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I think that at this point exactly one thing is clear: Nobody knows how to effectively loose weight on population wide basis.

throwaway22032 3y ago
Right, because nobody is a population. It's not an interesting question to ask. You may as well ask - how can we get the population to become strength athletes. Most people just don't care, it's not a priority for them. A lot of people just like food, and they'd rather enjoy big tasty meals than be slim. So what?
- constantcrying 3y ago
  Bizzarre stance. Being at a healthy weight is obviously an enormous issue, obesity is very dangerous. There is an entire industry trying or pretending to try to help people. >Most people just don't care, it's not a priority for them Blatantly false. Clearly an enormous amount of people are unhappy with the condition of their body.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    An enormous amount of people are unhappy =/= an enormous amount of people actually want to change things. People know what they need to do if they want to lose weight, they just don't do it because it's not a priority. Almost the entire weight loss industry is basically a scam, just like get rich quick schemes. Or quitting smoking. Once you see yourself as not being a smoker, forever, that's 90% of the battle.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      >An enormous amount of people are unhappy =/= an enormous amount of people actually want to change things. Again. The size of the industry shows the demand for people who want to see a change. And make at least a financial committment to change. >People know what they need to do if they want to lose weight What particularly? Eat less, exercise more?
      - throwaway22032 3y ago
        The main ingredient towards any body transformation, whether it's losing, maintaining, or putting on weight, is to eat the correct amount, yes. Exercising, and eating adult meals, can help, but they're way lower on the list than simply eating the correct amount. But you know this. I know that you know this. You just want some sort of collectivist answer that doesn't exist. It's harder to e.g. make eggs for breakfast, or cook a roast dinner, than it is to just go and have a donut from the drive through. There is obviously no way to "solve" that on a population level. You may as well ask "how do we get people to stop using social media and read books". They have to do it themselves. Many people will say they want to, but they really don't. Many just don't care at all. Case in point, here I am on HN rather than doing something more healthy. These are my revealed preferences. Who cares?
        constantcrying 3y ago
        The amount of obese people has been consistently on the rise for many decades. Before the 60s it almost did not exist. Clearly there is a solution, since it used to not be a problem. "People eat more now" is just a tautology. Why do they do it though? Food was worse in the 60s?
        throwaway22032 3y ago
        I think we're at loggerheads here, this is more of a political debate I feel. There's probably more affordable fast food about. Lately there seems to be a movement towards enabling obesity via lack of shame. If those things changed there would probably be movement. But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, that doesn't change what a person needs to do as an individual. You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        Yes, of course this is political, it simply can not be if obesity is effecting large parts of the population. >But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, I think it should be important to politicians. If the literal health of their populaion is not a priority, then what is? >You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you. Absolutely. But I am not talking about "me", since it is a population wide problem, population wide solutions are the only solutions.
bsder 3y ago
This isn't true. The competitive weightlifting community has weight loss down pretty cold. It just takes an enormous amount of willpower that the vast majority of people cannot muster. The problem is that the human body isn't wired for losing weight. It's really that simple. Every single system in humans is set up to make use of scarce calories and hoard them when available.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >The problem is that the human body isn't wired for losing weight. Complete nonsense. Obesity was never an issue in human society before the 60s. No, this is definitely not about the human body wanting to preserve calories as fat. The body has means to regulate its weight and those mechanisms worked up until a few decades ago. ("more food" is not to blame by the way, e.g. look at Japan, almost nobody there suffers from a poverty induced calorie deficit)
  - bsder 3y ago
    > Obesity was never an issue in human society before the 60s. 1) A lot of people still had food scarcity up through the 1980s. I think people on these forums don't remember prior to 1980 very well. When I was child, there were definitely students who were obviously malnourished. There is a reason we're still fighting for school meals. My family didn't plant gardens to be hip; we planted gardens to have food. It was really common. Your garden and canning was the difference between hungry and sufficient. Worldwide, heights for men in various countries peaked in the 1980s. That suggests that prior to 1980 there genuinely WAS caloric deficit for the average person. This is one of the reasons why I tend to goggle at people explaining to me about the "Good Old Days(tm)" prior to the 1980s. WTF? Everybody I knew was some level of poor. My family all worked those "good" mill and mine jobs, and we still all had gardens and hoarded repair parts. Sending their kids to college was a difficult financial decision--especially if they had multiple children (very common back then). I can go on and on. I really want to know where were those "Good Old Days(tm)" because nobody in family sure as hell ever saw them. 2) Nicotine is a remarkably good appetite suppressant. Smoking was rampant before the 1980s. One of the standard answers among the sorority sisters to the "Freshman 15" was to take up smoking. It generally worked on their weight. It would be interesting to correlate the drop in smoking in various countries with the rise in obesity. I suspect nobody in the medical community wants to do this because the conclusion is not something they're going to want to publicize. 3) Japan really did have food scarcity. Japan had widespread malnourishment from the 1940s for several decades. We know because of the height differentials. Suppressed height almost always correlates with food scarcity. And, now that they don't have scarcity, their height and weights went up. And, it's only in the 30 year olds that Japan has almost caught up in heights. And Japan is now seeing obesity in the younger cohorts.

