If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact.
Since when is psychology not part of biology?
Certainly, if you eat enough less and move enough more, you'll lose weight. I'm pretty sure there's a minimum threshold to this.
The problem with this is "eat less and move more" is just physics and not really a complete picture of your physiology. That is - you can be impelled somehow to eat less and move and if you go over threshold, you will lose weight. The problem is you may not reach a state which your body's internal calibration systems consider normal and thus you will wind-up gaining the weight back when the forces impelling you to eat less and move more go away. There's more to a craving for food than "psychology".
This is where the difficult biology of weight stands, as I understand it.
And personally, I'm always underweight no matter my food consumption so it's not hard to imagine other in the opposite situation. Each person's physiological system is different so a thousand antidotes don't prove a generality although they can certainly show the exceptions to the supposed "rule".
Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight.
On the other hand you have people who are trying to sell you something tell you all manner of complicated ways of losing weight that basically amount to being what overweight people want to hear.
In this case, you have a company called Fitocracy telling you:
Willpower will not bring you success.
It's a great statement that absolves overweight people of much of their responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. Fitocracy should sell well with this technique.
In spite of that, it's true that willpower is a limited resource and if you push too hard you'll burn out (just like with programming but exercise gives you more immediate physical pain and high risk of injury from overuse)
It's very clear that you didn't read the article. Dick, the author, is my best friend and comparing him to a fat apologist is the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.
He's a fat-kid-turned-competitive-bodybuilder and has helped a very large amount of people lose a lot of weight by cutting out the crap diets and mentality that try to confuse people into eating less than their TDEE every week. Dick's simplified diets for me and explained to me that fucking up every once in a while is ok, and I went from failing Atkins 2 times to losing 65lb in 8 months, and as I'm writing this I'm currently eating ice cream and waffles.
I understand that the fitness industry has a lot of negative stereotypes around it, for good reason, but please dear god read the article before you try to convince yourself that this person is just like the rest.
They frequently are smarter or better-informed. Just because someone writes a post on a blog doesn't mean they're smart or have deep knowledge about their subject matter.
And referring to peoples' comments as a "cesspool" is not particularly civil.
On the topic of health, diet and fitness, HN is particularly bad. It is a war between favourite self-promoting authors by proxy. Nary a dietitian to be seen. Everyone has their pet secret history and by god they will proselytise it.
So our object, scientific explanation for obesity is ... lack of personal responsibility!
I suspect Fitocracy is selling their explanation rather than your "explanation" because at least their explanation seems to offer a rational way of changing the situation rather being a mere gesture blaming people (not to say that their system would work for everyone, everyone's different and some people might even find shame and guilt useful for losing weight - still it's unlikely to be an appealing marketing campaign).
At this point, I know what some people are thinking. “Well, Dick. If you’re so smart and it’s not about willpower, I guess no one is at fault for being fat then, huh?”
On the contrary. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in my decade of talking to thousands of people between forums, clients, Fitocracy, and real life, it’s that people are responsible for their own failures. Most times, it is their fault. But it’s not for the reasons that most people think. Most don’t fail because they didn’t eat less or move more.
They failed because they could not see beyond the oversimplification of “eat less, move more.”
Many times, this is a problem of hubris; they failed to be curious, introspective, and mindful. These people also beat themselves up for all of their past failures, not realizing those plans had them doomed for the start.
The Biggest Loser will have you believe that fitness success is about being tough, being hardcore – dangerously hardcore. In fact, it’s about the exact opposite.
Fitness success is about humility – realizing you cannot reduce one of the world’s most challenging problems to “eat less, move more,” and then seeking out the knowledge to improve yourself. Success also requires compassion – forgiving yourself for past failures so that you can try again.
Those things are the exact opposite of being “hardcore.”
That’s the ultimate irony. It’s why people are ultimately responsible for their failures – not because they failed to shrink their waist, but because they failed to expand their horizons." ____________________________________________________________________
Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013
That’s because willpower is a finite resource. No amount of willpower alone will make you get up every morning to run if you hate running.
You're just making excuses for your potential customers. Your willpower may be finite but you can choose to spend it on the things that matter the most to you. You can also improve your willpower, and you can place yourself in environments where you have to use less willpower to achieve your goals.
So, yes, if you're healthy enough to do it and you want to get up every morning and run, you can build up enough willpower to do it. Period.
I have to admit that after I read that statement, I just skimmed the rest of your article. You can't just make a bunch of fallacious statements earlier in the article then expect a few qualifications in the ending paragraphs to make it all okay.
It isn't constructive to add this kind of barb to the end of your comment. From the top of the HN commenting guidlines:
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
HTH! ^_^
p.s. I suspect you're mad about the cardio comment. Let's not try to sugar coat the fact that science suggests your "feelings" are wrong, ty.
p.p.s – would say this all to anyone's face. good luck with your suggestion of 1 hr of cardio/day to people new to fitness... lmk how that pans out!
>good luck with your suggestion of 1 hr of cardio/day to people new to fitness... lmk how that pans out!
Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were asking in earnest... can only assume you're referring to what I shared earlier on HN—pretty much everyone who joined my high school swim team team made tremendous improvements in their fitness levels. Ditto for sedentary students joining cross-country. It already "panned out" years ago and it was a huge success!
If you put less gasoline in your car, you will produce less pollution. Simple as that. It's just basic conservation of mass. Just don't put as much in at the pump! Easy peasey. Problem solved. Get better mileage and pollute less just by buying less gasoline! Right?
Perhaps instead of focusing on the "moral inferiority" [those are scare quotes, I'm not saying you actually wrote those words] of the obese for their inability to accept basic thermodynamics, we should ask the question of what actually works in the big picture; what will actually produce the motivational or metabolic changes necessary to ensure a positive outcome. Asking what people do who have been thin their whole lives is probably not going to help.
I have myself lost 10kg in the last year, albeit that was not especially my prime objective. I can clearly see that if it was all pain and no fun, I wouldn't have done it - I wasn't even overweight, but clearly a bit out of shape.
Mostly exercising made me feel really good about myself. As did eating less, especially when you start not to get hungry as much anymore. I still love to eat, but I try to be more mindful of my eating.
Plus, if you actually care about whether people are healthy or not, the psychological factors are hugely relevant. All the "calories in/calories out" mantra seems to do is give people a soapbox to talk about how they're just intrinsically superior to fat people.
- That's not impossible. However you've probably used drugs affecting your metabolism to increase your expenditure.
"How accurately are you really measuring your calories out, and how your diet and exercise impacts that?"
- Why would measuring anything affect how physiology and physics work? (And yes, energy expenditure and consumption can be measured extremely precisely in labs.)
"Or how the composition and combination and timing of the foods you eat impacts your digestion (calories in)?"
- In healthy people it doesn't.
I'm sorry to tell you but you were eating less than you we're burning. I know it hurts.
I agree your metabolism is not a static thing. When starving it can adapt to as much as 30%, yet this only means you're burning less energy and you need to adjust your intake (or modulate your expenditure somehow - by exercising, not having too big of a caloric deficit etc.).
Stopping to eat certain kinds of food and/or starting to eat other kinds of food will not make you lose weight. Eating at a different time will not make you lose weight. Combining foods differently will not make you lose weight.
Weight loss is a result of a negative energy balance. Now, all these things you listed can impact your energy intake (and thus energy balance), especially if you eat calorie less dense food. But you're losing weight because you're eating less. All the things you listed are (more or less successful) ways to modulate your hunger. You're not necessarily eating less by volume, but certainly less by energy value.
Physics is clear - psychology and hunger management not so much. But I'm strictly speaking of physics and the fact that you stated that you lost weight without increasing energy expenditure or decreasing energy intake.
This is a categorical error that leads to people thinking that thermodynamics and the conservation of matter and energy are wrong.
The labels on food are estimates. The exercise databases are estimates. Therefore when you perform the equation with those inputs, it is approximate only.
When I am doing more physical work, I make sure I eat a bit more. When I am doing less physical work, I make sure I eat a bit less. It's not easy but it's really not as difficult as you are trying to make it seem. Further, I don't believe that people with legitimately diagnosed medical conditions make up a significant portion of the overweight population.
I'm happy for you. People have different metabolisms, and there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem. Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all.
That's your belief.
there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem
That's your belief.
Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all.
Allow me to turn this one right back around to you. You have a series of old wives tales that you believe and then tell people that their beliefs don't matter. I'm frankly surprised you didn't yank out the "I'm big boned" defense which has been as disproven as a person's intrinsically "faster metabolism".
The funny thing is that I'm usually lectured about how to be thin by people that have struggled with their weight their entire life. These people have had years and years of being overweight, have no idea how to truly eat and their weight has see-sawed their entire life. All the while, I have maintained the same thin weight. For 41 years. But they insist on how wrong I am and how right they are.
Really? Resorting to "Well that's just your opinion, man" on HN?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/25/5-metabolis...
Oh and your link even agreed with me so you're apparently batting a thousand here.
See this whole thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5300587
And plenty of the 35% of adults that are obese have problems like insulin resistance and high blood pressure (both of which are certainly medical problems). They are also generally at higher risk for cardiovascular problems.
There are probably many people who are told they have metabolic syndrome but fail to understand that this may be (at least partially) a result of their weight problems, not simply a cause of it.
Eating less doesn't interfere with having diabetes or hypothyroidism. And 90% of people don't have these conditions.
It wasn't easy counting calories, it takes time to do it, and it can be frustrating, especially when you're hungry.
I found it was also hard, at first, to turn down food. About a six months into the program though, I started to realize just how many calories were in certain foods. I would think to myself, are those calories really worth the taste? Most of the time, the answer was no. Although, with beer, it was usually yes.
Perhaps it doesn't work for everyone, but has it ever caused someone to gain more weight? Not just a few pounds, but tens of pounds?
I get the sense that the people who don't like the idea of "move more/eat less" don't want to deal with the hassle of counting calories and working out.