Oh lord, this became a shitshow.
Let’s have one last statement for clarity.
People have vastly different metabolisms and can see vastly different results from the same diet and exercise regimen. CICO is valid, but much of our caloric consumption is passive, varying by person, rather than from activity. People struggling with weight and diet deserve understanding, and that some seek dubious explanations for their struggles is no excuse for disdain.
We are living in a milieu that both evolution and current culture have ill prepared us for.
Exempting contesting explicit misinformation, this is sure as shit not the comm to be quarreling with people over what percentage of weight struggles are their “fault” vs a defeatist, determinist outlook. Take it elsewhere.
This coming from someone lucky enough to have a fairly high metabolism despite a shit diet. The genetic lotto is absolutely a factor in the weight of individuals.
The genetic lotto is absolutely a factor in the weight of individuals.
Which was, once again, just proven in a large-scale study, fresh out of the prints.
Hey denizens of Lemmy let me explain something to you. This years old meme is not asking for weight loss advice from any of you. Just laugh and move on. Resist the urge to give advice that nobody asked for.
Hey. Asshole. This post is spreading misinformation. And weight loss advice is correcting that misinformation. And correcting misinformation is what I expect from the comments on any post.
It’s fuken meme you twat
To everyone who didn’t move on, welcome to the trenches. and fuck you
Fuck you!
No please, I insist. Fuck you!
CAN I FIGHT TOO?
Its been a very long time since I’ve seen this but does she shove the trumpet in his mouth or on his head or something?
She puts him through the entire trombone
I shall call you, Captain Obvious.
I didn’t ask you for advice!
/S
But then how would we annoy people!?
Maybe she is eating too many carbs…
And not exercising enough…
Nobody asked you either, we have minds!
Losing weight from exercise alone is a fool’s errand. You can’t outrun your diet.
The secret to weight loss is to consume fewer calories than you burn. Install a calorie counting app and log everything you eat for at least a week straight to get a good idea of how much you’re eating compared to how much you need, and then adjust accordingly. When done correctly, you can expect to lose 1-2lbs per week.
Also weigh your portions. Most people under count their calories because they use the default serving size instead of what they’re actually eating.
As someone with a binge eating disorder (grew up playing hockey on 2 teams in highschool as well as reffing - literally on the ice every night - did not have to worry about my diet until my adulthood), 100% agree. Calorie counting in conjunction with increased cardio and weight lifting is the only thing that has worked for me
Of course, people with a tendency to develop anorexia or purging eating disorders should probably stay away from calorie counting as that can trigger dangerous disordered eating. Very important to know what works for you personally.
My general advice is to just look at the per-weight calories of things you buy, not counting calories, just being informed of how calorie dense stuff is. That way you can make informed decisions about your diet without stressing out about precise calorie counts: when you know that you can eat 3x as much French fries as crisps for the same calories, crisps suddenly become less appealing (at least for me).
This helped me with the cost/benefit of eating (i.e. actually knowing the cost). I can cut down the rice serving and have a beer or some ice cream, rather than cutting those things out arbitrarily because they seem unhealthy.
holyshittt a Lemmy comment
Removed by mod
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to determine that genetics can absolutely effect one’s weight. Outside of different body types theres also auto immune diseases that are genetically inherited. Obviously diet is a massive part of fat gain but it isn’t the only thing that effects it. Medication, exercise or the ability to exercise. Hell, even age does.
Ps Ben and Jerry’s really will make you fat, heed my warning
Dumb take. CICO(Calories in, calories out) is the guaranteed way to do it, but different people have different daily caloric usage and different caloric absorption rates, which is mostly dictated by genetics.
So, while genetics ARE a factor, they are no excuse for a defeatist attitude, you also don’t need to act like a cunt to get your point across.
And Your source is? And do You really think the difference would be such, that it would prohibit someone from losing weight?
It’s like you didn’t even read the comment you’re replying to.
Like I said earlier “So, while genetics ARE a factor, they are no excuse for a defeatist attitude”. I believe that responds to your question. I don’t think it would prohibit someone from losing weight, it would just make it easier for some, harder for others, to the point where people for whom losing weight comes easy might scoff and dismiss the additional effort someone on the other group would need to do in order to obtain comparable results.
And also like I said earlier “you also don’t need to act like a cunt to get your point across.”, you don’t need to go full confrontation mode with your questions, we can just discuss without the hostile, accusatory tone.
Hi, PhD in biology here: you’re wrong!
Not only are there direct genetic factors but also indirect ones (e.g. causing decreased thyroid activity, or depression which is often treated with drugs that make you gain weight), epigenetic factors, and so on.
Also you’re wrong about “fat logic”: both your gut bacteria and they fat itself emit hormones that make you eat more fattening stuff. It’s literally harder for a fat person to eat less.
Biology is complicated, so there’s a genetic factor in almost any behavior. Of course even more so for someone survival critical like hunger.
Hope you learned something.
Hi, certified dietitian with a PhD in physics here. You literally can’t gain weight while burning more calories than You eat.
You literally wrote “eat more fattening stuff”. No shit, You get fat from fattening stuff.
A person who has more muscle will burn more calories just existing than someone with less muscle. Muscle growth is impacted by hormones and other factors impacted by genetics.
It is a lot easier to diet properly when you burn 1500 calories a day resting than 800 calories a day resting. Taking the right supplements can obviously fix this but someone with 150lbs of muscle can just follow basic nutrition guidelines and it is “easy”.
So how come I don’t gain weight from overeating and all my middle aged friends do?
I’m not going to pretend it’s willpower as I down a bag of kettle cooked chips to myself.
You don’t overeat.
We all get fat from genetics. Genes are directly responsible for converting blood sugar to fat.
Every aspect of weight, including influences on behavior, are caused by genes. Without genes, there’d be no learned behavior, it isn’t a chicken and egg situation.
Excess calories are converted to fat. Fasting is required to speed the reverse. Apparently, prolonged exposure to shivering cold will speed fat loss, too.
Genes create the environment where calorie intake is preferred over a calorie deficit. Genes create a body which seeks food as a primary reinforced behavior - “taste, experience, and feeding” is the title of a behavioral psychology text.
losing weight is hard, your brain, as expressed by your genes, doesn’t want to do it. There is no experience more personally triumphant in this overweight society, than getting an actual handle on your weight.
