Being fat is a trap | Hacker News Reader

Being fat is a trap

federicopereiro.com

161 pointsswah359 comments

> but you have the choice to step out of the fat trap.

People should also talk about the volition trap. I'm 40 and it feels like I've had more than a life's worth of people talking about how "you can do it if you just try!"

> ... advertising signs that con / you into thinking you can do what's never been done / meantime life goes on all around you

The sheer scope of the obesity pandemic should make it clear that we are not the problem, that our volitions are not the problem. Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence? How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation? Certainly so many people shouldn't have to try so hard? Sure, some people succeed, but in world where the overwhelming majority are failing, maybe "trying harder" is just akin to insanity?

I love Dr Jason Fung. His position is that our current system focuses on calories and not eating all the time, not avoiding processed foods, being insulin insensitive, and eating real food. Here's a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgmFEb0b0TI His hypothesis is that having high levels of insulin is the issue.

People need to remember that being insulin resistant and being overweight are chronic conditions. You won't be able to fix them overnight. Don't focus on decreasing calories, focus on eating real food. The article mentions this too.

One thing that was counterintuitive to me is that most people's bodies produce insulin in response to artificial sugar so there's no real difference between diet coke and coke on your body.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzdwiOfW4b8&pp=ygURbGF5bmUgb...

In India, most people don't take huge junk food. They still get diabetes because of calorie heavy food and eating all time without letting the stomach get empty even for a minute.

It's the food addiction. People can't stop eating just like alcohol, cigarette or drugs.

I agree we shouldn't eat all the time. That's what was in my comment.

Quick question, in addition to eating all of the time do they eat processed foods like I mentioned in my comment? Examples include soda, white rice, flour (Naan), etc. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/curbing-indias-ult...

The premise of western civilization is that most of us are unfit idiots and natural slaves and we must fight to get out of our miserable subaltern state.

> The sheer scope of the obesity pandemic should make it clear that we are not the problem

The "obesity pandemic" is a very distinct trait of USA. The rest of the world does not have this problem at this magnitude.

The rest of the developed world is catching up.

Most of the rest of the world is where the US was 20-30 years ago when the US certainly had an “obesity pandemic”.

There are 127 countries with an obesity rate higher than 20% (roughly what the US was at 30 years ago).

In nearly every country in the world, your ancestors from 30 years ago would call you fat.

The US is just ahead of the curve for some reason.

Depending on the coutnry, this is somewhat overstated.

For example, here in Europe it's rather clear just by eye (but also borne out in the data) that the increase in obesity here is actually just an increase in age.

Older people (up to a point) tend to be plumper than young people. The rapidly increasing average age in Europe then causes an average increase in obesity.

There’s something to that. Obesity rates do peak in middle age (but they drop after that).

But obesity rates don’t correlate well with average country age, and if you look at childhood obesity rates in Europe they have increased dramatically.

Most European countries have childhood obesity rates close to the US childhood obesity rates in the early 90, many are much higher.

The US has also increased in average age quite a bit as well.

While the US is one of the most severe cases (and in particular has a large number of _very_ obese people, making it more _visible_), most of the world does have an obesity problem.

The answer, I believe, is that we are unique among all other creatures in that we are not equipped to be able to master our own actions. We all do things we would say we ought not to have done. The whole concept of fairness is built around the fact that people don’t always do what they should.

And just because everybody isn’t fat doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with porn, or substance abuse, or some other hangup they can’t seem to shake. In fact it’s the people who deny having any issues that are sometimes the least self-aware, having the most glaringly obvious issues to everyone else around them.

A lot of people mentioning willpower but not as much attention is given to the fact that everything in our millions of years evolutionary design is biased toward heavy reward for caloric foods, and within the past 100 years we are suddenly in an environment where those cravings can be fulfilled in abundance.

A modern diet is a restrictive diet. We live in a time when half of our produced food is thrown away. That's why veganism makes so much sense nowadays. Nothing about the modern diet is "natural" for most people.

Meat was awesome when calories were sparse/intermittent. Now it's just excess for the sake of a status symbol. Same can be said about a lot of our foods.

>We live in a time when half of our produced food is thrown away.

I don't see how this is a relevant fact. If we threw away 10x the food does that make our diet even more unhealthy? Moreover if technological innovations like refrigeration decreases food waste, does that magically make our diet healthy again?

>That's why veganism makes so much sense nowadays. Nothing about the modern diet is "natural" for most people.

>Meat was awesome when calories were sparse/intermittent. Now it's just excess for the sake of a status symbol. Same can be said about a lot of our foods.

If you turn back the clock even more (ie. pre-agriculture), you'd probably see the reverse (ie. more meat consumption).

> If you turn back the clock even more (ie. pre-agriculture), you'd probably see the reverse (ie. more meat consumption).

I believe you're agreeing with the comment you're commenting on. Before calories were easily available, meat was the most reliable form of protein and fat in most environments.

>If you turn back the clock even more (ie. pre-agriculture), you'd probably see the reverse (ie. more meat consumption).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Or really your entire reply doesn't make much sense.

Pre-agriculture people starved on a regular basis. Calories were scarce in general which is why meat was important. It was a calorie and nutrient bomb when those were irregular/hard to come by.

And even then their diets were primarily plant based, think about 80%. Analysis of human scat remains has repeatedly confirmed that ancient diets were primarily plant based. Most of this research comes from academia in countries not obsessed with beef(not the US).

Modern misinformation directly contradicts fact in this area and much of it is driven by cattle/dairy industries and bro-science marketing that the carnivore diet makes ya stronk/patriotic/manly. In reality, the meat heavy western diet is associated with a long list of preventable diseases and ailments. Gotta love heart attacks at 40 yrs old cuz of these beef heavy diets.

Which is easier(and burns less calories) to harvest: an animal you have to spend hours tracking/killing/processing or stationary plants you can forage throughout the day? Remember, they didn't have guns, vehicles, etc. This was spears and running in the elements.

>I don't see how this is a relevant fact.

Meat was great when calories and nutrients were scarce. Nobody is denying that. However, we live in 2025, not 10000BC, which means calories and nutrients are so abundant to the point we throw away half of what we produce. This means the benefit of meat is no longer a benefit.

Meat is awesome when you need an optimal mix of nutrients — not just empty calories. Of course it's certainly possible to get the right proportions of macronutrients and sufficient micronutrients on a vegan diet but it takes a lot more planning and attention to detail.

> an optimal mix of nutrients

not much: meats lacks A. fibers and B. carbohydrate. Some can argue removing B isn't a bad idea, it certainly is quire restrictive. Removing A. have many short and long terms effects that are not very desirable.

Therefore most meat eaters also eat thinks like vegetables, beans, grains etc... which "unbalance" the "right proportions" (if that exist) of meat. It's very hard to achieve near perfect macro and micro nutriments if not with an artificial and perfectly calculated meals taking into account daily physical activity, psychological state, temperature, infections exposure etc... I'm not even sure ISS guys get such a calculation.

> sufficient micronutrients

This is easily done by eating plenty of plants -which is exactly what non meat eaters do- and a pill of B12. One can count but it's not more necessary than if they want a perfectly balanced meat diet, which also have its "problems" when not perfectly balanced.

How does veganism help in this case? The problem is not meat, the problem is junk food, high sugar and carbs.

If by "veganism", you simply mean healthy diet, then I agree.

Think of it this way: Meat is a junk food. It's a calorie bomb that lacks essential macronutrients, fiber being a key one. Without managing your intake it leads to health problems. It can be addictive("But meat is soooo delicious I could never give it up"). It's not necessary for your survival; it is optional in 2025.

Sure sounds like a junk food.

Then there is the long list of benefits of giving up meat. Not just for you but the environment, which means it benefits every living creature on the planet.

Something being evolutionary is not an argument for anything. Just like something being natural isn't necessarily good for you.

Sometimes I really really want to punch a certain coworker in the face, but I still don't, and that's despite the temptation by "evolutionary design".

I agree. I really like wearing shoes for example.

It's still worth noting everything in our programming wants us to consume sweet foods, but this is maladaptive in the modern world.

> [...] I still don't, and that's despite the temptation by "evolutionary design".

This too, is downstream of evolutionary design. What drove us into becoming that which cares about discovering and conforming to complex social structures / rules?

> ... "within the past 100 years we are suddenly in an environment where those cravings can be fulfilled in abundance."

And an environment where a massive completely out of control advertising industry that's injected into pretty much everything these days abuses every psychological trick in the book to capitalize on those evolutionary cravings.

This. If the ad industry put half as much effort into promoting healthy eating, we wouldn't train everyone to eat poorly and/or excessively at a young age.

FFS, look at how long it took to get calorie counts on menu signage! And that's the lowest hanging fruit.

1. Fix fast food + the ad industry by financially penalizing pushing unhealthy food.

2. Rework the food supply chain to support healthier eating. (Less ultra-processed, shelf-stable items, more easy-to-cook healthy options + increase availability in food deserts)

Between lost productivity and end of life health expenses, I can't believe there isn't an economic argument for this.

It's difficult to drive systematic changes in the food supply chain because there are so many different entities involved, each trying to maximize profit. But we are finally seeing limited positive steps with some states banning junk food purchases with food stamps (SNAP) and the FDA banning some synthetic food dyes.

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-ten-states-changing-rules...

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/hhs-fda-...

> the FDA banning some synthetic food dyes.

This feels like a really weird first thing to spend effort on. I don't think it would make a list of the top 100 things to fix in the US food system.

For the most part, supply follows from demand than the other way around. If people cared more about healthy food more than convenient and tasty food, then companies will sell and advertise healthier food. Chinatowns were historically poor, but they never turned into food deserts because vegetables are a quintessential part of Chinese cuisine.

Taxing unhealthy food may work, but that would also piss a lot of people off who have their palates destroyed from eating too junk food, especially since you'd need taxes to be high enough to basically force people to change their habits. Subsidies for healthy food tend to benefit the the upper-middle class the most. Subsidizing school lunches that are both healthy and not disgusting is the only option I see as both feasible and effective.

> Chinatowns were historically poor, but they never turned into food deserts because vegetables are a quintessential part of Chinese cuisine.

The key component you're talking about here is culture, which is absolutely malleable to advertising over intermediate timespans.

Look at the Chinese shift towards greater amounts of meat consumption, driven by its promotion as a symbol of wealth.

And many of these beliefs are set in childhood. Imho, the rest of the world would do well to follow the Japanese/French tradition, where introducing children to healthy food options is taken seriously.

I’m thin but I agree with you, I don’t have to think or try to be this way, I just am. I do probably have healthier habits than average. But still, it comes naturally to me. I would feel awful and exhausted if it took willpower all the time just to maintain my weight.

> The sheer scope of the obesity pandemic should make it clear that we are not the problem, that our volitions are not the problem. Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence? How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation? Certainly so many people shouldn't have to try so hard? Sure, some people succeed, but in world where the overwhelming majority are failing, maybe "trying harder" is just akin to insanity?

At least in the US where the problem is much worse than in the EU, I would say the major driving factor is the lack of cheap healthy foods.

We're starting to get more healthy options in the US but the problem I see again and again is that food is always painted as "trendy" and therefore commands a higher price. I can go into McDonalds and buy fries and a cheeseburger for around ~$5. But if I try to get a healthier option from another place I'm looking at $10-15 for just about anything.

Every time I travel to Europe or Latin America I'm always shocked at how easy it is to find cheap healthy food. I can pop down to a local fast food place and for around $5 get a piece of chicken, beans and rice. This by no means fancy but it's solid healthy food.

But if you go to the grocery store, enough beans and vegetables to last multiple meals will run you $5...

Watch other people shop at the grocery store. They buy the vegetables, beans, raw meats, and dairy. They spend more time there than anywhere else on the store.

Watch what other people eat in their day. How many of their calories came from meals created with only the above ingredients? 25%?

I’ve heard this before and just don’t get it. Buying healthy food is generally cheaper, or just as expensive in my experience. Buy some vegetables, some chicken, some fruit, eggs. These are generally very affordable, you just have to cook with them.

Sure, buying Just Salad is more expensive than buying McDonald’s, but that’s not the only options.

The bigger problem IMO: we put way more sugar, sweeteners, and addictive substances in food and have big portions where people feel obligated to finish. It’s very easy to eat 100g of sugar every day and hardly notice. Combine that with most American activities involving food and alcohol.

We have a culture that encourages eating and food that responds by being more eatable

>At least in the US where the problem is much worse than in the EU, I would say the major driving factor is the lack of cheap healthy foods.

And portion sizes! There a several factors that lead to such large portions. Americans expect (and now desire, thanks to the ever expanding gut lines) to be stuffed from an ordered meal so producers spend the extra $1 on food costs to ensure larger portions and fewer complaints. We'd complain is the the $9 burger was made into 1/3 sized $3 burgers. Additionally the fixed costs of running a food joint require to low cost and high margin items (like fountain soda) to survive.

Portion size isn't an issue if you make your own food like most of the world does. But that is just yet another reason why Americans are fat I guess, its easier to get fat when you don't cook the food you eat.

A couple of years ago, I was researching modern food science (for unrelated reasons). What really struck me was how focused we are on product longevity. Everything must have low available water in order to survive warehouses, transit, and shelves. Sugar, sodium, oils, and phosphates are all just tools to accomplish this.

Put another way, the bag of chips at the American grocery is _designed from concept to factory_ to be unable to support living beings. Microorganisms would die from dehydration trying to eat the chips. But due to a bug in human psychology, when we eat them we just feel more hungry. There only regulating feeling we get is guilt.

> Put another way, the bag of chips at the American grocery is _designed from concept to factory_ to be unable to support living beings.

This is a weird leap. Yes, there is some degree of modern engineering in packaged food to prevent spoilage but "unable to support living beings" is the wrong conclusion. You're implying the food lacks nutritive value, which is not true.

That is because Americans shop every 2 weeks so things need to last 2 weeks.

In other countries that shops more frequently there is less need for that, and there these products has much fewer additives.

>Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence? How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

There have been fundamental shifts in CI and CO. Food went from fundamentally scarce and requiring effort to fairly abundant, and the effort to acquire keeps going down. Over the course of US history we have gone from farmers to factory workers to desk workers. Each of those transitions has lowered "natural" daily CO, as such each one has brought about weight increases.

>"trying harder" is just akin to insanity?

Yes, try smarter. CI/CO is true but I find it to be bad advice because a) it is damn near impossible to measure, and b) straight forward CI/CO changes can lead to opposite results.

What I find works for me:

Cut CI a little bit, large calorie cuts can slow metabolism. Up CO a little bit, exercise boosts metabolism even when not working out. Anerobic is better at boosting metabolism than aerobic.

