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There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. For anyone read

by jmduke 13y ago

There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. For anyone reading this post and inspired to lose weight, I recommend you keep the following basic tenets in mind when researching a plan/regimen: 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) 2. Being active isn't necessarily crucial to losing weight, but it is crucial to being more healthy. In particular, lifting weights will help your overall physique even if you're eating at a caloric deficit -- but the most important activity is the one that you like enough to make a habit. (Mine is biking, and occasionally soccer.) There are a lot of huge fads right now -- in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day), ketogenic diet (eat lots of fat, eat no carbs), and liquid diets (drink lots of things) seem to be the rage. The reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body and diligent about treating it well.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago
The problem here is that mainstream nutrition "science" is also a fad. It is also a dramatic example on how the Internet + an incentive can produce better Science than the traditional grant (and lobby system). Many of the traditional dogmas of nutrition have recently come intro question: the idea that eating cholesterol is what increases cholesterol in your arteries, the idea that salt is bad for you, the idea that fiber is good for you and many others. Regarding ketogenic diets, there are so many results and it seems to work so much better than what "they" have been telling us that the idea that this is a "fad" starts to sound a bit silly. Actually, some proponents of ketogenic diets are backing their claims with explanatory models, instead of simple epidemiological studies (which are, in my opinion, the lowest form of Science). Check out this talk if you want to know more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4 edit: this talk provides some convincing arguments against your assumption #1.
eshvk 13y ago
> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) True. For those who find it a pain to use one, I recommend sticking with it for a few months at least initially. After a while, your mind gets attuned to the idea of how much food is enough for you to be satiated. So don't obsess about getting every calorie in, it is easy especially if you are reading online communities to see people freaking. 2. Being active isn't necessarily crucial to losing weight, but it is crucial to being more healthy. In particular, lifting weights will help your overall physique even if you're eating at a caloric deficit -- but the most important activity is the one that you like enough to make a habit. (Mine is biking, and occasionally soccer.) I don't like the go weight lift or run recommendation for a person who has never run or hates the gym. Most are there because of systemic lifestyle issues. The best way to do that is to start at the core, hang out more with active people, doing entertaining things that also get out outdoors. After a while of doing that, I feel like you will naturally gravitate towards taking care of your body. > There are a lot of huge fads right now -- in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day), ketogenic diet (eat lots of fat, eat no carbs), and liquid diets (drink lots of things) seem to be the rage. The reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body and diligent about treating it well. It's funny. I spent a while doing lean gains. A couple of months were rather painful in terms of having to spend most of my time eating cottage cheese and tuna, finding it difficult to have dinner with friends. I was hitting all the marks though, then I got bored of it. A few months ago, I did something simple by being more mindful when I ate. I didn't particularly try to avoid any food group but I focused more on savoring it than as something to keep my mouth occupied while I listened to a friend or something. That got me way down on the scale than anything.
- ef4 13y ago
  > For those who find it a pain to use [a calorie-counting app], I recommend sticking with it for a few months at least initially. After a while, your mind gets attuned to the idea of how much food is enough for you to be satiated. But satiation is a built-in feature of your body. A healthy human body counts calories automatically, and governs appetite and metabolism appropriately to keep body weight in a narrow target range. A calorie counting app is basically a prosthetic replacement for the part of your brain that's supposed to be doing the job automatically. And it's much inferior to the real thing. Many people can at least remember a time in their youth when their weight was extremely stable, despite widely varying inputs. That's how it feels when your metabolic control systems are all functioning correctly. Many people assume that this ability naturally disappears with age -- but it seems much more likely that the system simply breaks down due to years of exposure to a very unhealthy environment.
seiji 13y ago
