
Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet - okket
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-weight-on-a-diet.html
======
barrkel
It's almost impossible, in western society, to talk about obesity without
blaming obese people for lacking something: willpower, honesty, something that
makes them individually responsible. This thread is testament to that.

What if weight regulation was as deeply baked into your brain as your sex
drive and changing its mechanism was as hard as abstaining from orgasm? Would
that be easy for you?

I think the overall lack of success from individual attempts at weight control
via diets should tell us something: that we need to find other ways, probably
involving changing neurochemistry.

But I fully expect we'll continue the blame game instead, because to do
otherwise would admit that we are not necessarily in full control of our
actions, and that in turn would threaten our self identities, our egos. It
would admit luck and circumstance as a primary factor in where we end up
rather than effort and agency.

~~~
lqdc13
I think it has a lot more to do with choices than with willpower/honesty.

If you choose to not have desirable food in your household, it is much easier
to eat less. You won't have to strain your willpower or lie to yourself.

If everyone went to the grocery store and bought eggs for breakfast and brown
rice + tuna for dinner with no oil, they would be just fine.

~~~
barrkel
It might work for unemployed people who live alone, yes.

~~~
lqdc13
Or employed people who live with others and want to lose weight.

------
nabla9
>After several months of eating fewer than 800 calories a day and spending an
hour at the gym every morning, I hadn’t lost another ounce.

That's obviously not true. Assuming slow pace gym session and 200 kcal lost,
nobody can keep their weight stable if they spend just 600 kcal per day and
have normal activity.

~~~
lolo_
Are you sure about that? The body is not as simple as you assume, and weird
stuff happens that makes literally no sense based on a simple energy in/energy
out equation that can't only be explained by self-delusion.

It's funny how much weight loss is an ideological issue to usually quite
logical people - don't assume you know this is impossible simply because you
have a model in your head that says so.

EDIT: When I say self-delusion here I am referring to the apparent self-
delusion of the author that the parent implies - to say you are only consuming
800kcal when there is an assumption that that MUST result in weight loss
leaves only self-delusion as an explanation. My point is that there might be
other factors (Emphasis on MIGHT...)

~~~
nabla9
OK, so she has shown us that people cam survive with 800 kcal per day and not
lose weight.

If she can do that, African famines are hoaxes and UN has been fooling us all
this time.

~~~
AlexandrB
> OK, so she has shown us that people cam survive with 800 kcal per day and
> not lose weight.

Only for several months while (probably) leading an otherwise sedentary
lifestyle. Still remarkable, but a far less impossible feat.

------
jasallen
>Diets often do improve cholesterol, blood sugar and other health markers in
the short term, but these gains may result from changes in behavior like
exercising and eating more vegetables

um, "changed in behavior ... eating more vegetables" -aka- "diet". So in other
words "fad and crash diets" don't work. But "improving your diet" does and
always has.

~~~
gcatalfamo
This. As always.

~~~
gcatalfamo
how on earth was this comment worthy of a downvote?

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lqdc13
This makes no sense to me. Quote from the article:

    
    
        "If dieting doesn’t work, what should we do instead? 
        I  recommend mindful eating — paying attention to 
        signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to
        relearn how to eat only as much as the brain’s 
        weight-regulation system commands."
    

From the dictionary:

    
    
        di·et - verb - restrict oneself to small amounts 
                or special kinds of food in order to lose
                weight.
    

So instead of dieting they are suggesting dieting?

What about a huge number of people who did lose weight permanently and
successfully through calorie restriction?

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knocte
Some weeks ago I saw an article that said that doing exercise is basically
useless to lose weight.

Now this article.

There's no solution, then, right?

LOL. What happens is that this article is confusing. At the end it says: "I
recommend mindful eating". That's what basically a diet is. I mean, a
permanent diet, so to speak. I guess what the author is saying is "if you stop
your diet, you will gain weight again", and to that, I reply: thanks Captain
Obvious!

~~~
jonaldomo
The word diet has several definitions. The author is using the verb meaning to
"restrict eating", not the noun "what one eats". It seems silly to overload a
word like that, I think a new one would be more accurate.

------
makosdv
At the end, the article says: "If dieting doesn’t work, what should we do
instead? I recommend mindful eating — paying attention to signals of hunger
and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the
brain’s weight-regulation system commands."

That means changing your diet... i.e., dieting...

------
forgetsusername
Maybe part of the problem is in the thinking that "a diet" is something you do
over the course of a few months to drop weight, as opposed to a necessary,
ongoing lifestyle change?

> _If dieting doesn’t work, what should we do instead? I recommend mindful
> eating_

I predict much pseudo-science coming from this Biggest Loser study...

> _Exercise reduces abdominal fat_

And how does that work? We can now target fat-loss?

> _I finally gave up dieting six years ago_

What does that even mean? You no longer eat? Oh, you mean you went from one
framework of deciding what to eat to a different framework of deciding what to
eat.

