based on the effect being measured.

Hang on, has a counterexample been presented? Maybe we're reading the challenge differently, but I parsed "reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years" as meaning a study in which a bunch of already-overweight people were selected to try some specific intervention (eg, "follow this diet & exercise program") and as a result of the intervention the median outcome was to lose that much weight and keep it off for 5 years.

A study of only people who succeeded, selected for the study because they succeeded, tells you nothing about how effective their particular strategy is.

For instance, suppose there exists a Grapefuit Diet which has the following effect: 1% of the people who try it lose weight, 2% of the people who try it gain weight, and 97% of the people who try it see no effect. If you take 100 people, tell them to try that diet, that is the result you'll get - a result which tells you the strategy is no good. But if you look at the national weight loss registry you'll only find people who were in the tiny 1% for which that diet worked. In fact, even if there are a LOT of Grapefruit Diet successes in the registry, that just tells you how popular the Grapefruit Diet was, it doesn't tell you if the Grapefruit Diet works.

What we want is an intervention study where a bunch of fat people do some specific thing and that thing is actually effective at producing a clinically significant and stable amount of weight loss. Ideally we'd want them to lose enough weight such that they are no longer "overweight" and then maintain that state.

Does that study exist? Is there any study meeting that set of criteria? My impression is that it does not; there is in fact no non-surgical intervention known to "work". Which explains why people keep grasping at straws to find options that plausibly might work.

Spot on.

Weight loss is difficult because dieting isn't a train you get off once you're at your target weight. It's basically a way of life to maintain your target weight. I don't know too many people that are capable of rewiring themselves to that kind of degree for the long-term

Reliably changing someone's weight for the long term probably requires swapping environment and altering their peer group/friends. Kinda like getting off of drugs.

To contradict this a little bit (and this is not 100% relevant because it involves exactly one participant, so who knows whether it would ever work for anyone else) this remains one of the most interesting weight loss related things I've read on the internet: http://edwardjedmonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Stewart...

The study participant went from 456 to 180lbs through the course of a year, and when they checked on him five years later, he weighed 196lbs. Obviously this is an extreme case, but it is one tiny and yet super interesting datapoint on the subject.

> The study participant went from 456 to 180lbs through the course of a year, and when they checked on him five years later, he weighed 196lbs.

The people who trot out "all diets fail" or "you'll regain!" would class that as his diet failing.

It's interesting that the comments on any article having anything to do with food automatically become a "weight thread." The topic of this article is poor scientific methodology and the failure of the current peer review system to address it, not diet or weight loss. And (based on the studies summarized in the article) the researcher discussed in the article works on psychological and economic factors in eating behavior, not defining what people should eat or promoting diets.

This is very depressing :(

As someone trying to lose weight myself, calorie tracking has so far yielded about 5% weight loss over a period of several months but I'm realizing that if I stop counting calories there's a strong possibility of gaining that back. This just lends some credence to that idea.

Don't give up! 5% is nothing to sneeze at, and that pace is actually probably the best way to go about it as it's not radical changes to your lifestyle. It also gives your body, both inside and out, more time to adjust.

The tracking might be a thing for the rest of your life, but it's so easy these days with things like MFP. There's also hope in that once you maintain a weight for a year, your hormones (ghrelin and leptin) will adjust and you won't be as hungry.

Also, people love to trot out the "all diets fail" and claim no one has ever shown otherwise, when there are things like the National Weight Control Registry that put that pernicious myth to rest. As another poster said, most people don't realize that you don't just diet temporarily and stop. The word "diet" derives from the Greek "diaita" which means "way of life".

All diets fail for nearly everyone who tries them, the National Weight Control Registry notwithstanding.

The fact that a tiny percentage of the populace successfully loses weight does not make "try to do what those people claim they were doing" good advice, any more than the fact that a tiny percentage of people win the lottery makes "buy lottery tickets!" good financial advice.

The notion that "all diets fail" persists because thus far it sadly remains true - telling people to lose weight and keep it off by dieting is faith-based advice, wishful thinking. It's not science.

Honestly, the human body just isn't built to lose weight. We're built for starvation and packing on as much as we can, while we can. Humanity is just a victim of its own success with the sheer plentiful amount of food that's available now, at least in the first world.

Working as intended, WONTFIX, etc. Obesity at this stage of our civilization is not abnormal. It sucks, but it isn't abnormal.

To add to this: this is 90% behavioral in nature. We like food, eating food makes us feel good, therefore we eat food and snack constantly. Obviously, you'd do it - it's like getting a hit off your favorite drug. If it didn't give us that high, we wouldn't do it.

But if we could remove that feeling with a drug, would we want to? Could we find enough pleasure in other things to keep us satisfied?

It bothers me to see three or four comments saying there's no point in trying to lose weight go unchallenged.

Widespread obesity is a recent development in our society. And it's not caused by the abundance of our wealth, as the poor are most affected. Rather it is caused by outsourcing cooking from the family to corporations, whose incentives are at odds with our health. They make fattening, craveable, nutritionally deficient food, and work hard to ensure that we and our kids are confused about what is healthy, while making sure that their products are always more available and convenient than planning and cooking meals.

Society has only turned this way in the last two generations, and it can be fixed. We are not doomed by biology.