You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. Not entirely. Try eating 2,000 calories of pasta versus 2,000 calories of chicken. It'll do immensely different things to your body. IF and keto are valid. Liquid diet is nutty. keto isn't exactly "eat lots of fat" -- it's avoiding > 30-60g carbs per day (and honestly, mostly sugars. carbs with fiber delivery (e.g. vegetables and limited fruits) are okay) while seeking out, but not adding "lots," of complementary fat (like avoiding fat free things because fat free just means "we added more sugar to compensate for removing fat"). If you have a limited memory capacity, just remember: fat doesn't make you fat. Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat. Your body doesn't take what you eat and just glue it inside of you. Food is like the input of a program generating very specific outputs. You can't feed the function "Add two numbers" 1 and 1 and end up with anything but 2. You (probably[1]) can't feed yourself carbs and carbs and carbs and end up with anything but lardass. [1]: Though, people are different. We have basic guidelines, but a lot is still genetics. I know people who basically live off pasta, chocolate, and smoothies and still weigh 130 pounds without workout out significantly.
- carbocation 13y ago
  > fat doesn't make you fat True, and it's why the low fat (== high sugar) marketing has done nothing to curb the obesity trends. > Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat. True. Keep in mind that (most) excess amino acids also get converted to carbs, and then to fat.
  - MDS100 13y ago
    No, this is a very underused mechanism in humans. Highly active in lab rats though. Which led to this confusion. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3799507 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3799507 500g Carbs overfeeding > <10g Fat synthesized
crusso 13y ago
You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses Yeah, and if you want to reduce your chance of auto accidents, limit the amount of gasoline you put in your car. I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago. Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food. If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others. Atkins and even others before him explained the problems with carbohydrates, especially simple ones, decades ago. Calling low carb eating (you can't eliminate all carbs) a fad at this point is either ignorant or just mocking.
- jmduke 13y ago
  Your comment seems unnecessarily antagonistic. I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago. I'm not sure how I dismissed ketogenic diets (I was on one for a year!) besides calling them a 'fad', which they certainly are. Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food. This is definitely important! But it might not be necessary, as proven by the fact that people have lost significant amounts of weight without doing so. If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others. I did read the article, and I'm not sure why you assumed otherwise. Most of my comment runs in parallel with the post (particularly being conscientious about what you do with your body.), though I don't think a process of discovery which leads one to assume multivitamins are 'snake oil' is particularly flawless.
  - crusso 13y ago
    I think what I objected to most was that you decried the signal to noise on this issue then your #1 point was one of the noisiest statements made in the last 50 years.
TelmoMenezes 13y ago
> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) If this is true, why don't we become incredibly fat or skinny over time? It would require incredible precision to maintain weight. But a lot of people seem to be able to do it with no effort... The reason why this is not true is simple: our organism is not a closed system, so this thermodynamics truism does not apply. We are able, for example, to excrete nutrients without digesting them. Our organism is way too complex for this bromide to have any merit.
- codyb 13y ago
  Also a 1000 calories of sugar are going to do far different things to your body than a 1000 calories of protein. That's why focusing on calories always seemed to be the wrong metric to me.
  - MikeCapone 13y ago
    Exactly. Our bodies regulate how much we eat via hunger, and some nutrients make us more hungry than others (ie. carbs).
  - rjh29 13y ago
    There are a lot of skinny people out there with rubbish diets, packed with carbs and low in protein.... while carbs undeniably cause hunger compared to fats and protein, there is definitely an individual variation in appetite that diet cannot completely make up for.
    - adventured 13y ago
      I was one of those hyper skinny people. There are only two reasons for it: 1) a temporarily very high metabolism that will fade with age 2) how many calories being consumed in relation to how fast your body burns I couldn't gain a pound of weight no matter how much crap I ate, right up to about the age of 25. So I ate anything at any time, all the time. I then proceeded to gradually gain 40 pounds over seven years, from 150 to 190 (at a 6'2" height), as my metabolism slowed. I lived off of sugar, all the time. And pasta carbs. You'll find that some of the formerly skinny types that keep up that rubbish diet, will end up remaining slightly thinner than most except for some out-of-place looking weight gain in the mid section. That's the lucky scenario. The unlucky scenario is you give yourself diabetes or your metabolism really lets out and you just explode to twice your size.
discardorama 13y ago
