8 ms·

Someone finally wrote this article. So refreshing. It's obvious when you live with a fat person why they have trouble losing weight, even when they're on a diet

Someone finally wrote this article. So refreshing. It's obvious when you live with a fat person why they have trouble losing weight, even when they're on a diet: they're usually not actually following it. Whether they don't understand portion sizes for calorie math, or look at calories at all, or eat things that they say "do not count", there is almost always a failure to understand what and how much they are eating.

sharken 4y ago
It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. Even if there was a device that could scan all food before eating it, they would still exempt some meals with the "do not count" argument. Rule of thumb, that if a meal is easy and fast to prepare, then it is probably not suited for a diet. To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. Most people just don't have that kind of willpower.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Wife switched to calories counting a few years ago. It was shocking how small the portions were. She lost 90 pounds doing that in under a year.
- trevorishere 4y ago
  Went from 230 to ~155 without exercise by calorie restriction alone (600-1200cal/day). It IS possible, though likely unhealthy to accomplish without exercise (I never, ask they say, consulted a doctor prior to the self-imposed restriction). Exercise was uncomfortable until I had lost weight, now I can do 15+ mile hikes with a 60l backpack. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing exercise at any time in their goal for weight loss, but it is possible to lose weight by calorie restriction alone.
  - mikevm 4y ago
    > Exercise was uncomfortable until I had lost weight, now I can do 15+ mile hikes with a 60l backpack. A simple walk on an incline (5km/hr @ 5% incline) can help you burn 400+kcals/hour. You can probably eat at 1500 kcals and start your day with a walk like that on the treadmill while watching some TV show :). > .. but it is possible to lose weight by calorie restriction alone. Indeed it is! :) If you're obese or severely overweight, it's best to just do a PSMF to lose weight as quickly as possible. Btw, at 230lbs you can easily do strength training which will help you with body recomp (stimulating muscle growth while burning fat). A good rule of thumb for a PSMF is 9.7x[protein intake]. For example: given 1.6g/kg*104kg = 166g of protein per day we get: 166g * 9.7 kcal/g = 1610 kcal. So your daily calories are at 1610 kcal max, and you need to eat at least 166g of protein (the rest of the calories can be filled with carbs/fat). I suggest min 50g of fat per day for men.
    - bena 4y ago
      PSMF - Protein-Sparing Modified Fasting
    - friedman23 4y ago
      Walking is the most under rated weight loss activity. People don't understand how many calories walking on an incline on a treadmill will shred if you are obese. When I was 220 pounds, walking at 10% incline at 2.6mph was 770 calories an hour. It is actually hard to eat at a calorie surplus when you are burning that many calories a day. If you want to lose weight you need to do one of the following Be hungry, Be in pain from exercise (running), or sacrifice all your free time to low intensity exercise I chose option 3 along with weight lifting and I don't regret it. Walking also has this really cool effect of not increasing ghrelin unlike high intensity cardio
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    Where did you get the information that it is unhealthy for a 230 pound person to eat 1200 calories a day? I understand that sodium,potasium,etc.. are necessary, I'm just asking about why you think that the calories are a problem when 230 pounds?
- bavell 4y ago
  > To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. Exercise doesn't help very much, it's really all about diet. Plus if you are exercising a lot, you'll feel hungier and it'll be harder mentally to not eat more to compensate.
  - rnd420_69 4y ago
    I lost 60lbs in about a year almost exclusively based around a large amount of exercise. My diet was bad and I was eating far above 2000kcal on many days. I just exercised a lot. 1h of fairly intense cardio at least 6 days a week, though I would always round up to the next 10 min mark and do more like 70 or 80 min per day. Some days I would order pizza or something and some dessert in the evening when I knew this would push me into the 3000kcal range and in return did 2h or 3h exercise routines fairly regularly, often times while eating the pizza.
    - jonhohle 4y ago
      Depending on your weight, an hour of cardio is only 500 or so calories. Last night I showed my wife a hand with 5 Brazil nuts. That’s equivalent to a one mile run at my weight. Obviously different things work for different people, but no amount of cardio is going to offset a terrible diet for most people. Caloric deficit and intermittent fasting combined with exercise is the easiest and fastest way (imho) to get your body to start metabolizing fat stores.
