6 ms·

The Myth of Willpower and “Eat Less, Move More”

33 points by jlees 13y ago

schtev 13y ago
If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact.
- zrail 13y ago
  This is a hard problem, as the article states. One of the biggest problems is that the "maintenance" level is a) extremely difficult to pin down on a good day, b) is different for everyone, and c) it moves every day. Let alone people who have other confounding medical issues like hypo- or hyper-thyroidism, diabetes, etc. Throw all that in and yes, the biological fact of "eat less move more" is true, it's also almost completely worthless for a very large percentage of the population.
  - schtev 13y ago
    What I did was stop eating until I'm full, and start eating just enough to feel not hungry. Found it to be a pretty good rough guideline. Never bothered counting calories or anything like that. Nice thing about this method (I figure) is that it solves the problem of not knowing quantitatively where that maintenance level lies on any given day.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    I am 41 years old. I have been thin my entire life. I don't try to "pin down" my "maintenance level" and frankly don't even know what would be involved in that. When I am doing more physical work, I make sure I eat a bit more. When I am doing less physical work, I make sure I eat a bit less. It's not easy but it's really not as difficult as you are trying to make it seem. Further, I don't believe that people with legitimately diagnosed medical conditions make up a significant portion of the overweight population.
    - zrail 13y ago
      > I have been thin my entire life I'm happy for you. People have different metabolisms, and there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem. Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all.
      - 300bps 13y ago
        People have different metabolisms That's your belief. there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem That's your belief. Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all. Allow me to turn this one right back around to you. You have a series of old wives tales that you believe and then tell people that their beliefs don't matter. I'm frankly surprised you didn't yank out the "I'm big boned" defense which has been as disproven as a person's intrinsically "faster metabolism". The funny thing is that I'm usually lectured about how to be thin by people that have struggled with their weight their entire life. These people have had years and years of being overweight, have no idea how to truly eat and their weight has see-sawed their entire life. All the while, I have maintained the same thin weight. For 41 years. But they insist on how wrong I am and how right they are.
        Karunamon 13y ago
        >That's your belief. Really? Resorting to "Well that's just your opinion, man" on HN? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/25/5-metabolism-myths-debunked.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/25/5-metabolis...
        300bps 13y ago
        Really? Responding to a thread that you apparently didn't read. It was the person I was responding to that started the "your beliefs don't mean anything" point. And I demonstrated how silly it was to him which led you to accuse me of doing it. Oh and your link even agreed with me so you're apparently batting a thousand here.
  - dbrunsek 13y ago
    Sorry but your perception of laws of thermodynamics is wrong. No one needs to eat the same amount of calories every day - your metabolism does not simply reset at midnight. It's a difference in energy consumption vs. expenditure that builds in a longer period of time that affects energy balance (positive or negative) and finally your weight change. Eating less doesn't interfere with having diabetes or hypothyroidism. And 90% of people don't have these conditions.
    - zrail 13y ago
      joe_the_user above states it much better than I can. The body is not a static science experiment in a lab. For people who's bodies don't naturally regulate themselves properly, the body is an active agent that is fighting tooth and nail against what the person knows to be best. For someone who's body is physiologically normal I'm sure it's really difficult to conceive this situation
- 300bps 13y ago
  On the one hand, you have people who are not trying to sell you anything telling you the simple (but difficult) truth: Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight. On the other hand you have people who are trying to sell you something tell you all manner of complicated ways of losing weight that basically amount to being what overweight people want to hear. In this case, you have a company called Fitocracy telling you: Willpower will not bring you success. It's a great statement that absolves overweight people of much of their responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. Fitocracy should sell well with this technique.
  - rdouble 13y ago
    The article is not the obesity apologetic you'd expect from the title. He's arguing that creating a positive feedback loop is a more powerful motivational tool than willpower. It doesn't seem like you read the article.
  - bchjam 13y ago
    If it said 'willpower alone ...' I might have disagreed with you, there was definitely a bit of a tone of selling something in the midst of condemning Biggest Loser. In spite of that, it's true that willpower is a limited resource and if you push too hard you'll burn out (just like with programming but exercise gives you more immediate physical pain and high risk of injury from overuse)
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    Article is more like: Willpower is a finite resource and you need some sort of motivation to keep going in a fitness regime.
  - jc4p 13y ago