throwaway22032 3y ago

Right, because nobody is a population. It's not an interesting question to ask. You may as well ask - how can we get the population to become strength athletes. Most people just don't care, it's not a priority for them. A lot of people just like food, and they'd rather enjoy big tasty meals than be slim. So what?

constantcrying 3y ago
Bizzarre stance. Being at a healthy weight is obviously an enormous issue, obesity is very dangerous. There is an entire industry trying or pretending to try to help people. >Most people just don't care, it's not a priority for them Blatantly false. Clearly an enormous amount of people are unhappy with the condition of their body.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  An enormous amount of people are unhappy =/= an enormous amount of people actually want to change things. People know what they need to do if they want to lose weight, they just don't do it because it's not a priority. Almost the entire weight loss industry is basically a scam, just like get rich quick schemes. Or quitting smoking. Once you see yourself as not being a smoker, forever, that's 90% of the battle.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >An enormous amount of people are unhappy =/= an enormous amount of people actually want to change things. Again. The size of the industry shows the demand for people who want to see a change. And make at least a financial committment to change. >People know what they need to do if they want to lose weight What particularly? Eat less, exercise more?
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      The main ingredient towards any body transformation, whether it's losing, maintaining, or putting on weight, is to eat the correct amount, yes. Exercising, and eating adult meals, can help, but they're way lower on the list than simply eating the correct amount. But you know this. I know that you know this. You just want some sort of collectivist answer that doesn't exist. It's harder to e.g. make eggs for breakfast, or cook a roast dinner, than it is to just go and have a donut from the drive through. There is obviously no way to "solve" that on a population level. You may as well ask "how do we get people to stop using social media and read books". They have to do it themselves. Many people will say they want to, but they really don't. Many just don't care at all. Case in point, here I am on HN rather than doing something more healthy. These are my revealed preferences. Who cares?
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        The amount of obese people has been consistently on the rise for many decades. Before the 60s it almost did not exist. Clearly there is a solution, since it used to not be a problem. "People eat more now" is just a tautology. Why do they do it though? Food was worse in the 60s?
        throwaway22032 3y ago
        I think we're at loggerheads here, this is more of a political debate I feel. There's probably more affordable fast food about. Lately there seems to be a movement towards enabling obesity via lack of shame. If those things changed there would probably be movement. But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, that doesn't change what a person needs to do as an individual. You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        Yes, of course this is political, it simply can not be if obesity is effecting large parts of the population. >But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, I think it should be important to politicians. If the literal health of their populaion is not a priority, then what is? >You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you. Absolutely. But I am not talking about "me", since it is a population wide problem, population wide solutions are the only solutions.

bsder 3y ago

This isn't true. The competitive weightlifting community has weight loss down pretty cold. It just takes an enormous amount of willpower that the vast majority of people cannot muster. The problem is that the human body isn't wired for losing weight. It's really that simple. Every single system in humans is set up to make use of scarce calories and hoard them when available.

constantcrying 3y ago
>The problem is that the human body isn't wired for losing weight. Complete nonsense. Obesity was never an issue in human society before the 60s. No, this is definitely not about the human body wanting to preserve calories as fat. The body has means to regulate its weight and those mechanisms worked up until a few decades ago. ("more food" is not to blame by the way, e.g. look at Japan, almost nobody there suffers from a poverty induced calorie deficit)
- bsder 3y ago
  > Obesity was never an issue in human society before the 60s. 1) A lot of people still had food scarcity up through the 1980s. I think people on these forums don't remember prior to 1980 very well. When I was child, there were definitely students who were obviously malnourished. There is a reason we're still fighting for school meals. My family didn't plant gardens to be hip; we planted gardens to have food. It was really common. Your garden and canning was the difference between hungry and sufficient. Worldwide, heights for men in various countries peaked in the 1980s. That suggests that prior to 1980 there genuinely WAS caloric deficit for the average person. This is one of the reasons why I tend to goggle at people explaining to me about the "Good Old Days(tm)" prior to the 1980s. WTF? Everybody I knew was some level of poor. My family all worked those "good" mill and mine jobs, and we still all had gardens and hoarded repair parts. Sending their kids to college was a difficult financial decision--especially if they had multiple children (very common back then). I can go on and on. I really want to know where were those "Good Old Days(tm)" because nobody in family sure as hell ever saw them. 2) Nicotine is a remarkably good appetite suppressant. Smoking was rampant before the 1980s. One of the standard answers among the sorority sisters to the "Freshman 15" was to take up smoking. It generally worked on their weight. It would be interesting to correlate the drop in smoking in various countries with the rise in obesity. I suspect nobody in the medical community wants to do this because the conclusion is not something they're going to want to publicize. 3) Japan really did have food scarcity. Japan had widespread malnourishment from the 1940s for several decades. We know because of the height differentials. Suppressed height almost always correlates with food scarcity. And, now that they don't have scarcity, their height and weights went up. And, it's only in the 30 year olds that Japan has almost caught up in heights. And Japan is now seeing obesity in the younger cohorts.