I’m surprised posters from fatlogic are still allowed in civilized society
It was a good subreddit. I got a lot of useful advice from there. Plus you got to make fun of stupid people.
It’s actually the only subreddit I ever come back to, once in a while, when I need some motivation to diet or exercise.
Yeah, about that.
Listen guys. Nobody’s genetics letting them escape thermodynamics. Eat less do more. You have enough energy on your body to not eat multiple days in a row.
genetics determines how much nutrients you absorb from things you eat, it determines how easily you feel hunger, it determines your baseline energy consumption.
genetics can absolutely make you more likely to gain weight.
Yes and regardless of any of those factors if your energy intake is below your energy usage you’ll lose weight.
you just missed the entire point i was making… yes, energy in < energy out means losing weight. BUT reducing energy intake is more difficult for some people than for others due to their genetics.
Unfortunately people respond differently to hunger.
Someone I know is trying to lose weight. Problem is, if they go ~100 kcal below maintenance they turn into a stress eater. ~200 below and they are unable to stop themselves from eating 400 kcal worth of food straight or of the fridge at night. All that on top of being hangry all day.
So losing weight means balancing the diet very carefully because that’s not much space between eating enough to maintain the weight and eating so little that hunger overrides reason and overcompensates.
For other people going below maintenance is just kinda uncomfortable but easily doable for a couple days. Advice like “just eat less” actually works for them without having to make a whole science out of it.
Yeah but that is how you lose weight. It’s one thing to be unwilling to do it because of a mental block. It’s another thing entirely to impart that mental block on others as a way of feeling better about their own shortcomings.
It’s quite important that you do not make the mistake of thinking that if you tell someone it is easy to do, because you find it easy to do, that does not make it easy for them to do.
With a kid, for example, you can tell them this and they will believe that it’s easy for everyone, then try it and fail, and suddenly believe they are fucking stupid and it must be their fault entirely. Which makes them feel bad. Which might make them eat more, or become anorexic, or any one of a number of eating disorders.
So instead, realise that there are many factors here beyond energy in and activity out. Those are important, but not the whole story. Be kind, and take your time.
Yeah and I haven’t said it was easy I just said it’s how you do it
It’s true. I remember when I could go most of the day without eating and feel nothing but minor hunger, which was easy to ignore.
But now I’m in my 30s, and if I try to skip lunch it’s like my entire body goes into revolt. Lethargy, headaches, mood changes, the works. My metabolism has changed with age and now the effects of blood sugar actually pack a punch.
People always underestimate the endocrine system. Your frontal cortex and everything that you are is basically just a tool for your endocrine system to use to get food and sex.
It’s why eating less is so hard for some people. If the endocrine system is being pushy, it can just make you not care about your goal, and not many people can do something uncomfortable that they don’t want to do in furtherance of a goal they don’t care about.Healthy, stable eating habits need to come before weight loss eating habits, and that needs to be paired with light excercise as you build up.
Like taming a wild animal. Some people just have a capybara, and others have some sort of ocelot that’s addicted to meth. Most people have dogs. Gotta ease in, but once you get started it’s fine as long as you don’t traumatize the poor beastie.True. Also don’t underestimate your gut microbiome. Those bacteria and fungi can have a distressing amount of control over you and if your microbiome is out of whack it can make it much more difficult to develop decent eating habits.
Changing to healthier eating habits will make managing hunger easier. Also self control and just not keeping easy junk food around.
Sounds easy but we’re deep in “draw the rest of the fucking owl” territory here.
For some people the threshold for healthy eating habits is low. I have to actively try to gain weight and I can handle slight hunger well so for me very little would have to change on a diet.
That person I mentioned, on the other hand, has to pre-plan their nutrition for a week down to the macronutrients of each single meal, just like a bodybuilder. A planning mistake will most likely result in binge eating. And yes, they would eat half a loaf of full-grain bread at night if nothing else was there.
So for someone like them advice like “have some self control and don’t buy junk food” is about as helpful as “have you tried not being poor”. Getting their endocrine system and gut microbiome to accept anything below maintenance calories is a long and nontrivial journey.
No s"t Sherlock. Doesn’t really change the fact that this is much easier to achieve than for others, before we are even talking about will power. Some people can eat much more at the same workout level as others, without gaining weight. No contradiction with thermodynamics needed.
By all means keep spreading the doomer mentality of “I can’t do anything to lose weight it’s my genetics”
Strawman. I was saying no such thing, merely that for some it is harder than for others. Just like some would starve to dewth in a famine sooner than others at identical feed intake and rate of activity.
This is no excuse for anything, just a fact. People can gave an influence on that, no matter the genes.
Not understanding what you’re saying doesn’t mean I’m making a straw man argument lol
You were claiming I was spreading “doomer mentality of “I can’t do anything to lose weight it’s my genetics””
That is false, I did no such thing. I merely stated the fact that metabolisms and especially regulation differ and some have to climb a steeper hill than others to get to the same peak. Harder doesn’t mean impossible.
I was such an asshole after I dropped 100 pounds in my 20s. I did it, you can too!
I was such a dick. I had actual anger towards fat folks for a few years.
Its like being mad folks are poor, just, knock it off. None of these comments actually help people lose weight. It actually scares them off further into the downward spiral. Lest not forget age gets us all, and you dont know what these people have been through, or are going through. You dont know.
My country, the shit stain one, they dont allow citizens to walk anywhere. Start there. I stayed fit when I could walk/bike places. Once I moved somewhere carcentric, guess what happened. Im not a dick to fat folks anymore.
Its not so black and white. The older I get, the more I realize its systemic, at least here in the god forsaken states.
remain positive, internal work is internal, and you cant make choicss for others. I wanted to give fitness to everyone when I was younger. But not everyone is brave enough to ride a bike in car city. I still get mad when I see parents giving their fat children candy. Sets them up for a lifetine of failure. I used to have my gaurdian lock me in a room, call me fat bitch, and literally throw a bag of mcdonalds at me in my teens.
you never know what someone has been through. Always kindness.
Telling people they need to eat less to lose weight isn’t unkind. These truths only push people who already are unwilling to accept reality further into delusion. I’m not sympathetic to those people.
Do you honestly, seriously believe anyone trying to lose weight doesn’t know that you need to eat less to achieve that?
Really??