      - stef25 4y ago
        My app and Google tell me running 6 miles in an hour burns 800+ calories.
        jonhohle 4y ago
        Mass will affect the amount of calories burned.
      - Blackthorn 4y ago
- javert 4y ago
  > To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. I think this is a misleading cliche. I seem to have a lost a significant amount of weight just from eating less, without exercise. Which makes sense. It's amazing how many miles you'd have to run to burn the calories you get from a Big Mac. Basically, our food is super dense in calories, and our bodies are extremely efficient machines (meaning, they don't burn as many calories as you'd think when exercising). So, it should be much easier to lose weight by eating less than by exercising more. > Most people just don't have that kind of willpower. Most people aren't motivated enough. But "willpower" is a misleading and thus destructive way to describe motivation. You increase motivation by thinking about whether the positive thing you want is "worth" whatever you're doing to get it. In other words, staying focused on the value. You don't increase motivation by "exerting willpower." That whole concept for motivation is a recipe for failure.
  - ntlk 4y ago
    A Big Mac is 563 calories. Hardly unreasonable for a meal.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      On its own maybe. But add large fries and a soda and it’s ~1300 calories. Way more than half most peoples daily requirement.
    - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
      I see many get huge sodas with the Big Macs which is what pushes it to crazy amounts.
- unicornporn 4y ago
  Also: once a fat cell, always a fat cell. Not really, but... https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/your-fat-cells-never-disappear-making-future-weight-gain-more-likely https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/your-fat-cells-never... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18454136/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18454136/
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  > It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. I found the same when I started counting calories. An extra slice of wholegrain bread is how much?! Even just a thin spread of butter or margarine on the bread would blow my daily budget by a lot, so I had to find alternatives for that (like mustard). Given my own preferences for having a "proper meal", I ended up only eating twice a day. I focused on making it high-protein and high-fiber to make me feel full longer, cutting down on regular carbs as needed.
- dspillett 4y ago
  > It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. In the immortal words of Jasper Carrott: "This hole", points to mouth. "Is bigger than that hole", points to bottom. > they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight My problem isn't meals and their potions, it is absent-minded snacking between. I'm finding it a lot harder to drop the few Kg I put on over 2019/2022/2021 (largely in 2020, when I like many had a bit of a mentally unstable few months and comfort eat a lot) than I found it to drop a few tens of Kg in 2015/2016.
retrac 4y ago
One of my roommates tried everything, including good hard exercise and all sorts of diets. Nothing seemed to be working. It was kind of perplexing me, actually. Then we started working the same schedule, breakfast together. The whole thing unravelled with a casual comment he made. "Wow, you're really stingy with the sugar in your coffee." Except I wasn't. I was actually indulging myself, like two tablespoons. Show me how you make coffee? Ah. Yes. If you put 500 calories of sugar and cream into your coffee multiple times a day, you're not gonna lose weight. He didn't believe me at first! I had to measure his quantities out and calculate it and show him. Liquids/powders in general seem to trip people up. We are bad at measuring them by sight. Soda, mayonnaise and dips. The oil in a nice salad dressing applied over-liberally can exceed the calories in the burger that goes with it. Try measuring/weighing these sorts of foods and looking up their caloric content if you haven't before. You may be a shocked as my poor roommate was.
- NoOneNew 4y ago
  You, this. I can second this fully. Figured out the same thing when I spent a solid week nazi tracking my eating. The thing that blew my mind. I always used heavy cream in my coffee. 150cal per 2 tablespoons. I would use like a quarter cup. I switch to milk, just 150cal per cup. The little things really damn matter.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    > The little things really damn matter. Integral calculus ftw!
- throwaway2016a 4y ago
  That's why I always drink my coffee black. The amount of calories in sugar and especially "Coffee Mate" is amazing (in a bad way). A serving size of Coffee Mate is actually 1/5 of what I see most people actually put in their coffee. It only looks "low-ish" calories because the serving size is so small.
  - Blackthorn 4y ago
