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> To lose weight, you simply need to intake fewer calories than you burn. While this is true, there a lot more complications. You body has its own idea of you

> To lose weight, you simply need to intake fewer calories than you burn. While this is true, there a lot more complications. You body has its own idea of your weight set-point, and tries to keep your body mass in that range. Any short-term intake / expenditure imbalance will be corrected when sufficient calories are available afterwards. If you are suffering a longer-term shortfall of calories, your body will "turn down the thermostat" in a couple ways. One by literally producing less heat, but your metabolism slows down in other ways, and an emphasis is put upon storing calories as fat. So if you cut your calorie consumption, and your body decides to cut calorie expenditure even more, you can gain weight. Also, your body will reduce muscle mass in a reduced caloric intake situation, because it will burn that muscle mass as energy to power the rest of your body, and also because muscle mass just uses more energy even when it is not doing anything. Going on a diet that causes you to lose muscle mass is a recipe for rapid weight gain after you stop dieting. Unfortunately, many fad diets will work in the sort term, but will make it easier to gain weight back later on.

mumblemumble 5y ago
So, in other words, that means that, even if "calories in, calories out" might be trivially true, which I would still imagine it is because thermodynamics, it's not actually useful as weight loss advice? Because the human body is not a passive system. It has all sorts of autonomic processes designed to control both calories in and calories out, and they have a tendency to subvert and/or counteract anything you're consciously doing to adjust your overall energy intake and expenditure. I'm obviously no health scientist, but, just thinking out loud, that seems pretty believable? Partially because, of course, nothing's ever that simple. But also, speaking purely speculatively, I can't imagine my body responds to me consuming a 1,500 calorie holiday meal by immediately producing three more pounds of fat tissue, and then making it disappear the very next day. So, even from that, it seems implausible that the body's arsenal of ways to deal with simple day-to-day and hour-to-hour variation in energy consumption has to go way beyond simply growing and consuming new tissue. Which is what it would seem to imply if useful weight loss advice really could be as simple as "calories in, calories out." Elsewhere I linked an article on the variability of the brain's calorie consumption, and one of the sources it cited was a table of calorie expenditure per hour across several activity types. Including things like reading a book or preparing a meal. It wasn't nearly detailed enough to know for sure, but, based on what I saw from a cursory glance, it seemed at least plausible that your body could completely counteract several hundred calories' worth of reduced food consumption by, say, simply making you unconsciously be a little bit less fidgety throughout the day.
- deegles 5y ago
  This study says that women feel hunger more strongly than men due to physical differences in the brain. True or not, the idea that some people just feel more hunger for the same amount of calorie deficit could explain a lot. Also, "calories in, calories out" is the second thought-terminating cliche[1] I've encountered today! [0] https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110876 https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110876 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
- flurie 5y ago
  I would still suggest that "calories in, calories out" is still solid weight loss advice. There are two major confounding issues that might make it appear incorrect. The first is that out is variable, and the second is that some parts of the system are noisy. The solution to both is to try to measure accurately and frequently. The best things one can do to achieve this are daily weigh-ins at approximately the same time and trying to account for the bulk of one's caloric and macronutrient intake.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Is it, though? To me, part of what qualifies advice as solid is that it has to help people who take it achieve the desired outcome. My understanding is that there's a staggering lack of evidence that that is the case. And not for lack of people looking for it. Which leaves me thinking that this is an idea whose memetic fitness far exceeds its practical value. The elephant in the room here is the article itself. The basic premise here is that internal bodily processes can increase your energy expenditure by as much as several thousand calories over the course of the day, even when you're being physically sedentary. And if it can autonomically increase the burn rate, surely it can also autonomically decrease it. I've certainly noticed that I have a more difficult time thinking clearly on days when I'm not eating as much as usual. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happens if I take a long bike ride without eating any extra food. Though this isn't something I've paid attention to in the past, so I suppose I don't really know. But still, if the body increases calorie expenditure during periods of higher brain activity, then it is certainly just as capable of reducing brain activity in response to a reduction in readily available energy.
abstractbarista 5y ago
Is there data to back up an individual 'set-point'? People think differently, so I can only speak to myself: If I was heavier than desired, and I noticed my body was gaining weight while I am suppressing caloric intake, I would reduce intake even further. Call the bluff. Of course, easier said than done. It's perhaps a masochistic mindset, forcing yourself to feel hunger, and obstinately refusing to give in. Since I was young, my conscious response to hunger seems different than many. I can easily ignore it for hours, if I am focused on something interesting. Hunger is an annoyance I typically ignore. The body screams "Wahh, I'm hungry! I'm going to make you feel bad until I eat!" and my internal voice says "Go right ahead. Suck it up, you're fine. I'm having too much fun to tend to you. Maybe you get something in a few hours." If anything, I probably don't eat 'enough'. But I don't try to eat less. I eat whatever I want whenever I want. I am very happy with my weight. I eat a wide variety of nutritious food. But ultimately it's just annoying that we have to eat at all.
marticode 5y ago
> You body has its own idea of your weight set-point, and tries to keep your body mass in that range. There's not much scientific evidence for "set point weight" or "starvation mode" or other similar concepts. People regain weight after dieting most likely because they go back to their old eating habits rather than making a lasting diet changes. But it's more convenient to blame their body stubbornness than their own lack of discipline.
sharadov 5y ago
Basically what you allude to is the metabolic rate. Your body has a metabolic rate, and if for whatever reason this gets out of whack - eating unhealthy, gaining a lot of weight, it becomes very hard to come back to baseline. Hence the yo-you effect of most diets.

