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Could not agree w/ this comment more. Writing a New York Times article suggesting people count calories, weigh their food, and exercise 3-5 times per week is bo

Could not agree w/ this comment more. Writing a New York Times article suggesting people count calories, weigh their food, and exercise 3-5 times per week is boring and doesn't sell. The public is dying for a guru w/ a new methodology or academia to emerge w/ a new "scientific breakthrough" to save them from the obesity epidemic. The answer is simple but yet so many people refuse to believe eating less calories than their body needs is the cornerstone to weight loss.

crikli 10y ago
Agreed. You cannot outwork a shitty diet BUT refined sugar is the cornerstone of most shitty diets.
zeta0134 10y ago
Honestly, I think the reason most authors tend to have so much success with the new fad diet of the week is that for the month or whatever that they run the diet, they're actually monitoring their food intake and making an effort to eat more balanced meals. The diet itself seems almost irrelevant. Just the simple act of paying attention to what you eat (counting calories is an excellent starting point) will help more than anything, as you'll more easily recognize poor trends in your food choices, and the awareness will encourage you to diversify your diet.
munificent 10y ago
A couple of years ago, in a show of solidarity with my wife, I did a Whole 30. It's a 30 day elimination diet that cuts out all sugar (except for naturally occurring in whole fruit). I'm in my thirties and very slim. The Whole 30 lets you have as much fat, meat and calories as you want. I plowed through eggs, homemade mayo, meat, and other calorie dense food. I'm skinny enough that I don't have much weight to lose. Even so, I dropped ten pounds effortlessly. I don't know if this generalizes to other people and their physiques, but it was enough to convince me that sugar/simple carbs really do correlate more directly to my waistline than just counting calories does. I'm sure what the right metric to pay attention to is. My hunch is that it's glycemic load. Either way, I cut down on my sugar and carbs since then, and I've lost of a lot of the middle-aged Dad belly I was starting to develop. I don't count calories at all. It seems to work for me.
- cheald 10y ago
  Honestly, I think it's just calories in vs calories out. There's all kinds of things to consider like glycemic load and digestion speeds and all that, but at the end of the day, you lose fat when you eat less than you burn (see: the Twinkie diet). I think way too many people focus on things like glycemic load and the "kinds" of calories they're eating as some kind of magical weight loss/gain formula, and lose track of the overall quantity. I've lost more weight just counting calories and ignoring micronutrients, glycemic load, etc than I ever did trying to micromanage glycemic load and micronutrients. Fats are a lot more satiating than carbohydrates (ie, sugars) - I could easily put away 4000 calories of goldfish crackers in an evening, but I would be insanely full, uncomfortable, and possibly even sick if I tried to eat 4000 calories of proteins or fats. My go-to craving-killer snack is peanuts - they're high calorie on the label, but a handful of them takes the edge off my craving in a way that chips and crackers and candy don't.
- iopq 10y ago
  I'm in my thirties and I don't want to lose weight. I also ate several hundred grams of sugar every day in December. Didn't gain a single pound. This is because my calories were still about the same, only the composition changed.
- chris_7 10y ago
  If you didn't count your calories, there's no way to tell where you were eating relative to your TDEE. People think they're eating more than they are all the time, it's an incredibly common thread on any fitness forum.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    Isn't that still a point in favor of the diet, though? That it's much harder to overeat on it?
    - chris_7 10y ago
      Of course, but it's pretty well accepted that fibrous and fatty foods are typically more filling that sugary foods, with fewer calories (especially for fibrous foods). It doesn't invalidate intake with respect to TDEE being the primary cause of weight gain and loss.
shorttime 10y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted but I agree with you.

crikli 10y ago

Agreed. You cannot outwork a shitty diet BUT refined sugar is the cornerstone of most shitty diets.

zeta0134 10y ago

Honestly, I think the reason most authors tend to have so much success with the new fad diet of the week is that for the month or whatever that they run the diet, they're actually monitoring their food intake and making an effort to eat more balanced meals. The diet itself seems almost irrelevant. Just the simple act of paying attention to what you eat (counting calories is an excellent starting point) will help more than anything, as you'll more easily recognize poor trends in your food choices, and the awareness will encourage you to diversify your diet.

munificent 10y ago

A couple of years ago, in a show of solidarity with my wife, I did a Whole 30. It's a 30 day elimination diet that cuts out all sugar (except for naturally occurring in whole fruit). I'm in my thirties and very slim. The Whole 30 lets you have as much fat, meat and calories as you want. I plowed through eggs, homemade mayo, meat, and other calorie dense food. I'm skinny enough that I don't have much weight to lose. Even so, I dropped ten pounds effortlessly. I don't know if this generalizes to other people and their physiques, but it was enough to convince me that sugar/simple carbs really do correlate more directly to my waistline than just counting calories does. I'm sure what the right metric to pay attention to is. My hunch is that it's glycemic load. Either way, I cut down on my sugar and carbs since then, and I've lost of a lot of the middle-aged Dad belly I was starting to develop. I don't count calories at all. It seems to work for me.

cheald 10y ago
Honestly, I think it's just calories in vs calories out. There's all kinds of things to consider like glycemic load and digestion speeds and all that, but at the end of the day, you lose fat when you eat less than you burn (see: the Twinkie diet). I think way too many people focus on things like glycemic load and the "kinds" of calories they're eating as some kind of magical weight loss/gain formula, and lose track of the overall quantity. I've lost more weight just counting calories and ignoring micronutrients, glycemic load, etc than I ever did trying to micromanage glycemic load and micronutrients. Fats are a lot more satiating than carbohydrates (ie, sugars) - I could easily put away 4000 calories of goldfish crackers in an evening, but I would be insanely full, uncomfortable, and possibly even sick if I tried to eat 4000 calories of proteins or fats. My go-to craving-killer snack is peanuts - they're high calorie on the label, but a handful of them takes the edge off my craving in a way that chips and crackers and candy don't.
iopq 10y ago
I'm in my thirties and I don't want to lose weight. I also ate several hundred grams of sugar every day in December. Didn't gain a single pound. This is because my calories were still about the same, only the composition changed.
chris_7 10y ago
If you didn't count your calories, there's no way to tell where you were eating relative to your TDEE. People think they're eating more than they are all the time, it's an incredibly common thread on any fitness forum.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Isn't that still a point in favor of the diet, though? That it's much harder to overeat on it?
  - chris_7 10y ago
    Of course, but it's pretty well accepted that fibrous and fatty foods are typically more filling that sugary foods, with fewer calories (especially for fibrous foods). It doesn't invalidate intake with respect to TDEE being the primary cause of weight gain and loss.

shorttime 10y ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted but I agree with you.