Well, one of the factors makes it hard to know what your actual caloric intake is. You are right, but it’s not quite as simple as you make it sound.
Simple does not mean easy.
If I could accurately monitor both calorie intake and expenditure … that sure would simplify things.
Imagine trying to balance your bank account where you only have estimates of your income and expenditures.
Our bodies have evolved to protect against weight loss. We like to think we’re modern, enlightened creatures, but we’re still a collection of biological processes that are centred around survival in an unforgiving world. Most of us no longer live in that world.
As a result, when we diet our bodies trigger processes that limit the effects of nutritional deficit. And sure, we’ll lose weight to start with, but that hits a plateau surprisingly quickly as our metabolism catches up.
Then add into that things like ADHD (which is something affects me personally), whereby when weight loss slows to a crawl after a few weeks I get frustrated and lose interest in keeping it up. So I’m 140kg with no sign of that going anywhere any time soon.
This is textbook cope. “I won’t do the thing because it’s technically not the most 100% efficient way so imma be 140 forever” I’ve got ADHD too bud. It’s possible to fast for 3 days a week.
It’s not cope, it’s biology.
Yes… biology you are using as an excuse to not do something, hence cope.
Youre so mean
I prefer the term naughty
The metabolic effect you’re describing is called “starvation mode” by a lot of people and while its technically real its actually quite a bit smaller than most people think, and can easily be countered by adding a work out to your routine. If you think youre not losing weight because of it, (or gaining weight, as some people claim) I would bet you’re actually not counting all your calories throughout the day.
You might lose weight just not in the region where you want it. Genetics might make you lose muscle mass, bone quality long before you lose fat. Also it might make you at the same time store everything as fat when you take an energy defecit diet.
Muscle mass is directly tied to how much you use the muscle. You can eat 100 protein bars and you won’t gain any muscle mass. Likewise if you continue your current level of exercise while fasting you are gonna keep the muscle and lose the fat.
Muscle mass is directly tied to how much you use the muscle.
I’d describe it more as a loose correlation rather than “directly tied.” There’s the obvious example of sex differences, where a typical untrained woman will not respond as quickly to weight training as a typical untrained man of similar size. There’s a lot of individual variation, too, and more recent research is revealing new insights into high and low responders to resistance training. See, for example, this review.
I learned to be less of a dick to others about this stuff when I learned I was an outlier high responder in muscle strength and growth, getting much better results from near identical workouts with some of my friends. Realizing that I was lucky helped me extend some more grace to others.
Zero muscle loss while on a signifcant calorie deficit to cause noticeable and sustained weekly weightless simply isn’t possible without the right sort of steroids like tren.
The best you can do is to minimise the amount you lose with the right amount of training, rest and quality macros. Ask any successful bodybuilder after making them take a piss test for roids what their losses were for their last cut.
https://www.fitnessnetwork.com.au/does-fasting-burn-fat-or-muscle/
Fat goes first, muscle mass loss is limited to negligible and can be countered by exercise as I originally said.
Actual scientific studies not Facebook slop please.
For pro body builders the holy grail of cutting is zero muscle loss and not one achieves it without chemical help, not one.
Water has weight… Not eating as much causes stress which causes water retention. Nothing is guaranteed.
Genetics are a factor, but outside of extreme cases they are going to play a small role. Obesity is a modern epidemic, and we didn’t all suddenly mutate. Environmental factors are much more impactful.
The last time I saw this come up there were approx. 500 calorie difference between the top and the bottom for similar fitness/build of the genetics curve.
500 calories is a pretty big workout, but its at the opposite ends of the curve, most people will be around 250 calories of the middle.
What is far more important is the genetic and learned response to feeling full and hunger. Saying its easy for people to just switch track on that is frankly an awful take, the current weight loss drugs work for a reason, while you carry on taking them. People rebound from often impressive weight loss in huge numbers for a reason, and its not because they forget how to calorie count or exercise.
500 calories is a pretty big workout, but its at the opposite ends of the curve, most people will be around 250 calories of the middle.
Most people will be around 250 calories of the middle? What do you mean by this? You are talking about a difference between caloric intake between multiple people right?
Saying its easy for people to just switch track on that is frankly an awful take, the current weight loss drugs work for a reason, while you carry on taking them.
Did you reply to the right comment? I never said anything like this.
Multiple people of similar height, weight, fitness levels yes. There can be a measurable difference and it can easily be as much as a medium to heavy workout, for the average to extreme ends of the scale.
Obviously someone who eats heathly, has a high percentage of muscle, exercises multiple times a week, will clearly burn even more calories than the same person who does none of that. What I am referring to is people who are close enough in these attributes and there still is a significant genetic difference.
This is very much genetics having an impact. It doesnt even cover the genetic difference between hunger sensitivity issues for things like insulin or GLP-1, which can massively impact dieting success.
I am not saying that environmental factors such as a life long poor diet and lack of exercise dont make this worse on top, but that genetics is a significant factor.
Second part is piggy backing, so apologies if it appears aimed at you.
Yeah a couple friends of mine REALLY struggled to lose weight until they got on one of those ozembic drugs. They’d doet for a while but it got to the point where they literally couldn’t stop thinking about food and they’d fall off the wagon. Whatever they’re taking kills those food cravings and they’re both at good weight now.
Obesity is a modern epidemic, and we didn’t all suddenly mutate. Environmental factors are much more impactful.
But not everyone got equally obese, even in the same environments, during these time periods. What portion of the population was predisposed to extra large impacts of unhealthy foods, sedentary lifestyles, external stressors, etc., when those environmental factors weren’t as prevalent?
So for completeness, it’s a bunch of feedback loops between genetic factors, epigenetic factors, and environmental factors, including cultural/social factors. Some genetic factors make it harder or easier in the environments we live in (and some environments make it harder or easier).
Yeah this “thermodynamics” thing is so stupid, there’s enough energy in a sugar cube to power my home for months.
I also probably have the genetics to “keep warm” which helps if you want to lose weight, and as a male I don’t get the hormonal changes at a certain age that makes you gain weight, etc. etc. etc.
Then we have those who just expertly state “eat less”, yeah man who would have thought eh.
On a more reasonable scale, things like ditching sugar (including fruit, corn, cooked carrots etc) make wonders, probably because dropping that addiction (which is hard) makes it easier to eat less.