    I promised myself I wouldn't read the hacker news comments on this because HN comments are always a cesspool of people trying to prove they're smarter than the author of the post, but I just have to respond to this one. It's very clear that you didn't read the article. Dick, the author, is my best friend and comparing him to a fat apologist is the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. He's a fat-kid-turned-competitive-bodybuilder and has helped a very large amount of people lose a lot of weight by cutting out the crap diets and mentality that try to confuse people into eating less than their TDEE every week. Dick's simplified diets for me and explained to me that fucking up every once in a while is ok, and I went from failing Atkins 2 times to losing 65lb in 8 months, and as I'm writing this I'm currently eating ice cream and waffles. I understand that the fitness industry has a lot of negative stereotypes around it, for good reason, but please dear god read the article before you try to convince yourself that this person is just like the rest.
- bchjam 13y ago
  the article seems a bit muddled in what it's complaining about but I think the main point is that taking it easy and setting small, realistic goals works better in the long term than trying to make yourself bleed in every workout because it's more sustainable. 15 pounds in 2 months is within healthy limits but this seems more directed at people who try to go from the couch to full bore exercise & diet maniacs overnight, or people who make money from sensationalizing that kind of behavior.
  - schtev 13y ago
    Yeah, that sort of mentality is awful. Extreme exercise just isn't sustainable. People who are really overweight need to accept that it may take a few years to reach their goals.
- norswap 13y ago
  Yes, but what the article really criticizes is you'll do that by willpower only (I was also very confused by the title and introduction of the article). I have myself lost 10kg in the last year, albeit that was not especially my prime objective. I can clearly see that if it was all pain and no fun, I wouldn't have done it - I wasn't even overweight, but clearly a bit out of shape. Mostly exercising made me feel really good about myself. As did eating less, especially when you start not to get hungry as much anymore. I still love to eat, but I try to be more mindful of my eating.
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact. Since when is psychology not part of biology? Certainly, if you eat enough less and move enough more, you'll lose weight. I'm pretty sure there's a minimum threshold to this. The problem with this is "eat less and move more" is just physics and not really a complete picture of your physiology. That is - you can be impelled somehow to eat less and move and if you go over threshold, you will lose weight. The problem is you may not reach a state which your body's internal calibration systems consider normal and thus you will wind-up gaining the weight back when the forces impelling you to eat less and move more go away. There's more to a craving for food than "psychology". This is where the difficult biology of weight stands, as I understand it. And personally, I'm always underweight no matter my food consumption so it's not hard to imagine other in the opposite situation. Each person's physiological system is different so a thousand antidotes don't prove a generality although they can certainly show the exceptions to the supposed "rule".
  - dicktalens 13y ago
    This is the absolute exact response that I would have given. I think I'm in love with you, joe_the_user. ;)
- itsybitsycoder 13y ago
  I've lost 30lb in four months without eating less or moving more. The biological reality is a lot more complicated than the "calories in/calories out" people insist it is. How accurately are you really measuring your calories out, and how your diet and exercise impacts that? Or how the composition and combination and timing of the foods you eat impacts your digestion (calories in)? If calorie restriction works for you, that's great. The times I've tried it, I was constantly tired, hungry, and cranky, and the results were really mediocre, no matter if I cut a little or a lot, or exercised a little or a lot alongside the diet. Plus, if you actually care about whether people are healthy or not, the psychological factors are hugely relevant. All the "calories in/calories out" mantra seems to do is give people a soapbox to talk about how they're just intrinsically superior to fat people.
  - dbrunsek 13y ago
    "I've lost 30lb in four months without eating less or moving more." - That's not impossible. However you've probably used drugs affecting your metabolism to increase your expenditure. "How accurately are you really measuring your calories out, and how your diet and exercise impacts that?" - Why would measuring anything affect how physiology and physics work? (And yes, energy expenditure and consumption can be measured extremely precisely in labs.) "Or how the composition and combination and timing of the foods you eat impacts your digestion (calories in)?" - In healthy people it doesn't. I'm sorry to tell you but you were eating less than you we're burning. I know it hurts.
    - itsybitsycoder 13y ago
      No drugs. I just stopped eating certain types of foods, and started eating more of other types of foods. For a couple weeks I added up my calories consumed for kicks, and I'm eating just as much, calorie-wise, as when I was gaining weight, and some days more. Haven't changed my exercise. No real health problems either, so unless you want to make a circular argument, where you claim I'm unhealthy because the composition of my diet affects my metabolism, you are just wrong.
      - 13y ago
- bzudo 13y ago