I agree; it's basically a physics problem (calories_in < calories_out to lose weight), with the body's metabolism being a second-order effect. I went on vacation recently, walked around all day taking photos and visiting museums, and ate well; but still lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks, without even trying.
ufo 13y ago
> he reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body Another reason is that most fads are effectively big lists of restrictions on what you are allowed to eat. Since finding things to eat becomes harder you often end up reducing the total calorie count as a side effect.
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. >>For anyone reading this post and inspired to lose weight, I recommend you keep the following basic tenets in mind when researching a plan/regimen... -- There is something important to point out here, which is that the basic tenets you listed are simple, but they are not easy. If they were, everyone would follow them. Most people don't actually want to lose weight. Rather, they want to already have lost weight. So they look for shortcuts that will get them there. That is why there is such a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world. Fad diets and magic pills are invented because people are willing to pay for them. People are fat because eating is a big part of their lives. They eat several huge meals everyday, plus snacks, and often times when they are eating one meal they are dreaming about and planning their next one. On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them. Being able to cook delicious, unhealthy food at a family BBQ is seen as an admirable skill, and bringing a box of donuts to the office in the morning is seen as a way to score points with coworkers. In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. They need to count calories, watch what they eat, do heavy workouts at the gym (none of this lift-pink-dumbbells or walk-on-the-treadmill-while-texting-friends bullshit), strictly regulate their sleep and wake-up times, and more. It is NOT supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be HARD. And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline. Unfortunately most people don't have that.
- jmduke 13y ago
  Most people don't actually want to lose weight. Rather, they want to already have lost weight. So they look for shortcuts that will get them there. That is why there is such a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world. Fad diets and magic pills are invented because people are willing to pay for them. I agree completely, though I would phrase it as "most people don't want to be healthy: they want to be thin." On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them. This is something I struggle with a lot (and I say this sipping a latte) -- so much of socializing revolves around food, it sucks to be the guy/gal who refuses the donut or orders a salad at the pizza place. Not to mention the black hole that is alcohol (though in my case, I'm more than willing to take the extra few pounds of fat if it means enjoying my whiskey and beer.) In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. ... And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline. Absolutely. There are dozens of anecdotes about people who lose a serious amount of weight, hit their target, and then slowly regain all the weight because that's what happens when you're 160 pounds and you go back to eating junk. To use a poor metaphor, personal fitness isn't like an MMO where once you hit max level you stay there -- you've got to take care of yourself or else you'll wind up back at level 1.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
"1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. " As a former chemistry student(I did not finish it, because I made engineering instead), I tell you you are oversimplificating how the body works. With a machine you could talk about calories because the way an engine works is so simple. Fuel, oxidant+Energy init reaction->Output + Energy out. Not so with the body. There are different processes the body uses to get energy, and it is very complex. E.g When you eat sugary drinks you put immense amounts of sugar in the blood, very fast which are dangerous(if insulin is not released you die), so the priority of the body is getting this sugar out of the bloodstream, converting it to fat. At the same time your liver could not process anything else as the rate it has to work to get rid of the sugar is too high. Countries like the US of America or Central Europe has an obesity epidemic problem, and what changed the most was food. 40 years ago Germans or Americans ate more than 8 kilos of butter and other natural fats per year. Now it is way less.
geuis 13y ago
