6 ms·

Why is it so hard for us to accept that obesity is due to overeating? Also, the myth that exercise is the key to losing weight won't die.

hourislate 10y ago
Because the cause of obesity is not that simple to diagnose. There are many factors that contribute to obesity. Over eating is just one. But I do agree with you that exercise has little to do with losing weight and can be counter productive when trying to lose weight.
- Coding_Cat 10y ago
  Well, overeating is maybe simplified too much but it can be reduced mostly to "wrong eating". Perhaps not overeating in absolute volume but overeating of effetcive calories. There might be metabolic difference between people leading to different eating patterns working for different people, sure. But if you are obese in virtually all cases it is simply a matter of changing your diet (even for the cases that have an independent medical cause such as a thyroid disease). And in most cases the fix is to simply eat less callories in general by eating less and/or healthier alternatives. And exercise does help you lose body fat, unless you start eating extra to compensate for the exercise as most people vastly overestimate how much calories you actually burn working out. And of course power-training that helps you build muscle mass can increase your weight but that does not mean that it is bad for you. If you're going to the gym regularlly anyway during your diet just measure your body-composition to track your effective weight. (not sure how accurate that is though).
DanBC 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
smhost 10y ago
I have a friend who eats 3000~4000 kcals with no exercise and he is as thin as a stick. I have another friend who is a complete couch potato and eats junk food all day with no exercise, and he looks like a gym rat. I think a lot of the magical thinking surrounding weight loss is because there's no one-size-fits-all solution, so people make up patterns in their heads and believe them to be true.
- matwood 10y ago
  > I have a friend who eats 3000~4000 kcals Does he keep a detailed food log? I have power lifted and worked out for over a decade now. Every single skinny person who has asked for my help to gain weight has told me exactly what you said above, "I eat 3-4k day and just can't seem to get any bigger." As soon as I put them on a food log we find out that nope, they are barely crossing 2k calories and are like most people who severely under/over estimate how much they eat.
  - smhost 10y ago
    It's more that we were eating the same things and I was getting bigger while he stayed thin. We were roommates for a summer, and our diet was virtually identical. Usually an omelette with guacamole and salsa in the morning with maybe a mimosa, 6~12 pack of beer throughout the day, california burrito, hors doeuvres with several shots of liquor at night, for about 3 months.
    - NikolaeVarius 10y ago
      Yeah, that's 99% an issue of almost always an issue of snacking or they're actually not eating as much as you think.
    - amag 10y ago
      While you may be eating the _same_ things, did you eat the same _amount_ of the things? In my experience it's very hard to compare the amount of food I eat with how much someone else at the table eats.
  - 10y ago
superbaconman 10y ago
It's not even overeating. For example people who eat their daily calorie budget within 6 hours temd to lose weight. Intermittent fasting is great for your body. It promotes burning fat and building muscle, but no seems to know or talk about it.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  IF gets talked about quite a lot, actually. There's so many different types of interment fasting so it's kinda hard to generalize too much. I only eat one time a day (dinner) and I'm fatter than ever. It's pretty natural for me to do that and I certainly eat less than than when I worried about trying to eat lunch. But I'm still fat and gaining despite the fact I watch my diet now, unlike when I was thin.
paulpauper 10y ago
I read that diets can make things worse by altering metabolism . Metabolism slows when on a diet, but when the diet is over metabolism remains slow, so it becomes very easy to regain the weight and then some.
- bluecalm 10y ago
  Citation? From what I've seen (for example the biggest loser study) metabolism doesn't slow down when people restrict calories. Yes - they need less after a while but that's because they weigh less. It's almost exactly what those BMR equations would predict.
- kmm 10y ago
  The evidence for this adaptive thermogenesis is scant and inconclusive. Even if it were true, we're talking about a difference of 100 kcal/day, which doesn't mean one can eat significantly less. It doesn't make sense that our bodies would be capable of doing this. Evolutionary, if our bodies could do the same tasks for a lower energy expenditure, we'd all do that. But you simply can't keep a body at 37.5°C for half the calories
- scholia 10y ago
  Possibly this article, or one based on it? After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weig... Quote: It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.
- no_wave 10y ago
  It has more to do with appetite. Fat produces a hormone called leptin, which suppresses appetite. You evaluate the quantity you eat very differently depending on your appetite. A meal that makes me very full at 190 pounds will barely satiate me at 165. If you asked 190 pounds me how many calories a meal was I'd usually give a higher number than 165 pounds me. Variation in comfortable resting weights likely has more to do with different satiation points than the number of calories burnt by an individual.
overgard 10y ago
This kind of attitude is just FUD -- nothing can be learned from adopting your point of view, because you're convinced the problem is "solved" and not worth discussing, yet your assertion is not proven. Also even basic metabolic science disproves your claim. If your immune system attacks your pancreas and damages your ability to produce insulin you will lose weight even if you stuff your face constantly, and if you inject insulin you will have trouble burning fat even when you have low glucose levels. What I don't understand is why people cling to this weirdly puritanical belief obesity is purely the sin of gluttony when its clear scientifically that weight gain and loss are controlled by hormones
- horsecaptin 10y ago
  Perhaps it is from overeating the things that make you fat? :). We should all figure out what works best for our lifestyles and bodies.
- strken 10y ago
  its clear scientifically that weight gain and loss are controlled by hormones Is this clear, though? Many people can manage their weight by increasing or decreasing food intake. It seems more likely that under normal circumstances weight can be easily managed, but other factors can force someone in either direction. Thus Alice doesn't understand why Bob is overweight and Charlie is underweight, because whenever Alice gets chubby or skinny she can easily get back in the normal range. For Alice, staying in shape is so easy that obesity really would be a sign of gluttony and being underweight would be a sign of mental illness, while for Bob and Charlie getting in shape would first require removing environmental factors. It feels like there are a lot of Alices and a lot of Bobs that both argue with each other as though their own experience applies equally to everyone, which probably isn't true.
