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It's always possible, but much harder for some people. It's in many ways like alcoholism or other addictions: it's not useful to pontificate to alcoholics and b

It's always possible, but much harder for some people. It's in many ways like alcoholism or other addictions: it's not useful to pontificate to alcoholics and blame them for a lack of of will power when dealing with a serious mental impairment. Yet, willpower remains the single best cure against addiction, encouraging people to leave themselves at the hands of impulse is not healthy advice. People do lose weight and keep it off by willpower, addicts change their lives by willpower. Gastric bypass is not a silver bullet, it's a major surgery with a significant mortality rate and is always a last resort for the most severe cases who have at least made an effort.

memebox3v 9y ago
Impulse over powers free will in the long term. Try starving yourself to death. Unless you are exceptional your will power will fail you. Ultimately you are not the master of desire. Desire is the master of you.
emodendroket 9y ago
The other guy is right though. Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. Given numbers like that, I don't see it as useful to cast it as a problem of willpower. The existence of large national trends also, to my mind, points away from individual failings. I find it hard to believe that the willpower of the average person has simply dropped off steeply over a few decades.
- croon 9y ago
  You are right in your description, but I disagree with your conclusion. Yes, the statistics of people in weight loss programs keeping their weight off is really low, but this could have many explanations: * Are they included because they wanted a one-time solution to a permanent problem? * Did they initially get coaching that they later lost? * Did the changes they made temporarily not work for them personally in the long term? Even if this is statistics of everyone that has ever tried losing weight, does it matter? Humans haven't evolved in the 50-100 years that obesity has exploded. This makes it conclusive that it can't be physiological, does it not? So it could be culturally behavioral, as a society, or individual, and it's looking like the former, but does it matter? What is more likely, that we as a culture fixes the obesity problem against any market forces pushing it, or that you die of obesity before that happens, unless you individually go against the grain of what is pushed upon you? The only way to lose weight is to make changes you can see yourself living with for the rest of your life. This sounds heavy, but none of your reflex habits seem heavy to you, but might to someone else. That's exactly why thin people seem to have it so easy (which they do). They have had a healthy habit of exercise and limited portion sizes their entire life, so they don't even have to think about it. You don't need exercise to lose weight, but you definitely need it to feel healthy. You need to find something you can either bare to do for the rest of your life, or best case enjoy doing. Soon enough it will be a habit you don't consider anyways. Same goes for food. There is no trick to it, and not one diet that works for everyone (in terms of psychology). Some can do it by counting everything they put in their mouth. Some can do it by forcing them to sit down everytime they put something in their mouth (so you don't walk around and snack without realizing). Some just cut out any drink that isn't water. Some cut out any snacks that isn't their one absolute favorite. Some just eat once a day without regards to portion size. Etc etc etc. It is harsh, but no one else will do it for you. You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to, but it's not productive to hide behind lies as to why you can't.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    So essentially you agree that we live in an environment that encourages obesity but in the end you think individuals should just "suck it up" and try harder. I think this is unlikely to ever see success for a large percentage of people and I don't think it's fair to fault people for not succeeding.
    - croon 9y ago
      No, I'm saying if someone wants to live longer they should, because the environment around them is much less likely to change. It isn't fair, but it works and is the path with least resistance, not low resistance.
- cornholio 9y ago
  > Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. That's not at all correct. Success rates of weight loss by dieting are around 20%. That's still low, but you have to ask yourself: is it because people really can't control their diet long term, or is it because the majority of the population prefers the self serving narative of obesity genes and viruses, addiction engineered by the food industry, "the calorie myth", the intractable failure of willpower over body impulse, and so on? Because that sounds a lot like a self fulfilling prophecy. Mind you, I'm grossly overweight (peak BMI 34, current 30), and I know full well the power of my body for mind control. A skinny person can't even imagine the fight every chubby faces on a daily basis. Yet, due to wining most battles, I've managed to lose some and not turn into the 500 Kg monster by body "demands" - I could easily eat 4-5000 calories on a daily basis, to great satisfaction.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Well, here's a source I was remembering the claim from (I was just a little off): http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... > In reality, 97 percent of dieters regain everything they lost and then some within three years. Obesity research fails to reflect this truth because it rarely follows people for more than 18 months. This makes most weight-loss studies disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst. I also think this article is interesting because it includes some personal testimony from a successful long-term dieter that I think illustrates why most people are not successful: > Debra Sapp-Yarwood, a fiftysomething from Kansas City, Missouri, who’s studying to be a hospital chaplain, is one of the three percenters, the select few who have lost a chunk of weight and kept it off. She dropped 55 pounds 11 years ago, and maintains her new weight with a diet and exercise routine most people would find unsustainable: She eats 1,800 calories a day—no more than 200 in carbs—and has learned to put up with what she describes as “intrusive thoughts and food preoccupations.” She used to run for an hour a day, but after foot surgery she switched to her current routine: a 50-minute exercise video performed at twice the speed of the instructor, while wearing ankle weights and a weighted vest that add between 25 or 30 pounds to her small frame. > “Maintaining weight loss is not a lifestyle,” she says. “It’s a job.” It’s a job that requires not just time, self-discipline, and energy—it also takes up a lot of mental real estate. People who maintain weight loss over the long term typically make it their top priority in life.