Sport in itself cannot outrun the spoon,but it might fire up desires to be in good shape, and lose weight might be part of that, and that’s really something, IMO.
Good luck with your long term goals everyone!
there’s enough energy in a sugar cube to power my home for months
…what? If that were close to true we’d be burning sugar instead of coal
No no no you see some people have the E=mc^2 gene which lets them metabolise mass directly into energy and so scientifically can never be held accountable for their weight.
I know you’re sort of joking, but metabolism is extremely badly understood (most is not understood at all), and different people extract different amounts of ATP from food than others, that’s just a verifiable fact. And eating less will make you lose weight, but how much less depends on, you guessed it, metabolism… So just saying “eat less” isn’t very helpful IMO.
And it has not really anything close to do with thermodynamic laws, or you Had to have the emc2-gene for it to matter, thats all.
It’s like relativity physics and car driving, it does intersect, but really not in any meaningful way.
My point is people get too hung up on “how much less depends on, you guessed it, metabolism… So just saying “eat less” isn’t very helpful IMO.” That they forget “And eating less will make you lose weight”
That’s my whole point. You gotta eat less if you want to lose weight and you can dig around in the science and semantics of it all you want but the bottom line doesn’t change.
Sure, but it’s not like people don’t know that, right? My take is sport, ditching sugar and so on will help you to eat less. Another thing is that the body reacts differently when you eat fat and sugar at the same time versus eating sugars, then later eating the fat. You are not wrong but there are many ways to get to the “eat less” IMO.
Nope, there’s just even more energy in a lump of coal.
I believe their point is that it’s a bit silly to sit around focusing too much in thermodynamics beyond the raw limits, when there’s a lot of factors that weigh in to how much of the theoretical maximum is available or used. Beyond just the basic chemistry involved, there’s hormones that influence how it’s used, and peoples urges to consume.That’s just not true.
The average home in the US uses 10,000 kWH per year; let’s be generous and call that 500 kWH per month, or 2e9J.
A sugar cube is 5g. To power a home for a month, it would therefore need a specific energy of 2e9J/5g = 0.4e9 J/g. Normally specific energy is given in MJ/kg, so we get a minimum needed of 400,000 MJ/kg.
Coal, per Wikipedia, comes in at 26-33 MJ/kg. Liquid hydrogen gets over 140, and that’s the most efficient fuel on the list.
I didn’t bother to look up the specific energy of sugar, but somehow I doubt it laps coal by orders of magnitude. The only possible way it could have that much energy is if we could convert its mass directly to energy, but neither technology nor biology can do that right now so it’s a bit silly to even mention.
neither technology nor biology can do that right now
Yes, that was the point. If we focus purely on the math to the exclusion of reality you get results that don’t apply to reality.
If you only look at thermodynamics when discussing weight loss you get the best possible weight loss advice: “eat less”.
It happens to ignore the reality of biology, how the body reacts to changing nutrition, or how it reacts towards changing your desires when nutrition changes, but it is technically correct.Just like it’s technically correct to say that a sugar cube has enough energy to power your home for a long time. It may be a useless observation, but it’s technically true.
Yup. Good habits come first. Every 12 pack of pop is roughly a marathon, give or take.
The simple act of cutting pop for water saves a massive amount of calories, but can be really hard if you’re not used to liquid not being strongly flavored.Excercise, beyond being a bit self fulfilling (“I want to be in shape so it sucks less when I excercise”), does also increase your baseline metabolic rate once you get in the groove. Once you start moving your body becomes more free with burning energy when you’re just sitting around, and you’ll passively burn 3-6 cans of pop more than you would before.
But 100% to your main point. If you don’t have your diet under control it doesn’t matter how much you excercise, the medieval peasant that lives in your endocrine system will make it very hard to resist putting the calories right back in.
Gl on everyone’s long term goal but don’t you dare suggest eating less to achieve the goal of losing weight.
Let’s miss my point lol
Feeling hunger is completely different than needing nutrients and energy.
Ehhhh sorta kinda. If you eat a more “natural” diet (read: not super processed) then the two are pretty closely linked. But we’ve invented entirely new foods that basically gives you zero satiety, but also has hundreds and hundreds of calories.
You can eat to satiety on carrots and spinach, and literally starve to death from lack of calories. You can also feel hungry all day and gain weight from drinking soda and eating cookies.
No you can’t bro be serious.
This is the only one of your takes I disagree with. The food you eat does mater for weight loss, because some foods are more filling and nutritious while being low in calories. Everything else youve said is right throughout the thread.
I’m specifically calling out the idea that you can literally starve to death from eating spinach and carrots. But fair enough I’ll take the L
Nobody said that
I think it’s a lot of conditioning around eating. What you write is a factor but behavior is an easy thing to fix.
There are terribly fat parents who teach their kids how to be terrible fat by example. Our DNA did not change to ultra fat mode since the 1950s.
And all of these can be easily overcome by eating less.
Well, kinda.
The problem is that it isn’t a 1:1 thing.
Hormones, insulin sensitivity, neurotransmitters, gut biome, muscle mass, brain activity, there’s a shit ton of factors that go into exactly what that break point is. Worse, that break point isn’t even 100% stable. People like to think it is, but it isn’t it can change as often as daily, and at the lower end of that point, a deficit is extremely difficult for patients to maintain healthily.
And yes, it is sometimes less healthy to eat less than it is to carry some extra fat. It’s not like vitamin supplementation is ideal, even when you know for a fact that what they’re swallowing is mostly bioavailable.
And, frankly, that bullshit of “enough energy on your body to not eat…” is utter bullshit. Starvation does jack shit for a bariatric patient, period. No, the energy burned absolutely is not enough to maintain a healthy body and metabolism for days. I don’t know where people got that idea, but it is malarkey.
I strongly urge people to go and consult with a specialist if they’re having trouble reducing their body fat. It is not wise to believe the random internet stupidity that can’t be bothered to stay up to date on a subject before prattling on. Fuck, I haven’t even worked in two decades, and I’m more up to date than random assholes, and I know I’m behind current bleeding edge in that specific field.
Fuck, I swear, people’s blind fucking cruelty trying to feel superior is disgusting. Fucking h lf assed sound bite garbage.
Thermodynamics my hairy asshole. People aren’t fucking furnaces, they aren’t a closed system.
