9 ms·

Thank you for sharing. I often have the feeling that something that, to me, seems like a complex of issues around emotional regulation, impulse control, sensati

Thank you for sharing. I often have the feeling that something that, to me, seems like a complex of issues around emotional regulation, impulse control, sensation seeking, etc is seen by most people as something much simpler. "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. Well, perhaps, but it's not the core of the issue. The widespread lack of empathy for people in the high BMI ranges freaks me out. The absolute majority of people WANTS to be healthy, happy and safe. This post really did a great job breaking through the stigma and humanizing this condition.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago
> The absolute majority of people WANTS to be healthy, happy and safe. "Wanting" something is completely meaningless, if you want other conflicting things more. I can say I want to lose weight, but if I also "want" to eat a whole pizza every night after eating my normal meals that's probably not going to happen. For me and probably a lot of people, the first step towards getting my weight in control was to decide that losing weight was one of my top priorities, and not just something I think about once in a while.
- kangda123 4y ago
  While I don't think that wanting is completely meaningless, the last bit rings very true. Ultimately you have to reshape your life and environment a little bit.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    For significant weight loss it’s more than a little bit. You have to reshape your life and environment drastically.
- JshWright 4y ago
  I guarantee you there are many, many people who think about their weight way more often than "once in a while" (more like "every waking moment"), but still struggle massively with disordered eating due to a variety of factors that make it far less simple than you're making it out to be.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    For me it is more thinking about eating every waking moment. Weight is a constant struggle as I think about eating something essentially non stop. There is that trope that men think about sex every 7 seconds - for me it is thinking about eating. I never feel full and always want more - I can finish up a big lunch and within mere minutes be thinking about dinner and what I can have for a snack or whatever. It is a constant struggle. It consumes my mind and I often can't think about anything else.
  - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    I understand that there are extreme cases like that, but that's a minority of people. I was commenting on the majority of people.
- nickybearblog 4y ago
  > For me and probably a lot of people, the first step towards getting my weight in control was to decide that losing weight was one of my top priorities, and not just something I think about once in a while. I think it all comes down to the level of control you have over your effort and results. For some, it's a losing battle against long term mental health problems and coping mechanisms (like in my case), for others it's against physical conditions like thyroid and hormonal problems. Others it's just a simple case of 'I want to eat what I want'. It is ultimately about making it a priority, but for this who aren't just eating because they want to, overcoming that problem becomes a whole bigger thing, and that's a much more insurmountable looking obstacle. That doesn't meant they can't achieve what they're looking for, else I wouldn't be trying myself. But it does mean the issue goes further, and support needs to look at the whole issue. Nutrition guides and workout programs don't resolve the deep seated mental blockers.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    And all while we're ignoring the fact that many foods are engineered for increasing appetite and higher caloric content. Or that there just might be an environmental issue as well. (Endocrine disruptors, perhaps?) Otherwise, how the heck does one explain the obesity epidemic? It is not like most if any people choose to be fat. And no, amount of physical labor is still considerable. It's very easy to individualize a systemic issue.
pigeonhole123 4y ago
Also what we eat affects hormones in complex ways, so while the CICO formula may be true in some narrow technical sense, even physiologically it doesn't explain the phenomenon to a useful degree.
- edanm 4y ago
  Can you elaborate? If someone forces themselves to eat X calories, where X is below their maintenance calories, they will lose weight. This is both obvious from understanding the mechanics, but also proven through many actual studies. I'm not sure if you agree with that or not, but if you do, then what do you mean that CICO doesn't explain the phenomenon?
  - pigeonhole123 4y ago
    Hunger and basal metabolic rate are aspects of physiology, and they both change based on what and how much you eat.
xkbarkar 4y ago
Id say its not the lack of empathy that you feel, but maybe the non trivial effort to normalize morbid obesity that is met with hostility. We should not celebrate morbid obesity as normal and beautiful. We gain nothing from villanizing people that suffer from it either. I personally have never suffered obesity but as the years go on, my body seems to want to put a ludicrous amount of fat in places it never used to. I maintain muscle mass by regular resistance training mixed with cardio and HIIT and that helps a lot with the otherwize natural loss of muscle over 40. Personally this is where excercise definetly helps me. Also now at 50, I dont have insulin resistance or high blood pressure as many of my fellow 50 year olds are falling prey to. Even the healthy weight 50 year olds around me are starting blood pressure medication. This is where I beleive the excercise regime I follow has worked wonders. Not so much for weight loss as many seem to think. It gets harder every year though to maintain physique and low body fat. Excercise has tremendous benefits for your health and looks but for great weight loss is a matter of nutrition and what particular combo suits your body, economy and culture.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  > We should not celebrate morbid obesity as normal and beautiful. I would swap out the 'beautiful' for 'healthy'. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.
  - knicholes 4y ago
    Yeah, but consider that MOST "beautiful" people are not morbidly obese.