memebox3v 9y ago

Impulse over powers free will in the long term. Try starving yourself to death. Unless you are exceptional your will power will fail you. Ultimately you are not the master of desire. Desire is the master of you.

emodendroket 9y ago

The other guy is right though. Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. Given numbers like that, I don't see it as useful to cast it as a problem of willpower. The existence of large national trends also, to my mind, points away from individual failings. I find it hard to believe that the willpower of the average person has simply dropped off steeply over a few decades.

croon 9y ago
You are right in your description, but I disagree with your conclusion. Yes, the statistics of people in weight loss programs keeping their weight off is really low, but this could have many explanations: * Are they included because they wanted a one-time solution to a permanent problem? * Did they initially get coaching that they later lost? * Did the changes they made temporarily not work for them personally in the long term? Even if this is statistics of everyone that has ever tried losing weight, does it matter? Humans haven't evolved in the 50-100 years that obesity has exploded. This makes it conclusive that it can't be physiological, does it not? So it could be culturally behavioral, as a society, or individual, and it's looking like the former, but does it matter? What is more likely, that we as a culture fixes the obesity problem against any market forces pushing it, or that you die of obesity before that happens, unless you individually go against the grain of what is pushed upon you? The only way to lose weight is to make changes you can see yourself living with for the rest of your life. This sounds heavy, but none of your reflex habits seem heavy to you, but might to someone else. That's exactly why thin people seem to have it so easy (which they do). They have had a healthy habit of exercise and limited portion sizes their entire life, so they don't even have to think about it. You don't need exercise to lose weight, but you definitely need it to feel healthy. You need to find something you can either bare to do for the rest of your life, or best case enjoy doing. Soon enough it will be a habit you don't consider anyways. Same goes for food. There is no trick to it, and not one diet that works for everyone (in terms of psychology). Some can do it by counting everything they put in their mouth. Some can do it by forcing them to sit down everytime they put something in their mouth (so you don't walk around and snack without realizing). Some just cut out any drink that isn't water. Some cut out any snacks that isn't their one absolute favorite. Some just eat once a day without regards to portion size. Etc etc etc. It is harsh, but no one else will do it for you. You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to, but it's not productive to hide behind lies as to why you can't.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  So essentially you agree that we live in an environment that encourages obesity but in the end you think individuals should just "suck it up" and try harder. I think this is unlikely to ever see success for a large percentage of people and I don't think it's fair to fault people for not succeeding.
  - croon 9y ago
    No, I'm saying if someone wants to live longer they should, because the environment around them is much less likely to change. It isn't fair, but it works and is the path with least resistance, not low resistance.
cornholio 9y ago
> Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. That's not at all correct. Success rates of weight loss by dieting are around 20%. That's still low, but you have to ask yourself: is it because people really can't control their diet long term, or is it because the majority of the population prefers the self serving narative of obesity genes and viruses, addiction engineered by the food industry, "the calorie myth", the intractable failure of willpower over body impulse, and so on? Because that sounds a lot like a self fulfilling prophecy. Mind you, I'm grossly overweight (peak BMI 34, current 30), and I know full well the power of my body for mind control. A skinny person can't even imagine the fight every chubby faces on a daily basis. Yet, due to wining most battles, I've managed to lose some and not turn into the 500 Kg monster by body "demands" - I could easily eat 4-5000 calories on a daily basis, to great satisfaction.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Well, here's a source I was remembering the claim from (I was just a little off): http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... > In reality, 97 percent of dieters regain everything they lost and then some within three years. Obesity research fails to reflect this truth because it rarely follows people for more than 18 months. This makes most weight-loss studies disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst. I also think this article is interesting because it includes some personal testimony from a successful long-term dieter that I think illustrates why most people are not successful: > Debra Sapp-Yarwood, a fiftysomething from Kansas City, Missouri, who’s studying to be a hospital chaplain, is one of the three percenters, the select few who have lost a chunk of weight and kept it off. She dropped 55 pounds 11 years ago, and maintains her new weight with a diet and exercise routine most people would find unsustainable: She eats 1,800 calories a day—no more than 200 in carbs—and has learned to put up with what she describes as “intrusive thoughts and food preoccupations.” She used to run for an hour a day, but after foot surgery she switched to her current routine: a 50-minute exercise video performed at twice the speed of the instructor, while wearing ankle weights and a weighted vest that add between 25 or 30 pounds to her small frame. > “Maintaining weight loss is not a lifestyle,” she says. “It’s a job.” It’s a job that requires not just time, self-discipline, and energy—it also takes up a lot of mental real estate. People who maintain weight loss over the long term typically make it their top priority in life.