  I've noticed a lot of people disagree with this idea. I lost about 25 pounds over one and a half years counting my calories. I used an app called Lose It! and set it up so I would lose half a pound a week. During that time I worked out on an elliptical machine three times a week for 30 mins. Later on I lifted weights every other day for 30 mins. I was probably in the best shape of my life after I lost the weight. It wasn't easy counting calories, it takes time to do it, and it can be frustrating, especially when you're hungry. I found it was also hard, at first, to turn down food. About a six months into the program though, I started to realize just how many calories were in certain foods. I would think to myself, are those calories really worth the taste? Most of the time, the answer was no. Although, with beer, it was usually yes. Perhaps it doesn't work for everyone, but has it ever caused someone to gain more weight? Not just a few pounds, but tens of pounds? I get the sense that the people who don't like the idea of "move more/eat less" don't want to deal with the hassle of counting calories and working out.
lawn 13y ago
In general there are three things you need to balance if you want to get fit, loose weight or get good at a sport or similar: eating, resting and training. Most make the mistake and think that the training is the most important thing, but it's really not. You cannot eat bad and train good and think that it will balance itself out, you really are what you eat. Something I'm really annoyed at in today's society is the focus on calories. Sure calories are all which matter... If all you want to do is warm water. But then you're ignoring the effect on your hunger and your hormones which can lead to yo-yo dieting. In theory it can work, if you can live with constantly being hungry. But in a war against hunger, you're bound to loose. Aim for quality, not quantity, and let your built in weight control device - the hunger - take care of the rest. After that you can focus on your training regime. Here again I totally agree with the article. Training should be fun and rewarding and if you can manage get a good feedback loop you're golden.
- dbrunsek 13y ago
  Can you define what "eating bad" means?
  - lawn 13y ago
    Nothing precise really, but I would say a lot of sugar (candy and soda) would be bad. Vegetables would be good. Avoiding fast foods and sugar will go a long way I'd say. But other than that I'm really not sure, there are a lot of different (often conflicting) ideas of what is "good" and what is "bad". Fat is bad vs Fat is good. Calories matter, the rest don't vs Calories are different. etc.
  - hanley 13y ago
    Eating a varied diet of real whole foods and staying away from processed, packaged food is the general consensus for a "good" diet.
    - dbrunsek 13y ago
      General consensuses are not always right.
dkarl 13y ago
Urgh. People argue these issues over and over and shave points so finely that I don't see the point any more. Who cares if, by some interpretation of the words, you can make the claim that "cardio alone is ineffective for weight loss?" Some people take up running and lose weight. There are a thousand different ways to approach fitness, and apparently the important thing is not to present an original or enlightening perspective but to shit all over other people's perspectives, to call them "stupid," "dogma," "myths," and "big fat lies" that "prevent you from creating a healthy lifestyle." Creating a feedback loop in which results motivate continued effort is one idea that has been around for decades and works for a lot of people. So is going for a run every morning. So is being "hard core," for that matter. For some people, the idea of being "hard core" is an exciting one that gets them out of bed early in the morning and helps them say no to excess food. If these ideas work for people, then they can be valuable, positive ideas, right? Wouldn't you want to make sure that people gave them serious consideration in case they were, for them, effective ideas? Why would you steer people away from alternative ideas by presenting them in the most negative possible light, in narrow, off-putting formulations? Oh, right, because this isn't fitness advice. It's marketing for a company selling a fitness product.
- dicktalens 13y ago
  Someone missed the point of the article.
  - newsit 13y ago
    Someone missed the point of the comment
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  Yes, The funny thing is, "find the approach that works for you" seems like it should be as good as anything for someone marketing a gym or even a family of products. I think the biggest dynamic is that when individuals do find the approach that works for them, another thing that often "works for them" is telling everyone else that what they do is the very best. More weirdly, consumers feel attracted to systems that forward a dogmatic certainty that they are right and such systems produce a group of believers who will also sell the system. Ah, I can't see an easy way out.
egypturnash 13y ago
If you can find something that burns calories that you enjoy and keep doing, the weight just kinda melts off. A couple years ago I got into burlesque dance; two hours of class every week got me into amazing shape. That's stopped for various reasons, and my weight's slowly crept up. I haven't found anything that I delight in doing the same way, so I'm out of shape. I've been fighting it but it's an uphill climb. I mean, yeah, to a large degree it WAS "eat less, move more" - but I wasn't thinking of it in terms of losing weight or getting fit. I was thinking of it in terms of "learning to move in frighteningly sexy ways".
enraged_camel 13y ago
