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Comment by DirectorKrennic | Hacker News Reader

The average bariatric surgery costs $7,400 to $33,000 before insurance coverage. [1] It's safe to say that the number of adolescents undergoing the procedure would be higher if it was cheaper.

For comparison, a good pair of running shoes costs $100, a new, quality bike costs $500, and a gym membership is $50 per month.

[1] https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/weight-loss/bariatric-surg...

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I've lost 120lbs. I'm a PM so I A/B tested different methods to lose weight until I found one.

Exercise did almost nothing. It helped start my metabolism here and there. The real weight loss came from just eating as close to 0 calories a day as possible. Water, lettuce, whatever gets you full. It's a grueling process. It's not something you do because you love your body and your habits. You have to hate them.

Feel free to recommend running shoes and gym memberships to people. In my experience, your comment isn't grounded in data, experience, or even helpful. It comes across as dismissive and wanting to sound right.

The people doing these operations are suffering through a level of anguish you can't imagine. They are well aware of your trite advice, and unable to get their problem solved. That's why they turn to painful, expensive surgery.

It's a problem, and playing armchair life coach with gotcha one liners isn't going to solve it.

Most people would probably lose a significant amount of weight just cutting out beverages with calories in them.

A step further is to cut out fast food, boxed food, or anything pre-made. You should be doing 90% of your shopping in the produce/meat/dairy sections of the grocery store. The vast majority of anything you buy in aisles is either bad for you or incredibly calorie dense.

Unfortunately nutrition doesn't seem to be taught in high school, and cooking at home is an optional course. Learning how to take care of your body and having the tools to be healthy if you choose is beneficial to everyone; much more useful in day to day life than almost anything you learn after grade 8.

> Most people would probably lose a significant amount of weight just cutting out beverages with calories in them.

This hasn't been borne out. Coke zero, sprite zero, pepsi zero, etc. are widely available, tastes the same as far as I know, and we haven't solved the obesity crisis since they came out.

Fruit juice, Coffee with cream and sugar, Gatorade/sports drinks, Alcohol

Those all have zero or low-cal options, and we haven't solved obesity.

That's kind of like telling a smoker all they need to do is quit smoking. It's true and it sounds easy enough but it's actually super difficult. I quit smoking. It took 11 attempts and I needed a dedicated mental framework which I found in the book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking which I highly recommend. Point being these people are going to need dedicated help to dig into why they have these habits and education to teach them how to cook and eat healthy neither of which are cheap either.

The good old "have you tried not being sad" approach to health.

I lost a bunch of weight once, but like many others I didn't keep it off. Having a harder go the second time around. If it were easy nobody would be overweight.

Are you implying that running shoes, a bike, and/or a gym membership are a replacement for bariatric surgery? Will you suggest salads as well next?

The magnitude of the obesity epidemic should really give people more pause when imagining simple fixes like this. It's becoming more and more clear that this is not simply a problem of lifestyle, but very likely environmental factors at least as problematic as leaded gasoline was on IQs.

Yes this seems obvious to me too. The whole population just suddenly in the 1970's started eating more and exercising less? And we as a society have no idea what is causing it, and there seems to be no sense of urgency to find out.

Here's the environmental factor: massive amounts of sugar and syrup. Ban companies from pumping kids with high fructose syrup and sugar. Ban the sale of milk, yogurt, bread, cereal, juice boxes, sodas, and any other foods contaminated with high fructose syrups and sugars. Only then can we actually say we are fighting this weight problem. Everything else is lip service.

20 minutes of running is negated by a single cookie. Exercise alone is an exceptionally difficult way to lose weight and telling people to just exercise more is not a systemic solution.

I wouldn't be surprised if people are overeating by 1k calories/day. It takes a substantial daily gym commitment to burn that much, you're better off eating better in the first place (which unfortunately can be easier said than done)

Exercise is way less important than diet for weight loss, and eating less is free.

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