Food wise, sugar and salt drive the human appetite. Reducing them will help you not feel as hungry while reducing CI. The other is just get used to eating less. Low food days help reorient to smaller meals feeing right. By "low food day" I mean find something small, low sugar, and salt (personally I use unsalted peanuts) when you feel hungry stop and focus on the feeling and try to determine if it is actual hunger or just habit hunger, if it is "real" hunger then eat a handful of peanuts and wait 15min before you reevaluate. The day after eating less will feel normal.

This is all great. It also helps to drink a lot of water.

I don’t want to disagree with you but I have a hard time with preaching that people are not be personally responsible for themselves.

I get your point that genes are important and some are blessed while others are not. But regardless what your genes are, you need to find a way to take care of yourself. You are not entitled to someone else taking responsibility for you and your problems.

> you need to find a way to take care of yourself

Here's the crux of the issue; for most people who are fat, finding a way to take care of themselves is so onerous, complex, and difficult that they're not technically stuck, but they're effectively stuck. If you need to drive more than an hour to get access to food that won't be terrible for you, it's not surprising that so many people have a problem.

Slowly getting into fasting is not onerous, complex, and difficult. It just sucks, especially when you're physically addicted.

But no one needs to eat above BMR? Eat whatever you want but control the portion.

Who is shoving food down your throat for years on end?

Millions of years of evolution.

evolution makes food taste good. society creates status games to regulate this behavior?

Their choices led them to get stuck and their choices are the only thing that can get them unstuck. Maybe they don’t want to get unstuck, who are we to tell people how to live?

It's not genes here, it's the food industry, constant advertising... There's an entire industry predicated on keeping people fat through overconsumption.

Telling people they should "take care of themselves" is cute, but it's completely pointless. You have to solve the systemic issues.

Societal norms are the problem. We’ve normalized unhealthy food. Big business has figured hit that if they make processed/refined foods easily accessible, you will buy them. Nobody wins here except shareholders, and only those shareholders in good health who don’t have to compete to get access from doctors who are overbooked with patients who have manifested a chronic illness that is statistically correlated with the aforementioned food.

A real mystery indeed ... Or ... we are slowing moving towards some crescendo where all this enshittification is intertwined: cheap packaging, maliciously deceptive marketing, marketing EVERYWHERE, garbage food, exploited workers, etc. The "rant" about corporations are ruining everything is just real life now more than ever. Finding healthy food is difficult and getting more expensive. In general finding quality anything is getting more difficult and more expensive. All while we are bludgeoned with advertising that tells us the opposite.

The idea that one person could fight this battle day in and day out on their own if they just try harder seems comical at best. Feels like victim blaming to be honest and I hate it. Make healthy food easy to find, identify and buy and tax trash food because it is a burden on the community, just like actual pollution/cigarettes/etc.

Do or do not, there is no try.

When you frame the issue as a matter of willpower or trying harder then you're already setting yourself up to fail. Everyone that I know who has succeeded in maintaining a healthy body composition has done so through permanent lifestyle changes in which they set up better defaults and positive habits. The daily exercise program then becomes something that they have to do whether they want to or not, rather that something that they can really choose. And some of these people literally used to be obese alcoholics, so it's totally possible. Discipline has to be progressively built up over time through exercising it, just like a muscle.

I think sticking with is is still hard. You can commit to doing hard things and still fail - aka "trying hard".

The longer you stick with it, the easier it becomes. It's just a matter of habits and discipline, not trying hard.

I think that's a simplistic take, or at least not a universal thing. For many (most?) people it simply doesn't work like that.

Plenty of reasonable, disciplined people do all the reasonable things to develop new habits and fail.

> How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

IMO: because we have always had nowhere near enough food. Agriculture revolution was what, 10,000 years ago? That's a blip.

It's entirely possible in my mind that the same mechanism and behaviors that fuel obesity were actually helpful for almost all of human history. It's just now, like right now, that they're a problem.

And it becomes even more obvious to me when I look at other animals. I look at my cute dog. If I gave him infinite access to food, I have no doubt he'd be dead by the end of the week. Is he stupid? Is he broken? Or was he never intended to be in that situation?

> IMO: because we have always had nowhere near enough food. Agriculture revolution was what, 10,000 years ago? That's a blip.

I think its the opposite, agricultural is much more reliable food so then population could grow until everyone barely starved. Before then people either had more food than they could use or they just died from starvation, people generally lived better lives before agriculture but there were much less people.

The reason we grow fat is because its good to be fat when you are a hunter gatherer, since there is more food than you can possible eat when you kill a large animal you just eat as much as you can, and then you survive better if you don't find another kill for a while.

Agriculture only started to produce enough food for everyone when we human stopped multiplying, before then starvation was only a few generations away as people would multiply exponentially until there isn't enough food again.

There is a blame industry and an excuses industry in an arms race with each other.

> Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence?

Why not? We're all weak, in one way or another.

> How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

There never was enough calories to go around. Getting as much as you can and storing them for later as fat used to make sense until very, very recently.

Hi HN! OP here. Thank you everyone for reading and commenting. Thanks to your feedback I have done the following edits to the post:

- Added a comment on GLP-1 agonists. I wrote the article like it was 2023, not 2025. These drugs now exist and their benefits massively outweigh their drawbacks, particularly for people that really need help. Anything that helps out of the trap, particularly with this effectiveness, should be front and center. Thank you for pointing it out.

- Added a comment on my take on the usefulness of exercise for this process. I don't believe in exercise as a calory burner, but as something you need in order to be strong, fit, flexible and feel better mentally. It supports you in your journey. Exercise in order to burn calories to get lean is counterproductive. It is a thick wall of the mental fat trap.

- I realize that my struggles (and I don't say this lightly) have been a small fraction of what many of you had to go through, or are still going through. I also mentioned this in the article now. For some, it can be ten, a hundred, a thousand times harder than for others to break free from being overweight and be able to regulate their food in a way that is mentally healthy.

- I also added this: "Incidentally, I don't think this is about willpower (this is another parallel with Carr's insight). The decision to change comes from a deeper source. When I was most obsessed about asserting willpower over my eating, I was having the worst time and making bad choices. Getting out involves awareness, work, and a willingness to fail and keep on trying. The authors above say it much better than I can."

Hope again this was helpful for those with like struggles.

good article, I can (unfortunately) relate. another aspect of the trap is when you have set backs (stress, life events) or get tired (long days, less sleep, emotional events) typically the first recourse is to stop the hardest parts: physical fitness, e.g., you take a car instead of bike/walk, skip sports, alcohol instead of water. it's sometimes a vicious circle, you're tired due to overweight, thus eat more to get energy, making you more overweight.

You brought up smoking and were mere inches near the truth but quickly ran away back into the lalaland... Smoking used to be more prevalent than obesity. Did we bring it down with "smoking positivity" and did shaming and harassing smokers only brought harm? What do you think?

For what it's worth, I believe that shaming is generally not helpful. For people to step out of a difficult situation, they need to be empowered. They will probably find your help more useful than you shaming them, or at least your sympathy. At least that's how I see it.

So, in your opinion, what curbed smoking? I don't recall any empowerment campaigns targeted at smokers.

I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

Finding ways you enjoy to keep an active lifestyle is a great idea, probably the highest impact thing you can do for your long term well being (for people in this community I strongly recommend trying rock climbing or martial arts, especially BJJ, both very mentally challenging sports).

However, author's recipe doesn't work for everyone, and you shouldn't feel terrible if it doesn't work for you. Also, I'm hearing amazing things about those new drugs.

Visceral fats leading to diabetes can be present without someone being visibly overweight.

Similarly people who appear overweight may have low volumes of visceral fat. Health is hard to determine without analysis and testing.

I had an overweight BMI when I could run a sub 3-hour marathon, I’ve concluded my body just doesn’t match the normal range.

Since BMI can't differentiate between fat and muscle, it breaks down for people who are very muscular. That said, most people are sedentary and hardly even exercise, so BMI is a good approximation. The people who are very muscular are probably well informed about this caveat that no buff bodybuilder thinks they're the same as an overweight person just because their BMI is the same.

It bears repeating that BMI at an individual level is at best a hint that something is wrong (and never that someone is healthy).

Another point is that you can be good athletically speaking and yet have too much body fat to be considered healthy. An extreme example is that of professional fighters in open-weight categories.

Great point. This comment reminds me of Mary Cain, who was fast and dominant until she joined Nike and Salazar tried to get her to lose weight. It became clear the lower weight impaired her health and performance.

Or BMI is a bullshit health metric. Ask any bodybuilder or powerlifter.

It is bullshit, but for most average people with average levels of exercise (or no exercise at all, sedentary lifestyle is pretty common) it's good enough to tell if something is wrong.

It's not A1C or something that's actively tracking your success and management in the long term, it's just the kind of thing where you look at it, look at the person, and say "is this a problem?" and usually it's clear.

>Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

Exercise -- even heavily -- will never compensate a bad diet; that focus we have on exercise as weight control is detrimental.

What it does do is improve your metabolism and health, both physical and mental. This can improve lots of your processes. Neglecting exercise is absolutely destructive and restricting calories does not get you those things, in fact it can work against them. Building muscle also helps burn calories and improves insulin response. Obviously, it is not enough on its own without a healthy lifestyle as a whole.

I think focusing on anything solely is detrimental but focusing on exercise as an aspect is good.

- eat a bit less food

- eat food that is higher on the satiety index

- eat food that has less easily absorbed calories/less processed/etc

- build muscle to raise your resting metabolic rate slightly

- sleep well

etc

I think a bit of everything with mostly a focus on less calories will be easier to adopt than just telling people to track calories into perpetuity and feel like they're starving for a good while.

I doubt it. There is no real evidence for genetics playing a major role here. You are probably underestimating your friends' energy intake. Exercise is great for many reasons but you can't outrun a bad diet. They're probably eating a lot more than you think, especially when you're not around.

The new drugs work; just not for everyone. Some folks won't react well to the drugs. For others, there's no reaction, but they don't affect their cravings.

I have several friends that have had miraculous weight loss, as a result of Ozempic.

>I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

>Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

An often overlooked factor is how much snacking is done. If you eat "all the carbs and fats", but they're contained to a single meal a few times a week, and the portions are reasonable (ie. you're not stuffing yourself every meal), that has far less caloric impact than someone eating "salad" everyday, but loaded with dressing and snacking voraciously on the side.

Oh no I snack all day every day. Can still taste those cashews from a few minutes ago.

> I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

> Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

Whether that's a boon or a bane not depends on which body fat and especially visceral body fat you end up with. Looking fit (which is somewhat captured by BMI) but actually being unhealthy (body fat) makes it easier to ignore in the short-term.

> I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

You’d be surprised just how little you eat. I’m also like that, thinking that I eat shitton and don’t get fat at all while my friends can’t lose 5 kilo. When I’ve started counting, even with all the junk food, I’ve been barely pushing above 1,5k.

Yeah this is correct. I eat whatever I want, snack a lot, etc. Never been fat because I just don't eat that much in aggregate.

I averaged 4,000+ calories per day in high school through the first couple years of college. Almost all junk food—pizza, chips, crackers, eggo waffles, french fries, that kind of thing. Enormous amounts of soda. Milk shakes. Cappuchinos and mochas, in the later years.

All I did for activity was ride bikes some and lift weights a little, plus usual kid stuff, no serious sports or training.

I had visible ab muscles and would get a full-on six pack if I did e.g. a lot of swimming in a week. During those times I'd have relatives concerned I was sick or something, my face would get so gaunt.

Metabolisms are weird. HGH and T are basically magic I guess? I truly have no idea where all that energy was going. Must have been mostly coming out the other end unprocessed, I suppose, or else somehow used up by my gut biome. Can't figure any other way.

> I truly have no idea where all that energy was going.

Growing your body. I was the same in my late teens and early 20's. Family called it the POW Aesthetic. 6'1" & 150lbs, couldn't put an lb more on. I was strong as shit though, in a practical sense. No issue throwing 100lb feed bags over a shoulder and walking it up some stairs into storage, things like that. I was both doing active things all the time, and finishing growing my body. The summer I got my last growth spurt was agony, my bones hurt every night and I was a bottomless void of hunger.

Also, do not underestimate this bit:

> All I did for activity was ride bikes some and lift weights a little, plus usual kid stuff, no serious sports or training.

Specifically I believe the "usual kid stuff" part was doing a lot for you, I know it was for me. Looking back I now realize that my "usual kid stuff" was me being very, very active. I was pounding out 20k+ steps a day just moving around the family farm, miles on a bike (often on grass too), and then maybe an hour of pick-up soccer in the evening. This was just normal activity for me back then, I would not have considered any of it Intentional Exercise. Today I'd have to intentionally train for an ironman to even start approaching that level of activity.

I gained 15lbs the _summer_ I got my first desk job, that was entirely because I replaced 8 hours of walking around and doing things with 8 hours of sitting in a chair, and about 30 minutes of walking for breaks and lunch.

Right, me too, which lead me to one conclusion: the root cause of obesity isn't overeating, it's a propensity to overeat. I don't have that propensity so I'm not obese, and probably won't be, unless that changes.

It's the same way I kind of view alcohol. Alcoholics are always alcoholics, even if they don't drink. Because drinking isn't alcoholism, having the desire to drink to the point of self-destruction is alcoholism.

Yep. I have IBD and have to track calories to keep my intake _up_. It's shocking how much food you have to eat to get much more than 2k a day.

It's not at all difficult if you are eating junk food. For example a single Medium Pizza alone is enough to fill your entire day's worth of calories.

I know because I've experimented with this when I started measuring my weight, heck sometimes having a single Wendy's Baconator will not only fill your entire calories but even make you gain weight.

Your activity levels of course also matter but I'm assuming sedentary lifestyle.

This is much more different for healthy foods however.

I get sick of junk food quickly (and sometimes sick from junk food).

Counter-anecdote: I have a smallish build and have well-tuned satiety, but a consistent measured TDEE of 2400~2500 kCal, and would go hungry and waste away at 1.5k.

I agree there’s no substitute for measuring your numbers. But meticulous calorie and weight tracking is probably a big ask for the average person, even though it’s imo absolutely necessary for controlling your weight one way or another.

Spending some months with a TDEE spreadsheet can be helpful but requires logging a lot of CI and weights -- if you go to any online TDEE calc you might overestimate your activity level.

I was surprised that running 6h/week and 15k/steps a day gave me an TDEE activity level at barely above "Light Exercise" and I need about 2460/day.

The "Moderate" activity level is if you actually work construction and haul bricks all day!

