Why do people look for unknown causes of obesity when there are so many obvious known causes? We aren't lacking an explanation!
Guest what happened when I ate less food? Lost weight
Yes, one can lose weight by drinking some Soylent Green mush with the exact correct caloric count and macros for steady healthy weight loss.
You know what else that person will lose? All happiness and the will to live =)
Some people really are just "food is fuel" and don't care what stuff tastes like, others (like me) actually get enjoyment from eating food, different foods on every day.
This is why there isn't a one size fits all solution to weight loss. Even "calories in calories out" is a bit hazy, because not every single calorie in the food is consumed with 100% efficiency - it depends on your gut bacteria, which we know way too little about.
There are actual studies on this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10368799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7463616/
We all know that one person who can eat literally anything and is still fit and that one person who sees an ad for ice cream and gains 5 pounds (hyperbole of course). According to these studies it's the difference in gut microbiota that's the difference here.
> We all know that one person who can eat literally anything and is still fit and that one person who sees an ad for ice cream and gains 5 pounds (hyperbole of course). According to these studies it's the difference in gut microbiota that's the difference here.
I know people who seem to eat the same amount of food but gain different amounts of weight from it, but I had always chalked it up to a combination of these factors: 1) bigger, taller people naturally burn more calories than shorter people even while sedentary; 2) people may do different amounts of activity (e.g., one person jogs 30 minutes daily and another doesn't); 3) you can't know if someone is actually eating the same food as someone else without observing all their caloric intake over an extended period of time, which only happens in scientific studies.
Now I know there are more factors. Thank you.
No one will gain weight with 500G of plain bread and water 3x daily + supplements
No one's getting fat on cucumbers
Calorie counting works. If you input less energy than your body consumes, you WILL lose weight. If you disagree with basic physics like that then you're deliberately misunderstanding.
And sure, many factors affect the exact balance, but it remains true that reducing calorie intake will reduce your weight.
When people say "calorie counting doesn't work" they really mean "calorie counting is hard to stick to", which is fair.
But WHAT you eat is also significant for long term weight loss. Anyone can eat 1000cal deficit of only kale and unseasoned chicken breast. But nobody can do it for 40 years, which is needed for a lifestyle change.
And now we’re back to the psychology of things, the food needs to be balanced and tasty. Not just 100% healthy.
Also if two people eat the exact same amount of the exact same food, they get different amounts of calories from it. The body isn’t a 100% efficient engine, there are losses.
Contrary to anecdotes, most people in Europe are also pretty sedentary, don't cycle to work and don't do sport (there's probably more active people in Europe than US). We probably walk a bit more but there can't be that much in it.
So I'm still baffled at that difference.
Also... yeah we are pretty sedentary in Europe but it's another level in America. In many parts of US cities there are literally no pavements so you can't walk even if you wanted to. I can't think of anywhere in Europe like that.
For example, in Portugal a McDonald’s meal is about €12.
Meanwhile you can get a meal of fish or meat, mashed potatoes and some veggies plus Coke Zero in a glass bottle for €8.50.
Or a plate of rice, good quality salad (not a token one) and quarter chicken plus a coffee for €7.50.
This is a greatly simplified POV and also incorrect. Lifestyle is influenced by a lot of things that are not merely choices. Stress, depressions, addictions (sugar is highly addictive), trauma, your social environment. Saying that someone can simply choose a healthy lifestyle is like saying someone can simply choose not to be depressed or addicted.
I'm not saying that. I'm merely saying that things aren't so easy as you make them out to be. Read my post again.
If a problem is systemic in its existence, then it has a systemic cause. Looking at it as an individual problem is fine for yourself, but if you want to fix it for a society, you have to look at the systemic cause instead.
Getting stuck on individual responsibility as a route to society-wide change is a smooth road to failure.
How to solve the problem this has created is again another seperate question. But I would suggest that problems caused by individual choices have very few (and very unsatisfying) solutions, other than personal responsibility. Which all tend to require denying people their liberties (like the way you might put a person in jail if they refuse to stop choosing to commit crimes).
It is, you just don't want to admit it. People didn't all individually decide to change their lifestyle, their lifestyle changed due to their environmental conditions changing. People aren't fully rational actors, but they are responsive actors.
And their decisions vary based on their environment and circumstances. Alter the environment, and you can easily get better decisions and results.
One thing some people do when trying to adopt a healthier diet is to change where they keep healthy vs unhealthy food in their house, to make healthier food more convenient and unhealthy food less convenient. They alter their environment to encourage better moment-to-moment decisions. We can choose as a society to do the same thing.
The point is not to make unhealthy decisions literally impossible; it's virtually always possible to make unhealthy or healthy choices, but how easy or hard they are can vary quite a bit. The point is to make healthier decisions the easy, default option.
Putting aside the "healthy vs unhealthy" food contrivance, how do you propose that society decides to keep healthier food options in individual people's houses? If somebody chooses to do that, they are individually choosing to make a lifestyle change. According to you this strategy is a "smooth road to failure".
It's not a strict binary system, but there's definitely foods that are broadly healthier or unhealthier. Unless you think Dorito's and broccoli are equally healthy.
> how do you propose that society decides to keep healthier food options in individual people's houses?
I would focus on the things the government can control. Transportation is a big one: the government already controls roads and streets, and the US has pushed car dominance in transportation options for decades now, and it's been very successful, with most trips done by car.
Switching to a model where walking, biking, and public transit are co-equal with driving overall, would result in more exercise in transportation, among the other benefits of multimodal transportation.
Tons of people actually do like walking, biking, and public transit when those options are actually good -- you see a lot of Americans comment on this when they visit other countries that do better here -- but in most US cities, they kinda suck. There's usually little that's useful within walking distance, biking feels both unpleasant and unsafe, and buses/trains are slow and unreliable, if they even exist at all.
Those are all fixable issues, it's just a matter of where we choose to invest as a society. We've mostly been investing into car-dominant transportation, and so cars usually make the most sense in our built environments. And we're talking about societal-level choices here; people don't get to individually choose if the buses are reliable, or if bike paths are unsafe, or if zoning allows for neighborhood bakeries and grocery stores.