4 ms·

It's not that dieting doesn't work. It's that telling people to diet, as a medical intervention, doesn't work. The science of dieting is refined. The science

It's not that dieting doesn't work. It's that telling people to diet, as a medical intervention, doesn't work. The science of dieting is refined. The science of getting people to diet however has not been very fruitful. It's probably one of the least successful interventions in all of modern medicine, so we obviously need to do better.

sasaf5 4y ago
The problem is the food supply. Sugary, fatty food, constantly available.
Sparkle-san 4y ago
And even when dieting is done successfully, most people regain the majority of weight lost within 5 years. It takes permanent lifestyle changes to make weight loss persist over time which is not a simple thing to do.
- plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
  Same with alcoholics, drug addicts, or anyone with any other addiction (In this case food). They can go sober for years, then BAM, back to square one. With food is harder because your addiction is right in your face every day.
TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
I’ll preface my comment with the acknowledgment that there will always be medical and non-medical cases preventing dieting from working. I think on the whole it’s a good thing to have psychological and physiological solutions to obesity. But I don’t think that changes anything. Ultimately the medical advice has remained consistent: the best way to lose and maintain weight is a healthy diet and/or physical activity. Calories in must be less than calories out to lose. Unless someone has a truly impactful psychological or physiological obstacle to implementing that advice, what is gained pursuing any other end? I agree with you but theoretically isn’t this kind of like “take your medicine” advice? If you don’t take the medicine, you don’t get better. To what end should we invest society’s resources into ever cleverer ways to get people to “take their medicine”?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > Unless someone has a truly impactful psychological or physiological obstacle to implementing that advice As someone who lost about half their body weight, I feel very much that just about everybody who has a problem with weight loss meets this criteria. The question is: why is it so easy for so many people to stay a healthy weight without even paying attention to it, and for others it require constant attention and suffering? Until we can answer and that, weight loss is most definitely not a solved problem.
  - plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
    > why is it so easy for so many people to stay a healthy weight without even paying attention to it, and for others it require constant attention and suffering? Society and the easy access to indulging high caloric and straight up unhealthy food. You don't see a lot (if any) fat people in certain parts of the world where access to cheap, unhealthy, highly caloric food is not as readily available as it is in the US. The literal problem around here is "I have too much access to food, and I'm unable to stop myself from eating it". Some people get addicted to cocaine, others to meth, heroine, others to alcohol, and others, to food (Sugar has been found to be MORE addicting than cocaine BTW). So it is an addiction problem, but because it is tabboo to tell someone they should eat that much, it becomes a hard problem to address. They appeal to emotion, i.e. "I will be hungry, do you know how hard is to go hungry?", yeah, thats your body craving its addiction, you know how hard is to quit alcohol cold turkey? It literally can kill you, so its almost the same with food. Someone else commented that some people lose a lot of weight, and then they gain it again 5 years down the road. Thats because the adiction won, at that point you gotta treat your food habits like an addiction. At least with alcohol and drugs, you can literally avoid it and not go near it, and still live fine. You cannot live without food so it makes the tempation of overindulging even higher.