“Enough” is simple to calculate for anyone, using math that we all learned in 3rd grade.
Eat 500 calories less per day than you burn and you will lose about a pound a week, every week until you are at your desired weight.
What is “difficult and extreme” about that?
Your experience does not define everyone’s experience.
Well, they have certainly found a life path that kept or keeps THEM from getting fat. Or even took them from a fat to a non fat life.
Look, I make no significant moral judgement on some random stranger carrying more mass around than is optimum.
OTOH I have a pretty darn good idea of how a fair number folks I interact with on a regular basis approach food and life. IMO, 90 percent, give or take, just aint trying (or trying smartly), don’t really care (aint trying at all), or are just outright lying to themselves. I’d WAG that 10 percent have an ACTUAL medical condition, have a “true food addiction”, or something else “serious”.
If you are that 10 percent? God bless and good luck. If you are that OTHER 90 percent? Be fracking glad you AINT that 10 percent AND quit using them as your excuse for your failure, because personally I find that pretty offensive.
I’ve noticed you in these threads in the past. I have a few questions that I hope you will answer.
How old are you?
How tall are you?
What was your highest weight?
What is your weight now?
How long were you at or relatively near your highest weight?
Assuming you were 100 pounds overweight as an example, for how many years were you at least 50 pounds or more overweight? (I couldn’t figure out how to ask that any other way without creating a really weird sentence.)
Were you significantly overweight or obese as a child?
How many years altogether were you significantly overweight? (say, 50 pounds or more)
How much yo-yoing did you do before you took the weight off for good? Try to be specific, please. For instance, did you lose/regain 50 or 75 pounds three times over five years? Lose/gain 100 pounds 5 times over 10 years? Something like that.
Are your parents obese? Have they ever been? Siblings?
How do you feel about food? Are you a “foodie”? Or do you just enjoy a tasty meal but lack any great passion? Or something in between?
Your honest and complete answers would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.
For most people, Gruntled, life is not an equation. It’s decades of experience of all kinds, and what appears to be an equation when you look at it on paper is an experience when applied to a person’s life.
After thirst, the drive to eat is the most powerful drive we experience. And because we are such complex beings, we have combined that already-intense drive into every aspect of our lives, making it even more intense.
Eating is an enormously powerful, compelling, meaningful and deeply visceral aspect of our lives in every conceivable way: physical, social, psychological, emotional, cultural, spiritual.
The fact that this reality escapes you explains why you are so confused about this subject. Some lucky/unlucky souls experience food in the way other animals do: fuel. But among human beings, this is very rare. And I say lucky because being so “meh” about food means you’re probably never going to be fat, but it also means you miss a great deal of pleasure, too.
I find this very strange. How in the world can someone else’s struggle with obesity and what they say-believe-claim-experience ever offend you? How did other people’s struggle become about you at all?
YOU dont find it offensive when someone with a weak assed excuse tries to co-opt someone else’s REAL excuse to excuse their behavior?
Seriously?
Obviously whats weak assed and whats real are debatable, but honestly, you can’t even see the general principle involved here?
Mom…I HATE walking to school every morning…its SOOO hard.
Listen you little brat, Bobby next door has no legs. And he manages.
Man, I CANNOT lose weight (cause I like me some buffets baby)
Man, I CANNOT lose weight because my parents were obese, they trained me badly, I was obese by the time I was in middle school, and I literally have an orgasm every time I take a bite.
IMO if you can’t even see the difference in those you are already about 5 turtles down.
Oh, and on top of the big picture, for the record: the above is false.
But that’s a big argument I’m not going to have. The science is everywhere if you want to look.
So let me be clear: yes, reduce intake enough and you will at some point use fat for fuel and become smaller. But what the reduction is for you vs. me vs. billfish vs. everyone else is different not only in terms of how we experience it, it’s different in actual terms of what calorie deficit will produce what result.
But I’m not going to engage in any debates on the subject of the science of obesity with anyone who rejects any scientific studies that take place outside of a test tube, which is the only place that the perfect caloric consistency and predictability you have such faith in occurs.
Except…that it’s not false at all. It’s a proven fact.
Well, to begin with, I don’t imagine that I have a perfect and complete understanding of anyone else’s behavior and experience, so I don’t imagine that I’m in any way qualified to make the call one way or another.
Secondly, I don’t find myself quizzing others about how they got so fat and why they aren’t thinner. Do you? Because if you are basing your assessment on casual conversations about diets and observing some eating, then I refer you to my first point, I think you might want to consider it.