    - Freak_NL 4y ago
      True enough for the average interpretation of what is essentially a subjective value, but it puts the focus on the wrong aspect of the issue. It's OK to not be beautiful (most people aren't, or are depending on who you ask), but not being healthy has a bigger impact on the individual (usually) and society (certainly) both. It is also a lot more objectively quantifiable than beauty.
    - 4y ago
eertami 4y ago
I think "work out more" can be a trap sometimes. Personally, the thing that has consistently worked is portion control. It will always be easier to eat only the calories you need, than to burn calories from over-eating. People look at the "recommended serving" and cry foul that it suggests they eat only 30-40g of cereal in the morning, but it really is plenty. I keep a digital scale in the kitchen and weigh out most of my food before eating or cooking with it. Even things like rice and pasta are really easy to over-do when guesstimating and not measuring. It can take a little bit of adjustment to get used to this, but your body quickly adapts to the portions you're being served. And then on days when you do more than your usual exercise, it's easier to add a snack or increase the portion slightly, than it is to be always trying to "reduce" the calories on days when you don't work out. It's a small mental trick that can work wonders once you've set a baseline.
- MrFantastic 4y ago
  Cereal spikes your insulin and is a terrible way to start your day.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Agreed, please don't eat cereal (at least the commercial ones) as they tend to be very high in sugar. It's like eating a tablespoon of sugar in the morning. Oatmeal and other non sugary breakfasts are fine.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Doesn't it rather depend on the particular cereal? I have wheat biscuits (a supermarket brand like Weetabix), 0 added sugar; almost any big brand cereal marketed at kids is extraordinarily sugary though. Weetos are quite good (compared to other child-targeted cereals), honeynut cornflakes very bad, etc., IME you need to read the label though because it can be hard to tell.
  - eertami 4y ago
    True, "cereal" is a catch-all term here for many things. I usually make oatmeal/porridge with a little bit of fruit. But using just 40g of oats. Of course the Nestle-style cereals you're talking about are not ideal. But especially bad for you if you're eating 100g and not 40g.
INTPenis 4y ago
It's not simple math. As someone who has struggled with overweight their entire adult life it feels more like an addiction. And it is heavily influenced by your mental state. I've been known to experience blackout-like behavior where my brain just disconnects and I end up buying some unhealthy snack because I subconsciously want it. It has gotten a lot better with age though, just last week a girlfriend called me "fit" and I was shocked. So I have lost a lot of weight and I've worked hard on managing my purchases. Just like drugs, as long as it's not in my home, I won't use it. But any snacks, candy or ice cream in my home gets eaten. In my later 30s I started throwing shit out, like candy into the trash, ice cream in the sink, just like an alcoholic. It's not just math. It's a very difficult mental health problem. And it's absolutely exasperated by in-store displays of candy and snacks. They're selling death to addicts, in color.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Weight loss being math and being difficult emotionally are not mutually exclusive. It is difficult, yes, but it still comes down to the math of calories in < calories out. I think it's important that we not think it's complicated from a math point of view lest people start thinking that only the quality of their foods matters, not their amounts; some people actually think that eating fat itself (lard, butter, etc) is the primary cause of what makes you fat, which is false.
  - INTPenis 4y ago
    No of course not, and I'm smart enough to know the basic formula. But to simplify a lifelong struggle down to "simple math" is kinda disrespectful to all those struggling.
    - mkmk3 4y ago
      I really respected your post, I like the recognition of behaviours that can cause obesity as being common across other types of addiction. I also like the parent your responding to though, because while you make an insightful point, it's helpful to keep it grounded. You have the sense for the parents post to feel obvious, but I think others do overcomplicate it. The function can be simple math, and the factors psychologically/emotionally difficult to deal with. Recognizing that is not lessening the struggle, from where I'm standing
The_Colonel 4y ago
> "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. > To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. It's important to realize that the weight (loss) boils down to these fundamentals. Many people delude themselves that their extra weight is caused by eating not healthy foods. While that might be partially true, portion control is hugely important as well. Many people then switch to eating healthier food (containing the healthy weight loss calories, not those gain calories), but still in copious amounts, and then wonder how come they're not losing weight. So, breaking such delusions by understanding CICO is an important first step, but of course it's not sufficient on its own and people need to develop more complex strategies based on this.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Eating less calories than losing is what makes one lose weight. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets are a success in the first few months of them. Keeping the weight at lower levels is a different thing entirely. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets fail when people gradually abandon them. Humans have a built-in sensor of satiety. If the sensor is signaling that they are hungry, they feel uncomfortable, and go looking for food, sooner or later. This can be suppressed by willpower, but it's taxing and distracting. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets get abandoned: the initial serving of willpower allocated to the self-restriction ends, and people want to proceed with their lives without having to fight the feeling of hunger most of the time. Between keeping a healthy weight and performing well on a demanding mental job they usually choose the latter. Whoever can lose weight on pure willpower is a hero; others can strive to emulate them, but should not assume they will be as successful. So substances that help blunt or remove the feeling of not having eaten enough are important. Some of them are medical drugs (say, modafinil has this effect), some are household substances (like caffeine), some are real dangerously addictive drugs (like nicotine or cocaine). But there are mechanical sensors right in the stomach, which are harder to suppress with substances. This is where surgical means can and do help. Cutting a part of your stomach is now done via a very small incision in one's abdomen. Morbid obesity is a disease, and should be treated as such. Shaming someone obese is like shaming someone with a broken leg: both painful and not helpful.
