Comment by ericb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericb | Hacker News Reader

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> There are no secrets to weight loss. Eat fewer calories than you burn. It doesn't matter if that involves keto, or vegan, or one meal a day. Thyroid problems also don't change physics.

You seem focused on the physics and materialist viewpoint, but it seems like you are taking that line of reasoning just far enough where we can be judgmental and snarky about "secrets."

What if we take your thinking a little farther and think about the brain chemistry and drives that affect behavior. We are just materialistic machines, right?

Ever seen a sick person who just doesn't want to eat? Or a skinny person with little interest in food? Ever try to hold your breath for 3 minutes? This should, in theory, for the average person be possible. But for some reason it is really really hard.

What if, these diets don't affect the physics of weight loss, they affect the hunger drive--the chemicals in the brain? Do we still get to ride our moral high-horse then?

Or what if there are drives and chemicals in the brain and even the metabolism itself fights back.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/6-years-after-the...

Excellent points

> Or a skinny person with little interest in food?

And yes, that's me all the time.

What i'm saying is, everyone has a resting metabolic rate. That rate is relatively stable among the entire human population. If you eat more than your metabolic rate, you gain weight. Less, and you lose weight.

Most readers on hacker news are saying "duh ngngngng, but you're oversimplifying". Correct, I am. But the reason for that is I believe most Americans (maybe other countries too), do not believe the information I just presented. Most Americans think if they are fat that their resting metabolic rate must be 1500 calories different from most skinny people.

I think this creates a sense of hopelessness. "No matter what I eat, i'll be fat. But no matter what ngngngng eats, he stays skinny!" Even though the reality is my metabolism is average, and the referenced overweight person probably has a similar metabolism as me.

"No matter what I eat, i'll be fat. But no matter what ngngngng eats, he stays skinny!"

This is plain denial, and is not the view expressed in the article. Anyone who reads and understands the article, and the purported benefits isn't likely to simultaneously hold that inane view.

Sorry, but you're not helping. There is not a lack of people, media, and doctors who repeat the calories in calories out mantra. People have this hammered into them all the time. And it's obviously not working.

> What i'm saying is, everyone has a resting metabolic rate. That rate is relatively stable among the entire human population.

You are probably confusing BMR and RMR; Basal Metabolic Rate is a reasonably constant function of age, weight, body composition, and gender for healthy, non-pregnant adults.

RMR varies considerably even for an individual based on a wide range of factors, including emotional state.

> Most Americans think if they are fat that their resting metabolic rate must be 1500 calories different from most skinny people.

And they are quite possibly right; fitness lowers RMR with the same BMR, and a 300 lb 6’0” man has a ~900 kcal higher BMR than a 150 lb man of the same height under te adultos used in simple BMR calculators. And there are a number of other ways that being overweight contributes to or is correlated with factors than contribute to different RMR (and in some cases BMR).

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