Americans Gaining Most Weight in Their 20s and 30s: What They Can Do
healthline.com
healthline.com
1. The only way to lose weight is to eat at a calories deficit. Calculate the number of calories you need using this app/site/whatever, than make sure to eat at a devicit tracking all your eating with this app. EDIT: This does not mean it is not important to eat well and clean, but that eating well alone is not going to make you lose weight if you are eating too many calories.
2. Engage in strength training at least 2 times per week, better 3. It is impossible to revert eating too much with exercise because the calories used during exercise are very easy to eat back just with a few slices of bread. However resistance training helps to create more muscles and less fat in the event you are still getting weight, and if you are losing weight will protect from losing muscles. There will be also methabolic benefits.
3. To speedup the weight loss, assuming you are eating at a deficit, you may add some cardio activity, this also helps to lower blood pressure, glucose levels and so forth.
4. When eating don't use cheat days: if your daily deficit is for instance 400 calories, and in your cheat day you eat back 400*6 of the deficit created during the other six days, you will not lose any fat.
5. Weight every day and store the weight into an app that can draw a graph for you, such as Google Fit, MyFitnessPal or whatever. You need a constant warning in case you are not losing weight but are gaining it.
1 is all you need to lose weight.
2 is mostly irrelevant. It's not like if you accidentally eat too much you'll get hulk muscles if you were working out. It's mostly impossible to both gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.
3 cardio is always good for you, but does little for weight loss, compared to food intake
4 is probably good advice.
5 is awful advice because you'll get discouraged weighing everyday. Between swings in water weight and erm, waste product, weight can easily swing a few lbs. Weekly is better advice.
None of this is to say your advice is necessarily bad, but I feel you're treating heavy people as idiots that you are smarter than. And maybe you are. But I personally think there's much much more going on than fat people being too stupid to know better, and that's what we need to focus on.
Daily weighing proves absolutely nothing, and at best, follows the same trends as weekly weigh ins.
That’s the indicator.
If you’re on the wrong track you don’t want to find out 21,000 calories later.
It's completely possible this person would see swings as much as 2lb up and down over that week. This tells them absolutely nothing about whether they are eating enough to lose weight or not.
I'm not saying every day weighing is useless, as it still covers the necessary bases. Just that it doesn't tell you a ton in the short term, or not appreciably more than weekly weighing.
I've swung 4lbs in a single day. How can that possibly jive with daily weighing in a way that makes any sense?
If you're someone locked on your diet and just tracking, it's probably fine. If you're someone tuning your diet, you're gonna make a lot of really bad decisions based on daily data.
Weight in at the same time in the morning every day.
Weight loss happens daily, when the week begins your body doesn’t suddenly decide to lose weight then and check back in with you next week.
Hell, it happens hourly. You can figure out what your hourly caloric burn rate is and know that if you eat something, your body will have to burn though it for the next n hours.
Daily weighing at least allows you to calculate an average with trends and to see the fluctuations. It's a good information to have.
This is wrong, I've done this repeatedly and seen dozens of other people do it. Lift heavy, eat at break even or a slight calorie defecit.
It is significantly harder to do this if you're close to your frame's natural muscular limits, but most people aren't.
To be clear, I'm absolutely not a lifter or bodybuilder, so I'm playing a secondary source at this point.
Yes, this is the reason for them
That said, the "bodybuilding meta" regarding Bulking/Cutting has evolved in the past decade. Now it's widely accepted that bulking/cutting cycles are probably merely the most efficient way to grow big and only need to "look good" for shows 1-3 times per year. It's also becoming accepted that "recomposition" (losing fat and gaining muscle) is real, and a very useful practice for bodybuilders who need to look good year-round (fitness models, instagram models, social influencers). The year-round nature of daily/weekly direct engagement with fans has driven significant changes in the bodybuilding community.
These days, it's believed that recomposition is a valid strategy if you can afford the "slow and steady" pace. If you need to get as big as possible in a limited number of months, and only need to look perfect for a specific target time window, then "bulking and cutting" allows the fastest size growth in the available time (actors preparing for a specific upcoming role, bodybuilders who are competing in an upcoming show).
Note also that for most bodybuilders, the aggressive cutting phase requires a fairly large amount of steroids to minimize dramatic loss of muscle mass.
> It is significantly harder to do this if you're close to your frame's natural muscular limits, but most people aren't.
It is true that bulk/cut cycles are much more efficient at putting on mass and it's absolutely the path that anyone trying to min-max their gains should follow, but that's not the demographic we're talking about.
In general I would not assume that every body builder actually knows the science behind muscle growth, many are cargo culting a small number of serious people who do know the science and offer recommendations on the most effective ways to build muscle.
With daily weighings the noise will be obvious and in your face, forcing you to acknowledge it.
It's basically a matter of downsampling with/without antialiasing.
Here's my advice:
1. Assume that cardio and strength training basically don't help you lose weight, no matter how much you train. Unless you're absolutely crazy. Constrained energy metabolism suggests that your basal metabolism adjusts to your physical effort or lack thereof.
2. Weighing yourself can work if you don't freak out over every little variation in weight changes.
3. Exercises should be done for health reason, not for weight loss. Only insane maniac can use exercise to lose weight. You should consider a well rounded program, and not just overly focus on one specific thing. Do steady cardio AND HIIT, stability and strength training. It's a lot. You probably should do more than the minimum requirement set by the CDC to get everything you need, but even if you can't, any exercise is better than none.
4. Weight loss is made in the kitchen(or rather what you ingest). There are ways to cut calories, some you may adhere to better, such as time restricted feeding, eliminating certain major food categories(cutting out deserts and sweets other than fruits), and calories counting. There's no real magic bullet here. Experiment and see what works best for you.
It's way easier to resist urges when you don't have daily triggers everywhere you go.
It's amazing how so many Americans nowadays have completely given up the idea of personal responsibility. It's been scientifically proven that willpower is like a muscle, it gets stronger the more we use it. If we encourage people to blame advertisements rather than their own poor self control, then we don't encourage people to strengthen their willpower, so it's no wonder obesity rates are higher than ever before. Your great grandparents would be laughing their asses off if they were around to hear people today suggesting it's easier to engage in the polticial process than just be more careful about what they put in their mouths.
Time to ask yourself if there are maybe systemic reasons why half of a country is stuffing themselves to death.
Or are there factors like good weather, quality food, better food standards, a societal embarrassment about being overweight, portion control and generally a better way of life that doesn’t make people so depressed?
I leant into CICO philosophy hard, which led me to eating tons of processed foods with added sugars.
What this looked like on the regular was months of weight gain, followed by months of weight loss where every food was measured in calories and I went to bed starving dreaming of marshmallows.
It’s not how we’re supposed to be. Ever since I cut out the processed foods and refined sugars and stick to as unprocessed as possible (think rice, potatoes, legumes, fruit and veg) my weight has settled without me even having to think about it, and I hardly ever get hungry enough for it to impact my mood even if I’ve skipped multiple meals.
Honestly, following CICO was one of the biggest mistakes of my twenties. The only downside of my current diet is how much time and money it takes to manage, and the upfront mental cost of learning recipes rather than buying a frozen pizza or something similar.
The point of CICO is to remind yourself even if you eat healthy, if you eat more calories than you lose, you won't lose weight.
I got my five a day which is the extent of government communication on the topic of nutrition.
> The point of CICO is to remind yourself even if you eat healthy, if you eat more calories than you lose, you won't lose weight.
And the point i’m making is that if you eat mostly unprocessed food you won’t have to worry about it. It becomes difficult to put on weight because your body moderates your appetite
My takeaway from our parents' post was that while CICO is sufficient for weight loss, it alone is not sufficient for well-being.
Lose weight swiftly in 4 simple (but not easy) steps:
1. Cut out sugar and anything that has sugar or sweeteners as an ingredient.
2. Cut out all fruit juices. Eat all the fruit you want instead.
3. Warm up every day. A quick 10 minute routine upon waking up. Not enough to feel tired or sore - just enough to feel strong and agile.
4. Walk 4 miles every day. That's around 10k steps.
I know a woman who lost 50 pounds this way in one year. I've lost 15 pounds in 2 months. It works if you can stick to it.