mumblemumble 5y ago

So, in other words, that means that, even if "calories in, calories out" might be trivially true, which I would still imagine it is because thermodynamics, it's not actually useful as weight loss advice? Because the human body is not a passive system. It has all sorts of autonomic processes designed to control both calories in and calories out, and they have a tendency to subvert and/or counteract anything you're consciously doing to adjust your overall energy intake and expenditure. I'm obviously no health scientist, but, just thinking out loud, that seems pretty believable? Partially because, of course, nothing's ever that simple. But also, speaking purely speculatively, I can't imagine my body responds to me consuming a 1,500 calorie holiday meal by immediately producing three more pounds of fat tissue, and then making it disappear the very next day. So, even from that, it seems implausible that the body's arsenal of ways to deal with simple day-to-day and hour-to-hour variation in energy consumption has to go way beyond simply growing and consuming new tissue. Which is what it would seem to imply if useful weight loss advice really could be as simple as "calories in, calories out." Elsewhere I linked an article on the variability of the brain's calorie consumption, and one of the sources it cited was a table of calorie expenditure per hour across several activity types. Including things like reading a book or preparing a meal. It wasn't nearly detailed enough to know for sure, but, based on what I saw from a cursory glance, it seemed at least plausible that your body could completely counteract several hundred calories' worth of reduced food consumption by, say, simply making you unconsciously be a little bit less fidgety throughout the day.

deegles 5y ago
This study says that women feel hunger more strongly than men due to physical differences in the brain. True or not, the idea that some people just feel more hunger for the same amount of calorie deficit could explain a lot. Also, "calories in, calories out" is the second thought-terminating cliche[1] I've encountered today! [0] https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110876 https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110876 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
flurie 5y ago
I would still suggest that "calories in, calories out" is still solid weight loss advice. There are two major confounding issues that might make it appear incorrect. The first is that out is variable, and the second is that some parts of the system are noisy. The solution to both is to try to measure accurately and frequently. The best things one can do to achieve this are daily weigh-ins at approximately the same time and trying to account for the bulk of one's caloric and macronutrient intake.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Is it, though? To me, part of what qualifies advice as solid is that it has to help people who take it achieve the desired outcome. My understanding is that there's a staggering lack of evidence that that is the case. And not for lack of people looking for it. Which leaves me thinking that this is an idea whose memetic fitness far exceeds its practical value. The elephant in the room here is the article itself. The basic premise here is that internal bodily processes can increase your energy expenditure by as much as several thousand calories over the course of the day, even when you're being physically sedentary. And if it can autonomically increase the burn rate, surely it can also autonomically decrease it. I've certainly noticed that I have a more difficult time thinking clearly on days when I'm not eating as much as usual. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happens if I take a long bike ride without eating any extra food. Though this isn't something I've paid attention to in the past, so I suppose I don't really know. But still, if the body increases calorie expenditure during periods of higher brain activity, then it is certainly just as capable of reducing brain activity in response to a reduction in readily available energy.

abstractbarista 5y ago

Is there data to back up an individual 'set-point'? People think differently, so I can only speak to myself: If I was heavier than desired, and I noticed my body was gaining weight while I am suppressing caloric intake, I would reduce intake even further. Call the bluff. Of course, easier said than done. It's perhaps a masochistic mindset, forcing yourself to feel hunger, and obstinately refusing to give in. Since I was young, my conscious response to hunger seems different than many. I can easily ignore it for hours, if I am focused on something interesting. Hunger is an annoyance I typically ignore. The body screams "Wahh, I'm hungry! I'm going to make you feel bad until I eat!" and my internal voice says "Go right ahead. Suck it up, you're fine. I'm having too much fun to tend to you. Maybe you get something in a few hours." If anything, I probably don't eat 'enough'. But I don't try to eat less. I eat whatever I want whenever I want. I am very happy with my weight. I eat a wide variety of nutritious food. But ultimately it's just annoying that we have to eat at all.

marticode 5y ago

> You body has its own idea of your weight set-point, and tries to keep your body mass in that range. There's not much scientific evidence for "set point weight" or "starvation mode" or other similar concepts. People regain weight after dieting most likely because they go back to their old eating habits rather than making a lasting diet changes. But it's more convenient to blame their body stubbornness than their own lack of discipline.

sharadov 5y ago

Basically what you allude to is the metabolic rate. Your body has a metabolic rate, and if for whatever reason this gets out of whack - eating unhealthy, gaining a lot of weight, it becomes very hard to come back to baseline. Hence the yo-you effect of most diets.