Keto is not a "fad diet" and is not about eating lots of fats. The core of what it's about is recognizing fat is not bad for you, and that the 3 main legs of what we eat are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Reduce the amount of carbs to a minimum and make up for it with increased protein and fats. Keto is backed up by a ton of science and real-world success. Just visit the keto subreddit and spend a few hours perusing, http://reddit.com/r/keto http://reddit.com/r/keto.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Imagine that you are not only releasing energy on the body. You are not using heat, like in a thermal motor. You need a specific chain reaction for getting the molecules you could use to move your body, mainly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate You need to make the molecules that make this reaction possible, for every sugar, fat or protein, it is different. Those supplies you need to fabricate or get in your food. Some are very common(inexpensive), some are not. E.g you will need oligoelements, or vitamins. Not only that, but those substances need to be able to share the same space, not react with other substances, or being toxic to other parts of the cell. Some of them are and need other substances to carry them safely. You also need other substances to carry them around. Some of them have water affinity, some not. The output of the reactions also need to be non toxic and some of the are over certain concentration. Some sugars output metabolic reactions produce toxic materials. At high rates you need your body to protect the arteries from acidic conditions with cholesterol layers and so on. Also what you need to fabricate has a delay. You can't fabricate your supplies instantly, so you have a control system, normally a series of PID controllers(we copied them from nature) to decide how much to fabricate given your normal diet. So if you eat pizza every single day and caramelize all the sugars, and denaturalize the proteins , like you do at 200C plus, your body will get used to it. There are fads, but there is also scientific knowledge people ignore. It is frustrating that people that ignore so much try to give advice to others. You see medicine doctors talk in 2013 about calories, they have knowledge in some areas but are ignorant in others, mainly chemistry and biochemistry, they won't admit that.
theathgeek 13y ago
> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) I see this all the time on HN and like most things, there is truth in it, but it doesn't tell the whole story. First and foremost, calories matter. Let's get that out of the way. They matter in that, yes, weight gain comes from eating calories in excess, loss from a deficit...normally (we'll get to that in a minute). However, this is where everyone should be reading the rest very carefully, details matter here. For one, if the ONLY thing you care about is number on the scale, eat at a deficit and you'll lose weight. BUT, if you care about the type of weight you are losing (ie. losing fat vs fat/muscle vs muscle), you HAVE to care about the macronutrient ratios of those calories. For instance, I'm an athlete, recreational bodybuilder/powerlifter and fitness model. I work very, very hard for muscle gains. I don't want to lose muscle when I diet down for a show, competition or photo shoot. If I only cared about calories, I would QUICKLY catabolize my muscle. I need to keep my protein high, fat pretty high and the rest of my calories can come from carbs. In practice, depending on my goal at the time, I implement one of a variety of PSMF (protein sparring modified fast) & CKD (cyclic keto diet, which is Keto with carb refeeds) or TKD (targeted keto diet, which is eating carbs around workouts). The problem with "just care about calories" is that very few people actually want that as the goal. Most people want to lose FAT, not muscle when they lose weight. If all you understand is calories, yes you'll lose weight, but you'll be losing fat and muscle. Most people, and I would guess everyone reading this, would rather keep whatever muscle they have, they need to understand how to SPARE their muscle when losing weight. And if someone is overweight there is a very high chance they are or are becoming insulin resistant. If this is the case, Keto is actually appropriate for them. Before I got into this world seriously, I just thought it was calories, like most people who haven't spent the time to understand the workings of the body. I literally wasted years trying to get lean with just a calories approach. It doesn't work that way.
Dewie 13y ago
> There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. Yes, there are a lot of varying information out there, and a lot of those are conflicting. Case in point: just look at how many replies you got where people are disagreeing with you and each other about your recommendations... ;)
joe_the_user 13y ago
I am six feet tall, constantly 5-10 pounds underweight. I eat as much as I can, always. I scare people with the amount I eat. My usual helping size is generally twice what most people take (which can cause friction if I'm not careful). I never, ever fluctuate in weight beyond the five pound fluctuations. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) Obviously this is true on some level but it's truth doesn't seem establish any automatic or definite cause-and-effect relationship between the amount of food a given person eats and their weight gain or loss. Some people may indeed find their consumption determine weight gain or loss. Fine but don't assume your experience will automatically carry to others. I recall current research has shed light on some complexities of this. Perhaps someone has a link.
acconrad 13y ago
> in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day) FYI that is incorrect. Intermittent fasting simply refers to eating your calories in condensed time windows. For example, Lean Gains suggests eating 2-3 meals in an 8 hour window.