People don't realize how wildly appetite varies between individuals. Thinner people tend to think they eat a lot, because they're fulfilling their appetite. Fatter people often think they don't eat that much, because they're rarely full. IME, that's the thing that varies far more than actual metabolism stuff.

> Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

I’ve been chubby despite heavy exercise most of my life. It took me at least 30 years to come to what now seems like the dumbest most obvious realization:

Exercise makes me strong. Food makes me fat.

Now I think of them separately, to a first approximation, as the high order bit. To affect change to my strength, I first need to modify my exercise habits, and to affect change to my weight, I fist need to modify my eating habits. Of course I’m not saying you can’t burn calories exercising, but it’s actually been extremely helpful in my weight loss goals to mentally separate exercise from eating. Instead of thinking of exercise as _the_ way to lose weight, I think of diet as the primary tool, and exercise as something that is primarily for strength and activity and only secondarily for weight control.

The reason I’ve been fat despite exercise is, of course, because I naturally compensate for exercise by eating more. For me, I was eating until I feel a certain level of fullness, and that level seems to be slightly too much regardless of how much physical activity I do. Finally realizing that I don’t need to exercise harder, I ‘just’ need to track what I eat, is what finally actually worked. But like the article says, simple is not easy; I air-quoted the ‘just’ in that last sentence because successful food tracking is mentally difficult.

One of the fun side effects of tracking my eating instead of thinking of exercise as the primary weight loss tool is that with respect to food, exercise sort-of reversed it’s function for me, in a way. Instead of thinking of it as my weight loss tool and relying on it to compensate for what I ate, I sometimes use exercise to allow me to eat more when I’m hungry or want a treat. It’s funny, I know I said the same thing two ways, but my mindset changed almost 180 degrees. When I’m in a calorie deficit, I’ve noticed that days I don’t exercise I get more tired and hungry than days I do exercise.

I’ve come to understand “getting in shape” is literally that. Food just gives your body energy and nutrients, how you use your body decides what shape it’ll take (how it directs that energy and nutrients).

To support what you said, there has been exactly one time in my life where I was exercising enough that it affected my weight, and that was when I was playing water polo for 3 hours a day, every day. That is a level of exercise that just about no one will put themselves through, where even your down time is spent treading water. And all that working out? Equivalent to pretty much one meal you'll get at a restaurant. And makes you ravenous, so the real reason it worked was that it capped out my availability of food, not my appetite for it.

As the saying goes, weight is lost in the kitchen.

Exercise is absolutely invaluable for general health but its not effective alone for weight loss for most people.

Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever.

It was incredibly hard and took me a long time to lose 15 pounds as a always had been skinny person whose weight slowly crept up.

I've never been obese and I'm sure it's super challenging to change, considering how hard loosing 15 lbs was for me. But if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down.

> Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever.

That second part makes it harder. Losing weight was pretty simple for me, but maintaining that low weight was much harder. Someone said that it takes about half a year to form a habit. I maintained lower weight for about a year, then it came back.

Adipocytes live like 10 years[0]. You need to maintain for a long time for those cells to die off. Otherwise, it is easy to regain.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover

IME the key is a very simple mindset shift. People generally try to ignore or overpower the sensation of hunger. That is super, super difficult over long periods of time. Instead what they should do is very directly and explicitly manage that felt sensation.

The key insight is that your sensation of hunger is primarily driven by the weight of your stomach (not the caloric contents or volumetric fullness of it).

So the question is how do you increase the weight of your stomach (decrease sensation of hunger) without increasing caloric consumption. You just eat a lot of low caloric density foods!

Divide calories by grams on the nutrition label. Lower is better. Replace as many items as you can in your diet with the nearest alternative that is of lower caloric density.

Nonfat greek yogurt and seitan are the two biggest hacks ever. Adopting this mindset will also probably astound you how many calories modern engineering can fit into a gram. Would be a pretty great achievement if we had to trek long distances, but here we are munching on this stuff while sitting all day.

This is extremely good advice! In particular, I agree completely the key is to figure out mentally how not to frame the problem as a willpower issue or as overcoming hunger. That is a setup for failure and feelings of shame. Making it about self-control and avoiding temptation is the worst thing you can do.

Yeah I instinctively did the same thing once I finally was able to bring myself to counting calories. Once you have a budget, you want to game the budget to feel full, so it makes veggies start looking a lot more attractive, and things like chocolate easier to avoid.

For me one of the big byproducts of this thinking is that my feeling of fullness was mis-calibrated a little bit. As a result, when I’m full according to my calorie counter, I think about how what I’m feeling is not hunger but the correct level of full. I’m recalibrating what full means to me, and believe it or not it actually helps me to not feel like I’m trying to overcome hunger.

> if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down.

Don't they only prescribe these for the morbidly obese? As someone "merely" overweight (BMI ~27) I'd like to try but I don't think I'm fat enough to get a prescription.

For better or worse, most of the online pharmacies like Ro or Hims will prescribe it to anyone with a pulse. Some insurance companies don't cover it unless your BMI is over like 40.

Pretty sure these aren’t available to me (in Germany), I will have to get an actual prescription.

I was around 27 as well. I’m a big guy with a muscular frame but put on extra weight over the last 2 years of intense company building. If you can get a prescription (Hims will prescribe) you may have to pay out of pocket, but worth it IMO. They may want you to be at 30 BMI, but that is easy to fudge on their intake (they won’t do any validation of your intake numbers). Commit to a few months of extreme dedication and let the financial impact be a motivator.

Reassess progress towards your renewal (we did 3 months). It’s literally cheating, in the best way.

I think the definition of "fat enough" will come down quickly as these drugs become better understood. If the side effects are mild or manageable, why not prescribe it to anyone who even comes within striking distance of "overweight"? There are other kinds of medications, like those for high cholesterol, where it's a no-brainer to just start taking them when your cholesterol crosses some threshold.

>no-brainer

Many experts including cardiologists maintain that the current mainstream protocols for statin drugs do more harm than good.

Some* experts, and frankly I really doubt their perspective because it's all a risk management thing.

It's not that statins are good for you, it's that heart disease is the number 1 killer in the US and surgery is very risky. If we're able to better control cholesterol and hypertension without invasive methods that's very good.

Also GLP-1s lower cholesterol too. So it's possibly statins will be going out a bit out of fashion in the future.

The statin skeptics all have protocols to address heart disease. It's not like they are advocating doing nothing about the risk.

They do to an extent, but the things they recommend are also recommended by cardiologists who prescribe statins. I mean, lifestyle and diet is going to be the first words out of a cardiologist's mouth when you see them and you have high cholesterol.

The reality, I think, is that that is just not a very effective treatment plan for a lot of people.

Agreed. I lost about 10 kg back to ~60 kg of the teen myself (now I'm 50). It took quite a lot of exercise but that was the easy part. The most difficult part was avoiding eating off hours apart from avoiding alcohol and sugar altogether. Now. Maintenance is surely easier.

On a side note, I keep exercising at least 2-3 hours per week and honestly I feel physically much better than I used to feel in my 30s.

Alcohol destroys any diet. I’m amazed how much more energy I have and how much weight I’ve lost being sober.

In my experience, beer is the biggest one. I got gout young (which my weight didn't help, but mostly truly cursed genes), and beer was/is a huge trigger. Turns out excruciating pain is a hell of a motivator, so all my beer consumption was swapped out for equivalent alcohol amounts of liquor pretty much overnight. I lost a significant amount of weight over the next year.

What's working for me now is just deciding what I want to weigh, but I couldn't do that for years. First I had to learn to actually control my eating, like not eating every time I felt like stuffing my face, getting enough sleep so I wasn't constantly fighting urges, and figuring out how much I need to walk to burn off extra calories.

'Just eat less and exercise more' never worked because I needed to learn how to do these smaller skills myself first. Once I learned what it actually takes to eat less and actually exercise more, that simple advice started becoming possible. It's still a work in progress.

For me, quitting tobacco was simple, don’t use. Quitting alcohol was simple. Don’t drink. I cannot simply abstain from eating. I can relate to the struggles and feelings from this article.

It can be this simple if you eat a controlled diet. Say Soylent or similar only for 3 months. Compliance is very easy to detect at least

Truth, but I also argue that I am not addressing the underlying emotional traps that I attempted to escape using tobacco and alcohol. Those same mental/emotional traps just shifted/intensified with my eating. Perhaps it is that simple, but I also feel it’s important to address the root factors, which I haven’t, admittedly.

Controlled diet + controlled exercise. Freshly prepared daily full-day meals delivery + personal trainer at the gym 2x/week combo is the only thing that ever worked for me. And it worked every time (3 times) in different countries. I would get fat again in between those periods, like I am now, after staying in a rural area without those facilities.

yuck - while the soylent diet might be efficient on short term, it's not sustainable. It's harder at first to eat better, healthier foods (more vegetables and fruits, meat and eggs, less fried foods and stuff with a zillion additives or refined sugars) but so much easier to maintain once the habit is formed. Stuff yourself with whole foods 80% of the time, it's going to be ok to eat a burger with fries or a pizza every now or then, and it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. Bonus: you'll feel the difference in energy levels.

You don't need to abstain. You can either eat less or simply eat more low caloric food (greens, potatoes, lentils, etc)

Except stopping is much harder than not starting. I can relate, I can go weeks/months without drinking. But then I have a beer and it turns into 10+ before the night is over.

I'm lucky I don't have the problem with food, because you cannot just avoid it like other "bad habits".

"You don't need to abstain". This is the beginning of my message

The point is that black and white, all or nothing is easier for many to stick to. It’s easier to not be tempted by a cigarette if you never see one or hang out with someone who smokes. With food, you can’t take approach.

That is fair but you can't pretend all food is bad when that's not true. That is what I took issue with. You can eat as many greens and lentils as you want. No such thing with cigs

The fact you can’t pretend _is the point_. A blanket policy of “no and never” that works well for other addictions or compulsions can’t be applied to food. :)

As a counter-factual, imagine if every time you wanted to smoke you had to decide if one particular type or brand of cigarette was good for you.

Many people find "cold turkey" to be an effective way to discontinue bad habits or addictive behaviors. It's brutal, but carrying it out is simple and binary.

You can't do that with food. Your only choice is to develop moderation, restraint, and discipline. You're forced to always be around temptation. To always indulge at least a little, but hopefully somehow not too much.

This is much harder to do. And you have to keep doing forever — even when you're tired or stressed or bored or whichever feelings trigger your bad habits. For life.

"Eat less" / "eat veggies" is a mechanical solution to an emotional and physiological problem. The GP is highlighting that some tools we apply to similar problems can't be applied here, and so we see poor results and higher recidivism.

I mostly agree, though you could generously say the analogy would be "don't consume high-cal/low-satiety junk foods". I don't think one needs to deprive themselves forever of any indulgence to lose weight, but maybe some find it easier to fully abstain.

Cannabis made me lose 20kg in a short span (~2 months). But the main reason was extreme loss of appetite. I cooked normal and after 40% of a plate I was full.

You do this for a few days and then you start changing your cooking habbits. This was a year ago and I've held the weight since and simply started eating less. My old eating habbits did not make me gain weight though as my old weight was constant for 10 years.

My main liquid is 98% water. I cant stand soda unless its mixed with 90% water.

Tea is a nice alternative to water, and I say this as someone who doesn't like most drinks other than water.

There's a huge variety of tastes among green teas, white teas, oolong, black teas... Specific tea variety, different locations where the plants are grown, different manipulations, all concur to a lot of different tastes. However, a lot of people I've met just say it tastes like "earthy/dirty water"

Why would anyone drink tea when there's coffee!?!

Which one you prefer is just a matter of taste.

But also, you can stay sufficiently hydrated by drinking just tea. Trying that with coffee will skyrocket your caffeine intake to unhealthy levels.

Also, caffeine is addictive. As someone who is severely addicted to caffeine, I really recommend not getting addicted. Try to drink tea without caffeine, even if you "don't mind" the caffeine in black/green/white tea.

A warm drink is something I hate. No tea/coffee for me. Ice tea is something I would still thin with 90% water + 10% ice tea

> There's a huge variety of tastes

And a lot of those are not "tea" (with theine/caffeine), they're herb infusions such as mint, hibiscus, chamomile, etc. You can drink as much as you want without getting the typical caffeine buzz.

I particularly like the Morocco Mint & Spices that Lipton sells.

Decaf: Organic peppermint tea.

Caf: Turkish Caykur Rize tea with a tiny bit of sugar or honey, and boiling water.

But we can presumably learn to abstain from eating certain things. Like sweet food and sweet drinks. Or certain foods with high fat content. We can learn to eat some things rather than others. It hard to get fat from eating too much of a healthy diet.

Eat only every other day? Fast one week on and off? All entirely possible.

Do you have friends or family? This is a ridiculous proposal for 99.9% of people.

Just don't eat when they do? Its not hard to say no, I do that a lot.

Nice! Given that good advice is something that people can follow, this is still terrible advice.

See, that's the real mental fat trap in my experience. Nobody's actually going to force feed you if you simply turn down food or eating.

You can recognize foods that trigger the addiction cycle and quit those.

> I cannot simply abstain from eating.

Eating is usually (insert a number of asterisks) not a problem, more often than not it is snacks snacks.

The problem is twofold. First, snacks are typically extremely calorie dense. Even a small snack can easily offset caloric deficit coming from reduced portions. Second, leptin, the satiety hormone, is barely secreted from carbs, which are again calorie dense and main ingredient of snacks.

With these two in mind, it is no coincidence that it is hard to not overconsume snacks and snacks quickly lead to caloric surplus.

You could split eating into meals and snacks. And for snacks, you can totally quit it. And according to my experience, it's the snacks that cause the extra weight.

So quick snacking.

To chime on this topic as one that's also quite personally relevant to me, I was obese as a youth. I got extremely into physical culture and healthy eating and pushed myself to become an elite athlete so that I would have another positive feedback mechanism for my diet and exercise habits besides just looking good. This worked quite well, and for years I enjoyed going to the gym 5 days a week and eating a strictly regimented diet because in addition to looking phenomenal I was chasing records and tracking clear metrics that I could derive satisfaction from on a weekly basis.

This part of my life ended in December 2020 when I was t-boned by a drunk driver going 130Mph. I'm no longer able to engage in intense exercise the way I once was, and the combination of my physical limitations and emotional issues (in addition to losing my life-long hobby and being in constant pain, my son had birth complications in 2022 and required brain surgery, and is now heavily special needs) pushed me towards alcoholism and emotional eating. I gained a _lot_ of weight, and my previous strategies no longer provided me with the guardrails and motivation to deal with the problem.