What “general principle” is involved in someone else’s personal struggle with their weight? How is that about you? Why do you have the slightest interest, never mind sufficient investment to muster up being offended about it?
If this was supposed to shed light for me, I’m afraid it doesn’t. I’m not offended by Bobby’s desire for a ride, even if it’s me he’s trying to get it from. Maybe he really hates walking, he’s entitled. The fact that the kid next door is an amputee has nothing to do with Bobby’s right to his own feelings and experience, which he’ll figure out for himself. It really has nothing to do with me, certainly not enough to arouse any feelings of offense or anger at him. Hell, maybe Bobby’s got undiagnosed arthritis and his pain is entirely legitimate, who am I to decide what’s true for Bobby?
It’s really rare, almost entirely unknown, for anyone to claim that they are physically immune to burning fat for fuel in the absence of nutrition from any other source. I’ve never heard the claim made in my lifetime, so I confess I’m skeptical that you’ve encountered it so often you’e offended by it.
In fact, pretty much every fat person I’ve ever known will tell you they can lose weight and they have. The trick is keeping it off, and that’s a horse of a very, very different color. (Particularly for people who have struggled with obesity and done a lot of dieting.) And good ol’ pesky science has now come around to the idea that from a purely health perspective, being chubby, even kinda fat, is probably healthier for you in the long run that losing and gaining it back repeatedly which is very stressful on the body.
So to sum up:
I don’t think we really have sufficient information to decide what someone else’s reality is, in any respect. Whether Bobby has arthritis or he just hates walking, we very rarely have enough information to be certain that we know the underlying reality.
Even if Bobby just hates the hell out of walking, it’s his life, his experience, and his burden. There’s just nothing there I can find to be offended about and I don’t see where anyone else would be either.
Great. Show me.
Then I’ll show you the science proving otherwise, but you have to go first since it’s your assertion.
Your post number 124 coulda fooled me.
Nothing, provided you don’t have a medical problem. But there’s always some ‘expert’ who claims only 10 percent of the population have a legitimate medical problem, and I call bullshit on that. I’d bet the percentage is a lot higher.
There are a lot of medications that cause weight gain, and a lot of medical conditions that lead to weight gain. Having experienced ‘unexplained’ weight gain and been shined on by medical professionals for years before the cause was actually discovered, I know firsthand how frustrating it can be.
I’ve also been both thin and fat, and people are truly shitty when you’re fat.
When people are willing to die on an operating table to get surgery for weight loss because they’ve failed using every other method, you’d better believe they don’t enjoy being fat. That’s pretty fucked up.
Isn’t it true that at the quantum level, supermassive black holes warp what we know as the physical laws of the universe? Although if you were that large, the last thing you’d be worried about was dieting! 
We await your cite.
One more time …
How do you figure out the what you burn side?
Are you assuming that the on-line BMR calculators are correct and correct in a static fashion? I’ve already documented that such is NOT the case. As an obese individual loses weight his/her body responds. It does not only lower its BMR in response to less mass, the muscles themselves, at the level of the muscle enzymes, become more efficient at rest. Ghrelin increases which cuts down metabolism as well and helps prevent breakdown of fat cells, while increasing the sensation of hunger.
So the amount that you burn is a moving target that often lowers quite dramatically as weight loss progresses. Meanwhile the drive to eat has been increased by ghrelin as well. Cortisol elevates which further contributes to a greater sense of hunger.
There are many in this thread who “know” that the obese, or excuse me, the “fatties”, are just weak or lazy or gluttons or stupid or making excuses or liars or whatever. They know that a fattie is just making a weak-assed excuse which insults others, certainly is a personal offense to them, or that 90% just aint tryin or lie or whatever. Some of the rest us appreciate the fact that we know very little about obesity but at least we understand that it is much more complex than the simplistic insults that some who, by their admission, feel like shit if they overeat, but who feel so righteous in the lecturing the gospel of why they are so great and their berating of those whose bodies are a bit different.
This is GQ. The GQ answer to the op is long answered. The ad’s claims were not outrageous; they were, if anything, understated. The science that shows that there are strong genetic predispositions to obesity, more key to the development of obesity than are learned behaviors given life in a modern Western society, is also well established. The science that shows that human bodies have compensatory mechanisms that decrease metabolism and increase appetite as obese individuals lose weight is also well established. And I’d be happy to share in detail the research that shows how prenatal factors that result in Intrauterine Growth Retardation sets up both later obesity and metabolic syndrome, and the research that shows that children who are crossing BMI curves upwards before five are at great future risk of obesity even if their current BMI is still on the lower side.
