But there also may be other components that we can do something about. For example, perhaps the bacteria in my gut are causing half of my hunger, insisting that I eat bread (because they want it, not I). And if I starve them out on a zero carb diet, I can break free of the excess hunger.
Hope springs eternal.
Personally I think it's some combination of gut biome, all than not messed up childhood eating habits (I've been taught to eat till stuffed, not so great in combination with my next point) , and way too calorie heavy (processed) food (it's not a challenge to find food where a quarter package is a healthy amount, way more challenging to find food where they food for a full package) not too mention it's made to keep you eating (so more is sold, sigh) . I'm always surprised people claiming not to have cravings whatever (even when the stuff is put in front of them), or be satiated by eating what for me is half a meal (even when I maintained a normal weight) .
Regardless eat less and try harder are hard to keep up, for me personally protein doesn't help to satiate me either. Part of it is that (for me) it's much easier to get into a habit to eat too much than to keep up the habit of eating just enough (I dare say 2+ years of keeping it low is a habit, but now for 3 wars annually 5kg was added: next try keto, hope it works as well as advertised)
You can think of your body as wanting to maintain homeostasis, which is one thing. That just means that if you binge once, you won't feel the need to continue binging at that level. It does not mean that anyone is genetically predetermined to be say 600 lbs.
To use that terminology though, your body could be said to have a "set point" that it aims for, but that "set point" can change. Nobody is destined to be fat, and if you lose weight, your "set point" will adjust.
Which I acknowledged. You can decrease (or increase) your set point, but there is a limit to that. Thinking that everybody has the potential to be at BMI x simply does not match reality. The vast range of human physiology is stunning. Everybody is different. Some people need to carefully watch every bite they take and they still struggle with overweight, whereas others can eat "what they want" and they are underweight.
Totally neglecting any genetic component here is equally as false as neglecting the impact of factors like diet, exercise and environmental ones.
This is wrong, and why set point theory is trash. Nobody is destined to be fat, everybody's "set point" can in fact be at a regular, healthy weight.
I don't understand this genetic determinism of weight to be the claim of Set Point Theory, which to my understanding is involved in energy homeostasis, which you acknowledged. Your body sets your metabolism, and it can tune it up or down. There are homeostatic processes in place such that your body "knows" whether it is underweight or overweight.
I'm not sure if there is a more specific objection you have to set point theory. It certainly has its limitations as to what it can explain, but it seems to be a useful concept or model.
What does probably vary is the pleasure people get from eating which then directly relates to how much they do it.
A few simple observations which don’t support the relevance of this genetic determinism argument:
- a few hundred years ago very few people were overweight. But maybe many people lived their lives incredibly hungry the whole time.
- wealthy countries where getting sufficient food is not the issue have variation in population-level statistics for obesity. Even if one claims that these countries are on-average different genetically in some ways (unlikely in the sense that genetic variation between large classes tends to be smaller than the variation within), one would expect America to mostly be a mix of old-world statistics whereas they come out exceptionally instead.
It seems to me that cultural expectations around food and weight will have a big difference and variation between countries, and that the kinds of food available and commonly consumed (eg sugary drinks, unhealthy fast food, etc) may be a big influence.
But none of this would mean that a particular individual is or is not overweight because of genetic factors rather than their environment.