I, too, am obsessed with fitness. In my experience, most people can't lose weight because they don't know how habits work and cannot use that knowledge to form the right ones. Every habit consists of three components: cue, routine, reward. Something triggers the behavior, you perform the behavior, and you reap some reward. Rinse, repeat. For example, a lot of people eat food - especially sweet food - to deal with stress. The cue that triggers the behavior is stress, the behavior itself is eating food, and the reward is the taste of that food. Repeating this enough times causes the person to get fat. Knowing this, it is also possible to engineer new habits. The way you do this is by starting from the end of the loop - the reward - and work your way backwards. For example, the reward (your motivation) for working out may be to become more attractive. From there, you may decide that going to the gym would help you lose weight, gain muscle and become more attractive, so that would be your routine. And the last part would be to figure out a cue, something that would trigger the routine. This works best as something that will remind you of the reward, such as looking at pictures of hot women. After you engineer the habit, you can also engineer your life around each component. For example, you can put up posters of hot women on your bedroom wall so that even if you come home tired, the pictures would remind you of your motivation and trigger the gym routine of "put on clothes, go to the gym, work out." You can choose to live within a few blocks of said gym (or build a home gym) so that executing the routine after it is triggered by the cue is as easy as possible. Basically the formula for making sure you continue the habit is: maximize cues + minimize the effort for the routine = maximize rewards. (Side note: this also works the other way around. If you're trying to quit smoking, keeping your cigarettes as far away as possible, such as on one of the top shelves in the kitchen, helps quite a bit.) The part that takes willpower is executing the routine. That's why willpower is so important, especially at the beginning. The further away you live from the gym, the more willpower it will require to actually go. In contrast, the stronger your motivation, the less willpower the routine will take to execute. Of course, there's quite a bit more to be said about the topic. But that's the psychological aspect of it.
- elliott34 13y ago
  What is the name of that book that goes into this? If so do you know if any of them are worth reading? Power of habit or somesuch? Thank you.
kephra 13y ago
> Maybe that’s why 85-90 percent of participants regain their original weight, Weight is party fixed by epigenetic by end of puberty. It depends on how you mother did eat before and when she was pregnant (e.g. Dutch hunter winter children), and how you diet was when you was young. The highest likelyhood of being fat is if you are from a foreign family that lived healthy but on low calories, and moved to a country where lots of cheap fast food is available. Women have a good chance to change weight everytime they are pregnant, and at the menopause. Unfortunately most women will gain weight at that point. Men do not have those easy opportunities at times of hormonal changes. So if one loses weight by hunger, the body will bounce back to its epigenetic fixed weight again, once you stop being hungry. So lets accept weight, and focus on fitness for fun itself. Imho, the best sport for fat people is sailing. Every crew needs fat sailors as self loading ballast at the rail. Sailing is sport that is fun, even for the heavy weight.Its a sport that does not give you the painful feeling of being a loser, but its fun to be an important member of a crew. You think you just sit there, and move your ass once every tack or jibe, but in fact you move all the time constantly balancing against the rolling of the boat. You burn a lot of calories that way. You get a positive feedback, and time by time you become fit, even if you only lose a few pounds fat and gain a few pounds muscles. I do not have a overweight problem myself, even vice versa. I'm 5'10"/178cm with 120lbs/54kg in summer, and 128lbs/58kg in winter. But I have a neighbor, who did lose 15kg/30lbs just by sailing, and by getting in a positive fitness loop. She moves more now, e.g. shopping by walking instead of shopping by car, as she is able to move without burden. She still weights 30kg/60lbs more then me, but thats ok. She is fit, even if she is still a bit round, because the rounds are now at the right places. She does no longer look like an ugly fat women mid 40s, but like a chubby smiling woman who is happy with her body. PS: You do not need to own a boat to become a sailor. Most boat owners are searching for crew. Owning a boat is an other can of worms, its a commitment to maintenance and club work.
xiaoma 13y ago
And yet there's research just last year from Duke that shows that cardio is the most effective tool for weight loss. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-aet121212.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-aet12121... More important (to me if not the author) is overall health benefits. I don't really tend to conflate bodybuilding types of aesthetics with health. I don't want terrible athletic performance, but athletic performance is pretty far down my list of priorities. Also, I think it's very unlikely that the ideal dietary and exercise regimen for bodybuilding is identical to the ideal regimen for longevity or feeling healthy.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  The current best diet for longevity is severe calorie restriction. I'd rather be strong and weak later than weaker, longer.
- rdouble 13y ago
  Bodybuilders were traditionally very healthy. They are basically responsible for "health food," gyms and diet and exercise awareness in general.