I've always had an issue with insatiable appetite my entire life, and while I was able to deal with it via a militantly regimented lifestyle and mindset change, I recognize that solution is itself incredibly challenging to implement (if it's even possible in an individual's case). Thankfully Monjourno was able to help me address the problem, and I look forward to GLP medications becoming more widely available as I do think there are a lot of people who suffer from appetite dysregulation due to genetics and emotional trauma who shouldn't have to wage an epic battle with their body to feel normal.

I think the obesity problem isn’t a unique one, but is in fact emblematic of a “class” of problems that are prevalent in the modern world.

They are all characterized something like this: the problem is on the face of it an individual one, with individual solutions. Just stop eating so much. Work out. Eat less unhealthy food. Etc.

But a deeper look and you see that the overall system makes it difficult or impossible for the average individual to really solve the problem. Because it’s too complex, too expensive, takes too much time, and mostly because the framework around “solving the problem” is still locked into the individual mindset.

The same pattern is in voting or affecting the democratic process (an individual action is what matters, but it simultaneously doesn’t really do anything unless you are wealthy/have free time to be an activist.)

Curbing social media addiction is another. It’s seen as an individual problem, but fighting against it requires you to essentially be against the entirety of society.

These are all consequences of the world getting more complex but the tools for dealing with that complexity not keeping pace.

The solution is maybe that we need a new agent or entity that operates in between the individual and the system. Traditionally that was something like your local neighborhood, extended family, etc. but nowadays I don’t think it really exists, because the solutions have been offloaded to individual-focused ones.

For example, there are apps which let you order healthy groceries every month that are delivered to your door. But it’s an individual thing, not a group or community one. You as an individual need to organize and order this stuff.

Some people are going to ding him for including exercise, and it's true that the physical calorie expenditure of exercise won't achieve much for weight loss unless you make cycling a major hobby. However, I think exercise goes a long way towards loosening the mental trap. It helps you build an identity as a healthy person, it relieves the guilt about not taking care of yourself, and it takes the edge off of emotions like anxiety. All of these things make it easier to avoid excessive eating. I don't think exercise is a must-have for everybody for weight loss, but I think more people should try it, and I think it gets overlooked because most of the claims about the calorie burn aspect of it haven't stood up.

Exercise is also a very strong predictor of long-term success in keeping weight off. Plus it's important for overall health anyway. Protects lean body mass, so that when you're shedding the pounds, you lose less muscle and more fat.

That's one effect people are less aware of. One reason your metabolism drops as you lose weight is you can also lose lean body mass. Muscle and organs.

It also helps with stress which is a major contributor to overeating.

Exercise is also something you can "get into". For example, you force yourself to go to the gym a few times, or to go running a few times. And then you start beating your previous records, at which point you get more ambitious. You try to research the best supplements on the web, or the best pull-up bar for at home, and before you know it, you are transforming into a "gym bro" without previously intending to. It's remarkably easy to get into various obsessions, even if they are entirely healthy.

There is also something to be said about doing exercise at a gym/class and seeing other healthy/fit people. It gives you practical evidence right in front of your eyes on how you COULD look. As well as likely becoming friends with people in those spaces that also have healthy habits. I have always found that motivation to be very strong.

> unless you make cycling a major hobby

Cycling specifically is incredibly good. It's easy to stay at a low-moderate zone 2 effort you can maintain for many hours, unlike running. It's also very easy on your body

>Reduce refined carbs, unhealthy fats and alcohol from your diet. Focus on getting enough vegetables, fruits, complex carbs and healthy fats.

Alcohol is by far the biggest one(was the case for me). Used to work at a place where "lets go grab a pint or two after work" was the norm every day. A pint is like 250kcal, you do that for a month you will gain like half a kilo easy.

Liquid calories in general are the most dangerous thing because of how easy it is to ingest.

One of the pillars of weight loss is "eating right" as we all undoubtedly know. It's eating whole foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and lean meat, and all that good stuff.

If you ever go to a nutritionist they'll tell you that, and they may even give you recipes!

But this is mostly an exercise in futility. Why? Because going to McDonalds tastes better. So people will revert and not solve their problem. Diets don't work, and new fad diets come out, and the industry cycle continues.

The problem with diets and lifestyle changes that are proposed in common social discourse is that we are always missing the most important step which is teaching citizens how to cook. As a nation I wish we would spend more time focusing on good culinary skills, and that is an investment that would pay dividends not only in healthier waistlines, but also in an increased interest in the quality of our food and produce.

I tend to agree. It's pretty easy to have cooking skills that out pace the trouble of driving, waiting, and ultimately only kind of enjoying fast food.

The advice I give people when rarely solicited, is that you work all day to ensure you have food and shelter. 1/3 work, 1/3 food, 1/3 shelter. If you routinely don't have time to cook and enjoy your food -- frankly, what are you doing with you life? Planning a menu, shopping for groceries, cooking meals, these things should take up your time! It's what you need to be doing. That's the point of this all!

Completely agree - we focus on spending time rushing to get food and things so we can get back home and spend time scrolling, but we should actually be spending time, in my humble opinion, cooking and enjoying life. I think over the long-term people in America will recognize this more and more.

Also, after a while you realize at least outside of some dishes like maybe ramen or something like that, you can cook day-to-day better than just about anywhere you can go out to eat. It also makes you appreciate really good restaurants a bit more too. At least that has been my experience.

As a single almost 40yo overweight man I've gotta disagree.

McDonald's doesn't taste better, it tastes worse, but what working adult has the time next to their day job to eat healthy?

You have to be either

1. Rich enough to be able to spend a premium at restaurants for most of the week

2. Be rich enough to have a partner that doesn't have to work a 40-50h work week

3. Be rich enough to have a personal cook

4. Not work and get by via other avenues.

People who say that they cannot cook on a 40h work week are just inefficient at cooking. It sucks to take a long time to prepare meals, but you will get faster.

When you first start cooking for yourself you'll easily double the times online recipes say. As you get better at prep and more of an understanding you'll eventually reach their times. Dishes afterwards are included in this: most recipes have downtime that you can entirely clean up during.

Yea I agree too. It really is a skill. The first few times you cook a dish you are reading a recipe maybe, oh whoops forgot to cut the celery, ugh this is stressful! but then by the end of a few attempts you start to get much better and much efficient at it.

I get that not everyone wants to cook though, but for those who do or want to eat healthier food you can do it and you WILL suck the first few times you cook anything because you're a human being and you haven't done it before.

Buy a bag of rice, a bag of frozen veggies (corn, carrots, peas, already cut up), some chicken thighs, throw it in a rice cooker, that's a meal right there, almost no effort.

Roger Ebert wrote a whole cookbook about using the rice cooker, guy loved the thing, makes for a very easy meal.

Well you just have to prioritize, unfortunately.

If you want to lose weight - and part of my comment was a critique on nutritional advice and dieting - or save money or just cook for the enjoyment of it you have to make time to do that.

It's not easy. I work full-time and do other things. I'm tired. I don't want to drive to the grocery store. it's Friday I want to relax, etc. and sometimes I don't cook! But it's just another life choice to make and we can be better and more consistent over time and make improvements without going straight to 0 eating out.

Unless you’re working 16h per day, every day, you have time to cook. There are many things that are very easy to cook and don’t even take that much effort, but people just refuse to learn how to use the tools they have.

All you need is an oven and some baking pans, and you can easily make a well balanced meal in less than an hour. Roasted chicken, potatoes, vegetables. Done. There’s only a little bit of prep, then it’s mostly waiting.

The biggest impact of industrialized food companies is not their poor products, it’s that they convinced everyone that cooking is too hard.

To expand on this further: You can make a well balanced meal in less than an hour. You can make 5 well balanced meals by cooking 5 times the amount and dividing it up for 15% extra time

Cooking takes hardly any time when you're smart about it

Unless you’re working 16h per day, every day, you have time to cook.

if you are single, sure. but as soon as you have family, those calculations go out the window. worse if you are a single parent. long commutes, a stressful job...

8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, 1 hour commute, 1 hour lunch, 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour spending time with my kids (means i do what they want), 1 hour TV to relax. 1 hour exercise/go for a walk. that leaves me with 2 hours for everything else. housework? shopping? keeping in touch with others? go out to meet friends/family?

i love cooking. i did it all the time before i got married. i rarely went out to dinner. but as soon as i got married i had to stop. i couldn't afford the time that i needed to dedicate to it to do it right. it's more than just the process, it's the planning, the shopping, etc.

it's not a question of time, but priorities. for most people 18 hours (sleep, work, commute, lunch) are spoken for, and everything else has to fit into the remaining 6 hours. yes, you can move things around. you have time to cook if you can delegate. that just never worked for me. at best i can delegate washing dishes and other housework.

> 1 hour spending time with my kids

Cook when you do that.

> i love cooking

This is probably the problem, you try to cook fancy stuff rather than things that are easy and fast to cook. Cooking barely takes any time if you cook easy things.

i knew someone was going to suggest to combine cooking and kids, which is why i added that parenthetical: spending time with my kids (means i do what they want) which could be playing a game with them, or some other activity. but most certainly not forcing them to hang around in the kitchen with me (unless they want cook, but then it will take even longer). besides, if i do anything else while i am cooking then i am most likely going to burn the food. it just doesn't work that way.

and no, i am not cooking fancy stuff. but i am using fresh ingredients which take more prep time and also require me to go shopping more often because you can't keep vegetables fresh for long. meat at least i can freeze.

100% agree that people should cook more.

But your example of roast chicken in under an hour is misleading since it doesnt include the time to go grocery shopping or to clean up. Add those in and your roast chicken dinner is probably taking up at least 2 hours.

You take one hour a week to go grocery shopping and then you have everything you need to stay alive for that week. Then another two hours on the weekend to cook everything and clean.

It’s really a non-negotiable activity that’s essential for life. The mental gymnastics people use to justify their bad habits is really shocking.

Completely agree. And to add on, many are complaining about not having time and working, but you're working more because you're spending more on eating out, DoorDash, etc., then your waistline expands, health problems creep in, and so on and so forth.

The American version of how we eat is abject nonsense - DoorDash expensive food that's worse than what you can cook for yourself, incredibly unhealthy, and then in between doomscrolling Elon Musk's latest Tweets and your ever expanding waste line complain that there's no time to do anything and you just can't cook because it takes "2 hours to go to the grocery store". Americans don't even go out to eat and take their time and enjoy life and the culinary arts because they're in a rush.

Unfortunately our car-only infrastructure reinforces this learned helplessness, and so we have crappy food quality, obese people and massive healthcare costs, and antisocial behavior as people spend their time terminally online.

Sorry for the rant to anyone reading. Don't take it too seriously. It just drives me crazy that we have such a great and vibrant country and we refuse to truly live in it for some god forsaken reason.

erm, where i have been living for the past 15-20 years, each large grocery run takes at least 3-4 hours. 1-2 of which are simply the time to get to the supermarket and back. and then one hour to top up every other day, mostly fresh vegetables. so in a week, shopping takes me 6 to 8 hours.

and i have no idea how i am supposed to be cooking for a whole week in two hours unless i eat the same thing every day. that doesn't sound desirable at all

> Because going to McDonalds tastes better.

this is a problem for a some people

however for many more people, the issue is affordability

unhealthy food is cheap and widely available

healthy food is more expensive and in some neighborhoods unavailable -- so there's the cost and effort of going somewhere where you can actually get it; food deserts are a real thing, while soda and chips vending machines are ubiquitous

this is why there are much higher rates of obesity among lower income populations

it's a solvable problem (not entirely, but it's possible to greatly reduce levels of obesity), but there seems to be very little social willpower to fix it

Idk, McDonald's doesn't seem that cheap to me but I haven't been in quite some time. Food deserts are a real issue, but if you're driving to McDonald's you can just keep on driving to the grocery store IMO.

There's an educational piece, a motivational piece, and a marketing piece (you'll be like Lebron James if you eat Burger King!!! or whatever) and lots of other general barriers. But it's a problem that we can make progress toward.

Though with all this being said I had hoped to really convey the problem of nutrition advice which misses the component that matters the most which is cooking proficiency. You eat out because it tastes better, but it tastes better even if you could make the same thing at home, because you don't know how to cook or cook well enough.

(not you specifically of course :) )

> McDonald's doesn't seem that cheap to me but I haven't been in quite some time

I don't go either, but I do know that it's cheap compared to healthy alternatives (especially organic); the immediate availability is a huge factor as well

> t's a problem that we can make progress toward

agreed; what really bothers/saddens me is that there seems to be so little social desire to do so -- probably because there's no money to be made from solving the problem, and lots of money to be made from letting it be and "solving" the symptom (but not the root problems) post-hoc with big money-makers like ozempic. it's disgusting.

I am going to be blunt here. Why is everyone using time as an excuse? In fact, it should be easier to lose weight if you are truly busy, because the only thing that will make you lose weight is eating less.

This whole idea about exercising to lose weight is unhelpful when the truth is that no amount of exercise is going to compensate for eating more calories than you have to.

And yes, you will go to bed slightly hungry for weeks or even months if you want to lose a lot of weight.

It's not so much about "time", but rather mental bandwidth. It takes effort and energy, that you may not have if you have lots of things going on.

When people say they "don't have the time" this is often what they mean.

It's like the joke from Airplaine!: "Guess I picked a bad time to quit smoking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit drinking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit sniffing glue", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit amphetamines", etc.

being able to still focus and complete your daily busy schedule while restricting is a different sort of obstacle, so that mostly moves the costs around.

I found the best weight loss success eating about 1200 or 1300 measured calories a day and using a fairly strict routine, but it left me on edge and distractible. And that kind of diet has social costs too - much more of a pain to eat with coworkers at lunch, for instance.

CICO is easy to say, but the trick is actually knowing both of those measurements and being able to control them.

The less time you have, the harder it is to make healthy choices. You're more likely to grab fast food or something that is easy to throw together in the microwave. It's not just time, but also energy. The more you work and the harder your job, the less energy you have to expend on preparing food. Add in mental health issues and/or chronic illness, and you have even less energy. Usually, when I say I don't have time, I mean that I don't have energy. I don't have enough time to mentally prepare myself for the task, then execute the task, and then recover from doing the task.

It takes the same amount of time to quit all sugary drinks and alcohol and only drink water for the rest of your life. It’s an extreme, but just doing that alone will save you a couple thousand calories a month.

Fast food doesn’t necessarily mean high calorie either. Almost all fast food places have meals for under 600 calories, yes even McDonald’s.

Why do people always think fat people are drinking sugary drinks? I can't stand sugary drinks. I don't drink soda. I don't put sweetener in my coffee. I mostly drink water.