~~~
KON_Air
Author surviving without eating or drinking six years piqued my curiosity too.

------
emdowling
This article and the concept it discusses - that we have a "weight set point"
\- seems overly simplistic. Maybe I'm missing something, but weight isn't an
indicator of obesity (or rather, it is a very poor one). Body fat percentage
is a much better suited for this. Is the weight set point theory based on an
overall weight or an amount of body fat?

Personally, I've been working out very regularly for some time but the change
hasn't been in my weight, just in my body fat. Going purely on weight,
"dieting" (eg: eating healthy and eating less) hasn't changed my weight at
all. But I am orders of magnitude fitter and stronger than I was before. These
articles only serve to highlight how little we know about how our bodies
function.

------
brador
It's hard not to lose weight when eating high quality high-nutritient non-
processed food.

Stop with the artificial and high sugar and watch it melt away.

And if you're still drinking soda that alone is -10 years of your life IMO.
Worth it? not for me, but you decide.

------
throwzitaway
I've been experimenting with keto and have lost 12kg over the last 3 months.
Bread was my nemesis - I love(d) the stuff. I read somewhere (sorry, can't
remember) that in the UK in the 1950s, standard doctors' advice to women who
wanted to regain their figures after childbirth was to give up potatoes and
bread. Believe me, pasta and rice hadn't even begun in the 1950s in the UK
(apart from rice pudding!) so keto-lite might have been around for longer than
we think.

------
venomsnake
I want to see the person that won't lose weight while fasting for a week. And
maintain it sucessfully if he fasts one or two days.

------
mcjon77
As someone who has lost a fair amount of weight recently (97 lbs in just under
10 months), I was prepared to argue against this article before even reading
it. However, the method he recommended (mindful eating) is basically what I
used to finally lose weight.

I have been overweight/obese virtually all of my life (my baby fat was
immediately replaced with fat fat). Over the years I have been under the care
of two separate physicians for weight loss and taken 3 different types of
prescription drugs for weight loss (Phentermine, Xenical, and Contrave). The
most that I lost under those physicians and medication was about 30 lbs, which
I promptly gained back PLUS an additional 30 lbs for my trouble.

Once I took a more mindful/intuative eating approach, the weight came off
easily. I follow 4 basic rules that I took from a book called "I Can Make You
Thin" by Paul McKenna (the book also includes some hypnosis stuff, but I don't
use that).

1) When I am hungry I eat. 2) I eat what I want. 3) I eat consciously. 4) When
I am full I stop.

Seems simple enough, but the devil is in the details. For example, regarding
rule 1, I ONLY eat when I am hungry, not when I am bored or stressed. Learning
when I was actually hungry and not just wanting to eat to change my emotions
was HUGE.

Regarding rule 3 (eating consciously), that means no more eating in front of
the TV/Computer, or while reading a book, or even thinking a lot about other
things. I focus on eating and JUST eating. I eat with as few distractions as
possible.

Regarding rule 4, knowing WHEN I was full was a HUGE issue for me. For most of
my life, I ate until I was bloated or nauseous. Now as soon as I am satisfied
or full I stop.

Because of Rules, 1, 3, 4, the results of rules 2 (eat what I want) were
interesting. I still eat what I want, but what I want changed. I have always
loved pizza, but now I am also addicted to spinach, either raw or steamed. I
can honestly say that I eat more spinach in a given month than I had TOTAL in
the 10 year period between 2004-2014. It's nuts. I am absolutely astounded by
how few vegetables that I used to eat before this eating plan.

I don't get hungry and I don't have those cravings that everyone who has been
on a diet knows so well. The key for me was that I wanted to find something
that I KNEW that I could do for the rest of my life, not some diet that I
would just stay on until I reached my goal weight, then revert to my old ways.

------
Longhanks
This while article sounds like a justification for the author not losing
weight.

There's so much information available about losing weight, I doubt all of the
articles are true.

That being said, eating 1500 calories a day and running for 30 minutes twice
or three times a week have helped me lose 40 pounds in 3 months, and after
that, I re-raised the calorie limit to 2000-2500 a day. There's not much
science involved, eat the right stuff and work out.

~~~
lolo_
Ah yes! The sanctimonious blame game. So very common with this problem. I do
have to ask though, did you read the article at all?

'For example, men with severe obesity have only one chance in 1,290 of
reaching the normal weight range within a year; severely obese women have one
chance in 677. A vast majority of those who beat the odds are likely to end up
gaining the weight back over the next five years. In private, even the diet
industry agrees that weight loss is rarely sustained. A report for members of
the industry stated: “In 2002, 231 million Europeans attempted some form of
diet. Of these only 1 percent will achieve permanent weight loss.”'

I'm pretty certain studies generally conclude that people who lose weight are
_overwhelmingly_ likely to regain it. Of course you can play the blame/shame
game with them and say they're all just lazy, but you're really starting to
walk away from the facts and towards the all-too-common ideology that
surrounds weight.

Also:

'After several months of eating fewer than 800 calories a day and spending an
hour at the gym every morning, I hadn’t lost another ounce.'

So the 'not much science involved' calorie balance really REALLY should have
resulted in a loss at this rate, yet it didn't - how do you explain that? I
mean that literally entirely contradicts your claim.

I'm overweight. I take full responsibility for my situation and make no
excuses. But losing weight is surprisingly, intensely difficult and your body
fights you every damn inch of the way and this kind of blaming, sanctimonious
'it's simple' shite you hear so often does NOT fit reality.

Congratulations on your loss, but don't assume you'll sustain it. I lost about
the same amount of weight as you with the same calorie limit as you, and
despite all this will likely try again and have good results at least
initially. But I think longer term you have to think more carefully about how
the hell you'll sustain it, it really _isn't_ simple.

~~~
parfe
>'After several months of eating fewer than 800 calories a day and spending an
hour at the gym every morning, I hadn’t lost another ounce.'

>So the 'not much science involved' calorie balance really REALLY should have
resulted in a loss at this rate, yet it didn't - how do you explain that? I
mean that literally entirely contradicts your claim.

Explanation is simple: The author either lied to herself or she lied to us.
Her diet and workout plan did not violate the laws of physics, so she's wrong.

~~~
bloat
Mass is not the same as energy. If she claimed to be eating 1.5kg of food a
day, and excreting 1.55kg, then your explanation/accusation would hold. But
she didn't - she talked about energy intake and expenditure which is not the
same.

~~~
lqdc13
You would expend more than 800 calories from breathing alone at the weight of
125lb.

The Base Metabolic Rate in the cited paper is still much higher than that even
for people whose metabolism slowed down.

Normally, it's calculated as (9.99 x weight_in_kg) + (6.25 x height_in_cm) –
(4.92 x age) – 161 for women.

So for her (assuming she is 5' tall and late 20's), to remain at normal weight
and not move at all it would have been (9.99 x 56.699) + (6.25 x 152.4) –
(4.92 x 27) – 161 = 1225

This is without any exercise. She must have missed some source of calories.

------
throw94
One of the things I have found quite useful in loosing weight is to eat
slowly. I sometimes observe people's eating habits and in general, obese
people seem to be eating faster (sometimes as much as twice as fast) compared
to average.

~~~
ufukbay
One of the reasons this works is because your body has enough time to feel
sated. At least it works like this for me because if I eat fast I will be able
to eat much more than if I ate slow.

I think it also helps with digesting since you chew longer.

------
vinceguidry
I tried for 3 years to lose weight before I happened on an effective approach.
Body composition change (I hate the term 'losing weight') is one of the
hardest things one could ever try to do, right up there with kicking an
addiction.

Misinformation was the first big hurdle. I would happen on a promising
approach, and then when immediate results were not forthcoming, I'd start
questioning my assumptions. In the process of questioning those assumptions, I
lost all faith in so-called 'expert' opinions and realized that I was
completely on my own.

Instead of looking for someone to give me a plan / approach / strategy, I
researched on Wikipedia exactly how metabolism works. How does food turn into
fat? What causes that fat to break down?

It was here that I had the realization that _what_ you eat can never have more
of an effect on your metabolism than _how much_ you eat. Calories in and out
is the rule, everything else is secondary.

I also realized from the research that there are different goals involved in
improving health / fitness. I also developed a disdain for the term "healthy".
It's entirely too poorly-defined to be a useful term. It's basically a shield
against the possibility of failure. You can't fail in your goals if you don't
have any goals, and "eating healthy" is not a definable goal.

I decided to frame my goals instead in terms of aesthetics. If my looks are
improving, then I am making progress. If not, then I need to go back to the
drawing board.

So I started to look a little more carefully at the aesthetic angle. What
looks good on people? Muscles look good. So does lack of excess body fat. But
with an aesthetics first approach, I realized that losing fat is way way more
important than gaining muscle. I used to deadlift 325 and I still looked fat.

So I needed a diet. But just like "healthy" and "losing weight", "diet" is too
poorly-defined to be really useful, hiding a lot of complexity. People don't
want to have to do their own research and actually understand the problem
domain, so they reach for an intuitive solution rather than apply their
analytical mind. I've looked at and applied several diet approaches over the
years, but realized after I started throwing out 'experts' that there's
something more fundamental about dieting that I was missing.

Are you taking a short-term approach or a long-term one? Which one is better?
The more I reasoned it out, the more I realized that you need both the short
and the long to really be successful. Most people only go one way. They'll
pick a long-term approach and won't test it, or they'll pick a short term
approach that works for awhile, but long-term they just go right back. You
need a plan for losing it, and a plan for keeping it off.

The calories-in-calories-out realization made things a lot easier. What really
made it dead simple was when I started researching diets throughout history. A
lot of people use the "healthy" heuristic to throw out perfectly good dieting
strategies, and especially egregiously, to subconsciously toss out calories-
in-calories out. If you don't get CICO right, you will not lose fat. When I
read that Roman legionnaires mostly ate vegetables and grains, all thoughts of
controlling 'what' I ate left my mind and I focused only on 'how much'.

Finally that leaves habits. Intermittent fasting held the most appeal to me,
that seemed like the most sustainable approach considering my lifestyle and
and history. But how to deal with hunger? Being committed to the goal, having
a simple-enough approach made it really easy to adjust to once-a-day eating. I
simply looked at all the barriers to eating once a day and devised practical
solutions for each of these in turn, giving myself permission to make mistakes
and also to relax, this is a lifestyle change and I'm going to be doing this
_for the rest of my life_.

So I'd structure everything in terms of tweaking knobs. I would get hungry and
so I'd eat a small something, resolving myself to snack less in the future. so
long as the amount of snack foods is decreasing over time then I'm on track.
Eventually I mastered hunger and was able to mostly stop snacking. People
would bring in food and it would make me really hungry, so I'd eat earlier to
pre-empt it. Eventually the smell of food started holding less power over me,
and I'd pick a later meal time, as that afforded me greater social
flexibility.

Long term was all about monitoring and awareness. Once I was happy with how I
looked, I'd stay strict on most of my 'knobs' and just start tweaking one at a
time back up to give me more pleasure. I'd watch myself closely to see how I
felt and looked. I found remarkably easy, and I've been able to dial back
monitoring and transfer more control over my eating back to my subconscious. I
realized that if you're not happy with how you look, you should not listen to
your body, but if you are, then you should, as the body is a selfish two-year
old who is terrified of losing anything and will do anything to you to
maintain the status quo.

Reading this article, I can tell that it means well, but is going to be just
as ineffective as all the other 'expert' advice. It doesn't focus on the right
level and instead perpetuates poorly-defined, 'intuitive' concepts that do
nothing but obscure true effectiveness.

~~~
hackersdiet
Sounds like you rediscovered "The Hacker's Diet"

Summary:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker%27s_Diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker%27s_Diet)

Book: [http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet](http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet)

------
Numberwang
You need to study basic physics.

~~~
lolo_
Do you think this is a civil way to respond to a point? Would you like me to
talk to you like this in real life? How would you feel if I did? Or how might
you expect me to react to you if you spoke to me that way?

I used to hold HN to a higher standard than say YT comments, and I hate to say
it but yeah it's really not what it was.

I'll reply to the actual point to the more civil commenter above.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...says the guy that opened with "self delusion"

~~~
lolo_
again the smart arse comments... How about, instead of lashing out
questioning/attacking what I said in a civil way? Is it so hard? Would you
talk to someone this way in person and expect a good response? This isn't
YouTube.

Anyway, I meant the alleged self-delusion of the author. Maybe I wasn't clear
in how I put it, but I wasn't accusing anybody of it, I was saying that the
implication is the author is self-deluded since she claims 800kcal/day + 1hr
gym and yet didn't lose weight.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sorry, it acted like a trigger phrase. I'll try to take it back a notch in
future.

~~~
lolo_
No problem, I know the feeling :) it can be hard to avoid responding
emotionally if you see something that is aggravating even if it might be a
misinterpretation (as I sincerely think it is here.)

I should not have made the 'smart arsed comments' comment which was rather
ironic also, so sorry for that as I distracted from my point and deservedly
got karma-hammered...