The statement “Weightloss is calories in, calories out” is rather like “running a marathon is just running 100 meters and repeating it 420 more times”. It’s entirely true, but it’s reductive beyond uselessness. Yes, if you burn more calories than you eat, you will always lose weight. And if you run 421, 100m stretches you’ve done a marathon. And both of those pieces of advice are completely useless to anyone trying to do it, and they can possibly even make things worse.
Managing satiety, breaking patterns, learning recipes that work for you, finding comfort without food, learning to say no to your immediate friends and family, dealing with binging, rewarding yourself without food, and many maaaaany other things are the tools people need to lose weight.
Calorie counting is useful and foundational, but you like my therapist used to say: “you can’t live in a foundation”. But, without a good foundation, you can’t build a house either. If you switch your 5000 calorie fastfood diet for 5000 calories of fruit and vegetables, you’re not going to lose weight.
It’s almost like the human body is a biological nuance that’s different for everyone. We all learned about “a varied diet”, “an active lifestyle”, and “weightloss is calories in vs calories out”.
The nuance is always that these things mean widely different things from person to person.
Absolutely. What we need is a broad statement that is always true for everyone and helps everyone conceptually understand the fundamentals of weight loss. Something like… “eat less do more.” Yeah! That’s it! Surely such an inarguable, well meaning statement wouldn’t lead to an absolute shit show that makes a mockery of the human miracle of language and communication.
That comment is exactly the brain dead, empty sound bite that’s the problem
Managing satiety, breaking patterns, learning recipes that work for you, finding comfort without food, learning to say no to your immediate friends and family, dealing with binging, rewarding yourself without food, and many maaaaany other things are the tools people need to lose weight.
Yeah, it’s not the what (e.g. CICO), it’s the how.
That’s such a large amount of excuses that you sound like an American.
Really? Really? That’s the best you can come up with?
I mean, I agree with you, but you gotta admit it’s a good comeback.
No, it isn’t.
It’s lame as fuck. I’ve heard better come backs on elementary school playgrounds.
It sounds like their intestinal parasites have taken over their executive function like the Last of Us cordyceps fungus.
Woke mind virus is real but it’s just a brain worm that convinces Americans they need to eat more food to get less fat
You can’t convince some people. Just look at people with thyroid issues. Their diet and exercise level can remain the same and yet once the illness starts affecting their bodies, they start gaining weight. There’s a reason support groups are full of people asking how to lose this suddenly gained weight.
Exactly! I had so many patients that would have sudden weight swings after some kind of medical issue, even when their diet was well within healthy caloric intake, and (even worse imo) would have suffered other medical issues had they dropped enough intake to reach their new break point.
It isn’t like it’s even rare to have one of the dozen plus major medical issues that can cause fat gain well beyond what diet can counter. Hell, host having enough stress can make it very difficult to maintain a healthy diet and still reach one’s break point because of how cortisol influences metabolism. And that’s without some underlying cortisol disorder. An individual disorder or disease might be rare, but taken together, it starts making up a m Large chunk of the population.
Right… Well guess I’m actually dead right now since I haven’t eaten in a couple days.
It apparently impacted your comprehension since you only read part of that paragraph
True dat. I’m not one to double check if what I’m drinking is piss by skulling the glass, I admit that.
I’d like to invite you into my premenopausal body. Eat nothing, lose nothing. Yes, really.
You’re literally the person in the meme
Says for you I never have energy to do shit!
I feel like the number of people blaming genes for their unsuccessful weight loss attempts is far greater than the number of people who really do have bad genes for weight loss.
Or it might just be my personal experience with knowing people who failed to lose weight. Maybe not reflective of anything. I’ve heard this opinion may times before, but quite often it felt disingenuous.
I think it’s more about people thinking exercise is a pretty good tool for weight loss. It really isn’t, though it’s a really good idea for health broadly, but weight loss is not that significant with activity, at least to get from the low end of obesity to healthy weight.
Managing what you eat and how much you eat is pretty unavoidable if you want to manage weight, but people keep thinking a few minutes on a treadmill should take care of it.
There actually is one excersize routine that one can do that will completely ignore/offset your diet. Competitive swimming. There is an issue. If you eat empty calories, you feel and perform like shit. Yeah, at my peak I was eating 20,000 Kcal a day, but there was no processed sugar, no bleached flour, no soda, no dyes, you basically had to make everything from scratch.
Well training for that is way more time and facility intensive than most folks can manage.
So the takeaway becomes “oh, if I move around in a pool for 20 minutes every couple of weeks that should be really good at weight management”.
Yes swimming is nicely low impact so you can more credibly stand hours a day of that much intense activity and between the activity itself and the energy hungry musculature you get it can make a difference, but that is way way beyond realistic for all but a tiny bit of the population.
Realistically, realistic exercise is good for various things, like joint health (when done correctly), cardiovascular health, insulin response, and tons of other stuff. However it will not manage weight that well nor stave off all the associated health risks.
While i question your kcal count, i agree that swimming is one of the few great exercises for weight loss.
Also what most people consider very long distance running (like at least 20 miles per week, realistically even more) is great. IIRC your body doesn’t even start to primarily burn fat until like 30 or 40 minutes into an intense workout and it’s slow to burn any.
Pay attention you are at the gym. 90% of the people on treadmills are walking with the vast majority getting off after 20 to 30 minutes. Dont get me wrong. Its better than doing nothing, but its like bare minimum maintenence and definitely not even close to fat loss.
People burn through a small amount of their glycogen stores at the gym. Maybe 100 to 200 calories. Go home and drink a 500 calorie smoothie as a reward and wonder why they aren’t losing weight.
We had dieticians monitoring our intakes. We had special exceptions to eat in class, so that we could eat enough to maintain weight. Our coach was an Olympic medalist and trained all of us like he expected the same from us. I made first runner up for the national team my freshman year of college, but then focused on other things. Once I knew it was possible, an Olympic medal didn’t seem worth the effort.
The main thing that is great about swimming long distance, as opposed to running, is that swimming is almost 0 impact. The other benefit is that you’ll start burning fat quicker, because your metabolism has to kick into overdrive, as the water is leeching heat from you as quickly as it can.
Id actually wager there’s a huge individual component through our microbiome.