elvis10ten 4y ago
> "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. This is true. > that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. This is not true. I understand your core message about the difficulty, but I dont see the similarities between both statements. Basically, there are lots of people who have been working hard and saving that are still poor. But I haven’t met anyone that have been consistently doing fitness (nutrition, exercise, sleep,) that is out of shape. Edit: What I mean is that getting in shape is simple but hard. We have a “universal” script for it. If I follow it I will get some results. Getting out of poverty is both hard and complex. It involves more variables but using your message: What do you work hard on? Is there anything to even save at the end of the month? There is also a good amount of luck involved. My dad worked hard and spent frugally but was still poor.
- andrelaszlo 4y ago
  I get your point! I think a better analogy/wording would have been to say "earn more" instead of "work harder". :)
_gabe_ 4y ago
> etc is seen by most people as something much simpler The solution here really is simple. Eat less move more, and preferably eat healthier. It doesn't mean it's easy. And this is coming from someone who's been about 50 pounds overweight for 3 years and I'm finally losing the weight, down 25 pounds but still a long way to go.
Someone1234 4y ago
The phase: "Losing weight is simple, not easy." Sums it up nicely. Just like, your example of poverty, or smoking/drug use. Addictions are often "simple" to quit, just stop doing [bad thing], but they're far from easy because it ignores the underlying reasons people are addicts or have emotional regulation issues to begin with. A common online solve-all is: "Just go get therapy." Which, while better intentioned than bullying, or yelling "CICO!!!" is often suggested by people who don't realize how expensive, inconsistent, and uncommon good therapy is. People treat it like a "just talk to a therapist, and you'll be fixed" rather than more realistically: "just spend $100 a session until you can even find a therapist who could help you, then spend thousands on that therapist."
- safety1st 4y ago
  To add to this, therapists are the first ones to admit that not all disorders are curable, and that therapy doesn't work 100% of the time. Even the best therapists work with patients for years in some cases and fail. When someone says "just go get therapy" it says more about them than anything else: they're demonstrating that they're misinformed, low empathy, or both.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  I'm a big fan of therapy (it was definitely useful for me) but there is something even more insidious about how discourse has shifted towards promoting therapy for almost everything: therapy does not actually fix most causes of suffering. Tools like CBT give people the ability to endure suffering and even thrive in it but they do not eliminate suffering. It almost feels like a trick. One more way in which people are trained to assume that suffering because they've got a shitty job with a boss that hates them working for a faceless corporation and anonymous customers is just a property of the universe like gravity. I don't think that therapists are doing something wrong or that going to therapy is bad but there is something sick about how human suffering just becomes one more market where megacorps can extract wealth from the masses.
tarsinge 4y ago
I struggled a lot with weight but not since a least a decade, and my take is that we are missing the problem. Yes it's simple math, but it's not about the people having poor control, the real problem is some type of food are just no match for our will, they are just brain hacks. I find staying in good shape very easy, but at the same I absolutely cannot resist some types of food if they are available. What I found is simple is not buying them. E.g. if I can only snacks almonds at home I will be full before getting fat, whereas it's possible to eat a whole meal calorie equivalent of potato chips or ice cream without feeling full. What is complex is that it's all dependent on your options depending on where you live, your social circle, and yes a bit of control. Kind of like the difference between trying to stop smoking and having the pack with the lighter ready in front of you vs being in a smoke-free environment. So it's a bit of both, people have a responsibility for their state, but it's not entirely their fault. Now without regulation (but how do we even start banning some mixes of sugar, fat and salt), what options do we have?
alistairSH 4y ago
To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. Well, perhaps, but it's not the core of the issue. Absolutely true. CICO is an over-simplification and almost useless to many people who suffer from obesity. It also ignores that most people do better concentrating on the CI side of the equation (increasing CO is rarely enough for an obese person to permanently reduce their weight). Understanding the fundamentals of calories, the broader aspects of nutrition, glucose response (post-exercise, daily rhythms, etc) - if you’re desperate it can be quite overwhelming. Telling an obese person to “eat less” or “exercise more” isn’t any more helpful than telling them “try harder” or “don’t be a fatty”.
elenaferrantes 4y ago
Problem is people want it all : health _and_ do whatever comes to my mind. Sometime reality is stronger than will. My advice : do not focus on a weight but on eating normally. If you can stop _gaining_ weight it’s the first step to health. Eventually and _very_ gradually your weight will decrease and in a very distant future it’ll be normal.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago

> The absolute majority of people WANTS to be healthy, happy and safe. "Wanting" something is completely meaningless, if you want other conflicting things more. I can say I want to lose weight, but if I also "want" to eat a whole pizza every night after eating my normal meals that's probably not going to happen. For me and probably a lot of people, the first step towards getting my weight in control was to decide that losing weight was one of my top priorities, and not just something I think about once in a while.

kangda123 4y ago
While I don't think that wanting is completely meaningless, the last bit rings very true. Ultimately you have to reshape your life and environment a little bit.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  For significant weight loss it’s more than a little bit. You have to reshape your life and environment drastically.
JshWright 4y ago
I guarantee you there are many, many people who think about their weight way more often than "once in a while" (more like "every waking moment"), but still struggle massively with disordered eating due to a variety of factors that make it far less simple than you're making it out to be.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mattlondon 4y ago
  For me it is more thinking about eating every waking moment. Weight is a constant struggle as I think about eating something essentially non stop. There is that trope that men think about sex every 7 seconds - for me it is thinking about eating. I never feel full and always want more - I can finish up a big lunch and within mere minutes be thinking about dinner and what I can have for a snack or whatever. It is a constant struggle. It consumes my mind and I often can't think about anything else.
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  I understand that there are extreme cases like that, but that's a minority of people. I was commenting on the majority of people.
nickybearblog 4y ago
> For me and probably a lot of people, the first step towards getting my weight in control was to decide that losing weight was one of my top priorities, and not just something I think about once in a while. I think it all comes down to the level of control you have over your effort and results. For some, it's a losing battle against long term mental health problems and coping mechanisms (like in my case), for others it's against physical conditions like thyroid and hormonal problems. Others it's just a simple case of 'I want to eat what I want'. It is ultimately about making it a priority, but for this who aren't just eating because they want to, overcoming that problem becomes a whole bigger thing, and that's a much more insurmountable looking obstacle. That doesn't meant they can't achieve what they're looking for, else I wouldn't be trying myself. But it does mean the issue goes further, and support needs to look at the whole issue. Nutrition guides and workout programs don't resolve the deep seated mental blockers.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  And all while we're ignoring the fact that many foods are engineered for increasing appetite and higher caloric content. Or that there just might be an environmental issue as well. (Endocrine disruptors, perhaps?) Otherwise, how the heck does one explain the obesity epidemic? It is not like most if any people choose to be fat. And no, amount of physical labor is still considerable. It's very easy to individualize a systemic issue.