  - overgard 10y ago
    > Is this clear, though? I've yet to see any study convincingly refute insulin's effect on fat uptake (also: we've known this for like a hundred years). I don't really disagree with anything else you've said, but here's why this topic tends to get to me: with most other illnesses, we don't automatically assume the worst about the other person and assume it was their behavior that caused it. (while, incidentally, knowing nothing about their behavior). If someone got brain cancer, we wouldn't be like "looks like you used your phone too much!", and if someone is going bald you wouldn't be like "looks like you accidentally replaced your shampoo with Nair!" Obesity is a symptom of quite a few underlying diseases. You can become obese from overeating, sure, but you can also become obese by getting a brain tumor in the wrong spot, or because you handle specific foods poorly, or you have endocrine issues, or your gut bacteria have become unhealthy, or... (lots of reasons). We act like obesity is the cause to everything, when it's often just a symptom. When people frame this in moral terms ("you're fat because you're a glutton"), it just strikes me as clueless, because we have this rising obesity epidemic on our hands, and it seems really unlikely that somehow our generation is special in terms of just not being able to resist an extra slice of pizza.
ue_ 10y ago
>Also, the myth that exercise is the key to losing weight won't die. As someone who's on the verge of being overweight, what is the key to losing weight? This seems like a very curious proposition.
- Steer 10y ago
  I think the point OP is trying to make is that it is very easy to eat in excess (calorie-wise) to what you are burning by training since physical activity will often make you crave more food. Doing some kind of training is obviously good for you, but you will not necessarily lose weight if you don't restrict your caloric intake. Just like intelligence differs, your ability to gain or lose weight is not the same as other peoples'. In my experience it is not fair, but on the other hand, what is? I would recommend something like the slow carb diet (Tim Ferriss), but anything that restrict your intake of calories and that you feel you can sustain over a long period of time is good.
- WA 10y ago
  > what is the key to losing weight? Easy win: No sugary drinks. Juice is as unhealthy as coke. If you want something with flavor, drink tea (without sugar). For most people, it's to understand this: Carbohydrates make you gain weight. Not the fat in food. Somewhat hard to implement, but with significant results: Cut sugar entirely from your diet. This automatically results in much healthier eating, because you have to check ingredients on everything this way.
- chris_7 10y ago
  Eat fewer calories than you expend. Most of your expenditure is BMR + walking around, exercise doesn't add that much (unless you're at Olympic-swimmer levels).
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Eating less calories than you take in: measure your food accurately and keep a food log, then stay under the computed target for the day. It works every time, it is just hard to keep up with if you aren't motivated. I know it works though, it help me shred 25kg.
dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
Because you can't describe metabolic needs with an implicit, seemingly obvious(!?) limit to how many calories you need of which types.
dclowd9901 10y ago
You're right and you're wrong. The problem is we don't even know what "overeating" is yet on an individual basis. Some people can pack away thousands of calories a day, not do a lick of exercise, and be fine. Others (like me) have to severely restrain their eating (to say less than 1500 calories a day) to prevent weight gain. Once we figure out how to accurately measure basic metabolic process, we'll have gone a long way toward figuring out this woeful conundrum.
- an_account 10y ago
  It doesn't take long to figure out for yourself... Start tracking calories and also weight, and then slowly adjust daily caloric intake until you stop changing weight.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
  "Some people can pack away thousands of calories a day and be fine" They are almost certainly not packing thousands of calories a day, everyday. Most of these people who you see eating a lot occasionally probably have very controlled and disciplined diets most of the time (whether that control comes easily to them or with great struggle is a different matter). But it is simply not true that you can eat at significant net caloric surplus _regularly_ without gaining weight.
kolinko 10y ago
The question is what causes overeating. With some people it's obviously bad habits, but we also know that thyroid problems, anxiety, adhd and other brain issues can cause overeating.
dxhdr 10y ago
> accept that obesity is due to overeating? That's a tautology, the question is why. What causes overeating and why do some people have great difficulty with it? It's clearly not as simple as thinking to yourself, "I'd like to eat just enough today such that I don't overeat." Why are some bodies able to regulate caloric intake and others aren't?
- an_account 10y ago
  Addiction. Mental willpower. Emotional connections to food. If you can't start tracking calories and reducing intake yourself, then you should probably seek professional help. One issue is that many people don't see it as a health or lifestyle problem, and make endless excuses for why they can't possibly lose weight, ignoring advice from medical professionals.
  - dxhdr 10y ago
    Would you also describe depression as a lack of mental willpower? Why not? Normal bodies don't require calorie tracking, the brain automatically signals the body to stop eating; no effort required. This system is broken in some people, their brain tells them they are hungry even after consuming too many calories. What causes this malfunction?
    - bluecalm 10y ago
      >>Normal bodies don't require calorie tracking Why not? It's a skill necessary to adapt to circumstances our bodies didn't evolve in (that is constant and unlimited access to food). It's only natural that we need new skills to function in new environment. For example it's safe to assume that for most of human history people didn't have an option to eat whenever they are hungry while today you can always dial-in a pizza. It's expected that those mechanisms, which were shaped in times where food was scarce or at least not being as easily and quickly available, don't work that well today. >>What causes this malfunction? Unlimited exposure and access to rich and calorie dense food? I mean, it's not rocket science.

hourislate 10y ago

Because the cause of obesity is not that simple to diagnose. There are many factors that contribute to obesity. Over eating is just one. But I do agree with you that exercise has little to do with losing weight and can be counter productive when trying to lose weight.

Coding_Cat 10y ago
Well, overeating is maybe simplified too much but it can be reduced mostly to "wrong eating". Perhaps not overeating in absolute volume but overeating of effetcive calories. There might be metabolic difference between people leading to different eating patterns working for different people, sure. But if you are obese in virtually all cases it is simply a matter of changing your diet (even for the cases that have an independent medical cause such as a thyroid disease). And in most cases the fix is to simply eat less callories in general by eating less and/or healthier alternatives. And exercise does help you lose body fat, unless you start eating extra to compensate for the exercise as most people vastly overestimate how much calories you actually burn working out. And of course power-training that helps you build muscle mass can increase your weight but that does not mean that it is bad for you. If you're going to the gym regularlly anyway during your diet just measure your body-composition to track your effective weight. (not sure how accurate that is though).

DanBC 10y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.

smhost 10y ago

I have a friend who eats 3000~4000 kcals with no exercise and he is as thin as a stick. I have another friend who is a complete couch potato and eats junk food all day with no exercise, and he looks like a gym rat. I think a lot of the magical thinking surrounding weight loss is because there's no one-size-fits-all solution, so people make up patterns in their heads and believe them to be true.

matwood 10y ago
> I have a friend who eats 3000~4000 kcals Does he keep a detailed food log? I have power lifted and worked out for over a decade now. Every single skinny person who has asked for my help to gain weight has told me exactly what you said above, "I eat 3-4k day and just can't seem to get any bigger." As soon as I put them on a food log we find out that nope, they are barely crossing 2k calories and are like most people who severely under/over estimate how much they eat.
- smhost 10y ago
  It's more that we were eating the same things and I was getting bigger while he stayed thin. We were roommates for a summer, and our diet was virtually identical. Usually an omelette with guacamole and salsa in the morning with maybe a mimosa, 6~12 pack of beer throughout the day, california burrito, hors doeuvres with several shots of liquor at night, for about 3 months.
  - NikolaeVarius 10y ago
    Yeah, that's 99% an issue of almost always an issue of snacking or they're actually not eating as much as you think.
  - amag 10y ago
    While you may be eating the _same_ things, did you eat the same _amount_ of the things? In my experience it's very hard to compare the amount of food I eat with how much someone else at the table eats.
- 10y ago

