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I think the missing pole in the tent of weight loss is that we don't acknowledge the psychology of it. Everyone who is overweight knows that they should eat les
by snarf21 5y ago
I think the missing pole in the tent of weight loss is that we don't acknowledge the psychology of it. Everyone who is overweight knows that they should eat less and move more. What always gets lost is the how. How do I consistently do this in the face a stressful life and constant time pressure? Everyone can walk past a tray of cookies once at the beginning of the day. After a stressful meeting where you were yelled at by your boss? No so easy and you may even eat two.
Like you said, exercise is important for overall health but is a horrible way to lose weight. We are going to eat cake at lunch because we claim we will workout later (but then don't). Exercising takes time to do, to change, to shower, to travel. People are likely to overeat after exercising because they feel famished even though they burned a fraction of the calories they think they did. I think people are probably better served with intermittent fasting and trying hard to control their grocery shopping to keep binge-able foods out of the house. The challenge here is if you are the only person in the house trying to lose weight.
We need a better life hack to lose weight in the 21st century. We are going to lie to ourselves about what we will do or why we didn't. This is actually the brilliance of the Planet Fitness pricing model. The majority of their customers barely go but for $10/month you can lie to yourself that you are "trying" and it is cheap enough to prevent cancellation. I think this is why people have initial success on WW or NutriSystem because it takes a lot of the mental load away. Don't think, just follow instructions.
- cjblomqvist 5y agoSorry for not having references, but to add to your very good comment: Working out triggers hunger in us, and I believe I've read somewhere (research?) that hunger overcompensates compared to how much was burnt, so working out (regardless if cardio or weights) is actually bad for losing weight. Then of course it can be good for your overall health (in particularly your mental one) so that in turn might help you (and be good for you), but if your only goal is losing weight, I'm not sure this talk about exercising is so good.
- chucksta 5y agoNo absolutely not. You may overcompensate initially, but your body re acclimates. The prevailing advice simply wouldn't be to start moving more for the obese/morbidly obese if this were the case
- favorited 5y agoI don't disagree with you about the overall health benefits of regular exercise, but the entire point of the article was that the "prevailing advice" WRT weight management is often over-simplified to the point of worthlessness.
- Zababa 5y ago> The prevailing advice simply wouldn't be to start moving more for the obese/morbidly obese if this were the case Considering the state of the obesity epidemic, maybe that prevailing advice is not working well?
- aitchnyu 5y agoI used soaked chia seeds to fill the extra hunger. Some days I was "hungry" with a full stomach. Can I take advantage of the low calories of chia seeds or do I have to depend on hunger acclimation?
- copperx 5y agoI'm not sure if this is a common thing, but working out has a satiating effect on me. I simply have less hunger when I exercise. The only exception is when I swim. That does increase hunger. I wish I understood the reason.
- wvh 5y agoWorking out too hard, i.e. anaerobically such as running or anything that gets you out of breath, can trigger hunger if you're not adapted to that level of exercise. It puts your body in high alert mode and you will have to balance out stress hormones and refuel immediate energy stores after. Pushing yourself to the limit is probably only a good idea if your body is already healthy enough to take the abuse. If you want to lose weight, something less taxing that you can happily do for a longer time is a much better choice – work with your body and mind, not against them. Give your body time to hit those fat stores instead of putting it in overdrive and pulling energy from more direct sources of glycogen.
- vmladenov 5y agoBut now you’ve reduced a weight loss problem to a discipline problem, where you have access to a much wider array of techniques available.