33 points by jlees 13y ago

If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact.

zrail 13y ago
This is a hard problem, as the article states. One of the biggest problems is that the "maintenance" level is a) extremely difficult to pin down on a good day, b) is different for everyone, and c) it moves every day. Let alone people who have other confounding medical issues like hypo- or hyper-thyroidism, diabetes, etc. Throw all that in and yes, the biological fact of "eat less move more" is true, it's also almost completely worthless for a very large percentage of the population.
- schtev 13y ago
  What I did was stop eating until I'm full, and start eating just enough to feel not hungry. Found it to be a pretty good rough guideline. Never bothered counting calories or anything like that. Nice thing about this method (I figure) is that it solves the problem of not knowing quantitatively where that maintenance level lies on any given day.
- 300bps 13y ago
  I am 41 years old. I have been thin my entire life. I don't try to "pin down" my "maintenance level" and frankly don't even know what would be involved in that. When I am doing more physical work, I make sure I eat a bit more. When I am doing less physical work, I make sure I eat a bit less. It's not easy but it's really not as difficult as you are trying to make it seem. Further, I don't believe that people with legitimately diagnosed medical conditions make up a significant portion of the overweight population.
  - zrail 13y ago
    > I have been thin my entire life I'm happy for you. People have different metabolisms, and there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem. Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all.
    - 300bps 13y ago
      People have different metabolisms That's your belief. there wouldn't be an entire multi billion dollar industry and worldwide government initiatives to help people if there wasn't a legitimate problem That's your belief. Your beliefs don't enter into the equation. At all. Allow me to turn this one right back around to you. You have a series of old wives tales that you believe and then tell people that their beliefs don't matter. I'm frankly surprised you didn't yank out the "I'm big boned" defense which has been as disproven as a person's intrinsically "faster metabolism". The funny thing is that I'm usually lectured about how to be thin by people that have struggled with their weight their entire life. These people have had years and years of being overweight, have no idea how to truly eat and their weight has see-sawed their entire life. All the while, I have maintained the same thin weight. For 41 years. But they insist on how wrong I am and how right they are.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        >That's your belief. Really? Resorting to "Well that's just your opinion, man" on HN? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/25/5-metabolism-myths-debunked.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/25/5-metabolis...
        300bps 13y ago
        Really? Responding to a thread that you apparently didn't read. It was the person I was responding to that started the "your beliefs don't mean anything" point. And I demonstrated how silly it was to him which led you to accuse me of doing it. Oh and your link even agreed with me so you're apparently batting a thousand here.
- dbrunsek 13y ago
  Sorry but your perception of laws of thermodynamics is wrong. No one needs to eat the same amount of calories every day - your metabolism does not simply reset at midnight. It's a difference in energy consumption vs. expenditure that builds in a longer period of time that affects energy balance (positive or negative) and finally your weight change. Eating less doesn't interfere with having diabetes or hypothyroidism. And 90% of people don't have these conditions.
  - zrail 13y ago
    joe_the_user above states it much better than I can. The body is not a static science experiment in a lab. For people who's bodies don't naturally regulate themselves properly, the body is an active agent that is fighting tooth and nail against what the person knows to be best. For someone who's body is physiologically normal I'm sure it's really difficult to conceive this situation
300bps 13y ago
On the one hand, you have people who are not trying to sell you anything telling you the simple (but difficult) truth: Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight. On the other hand you have people who are trying to sell you something tell you all manner of complicated ways of losing weight that basically amount to being what overweight people want to hear. In this case, you have a company called Fitocracy telling you: Willpower will not bring you success. It's a great statement that absolves overweight people of much of their responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. Fitocracy should sell well with this technique.
- rdouble 13y ago
  The article is not the obesity apologetic you'd expect from the title. He's arguing that creating a positive feedback loop is a more powerful motivational tool than willpower. It doesn't seem like you read the article.
- bchjam 13y ago
  If it said 'willpower alone ...' I might have disagreed with you, there was definitely a bit of a tone of selling something in the midst of condemning Biggest Loser. In spite of that, it's true that willpower is a limited resource and if you push too hard you'll burn out (just like with programming but exercise gives you more immediate physical pain and high risk of injury from overuse)
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Article is more like: Willpower is a finite resource and you need some sort of motivation to keep going in a fitness regime.
- jc4p 13y ago
  I promised myself I wouldn't read the hacker news comments on this because HN comments are always a cesspool of people trying to prove they're smarter than the author of the post, but I just have to respond to this one. It's very clear that you didn't read the article. Dick, the author, is my best friend and comparing him to a fat apologist is the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. He's a fat-kid-turned-competitive-bodybuilder and has helped a very large amount of people lose a lot of weight by cutting out the crap diets and mentality that try to confuse people into eating less than their TDEE every week. Dick's simplified diets for me and explained to me that fucking up every once in a while is ok, and I went from failing Atkins 2 times to losing 65lb in 8 months, and as I'm writing this I'm currently eating ice cream and waffles. I understand that the fitness industry has a lot of negative stereotypes around it, for good reason, but please dear god read the article before you try to convince yourself that this person is just like the rest.