pigeonhole123 4y ago

Also what we eat affects hormones in complex ways, so while the CICO formula may be true in some narrow technical sense, even physiologically it doesn't explain the phenomenon to a useful degree.

edanm 4y ago
Can you elaborate? If someone forces themselves to eat X calories, where X is below their maintenance calories, they will lose weight. This is both obvious from understanding the mechanics, but also proven through many actual studies. I'm not sure if you agree with that or not, but if you do, then what do you mean that CICO doesn't explain the phenomenon?
- pigeonhole123 4y ago
  Hunger and basal metabolic rate are aspects of physiology, and they both change based on what and how much you eat.

xkbarkar 4y ago

Id say its not the lack of empathy that you feel, but maybe the non trivial effort to normalize morbid obesity that is met with hostility. We should not celebrate morbid obesity as normal and beautiful. We gain nothing from villanizing people that suffer from it either. I personally have never suffered obesity but as the years go on, my body seems to want to put a ludicrous amount of fat in places it never used to. I maintain muscle mass by regular resistance training mixed with cardio and HIIT and that helps a lot with the otherwize natural loss of muscle over 40. Personally this is where excercise definetly helps me. Also now at 50, I dont have insulin resistance or high blood pressure as many of my fellow 50 year olds are falling prey to. Even the healthy weight 50 year olds around me are starting blood pressure medication. This is where I beleive the excercise regime I follow has worked wonders. Not so much for weight loss as many seem to think. It gets harder every year though to maintain physique and low body fat. Excercise has tremendous benefits for your health and looks but for great weight loss is a matter of nutrition and what particular combo suits your body, economy and culture.

Freak_NL 4y ago
> We should not celebrate morbid obesity as normal and beautiful. I would swap out the 'beautiful' for 'healthy'. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.
- knicholes 4y ago
  Yeah, but consider that MOST "beautiful" people are not morbidly obese.
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    True enough for the average interpretation of what is essentially a subjective value, but it puts the focus on the wrong aspect of the issue. It's OK to not be beautiful (most people aren't, or are depending on who you ask), but not being healthy has a bigger impact on the individual (usually) and society (certainly) both. It is also a lot more objectively quantifiable than beauty.
  - 4y ago

eertami 4y ago

I think "work out more" can be a trap sometimes. Personally, the thing that has consistently worked is portion control. It will always be easier to eat only the calories you need, than to burn calories from over-eating. People look at the "recommended serving" and cry foul that it suggests they eat only 30-40g of cereal in the morning, but it really is plenty. I keep a digital scale in the kitchen and weigh out most of my food before eating or cooking with it. Even things like rice and pasta are really easy to over-do when guesstimating and not measuring. It can take a little bit of adjustment to get used to this, but your body quickly adapts to the portions you're being served. And then on days when you do more than your usual exercise, it's easier to add a snack or increase the portion slightly, than it is to be always trying to "reduce" the calories on days when you don't work out. It's a small mental trick that can work wonders once you've set a baseline.

MrFantastic 4y ago
Cereal spikes your insulin and is a terrible way to start your day.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Agreed, please don't eat cereal (at least the commercial ones) as they tend to be very high in sugar. It's like eating a tablespoon of sugar in the morning. Oatmeal and other non sugary breakfasts are fine.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Doesn't it rather depend on the particular cereal? I have wheat biscuits (a supermarket brand like Weetabix), 0 added sugar; almost any big brand cereal marketed at kids is extraordinarily sugary though. Weetos are quite good (compared to other child-targeted cereals), honeynut cornflakes very bad, etc., IME you need to read the label though because it can be hard to tell.
- eertami 4y ago
  True, "cereal" is a catch-all term here for many things. I usually make oatmeal/porridge with a little bit of fruit. But using just 40g of oats. Of course the Nestle-style cereals you're talking about are not ideal. But especially bad for you if you're eating 100g and not 40g.

