It's not like we didn't try, but what we tried didn't work and never really iterated toward something that works.
"It's not that I don't want to stop smoking, but the cigarette companies put chemicals in that keep me addicted"
"I live in an environment that pushes me to smoke"
"I wish the policymakers would stop me from smoking"
"I smoke because my genes tell me so"
We should be working to pragmatically solve problems, not playing unhelpful blame game. Doctors don't go around trying to make sure that their patients are first virtuous in their self care. They get on with the business of medicine and do their best.
We now have a powerful drug that help with obesity. Let's make use of that when nothing else accomplish the job as we work on other alternatives such as better regulations, psychological health, etc.
> "I live in an environment that pushes me to smoke"
But those two things are true. The nicotine is addictive and being surrounded by other smokers, smoking materials, smoking in films and on television, all compounded to make smoking more attractive. Plenty of smokers offered me cigarettes when i was in my teens.
This is modern voodoo.
I’ve eaten terrifically and exercised regularly. I’ve also been a slob and ordered Uber Eats from bed for a week. I don’t gain much weight either way. When I have, I can lose it within a week. (My figure changes. But not enough that clothes don’t fit.)
This isn’t because I follow some magic (ex post facto obvious in some way) diet. It’s my biology. Other people have different biologies that will save calories irrespective of the source and use; their basal metabolism adjusts to ensure they’re burning less than they eat, all the way to starvation.
In a calorie-deficit environment, or one stricken by plague that disease out digestion while the immune system goes full blast, I die first. In a calorie-rich and vaccinated world, they do. (Even then, mortality is higher amid low BMIs than moderate ones, largely due to disease outcomes.)
I did indeed lose the belly fat I wanted to shed.
I'm sure it wasn't the healthiest thing I ever did, but from the perspective of fat loss it worked AOK
There is zero scientific evidence about this.
Weight loss is apparently a 90 billion dollar industry.
It’s just that the long term weight loss outcomes are still abysmal.
New approaches are gladly welcomed.
Have you noticed that every time this discussion comes up in this forum, simple personal intervention is glossed over as a solution? Causes for obesity, for HN users, are:
- The Environment - The Lack of Walkable Cities - The Policymakers™ - Too Many Cars - The Government Lobbied By Food Corps et cetera.
While none of the above has directly put calories into a person's mouth, and the only responsibility is on the mouth owner, we sometimes forget that the simple solution to the obesity crisis is: caloric restriction. This solution however has a major drawback: it requires being slightly uncomfortable for a tiny amount of time, which is unacceptable to most. So, enter the Magic Pill: No effort is required whatsoever, and we can keep on blaming external factors for what enters our mouth.
Your body doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. Your argumentation is saying if you stop eating you wont lose weight - which is blatantly false.
No one dies of starvation being fat. It’s that simple. You wanna lose weight? Stop eating and drink water. You’ll lose the weight regardless of what nonsense you believe.
I recommend reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind... (or the audiobook) to learn what makes our 'food' so much worse than 50 years ago.
If you want something more moving, this is good documentary by the same the doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk
And so we medicate, because that's the only thing where people can say "my neighbor did it, and look, it worked for them, I'll do it too".
Really?
It’s Calories In - Calories Out.
But how does this theory explain why people lose weight on semaglutide?
Diesel fuel technically has several times as much calories as Cola-Cola. But try drinking diesel fuel for lunch and see what comes about.
This is because the human body doesn't literally burn food like in a calorimeter. Digestion is a very complex chemical reaction with lots of nuance and different nutrient pathways.
But to address your point: It seems like a disingenious and pedantic argument.
Can you come up with edge cases where my one-liner (Calories In - Calories Out) is not 100% accurate? Yes. Is that the case for the absolutely overwhelming majority of people? No. Over 70% of people in the US are overweight or obese. That's more than 2 in 3. Are we all suffering from some exotic, unknown, mysterious disturbance of the gut microbiome? Or is it more likely that we just move too little while eating too much? I think I know the answer.
Go to Europe and eat home cooked meals there. Your health will improve
But yea, the EU does a lot better job policing what goes into food and it shows. Fruits and vegetables and meat that I buy here spoil within 2-4 days (and 4 is pushing it)! I had to adjust my purchasing habits because it would go bad before I could eat it all.
The public transportation and push to cycle and walk definitely helps, but at least where I live in the south, most families still own at least one car. The difference is that they only use it to drive to work and for trips. Any errands are done on foot or on a bicycle.