Because people drink an absurd quantity of their calories: https://www.healthyfoodamerica.org/sugary_drinks_in_america_...

177 calories per day on average according to your link. More in teenagers, less in adults. Long term trend is decreasing consumption.

Which is a lot over time. With 3500 calories per pound that means quitting soda would on average make people lose a pound every 3 weeks, that is about 15-20 pounds a year.

Mostly agreeing with you here but I've been through this journey and this shocked me when I ran the numbers one time so I'm sharing.

A better way to be thinking about this is at what point will you stop gaining weight? If you are someone who burns 2000 calorie a day but eats 2170 calories a day, you will be gaining 170 calories on that first day. But then you will add some fat, and you will burn 2001 calories, and only gain 169 calories the next day. Eventually you will reach equilibrium where you burn 2170 calories. But fat isn't like muscle, it's very efficient because that is it's main purpose - it just sits there. So it actually takes a lot to reach that new equilibrium.

The rule of thumb is 100 calories surplus will lead to a long run gain of about 15 pounds. So the 177 calorie average would end up yielding about 25 pounds of fat above what they should have.

Then the next question is if you will ever reach equilibrium, or if when you start burning 2001 calories, you start eating 2171 calories...

Because if you're crunched for time then you're stressed, which for most people leads to much less reasonable decision making.

When I quit smoking, the hardest days were the stressful ones. It didn't matter that just the previous day I swore I would never have a cigarette again. I'm sitting in my car, I'm down on myself, and I would give anything in that moment for just a hit of release.

We're not robots. We're not efficient, we're not productive, we just kind of... do. Our systems don't make sense, they're not linear, they're not necessarily predictable. How the mind feels isn't the kind of thing we can just land a dart on.

Eating healthy takes more time than eating junk. The busier I am the less time I have for food shopping and the more likely I am to be away from home and need food, which means eating out.

Also cooking. If you don't have your groceries sorted and a little planning for prepping some meals ahead, suddenly you have a fridge full of ingredients and nothing to eat.

No it doesn’t. Just eat half of what you order while eating out. Save the rest for later. Now you have two meals instead of one.

A huge part of eating healthy is eating less.

Somewhat on/off topic, but I'd also wager that a lot of folks who call themselves "busy" are really just bad at time management. They're not so much "busy" as they are wasting a ton of time and then using that lost time as an excuse to not have to do things.

So they are busy but it's because of a lack of time management which then plays into their inability to make good dietary choices. Being "busy" is their excuse and they make it happen by not managing their time.

Things like having to hit up starbucks before work, which wastes 10-15 minutes. Then going to grab lunch instead of bringing it from home, which wastes 45 minutes. Then they spend a large amount of time doing their outfit for the day, which wastes time in the morning. 30 minutes on social media before/after bed. Etc. These things add up to hours every day. And then "I'm too busy to eat healthy" comes out.

I say this cuz I know plenty of people who are "busy" but still manage to make great choices. I've noticed it has more to do with how people manage their time and the priorities they make throughout that time management. Time management is a skill that needs to be worked on. When one avoids managing their time well then of course they're going to be so inefficient that things get difficult.

This is true. I don't meal prep myself since I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a meal delivery service where I can then just microwave my meals, but meal prepping can be done for about an hour a week, two hours at most if you want to get fancy.

I think people forget that mild hunger is a normal part of existence.

I think people are oversensitive to hunger stimulation.

A small amount of hunger will completely distract some people, cause them to become overly emotional and overspend.

Probably because they aren't used to it, its like how people in warmer climates wear more clothes for the same outdoor temperature since they aren't used to being cold.

I don't think you need to do the things the author says. Based on their definition I'm in both a physical and mental fat trap.. but I've maintained ~12% body fat and a healthy BMI my entire life. I also:

- can gain weight, and fat, easily. I've intentionally done it when weight training

- have gone through periods of years where I exercised very little. Certainly not daily exercise or even their prescribed 7500 steps. No weight gain

- can't really trust myself with food. Put a bunch of snacks in my house and they'll be gone very quickly

I think the things that are really making a difference is simple, and more strategic: I know how many calories the foods I eat have (was very into weight training in the past), I cook 90% of my own meals (usually 4-5 days worth at a time so I'm not tempted to order - I can just reheat) and I don't keep junk food in my house

That last point is huge. They sent me a free pizza with my grocery delivery the other week - I threw it out. I've thrown out countless bottles of coke/pepsi I'm sent for free. If I keep it around I'll eat it

I was overweight my entire life up to when I was 21. In less than 2 years I went from 300lb to 198lb (136kg to 89kg). I'm 6'4 so 198 personally was not maintainable, but I was working out, and I felt my best at 205, which I sat at for 3ish years. Recently I hit 240, I got an office job, so working out and just life in general is harder to do right now but I'm actually doing pretty well about eating again.

I agree with what he is saying, but I think the trap starts earlier than that. I think a huge aspect is your eating habits as a child. I feel like my hunger is not normal, I can have a giant meal and still feel the need to continue eating, my brain just loves it. It is frustrating to feel the need to eat 24/7, I believe my family has some form of ADHD because we all have addictive personalities, mine and my sisters were eating. My eating habits as a child is something that I ALWAYS have to fight against, it can get pretty tiring.

What I can tell you though is losing weight is also a feedback loop, I'm not saying positive or negative because I believe it depends on who you ask. When I was losing weight, it was so much easier once the ball was rolling, I'm less hungry, I have more energy, but you also start thinking about everything you eat. I was refusing to have dinner with college roommates because it didn't fit my daily caloric intake, and I never truly felt like I looked better, I was never satisfied. At my skinniest you could see my ribs and my arms were twigs.

The inverse is true, I truly believe that most American food is designed to make you eat more than to provide enjoyable nutrition. I visited Europe once, and it was crazy how much weight I was losing because I could have a great meal and feel content, something that I rarely feel here.

The weird thing is I wouldn't change a thing, maybe I did overcorrect, but it taught me a ton about nutrition, and seeing my weight go down made me feel more passionate to keep going, I'm not sure if I had stuck with it if I did the healthier slow and steady approach.

I'm back on the grind and have been working out more, it sucks that I don't have the time to dedicate to my health that I used to during covid, but that's something I'll have to figure out.

It’s super complicated and anecdotal topic. I have phases: a) “good phase” - I can compete in ultramarathons, I can run 100km a week, I can lift some insane weighs, b) I cannot. Temporary burnout. No physical activity, gain like 10kg.

Then I need something that motivates me again and move from b) to a).

Long term fat is bad, but if you are able to burn it, it is the fuel

Absolutely all mental trap issues were resolved when my doctor finally approved Ozempic. Apparently, all this was caused by a tiny chemical disbalance in my neural circuits.

Snap, instant cure. No side effects. I lost 26 kg (57 pounds) in 18 months. I finally eat normally. I am no longer prediabetic. My cholesterol is now fine.

So, I constantly thank the researchers for making this wonder drug, and I hope the same success can be repeated for other disorders.

This is not a question of "discipline", or "willpower", or "mental trap". Just a physiological imbalance that can be easily resolved. For some people, staying lean is easier because they don't have this disbalance. For others, it is much harder, but this is not their fault.

I've been on compound semaglutide for about 5 months and lost 40 pounds without really trying. Not because it's a magic cure that makes food calories disappear, but because it freed my brain from thinking about food all the time. I just got back from a two week trip without the medication and can feel how different things are when I am not on it. Without semaglutide, it feels like I need to have my stomach full all the time. As soon as my stomach empties at all, I get intense hunger pains and my stomach starts growling and grumbling. Even though I logically know that I don't need to eat yet, it feels like I do and it is all that I can think about. Meanwhile, when I am on semaglutide, I don't think about food until I am truly hungry.

> I believe that the fat trap is also physical and mental.

This is the key for all addictions and compulsions.

Yes. The emotional is the part of addictions that many people miss, and one of the primary reasons it can be so hard to break out of them. Addictions are almost always fulfilling some emotional need, or covering up some emotional pain, and if you remove the addiction without addressing the underlying issue, you almost certainly will either relapse or replace it with something else.

It's not about willpower.

This plus abundance of bad food. It's easier to stay thin if your diet is what we evolved to eat. That norm would take most people incredible will power to stick to with all the high carb food. Harder than not drinking.

Make a shopping list, stick to that, ignore and don't buy from the "bad aisles". If you have nothing "bad" at home and in your fridge you can't eat badly, and personally I have found that it is much easier not to buy than not to eat what you already have.

The problem, again, though is if the food you were eating was fulfilling an emotional need that you don't try to address after you start to make changes like this. That's why it's hard to sustain for a lot of people. You buy better food for a few weeks, and then suddenly you find that you're eating takeout every day again.

I think there is some evidence that energy dense foods dampen down the stress response.

If this is the case then you would need to make other changes in your life at the same time as adjusting your diet.

Having high carb food around at all does basically make it impossible. If you live on your own, clean out your cupboards and change what you buy. If you live with any other people... well, good luck getting them to also diet with you?

Don’t forget the millions and millions of dollars companies invest into marketing their cheap junk food. It works, makes them rich and us unhealthy.

There is a constant supply of pressure and propaganda from the junk food makers that most people don’t notice and can’t fight against. It is brutal. This t should be regulated, but …

I think the chance that the food companies are going to lie down and accept regulations without complaint is close to zero.

Yes, and we shouldn’t accept that there is not regulation either.

> it might astonish you to find out that most fat people are painfully and constantly aware that they are fat

I really don’t believe this is true. It may have been at some time in the 1900s when being skinny was the norm, but most people will look around these days and see that other people are fat just like them, and it just becomes accepted as the norm. The “fat” person is always someone fatter than them. And even if they know they are fat, most simply refuse to see it as a problem.

Most have been fat so long I do not think they are even aware how much better life could be if they were a proper weight, anymore than a skinny person thinks how much harder life would be if they were carrying an extra 45 pounds everywhere they went. I hear the little pains they feel everyday from being fat often getting attributed to age when really it’s just from being fat and inactive. If you take care of yourself you should feel just as good at 40 as you did in your 20s, and maybe even better.

But here’s the grim truth: it’s pretty much impossible for 99% of people to ever lose weight long term. Once you’ve reached a certain level of weight, you’re pretty much not going to be much lower than that for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you try. Nearly 99% of people who lose significant weight gain it back it after year. Imagine, when was the last time you were top 1% of anything? That’s the level of effort you have to go through to be one of the success stories, and I don’t think people realize this.

Your ONLY hope is stuff like Ozempic and other GLP-1s.

I've been overweight and obese for most of my life, and on several occasion i've managed to lose a bunch of weight through diet and excersice, but always ended up regaining it a year or two later. Finally at 40 i got a health scare, heart arrythmia, and i decided to try again. I found a pretty good nutritionist that emphasized 'relearning' to eat over just an efficient weight loss diet. That was the key, and that i managed to modify my environment by buying 95% unprocessed foods and never keeping more than a very small stock of cheat meals. Here in Argentina we still have a lot of options to buy meat and vegetables fairly cheap and accessible, outside of the supermarkets. That said, the first two years after i lost most of the weight were harsh, not so much because of keeping eating healthy, which happily took less and less effort each month, but because of 'not recognizing myself in the mirror' after 25kgs gone. I started questioning if i needed to keep changing things, like breaking up my marriage for example, or changing careers. And i still have a recurring nightmare where i wake up and i'm 115kgs again. So i can totally relate with the 'fat trap' concept, even though i haven't been 'fat' for close to 5 years now. Great article!

> Getting out of the physical fat trap, strictly speaking, is simple:

Because it's CICO. Focusing on whole-foods can make you resistant to undesirable weight-gain, but losing substantial amounts of weight requires caloric restriction in some form or another. That isn't easy to adhere to, it needs to be done in whichever way is the most sustainable. Low-hanging fruit is to boost protein and fiber at higher-than-normal amounts for satiety.

All of the programs/diets that don't have you track calories are just tracking something else as a stand-in, obfuscating restriction. If you go low-carb and hit a wall, what are you going to do next, cut out negative carbs? If you go low-fat, will you cut out fat that's no longer there?

> The notion of two traps, a physical trap and a mental trap, comes from Allen Carr’s fantastic Easy Way To Stop Smoking. He states, quite convincingly, that there is a physical aspect to smoking (nicotine addiction) and a mental aspect to smoking (feeling that you need it).

I think Carr's perspective is very strong advice for kicking a bad habit. However, "emotional" and/or binge-eating may benefit from more targeted therapy.

I found that removing carbs and calorie counting together works well. Psychologically (and perhaps physically), allowing for one weekly "cheat day" helps to keep to it a lot, IMHO.

It can of course. The calories have to come from somewhere. The point was that merely restricting one macro or another from one's plate won't guarantee a deficit (Over time. Yes when you're starting from 0 on what was an Americanized diet, you will lose weight in the beginning).

It's interesting to me that if you're rigorous enough the other six days the cheat day still works. I would order in restaurant food and have some alcohol with it, get ice cream or whatever, and was still losing weight overall. I guess one day isn't enough to get your body used to the high calories or something? Diet science is weird

Yeah if your weekly average calorie-intake is still in deficit, you will lose weight. BUT, it's possible to blow your weekly average with one day of binging. So even on cheat days, be careful.

It’s really solid to do one big cheat meal, dinner+drinks+dessert. An entire day I agree, not the play.

Maybe I wasn't receiving the full Fitness Message as someone proudly sedentary, but the way I experienced the world (seen through what I think I know now), it always seemed like people overemphasize weight loss and being thin as a marker of health.

People, people, I know many of you don't want to look like you lift, but skeletal muscle has moby advantages in minimizing the annoyances of old age. It also literally helps in weight loss. I'm also told it regulates insulin. Plus weight training also strengthens your tendons and bones. If you start deadlifting heavy at age 40, you will develop strong spinal erectors which will likely protect you from herniated discs when you're 60.

Losing weight is fine and will help preventing coronary / fatty liver etc diseases. But please make it priority number 2. Build muscle and try, as a bonus, to lower your body fat percentage. If you never do, it's better to be 35% bodyfat and yoked than to be 30% and made of blubber and chalk.

Something that's really helped me work with my body weight and my own self-image is intuitive eating, an "anti-diet" approach I was introduced to by my registered dietician. Essentially, it's about recognizing when my body is hungry and being more accepting of who I am. My weight hasn't changed much, but there has been a much more marked improvement in my mental state. It feels much better than when I was tracking calories using a food scale and app (basically going into starvation via calorie deficit).

https://www.intuitiveeating.org/about-us/10-principles-of-in... https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/feeding-body-and-so... https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/quick-guide-intuitive-e...