by jmduke 13y ago

TelmoMenezes 13y ago

The problem here is that mainstream nutrition "science" is also a fad. It is also a dramatic example on how the Internet + an incentive can produce better Science than the traditional grant (and lobby system). Many of the traditional dogmas of nutrition have recently come intro question: the idea that eating cholesterol is what increases cholesterol in your arteries, the idea that salt is bad for you, the idea that fiber is good for you and many others. Regarding ketogenic diets, there are so many results and it seems to work so much better than what "they" have been telling us that the idea that this is a "fad" starts to sound a bit silly. Actually, some proponents of ketogenic diets are backing their claims with explanatory models, instead of simple epidemiological studies (which are, in my opinion, the lowest form of Science). Check out this talk if you want to know more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4 edit: this talk provides some convincing arguments against your assumption #1.

eshvk 13y ago

> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) True. For those who find it a pain to use one, I recommend sticking with it for a few months at least initially. After a while, your mind gets attuned to the idea of how much food is enough for you to be satiated. So don't obsess about getting every calorie in, it is easy especially if you are reading online communities to see people freaking. 2. Being active isn't necessarily crucial to losing weight, but it is crucial to being more healthy. In particular, lifting weights will help your overall physique even if you're eating at a caloric deficit -- but the most important activity is the one that you like enough to make a habit. (Mine is biking, and occasionally soccer.) I don't like the go weight lift or run recommendation for a person who has never run or hates the gym. Most are there because of systemic lifestyle issues. The best way to do that is to start at the core, hang out more with active people, doing entertaining things that also get out outdoors. After a while of doing that, I feel like you will naturally gravitate towards taking care of your body. > There are a lot of huge fads right now -- in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day), ketogenic diet (eat lots of fat, eat no carbs), and liquid diets (drink lots of things) seem to be the rage. The reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body and diligent about treating it well. It's funny. I spent a while doing lean gains. A couple of months were rather painful in terms of having to spend most of my time eating cottage cheese and tuna, finding it difficult to have dinner with friends. I was hitting all the marks though, then I got bored of it. A few months ago, I did something simple by being more mindful when I ate. I didn't particularly try to avoid any food group but I focused more on savoring it than as something to keep my mouth occupied while I listened to a friend or something. That got me way down on the scale than anything.

ef4 13y ago
> For those who find it a pain to use [a calorie-counting app], I recommend sticking with it for a few months at least initially. After a while, your mind gets attuned to the idea of how much food is enough for you to be satiated. But satiation is a built-in feature of your body. A healthy human body counts calories automatically, and governs appetite and metabolism appropriately to keep body weight in a narrow target range. A calorie counting app is basically a prosthetic replacement for the part of your brain that's supposed to be doing the job automatically. And it's much inferior to the real thing. Many people can at least remember a time in their youth when their weight was extremely stable, despite widely varying inputs. That's how it feels when your metabolic control systems are all functioning correctly. Many people assume that this ability naturally disappears with age -- but it seems much more likely that the system simply breaks down due to years of exposure to a very unhealthy environment.

seiji 13y ago

You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. Not entirely. Try eating 2,000 calories of pasta versus 2,000 calories of chicken. It'll do immensely different things to your body. IF and keto are valid. Liquid diet is nutty. keto isn't exactly "eat lots of fat" -- it's avoiding > 30-60g carbs per day (and honestly, mostly sugars. carbs with fiber delivery (e.g. vegetables and limited fruits) are okay) while seeking out, but not adding "lots," of complementary fat (like avoiding fat free things because fat free just means "we added more sugar to compensate for removing fat"). If you have a limited memory capacity, just remember: fat doesn't make you fat. Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat. Your body doesn't take what you eat and just glue it inside of you. Food is like the input of a program generating very specific outputs. You can't feed the function "Add two numbers" 1 and 1 and end up with anything but 2. You (probably[1]) can't feed yourself carbs and carbs and carbs and end up with anything but lardass. [1]: Though, people are different. We have basic guidelines, but a lot is still genetics. I know people who basically live off pasta, chocolate, and smoothies and still weigh 130 pounds without workout out significantly.

