Food for thought

Commander_Keen

http://time.com/4937456/weight-loss-myths/?amp=true

Terytha

“If you just try to eat less and exercise more, most people will lose that battle. Metabolism wins,” said Dr. David Ludwig ... “Simply looking at calories is misguided at best and potentially harmful because it disregards how those calories are affecting our hormones and metabolism—and ultimately our ability to stick to a diet.”

Instead, Ludwig recommends people concentrate on eating healthier foods, and avoid highly processed food with lots of added sugar.

This advice has been repeated to me since I was 16 and has been the single most harmful advice I've ever had.

Because every time I failed to give up soda or every time I enjoyed a fast food burger or every time I tried to eat "healthier" and didn't lose weight I felt like a huge failure. My relationship with food became a hellish misery. I developed a binge eating disorder as a result of cycling through hopelessness and anger and self hatred.

Just counting calories, I have enjoyed my favorite foods and soda and chocolate and still dropped 26 pounds in 70 days. I finally feel like I don't have to hate food. I finally feel like not a failure. Like instead of blaming metabolism and stuff, I have control.

Doctors are so useless.

AnnPT77

Feels a little incomplete-truth-ish, so not very helpful, IMO. Certainly not insightful.

Weight management is about how much we move, and how much we eat. What we eat affects satiety and energy level, which have secondary effects on how much we feel like eating, and how much we feel like moving. Calorie counting while figuring out one's personal satiety and energy needs seems to work for a lot of people, because it pins down more of the variables as compared with eating ad libitum. (Medical conditions complicate the scenario a bit, but less than many people assume . . . I say this as someone severely hypothyroid, and menopausal).

Just "moving more and eating less", without any kind of metrics, is less likely to work (bodyweight scale yields one kind of metrics, and can be enough for some, BTW). It might work to eat exactly the same foods, in exactly the same proportions, necessarily maintain satiety/energy, but assuming it will work is kind of naive and nonsensical. Similarly, deciding to simply "eat good things" and "eliminate bad things" is also naive and nonsensical.

Pushing the complexities off as "metabolism" and "hormones" seems like a way to convince regular people that success is off in a land that they can't possibly understand or influence, which is nonsense. Most people understand energy and satiety when those manifest in their own lives, and that's what a lot of the science-y sounding terminology comes down to, at a practical level . . . and if we can observe our energy/satiety, we can influence them.

IMO, helping people focus on what they personally can observe, influence, and control is empowering, and more likely to lead to success. Focusing on mostly uncontrollable or not-directly-observable factors (metabolism, hormones, chemicals/toxins, genetics, etc.) isn't very helpful, unless the point is making people feel victimized and powerless.

Just my opinions, obviously.