We determine calories by burning food to measure the energy released but that’s no guarantee of what any individual is able to obtain from it.
it’s almost always the amount of trash they eat.
breads, sugar ‘coffee’, sugar food, cereals… it’s all empty carbs. almost always… just watch people eating, you’ll notice a trent that a LOT of people eat nonstop trash
But on the flipside that’s pretty much all I eat and I’m skinny AF also I usually lose weight when I eat only fastfood like when dominos had a voucher exploit for a whole summer as a kid
Edit: js found out from another comment its probs my anxiety stopping me from gaining weight
Anxiety might help, but it’s probably more likely that you eat “trash” but just not a lot of it. If you count your calories you probably eat a pretty reasonable amount for whatever your weight is. Especially if you’re a tall man, you can potentially eat up to like 2500-3000 calories a day without really gaining weight.
Also a real killer for people is sugary drinks, alcohol, and other liquid calories. I dunno if you drink any, but those add up fast.
With the “right” metabolism you can eat way more, than what goes as “normal rate”, because your body just does not ingress all the calories.
So that’s where those types who eat junk all day, never move and still be skinny come from.
I eat upwards of 4000kcal a day usually less tho tbf and I am fairly tall but not giant. When I say I eat trash I mean proper trash and I binge it alot of the time I’m still technically underweight tho I think. IMO I’ve noticed I put on ALOT more weight when eating proper whole foods instead of js empty calories or fastfood or whatever and I can’t eat as much whole food
IMO 95% of people who blame genetics are lying to themselves more than anyone.
The obese people I know all refuse to eat vegetables and at best go to the gym irregularly because none of their hobbies qualify as exercise. Live on the 2nd floor but take the elevator every day. Would rather drive than walk 10 mins.
Fitness is 70-80% your diet.
Arrr these goah darn genes.
People either ask me how i’m staying thin or just straight up tell me that i’m lucky. When i tell them that i eat healthy and don’t drink and so on, i already loat them, they don’t actually wanna hear that. They wanna gear something like: oh i just take this magic pill every morning.
Ok but some motherfuckers really do have it different, I’ve known multiple people that eat/drink/don’t exercise as much as anyone and still stay thin. They ain’t healthy, but they stay thin most likely from a high resting metabolic rate of calorie burning (in other words, still CICO).
Yup that’s been me, though after turning 30 it started catching up with me and I got a little skinnyfat. So now I work out 3 hours a week and I do a lot more walking (thanks Pokemon GO and Walkscape!)
How does that work though? Is there some genetic situation where consuming fewer calories than you burn doesn’t lead to weight loss?
No, but running a deficit becomes much harder, when your body ingress all the calories from all food sources and has a low metabolism.
Some people are like “yeah, I lost weight by skipping my snack apple in the evening” while others would need to skip 2.5 meals per day. So the latter have a much harder time to maintain a deficit for long enough.
I’d say that the genetics are probably more along the lines of “no off switch for wanting to eat.” I.e. you just keep bingeing calories.
Nope. It’s usually people, like in this thread, not understanding what “bad genes” means.
You’re a thermodynamic machine, not magic. If you eat less then you burn you’ll loose weight.
You are also an extremely complicated machine, with complex chemical processes that govern long and short term behaviors.
“You” are a little slice of protein and fat the size of an avocado glued to the front of a more complicated machine. “You” are responsible for solving problems. The rest of your brain and endocrine system is responsible for managing most desires as well as most other things.Some people have genetics where they run a mile and their body says “oh shit, this would be easier if I turned the energy fountain up to full wouldn’t it?” And now they’re burning more energy when they’re asleep than they were before.
Other people have genetics that gives them a body that says “oh my God, you just ran nearly 2 blocks. Clearly you’re in danger, so I’m going to increase the hormones that tell you to eat a lot more food. Don’t worry, the pizza will be gone before you actually feel how much food that is”.You can override the endocrine system, but it’s hard. The frontal cortex can change what you do, but the endocrine can change what you want.
Your body is a machine, just like a car. And different cars will start to ding and nag the driver for fuel or maintenance tasks at different points, with different levels of intensity. If your car is built for the Australian outback it might be way more aggressive about fuel warnings, and have a significantly larger tank.
All that’s why excercise is a terrible way to lose weight. You lose weight by getting your eating under control and convincing the medieval peasant in your endocrine system that you’re not in a famine. Excercise makes your body feel better, more capable, and healthier.
You can excercise all you want, but you can eat your way through any excercise routine in minutes.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is more than an hour of vigorous time on a rowing machine.A lot of calorie expenditure is determined by hormones, and for a typical person, resting metabolism is a significant percentage of total calorie burn.
Some people respond poorly to dietary interventions because they end up with lower resting metabolic rate. Sometimes it shows up in the form of a person who is always feeling cold or exhausted.
Others have high stress hormones, which throw all sorts of metabolic loops out of wack.
And other hormones affect appetite or satiety after eating, so the biological disadvantage (whether genetic or environmental or both) sometimes comes in the form of greater difficulty with portion control or willpower compared to others. That’s not a direct effect on calories in versus calories out, but it does have an indirect effect on overall success with a weight loss program, and it’s grounded in an actual physical/physiological/biological difference between individuals.
Some people respond poorly to dietary interventions because they end up with lower resting metabolic rate. Sometimes it shows up in the form of a person who is always feeling cold or exhausted.
Do you have a source where I can read more about this? Im always cold and exhausted.
Those are classic symptoms of hypothyroidism, which can be diagnosed with blood tests.
The endocrine system is fascinating.
Js learned I’m skinny cause my anxiety is so bad lmao
Our bodies each have an equilibrium of calories consumed/burned that it really wants to be maintained. If you start dieting to reduce calories consumed, then it automatically adjusts so that your body burns fewer calories just for existing, thereby reducing the deficit you created with your diet. So people see the diet not working and give up rather than taking the time to dial in a sustainable dietary calorie deficit that allows for weight loss without leaving you physically and mentally exhausted by your bodies compensatory reaction.
without leaving you physically and mentally exhausted by your bodies compensatory reaction.
Unfortunately, I get this feeling before even reaching maintenance numbers, let alone a deficit. Losing weight is absolutely brutal for me because there is no available option for “lose weight without complete and abject misery” for my body apparently.
Still doing it (with occasionally falls off the wagon, but get right back on), but fuck me does it suck.
