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Comment by NoPicklez | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't agree more.

There doesn't need to some mathematical proof or nobel prize winning study, because... well, the proof is in the pudding if you look at athletes.

Most people are not doing the basics, but by doing some form of exercise often and consistently. Eat a nutritious meal, don't binge on junk food and sleep well. People love to complicate and over engineer the situation by diving into everything 100% when they have a 'I'm going to lose weight' mindset. Weight loss takes a while and you might need to be a little hungry at times to lose weight.

Just don't expect exercise to be the one reason you will lose weight, the largest reason will be your diet. As the old saying goes, you can't outrun a poor diet.

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Athletes aren't a great example. A quick look at the literature and you will quickly find heaps of studies on eating disorders in athletes. There are obvious and not so obvious motivations (i.e. a boxer making a weight division vs body image concerns). The big confounding factor in athletes is that they usually have extremely high discipline/self control.

Athletes are a great example of what proper exercise and nutrition does for the body. They are living proof, otherwise if it didn't work they'd be all overweight. Now we don't necessarily expect ourselves to be at that level but clearly doing the basics will work wonders or move you in the right direction. I don't think we can nullify the impacts of lots of exercise and world class nutrition because of some eating disorders.

I'd say obesity is the greater eating disorder, not athletes being at the top of the game working themselves into the ground.

But a good thing you point out there, is that it is easy to say exercise consistently and eat a good diet. But the trouble is the discipline/self control to do so.

Many of us lead stressful busy lives which don't always leave us the room to be the healthy people we want to be. You just need to make time for it in a way that you can and enjoy, if you truly do want to prioritise it.

> Many of us lead stressful busy lives which don't always leave us the room to be the healthy people we want to be.

It is so much easier to exercise consistently and eat a good diet if one is being paid for it.

The reward of feeling and looking good and living a long healthy life can be a pretty good motivator for the amateurs.

Amateurs can make massive changes to their body composition quite quickly, which is absolutely motivator.

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