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Comment by nawgz | Hacker News Reader

> ... then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight.

I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life.

It seems pretty obvious to me that saying "some people can't eat enough to put on weight / get fat" is a distinct thing from saying "someone who cannot stop putting on weight / getting fatter will almost never be able to lose the weight without adjusting their diet". Do you agree or am I missing something?

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I peaked at about 200 pounds, got really into cycling, and then had to put a lot of work into my diet to get back up to 160. I think there’s a bunch of obvious reasons why this is uncommon even if you pretend there’s zero metabolic differences between people, so it’s very hard to say how much it’s something that can’t happen for people versus merely being something that could but doesn’t.

You're missing something.

More or less anyone can get to the point of being active enough where their body's ability to absorb calories is a limiting factor. It's not genetic or "some people" kind of thing, everybody has this limit and can hit it and people who are really excited about exercise and do a tremendous amount of it have to have strategies about how to get enough calories in their body on a day to day basis.

It's a lot of activity to get to this point, but some folks have magical thinking about eating.

Anyone absent a significant disability can be active enough to lose weight regardless of diet.

I'm not saying the "go insane and spend most of your free time exercising" is the best course of action, but far too many people have magical thoughts about changing diet or changing activity levels being ineffective for changing body composition.

Getting sat down in a doctors office and being told to do this isn't particularly effective, but that's different from actually doing it being effective.

> their body's ability to absorb calories is a limiting factor

That depends on what "calories" you're consuming (as I responded to another comment, calories are not just calories). If you're getting calories through animal fat, then indeed absorption is a limiting factor. If you're chugging pure glucose/sucrose dissolved in water, then that limit is significantly higher, and you start hitting the physical limit of how much liquid volume can physically move through your body without it being a torture method.

Which actually leads to the primary cause of the obesity epidemic: the prevalence of sugar, and particularly in forms that get directly absorbed into the body.

> It's a lot of activity to get to this point

Yes. Like multiple hours a day lot. That's why it's a "myth". It takes an amount of time, effort, and focus, that isn't particularly reasonable for I'd say almost all people.

Fundamentally, I agree with you that it's possible: I pretty much did it myself with ~12 hours of hard cycling a week, but I just think your take is wrong because it basically boils down to nitpicking "myth".

We live in an age where some people will say they're not lying as long as what they said has the vaguest association with the truth. Let's not contribute to that.

People in these threads are arguing aggressively this "myth" is not at all possible when the truth is lots of people experience it, including yourself.

Let's not dilute the meaning of the word "myth" to mean "its somewhat difficult".

A unicorn is a mythical creature from fairy tales, this doesn't mean the same thing as "the zoo with a unicorn exhibit is a few hours away and pretty expensive".

This isn't some nitpick of a minor detail better described with slightly different wording. It's people passionately arguing a common experience is impossible.

It's not "common".

Go ahead and die on this hill if you want but you're doing it alone and without convincing anyone you're fighting the right crusade.

it's not "merely difficult". it's impossible for vast swathes of the population. if i wanted to lose weight through exercising i'd have to be an absent father. well technically i can i guess.

fasting is simply way better and easier.

for many folks exercising is good to get healthy, not to lose weight.

> It's a lot of activity to get to this point

Like a lot. Like professional athlete level.

Running 50 miles per week is a ton, easily top 1% activity level.

And all you incrementally need is a large slice of pizza, a coke, and a couple scoops of ice cream to make up for it.

> I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life.

This is an extremely common story for anyone who does through hiking on the Appalachian Trail (or Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, etc.). Quite a lot of people start overweight (although I have no idea what the percentage looks like). Almost everyone ends up losing a very significant amount of weight along the way. It is very difficult to stay overweight on the trail. People are intentionally choosing the absolute most calorie-dense food they possibly can, gorging themselves at every opportunity, consistently eating integer multiples of the standard recommended caloric intake, and are still losing large amounts of weight.

This is definitely an outlier case though.

That's definitely an outlier case.

And despite their choices of calorie-dense foods,

> gorging themselves at every opportunity

is a meaningful qualifier. Carrying your food will lead to restriction, naturally.

> Carrying your food will lead to restriction, naturally.

Eh. Yes, but people on the trail are still regularly eating > 6000 calories a day. If you talk with folks, the limit is often satiety even when not in town (people often simply cannot eat enough calories without feeling sick if they don't pace their eating accordingly), not pack capacity.

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