vlunkr 4y ago
Or alternatively, they know they are eating too much, but simply don't have the will power to quit. I'm no food expert, but to me it looks like any other addiction. They rely on food emotionally, so when they are ashamed or depressed that they aren't losing weight, they turn to food, which continues the addiction cycle.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  American society is basically brainwashed as to what is and isn't healthy. It takes actual effort to become well informed. So many food products are marketed as "Fat Free, Organic, High In Fiber, Heart Healthy" and so on, even though the products are just a bunch of processed low quality crap. Even beer is frequently marketed as "Low Carb". In reality, there is no reason in include any calories for alcohol in any diet where the goal is losing weight.
  - retrac 4y ago
    "Alcohol has no calories". Can't count the number of times I've heard that. Nope. The human body can metabolize ethanol. 7 calories per gram. A few shots of vodka is a light meal with no nutrients.
- ehsankia 4y ago
  We have literally evolved to overeat. And one thing people don't consider is that genetics does play a real role. Just because it's easy for you to not overeat as much doesn't mean it's the same for others. I personally believe the solution will ultimately have to come from science/technology. We need a safe and efficient appetite reducer that people can take regularly.
  - mpalczewski 4y ago
    Obesity started to be a thing in the last 100 years. It wasn't evolution.
    - ehsankia 4y ago
KennyBlanken 4y ago
"I'm big boned" - show them an MRI or cat scan of a morbidly obese person and you see a tiny little skeleton surrounded by what looks like a giant, puffed up cartoon balloon body. "I have a low metabolism" - obese people actually have a high 'metabolism', because moving all that extra weight takes a lot of energy "Being overweight is not unhealthy" - weird then that they are having trouble getting pregnant and/or miscarriage regularly, need a machine to breathe at night lest their brain not receive enough oxygen, their knees and hips and eyes are that of someone several decades older, they're likely dependent upon insulin injections to live, and substantially more likely to develop cancer, etc. Yes, there are a lot of negative attitudes towards obese patients in the medical community. That is partly because obese people think they know better than medical science, and are more interested in screaming about how they're being discriminated against thanks to the patriarchy and unrealistic beauty standards....than actually doing something about their weight...like accepting a referral to a nutritionist and accepting the advice to engage in more activity and weight-bearing exercise. When someone needs a machine to breathe, artificial joint replacements, hourly/daily insulin, and Star Trek levels of intervention to reproduce, maybe they just need to shut the fuck up and lose weight. You know what's really infuriating? Maintaining a healthy weight, getting exercise, making an effort to eat a balanced diet that hits lots of nutrients....and seeing these people cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do.
- Blackthorn 4y ago
  Regardless of health, being overweight doesn't make someone a bad person.
  - pirate787 4y ago
    I'm not sure about that. Being overweight is selfish and wasteful in a world where many people don't have enough food to eat.
    - teolandon 4y ago
      Eating less candy isn't going to feed anyone in impoverished countries.
dalbasal 4y ago
There are a lot of nuances to both nutritional understanding, and to the meta of nutritional understanding... how people understand it. A lot of methods, food types, rulesets and whatnot are actually very useful. Often, they have benefits in the meta. Fasting-ish methods help people deal with and experience what hungry is, and relate to the biological fact that they'll be just fine skipping a meal, or ten. Food type-ish diets help avoid getting into overeating modes^. Point systems That said, totally agree. The basics starts with a basic understanding of "how much." Food is quantified calorically. If you don't have knowledge or intuition about how much is how much, you're not aware of your eating habits. Mates of mine are vegan, and I think they make the mistake in the other direction with their kid. They're hyper focused on "quality calories" but they underestimate calorie quantity. A kid's meal consisting of cucumber, greens, carrot, and bean noodles is 100 calories, and the kid needs 300. They do put a lot of effort into learning about healthy vegan diets, but the basics... quantity estimation isn't there. ^BTW, I think the whole idea behind courses and other "feasting" traditions might be that it allows us to pig out more effectively. I'm all full on soup, but I could go for some of that potato. Then sweets. Mebe some cheese.
mdoms 4y ago
I lived with a dieting obese couple who would reward themselves with a "cheat" dinner if they'd been good for a whole 2 meals prior.