> Getting out of the physical fat trap, strictly speaking, is simple: Develop basic sleep habits so that you get decent sleep. Exercise daily or almost daily. Reduce refined carbs, unhealthy fats and alcohol from your diet. Focus on getting enough vegetables, fruits, complex carbs and healthy fats.

Well... and that's the problem. It sounds easy on paper but in fact it is not easy at all in practice for the wide masses:

- work 8 hours, add 1h overtime and lunch, add 2 hours for commute, so out of the 24 hours a day, you already lose 11 hours to work related matters. Add 8 hours for a decent sleep time and whoops, only 5 hours remaining in the day for everything else: getting ready for work in the morning (0.5h), do chores (1h), make, eat and digest dinner (1.5h) have some quality time with your partner (1h) and children (1h), and whoops the entire day is gone before even considering anything actually relaxing, hobbies, or working out.

- shift work, particularly rotating shifts, or on-call work that's effectively being abused as regular overtime, makes developing healthy sleep patterns outright impossible.

- many people are outright unable to afford healthy groceries, which is why they're going for unhealthy highly processed food

- of those that are able to afford groceries, good luck getting them in one of the way too many food deserts

Our health issues (and the lack of children) to a very large degree tie back right into the expectation that people have to work 40 hours a week just to afford bare survival. That is the true trap - systemic forces leave the wide masses no other way.

[Simple is not easy][1].

[1]: https://www.entropywins.wtf/blog/2017/01/02/simple-is-not-ea...

Another trap I see in your list is wasting 3-4 hours for unpaid work:

- 2 hours commute daily? This seems crazy. Never had such a commute and most of my life I could walk or cycle to the university/work, so I gained some free exercise time.

- 1 hour overtime daily? What for?

- Lunch outside of work? (This is where my additional hour came from) Thankfully this never happened to me in my actual career.

> This seems crazy. Never had such a commute and most of my life I could walk or cycle to the university/work, so I gained some free exercise time.

Good luck for you. Here in Munich, I have multiple colleagues who commute 1.5h single direction, I myself (since I can't afford rent in that fucking city, so gotta commute in from Landshut) have anything from 1 to 3 hours one way depending on how shitty the train service is on that day.

> - 1 hour overtime daily? What for?

I work in the creative industry. Thankfully we are a unionized shop which means we're not affected by that problem too much - but virtually everyone I know from other agencies that are not unionized is working easily 50 hour weeks. Every company in the industry has decimated staffing, much more than the incoming work fell, so everyone is working extra to not be the next whose head rolls.

> - Lunch outside of work? (This is where my additional hour came from) Thankfully this never happened to me in my actual career.

Germany has a mandatory 30 minute break by law during the day, in practice it's more like 45-60 minutes.

> 2 hours commute daily? This seems crazy.

This is the norm in many places of the world. I live in London and am lucky to only need to take one tube train into the office. It's still 1 hour each way - 10 mins to station, 5 mins wait - if i'm lucky, but it could be as much as 15, 45 min train, another 10 mins walk, 1hr each way is just a good smooth day for me. Many of my colleagues have even longer journeys. I only belabour this because I actually feel lucky in the length of my commute compared to many people in the UK.

As for 1hr overtime daily - if you're a salaried employee you aren't doing overtime to begin with, you're just doing your job - sure you can just not, but it probably won't go in your favour - at most agencies I've worked (this is in the UK) I was asked (i.e. required) as part of the onboarding to opt out of the working hours directive (https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/weekly-maxim...). There was no overtime, there was just work.

The article is basically describing one's addiction to anything. It can be any habit at all. So whether it's a fat trap or any other trap the way out is always the same - willpower. And it comes from the sincere desire for something.

I spent overall around 5 years quitting smoking. It was extremely hard, for the most part because of the mental trap. Physically I got rid of the addiction in a couple of weeks. And physical exercises were the thing that helped me. I still do my routine, because it became the substitute for my smoking habit. But in a healthy way.

And from my experience this is how everything works, regarding the quality of life that you have control over.

And I agree that judging and shaming is not helpful. You need to clear your mind and concentrate on the better future you want rather than reflecting on bad things that you have in your present or past.

> So whether it's a fat trap or any other trap the way out is always the same - willpower.

Which is completely wrong according to science on the topic. Trying to willpower your way out of addictions is a recipe for failure. It's been shown over and over again. People who are aren't addicted don't have more willpower. They have to exercise their willpower far less than someone who struggles with addiction. Identifying and eliminating environmental triggers will do far more for an addict than "willpower" will. Instead of inane advice like "just have more willpower bro" we should be teaching people about environmental triggers and how to structure your life to avoid them without relying on willpower constantly.

> Identifying and eliminating environmental triggers

That requires a lot of willpower, which is why that advice typically doesn't work.

Dieticians are often fat so you know there is more to it than just knowledge, there is a big willpower factor to it still.

Regarding the mental element, many people report that GLP-1 drugs help calm the "food buzz" running thoughts constantly obsessing about food all day. It can help you step out of the cycle and most likely would make therapy, meditation and books more effective.

My one weird trick on this subject, as a person who enjoys sweets & a dessert, was to switch my late night sweets habit to fruit juice popsicles. Still super tasty and sweet, but generally I find them much lower in calories per satisfaction compared to other sweets. I really like these pineapple ones, although they vary in quality depending on where you are in the US; here in Florida they're fantastic but in California they're just okay: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Outshine-Pineapple-Frozen-Fruit-B...

Just as with being fat. Stopping being poor is easy.

Earn more, spend more time earning money. Cut down spending. Evaluate what you spend money and remove the too expensive parts.

After those steps it is simple.

And for some reason people just don't accept this truth.

Body is reflecting one's lifestyle. I would say the trap is attempting to lose weight while keeping the fat person lifestyle.

"I'll do this temporary measure for X days and I will stay lean forever afterwards".

I sympathise with the author but I fear what he's doing here is adding one more item to that list of thoughts: "I'm in a trap"

There's a lot of stuff I started writing from personal experience but I've just deleted it because I sense what's being talked about in the article is probably classifiable as an eating disorder and I am in no way qualified to say anything about eating disorders. People who identify with the sentiments expressed in the article may want to consult a doctor.

> There is a range of body fat percentage that is healthy. If you are outside (probably above) this percentage, you are damaging your health. The science is unequivocal on this.

Yes and no. I think it is more individual. Robert Lustig has an interesting assertion that about around 20% of slightly overweight people are metabolically healthy and they simply have a higher "normal for them" body fat percentage.

I think is just simply to diet and culture

take this quick video as example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg3Y3tCmBWo

the different portion size is ridiculous

and now you compare it to serving size from asian country, you would find it very hard to get fat at this places

and I mean it, even if you get fat its nowhere near american fat

Except portion size in a lot of Asian countries is LARGER. It is WHAT they're portions of, and how satiating it is that matters.

For example a popular Asian Fast-Food dish might be a huge bowl of udon noodles, with assorted veggies (e.g. bok choy, carrots, mushrooms), a little meat/tofu, in a salty broth. 500~ calories total. Then add on a Green Tea/Thai/Jasmine/Oolong Tea at an additional 100~ calories or less.

A McDonalds large french fry is also 500 calories alone for comparison. A Big Mac is another 580 calories on top, and a Medium Coke is 200 calories. So we're at 1280 calories for McDonald's most popular meal in the US.

I'd put it to people that the udon bowl is more satiating ("filling") than the Big Mac meal by a lot. It is also a large portion. You'll be full most of the day, whereas on the carb/fat/sugar explosion from McDonald's you'll need a snack when you crash late-afternoon.

Yeah but American size is not only pack a heavy calories but also packs a lot of "food"

its insane you can order 1 litre coke for your drink

As someone that moved to the US somewhat recently.. the portion sizes here still blow my mind. My girlfriend orders chinese food and makes 3-4 meals out of it

+ food is viewed strongly as entertainment here

+ everything is very noticably sweeter or saltier than I'm used to. So many brands of plain bread taste like cake!

I very much sympathize with americans that are pushed by their environment to be overweight

Become healthier through diet and exercise. Don't worry about your weight. Gaining muscle through weight lifting will increase your weight. Cardio exercise will increase your weight due to increasing blood volume.

Just cut the sugar calories. You probably eat the appropriate amount of calories for you, just eliminate the calories you drink.

I feel like the author is generalizing by assuming that everyone who is fat has an "obsession with food".

Most people I know who are overweight have more of an obsession with beer/alcohol and they make poor food choices when intoxicated.

They eat snacks before bed, consume high calorie foods with low nutritional value. Then they feel too tired or hungover to be active the following day due to a poor night of rest.

I struggle to pay attention to diet because of ADHD. The closest thing I'd have to food obsession is just the normal level of hate for myself that's common to everything. My doctor says I'm quite close to obesity, and my own research suggested most people my age and gender are supposed to weigh roughly a third less than I do. That's not anything quite like morbid obesity, but it's still something I occasionally hate myself for. Yes I would have to develop quite the food obsession to change habits about this because I don't think I've changed habits about anything for reasons like this before. Worth noting I have BPD so it's nearly impossible for me to do anything for myself. But I don't think I have that obsession right now.

I think he’s more saying that if you’re fat and you want to lose weight (and keep it off) you have to develop an obsession with food — that it requires an enormous amount of constant attention and effort, unlike the relationship with food that normal-weight people can enjoy.

This is why GLP-1s are so interesting. They suppress hunger, but more importantly they suppress “food noise” — the state of constantly thinking about food. You can separate this effect from appetite suppression due to its seemingly global (although still anecdotal) effect on ALL compulsive behavior, from drinking to smoking to shopping.

For me, the problem is that it's a lot more work and effort to find healthy foods in a society where unhealthy foods are the norm. I want to be able to go somewhere and order fresh healthy food to eat for example, because keeping things at home leads to risk of spoiling and mold, and that leads me to avoid keeping them at home, but when I go out to eat, I don't know how to get that healthy food, only fast food, but my doctor already says that the oils in fast food are killing my liver which is very bad.

I wish I could just go to a restaurant style place and just like order fresh fruit or something.

Yeah, I can see that. I recently dropped good chunk of fat. For context, I'm a 5'11 (~180 cm) male (early 50s, ugh). I'd been going to my doctor yearly and my weight had been around 195 lbs (88.45 kg) for 5 years. I didn't like it anymore, as that is considered overweight. My doc didn't mind as she said since it was consistent she wasn't worried about it. Sometimes I'd catch my reflection in my car window as I walked up to it, or my shadow and thought "Hmm, I don't like that shape... at all." I didn't like the way my belt and pants felt when I sat. So, back in December I simply cut calories. I started counting my calories and knocked them down to about 1,200 a day. I also walk at a decent pace for 30 minutes at least once a day, but it's usually an hour or more (perhaps 2 30+ minute walks a day). Since then I am now down to about 170 lbs (77.1k g). I am now in the "normal" range, but just barely. I'd like to lose another 10 lbs (4.5 kg), but that is getting more difficult, as I need to pick up the exercise pace and well... I hate exercising. Sweating profusely is not my bag. It makes me angry, and full of rage. Yeah, I know that's odd, but it makes me feel mentally horrible.

I can say that my feet, knees and legs sure appreciate the change. I definitely don't feel that weight on me like I did before. I do like the occasional "Hey, you're looking good" or "You lost weight, didn't you?" That doesn't offend me. My facial structure looks better, as I have a better chin line now. My clothes are a pain, as I have to keep a tight belt as all my pants are too big now. My stomach is much flatter and doesn't poke out. Hah. I don't have a 6 pack but I sure don't have a mini-keg starting.

Anyway, after all my rambling, my point is that I wasn't addicted to food. I just sit in front of a computer too much, and was consuming too many calories. I do miss fun food. I haven't had things like ice cream since I started this thing. I'm not a fan of always being hungry. I deal with it, but I sure feel like I can eat all the time. The key is to just not think of it. Avoid being around it. I don't go out to eat with people, as that stuff is always a killer when it comes to calories. Usually, I meet up for a drink but when they all decide to go hit a table for dinner, I'll say my goodbyes and move along to something and eat later at home as I know what I'm ingesting.

For most of us that have too much fat on us, it's simply about calorie control. It's not food addition, or a mental problem. It's simply awareness. Though, in the US, we obviously have a huge mental disorder epidemic, but I believe that is just the disorder of "rampant cognitive dissonance." It covers so much of our issues here. "This soda is fine, I only have 4 a day." "Sure it's deep fried, but it's fish and that's healthy!" "He's a billionaire; he doesn't want your money! You can trust him to fix the government..." Cough Cough

Worth noting that even though there totally is an epidemic, they've also gotten better at diagnosing mental disorders that would've just gone unnoticed before. So it's hard to say exactly how much of it is new and how much of it just went unnoticed. There's still plenty of new though.

I’m a huge fan of vice taxes. Let people do whatever they want, as long as they are (literally) willing to pay up for what it costs society. I’m not quite sure exactly how you price this in, but Coca-Cola and refined sugar in general should cost a hell of a lot more than they do now.

Ok, but there's also an environmental (and one completely reasonable mental) factor: I live in a place where it is unpleasantly hot (upper 90s and humid) most of the year and there are few public outdoor spaces generally thanks to rampant overdevelopment, I hate gyms and toxic gym culture, I have a quaint bungalow that doesn't have space for equipment, I work an intense job that keeps me focused for hours at a time, I live in a country that prioritizes fast, processed, sugary foods, etc. Much like fighting climate change, placing all the responsibility on the end user without changing some of the social conditions is a flawed approach, even if there are some things individuals can do to help. Put another way, there are plenty of situations where all the mental fortitude, discipline, self-honesty, commitment to change, and persistence won't be enough in the face of it simply being difficult to find time, space, or money to be healthy.

Calisthenics and bodyweight exercises require no equipment and can be done at home

And some exercises can be really intense, too! I have to repeat this over and over to people who complain about not being able or wanting to go to a gym: just start from (carefully) doing some squats or any other youtube-guided exercise in your living room! anything else is just an excuse they're forming in their head to cover for their lack of will to do it.

Try to do Saitama's training (from anime One Punch Man, just a tongue-in-cheek way to mean do lots of push-ups and squats) and afterwards tell me you don't feel like you've done some serious exercise!

> Put another way, there are plenty of situations where all the mental fortitude, discipline, self-honesty, commitment to change, and persistence won't be enough in the face of it simply being difficult to find time, space, or money to be healthy.

If that was true, then literally everyone would be fat in your area. You can learn to cook, you have room for bodyweight exercises. You don't need equipment to feel really sore the next day! It's not going to be easy, it will be miserably hard, but it is possible.

