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.