bchjam 13y ago
the article seems a bit muddled in what it's complaining about but I think the main point is that taking it easy and setting small, realistic goals works better in the long term than trying to make yourself bleed in every workout because it's more sustainable. 15 pounds in 2 months is within healthy limits but this seems more directed at people who try to go from the couch to full bore exercise & diet maniacs overnight, or people who make money from sensationalizing that kind of behavior.
- schtev 13y ago
  Yeah, that sort of mentality is awful. Extreme exercise just isn't sustainable. People who are really overweight need to accept that it may take a few years to reach their goals.
norswap 13y ago
Yes, but what the article really criticizes is you'll do that by willpower only (I was also very confused by the title and introduction of the article). I have myself lost 10kg in the last year, albeit that was not especially my prime objective. I can clearly see that if it was all pain and no fun, I wouldn't have done it - I wasn't even overweight, but clearly a bit out of shape. Mostly exercising made me feel really good about myself. As did eating less, especially when you start not to get hungry as much anymore. I still love to eat, but I try to be more mindful of my eating.
joe_the_user 13y ago
If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact. Since when is psychology not part of biology? Certainly, if you eat enough less and move enough more, you'll lose weight. I'm pretty sure there's a minimum threshold to this. The problem with this is "eat less and move more" is just physics and not really a complete picture of your physiology. That is - you can be impelled somehow to eat less and move and if you go over threshold, you will lose weight. The problem is you may not reach a state which your body's internal calibration systems consider normal and thus you will wind-up gaining the weight back when the forces impelling you to eat less and move more go away. There's more to a craving for food than "psychology". This is where the difficult biology of weight stands, as I understand it. And personally, I'm always underweight no matter my food consumption so it's not hard to imagine other in the opposite situation. Each person's physiological system is different so a thousand antidotes don't prove a generality although they can certainly show the exceptions to the supposed "rule".
- dicktalens 13y ago
  This is the absolute exact response that I would have given. I think I'm in love with you, joe_the_user. ;)
itsybitsycoder 13y ago
I've lost 30lb in four months without eating less or moving more. The biological reality is a lot more complicated than the "calories in/calories out" people insist it is. How accurately are you really measuring your calories out, and how your diet and exercise impacts that? Or how the composition and combination and timing of the foods you eat impacts your digestion (calories in)? If calorie restriction works for you, that's great. The times I've tried it, I was constantly tired, hungry, and cranky, and the results were really mediocre, no matter if I cut a little or a lot, or exercised a little or a lot alongside the diet. Plus, if you actually care about whether people are healthy or not, the psychological factors are hugely relevant. All the "calories in/calories out" mantra seems to do is give people a soapbox to talk about how they're just intrinsically superior to fat people.
- dbrunsek 13y ago
  "I've lost 30lb in four months without eating less or moving more." - That's not impossible. However you've probably used drugs affecting your metabolism to increase your expenditure. "How accurately are you really measuring your calories out, and how your diet and exercise impacts that?" - Why would measuring anything affect how physiology and physics work? (And yes, energy expenditure and consumption can be measured extremely precisely in labs.) "Or how the composition and combination and timing of the foods you eat impacts your digestion (calories in)?" - In healthy people it doesn't. I'm sorry to tell you but you were eating less than you we're burning. I know it hurts.
  - itsybitsycoder 13y ago
    No drugs. I just stopped eating certain types of foods, and started eating more of other types of foods. For a couple weeks I added up my calories consumed for kicks, and I'm eating just as much, calorie-wise, as when I was gaining weight, and some days more. Haven't changed my exercise. No real health problems either, so unless you want to make a circular argument, where you claim I'm unhealthy because the composition of my diet affects my metabolism, you are just wrong.
    - 13y ago
bzudo 13y ago
I've noticed a lot of people disagree with this idea. I lost about 25 pounds over one and a half years counting my calories. I used an app called Lose It! and set it up so I would lose half a pound a week. During that time I worked out on an elliptical machine three times a week for 30 mins. Later on I lifted weights every other day for 30 mins. I was probably in the best shape of my life after I lost the weight. It wasn't easy counting calories, it takes time to do it, and it can be frustrating, especially when you're hungry. I found it was also hard, at first, to turn down food. About a six months into the program though, I started to realize just how many calories were in certain foods. I would think to myself, are those calories really worth the taste? Most of the time, the answer was no. Although, with beer, it was usually yes. Perhaps it doesn't work for everyone, but has it ever caused someone to gain more weight? Not just a few pounds, but tens of pounds? I get the sense that the people who don't like the idea of "move more/eat less" don't want to deal with the hassle of counting calories and working out.