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      > You don't see a lot (if any) fat people in certain parts of the world where access to cheap, unhealthy, highly caloric food is not as readily available as it is in the US The word "unhealthy" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. For instance, there's the Kitvian people, who have no food scarcity whatsoever and a diet that consists of 70% carbohydrates, which a lot of nutrition "science" tells us is bad, yet obesity is completely unknown to them. Or the Maasai diet, which is about 66% fat, yet they also don't have an obesity problem. Sugar consumption in Austrailia between 1980 and 2003 dropped 23% but obesity nearly trippled. The idea that this is merely due to food addiction caused by some "unhealthy" quality of what we're eating is not well supported by the data. Or at least we haven't isolated what exactly the "unhealthy" part of that is yet.
browningstreet 4y ago
I think our issues with homelessness and obesity are pretty similar -- targeting the late state symptoms is not effective. Dealing with the root causes will yield the actions for improvement. But both are creeping issues -- they've been going the wrong way for a long time and at least in our American society, we haven't seen any significant improvements. Our structural society doesn't value or recognize well-being.
colpabar 4y ago
But how can we do better? At the end of the day, dieting is just hard. Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower. But I don't see what else can be done. Ultimately, dieting is an individual effort, because only you control what you eat. You can be given all the advice and meal plans and other information in the world, but the hardest part is choosing a side salad over fries, or not buying the snacks you love but know aren't good for you. If a doctor said "take this medicine because you have condition X" and the patient doesn't do it, is it the doctor's fault?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  If the medication tastes like human waste, can you blame the patient for a low compliance rate?
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  >But how can we do better? At the end of the day, dieting is just hard. Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower. Healthy food also tastes delicious. And while changing one's diet - or any habit - requires willpower, if one has healthy standards set early in life it is not that difficult to continue with them or pick them back up. One commonality between diets as different as a vegan one or all beef one is the emphasis on eating real food rather than processed garbage. However I think the idea that there is something present environmentally that is causing a systemic issue should not be discounted. People in the 70s did not eat particularly healthy. They liked to watch tv, had Doritos and snack cakes, were just as lazy, and did not have any more willpower, discipline, or education than people do now.
  - ferrumfist 4y ago
    > Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower Just want to say that, in my experience, this is only if you're in the habit of regularly eating unhealthy food. Once you break that habit and your body adjusts to eating healthier food, eating unhealthy food regularly becomes too rich/heavy/sweet. For example: I used to eat a ton of Reese's pieces when I was younger. This weekend over Thanksgiving, I had a few pieces and came to find that they were now WAY too sweet. Same goes for soda, once water is your baseline drink soda becomes far too syrupy and sweet.
hunter-gatherer 4y ago
I've recently wondered if more strict food regulation would help. Maybe heavily tax sugars (a nuance-lacking example, of course). I mean, we effectively regulate tobacco and alcohol to some degree and limit consumption thus. I wonder if regulation that encourages strict whole food consumption is possible. Of course, even the thought excersise is probably wasteful because it will never happen. Too much money in cheesecake and chips
andrewla 4y ago
This is similar to condoms -- condoms are nearly 100% effective in preventing pregnancy. But as a method of birth control (that is, as a medical intervention), they are only 80% effective in preventing pregnancy because people don't always comply.