carbocation 13y ago
> fat doesn't make you fat True, and it's why the low fat (== high sugar) marketing has done nothing to curb the obesity trends. > Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat. True. Keep in mind that (most) excess amino acids also get converted to carbs, and then to fat.
- MDS100 13y ago
  No, this is a very underused mechanism in humans. Highly active in lab rats though. Which led to this confusion. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3799507 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3799507 500g Carbs overfeeding > <10g Fat synthesized

crusso 13y ago

You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses Yeah, and if you want to reduce your chance of auto accidents, limit the amount of gasoline you put in your car. I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago. Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food. If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others. Atkins and even others before him explained the problems with carbohydrates, especially simple ones, decades ago. Calling low carb eating (you can't eliminate all carbs) a fad at this point is either ignorant or just mocking.

jmduke 13y ago
Your comment seems unnecessarily antagonistic. I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago. I'm not sure how I dismissed ketogenic diets (I was on one for a year!) besides calling them a 'fad', which they certainly are. Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food. This is definitely important! But it might not be necessary, as proven by the fact that people have lost significant amounts of weight without doing so. If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others. I did read the article, and I'm not sure why you assumed otherwise. Most of my comment runs in parallel with the post (particularly being conscientious about what you do with your body.), though I don't think a process of discovery which leads one to assume multivitamins are 'snake oil' is particularly flawless.
- crusso 13y ago
  I think what I objected to most was that you decried the signal to noise on this issue then your #1 point was one of the noisiest statements made in the last 50 years.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago

> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) If this is true, why don't we become incredibly fat or skinny over time? It would require incredible precision to maintain weight. But a lot of people seem to be able to do it with no effort... The reason why this is not true is simple: our organism is not a closed system, so this thermodynamics truism does not apply. We are able, for example, to excrete nutrients without digesting them. Our organism is way too complex for this bromide to have any merit.

codyb 13y ago
Also a 1000 calories of sugar are going to do far different things to your body than a 1000 calories of protein. That's why focusing on calories always seemed to be the wrong metric to me.
- MikeCapone 13y ago
  Exactly. Our bodies regulate how much we eat via hunger, and some nutrients make us more hungry than others (ie. carbs).
- rjh29 13y ago
  There are a lot of skinny people out there with rubbish diets, packed with carbs and low in protein.... while carbs undeniably cause hunger compared to fats and protein, there is definitely an individual variation in appetite that diet cannot completely make up for.
  - adventured 13y ago
    I was one of those hyper skinny people. There are only two reasons for it: 1) a temporarily very high metabolism that will fade with age 2) how many calories being consumed in relation to how fast your body burns I couldn't gain a pound of weight no matter how much crap I ate, right up to about the age of 25. So I ate anything at any time, all the time. I then proceeded to gradually gain 40 pounds over seven years, from 150 to 190 (at a 6'2" height), as my metabolism slowed. I lived off of sugar, all the time. And pasta carbs. You'll find that some of the formerly skinny types that keep up that rubbish diet, will end up remaining slightly thinner than most except for some out-of-place looking weight gain in the mid section. That's the lucky scenario. The unlucky scenario is you give yourself diabetes or your metabolism really lets out and you just explode to twice your size.

discardorama 13y ago

I agree; it's basically a physics problem (calories_in < calories_out to lose weight), with the body's metabolism being a second-order effect. I went on vacation recently, walked around all day taking photos and visiting museums, and ate well; but still lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks, without even trying.

ufo 13y ago

> he reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body Another reason is that most fads are effectively big lists of restrictions on what you are allowed to eat. Since finding things to eat becomes harder you often end up reducing the total calorie count as a side effect.