To drop my spare kilos I only eat one meal a day which I think was the main reason to lose the spare tire.
I also reduced my carbohydrate intake, cut out sugars (including fruit juices), and try to avoid highly processed foods. I don’t do much exercise, and I do drink a moderate amount.
My one-meal technique does work for middle aged me. However I know others that need breakfast and lunch, and my technique can’t work for them.
I have friends who try much much harder than me at various techniques to lose weight, without good results. If I start lunching and dinnering (or just home snacking) then I do put weight back on.
That will eat your lifetime faster than obesity unless you also do something else.
Walk that 6 miles to the grocery store. Don’t be lazy! At least 3 miles might have a side walk.
And when you get there and look at the 62 different loaves of bread, make sure to pick one which is healthy. Should be easy.
I do accept the role of personal responsibility but come on let’s not ignore all the other issues too.
Look at the label of the food you are buying. If the ingredient list is long and there are lots of words you don't recognize or can't pronounce, don't buy it.
If most of you food comes in a box/container then you are probably eating sub optimal food. Look at how much sugar is in it. Most processed food has more sugar than you think. A lot more.
Limit drinks that are not water. They have sugar in them or chemicals.
It is not hard to eat relatively health, if you have time or money. Time to prepare food or money to buy pre cut veggies and other fresh items.
It's easier to have self-control for the one hour a week that you're at the supermarket than 24x7 when there's chocolate and alcohol in the pantry. So the easiest way to control your intake of high calorie foods is to just not buy them.
May I also offer some words of wisdom from Dr Rudy... two words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GGf_GlD2RY
It is quite literally this simple, but the weight-loss industry keeps growing. So many billions of dollars spent to redirect the answer for people. Some people will have a harder time mentally coping due to genetics, but at the end of the day, this is the answer.
Nitpick: everything is a chemical (even water itself).
If you take a look at the dictionary, which is a documentation of the practical use of words, you will see that to talk of chemicals in food is entirely coherent. Words do not have absolute definitions, they are defined by their usage in the real language.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/chemica....
The purpose of language is communication. If the 'practical' use of the word doesn't communicate anything, then the practical use is wrong.
Losing weight is easy. Eat less calories than you burn. If you don't know what that is, assume 1500ish.
I know this, but still have had huge phases of gaining and losing weight in my life. And it was never because I'm so dumb as not to know why or how to fix it, but because fatty foods become some type of 'good part' in an otherwise uneventful day. Or because you're so exhausted fast food is all that's for dinner.
We've got to figure out how to fix the mental parts. With the rise of social media and the recently published 'loneliness epidemic', I suspect this will get worse before it gets better.
I just got out a bad relationship and I’ve gained 7kg.
You need to be in a really good place mentally to make all the good decisions and fight all the advertising.
It's when I cook at home that I have a hard-to-impossible time trying to keep track.
Too many calories might be bad no matter what the source is, but some foods seem to make people want to eat more of them than others... and some foods have negative effects even aside from weight. They seem pretty sure even lots of stuff that's totally natural isn't that healthy...
The thing that I would really like to understand is why social media and internet addiction doesn't make us eat less.
I would expect the American diet to be a lot healthier now that phones exist, because we all look at screens all day, you would think we would just eat exactly enough to not be hungry, and maybe a little more as a social thing, and otherwise maybe even forget to eat half the time, like people do when engrossed in a book or a project?
Why can't tech fill our pointless dopamine seeking needs just as well as eating crap? Shouldn't intermittent fasting be kind of automatic now?
Perhaps one might expect us to even have healthy meals more just to show off on Instagram.
Instead we scroll while we eat, and we even doordash now, from what I hear.
It almost seems like the scrolling makes it worse!
If one doesn't do a minimum of anything vaguely resembling strength training or other exercise surely ones resting metabolic rate is low making it so one has to eat even less to stop gaining fat which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks...
If one doesn't eat somewhat decent food as a default and just looks at calories whilst ingesting shit surely one ends up with deficiencies and consequential urges notably when cutting back on food in general which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks...
When counting calories and spreading eating out through the day, diet planning, food preparation and eating can easily become an almost full time job.