sasaf5 4y ago

The problem is the food supply. Sugary, fatty food, constantly available.

Sparkle-san 4y ago

And even when dieting is done successfully, most people regain the majority of weight lost within 5 years. It takes permanent lifestyle changes to make weight loss persist over time which is not a simple thing to do.

plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
Same with alcoholics, drug addicts, or anyone with any other addiction (In this case food). They can go sober for years, then BAM, back to square one. With food is harder because your addiction is right in your face every day.

TheNewsIsHere 4y ago

I’ll preface my comment with the acknowledgment that there will always be medical and non-medical cases preventing dieting from working. I think on the whole it’s a good thing to have psychological and physiological solutions to obesity. But I don’t think that changes anything. Ultimately the medical advice has remained consistent: the best way to lose and maintain weight is a healthy diet and/or physical activity. Calories in must be less than calories out to lose. Unless someone has a truly impactful psychological or physiological obstacle to implementing that advice, what is gained pursuing any other end? I agree with you but theoretically isn’t this kind of like “take your medicine” advice? If you don’t take the medicine, you don’t get better. To what end should we invest society’s resources into ever cleverer ways to get people to “take their medicine”?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> Unless someone has a truly impactful psychological or physiological obstacle to implementing that advice As someone who lost about half their body weight, I feel very much that just about everybody who has a problem with weight loss meets this criteria. The question is: why is it so easy for so many people to stay a healthy weight without even paying attention to it, and for others it require constant attention and suffering? Until we can answer and that, weight loss is most definitely not a solved problem.
- plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
  > why is it so easy for so many people to stay a healthy weight without even paying attention to it, and for others it require constant attention and suffering? Society and the easy access to indulging high caloric and straight up unhealthy food. You don't see a lot (if any) fat people in certain parts of the world where access to cheap, unhealthy, highly caloric food is not as readily available as it is in the US. The literal problem around here is "I have too much access to food, and I'm unable to stop myself from eating it". Some people get addicted to cocaine, others to meth, heroine, others to alcohol, and others, to food (Sugar has been found to be MORE addicting than cocaine BTW). So it is an addiction problem, but because it is tabboo to tell someone they should eat that much, it becomes a hard problem to address. They appeal to emotion, i.e. "I will be hungry, do you know how hard is to go hungry?", yeah, thats your body craving its addiction, you know how hard is to quit alcohol cold turkey? It literally can kill you, so its almost the same with food. Someone else commented that some people lose a lot of weight, and then they gain it again 5 years down the road. Thats because the adiction won, at that point you gotta treat your food habits like an addiction. At least with alcohol and drugs, you can literally avoid it and not go near it, and still live fine. You cannot live without food so it makes the tempation of overindulging even higher.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    > You don't see a lot (if any) fat people in certain parts of the world where access to cheap, unhealthy, highly caloric food is not as readily available as it is in the US The word "unhealthy" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. For instance, there's the Kitvian people, who have no food scarcity whatsoever and a diet that consists of 70% carbohydrates, which a lot of nutrition "science" tells us is bad, yet obesity is completely unknown to them. Or the Maasai diet, which is about 66% fat, yet they also don't have an obesity problem. Sugar consumption in Austrailia between 1980 and 2003 dropped 23% but obesity nearly trippled. The idea that this is merely due to food addiction caused by some "unhealthy" quality of what we're eating is not well supported by the data. Or at least we haven't isolated what exactly the "unhealthy" part of that is yet.

browningstreet 4y ago

I think our issues with homelessness and obesity are pretty similar -- targeting the late state symptoms is not effective. Dealing with the root causes will yield the actions for improvement. But both are creeping issues -- they've been going the wrong way for a long time and at least in our American society, we haven't seen any significant improvements. Our structural society doesn't value or recognize well-being.

colpabar 4y ago

But how can we do better? At the end of the day, dieting is just hard. Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower. But I don't see what else can be done. Ultimately, dieting is an individual effort, because only you control what you eat. You can be given all the advice and meal plans and other information in the world, but the hardest part is choosing a side salad over fries, or not buying the snacks you love but know aren't good for you. If a doctor said "take this medicine because you have condition X" and the patient doesn't do it, is it the doctor's fault?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
If the medication tastes like human waste, can you blame the patient for a low compliance rate?
SyzygistSix 4y ago
>But how can we do better? At the end of the day, dieting is just hard. Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower. Healthy food also tastes delicious. And while changing one's diet - or any habit - requires willpower, if one has healthy standards set early in life it is not that difficult to continue with them or pick them back up. One commonality between diets as different as a vegan one or all beef one is the emphasis on eating real food rather than processed garbage. However I think the idea that there is something present environmentally that is causing a systemic issue should not be discounted. People in the 70s did not eat particularly healthy. They liked to watch tv, had Doritos and snack cakes, were just as lazy, and did not have any more willpower, discipline, or education than people do now.
- ferrumfist 4y ago
  > Unhealthy food is delicious, and choosing healthier options and eating less in general requires a good bit of willpower Just want to say that, in my experience, this is only if you're in the habit of regularly eating unhealthy food. Once you break that habit and your body adjusts to eating healthier food, eating unhealthy food regularly becomes too rich/heavy/sweet. For example: I used to eat a ton of Reese's pieces when I was younger. This weekend over Thanksgiving, I had a few pieces and came to find that they were now WAY too sweet. Same goes for soda, once water is your baseline drink soda becomes far too syrupy and sweet.

hunter-gatherer 4y ago

I've recently wondered if more strict food regulation would help. Maybe heavily tax sugars (a nuance-lacking example, of course). I mean, we effectively regulate tobacco and alcohol to some degree and limit consumption thus. I wonder if regulation that encourages strict whole food consumption is possible. Of course, even the thought excersise is probably wasteful because it will never happen. Too much money in cheesecake and chips

andrewla 4y ago

This is similar to condoms -- condoms are nearly 100% effective in preventing pregnancy. But as a method of birth control (that is, as a medical intervention), they are only 80% effective in preventing pregnancy because people don't always comply.