There is real biologic predisposition to obesity that is both genetic and a consequence of early environmental factors. No, they don’t all have a “medical problem”; they have a biologic predisposition to get fat and to stay that way - probably that trait was beneficial back when a famine was around any particular next corner. Some people have that predisposition; some do not; some have it a little; some have it a lot. That predisposition need not be destiny but to pretend that it does not exist, to take the position that acknowledging its reality is making excuses for “weak assed fatties”, is not only ignorance. It is by this point in this thread willful ignorance. It is hateful. It is inexcusable.
The effort required for an obese adult to become non-obese and stay that way is very significant and the effort is lifelong. It is doable and it is worth it but it is not easy or simple and those who fail are not weak or stupid. For some accepting that they are fat but living life with healthier lifestyle choices - exercising regularly and eating healthy choices and in greater moderation - will be as much as they can accomplish, and will achieve some significant health benefits even without significant weight loss. Those behaviors are a worthwhile achievement all on their own. Even if they don’t shut the ignorant around them who believe that they know what their problem is and feel free to insult them. And those who insist on insulting and bullying the obese disgust me; they are the ones who I take serious offense to.
“The claim was that for 1/3 of severely overweight people, no amount of dieting is ever going to help them.”
Probably worth remembering that this was the original claim and that even then it had nothing to do with ‘thermodynamics’, simply that 1/3 of them will be unable to sustain weight loss regimes in the long term, because of issues like Dseid has quoted.
If theres some agreement that 10% of people in general who are overweight might be medically related, its not really a huge stretch to 1/3 for severely overweight, ie morbidly obese etc given thats a subgroup.
That still leaves 2/3 of those people that people can keep happily keep being morally superior about and an even higher percentage for the lesser weight categories. Everybody wins.
Edit: btw there was a recent study finding calorie counting is extremely inaccurate, which is an additional possible explanation for the lowish success rates of these strategies. Ill track it down.
Here:
Otara
To me, the quote reads that “no” amount of dieting will ever help them-- as in – they could reduce caloric intake (“diet” in the common parlance) forever and not lose weight (note: not try or attempt to reduce intake – it says NO AMOUNT will help them). It doesn’t say anythng about “long term” or “try and fail” or “form good habits” or “have emotional eating issues.” It says “no amount of dieting” – and that’s obviously crap.
After all, bariatric surgery – which the ad in the OP was hyping, works by reducing caloric intake. Clearly there is an amount of dieting that would permit this mythical 1/3 to lose weight – its the amount equivalent to the caloric reduction that occurs with bariatric surgery. If it was true that “no amount of calorie reduction” would cause them to lose weight – bariatric surgery wouldn’t work either.
because perhaps some of us are already at a nutritional minimum as defined by our diabetic nutritionist? If I dropped 500 cal a day it would put me at 1300, and into the starvation preventing the body from metabolizing properly region, and into the what nice healthy veggie portion would you actually like me to cut out? I eat a pretty exacting portion controlled diet as it is. It is literally written down by a trained and certified diabetic nutritionist. Think of it as a prescription. The only thing I have free choice of is 180 cal of anything I want [as she described it, yes I could grab a spoon and eat 180 cal of sugar straight out of the bag if I desired. I tend to use it to grab an extra portion of hummus and carrots, my favorite snack.]
lots of obviously aimed at me but made to look generic stuff from the following post removed.
Yeah…no personal projection there in THAT post there DSeid. Its OBVIOUS to me in your posts that you look for insults where there are none.
I call BS on your claims. Are there some (even a decent fraction) of people with wieght problems eating healthy and in moderate portions? Sure there are.
Is it the majority? Hell fracking no in my personal observations. When I go out to eat most people I see eating are eating more in ONE sitting than I eat all day. And the people with a weight problem are (on average) even WORSE. And healthier? Please. Its not like I am out eating the BBQ pork fat while everyone else is eating salads. On average, my meal is typically AS healthy as theirs and certainly a smaller volume. Yeah, I guess its possible SOME people out there are ONLY eating the meal I see that day. But is that their ONLY meal for the day for most people? I highly doubt it.
And beside all these random strangers I see there are plenty of folks I know much better than that. And those observations don’t really change the apparent distribution much.
Again, if you have some mental drive that forces you to eat too much I’ll buy it. If you have a “real” medical problem, I’'ll buy that too. But are most/all people in that boat? BS IMO.
But large people eating tiny salads all day long and running 20 miles? Double BS.
And IMO thats the real problem. SOOOO many people have, one way or another, convinced themselves that what they eat and how much they do is actually normal and healthy and some other thing is to blame.