Genetics obviously doesn't break the laws of physics. You cannot get fat without calories in exceeding calories out. With that said, if dieting means you are ravenously hungry all the time, leaves you feeling overwhelmed with stress or leaves you lacking energy to do the bare minimum you need to do (i.e. work, chores, caring for kids, etc), then you're going to find it very difficult to lose weight. These are the actual problems people struggle with when trying to lose weight, which I think lean people often struggle to relate to.
I can relate. I was overweight most of my life. I had to peel away layers of bad narrative and misunderstanding, and also train my discipline circuits to get "lean". And it's still a struggle every day. I'm one of those people who gain weight on a lot less calories than other people. My wife is 2 inches shorter and weighs 50 lbs less than I, and eats twice the calories per day. Mind you, we track every gram of food and weigh it on a scale, and enter it into a diet tracking app (Cronometer in our case). So I am SUPER familiar with everything you are saying.
What I am getting at is that most people are not able to initially grasp this nuance, and the fundamental fact is that there IS a threshold of calories where you WILL lose weight no matter what. It's up to every individual to work on their motivation, but frankly that's orthogonal to the facts of the matter, and it's better to be direct rather than tell half-truths because it's "complicated". I almost never see discussions of motivation and differences in metabolism in these types of threads elsewhere, and to just assume the average person understand these factors is a mistake. The first thing people need to learn is that cutting down food will lose weight, point blank. Then you can add on layers about metabolism and motivation as the journey continues.
> What I am getting at is that most people are not able to initially grasp this nuance, and the fundamental fact is that there IS a threshold of calories where you WILL lose weight no matter what.
Once you cross this threshold, the organism activates every failsafe evolution devised since the first metazoan arised, to ensure you stop and come back.
People who are on a healthy weight just don't have motivational issue. I have a good friend that eats garbage and she knows and wants to change that. She's still not gaining weight.
A properly calibrated body will just do what it's supposed to do. For the rest of us, it's an uphill battle.
Yea, I get what you're saying. It is unhelpful when people act as if cutting enough calories and/or increasing exercise enough won't lead to weight loss, because obviously it will. Insufficient motivation is definitely a problem for a lot of people, but I think it is also possible to be so metabolically deranged that motivation actually becomes a secondary issue when you have very strong hormonal signals telling you that you need to eat more.
I don’t think standard humans measure enough data to check the mass balance of their body’s system. I seem to remember an episode of CSI where that kind of behavior was used as evidence of an eating disorder.
Joking aside, being overweight is mostly about body density, not mass. Few people get upset about having too much lean muscle or the food inputs needed get there; that is a different set of health risks.
Whether your body converts incoming calories to muscle or fat or whatever else does actually depend (to some variable extent) on genetics, along with many other factors. Glossing this as “breaking the laws of physics” is a straw man.
One example off the top of my head: eating lots of protein to build muscle can be hard on the liver.
Exercising a lot is generally healthy, but high impact exercises (running comes to mind) can cause your joints to wear out a lot faster.
This is all also assuming an average, healthy person with no existing medical conditions. Things get trickier if you have exertional asthma, any kind of condition that can cause fatigue, etc.
The normal claim is a bit weaker, that under caloric restriction the body situationally reacts by doing a lot less work. You also see reports of reduced cognitive abilities and whatnot, consistent with lower energy expenditures.
I think those reports are overblown, especially with little mismeasurements on the order of 1Tbsp of butter or the fact that many foods have labeled calories 20% less than the actual caloric content, all of that combined with thinking that exercise is more impactful than it actually is (especially weight training), but the core claims aren't totally ludicrous at face value.
I don't have the reference study on hand, but I believe the brain requires approximately 600 calories a day, or 150g of carbs. Switching over to use ketones requires going into ketosis, which most people never do.
When you look at how our hormones are affected by different types of macronutrients, there are dietary ways to restrict calories, prevent hunger from becoming an issue, and still maintain a decent level of mental acuity.
I've found that aiming for 150g of carbs a day and .7-1g protein/pound of body weight to be fairly self-regulating. I have to eat more carbs on days I do BJJ (pretty glycogenic sport, but, admittedly, has become less demanding the closer I got to my black belt), but using that target as a rule of thumb has worked out well for me over the years.
When we talk about CICO, there is the reality of our hormones that we have to consider--at least in terms of human behavior. There are ways to diet with ease and no discomfort, but yo-yoing between binging on snacks and trying to not eat anything isn't very feasible.
No, no, I've seen such comments here on HN as well. It is definitely more nuanced, as genetics does play a role, but still, not one that violates the Law of Conservation of Energy.
Starving yourself is not a healthy way to lose weight. It is not an effective way either, since you will either gain it all back when you decide to eat again or get an eating disorder.
Straw man. No one is claiming they aren't more complicated, but food intake is cornerstone, the foundation to understanding weight and weight loss. The complexity and nuance should be layered on top of this. Many ignore the foundation. See my other comments in this thread.
