That's the bit that OP and the writer, if they're different people, miss. Fat acceptance is basically a position that we fatties have been forced into. If every skinny person learned to mind their own business, it wouldn't exist.
The problem is not that we aren't listening to our doctors - the problem is that people like OP exist who self-appoint themselves as our doctors and start preaching. And that word was chosen carefully, because it's exactly the same bullshit.
So much this. I can't tell you how sick I am of getting some dumb, poorly thought out health/diet advice from a skinny person who never had to lose a lot of weight.
Losing weight is actually really easy. Eat less calories than you burn, and be motivated. My first serious attempt I managed to lose almost 30kg. Sticking with it and keeping it low is really hard. Because every kilo you gain back makes you that much less motivated.
But if you're not motivated, no amount of fascile health advice is going to help. Motivation must come from within. And it can be hard to maintain.
The only diet advice I have from my experience: make a diet you like. If you hate the diet, it will never work. Dieting doesn't have to suck.
> Losing weight is actually really easy. Eat less calories than you burn, and be motivated.
I've often heard fitness instructors often phrase this as "weight loss is simple, but not easy" precisely because it's hard to sustain CICO discipline over a reasonable period of time.
I'd put it in another way: losing weight is simple, but it's not easy!
As I understand, you just need to consume fewer calories, less sugar and do more exercise. But there's cravings. It's harder to get healthy food at restaurants and cafes. It's harder to cook healthy and tasty food - no one wants to eat miserable food for months, many doctor and nutritionists will just tell patients to eat bland food day after day, like people are robots without souls.
I've heard the same thing about the C programming language: it's a small simple language, but programming with it is hard!
You're absolutely right, and this is essentially what I meant.
But dieting doesn't have to suck at all. You can diet on food you enjoy no problem.
They key for me was to design a diet to my liking as opposed to one that sucked all the enjoyment out of food. Here are some of the ways I accomplished this:
0. My BMR is about 2000 for reference. I used myfitnesspal w a kitchen scale to count calories and a fitbit(charge 4) to estimate my metabolic rate. I weighed in daily, not weekly, and then went by the weekly average to see progress. I found that weight could often fluctuate by as much as a kg daily due to variables like bowel movements, hydration and imprecision of the scale. Weighing in daily helped control for that.
1. Dinner is sacred. It should be filling and tasty. One of the dinners I made the most was chicken breast with brown rice and a variety of delicious sauces. I managed to make a recipe that included 1 chicken breast sliced up, brown rice and creme fraiche and butter added to the sauce, often with lots of mushrooms, at about 1000kcal pr meal. That's pretty much a full-blown dinner with a very high protein content. And absolutely delicious.
2. To make room for dinner, my breakfast and lunch were quite spartan, about 2-300 calories each. And I would eat maybe 200 calories of nuts or something before bed, because it helped me sleep better. In total that leaves a total daily consumption of 1800kcal. This provides a buffer of 200 calories to my base metabolic rate. That's enough that any added physical activity is always a bonus. But I could sit on my ass all day and still break even at worst. Some days you just don't feel like going outside at all.
3. Insisted on at least 6, ideally 8 hrs of sleep every night. Took whatever steps necessary to make that happen without medication that worsen sleep quality. One thing that really helped here was to take a short walk after dinner. This prevented me from my natural dinner nap which made sleeping at night much easier. Adequate sleep is crucial for losing weight.
4. Incorporate a cheat day at most once a week, at least once a month, making sure it coincided with a lot of activity. So if I got a dinner invite, I would find some way to be really active that day. Maybe I'd walk most of the way to/from the restaurant, or get to public transport by taking a a forest trail in rough terrain. And then I would eat whatever the hell I wanted to that day, as long as I'm not straight up gluttonous about it. This meant in practice that it was pretty hard for me to actually eat more than I burned, because I still ate tiny meals before dinner.
5. Walk whenever possible. Find little ways to walk a bit more, walk one bus stop further than you need to. If you're overweight, just walking can burn a surprising amount of calories.
6. I never set foot in a gym, went jogging or any other "tryhard" forms of exercise. I just took enjoyable walks. More than adequate exercise for weight loss for me anyway.
With this set up I lost 0.5-1kg every week all the while enjoying my diet every day, and regularly allowing some guilty pleasures. And I never did or ate something I hated.
The reason I eventually failed was the bane of my existence: my ADHD, and winter depression. I was doing well with all this taking medication, which enabled me to have all these routines at all. But then the usual depressive episode happened and things got so bad I stopped taking medication, all routines ceased to exist and weight came back. I'm ramping up for another go, with a new plan. In the winter I will attempt to maintain weight, not lose it. This should be significantly easier. And I'm taking more steps to avoid another winter depression but that's a whole other rabbit hole.
> I never set foot in a gym, went jogging or any other "tryhard" forms of exercise.
I had to look up that word: A person usually of little talent who tries hard to succeed, especially through imitation, usually to gain fame or popularity.
A big part of habit change is also changing identity, how you see yourself. In that sense it might be worth investigating your aversion to people that exercise. Many forms of exercise can become quite addictive in themselves. Additionally building some basis of muscle if you have never trained before can increase your base metabolism.
When I say tryhard, I just meant anything that to me is not enjoyable and therefore requires mental effort just to motivate me to do it.
I don't have an aversion to people that exercise. I exercise. Exercise doesn't have to include going to a gym or running. I used to think I just hate all exercise, but I learned that really I just hate synthetic exercise, like gyms and jogging on asphalt. I love spending time in nature, forests, river valleys. It's great exercise. Hell you could go do calisthenics in the woods if you really wanted to. You can do pullups from branches etc.
My point both for dieting and exercise is that the key is to find something you don't hate doing. I resent the implication that hating gyms is some kind of character flaw that needs fixing. If you enjoy the gym, great, go there! If you don't, find something else! I definitely got addicted to walking/bursting/parkouring around a river valley with some death metal in my ears. In the summer I would do it almost every day for half an hour just because I wanted to.
As for growing muscle, this is certainly also important, and initially I tried to incorporate it, but I found that building muscle while also eating a caloric deficit greatly reduced my options in terms of food. I came to the conclusion I had to cut out almost all fat to accomodate the protein and carbs necessary for that. I decided to postpone this until a "stage 2" where I would change my diet to instead maintain weight while gaining muscle and losing fat, but I never got there. Feeling good about next time though because I know what failed last time and what I need to watch out for.
The problem with all this is the word 'diet'. For most people they shouldn't be "dieting". They should be changing their perspective on food and exercise completely, forever.
Otherwise after the "diet", they will go back to their original weight.
Note: I'm using the definition most people think when they hear diet, which is a restriction.
That's literally what my long post was about though. Overly restrictive diets never work. Finding a healthier relationship with food is precisely what I was trying to do, and I would say I succeeded. I just failed to solve the problem which is more unique to me, namely that I completely cease to function as an adult human being for several months at a time almost every year. This has mothing to do with dieting per se and isn't the case for most people.
The problem is not that we aren't listening to our doctors - the problem is that people like OP exist who self-appoint themselves as our doctors and start preaching. And that word was chosen carefully, because it's exactly the same bullshit.