INTPenis 4y ago

It's not simple math. As someone who has struggled with overweight their entire adult life it feels more like an addiction. And it is heavily influenced by your mental state. I've been known to experience blackout-like behavior where my brain just disconnects and I end up buying some unhealthy snack because I subconsciously want it. It has gotten a lot better with age though, just last week a girlfriend called me "fit" and I was shocked. So I have lost a lot of weight and I've worked hard on managing my purchases. Just like drugs, as long as it's not in my home, I won't use it. But any snacks, candy or ice cream in my home gets eaten. In my later 30s I started throwing shit out, like candy into the trash, ice cream in the sink, just like an alcoholic. It's not just math. It's a very difficult mental health problem. And it's absolutely exasperated by in-store displays of candy and snacks. They're selling death to addicts, in color.

cercatrova 4y ago
Weight loss being math and being difficult emotionally are not mutually exclusive. It is difficult, yes, but it still comes down to the math of calories in < calories out. I think it's important that we not think it's complicated from a math point of view lest people start thinking that only the quality of their foods matters, not their amounts; some people actually think that eating fat itself (lard, butter, etc) is the primary cause of what makes you fat, which is false.
- INTPenis 4y ago
  No of course not, and I'm smart enough to know the basic formula. But to simplify a lifelong struggle down to "simple math" is kinda disrespectful to all those struggling.
  - mkmk3 4y ago
    I really respected your post, I like the recognition of behaviours that can cause obesity as being common across other types of addiction. I also like the parent your responding to though, because while you make an insightful point, it's helpful to keep it grounded. You have the sense for the parents post to feel obvious, but I think others do overcomplicate it. The function can be simple math, and the factors psychologically/emotionally difficult to deal with. Recognizing that is not lessening the struggle, from where I'm standing

The_Colonel 4y ago

> "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. > To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. It's important to realize that the weight (loss) boils down to these fundamentals. Many people delude themselves that their extra weight is caused by eating not healthy foods. While that might be partially true, portion control is hugely important as well. Many people then switch to eating healthier food (containing the healthy weight loss calories, not those gain calories), but still in copious amounts, and then wonder how come they're not losing weight. So, breaking such delusions by understanding CICO is an important first step, but of course it's not sufficient on its own and people need to develop more complex strategies based on this.

nine_k 4y ago
Eating less calories than losing is what makes one lose weight. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets are a success in the first few months of them. Keeping the weight at lower levels is a different thing entirely. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets fail when people gradually abandon them. Humans have a built-in sensor of satiety. If the sensor is signaling that they are hungry, they feel uncomfortable, and go looking for food, sooner or later. This can be suppressed by willpower, but it's taxing and distracting. This is why so many calorie-restricting diets get abandoned: the initial serving of willpower allocated to the self-restriction ends, and people want to proceed with their lives without having to fight the feeling of hunger most of the time. Between keeping a healthy weight and performing well on a demanding mental job they usually choose the latter. Whoever can lose weight on pure willpower is a hero; others can strive to emulate them, but should not assume they will be as successful. So substances that help blunt or remove the feeling of not having eaten enough are important. Some of them are medical drugs (say, modafinil has this effect), some are household substances (like caffeine), some are real dangerously addictive drugs (like nicotine or cocaine). But there are mechanical sensors right in the stomach, which are harder to suppress with substances. This is where surgical means can and do help. Cutting a part of your stomach is now done via a very small incision in one's abdomen. Morbid obesity is a disease, and should be treated as such. Shaming someone obese is like shaming someone with a broken leg: both painful and not helpful.

elvis10ten 4y ago

> "It's simple math, calories consumed versus calories burned", and the solutions are correspondingly simplistic. Eat less, work out more, or both. This is true. > that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. This is not true. I understand your core message about the difficulty, but I dont see the similarities between both statements. Basically, there are lots of people who have been working hard and saving that are still poor. But I haven’t met anyone that have been consistently doing fitness (nutrition, exercise, sleep,) that is out of shape. Edit: What I mean is that getting in shape is simple but hard. We have a “universal” script for it. If I follow it I will get some results. Getting out of poverty is both hard and complex. It involves more variables but using your message: What do you work hard on? Is there anything to even save at the end of the month? There is also a good amount of luck involved. My dad worked hard and spent frugally but was still poor.