sharken 4y ago

It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. Even if there was a device that could scan all food before eating it, they would still exempt some meals with the "do not count" argument. Rule of thumb, that if a meal is easy and fast to prepare, then it is probably not suited for a diet. To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. Most people just don't have that kind of willpower.

treeman79 4y ago
Wife switched to calories counting a few years ago. It was shocking how small the portions were. She lost 90 pounds doing that in under a year.
trevorishere 4y ago
Went from 230 to ~155 without exercise by calorie restriction alone (600-1200cal/day). It IS possible, though likely unhealthy to accomplish without exercise (I never, ask they say, consulted a doctor prior to the self-imposed restriction). Exercise was uncomfortable until I had lost weight, now I can do 15+ mile hikes with a 60l backpack. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing exercise at any time in their goal for weight loss, but it is possible to lose weight by calorie restriction alone.
- mikevm 4y ago
  > Exercise was uncomfortable until I had lost weight, now I can do 15+ mile hikes with a 60l backpack. A simple walk on an incline (5km/hr @ 5% incline) can help you burn 400+kcals/hour. You can probably eat at 1500 kcals and start your day with a walk like that on the treadmill while watching some TV show :). > .. but it is possible to lose weight by calorie restriction alone. Indeed it is! :) If you're obese or severely overweight, it's best to just do a PSMF to lose weight as quickly as possible. Btw, at 230lbs you can easily do strength training which will help you with body recomp (stimulating muscle growth while burning fat). A good rule of thumb for a PSMF is 9.7x[protein intake]. For example: given 1.6g/kg*104kg = 166g of protein per day we get: 166g * 9.7 kcal/g = 1610 kcal. So your daily calories are at 1610 kcal max, and you need to eat at least 166g of protein (the rest of the calories can be filled with carbs/fat). I suggest min 50g of fat per day for men.
  - bena 4y ago
    PSMF - Protein-Sparing Modified Fasting
  - friedman23 4y ago
    Walking is the most under rated weight loss activity. People don't understand how many calories walking on an incline on a treadmill will shred if you are obese. When I was 220 pounds, walking at 10% incline at 2.6mph was 770 calories an hour. It is actually hard to eat at a calorie surplus when you are burning that many calories a day. If you want to lose weight you need to do one of the following Be hungry, Be in pain from exercise (running), or sacrifice all your free time to low intensity exercise I chose option 3 along with weight lifting and I don't regret it. Walking also has this really cool effect of not increasing ghrelin unlike high intensity cardio
- gitfan86 4y ago
  Where did you get the information that it is unhealthy for a 230 pound person to eat 1200 calories a day? I understand that sodium,potasium,etc.. are necessary, I'm just asking about why you think that the calories are a problem when 230 pounds?
bavell 4y ago
> To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. Exercise doesn't help very much, it's really all about diet. Plus if you are exercising a lot, you'll feel hungier and it'll be harder mentally to not eat more to compensate.
- rnd420_69 4y ago
  I lost 60lbs in about a year almost exclusively based around a large amount of exercise. My diet was bad and I was eating far above 2000kcal on many days. I just exercised a lot. 1h of fairly intense cardio at least 6 days a week, though I would always round up to the next 10 min mark and do more like 70 or 80 min per day. Some days I would order pizza or something and some dessert in the evening when I knew this would push me into the 3000kcal range and in return did 2h or 3h exercise routines fairly regularly, often times while eating the pizza.
  - jonhohle 4y ago
    Depending on your weight, an hour of cardio is only 500 or so calories. Last night I showed my wife a hand with 5 Brazil nuts. That’s equivalent to a one mile run at my weight. Obviously different things work for different people, but no amount of cardio is going to offset a terrible diet for most people. Caloric deficit and intermittent fasting combined with exercise is the easiest and fastest way (imho) to get your body to start metabolizing fat stores.
    - stef25 4y ago
      My app and Google tell me running 6 miles in an hour burns 800+ calories.
      - jonhohle 4y ago
        Mass will affect the amount of calories burned.
    - Blackthorn 4y ago
javert 4y ago
> To lose weight you have to do a lot more exercise than you think consistently. And you have to eat a lot less than you think. I think this is a misleading cliche. I seem to have a lost a significant amount of weight just from eating less, without exercise. Which makes sense. It's amazing how many miles you'd have to run to burn the calories you get from a Big Mac. Basically, our food is super dense in calories, and our bodies are extremely efficient machines (meaning, they don't burn as many calories as you'd think when exercising). So, it should be much easier to lose weight by eating less than by exercising more. > Most people just don't have that kind of willpower. Most people aren't motivated enough. But "willpower" is a misleading and thus destructive way to describe motivation. You increase motivation by thinking about whether the positive thing you want is "worth" whatever you're doing to get it. In other words, staying focused on the value. You don't increase motivation by "exerting willpower." That whole concept for motivation is a recipe for failure.
- ntlk 4y ago
  A Big Mac is 563 calories. Hardly unreasonable for a meal.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    On its own maybe. But add large fries and a soda and it’s ~1300 calories. Way more than half most peoples daily requirement.
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    I see many get huge sodas with the Big Macs which is what pushes it to crazy amounts.
unicornporn 4y ago
Also: once a fat cell, always a fat cell. Not really, but... https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/your-fat-cells-never-disappear-making-future-weight-gain-more-likely https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/your-fat-cells-never... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18454136/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18454136/
magicalhippo 4y ago
> It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. I found the same when I started counting calories. An extra slice of wholegrain bread is how much?! Even just a thin spread of butter or margarine on the bread would blow my daily budget by a lot, so I had to find alternatives for that (like mustard). Given my own preferences for having a "proper meal", I ended up only eating twice a day. I focused on making it high-protein and high-fiber to make me feel full longer, cutting down on regular carbs as needed.
dspillett 4y ago
> It's more like they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight. In the immortal words of Jasper Carrott: "This hole", points to mouth. "Is bigger than that hole", points to bottom. > they DO NOT want to believe how small portion sizes are required to consistently lose weight My problem isn't meals and their potions, it is absent-minded snacking between. I'm finding it a lot harder to drop the few Kg I put on over 2019/2022/2021 (largely in 2020, when I like many had a bit of a mentally unstable few months and comfort eat a lot) than I found it to drop a few tens of Kg in 2015/2016.