lawn 13y ago

In general there are three things you need to balance if you want to get fit, loose weight or get good at a sport or similar: eating, resting and training. Most make the mistake and think that the training is the most important thing, but it's really not. You cannot eat bad and train good and think that it will balance itself out, you really are what you eat. Something I'm really annoyed at in today's society is the focus on calories. Sure calories are all which matter... If all you want to do is warm water. But then you're ignoring the effect on your hunger and your hormones which can lead to yo-yo dieting. In theory it can work, if you can live with constantly being hungry. But in a war against hunger, you're bound to loose. Aim for quality, not quantity, and let your built in weight control device - the hunger - take care of the rest. After that you can focus on your training regime. Here again I totally agree with the article. Training should be fun and rewarding and if you can manage get a good feedback loop you're golden.

dbrunsek 13y ago
Can you define what "eating bad" means?
- lawn 13y ago
  Nothing precise really, but I would say a lot of sugar (candy and soda) would be bad. Vegetables would be good. Avoiding fast foods and sugar will go a long way I'd say. But other than that I'm really not sure, there are a lot of different (often conflicting) ideas of what is "good" and what is "bad". Fat is bad vs Fat is good. Calories matter, the rest don't vs Calories are different. etc.
- hanley 13y ago
  Eating a varied diet of real whole foods and staying away from processed, packaged food is the general consensus for a "good" diet.
  - dbrunsek 13y ago
    General consensuses are not always right.

dkarl 13y ago

Urgh. People argue these issues over and over and shave points so finely that I don't see the point any more. Who cares if, by some interpretation of the words, you can make the claim that "cardio alone is ineffective for weight loss?" Some people take up running and lose weight. There are a thousand different ways to approach fitness, and apparently the important thing is not to present an original or enlightening perspective but to shit all over other people's perspectives, to call them "stupid," "dogma," "myths," and "big fat lies" that "prevent you from creating a healthy lifestyle." Creating a feedback loop in which results motivate continued effort is one idea that has been around for decades and works for a lot of people. So is going for a run every morning. So is being "hard core," for that matter. For some people, the idea of being "hard core" is an exciting one that gets them out of bed early in the morning and helps them say no to excess food. If these ideas work for people, then they can be valuable, positive ideas, right? Wouldn't you want to make sure that people gave them serious consideration in case they were, for them, effective ideas? Why would you steer people away from alternative ideas by presenting them in the most negative possible light, in narrow, off-putting formulations? Oh, right, because this isn't fitness advice. It's marketing for a company selling a fitness product.

dicktalens 13y ago
Someone missed the point of the article.
- newsit 13y ago
  Someone missed the point of the comment
joe_the_user 13y ago
Yes, The funny thing is, "find the approach that works for you" seems like it should be as good as anything for someone marketing a gym or even a family of products. I think the biggest dynamic is that when individuals do find the approach that works for them, another thing that often "works for them" is telling everyone else that what they do is the very best. More weirdly, consumers feel attracted to systems that forward a dogmatic certainty that they are right and such systems produce a group of believers who will also sell the system. Ah, I can't see an easy way out.

egypturnash 13y ago

If you can find something that burns calories that you enjoy and keep doing, the weight just kinda melts off. A couple years ago I got into burlesque dance; two hours of class every week got me into amazing shape. That's stopped for various reasons, and my weight's slowly crept up. I haven't found anything that I delight in doing the same way, so I'm out of shape. I've been fighting it but it's an uphill climb. I mean, yeah, to a large degree it WAS "eat less, move more" - but I wasn't thinking of it in terms of losing weight or getting fit. I was thinking of it in terms of "learning to move in frighteningly sexy ways".

