What nobody tells you about losing weight

AnnPT77 wrote: »

zaxaz wrote: »

Ariadne__ wrote: »

zaxaz wrote: »

And I do believe all those things they said - eat less more more, for example - are all lies and unsupported by scientific evidence.
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Do you believe that eating less and moving more doesn't lead to weight loss?

I recommend you read "The Obesity Code" by Dr Jason Fung. He reviews all the various things we have been told our entire lives, including being made to feel inadequate, no self-control, etc, and destroys them by reviewing long-term scientific studies.

Popular press books aren't necessarily good science, even when they point out studies. Individual studies are fairly meaningless, until replicated and confirmed. Further, most readers of the book don't read the studies. That's understandable, but it leaves readers vulnerable to cherry-picked content, and sometimes the studies don't even say what a book claims!

W =hen I'm swayed to some theory, I consider it important to read its critics, and I try to do so fairly. Fung is not well regarded by peers in the field. He's had success in treating certain conditions, but that speaks more to his clinical acumen than his theories about why it works.

In the larger world of the relevant science, it's an accepted fundamental truth that moving more and eating less (i.e., calorie balance) is at the foundation of body weight management. The problem is that even though calories are the foundation, there's much more to accomplishing weight loss at a practical and even scientific level than getting a calorie estimate from a so-called "calculator" then counting calories.

At the scientific level, other fundamental truths are that human bodies are dynamic with respect to calorie balance, that results vary between individuals, and that other characteristics of food (besides calories) matter in a practical and (to some extent) theoretical sense. (<== Very few sources ever tell us these things - with specifics - about weight loss, so I'm gonna say this post is on topic. Long, though, because I'm going to be more specific )

Human bodies are dynamic in that calories in affect calories out. Oversimplifying: Eat more calories, there's a tendency to be more active, so burn more calories. Eat fewer calories, there's a tendency to fatigue, bleeding calorie burn out of one's day. Do major calorie-burning workouts, and fatigue may also make a person drag through the day, so net calorie burn is lower than expected. Or, if someone becomes more fit (gradually!), there's a tendency to move more in daily life, maybe do more exercise, maybe add muscle and bump up resting calorie burn (RMR) a tiny bit. This doesn't mean the calorie balance concept is incorrect, it means that it's more nuanced. It still comes down to eating less (than we burn) and moving more (than we eat), but the target number can shift.

Increasingly, it seems like the weight of research is demonstrating that people vary in ways that affect weight management results, and for varied reasons. Some people seem more sensitive to those "tendencies" in my previous paragraph. Gut microbiome and individual genetics can affect how each person responds to particular foods, calorie levels, activity types/levels, etc., in ways that can strongly affect practical weight management. Again this doesn't mean that the calorie balance equation is incorrect, it means that people vary in the fraction of calories they absorb from their food, how their calorie intake (plus timing and food choice) affects energy level and even attitudes, how sated they feel, etc.

Food characteristics also cause variation that can affect calorie counting. Some foods require materially more calories to digest than others, for example. The effect of that in a typical mixed diet is small, but it's a thing. Some people will find some foods more mood-enhancing, energy-increasing, filling, and the like. Again, that's not an invalidation of "calories in, calories out" as a foundation issue, but rather that calculating the actual detailed ins and outs is more complicated, and food choice also affects the practical ability to accomplish a weight loss goal. (It's a good thing that we don't need to be totally accurate to use calorie counting successfully. All we need is workable estimates.)

From observing my friends, some people seem to have a bent to believe iconoclasts, perhaps because of a conviction that the mainstream view is inherently corrupt due to money following the mainstream, and because of intellectual inertia in that mainstream. (The iconoclasts are usually happy to encourage those views.) Historically, it turns out that some iconoclasts are right, sometimes in ways that radically transform a field. In practice, that doesn't happen very often. Most iconoclasts turn out to be completely wrong.

My opinion: Some of the strategies Fung advocates will help some people. His theoretical foundations are shaky, and some of his pronouncements are not well-supported by science.

P.S. I agree with @Ariadne__ that "being made to feel" thing is not in accord with my personal philosophy. To me, that's self-disempowerment. It can lead toward simmering resentment, besides (because of perceiving that others block our success via our feelings). I prefer to focus on what I personally can control or at least influence, and when it comes to eating and moving I have nearly total control, in the fortunate comfortably middle-class, developed world situation in which I find myself. YMMV.

In my social set, which is a biased sample of humanity (not speaking of the big wide world), I've noticed that people who tend to be repeatedly attracted to iconoclasts also tend to feel they've been victimized in some way by mainstream ideas, to the extent of becoming suspicious of the mainstream. That's understandable, but can be problematic.