You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much

Annoying article to read. Why swear so much?

Anyway. I used to believe this. Every few months I'd flip between dieting, and not dieting (putting on weight). When dieting, I'd go on a 500 calories restriction. This meant religious calorie counting, going to bed every night hungry, and generally being grumpy constantly. Waking up in the night because I wanted some toast or something and trying to work out if I could fit it into my budget. I got my daily calorie requirement down so well I could lose a pound a week reliably. But it was miserable.

Eventually, I'd meet a goal and start eating what I wanted again. And my weight would go up. And then I'd have to diet.

A shit life.

This year, I've started intermittent fasting (12/12), and every week or two I have a 36 hour fast.

I never feel hungry in between meals anymore, and even when fasting for 36 hours I only feel hungry for brief periods of the day.

If I knew this was possible in my early twenties I'd be so much better off today. Instead I listened to everyone online, don't care about what you eat just make it fit your macros. Reductionist bullshit in short. And in consequence my insulin was always up, always demanding more food.

However, to the author, I'm sure they feel good acting like everyone else is stupid. It all comes down to counting calories and people not trying hard enough right. Not fundamentally flawed advice at large on how to eat right, just pure moral failing.

No one is talking about why we want to eat so goddamn much. There is a brain issue at play here that is not discussed. I have been active my whole adult life and have always been either overweight or doing some kind of diet. Every time I lost weight it came back later on and yeah I am to blame but how can anyone just spend their whole existence fighting their brain.

I decided to try one of these famous GLP-1 agonists and oh boy does that change everything. My brain just decided to shut up all the food thoughts. Just gone. There is something in our current diet/environment screwing up our inner desire for food and that is reflected in our behaviour. Our conscious thoughts aren’t enough to control that behaviour fully.

I expect a shift in the future on how obesity is portrayed. It will go the same way as depression where we slowly realized “cheer up buddy” is not a valid treatment.

Once I got a kitchen scale I was astounded at how terrible I was at estimating the actual amounts of things that I was using. While I am sure it is not as simple as calories in versus out, if you take anything away from this article at least let it be that people are very bad about estimating their actual portion sizes. And if you get a chance, grab a kitchen scale (and keep some measuring cups handy too) and try guessing then measuring and see how well you do! I think you'll be very surprised. Especially, as mentioned in the article, pouring liquid, which is very very easy to drastically overpour.

It's missing a lot of context.

> The mouse that eats less but gains weight

> Unexpectedly, this increased adiposity is not caused by increased food intake. Instead, Mc3r-/- mice gain more fat per calorie of food consumed, apparently at the expense of their lean body mass. This so-called increased feed efficiency means that the mutant mice store more fat despite eating less than normal mice do, and they become obese if fed a high-fat diet. The mechanism behind these responses is unclear because the Mc3r-/- mice have normal metabolic rates, body temperatures, and thyroid function

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2330/

Also a lot of counterpoints in this article.

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...

E.g.

> consider Poehlman et al. (1986), where researchers fed a group of 12 men 1,000 extra calories a day for 22 days. On average the men gained about 5 lbs (2.2 kg), but some of them actually lost weight instead.

...

> The fact that many of these are twin studies provides even more evidence against CICO. In groups of twins that are all overfed by the same amount, there is substantial variation between the different participants in general. Some people gain a lot of weight, others gain almost none. But each person gains (or loses!) about the same amount of weight as their twin. In some cases these correlations can be substantial, as high as r = 0.90. This strongly suggests that genetics plays a large role in determining how the body responds to overfeeding.

This post: A long article about weight loss that is built on a calorie-centric approach to food instead of questioning that fundamental premise and differentiating between types of fats and carbs and their effects on body weight.

I've commented on this in the past but to reiterate, calories as a measure are pseudo-scientific at best and totally bunk at worst. If all you are doing is looking at that number on packaging, generally speaking, your weight control will be very limited due to the lack of precision in that measurement.

You would think that with the amount of mental gymnastics HN loves to do every time CICO gets mentioned, they would finally lose some weight and solve the problem once and for all.

I suppose it's not quite as good as regular gymnastics.

Disagree about 'slow metabolism' big time. It is not myth. I know for a fact I eat less than I did when I was 16 for the same body weight. If humans vary by all sort of other attributes, such as IQ, height, or physical strength, even controlling for age and other variables, why would metabolism not vary too? That makes no sense.

Also, 'starvation mode' does not mean that the laws of thermodynamics does not work anymore. I dunno why this concept is so confusing to so many people. It's like people are trying to make this needlessly complicated or being deliberately obtuse because they have some axe to grind. It means that the body burns fewer calories than predicted by weight, physical activity, and other variables, which makes dieting much harder. It is sometimes called metabolic adaptation. So Instead of burning 2000 calories/day as predicted for your new, lower weight, you only burn 1500 or so.

You're not losing fat because you're too sedentary. You absolutely can outrun your fork. You just have to run a lot further than you think. Show me a fat person who runs 50 miles a week.

Calories in. Calories out. What's new? Aside from the "HOLY SHITBALLS!" Gen-X branding.

Except for situations of food insecurity, most humans alive today have access to absurd amounts of calories. That coupled with intense marketing, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and decline of self-discipline explain the rise in cancer, type 2 diabetes, and CHD.

On the other side (increasing metabolic rate), there is widely-held misinformation: that it is "easy" or desirable to burn calories through exercise. Unfortunately, the human body is extremely efficient at long duration, low intensity activity. Us humans can run down most any fleeing terrestrial animal on flat terrain through a combination of high endurance and caloric efficiency. [1] This is why caloric restriction is far more time, cost, and effort efficient than exercise. Said another way: the most effective categories of exercise such as weightlifting, HIIT, and 30 minutes on the elliptical are beneficial for multiple purposes secondary to weight loss.

A rough guide to caloric density is dry food weight (minus all water). And double anything containing oil, cheese, or cream.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis