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This discussion has shown that, if anything, the only thing we can rely on is that our bodies are incredibly complex. There does not appear, at least to me, an

This discussion has shown that, if anything, the only thing we can rely on is that our bodies are incredibly complex. There does not appear, at least to me, any consistently correct way to do things when diet and exercise are concerned. All of this is why I prefer to just stick with the basics: - Real, unprocessed food - Calories from food, not drinks - Consistently getting up and out of the chair - Sleeping when I'm tired - Waking up when I'm not tired - Exercising regularly I'm happy, healthy, and energetic. I'll let scientists keep working on the hard stuff without stressing too many details.

samolang 12y ago
There may not be a consistently correct way to optimize health, but there is a consistently correct principle when it comes to weight loss. Consumer fewer calories than you burn and you will lose weight (even if those calories come from processed foods: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/).
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  ...unless your body responds to a reduction in caloric intake by burning fewer calories. If you employ a caloric restriction diet, you must do something to keep your metabolism from down-regulating, by whatever means that works for you. Otherwise, you will get stuck at a weight-loss plateau that is probably well above your goal weight, and further restricting calories from there might just worsen your situation. You can't push on a string. Don't consume fewer calories than you burn; burn more calories than you consume. It's a fine hair to split, but be aware that they are not two independently controllable variables.
  - samolang 12y ago
    > If you employ a caloric restriction diet, you must do something to keep your metabolism from down-regulating No you don't. You will always burn calories by simply existing. You can get no exercise and still lose weight simply by cutting calories. Cutting 100 calories from your daily diet may be matched one-to-one with metabolism decreases, but I guarantee that if you cut 1,000 calories from your daily diet you will lose weight.
    - Swizec 12y ago
      If your only goal is losing weight, might as well chop off your legs, lose 50 pounds and be done with it. Hint: nobody's goal is just weight loss.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - samolang 12y ago
        Lowering your BMI from 31 to 24 by cutting fat makes you healthier and increases your expected lifespan (regardless of whether or not you exercise), chopping off your legs does not.
        Swizec 12y ago
        Yes, BY CUTTING FAT. See, your goal is not just to lose weight. Your goal is to lose fat. Your body will burn a hell of a lot of muscle if you just sit still and not eat. And becuase you're burning more muscle than fat, you're even going to lose more weight. Hooray! For added bonus, you can lay in bed all day so that you lose bone density as well. Even more weight loss even faster! So much better BMI. Much healthy and awesome. Point is, nobody's goal is JUST to lose weight.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - rosser 12y ago
      Yeah, because consuming fewer calories than you burn at your basal metabolic rate is totally sustainable.
      - samolang 12y ago
        You don't have to do it forever, you just need to do it until you're happy with your weight. I've personally used this method of weight loss because I find it very difficult to exercise effectively when I'm running on a caloric deficit. I consumed 1,000 - 1,500 calories a day for ~2 months and lost ~20 pounds, then began living life normally again. I found it more sustainable than grinding out weight loss over a much longer period of time by exercising.
  - arrrg 12y ago
    That wasn’t true for me personally. I personally lost weight almost with mechanical precision. About a 7500 calorie deficit resulted indeed in 1 lost kg. That’s with about half the deficit coming from exercise and the other half coming from cutting calories and is using all the bog-standard formulas for roughly estimating my base metabolism. I was astonished by the mechanical precision of those number, really astonished. I didn’t expect that at all. However, this has many moving parts and cheating (mostly by consuming more calories) is ridiculously easy. My guess would be that that’s the effect many people see when they don’t succeed. All of this is really hard and I was lucky to be in an extremely privileged position where I could devote lots of my attention to this task. Not many people are so lucky. Motivation obviously plays a crucial role and I absolutely do believe that it is central to successfully losing weight. The mechanics are simple and do indeed work like clockwork. But that doesn’t mean you can make them work like clockwork for yourself … So, yeah, the body may be astonishingly mechanical when you execute everything perfectly, but motivation is the crucial second parts that allows you to execute everything correctly. And it may well be that to keep motivated it helps to be active or to eat certain thing. (I, for example, know that eating pasta with tomato sauce – formerly my absolute favourite food – will keep me hungry for longer. Meanwhile the same amount of calories from some salad with a vinaigrette and grilled chicken breast will keep me feeling full for longer.)
- tutufan 12y ago
  This principle may be vacuously true, but it's utterly useless. Kind of like noting that drivers should "reduce their relative velocity with respect to nearby massive objects" in order to reduce our country's (ridiculous) level of traffic fatalities. Yeah, that's true. But basically worthless in terms of solving the problem.
debacle 12y ago
I think this is the Fox News response. "Science says one thing, but I have another opinion, so clearly there's no consensus."
- nkohari 12y ago
  They didn't say they disagreed, and in fact there is very little consensus about food science. Even the article says that the process by which the time-restricted diet functions isn't well understood.

samolang 12y ago

There may not be a consistently correct way to optimize health, but there is a consistently correct principle when it comes to weight loss. Consumer fewer calories than you burn and you will lose weight (even if those calories come from processed foods: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/).

logfromblammo 12y ago
...unless your body responds to a reduction in caloric intake by burning fewer calories. If you employ a caloric restriction diet, you must do something to keep your metabolism from down-regulating, by whatever means that works for you. Otherwise, you will get stuck at a weight-loss plateau that is probably well above your goal weight, and further restricting calories from there might just worsen your situation. You can't push on a string. Don't consume fewer calories than you burn; burn more calories than you consume. It's a fine hair to split, but be aware that they are not two independently controllable variables.
- samolang 12y ago
  > If you employ a caloric restriction diet, you must do something to keep your metabolism from down-regulating No you don't. You will always burn calories by simply existing. You can get no exercise and still lose weight simply by cutting calories. Cutting 100 calories from your daily diet may be matched one-to-one with metabolism decreases, but I guarantee that if you cut 1,000 calories from your daily diet you will lose weight.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    If your only goal is losing weight, might as well chop off your legs, lose 50 pounds and be done with it. Hint: nobody's goal is just weight loss.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - samolang 12y ago
      Lowering your BMI from 31 to 24 by cutting fat makes you healthier and increases your expected lifespan (regardless of whether or not you exercise), chopping off your legs does not.
      - Swizec 12y ago
        Yes, BY CUTTING FAT. See, your goal is not just to lose weight. Your goal is to lose fat. Your body will burn a hell of a lot of muscle if you just sit still and not eat. And becuase you're burning more muscle than fat, you're even going to lose more weight. Hooray! For added bonus, you can lay in bed all day so that you lose bone density as well. Even more weight loss even faster! So much better BMI. Much healthy and awesome. Point is, nobody's goal is JUST to lose weight.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - rosser 12y ago
    Yeah, because consuming fewer calories than you burn at your basal metabolic rate is totally sustainable.
    - samolang 12y ago
      You don't have to do it forever, you just need to do it until you're happy with your weight. I've personally used this method of weight loss because I find it very difficult to exercise effectively when I'm running on a caloric deficit. I consumed 1,000 - 1,500 calories a day for ~2 months and lost ~20 pounds, then began living life normally again. I found it more sustainable than grinding out weight loss over a much longer period of time by exercising.
- arrrg 12y ago
  That wasn’t true for me personally. I personally lost weight almost with mechanical precision. About a 7500 calorie deficit resulted indeed in 1 lost kg. That’s with about half the deficit coming from exercise and the other half coming from cutting calories and is using all the bog-standard formulas for roughly estimating my base metabolism. I was astonished by the mechanical precision of those number, really astonished. I didn’t expect that at all. However, this has many moving parts and cheating (mostly by consuming more calories) is ridiculously easy. My guess would be that that’s the effect many people see when they don’t succeed. All of this is really hard and I was lucky to be in an extremely privileged position where I could devote lots of my attention to this task. Not many people are so lucky. Motivation obviously plays a crucial role and I absolutely do believe that it is central to successfully losing weight. The mechanics are simple and do indeed work like clockwork. But that doesn’t mean you can make them work like clockwork for yourself … So, yeah, the body may be astonishingly mechanical when you execute everything perfectly, but motivation is the crucial second parts that allows you to execute everything correctly. And it may well be that to keep motivated it helps to be active or to eat certain thing. (I, for example, know that eating pasta with tomato sauce – formerly my absolute favourite food – will keep me hungry for longer. Meanwhile the same amount of calories from some salad with a vinaigrette and grilled chicken breast will keep me feeling full for longer.)
tutufan 12y ago
This principle may be vacuously true, but it's utterly useless. Kind of like noting that drivers should "reduce their relative velocity with respect to nearby massive objects" in order to reduce our country's (ridiculous) level of traffic fatalities. Yeah, that's true. But basically worthless in terms of solving the problem.

debacle 12y ago

I think this is the Fox News response. "Science says one thing, but I have another opinion, so clearly there's no consensus."

nkohari 12y ago
They didn't say they disagreed, and in fact there is very little consensus about food science. Even the article says that the process by which the time-restricted diet functions isn't well understood.