superbaconman 10y ago

It's not even overeating. For example people who eat their daily calorie budget within 6 hours temd to lose weight. Intermittent fasting is great for your body. It promotes burning fat and building muscle, but no seems to know or talk about it.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
IF gets talked about quite a lot, actually. There's so many different types of interment fasting so it's kinda hard to generalize too much. I only eat one time a day (dinner) and I'm fatter than ever. It's pretty natural for me to do that and I certainly eat less than than when I worried about trying to eat lunch. But I'm still fat and gaining despite the fact I watch my diet now, unlike when I was thin.

paulpauper 10y ago

I read that diets can make things worse by altering metabolism . Metabolism slows when on a diet, but when the diet is over metabolism remains slow, so it becomes very easy to regain the weight and then some.

bluecalm 10y ago
Citation? From what I've seen (for example the biggest loser study) metabolism doesn't slow down when people restrict calories. Yes - they need less after a while but that's because they weigh less. It's almost exactly what those BMR equations would predict.
kmm 10y ago
The evidence for this adaptive thermogenesis is scant and inconclusive. Even if it were true, we're talking about a difference of 100 kcal/day, which doesn't mean one can eat significantly less. It doesn't make sense that our bodies would be capable of doing this. Evolutionary, if our bodies could do the same tasks for a lower energy expenditure, we'd all do that. But you simply can't keep a body at 37.5°C for half the calories
scholia 10y ago
Possibly this article, or one based on it? After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weig... Quote: It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.
no_wave 10y ago
It has more to do with appetite. Fat produces a hormone called leptin, which suppresses appetite. You evaluate the quantity you eat very differently depending on your appetite. A meal that makes me very full at 190 pounds will barely satiate me at 165. If you asked 190 pounds me how many calories a meal was I'd usually give a higher number than 165 pounds me. Variation in comfortable resting weights likely has more to do with different satiation points than the number of calories burnt by an individual.

overgard 10y ago

This kind of attitude is just FUD -- nothing can be learned from adopting your point of view, because you're convinced the problem is "solved" and not worth discussing, yet your assertion is not proven. Also even basic metabolic science disproves your claim. If your immune system attacks your pancreas and damages your ability to produce insulin you will lose weight even if you stuff your face constantly, and if you inject insulin you will have trouble burning fat even when you have low glucose levels. What I don't understand is why people cling to this weirdly puritanical belief obesity is purely the sin of gluttony when its clear scientifically that weight gain and loss are controlled by hormones

horsecaptin 10y ago
Perhaps it is from overeating the things that make you fat? :). We should all figure out what works best for our lifestyles and bodies.
strken 10y ago
its clear scientifically that weight gain and loss are controlled by hormones Is this clear, though? Many people can manage their weight by increasing or decreasing food intake. It seems more likely that under normal circumstances weight can be easily managed, but other factors can force someone in either direction. Thus Alice doesn't understand why Bob is overweight and Charlie is underweight, because whenever Alice gets chubby or skinny she can easily get back in the normal range. For Alice, staying in shape is so easy that obesity really would be a sign of gluttony and being underweight would be a sign of mental illness, while for Bob and Charlie getting in shape would first require removing environmental factors. It feels like there are a lot of Alices and a lot of Bobs that both argue with each other as though their own experience applies equally to everyone, which probably isn't true.
- overgard 10y ago
  > Is this clear, though? I've yet to see any study convincingly refute insulin's effect on fat uptake (also: we've known this for like a hundred years). I don't really disagree with anything else you've said, but here's why this topic tends to get to me: with most other illnesses, we don't automatically assume the worst about the other person and assume it was their behavior that caused it. (while, incidentally, knowing nothing about their behavior). If someone got brain cancer, we wouldn't be like "looks like you used your phone too much!", and if someone is going bald you wouldn't be like "looks like you accidentally replaced your shampoo with Nair!" Obesity is a symptom of quite a few underlying diseases. You can become obese from overeating, sure, but you can also become obese by getting a brain tumor in the wrong spot, or because you handle specific foods poorly, or you have endocrine issues, or your gut bacteria have become unhealthy, or... (lots of reasons). We act like obesity is the cause to everything, when it's often just a symptom. When people frame this in moral terms ("you're fat because you're a glutton"), it just strikes me as clueless, because we have this rising obesity epidemic on our hands, and it seems really unlikely that somehow our generation is special in terms of just not being able to resist an extra slice of pizza.

ue_ 10y ago

>Also, the myth that exercise is the key to losing weight won't die. As someone who's on the verge of being overweight, what is the key to losing weight? This seems like a very curious proposition.