andrelaszlo 4y ago
I get your point! I think a better analogy/wording would have been to say "earn more" instead of "work harder". :)

_gabe_ 4y ago

> etc is seen by most people as something much simpler The solution here really is simple. Eat less move more, and preferably eat healthier. It doesn't mean it's easy. And this is coming from someone who's been about 50 pounds overweight for 3 years and I'm finally losing the weight, down 25 pounds but still a long way to go.

Someone1234 4y ago

The phase: "Losing weight is simple, not easy." Sums it up nicely. Just like, your example of poverty, or smoking/drug use. Addictions are often "simple" to quit, just stop doing [bad thing], but they're far from easy because it ignores the underlying reasons people are addicts or have emotional regulation issues to begin with. A common online solve-all is: "Just go get therapy." Which, while better intentioned than bullying, or yelling "CICO!!!" is often suggested by people who don't realize how expensive, inconsistent, and uncommon good therapy is. People treat it like a "just talk to a therapist, and you'll be fixed" rather than more realistically: "just spend $100 a session until you can even find a therapist who could help you, then spend thousands on that therapist."

safety1st 4y ago
To add to this, therapists are the first ones to admit that not all disorders are curable, and that therapy doesn't work 100% of the time. Even the best therapists work with patients for years in some cases and fail. When someone says "just go get therapy" it says more about them than anything else: they're demonstrating that they're misinformed, low empathy, or both.
UncleMeat 4y ago
I'm a big fan of therapy (it was definitely useful for me) but there is something even more insidious about how discourse has shifted towards promoting therapy for almost everything: therapy does not actually fix most causes of suffering. Tools like CBT give people the ability to endure suffering and even thrive in it but they do not eliminate suffering. It almost feels like a trick. One more way in which people are trained to assume that suffering because they've got a shitty job with a boss that hates them working for a faceless corporation and anonymous customers is just a property of the universe like gravity. I don't think that therapists are doing something wrong or that going to therapy is bad but there is something sick about how human suffering just becomes one more market where megacorps can extract wealth from the masses.

tarsinge 4y ago

I struggled a lot with weight but not since a least a decade, and my take is that we are missing the problem. Yes it's simple math, but it's not about the people having poor control, the real problem is some type of food are just no match for our will, they are just brain hacks. I find staying in good shape very easy, but at the same I absolutely cannot resist some types of food if they are available. What I found is simple is not buying them. E.g. if I can only snacks almonds at home I will be full before getting fat, whereas it's possible to eat a whole meal calorie equivalent of potato chips or ice cream without feeling full. What is complex is that it's all dependent on your options depending on where you live, your social circle, and yes a bit of control. Kind of like the difference between trying to stop smoking and having the pack with the lighter ready in front of you vs being in a smoke-free environment. So it's a bit of both, people have a responsibility for their state, but it's not entirely their fault. Now without regulation (but how do we even start banning some mixes of sugar, fat and salt), what options do we have?

alistairSH 4y ago

To me, it's like saying that poverty can be solved by people either working more or spending less. Well, perhaps, but it's not the core of the issue. Absolutely true. CICO is an over-simplification and almost useless to many people who suffer from obesity. It also ignores that most people do better concentrating on the CI side of the equation (increasing CO is rarely enough for an obese person to permanently reduce their weight). Understanding the fundamentals of calories, the broader aspects of nutrition, glucose response (post-exercise, daily rhythms, etc) - if you’re desperate it can be quite overwhelming. Telling an obese person to “eat less” or “exercise more” isn’t any more helpful than telling them “try harder” or “don’t be a fatty”.

elenaferrantes 4y ago

Problem is people want it all : health _and_ do whatever comes to my mind. Sometime reality is stronger than will. My advice : do not focus on a weight but on eating normally. If you can stop _gaining_ weight it’s the first step to health. Eventually and _very_ gradually your weight will decrease and in a very distant future it’ll be normal.