That's quite a leap. Some people enjoy gyms. Some people run at 3am. Some people have bigger houses. And yet, our area has much higher obesity rates than average.

It also doesn't address the larger point that _it doesn't have to be this hard_.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. Maybe set 1 goal a week, or a month even, and then add to them.

For example, only drink water. It’s all the body needs for hydration anyways. No soda, diet soda, alcohol, slurpees, etc. Black coffee if you enjoy a cuppa in the morning, no sugar. (Good black coffee is such a joy)

Then set a rule about only eating 3 meals a day, however you define meal. No snacks in between.

Losing weight, even accounting for hormones, really is a diet thing. Exercise daily burns like… 100-300 calories, which is a small fraction of basal metabolic rate for a grown human.

One I try to do (not always successful) is no eating after 9/8/whenever PM - no matter how hungry. You could make any variation you want, but the food we eat later tends to be bad for us, bigger portions and not really enjoyed, plus impacts your sleep. It's hard but you're likely not really "starving"; going to bed slightly hungry is a good mental exercise too

Yeah, “no snacking” would have been my next suggestion, but I was worried about coming off as too preachy.

My spouse and I work full time with 3 kids between ages 3-11. We are very busy, all the time. We have both lost a noticeable amount of weight in the past 6 months following these kinds of “rules” if you will.

People who says they’re too busy are sadly fooling themselves.

We don’t even exercise! Well, maybe at night sometimes…

All good advice, and I follow much of it. I should note that due to addiction issues in my family, I tend not to be an absolutist about these things, nor to stigmatize things (I don't have a 'cheat day' or 'sneak' a treat, for example; sometimes I just want a snack, and that's ok). But there's actually an interesting challenge I've dealt with at points in my career: you say _only_ eating 3 meals per day, but I have seen people struggle mightily with obesity because they were only eating 2 or 1 meal per day regularly, which threw their entire metabolism out of whack. "Don't do that" was simply not a viable response for them because at times they simply couldn't afford more food. (To be clear, that's not my experience, so I can't speak to it directly, but it's an interesting challenge to "eat 3 square and you'll be good".)

Coming from a family of alcoholics, I'm also very familiar with the moral judgment issue with addiction. It _must_ be a lack of control that makes that man drink, etc. There's been quite a lot of success destigmatizing alcohol addiction in the last half century, so it's even more stark to see exactly the same thing play out with so many conversations about food and weight. It _must_ be that fat man's lack of control that makes him fat. Often it is. But there are so, so many other factors. I actually think that's part of OP's larger point.

I also come from a family with substance issues, alcohol et. al. You can use your imagination.

I focused on the water thing because it is so, so easy to smash a 20oz coke without thinking about it, twice a day even. I’m sure I don’t need to inform you about the nutritional information of coke, but 40oz a day negates any kind of diet or exercise two-fold.

I also made the point about 3 meals completely because of metabolism and the bad effects of eating only once a day. There is however value in skipping breakfast and only eating lunch and dinner, but not if you just make up for breakfast with the other two meals.

The world isn’t black and white, absolutism is never a good thing unless you’re designing digital circuits or some other “there is no other choice but binary” but there already is an exception to your rule.

Keep an open mind. You sound like you’ve talked yourself out of lots of things and seem to have accepted defeat and blamed your circumstances. Coming from the same background as you I would encourage you to at least admit to yourself the things you already know and excuse away. When I finally had that moment it was a game changer.

That's not how statistics work. Plenty of environmental factors significantly raise risks without "literally everyone" being impacted. Working in a smoky casino is bad for your lungs but not every casino worker has lung cancer.

This is wrong. People have different genes. Some people would weigh 200kg with my eating and exercise habits, I weigh 79.

GP, try climbing or martial arts - indoor air conditioned activities that have much less toxic culture and are much more mentally engaging.

You totally discount genetics. I know more "not fat" people who are very unhealthy than I do people who are mentally strong and dedicated to a fitness regime. They're just skinny with a different set of issues related to diet and low activity.

Isn’t it just a more fun way to go through life to believe that you do have enough mental fortitude, discipline, self-honesty, commitment to change, and persistence to be healthy?

I just don’t get the appeal of throwing my hands up and going, “Yep, somebody needs to care more about me than I care about me.”

Americans, and lots of folks, love excuse culture and the "victim" mindset(life happens to them, they dont have agency). It's really easy to blame someone or something else than to just be honest with themself. It's always so and so's fault, or the corporations, or the government, or the climate, or you just had a big bad day, or something.

It's rarely "This is really hard and I doubt I have it in me right now" or some other honest answer.

I knew I'd run into this reaction. Here's the secret: an individual can be fully dedicated to a cause, but the weight of surrounding circumstances defeats them. See, e.g., food deserts. No, it is not more fun to go through live believing you have enough mental fortitude only to have context tap you on the shoulder the moment you take that first step.

I don't, for the record, disagree with much OP's point, though I do have some misgivings about "food addiction" being explanation for everyone's struggle with weight (I don't think that's his point, really, but it's clearly what his experience has been and it's the focus of the piece). His approach mirrors my own (successful) approach with any of a number of challenges. I just question the effectiveness as a complete solution.

> No, it is not more fun to go through live believing you have enough mental fortitude only to have context tap you on the shoulder the moment you take that first step.

It is also possible to have enough mental fortitude to read beyond the first item in a list that you yourself wrote about an hour ago.

Yes, you can’t mental fortitude yourself out of every situation. But you can be committed to change and figure things out.

Or you can just say “Nah, I’ll let somebody else fix things for me. I’m sure I’m high on their list of priorities.”

I'd invite you to point out where I said that we should all expect others to fix our problems, but you won't be able to. I said, and I'm correct, that there is a larger context than simply one's mental approach to a problem that can the problem more difficult to solve than it should be, even when it is an already difficult problem, and, in some cases, makes it impossible. For some, the external context is a less significant factor and they are able to find a path; for others, the external factors are insurmountable (food deserts again spring to mind). But absolutely nowhere did I say, or even imply, that the solution rests solely outside the individual.

> Much like fighting climate change, placing all the responsibility on the end user without changing some of the social conditions is a flawed approach, even if there are some things individuals can do to help

Who is changing some of the societal conditions here? You or someone else?

You also started your comment with a list of individual excuses.

You may not have said “4” but you said “2+2” and it’s not that big of a leap to make.

No, because you'd be trapped in a cult of selfishness. A religion of self is a very bad place to be. I am not a self-contained sovereign god-being who just miraculously actualizes the positive reality I envision.

Yes, positivity is essential, and negative thinking is also a trap, but this "Believe In Yourself!" and "Follow Your Passion!" is rotten fruit from the $16 self-help bookshelf in the public library.

But isn’t the advice of if something sucks in your life, attempt to take action to change it the only thing that actually works?

... "something"? Like, anything at all? Or within the context of this article?

But no, that is not the only thing that works. If anyone despairs or believes such as this, then refer back to "cult of self" we're trapped in.

What specifically are the other things that work?

I get that you can hope someone else helps you or that circumstances change on their own.

But again while you’re sitting around waiting, shouldn’t you exhaust the options that you control?

I don’t get how trying to improve your life yourself is a “cult of self” or being portrayed as a bad thing.

You're absolutely right. Almost everything in the US is (intentionally or not) working to make and keep people fat. The most effective steps are those that make better choices easier by default. I have very weak impulse control for junk foods in the house, but much better control in the grocery store, so I try my best to keep high-calorie and low-satiation foods out of the house.

I don't disagree with you, but also don't think (based on what you described) that you're a great example of the environmental components. Compared to say someone who hasn't known non fat as a norm for generations and doesn't have a grocery store for miles you actually recognize the issue and problems. It sounds like you have a lot of tools and resources to overcome systemic aspects but prioritize other things. There's no doubt you brought up relevant components, but individual and environmental in your case don't seem at all mutually exclusive.

I appreciate the response, but I'd caution against extrapolating from a list of examples intended to represent a generally comprehensible set as a representation of my (or anyone else's) full life context. I mentioned the food desert concept elsewhere, and there is zero doubt that generational health and simple food geography are a major driver of health for many people, often in surprising ways.

Do indoor HIIT 20 minutes a day, and find a better way to eat. Your post seems like you the very little mental fortitude to change tbh.

Is everyone around you obese ?

I bet not. Sure it is more difficult for some people than others, but what would be the alternative ? Ban or regulate fast food ?

I want to be able to have a guilty pleasure once in a while, I am careful with what I eat in general. Why should I be deprived of that ?

I've seen statistics that ~64% of my state's residents are obese or significantly overweight. That's a pretty stark number.

I honestly don't know how I feel about things like sugary drink bans. Objectively they're part of the problem, but I feel like emphasizing urban rather than suburban development would be a more effective tool. A bit hard to put the genie back in the bottle where I live (the next county over has 0% undeveloped land, and most of it is suburbs). I would rather destroy the market for things than ban the thing. Personal lifestyle changes play a role in that, as others in this thread have gleefully noted, but health education does too. Vice taxes are probably one solution, but only if the money is actually going to be used for effective programs, which is almost certainly not going to happen in the political environment where I live.

I'm with you on sugary drinks. It is an industrially produced edible drug. I do not know whether banning is the answer, but in my opinion Ultra Processed Food (which is not food, it is edible industrial products) should be clearly marked as such. The way tobacco is marked in the EU.

I used to believe this until I decided to eat right

> I live in a place where it is unpleasantly hot (upper 90s and humid)

Work out in the early morning or late evening?

> I hate gyms and toxic gym culture

Stop hating gyms. Stop over-analyzing "toxic gym culture". Get off social media because that's the only place this exists. Nobody in the gym cares about you or what you're doing as long as you aren't harming someone else, breaking equipment, etc.

> I have a quaint bungalow that doesn't have space for equipment

Give Crossfit Linchpin a try - they have 5 workouts/week including "no equipment" workouts.

> I live in a country that prioritizes fast, processed, sugary foods, etc

Yes but you don't have to prioritize those foods.

> I work an intense job that keeps me focused for hours at a time

This is fair. We all unfortunately have to deal with this in some fashion, but even then you can probably find 15 minutes/day to exercise in a way that you enjoy, if you want to.

> Much like fighting climate change, placing all the responsibility on the end user without changing some of the social conditions is a flawed approach

Our environments shape us. For sure. If you are surrounded by a bunch of obese people encouraging you to drink milkshakes all day and making fun of you for working out, that's going to be hard to overcome! But just like climate change, you can't control these social conditions, or at least you can't have much of an effect. But you can make a difference in your own life according to your own principles. Often times it just means being "less bad" instead of giving up.

Blaming corporations or the built environment is a convenient excuse you can use again and again and never have to overcome.

You overly discount the intimidation of gyms, but I agree you can definitely find one that works for you. They range from young & beautiful to very specialized and accepting. I suggest you try a community run or neighborhood (doesn't have to be your neighborhood!) as these tend to be very low key, and probably significantly cheaper.

Motivation for gym work can be a huge problem; what suggestions do people have for that?

For me, it's the YMCA down the street. (Surprise! I said I hated gyms and toxic gym culture, but I didn't say I didn't find one I enjoy.)

I was hoping to convey that the intimidation factor is completely made up and it just stems from your own self-doubt based on your (not you specifically) own conjured up straw man.

I agree with your general suggestion though too. Though from the sound of the scenario the OP was describing there probably aren't many neighborhood gyms. But hey maybe the OP or someone in that scenario could start a friendly gym?

> For sure. If you are surrounded by a bunch of obese people encouraging you to drink milkshakes all day and making fun of you for working out, that's going to be hard to overcome! But just like climate change, you can't control these social conditions, or at least you can't have much of an effect. But you can make a difference in your own life according to your own principles. Often times it just means being "less bad" instead of giving up.

Completely agree. I may nitpick a few of your responses, but I'm not saying that any of the factors I named make health impossible, only that it's exponentially more difficult because of the larger social context. And, similarly, I'm not saying the larger social context makes it impossible, but that it makes it _much_ harder than it needs to be for many people. (As evidence, I live in an area with very high obesity rates.)

I sort of knew when I posted that here, in particular, that the reaction would be to focus on the individual, because, well, HN. It's kind of a thing here. I'm also fascinated by the reaction that I must be fattie fat man who wants to make excuses and wait for others to fix my problem because I questioned whether mental fortitude is enough. The reality is that I was merely noting that there are larger contextual challenges that, taken together, make any individual's journey needlessly, inescapably harder than it should be.

> I'm also fascinated by the reaction that I must be fattie fat man who wants to make excuses and wait for others to fix my problem because I questioned whether mental fortitude is enough

Why is this fascinating when you both offered up a litany of excuses and then went on to say:

Who is changing some of the societal conditions here? You or someone else?

I apologize if my post might have come off as accusatory of you being, haha, as you say a fatty fat!

When I wrote my post I was responding to you but also hoping others would see that post and if they had the same challenge that you mentioned that they would find some encouragement. It's unfortunate (maybe not? [1]) but our societal expectations around fitness can cause people pretty extensive anguish and I think it's important to just say, there are no reasons or excuses for me not to work out or go to a gym - it's your life and you decide that, nobody else. BUT if you don't want to go you don't have to and you don't need to feel bad about that either. Making up excuses to mask your lack of desire is an unnecessary exercise in self-deception.

I think one of the greatest problems in America, and one of the sources of many of our downstream problems, is that we build places where local businesses can't compete, people can't walk anywhere, and they're designed for the lifestyle of the automobile instead of the American Citizen. Highlighting the scenario you find yourself in (or was bringing to the discussion as an example) I think is yet another downstream effect of cars cars cars at all costs.

[1] It's probably good overall that we are so focused as a society on health and fitness. We do have a lot of overweight folks which is bad for social health but we also have a very great fitness culture that I think is arguably unmatched in the world.

Different gyms have very different cultures. Try going to different ones to see if there is one you like. For example, Gold's Gym has a lot of bodybuilders whereas I've found the YMCA is mostly older folks trying to stay active.

The article is about being fat. The primary tool to lose fat is diet, not exercise.

Losing weight is all about removing things from your diet. It’s accessible to anyone if they are willing to tolerate a little hunger.

Don't attempt to exercise for weight control. It's impossible.

This isn't what you want to hear, but "mental fortitude, discipline, self-honesty, commitment to change, and persistence" are not things that are supposed to be defeated by "it simply being difficult." In fact, some of them (especially "fortitude" and "commitment") strongly imply that the circumstances in which they are applied should be difficult.

If you're somewhere hot and humid (I used to live in Florida, so I understand) or have a job that keeps you in a chair all day, go for long walks around four or five in the morning: you'll avoid the heat and feel ready for your morning work.

