What? Surely changing one's behaviour - particularly the parts of behaviour that caused the obesity in the first place - is a sure way to stop being obese.
Behavioural changes work, the issue is that most people don't actually change their behaviour.
It's funny how proposing an healthy diet is unrealistic and watching fatties eat themselves to death is the new normal, complete value inversion and looser mentality
It's just that you should probably suggest other treatments in addition to the lifestyle changes that have relatively low long term efficacy.
Of course, that assumes your goal is to actually help the fatties instead of judging them.
I don't believe that's possible. They have to choose a healthier lifestyle by themselves.
It's not that people are fat because no one told them to eat healthy and exercise sometimes. They're fat because they have ignored that advice for a long time.
They aren't missing information about diet and exercise, they're missing diet and exercise.
I wonder what changed in between? Maybe our food and our relation to it? Who knows right?
You believe incorrectly.
> They're fat because they have ignored that advice for a long time.
Ah yes, the medical equivalent of "works on my machine".
You've now shifted from "how effective is this treatment" to "whose fault is it when the treatment doesn't work".
You will be able to help the fatties when you shift back into asking the question that matters.
But you are right with the fact that at the end, it mostly doesn't work. But those who stick with regime, it works 100% and positive changes in life, quality, happiness etc are massive.
The real solution - treat underlying mental issues. They are always there with obese people, they are massive (no pun intended), and they manifest as obesity, among plethora of other mental issues.
No. Even nearly a decade of intensive behavioral treatment has highly variable results.
Here's what the numbers tend to look like in practice:
~26% weighed more than at baseline
~23% lost >0% to <5%
~23% lost 5% to <10%
~16% lost 10% to <15%
~11% lost ≥15%
> positive changes in life, quality, happiness etc are massive
This is generally true. Eating better and exercising will improve your life.
But will you lose weight? How much weight? Those are far more difficult questions.
Again, we can not change other people. People can only change themselves.
We have.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319339
> Body adapts significantly over time when subjected to weight loss.
> There are compensatory physiological adaptations that favor weight regain, such as changes in energy expenditure and appetite.
> Even with sustained effort, maintaining the initial weight loss may become progressively more difficult because of those changes.
> This shows up in research as results like mean weight loss of ~9% at year 1 and ~5% at year 8.
Mental issues is a broad category as well. Are food cravings a "mental issue", or a "physiological/hormonal issue"? No clear difference between those two, and given how GLP-1s quench cravings in general - not just food cravings, plenty of people on those report losing their compulsive behaviors, even such as gambling or shopping - the hormonal variant sounds quite plausible.
Which may be actually good. We are a lot better in treating hormonal issues than mental issues.
perhaps you can elaborate on how systemic death spirals are funny?
Running a marathon a month is a sure way to improve your health. However, less than 1% of people would be willing to do that. So it’s not an effective solution.
It’s an effective solution if we just ignore life, sure. But solutions are rooted in pragmatism.
If you opt for it, then yes of course, abstinence-only sex education is a sure way to stop ten pregnancy.
Similarly, if you opt to change your lifestyle and start living healthier, and follow through, it will work.
If someone tries to force you, of course it will fail (in both of these cases). There is no way to stop someone else from being fat. We can only change ourselves.
Being fit and maintaining the normal weight is not the same thing as reaching a BMI of 50 kg/m² then losing it. I've seen fitness influencers take up that challenge only to find that "changing oneself" is significantly harder than it used to be when they were fit.
If you change your lifestyle temporarily, the effects are temporary.
If you change your lifestyle permanently, the effects are permanent.
For the love of god or any other deity I can't grasp this, its trivial for me to muster a tiny fraction of discipline and simply change direction from now on. But people out there are vastly different than me, thats pretty obvious, ie many people detest sports or even sweating. Addictions, and over-eating is an addiction (or some form of stress-coping mechanism) have a way to grasp core of one's existence and not let go.
My wife sees such overweight folks with not-so-much-time-remaining-on-earth as GP regularly. As she says - they basically over-ate themselves into mental disorder (or started with it and their body over time aligned with behavior). To actually fix this, that mental disorder needs to be tackled, no gastric operations or wegovy injections provide permanent solution. But they sure make pharma companies richer and give this warm fuzzy feeling of achieving actually something visible, even if temporary.
Not quite.
If the lifestyle deteriorates, then weight regain is expected. However, people might regain only a fraction of the weight lost. It is possible for some of the weight loss to be permanent.
Also, even temporary changes in lifestyle can produce benefits that outlast the intervention, like lower risk of disease such as diabetes. Exercise is notable for providing numerous benefits that persist even if weight is completely unmodified.
> If you change your lifestyle permanently, the effects are permanent.
No. It improves your odds of success, but does not guarantee it.
Body adapts significantly over time when subjected to weight loss. There are compensatory physiological adaptations that favor weight regain, such as changes in energy expenditure and appetite. Even with sustained effort, maintaining the initial weight loss may become progressively more difficult because of those changes. This shows up in research as results like mean weight loss of ~9% at year 1 and ~5% at year 8.