retrac 4y ago

One of my roommates tried everything, including good hard exercise and all sorts of diets. Nothing seemed to be working. It was kind of perplexing me, actually. Then we started working the same schedule, breakfast together. The whole thing unravelled with a casual comment he made. "Wow, you're really stingy with the sugar in your coffee." Except I wasn't. I was actually indulging myself, like two tablespoons. Show me how you make coffee? Ah. Yes. If you put 500 calories of sugar and cream into your coffee multiple times a day, you're not gonna lose weight. He didn't believe me at first! I had to measure his quantities out and calculate it and show him. Liquids/powders in general seem to trip people up. We are bad at measuring them by sight. Soda, mayonnaise and dips. The oil in a nice salad dressing applied over-liberally can exceed the calories in the burger that goes with it. Try measuring/weighing these sorts of foods and looking up their caloric content if you haven't before. You may be a shocked as my poor roommate was.

NoOneNew 4y ago
You, this. I can second this fully. Figured out the same thing when I spent a solid week nazi tracking my eating. The thing that blew my mind. I always used heavy cream in my coffee. 150cal per 2 tablespoons. I would use like a quarter cup. I switch to milk, just 150cal per cup. The little things really damn matter.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  > The little things really damn matter. Integral calculus ftw!
throwaway2016a 4y ago
That's why I always drink my coffee black. The amount of calories in sugar and especially "Coffee Mate" is amazing (in a bad way). A serving size of Coffee Mate is actually 1/5 of what I see most people actually put in their coffee. It only looks "low-ish" calories because the serving size is so small.
- Blackthorn 4y ago

vlunkr 4y ago

Or alternatively, they know they are eating too much, but simply don't have the will power to quit. I'm no food expert, but to me it looks like any other addiction. They rely on food emotionally, so when they are ashamed or depressed that they aren't losing weight, they turn to food, which continues the addiction cycle.