Same here. The most weight I lost was in the 4 months after my then wife told me she didn’t want to be married anymore, while I figured out she had already been cheating on me for months, I was already in such misery not eating didn’t add any more… I lost 40 pounds in 4 months… Haven’t been able to continue…
It does seem to be a thing. Just not as common as some people want it to be.
You would hate me - I’ve always eaten whatever I want and somehow stay trim automatically. My wife eats a burger and gains 5 lbs.
I’m like you and my husband gains weight from eating the same amount. I did get like 20 lbs bigger than I wanted and we went on keto together and my weight plummeted to the point I had to come off and he lost weight a lot slower. I’ve seen genetics at work it’s a thing
I was skinny my entire life despite eating far more calories than I could possibly burn. My greatest/only weight gain happened during an experiment with intermittent fasting.
lol in my day intermittent fasting was called “skipping lunch”
I hate the game not the player
Somebody went for a waddle around the neighbourhood three times and expected to drop 5kg as a result.
It’s my DNA’s fault
Username checks.
I hate waddling people, I know everything about people by the way they walk.
For instance, I can tell by the way they walk they’re a woman’s man, no time for talk.
it’s alright, it’s ok, i may look the other way
It’s impossible to work out properly and not get stronger, healthier, better looking, more muscle, less fat, better skin etc. Just keep at it.
This is factually untrue. you can work out a lot and still gain fat, if you consume more than you burn.
You can’t outrun a bad diet.
It does however remain true that exercise will make you healthier, especially since fat effectively turns everything into resistance training.
No one should skip exercising just because it won’t make them thin, getting exercise while being fat will probably make you feel soooooo much better and prevent injuries.
I wanted to edit my comment but couldn’t find it.
I meant you will at least get one of them. You will get some change eventually.
And with good exercise, OK diet and good recovery and sleep, you will definitely see good results. I hate it when people just come up with excuses for not working out. “Oh I actually dont eat ANYTHING I’m just 140KGs because I have a thyroid problem (or low metabolism)” is one of the classics.
This screams: I ran on the treadmill for an hour and I deserve a snack. Said snack is energy bars or something like that.
I know, because that’s how I used to think. Went to a dietist and her words were: Exercise is for toning, eating is for weightloss.
Yeah, you burn calories and you lose weight if you exercise a lot, but let’s be real, most of us aren’t exercising a lot. Going to the gym for an hour isn’t the same as doing athlete sports or manual labor.
That’s why, if we want to lose weight, we have to look at portion control, lean protein, cut down on starch and eating a lot of greens.
You can still eat a lot while losing weight, but most people aren’t going to eat the right things and that’s the issue. I was told that energy bars, crackers and anything bread-related outside of rye bread, was a weightloss killer.
It doesn’t mean you can never ever have bread again, but if your aim is to lose weight, you’re not gonna get very far if you snack on bread and crackers. If you snack on vegetables, however, you’ll be able to eat A LOT.
There are always things you can do to adjust your diet so that you will lose weight, but if you don’t know anything about what different types of food actually does to your body, you may think you’re doing the right thing by eating ten bananas a day, but the scales don’t move because you ate frigging ten bananas a day!
Doesn’t mean you can never eat bananas or squash or fatty fish ever again, but while losing weight, you’re supposed get less calories than what you need to sustain your weight. It helps reading into it and getting a basic idea of what, how and where. I didn’t know shit before I had a professional helping me. I’m still no expert and my weight still goes up and down during different seasons of my life, but I know why and I know how to fix it when I get the motivation. Losing weight is very, very, very easy once you make up your mind to do it and have a basic understanding of what food does to the body.
Losing weight is very, very, very easy once you make up your mind to do it and have a basic understanding of what food does to the body.
No, losing weight is very very SIMPLE.
But a lot of people, like me when I was obese, don’t struggle with knowing what to eat. We struggle with our brain, with satiety, with binging. With failing and comforting ourselves with food and failing more. With controlling food as a means of controlling our lives. With not taking ownership of our problems.
It’s not easy at all. It’s really fucking hard. But at least it’s not complicated.
I’m not a stranger to having those problems, but if you read what I said, you’d also know that I said that once you make up your mind and have the knowledge necessary to make the choices that leads to weightloss, it is very very very easy.
That hard part is breaking out of the cycle and establishing a healthier habit. Once you’re on that track, losing weight is easy.
But if you don’t have the motivation and/or the right mindset, it will not happen, and there can be a myriad of reasons as to why that is. Life circumstances, mental health and such. I myself have dealt with a lot of blows in my life recently that has caused me to gain weight and I’m going to lose the weight when I go on break and finally get some time away from the stress. And after that, it’s gonna be pretty easy to keep going.
But losing weight is easy. I will always stand by that.
Losing weight is very, very, very easy once you make up your mind to do it and have a basic understanding of what food does to the body.
Nice if that is so easy for you. Let me tell you how that feels for me: As soon as my body does not get its usual amount of calories, it replies with relentless hunger. The kind that burns in your stomach and distracts you from everything else. The only thing my brain wants to think about is how to get more food and how tasty it would be. If I don’t give in, I go into energy save mode: I feel exhausted, my body does not want to move or do anything that could cost it valuable calories.
For a lot of people losing weight is not easy. You could also tell a smoker that it is easy to quit smoking, just don’t pick up a cigarette anymore.
This is why things like ozempic are used despite it’s side effect. It gives you time to get in the habit of a healthy diet without the brutal hunger and hopefully your body accepts that diet when you reduce the dosage.
I’d you’re open to advice: calories aren’t what makes you feel full. Mass makes you feel full (a bit over simplified, but not completely wrong), so what you need to do is eat stuff, and I ate SO many carrots and cucumbers when I was trying to feel more full without more calories.
I absolutely hate raw carrots now, but eh, small price to pay.
For a lot of people losing weight is not easy. You could also tell a smoker that it is easy to quit smoking, just don’t pick up a cigarette anymore.
Yeah, except then you die. So actually DO keep smoking, but limit yourself to 3x a quarter of a cigarette per day. Easy, right?
It does help with the immediate hunger, but it comes back strong once your body realises it was “cheated” out of calories. I am not sure I can withstand that for a long time. But maybe a short time would already be an improvement.
So thanks I will try to have carrots lying around at all times and try to eat them first between meals. Maybe it helps.