1. Follow the advice in the rest of these comments. Summary: Eat good food and exercise. This is actually obvious, often repeated and boring advice.
2. This is my real golden nugget: Stop eating. Take a step back from all of this constant debate on nutrition. Calorie in calorie out is actually true, but the real hack is the fact that you don't need to eat. Intermittent fasting is also common advice, but go ahead, go even further.
*For either option, Drink water. Lots of it. Good quality water. Don't drink other stuff (some coffee, tea, okay). Water is love. Water is life. Often repeated but not stressed enough, and a major source of many issues.*
Anorexia is a problem, but it is not a common problem and is not something that should be worth preventing people from acknowledging that fasting is okay, humans have uniquely evolved to do it, and in general it's a much easier solution. I think it's okay for young people to try out not eating, but absolutely they should be encouraged and taught to do #1 instead, with an emphasis on the downsides of bad nutrition and physical health. A bigger problem than anorexia is the historical political and corporate motivation to make us eat more and often and don't stop eating, which is probably a major contributor to the obesity epidemic (probably global pollution as well).
[0] https://twitter.com/JohnSpeakman4/status/1651244232789598211 [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-023-00782-2.epdf?shar...
EDIT: Explainer video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNNxE-K06KA
The data is out of date by a few years now, but I assume Americans have only gotten larger. Not thinner.
I don’t exercise, I used to run often, but now I’m too busy running my firm and renovating a house that leaves me doing enough bodily work I’m not missing out.
So my biggest variable is eating and at my weight any singular deviation from proper eating means that I gain weight fast.
I weigh in daily.
The article tells us things we’ve known I’m sure at least since the 70s so there aren’t any grand revelations here. It’s just that people suck at eating properly.
And frankly, eating well is boring. That’s why people fail to do it. Most people I know already can’t cook, and if you have no culinary articulation nor come from a racial background of low weight individuals you’re fighting both a dietary and cultural problem at the same time.
I noticed my weight gain in my 20s, and so I’ve always tracked it since then.
My observations are that Americans eating whole foods get as close as possible to replicating other foreign cultures who are naturally thin peoples. Asians in particular come to mind.
The inherent issue with most processed foods just simply that most processes combine ingredients that are high in calories, or refine ingredients into densities that mean you’re eating more simply because the process condenses them.
That’s it. Processed foods make you eat more food.
If you juiced one orange, you’d barely have any juice. If you ate one orange you’d receive all of the fiber of the fruit itself as well.
In America, we just don’t have many recipes or cultural dishes that help you lose weight.
But in Asian cultures, I can think of dish after dish that are whole ingredients and none of them are refined.
To lose weight, you have to learn how to eat.
I see it the same way you learn how to not smoke or drink.
It’s just that junk food and sugar are so prevalent and we don’t assign it the same social stigma that people are such poor eaters.
After the physical weight loss I still had to work through the mental issues with losing what felt like half of me (positive but still strange to witness in the mirror), becoming visible in spaces (think socially) I was typically invisible (despite being so large), and transitioning out of a year long weightloss mode to a life long sustainable "maintenance mode" to keep the weight at bay but not go crazy.
While the weight has fluctuated a bit since the intial weightloss over 10 years, the bulk 45ish lbs has not come back. One key are for me personally was wrapping my head around all the stuff surrounding my unhealthy habits, many not tied to food and working to shore up those areas in my life as well. Mind. Body. Soul.
Just wanted to throw that into the ring. Everyone has their own journey and the steps are really basic from a nutrition stand point. It can be a fascinating oppurtunity to learn about oneself through focused observation.
* On average Americans are likely to be obese and very likely to be overweight.
* Fit & muscular Americans are much bulkier than fit Germans.
* On average, Americans consume way more sugar.
* On average, Americans consume way more fast food.
* I think American meat has more steroids.I also never walked less than the two weeks I spent in Texas.
There's a simpler answer: Americans, regardless of whether they exercise or not, consume more calories than Germans. This means Americans who lift weights will grow more muscles than Germans who lift weights, and Americans who don't will grow more fat.
but for both sexes it’s a lot less free time and alot more stress. both of which are contributors to weight gain