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. >>For anyone reading this post and inspired to lose weight, I recommend you keep the following basic tenets in mind when researching a plan/regimen... -- There is something important to point out here, which is that the basic tenets you listed are simple, but they are not easy. If they were, everyone would follow them. Most people don't actually want to lose weight. Rather, they want to already have lost weight. So they look for shortcuts that will get them there. That is why there is such a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world. Fad diets and magic pills are invented because people are willing to pay for them. People are fat because eating is a big part of their lives. They eat several huge meals everyday, plus snacks, and often times when they are eating one meal they are dreaming about and planning their next one. On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them. Being able to cook delicious, unhealthy food at a family BBQ is seen as an admirable skill, and bringing a box of donuts to the office in the morning is seen as a way to score points with coworkers. In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. They need to count calories, watch what they eat, do heavy workouts at the gym (none of this lift-pink-dumbbells or walk-on-the-treadmill-while-texting-friends bullshit), strictly regulate their sleep and wake-up times, and more. It is NOT supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be HARD. And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline. Unfortunately most people don't have that.

jmduke 13y ago
Most people don't actually want to lose weight. Rather, they want to already have lost weight. So they look for shortcuts that will get them there. That is why there is such a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world. Fad diets and magic pills are invented because people are willing to pay for them. I agree completely, though I would phrase it as "most people don't want to be healthy: they want to be thin." On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them. This is something I struggle with a lot (and I say this sipping a latte) -- so much of socializing revolves around food, it sucks to be the guy/gal who refuses the donut or orders a salad at the pizza place. Not to mention the black hole that is alcohol (though in my case, I'm more than willing to take the extra few pounds of fat if it means enjoying my whiskey and beer.) In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. ... And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline. Absolutely. There are dozens of anecdotes about people who lose a serious amount of weight, hit their target, and then slowly regain all the weight because that's what happens when you're 160 pounds and you go back to eating junk. To use a poor metaphor, personal fitness isn't like an MMO where once you hit max level you stay there -- you've got to take care of yourself or else you'll wind up back at level 1.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

"1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. " As a former chemistry student(I did not finish it, because I made engineering instead), I tell you you are oversimplificating how the body works. With a machine you could talk about calories because the way an engine works is so simple. Fuel, oxidant+Energy init reaction->Output + Energy out. Not so with the body. There are different processes the body uses to get energy, and it is very complex. E.g When you eat sugary drinks you put immense amounts of sugar in the blood, very fast which are dangerous(if insulin is not released you die), so the priority of the body is getting this sugar out of the bloodstream, converting it to fat. At the same time your liver could not process anything else as the rate it has to work to get rid of the sugar is too high. Countries like the US of America or Central Europe has an obesity epidemic problem, and what changed the most was food. 40 years ago Germans or Americans ate more than 8 kilos of butter and other natural fats per year. Now it is way less.