Steer 10y ago
I think the point OP is trying to make is that it is very easy to eat in excess (calorie-wise) to what you are burning by training since physical activity will often make you crave more food. Doing some kind of training is obviously good for you, but you will not necessarily lose weight if you don't restrict your caloric intake. Just like intelligence differs, your ability to gain or lose weight is not the same as other peoples'. In my experience it is not fair, but on the other hand, what is? I would recommend something like the slow carb diet (Tim Ferriss), but anything that restrict your intake of calories and that you feel you can sustain over a long period of time is good.
WA 10y ago
> what is the key to losing weight? Easy win: No sugary drinks. Juice is as unhealthy as coke. If you want something with flavor, drink tea (without sugar). For most people, it's to understand this: Carbohydrates make you gain weight. Not the fat in food. Somewhat hard to implement, but with significant results: Cut sugar entirely from your diet. This automatically results in much healthier eating, because you have to check ingredients on everything this way.
chris_7 10y ago
Eat fewer calories than you expend. Most of your expenditure is BMR + walking around, exercise doesn't add that much (unless you're at Olympic-swimmer levels).
tomjen3 10y ago
Eating less calories than you take in: measure your food accurately and keep a food log, then stay under the computed target for the day. It works every time, it is just hard to keep up with if you aren't motivated. I know it works though, it help me shred 25kg.

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago

Because you can't describe metabolic needs with an implicit, seemingly obvious(!?) limit to how many calories you need of which types.

dclowd9901 10y ago

You're right and you're wrong. The problem is we don't even know what "overeating" is yet on an individual basis. Some people can pack away thousands of calories a day, not do a lick of exercise, and be fine. Others (like me) have to severely restrain their eating (to say less than 1500 calories a day) to prevent weight gain. Once we figure out how to accurately measure basic metabolic process, we'll have gone a long way toward figuring out this woeful conundrum.

an_account 10y ago
It doesn't take long to figure out for yourself... Start tracking calories and also weight, and then slowly adjust daily caloric intake until you stop changing weight.
kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
"Some people can pack away thousands of calories a day and be fine" They are almost certainly not packing thousands of calories a day, everyday. Most of these people who you see eating a lot occasionally probably have very controlled and disciplined diets most of the time (whether that control comes easily to them or with great struggle is a different matter). But it is simply not true that you can eat at significant net caloric surplus _regularly_ without gaining weight.

kolinko 10y ago

The question is what causes overeating. With some people it's obviously bad habits, but we also know that thyroid problems, anxiety, adhd and other brain issues can cause overeating.

dxhdr 10y ago

> accept that obesity is due to overeating? That's a tautology, the question is why. What causes overeating and why do some people have great difficulty with it? It's clearly not as simple as thinking to yourself, "I'd like to eat just enough today such that I don't overeat." Why are some bodies able to regulate caloric intake and others aren't?

an_account 10y ago
Addiction. Mental willpower. Emotional connections to food. If you can't start tracking calories and reducing intake yourself, then you should probably seek professional help. One issue is that many people don't see it as a health or lifestyle problem, and make endless excuses for why they can't possibly lose weight, ignoring advice from medical professionals.
- dxhdr 10y ago
  Would you also describe depression as a lack of mental willpower? Why not? Normal bodies don't require calorie tracking, the brain automatically signals the body to stop eating; no effort required. This system is broken in some people, their brain tells them they are hungry even after consuming too many calories. What causes this malfunction?
  - bluecalm 10y ago
    >>Normal bodies don't require calorie tracking Why not? It's a skill necessary to adapt to circumstances our bodies didn't evolve in (that is constant and unlimited access to food). It's only natural that we need new skills to function in new environment. For example it's safe to assume that for most of human history people didn't have an option to eat whenever they are hungry while today you can always dial-in a pizza. It's expected that those mechanisms, which were shaped in times where food was scarce or at least not being as easily and quickly available, don't work that well today. >>What causes this malfunction? Unlimited exposure and access to rich and calorie dense food? I mean, it's not rocket science.