"...the average height of a man aged 20-74 years increased from just over 5-8 in 1960 to 5-9 ½ in 2002" [1].
Despite the higher weight, life expectancy has increased too [2]. I'm not trying to handwave obesity rates, but pointing out that it's a mixed narrative.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm
[2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
Our heights are, in order, from oldest to youngest:
* 5' 7", same as our father
* 5' 9"
* 5' 11"
* 6'
Now obviously the sample size is quite small, but we've always wondered if nutrition had something to do with it.
I'm not saying we start smoking to lose weight, but it does suppress appetite. Now we have FDA approved medications that can do that.
Drink water or black tea or coffee.
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
This series of blog posts goes through various theories (and myths) regarding obesity.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
Their thesis doesn't hinge entirely on lithium, but their sloppy work and responses to the rebuttal mean people should take their work with a huge grain of salt.
If a lizard bite can make you thinner, maybe there's a metaphorical lizard bite that's making us fatter.
It's cars and large houses peripherally connected to amenities by car-only infrastructure.
People love this lifestyle and will fight you very energetically if you try to do anything to nudge city layouts towards the previous level of walkability.
Until they run out of breath, anyway.
Anyone into machining, high powered rocketry, or shooting or hunting.
YMMV but I doubt you could have a magazine and pass inspection from the BATFE or your state inspection for fireworks or explosives. And dense living near a gun range is impossible unless you got money to build a long range that can catch any stray rounds, when done in a rural area this is done using natural land and hills or building dirt mounds, which a walkable city would not have.
I do understand that the causes of over eating are not necessarily so simple.
What I wonder about is that essentially no government has an explicit policy to combat this despite its obvious negative consequences.
It’s good for the economy. That’s the answer.
Why don't we attack that? Because 30+ years of evening news clips showing obese people walking or sitting and handwringing about the obesity crisis have done nothing, and that seems to be the extent of our ability to act.
You can save yourself years of extra health-span standing in any way more than sitting.
Turns out knowledge work is just as dangerous as physical work, you just die in a different way and the coffin is larger.
It's really pretty shocking how much added sugar there is in anything with more than 1 ingredient, and getting more sweetness in is basically a race with every other element of someone's diet. The 1980s had it junk food, but there was still other food.
Is it? Glancing around, it seems to me that the stark difference is between places where nobody walks or bikes anywhere — Tulsa, Little Rock, etc — and places where everyone walks and bikes — NY, DC, SF.
Changing your diet will have much greater bang for your bucks and much 'easier' to do.
I can't see the logic in declaring one side of an equilibrium equation to be secondary. Both sides are obviously of the same importance.
I've heard that keeping a calorie intake diary is an effective way to lose weight. I also had pretty good results with it personally by setting a calorie target in an app and sticking to it.
I see people in SF walking around with some Starbucks abomination or another, every day.
Walk uphill 400 metres altitude gain every day, and you will lose weight, yes. Run uphill 400m every day and you will lose even more. Carry a backpack, and ... you will put on muscle.
Walking or running on the flat, not so much.
[0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
Yes exercise is very healthy, that has been proven, but loosing weight is mostly a matter of eating less, at least according to this (reputable) meta source. Apparently, over eating but not getting fat (which holds true for me), leads to other problems (also true for me, I have an autoimmune disorder).
Eat less to lose weight. Exercise more to be healthy.
(nice, got my first downvotes in less time it takes to watch 1/10th of my source ;))
There are a lot of pathological things we do regularly, not just overeat/eat the wrong things. They all contribute. Last I saw less exercise is more caused by obesity than the other way around. And sitting a lot can cause biomechanical maladoptions which makes movement (and in turn exercise) more inconvenient.
You burn roughly as many calories walking as you do sleeping.
Sleeping burns 40-80 calories per hour, walking 200-350.
You're not gonna burn off any calories by walking.
> Sleeping burns 40-80 calories per hour, walking 200-350.
We must have different definitions of "roughly", that's an order of magnitude difference!
> You're not gonna burn off any calories by walking.
That's a very different claim (but still not true).
To be clear: walking is great exercise. No, you're not going to walk off a 10,000 calorie/day diet with it; you need to not eat that much. Nor are you going to look like you spend 3 hrs/day doing crossfit just by walking. But 10,000 steps per day is miles better than 500.