gitfan86 4y ago
American society is basically brainwashed as to what is and isn't healthy. It takes actual effort to become well informed. So many food products are marketed as "Fat Free, Organic, High In Fiber, Heart Healthy" and so on, even though the products are just a bunch of processed low quality crap. Even beer is frequently marketed as "Low Carb". In reality, there is no reason in include any calories for alcohol in any diet where the goal is losing weight.
- retrac 4y ago
  "Alcohol has no calories". Can't count the number of times I've heard that. Nope. The human body can metabolize ethanol. 7 calories per gram. A few shots of vodka is a light meal with no nutrients.
ehsankia 4y ago
We have literally evolved to overeat. And one thing people don't consider is that genetics does play a real role. Just because it's easy for you to not overeat as much doesn't mean it's the same for others. I personally believe the solution will ultimately have to come from science/technology. We need a safe and efficient appetite reducer that people can take regularly.
- mpalczewski 4y ago
  Obesity started to be a thing in the last 100 years. It wasn't evolution.
  - ehsankia 4y ago

KennyBlanken 4y ago

"I'm big boned" - show them an MRI or cat scan of a morbidly obese person and you see a tiny little skeleton surrounded by what looks like a giant, puffed up cartoon balloon body. "I have a low metabolism" - obese people actually have a high 'metabolism', because moving all that extra weight takes a lot of energy "Being overweight is not unhealthy" - weird then that they are having trouble getting pregnant and/or miscarriage regularly, need a machine to breathe at night lest their brain not receive enough oxygen, their knees and hips and eyes are that of someone several decades older, they're likely dependent upon insulin injections to live, and substantially more likely to develop cancer, etc. Yes, there are a lot of negative attitudes towards obese patients in the medical community. That is partly because obese people think they know better than medical science, and are more interested in screaming about how they're being discriminated against thanks to the patriarchy and unrealistic beauty standards....than actually doing something about their weight...like accepting a referral to a nutritionist and accepting the advice to engage in more activity and weight-bearing exercise. When someone needs a machine to breathe, artificial joint replacements, hourly/daily insulin, and Star Trek levels of intervention to reproduce, maybe they just need to shut the fuck up and lose weight. You know what's really infuriating? Maintaining a healthy weight, getting exercise, making an effort to eat a balanced diet that hits lots of nutrients....and seeing these people cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do.

Blackthorn 4y ago
Regardless of health, being overweight doesn't make someone a bad person.
- pirate787 4y ago
  I'm not sure about that. Being overweight is selfish and wasteful in a world where many people don't have enough food to eat.
  - teolandon 4y ago
    Eating less candy isn't going to feed anyone in impoverished countries.

dalbasal 4y ago

There are a lot of nuances to both nutritional understanding, and to the meta of nutritional understanding... how people understand it. A lot of methods, food types, rulesets and whatnot are actually very useful. Often, they have benefits in the meta. Fasting-ish methods help people deal with and experience what hungry is, and relate to the biological fact that they'll be just fine skipping a meal, or ten. Food type-ish diets help avoid getting into overeating modes^. Point systems That said, totally agree. The basics starts with a basic understanding of "how much." Food is quantified calorically. If you don't have knowledge or intuition about how much is how much, you're not aware of your eating habits. Mates of mine are vegan, and I think they make the mistake in the other direction with their kid. They're hyper focused on "quality calories" but they underestimate calorie quantity. A kid's meal consisting of cucumber, greens, carrot, and bean noodles is 100 calories, and the kid needs 300. They do put a lot of effort into learning about healthy vegan diets, but the basics... quantity estimation isn't there. ^BTW, I think the whole idea behind courses and other "feasting" traditions might be that it allows us to pig out more effectively. I'm all full on soup, but I could go for some of that potato. Then sweets. Mebe some cheese.

mdoms 4y ago

I lived with a dieting obese couple who would reward themselves with a "cheat" dinner if they'd been good for a whole 2 meals prior.