Also have you asked a smoker how it feels to slightly reduce the number of cigarettes per day?
Your body gets used to the amount of calories you eat. So if you don’t eat to that amount, it freaks out and thinks you’re dying (/dramatic effect). After gradually reducing your daily caloric intake and hitting your new maintenance target, over time your body will get used to the new norm.
Yes, that is often the case, but reducing it is the hard part. You need to keep it at a lower level for a while before your body adjusts.
Note that for some people it never adapts completely. Those people will always feel hungry or crave a snack and are never satisfied with the level of calories they actually need.
Just out of curiosity have you used ozempic and if so did you notice a decrease in severity of the hunger related symptoms on your mentality?
I did not, I know two people who do and they were impressed how easy it was to stick to their recommended diet. However, they are still on it, the interesting part is if you can get off without reverting your behaviour. Also they did not have any side effects so far, so lucky them.
I am currently holding my weight and don’t plan on using it.
anything bread-related outside of rye bread
What makes rye special?
If it’s made the right way, with lots of seeds in it, like we do here in Scandinavia, it’s really good for gut health and it helps making you feel full quickly. The best brand of rye bread for losing weight is Herkules rugbrød
As it is low in fat, but still dense and the slices are rather thick.
White bread is terrible for the gut and my old dietist described it as sticky caramel in the intestines that makes digestion more difficult.
When I got started on my diet plan with her back in the day, she encouraged me to eat raw broccoli and kale and stuff like that because they are like those big rotating brushes in a car wash, but inside your intestines. They will clean up all the mess in there and help your digestion. Which was so true. Not gonna go into details, but let’s just say that toilet visits were pretty intense for a few days. It’s insane how much shit (literally) that is just chilling inside the body if your diet is poor.
The difference also feels insane. Hard to describe, but you just feel like you can fly once you get started on eating things that are good for your gut and avoid things that are really bad for you. I was surprised at which things were bad for you and how they affected you. Because most people know that white bread isn’t good for you, but they don’t actually know what it does to your body. Not really. And once you know, it’s really eye opening.
Edit to add: here are some examples of good and bad ryebread:
Bad:
Good:
If it doesn’t have seeds in it, it’s worthless. Doesn’t mean you can’t have white bread and seedless ryebread, but if your aim is to lose weight and improve your digestion, you won’t get far with those types of bread.
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This violates the laws of physics
Mass is energy. If you eat less and move more but still maintain or gain mass you are a free energy machine and a violation of the laws that govern the universe
The last part of their sentence is about how their body goes into survival mode and tricks their brain into eating more in order to put on extra weight without them realizing it by delaying the feeling of being full longer than normal.
So burn 10% more calories but eat 25% more without realizing it and be worse off than before you started.
Mate if I’ve learned anything from this comment section, you are about to get rinsed
Who said anything about eating less? Exercise is very good for many things including keeping fit, and some people say it helps with their mood although I can’t attest to that personally, but to be honest if you’re doing it to lose weight you’re better off just dieting (the right kind of diet, not just these fad ones that don’t work and just leave you hungry all the time).
I can eat one kit kat finger and basically waste an entire 60 minute workout session.
You could very well be right. Depending on your weight, athleticism, and how much you move, it could take an hour to burn off a Kit-Kat bars worth of calories, that’s pretty normal
Someone more athletic can get more movement in during that hour so they could burn off that Kit-Kat faster
Where someone less athletic probably gets less motion in during that same hour so it would take them longer, the entire hour or more, to burn off that same Kit-Kat
But moving more an eating less grantees you will lose weight because the laws of physics will not allow you to spend more energy than you take in and still keep or produce more mass
There are even more moving parts as far as weight loss goes! Heavier people tend to burn more calories, for example, and people with higher muscle content also burn more calories. Its not just about how much you move.
Can’t forget, athletes performing a routine motion do it much more efficiently, expending less energy than a layperson to do the same thing. So a given body’s response to the same exercise can be expected to change over time, too (as they do it enough to get better at it, that is).
Exactly, there are just so many metrics involved, plus athletes could be any body type.
I can eat one kit kat finger and basically waste an entire 60 minute workout session.
Well that just tells me exercise is futile.
It isn’t futile but it’s not the way to lose weight. The human metabolism doesn’t really work with exercise, We’re not fast predators, we don’t chase after pray and run them down. We throw a spare at it, and then let it limp away, then we track it for 4 days until it gives up. We are persistence hunters. That doesn’t use a lot of calories up so running on a treadmill for 30 minutes, while obviously it will burn off some fat, won’t burn off as much as it would for something like a cat metabolism.
If you want to build up muscle, or resilience, or rehabilitate a weakened muscle, exercises is fantastic. But most people don’t want to do any of those things, most people want to be thinner, so gyms advertise themselves as weight loss programs. Which they’re not.
No I just wanna eat kitkats
Can we not post the entire library of Reddit memes
OP automates their posting on this platform… they have a lot of dumb content that they blanket Lemmy with because quantity > quality to them. I’m probably going to block the account soon because it’s really annoying.
Fwiw nobody loses weight through exercise anyway. You can only lose weight by consuming less than you burn. You burn more when you exercise, yeah, but you still have to resist just eating that bit more to cover the extra expense. Your basal metabolic rate increases when you build up more muscle mass, yeah, but yet again that doesn’t mean that your appetite will be the same as before, you’re still going to have to have the will power to eat less than you’d maybe want. Conditioning yourself to stop eating before you’re absolutely full, training to manage living with a bit of an appetite without having a snack, and learning your way around food that is more filling through fibres, protein, and complex carbs like starch is literally the only sustainable path to losing weight.
That being said you should exercise either way. It’s more important than losing weight for the vast majority of unfit people anyway.
Fwiw nobody loses weight through exercise anyway.
If you want some depressing stats: walking around a soccer field burns 2 entire peanut M&Ms. Not 2 bags, 2 individual candies.
Yeah, unless you are a bodybuilder or professional athlete most of your daily calories are just going to go into staying alive. Meaning if you just want to lose weight, you are going to see much more impact from eating less than exercising more. Humans are unfortunately very efficient at things like running. Exercising does have other health benefits though.
And when i eat more than necessary: it goes straight into the Brain and gets converted to additional worry’s and Fears. Thanks Brain