If you hate toxic gym culture, look into different gym cultures. The US gym chain "Planet Fitness" makes a big deal about explicitly rejecting gym-bro culture in order to foster a more inclusive environment.

Consider, however, that gym-bro culture might exist for a reason other than simple jackassery: people stick with something difficult when they undertake it with friends, and they have more fun doing boring things when they do them with friends. If you start going to a gym with a friend or group of friends, you might find that you enjoy it more and that the difficulties you describe become easier.

Yes, trying to live a healthy lifestyle is definitely an uphill battle in many (probably most) areas. I think the part the pisses me off the most is when I'm trying hard to get my kid to eat well, and he suddenly has to deal with a chocolate craving because of a commercial he saw on television. Or some parent yells out "Who wants ice cream!?" after soccer, at 8pm, when he's supposed to be sleeping an our later.

What is "toxic gym culture" though? I've been to gyms off and on for months at a time in different cities (and countries) and all I see are people trying to become stronger, or lose weight, usually with headphones on minding their own business.

These all seem like excuses and generalizations. However, I will agree with you — it’s more difficult. But being a little difficult doesn’t mean it has to be laborious, torturous, or even nearly impossible. You can choose how you want to be and how you want to feel.

* “It’s unpleasantly hot,” but that is kind of irrelevant. Unpleasantly cold could be a deterrent. I live in a climate that changes wildly with the seasons, which is annoying, because I have to have different routines depending on the time of year. There are few climatically perfect situations.

* “I hate gyms,” but maybe it’s certain aspects of gyms, or you had some bad experiences at a gym.

* “I have a quaint bungalow that doesn’t have space for equipment,” but you don’t have to have a lot of equipment. All you need are a few dumbbells, and a treadmill is nice but also very much not required.

* “I work an intense job,” but so do many people who find time to work out. Things like standing desks help, walking during meetings, finding the time during lunch, before work or after work. And sometimes time-intensive jobs help distract people from eating, which can be a useful tactic. Time management is hard, but it’s not impossible. And if your job sucks… well, that’s an entirely different conversation.

* “I live in a country that prioritizes fast, processed, sugary foods,” but most countries do. Cheap soda, cheap fast food, grab and go snacks… absolutely! All of this makes eating healthily difficult. What you’ll need to do is learn how to cook for yourself. It’s an incredibly important skill that will help considerably.

* “Responsibility is on the end user,” and yes, it sure is! But you can get help. You are not alone! There are resources — support groups, diet and fitness programs, indoor and outdoor activity groups, nutrition, fitness, and life coaching.

* “It won’t be enough in the face of it simply being difficult to find time, space, or money,” but that’s what you have decided to tell yourself. In reality, you don’t need a lot of time, space, or money. If you have more, sure, it’s easier. But it’s more doable than you are giving yourself credit.

I'm not saying it's easy but two things that might help you would be to find a gym buddy and/or personal trainer, and wear earphones to shut out the world around you while working out. Dealing with toxic gym culture is minor compared to the advantages of getting good exercise.

One of the easiest ways to lose weight if you drink is sobriety. Alcohol is an even bigger trap.

If you can handle the responsibility adopting a dog can be a very rewarding experience with physical and emotional benefits. Many adoption centers will work with you to make sure you are a good match and can provide a loving home.

Gained 45 pounds in a year due to light-depression from the economy. Just got on Ozempic/Semaglutide last week so hopefully should be back to my goal weight in 3-6 months.

Don't forget to add some form of exercise so you minimize muscle mass loss, to increase your chances of keeping the fat off.

Especially when you take a medication that pits choosing crushing depression without or obesity with, and insurance companies refuse to cover GLP-1 for this purpose.

One of the most dead-on articles I've ever read on HN.

> Now, I believe the body positivity movement is a great step forward. Body positivity is about accepting others’ bodies, as well as your own, without regard to size, shape and gender. For those inside the fat trap, this brings tremendous relief. Being judged for being fat, or for being obsessed about fat, is almost always extremely counterproductive. It is harmful. If you are a non-fat person that goes around judging fat people, it might astonish you to find out that most fat people are painfully and constantly aware that they are fat, as well as the fact that that’s bad for them and they should make a change. There is nothing to be gained and everything to lose by judging someone for being fat.

LOUDER for people in the back.

Some people are hungrier than others. Some are more predisposed to weight gain than other.

All bodies are good.

Also, stock inventory for bigger people in clothing stores, for fuck's sake.

There is an extremely glaring omission of any discussion of GLPs, which makes me suspect the author has a mental block of some kind.

Stop eating junk food. It's as simple as that.

It’s not as simple as that. All people don’t get fat for the same reasons. I never eat junk food, and yet I still got fat during the pandemic.

For me the issue was that I stopped exercising during the lock down, but continued to eat the same amount out of habit. This led to me putting on a bunch of fat without realizing it.

To fix the issue, I primarily scaled back the quantity of food I ate without changing its composition too much.

Most people only burn 150-200 calories when they work out.

If you were eating the exact same and just not working out, you wouldn’t have put on “a bunch of fat” at all. Maybe 10lbs over two years.

Assuming not working out vs. working out for 150-200 calories burned 3-6 times a week, you would gain (assuming the entire surplus went to fat, @ 3500 calories surplus -> 1 lb fat gain), 13.37 to 35.66 lbs of fat, which assuming starting at the US median adult male weight of ~200lbs, is a gain of 6.7-18% of starting body weight, all in fat, which would, especially at the high end but even near the middle to low end, be "a bunch of fat".

You can’t assume the entire surplus went to fat. That’s nuts.

Junk food easily to blame for the initial weight-gain (most of the time), but cutting it out usually isn't enough to reach optimal weight, unless the excess weight is marginal.

Define "junk food."

I'm on the other side. Its extremely difficult for me to gain weight. I've never weighted more than 64kg @ 177cm - the only time I really gained weight was when I ate 3x a day like 2-4 warm dishes for few months (chinese food). Actuall I'm pending between 59.5-61.0kg.

What was an eye-opener for me:

once i was prescribed 20mins ergometer. So they put on cables and connected me to the monitoring system - the system is adjusting the power level of the ergometer to keep high power, while monitoring heart rate and that the power level is not set too high / heart rate.

To my astonishing, that 20 minute ride was HELL! constantly keeping the muscles at continuous high load nearly "killed" me - I've fallen asleep afterwards while doing MRT. It really was hell.

and then - the evaluation told me, I've burned the equivalent of 180 kcal. ONE HUNDRED EIGHTTY kilocalories!!!!

My body was on full force for 20 minutes and I burned just a burger ??? - ??? Not to speak of the fanta I usualy drink to spill down my four ordinary hamburgers which I eat 3x a week (doing a fat-diet).

So, I realized, that there's no way other than that of of counting kcal - One can exercise as much as one wants, but the burned energy (output) must somehow correspond to the input (eat & drink). If one eats more than one can burn, it will be stored for bad times in the hips-storages or in the belly-town.

If you want to lose weight - check first how much energy are you capable of burning when doing heavy exercise. And then you have to count the in-put kilocalories. Just for visualizing and assess how and how much you need to exercise, if you put in that burger... and that coke.. and that dessert.

for me, to see how much has been burned cleared up that much:

- exercising doesn't stop me on my way to become round

- no need to count kcal except assuring intake of roundabout the equivalent of burned energy while exercising (not much, though)

- I won't gain weight, because I can't eat that much anyway. So, start loving myself is a better option for me.

If you really all-in about loosing weight, find the exercises that burn the most. That depends on your constitution. You need professional help to get the knowledge. Look for a university doing sport-studies and ask them if they want to conduct a study on this or, at least, whether they can measure what exercises do the best burning. And then count & asses.

Or use the new medication emerged. Or try a stool-transplant. But without, definitely, one has to control the input kcals.

Wish everyone to achieve what one's soughing so hard!!!

Just do insanity bro:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9EmDyARAMtlZ21FdmZZ...

2 3 and 5 in a loop (3 sessions per 4 days), the other are useless

Two important changes :

- remove the stretching after the warmup, it's considered harmful nowadays

- don't do the jumps and replace by squats (for knee problems)

It's only 35 min per day and I've lost 2.5 kg in basically a month.

Please note that watever your sport level is, you WONT be able to do the workout completely at least the first 10 times

Obesity is much like poverty.

Telling someone that losing weight is as simple as calories in < calories out is about as useful as telling a homeless person that building wealth is as simple as money in > money out.

There are environmental, genetic, and cultural influences, and while you can always find a token individual who overcomes them all to become fit/wealthy, there's no denying that they have significant impact on outcomes at a population level.

For example, a tall, attractive person born in the US into a wealthy household who's introduced to other wealthy people throughout their lives and taught how to manage and increase their wealth is going to have it far easier becoming/staying wealthy than an ugly, smaller person born in South Sudan into a poverty-stricken household who's forced to struggle their entire lives.

Similarly, someone born to exceptionally fit parents in a country like Japan with a culture focused more on health is going to be far more likely to be themselves fit than someone born to a family with a history of obesity in a country like the US where it's harder and more expensive to buy and make healthy foods than unhealthy foods.

And yet, in classic US style, just like with wealth, we add a thick layer of moral valuation to being fit so that people can feel better about themselves by viewing and treating anyone less fit than themselves as lesser, evidenced quite strongly throughout these very comments.

Many people here are talking about what they percieve as the systematic issues that prevent them from losing weight. I no longer buy any of this, because I moved from the US to Europe a few years ago and have since gained around 10 kg.

No amount of public transit-friendly infrastructure is going to stop me from putting more food in my mouth than I need at any given time. No belief that cooking needs to be an hour long affair or it's worthless is going to change the fact that I can cook a week's worth of lentils in a rice cooker with 5 minutes of prep time on a Sunday. 5 more minutes gets me a week's worth of boiled eggs.

Rather, I think most people are incentivized to make themselves look good, and want to chatter about conspiracy theories as to why their lives secretly suck. I can understand this, I'm liable of both of these myself in the same way. But at the end of the day, I am fat because I chose over a long period of time to put more food into my body than I needed, and the way I get out of being fat is by putting in less. When I reach a healthy weight the mission changes to a much easier, match caloric income with caloric expenses.

Focusing my efforts on that simple fact is the only way I have ever successfully lost weight. The theories are fun, in the same way quantum physics is fun even though 99.9% of what we do in everyday electromagnetics is in the boring house that Maxwell built.

I actually lost about 30 lbs after moving out of the city back to the rural town I grew up in where I have to drive everywhere. Taking care of yourself is about your attitude/worldview and I think the attitude city living encourages makes that harder.

I would argue that being fat is a direct result of capitalism.

The US hesitates to regulate major food corporations because they're core domestic economic drivers and employ millions, which contribute significantly to GDP. Also lobbying.

Europe has more of a middle ground. They have major food companies but stronger traditions of balancing corporate and consumer interests.

Check any major health metric (obesity rates, life expectancy, etc) between the two and there is a clear winner.

THe US food system has clear stratification based on economic access and geographic distribution. Wealthy areas have greater access to fresh, minimally processed foods, while lower-income communities are disproportionately served by retailers offering processed options.

Food industry executives/policymakers often have purchasing patterns that differ significantly from the products their companies produce or the regulations they oversee. This creates a disconnect between decision-makers' lived experiences and the food environment they help shape for the broader population.

The economic incentives favor processed food production due to longer shelf life, lower costs, and higher profit margins. Healthcare costs associated with diet-related diseases are largely socialized through public health systems, while profits from food sales remain private.

Geographic food access varies significantly by income level. You find premium pricing on minimally processed foods which creates economic barriers. The regulatory framework reflects input from industry stakeholders who may have limited personal exposure to the food environments experienced by lower-income consumers.

There are two distinct food ecosystems: one accessible to higher-income consumers with diverse options, and another serving price-sensitive consumers with fewer alternatives. The structural incentives maintain this division through market mechanisms rather than explicit policy design.

You could go on and on...tie in wages, taxes, etc. It all flows back to the all mighty dollar and profit motive regardless of all else. And why shouldn't it? We're in the land of the free, home of the brave! We can do what ever we want because it's out choice! /$

Here we go again.

This post clearly comes from a place of personal reflection and empathy, but it contains several outdated and overly simplistic assumptions about body weight, health, and the nature of long-term weight regulation. While the author emphasizes that they’re not judging others, their framing of being “fat” as a “trap” reinforces a medicalized and moralized view of weight that doesn’t align with what we now understand from current research. Body fat is not inherently unhealthy; what matters far more are metabolic indicators, lifestyle, and psychological well-being. The notion that health can be reduced to a body fat percentage (10–20% for men, 15–25% for women) has been widely challenged by longitudinal studies showing that people classified as overweight by BMI often live as long—or longer—than those in the “normal” range.

The author writes as though sustained weight loss is a matter of difficult but straightforward lifestyle choices—sleep better, move more, eat clean. However, we now know that long-term weight regulation is biologically defended by the body. After weight loss, metabolic rate drops and hunger signals increase, making it difficult to maintain the new weight. This is not a matter of willpower, but of physiology. The success of GLP-1 receptor agonists like semaglutide further proves this point: the most effective interventions for significant weight loss target biology, not discipline. To say that most people can “get out of the fat trap” with a few months or years of effort severely underestimates the chronic, relapsing nature of obesity.

Moreover, the suggestion that aches, low energy, and poor sleep stem primarily from being fat is misleading. These symptoms can be caused by stress, overwork, inflammation, sleep disorders, depression, and poor nutrition—regardless of weight. The author’s framing implies that fat bodies are inherently dysfunctional, which not only ignores counterexamples (such as metabolically healthy fat individuals) but also contributes to the very stigma they claim to reject. In fact, weight stigma itself is a proven source of health harm, leading to increased cortisol, disordered eating, avoidance of medical care, and reduced physical activity.

To the author’s credit, the discussion of the mental and emotional dimensions of eating—especially the anxiety, guilt, and obsession around food—is insightful and compassionate. They are correct that healing from disordered eating patterns often involves therapy, mindfulness, and internal self-work, not just external changes. Their acknowledgement that body positivity and self-acceptance are vital steps is also important. Still, framing recovery as a journey out of the “fat trap” subtly undermines those same values, by implying that fatness itself is the problem to be escaped.

Ultimately, this post would be stronger if it embraced a more nuanced understanding of health at every size, acknowledged the role of genetics and biology in body weight, and moved away from binary thinking about “traps” and “freedom.” Compassion, flexibility, and science-based awareness are essential—not just for others, but for oneself. Weight is not a moral failure or a mental prison. It’s one part of a complex picture of health, identity, and lived experience.

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