enraged_camel 13y ago

I, too, am obsessed with fitness. In my experience, most people can't lose weight because they don't know how habits work and cannot use that knowledge to form the right ones. Every habit consists of three components: cue, routine, reward. Something triggers the behavior, you perform the behavior, and you reap some reward. Rinse, repeat. For example, a lot of people eat food - especially sweet food - to deal with stress. The cue that triggers the behavior is stress, the behavior itself is eating food, and the reward is the taste of that food. Repeating this enough times causes the person to get fat. Knowing this, it is also possible to engineer new habits. The way you do this is by starting from the end of the loop - the reward - and work your way backwards. For example, the reward (your motivation) for working out may be to become more attractive. From there, you may decide that going to the gym would help you lose weight, gain muscle and become more attractive, so that would be your routine. And the last part would be to figure out a cue, something that would trigger the routine. This works best as something that will remind you of the reward, such as looking at pictures of hot women. After you engineer the habit, you can also engineer your life around each component. For example, you can put up posters of hot women on your bedroom wall so that even if you come home tired, the pictures would remind you of your motivation and trigger the gym routine of "put on clothes, go to the gym, work out." You can choose to live within a few blocks of said gym (or build a home gym) so that executing the routine after it is triggered by the cue is as easy as possible. Basically the formula for making sure you continue the habit is: maximize cues + minimize the effort for the routine = maximize rewards. (Side note: this also works the other way around. If you're trying to quit smoking, keeping your cigarettes as far away as possible, such as on one of the top shelves in the kitchen, helps quite a bit.) The part that takes willpower is executing the routine. That's why willpower is so important, especially at the beginning. The further away you live from the gym, the more willpower it will require to actually go. In contrast, the stronger your motivation, the less willpower the routine will take to execute. Of course, there's quite a bit more to be said about the topic. But that's the psychological aspect of it.

elliott34 13y ago
What is the name of that book that goes into this? If so do you know if any of them are worth reading? Power of habit or somesuch? Thank you.

kephra 13y ago

> Maybe that’s why 85-90 percent of participants regain their original weight, Weight is party fixed by epigenetic by end of puberty. It depends on how you mother did eat before and when she was pregnant (e.g. Dutch hunter winter children), and how you diet was when you was young. The highest likelyhood of being fat is if you are from a foreign family that lived healthy but on low calories, and moved to a country where lots of cheap fast food is available. Women have a good chance to change weight everytime they are pregnant, and at the menopause. Unfortunately most women will gain weight at that point. Men do not have those easy opportunities at times of hormonal changes. So if one loses weight by hunger, the body will bounce back to its epigenetic fixed weight again, once you stop being hungry. So lets accept weight, and focus on fitness for fun itself. Imho, the best sport for fat people is sailing. Every crew needs fat sailors as self loading ballast at the rail. Sailing is sport that is fun, even for the heavy weight.Its a sport that does not give you the painful feeling of being a loser, but its fun to be an important member of a crew. You think you just sit there, and move your ass once every tack or jibe, but in fact you move all the time constantly balancing against the rolling of the boat. You burn a lot of calories that way. You get a positive feedback, and time by time you become fit, even if you only lose a few pounds fat and gain a few pounds muscles. I do not have a overweight problem myself, even vice versa. I'm 5'10"/178cm with 120lbs/54kg in summer, and 128lbs/58kg in winter. But I have a neighbor, who did lose 15kg/30lbs just by sailing, and by getting in a positive fitness loop. She moves more now, e.g. shopping by walking instead of shopping by car, as she is able to move without burden. She still weights 30kg/60lbs more then me, but thats ok. She is fit, even if she is still a bit round, because the rounds are now at the right places. She does no longer look like an ugly fat women mid 40s, but like a chubby smiling woman who is happy with her body. PS: You do not need to own a boat to become a sailor. Most boat owners are searching for crew. Owning a boat is an other can of worms, its a commitment to maintenance and club work.

xiaoma 13y ago

And yet there's research just last year from Duke that shows that cardio is the most effective tool for weight loss. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-aet121212.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-aet12121... More important (to me if not the author) is overall health benefits. I don't really tend to conflate bodybuilding types of aesthetics with health. I don't want terrible athletic performance, but athletic performance is pretty far down my list of priorities. Also, I think it's very unlikely that the ideal dietary and exercise regimen for bodybuilding is identical to the ideal regimen for longevity or feeling healthy.

jacques_chester 13y ago
The current best diet for longevity is severe calorie restriction. I'd rather be strong and weak later than weaker, longer.
rdouble 13y ago
Bodybuilders were traditionally very healthy. They are basically responsible for "health food," gyms and diet and exercise awareness in general.