geuis 13y ago

Keto is not a "fad diet" and is not about eating lots of fats. The core of what it's about is recognizing fat is not bad for you, and that the 3 main legs of what we eat are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Reduce the amount of carbs to a minimum and make up for it with increased protein and fats. Keto is backed up by a ton of science and real-world success. Just visit the keto subreddit and spend a few hours perusing, http://reddit.com/r/keto http://reddit.com/r/keto.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Imagine that you are not only releasing energy on the body. You are not using heat, like in a thermal motor. You need a specific chain reaction for getting the molecules you could use to move your body, mainly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate You need to make the molecules that make this reaction possible, for every sugar, fat or protein, it is different. Those supplies you need to fabricate or get in your food. Some are very common(inexpensive), some are not. E.g you will need oligoelements, or vitamins. Not only that, but those substances need to be able to share the same space, not react with other substances, or being toxic to other parts of the cell. Some of them are and need other substances to carry them safely. You also need other substances to carry them around. Some of them have water affinity, some not. The output of the reactions also need to be non toxic and some of the are over certain concentration. Some sugars output metabolic reactions produce toxic materials. At high rates you need your body to protect the arteries from acidic conditions with cholesterol layers and so on. Also what you need to fabricate has a delay. You can't fabricate your supplies instantly, so you have a control system, normally a series of PID controllers(we copied them from nature) to decide how much to fabricate given your normal diet. So if you eat pizza every single day and caramelize all the sugars, and denaturalize the proteins , like you do at 200C plus, your body will get used to it. There are fads, but there is also scientific knowledge people ignore. It is frustrating that people that ignore so much try to give advice to others. You see medicine doctors talk in 2013 about calories, they have knowledge in some areas but are ignorant in others, mainly chemistry and biochemistry, they won't admit that.

theathgeek 13y ago

> 1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) I see this all the time on HN and like most things, there is truth in it, but it doesn't tell the whole story. First and foremost, calories matter. Let's get that out of the way. They matter in that, yes, weight gain comes from eating calories in excess, loss from a deficit...normally (we'll get to that in a minute). However, this is where everyone should be reading the rest very carefully, details matter here. For one, if the ONLY thing you care about is number on the scale, eat at a deficit and you'll lose weight. BUT, if you care about the type of weight you are losing (ie. losing fat vs fat/muscle vs muscle), you HAVE to care about the macronutrient ratios of those calories. For instance, I'm an athlete, recreational bodybuilder/powerlifter and fitness model. I work very, very hard for muscle gains. I don't want to lose muscle when I diet down for a show, competition or photo shoot. If I only cared about calories, I would QUICKLY catabolize my muscle. I need to keep my protein high, fat pretty high and the rest of my calories can come from carbs. In practice, depending on my goal at the time, I implement one of a variety of PSMF (protein sparring modified fast) & CKD (cyclic keto diet, which is Keto with carb refeeds) or TKD (targeted keto diet, which is eating carbs around workouts). The problem with "just care about calories" is that very few people actually want that as the goal. Most people want to lose FAT, not muscle when they lose weight. If all you understand is calories, yes you'll lose weight, but you'll be losing fat and muscle. Most people, and I would guess everyone reading this, would rather keep whatever muscle they have, they need to understand how to SPARE their muscle when losing weight. And if someone is overweight there is a very high chance they are or are becoming insulin resistant. If this is the case, Keto is actually appropriate for them. Before I got into this world seriously, I just thought it was calories, like most people who haven't spent the time to understand the workings of the body. I literally wasted years trying to get lean with just a calories approach. It doesn't work that way.

Dewie 13y ago

> There's a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world, particularly because there's so much value to be made just by making some noise. Yes, there are a lot of varying information out there, and a lot of those are conflicting. Case in point: just look at how many replies you got where people are disagreeing with you and each other about your recommendations... ;)

joe_the_user 13y ago

I am six feet tall, constantly 5-10 pounds underweight. I eat as much as I can, always. I scare people with the amount I eat. My usual helping size is generally twice what most people take (which can cause friction if I'm not careful). I never, ever fluctuate in weight beyond the five pound fluctuations. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.) Obviously this is true on some level but it's truth doesn't seem establish any automatic or definite cause-and-effect relationship between the amount of food a given person eats and their weight gain or loss. Some people may indeed find their consumption determine weight gain or loss. Fine but don't assume your experience will automatically carry to others. I recall current research has shed light on some complexities of this. Perhaps someone has a link.

acconrad 13y ago

> in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day) FYI that is incorrect. Intermittent fasting simply refers to eating your calories in condensed time windows. For example, Lean Gains suggests eating 2-3 meals in an 8 hour window.