Being fat is a trap

A lot of people mentioning willpower but not as much attention is given to the fact that everything in our millions of years evolutionary design is biased toward heavy reward for caloric foods, and within the past 100 years we are suddenly in an environment where those cravings can be fulfilled in abundance.

I love Dr Jason Fung. His position is that our current system focuses on calories and not eating all the time, not avoiding processed foods, being insulin insensitive, and eating real food. Here's a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgmFEb0b0TI His hypothesis is that having high levels of insulin is the issue.

People need to remember that being insulin resistant and being overweight are chronic conditions. You won't be able to fix them overnight. Don't focus on decreasing calories, focus on eating real food. The article mentions this too.

One thing that was counterintuitive to me is that most people's bodies produce insulin in response to artificial sugar so there's no real difference between diet coke and coke on your body.

> How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

IMO: because we have always had nowhere near enough food. Agriculture revolution was what, 10,000 years ago? That's a blip.

It's entirely possible in my mind that the same mechanism and behaviors that fuel obesity were actually helpful for almost all of human history. It's just now, like right now, that they're a problem.

And it becomes even more obvious to me when I look at other animals. I look at my cute dog. If I gave him infinite access to food, I have no doubt he'd be dead by the end of the week. Is he stupid? Is he broken? Or was he never intended to be in that situation?

>Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence? How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

There have been fundamental shifts in CI and CO. Food went from fundamentally scarce and requiring effort to fairly abundant, and the effort to acquire keeps going down. Over the course of US history we have gone from farmers to factory workers to desk workers. Each of those transitions has lowered "natural" daily CO, as such each one has brought about weight increases.

>"trying harder" is just akin to insanity?

Yes, try smarter. CI/CO is true but I find it to be bad advice because a) it is damn near impossible to measure, and b) straight forward CI/CO changes can lead to opposite results.

What I find works for me:

Cut CI a little bit, large calorie cuts can slow metabolism. Up CO a little bit, exercise boosts metabolism even when not working out. Anerobic is better at boosting metabolism than aerobic.

Food wise, sugar and salt drive the human appetite. Reducing them will help you not feel as hungry while reducing CI. The other is just get used to eating less. Low food days help reorient to smaller meals feeing right. By "low food day" I mean find something small, low sugar, and salt (personally I use unsalted peanuts) when you feel hungry stop and focus on the feeling and try to determine if it is actual hunger or just habit hunger, if it is "real" hunger then eat a handful of peanuts and wait 15min before you reevaluate. The day after eating less will feel normal.

I don’t want to disagree with you but I have a hard time with preaching that people are not be personally responsible for themselves.

I get your point that genes are important and some are blessed while others are not. But regardless what your genes are, you need to find a way to take care of yourself. You are not entitled to someone else taking responsibility for you and your problems.

Societal norms are the problem. We’ve normalized unhealthy food. Big business has figured hit that if they make processed/refined foods easily accessible, you will buy them. Nobody wins here except shareholders, and only those shareholders in good health who don’t have to compete to get access from doctors who are overbooked with patients who have manifested a chronic illness that is statistically correlated with the aforementioned food.

> The sheer scope of the obesity pandemic should make it clear that we are not the problem, that our volitions are not the problem. Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence? How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation? Certainly so many people shouldn't have to try so hard? Sure, some people succeed, but in world where the overwhelming majority are failing, maybe "trying harder" is just akin to insanity?

At least in the US where the problem is much worse than in the EU, I would say the major driving factor is the lack of cheap healthy foods.

We're starting to get more healthy options in the US but the problem I see again and again is that food is always painted as "trendy" and therefore commands a higher price. I can go into McDonalds and buy fries and a cheeseburger for around ~$5. But if I try to get a healthier option from another place I'm looking at $10-15 for just about anything.

Every time I travel to Europe or Latin America I'm always shocked at how easy it is to find cheap healthy food. I can pop down to a local fast food place and for around $5 get a piece of chicken, beans and rice. This by no means fancy but it's solid healthy food.

I’m thin but I agree with you, I don’t have to think or try to be this way, I just am. I do probably have healthier habits than average. But still, it comes naturally to me. I would feel awful and exhausted if it took willpower all the time just to maintain my weight.

good article, I can (unfortunately) relate. another aspect of the trap is when you have set backs (stress, life events) or get tired (long days, less sleep, emotional events) typically the first recourse is to stop the hardest parts: physical fitness, e.g., you take a car instead of bike/walk, skip sports, alcohol instead of water. it's sometimes a vicious circle, you're tired due to overweight, thus eat more to get energy, making you more overweight.

> Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

I’ve been chubby despite heavy exercise most of my life. It took me at least 30 years to come to what now seems like the dumbest most obvious realization:

Exercise makes me strong. Food makes me fat.

Now I think of them separately, to a first approximation, as the high order bit. To affect change to my strength, I first need to modify my exercise habits, and to affect change to my weight, I fist need to modify my eating habits. Of course I’m not saying you can’t burn calories exercising, but it’s actually been extremely helpful in my weight loss goals to mentally separate exercise from eating. Instead of thinking of exercise as _the_ way to lose weight, I think of diet as the primary tool, and exercise as something that is primarily for strength and activity and only secondarily for weight control.

The reason I’ve been fat despite exercise is, of course, because I naturally compensate for exercise by eating more. For me, I was eating until I feel a certain level of fullness, and that level seems to be slightly too much regardless of how much physical activity I do. Finally realizing that I don’t need to exercise harder, I ‘just’ need to track what I eat, is what finally actually worked. But like the article says, simple is not easy; I air-quoted the ‘just’ in that last sentence because successful food tracking is mentally difficult.

One of the fun side effects of tracking my eating instead of thinking of exercise as the primary weight loss tool is that with respect to food, exercise sort-of reversed it’s function for me, in a way. Instead of thinking of it as my weight loss tool and relying on it to compensate for what I ate, I sometimes use exercise to allow me to eat more when I’m hungry or want a treat. It’s funny, I know I said the same thing two ways, but my mindset changed almost 180 degrees. When I’m in a calorie deficit, I’ve noticed that days I don’t exercise I get more tired and hungry than days I do exercise.

> I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

You’d be surprised just how little you eat. I’m also like that, thinking that I eat shitton and don’t get fat at all while my friends can’t lose 5 kilo. When I’ve started counting, even with all the junk food, I’ve been barely pushing above 1,5k.

>Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

Exercise -- even heavily -- will never compensate a bad diet; that focus we have on exercise as weight control is detrimental.

I doubt it. There is no real evidence for genetics playing a major role here. You are probably underestimating your friends' energy intake. Exercise is great for many reasons but you can't outrun a bad diet. They're probably eating a lot more than you think, especially when you're not around.

The new drugs work; just not for everyone. Some folks won't react well to the drugs. For others, there's no reaction, but they don't affect their cravings.

I have several friends that have had miraculous weight loss, as a result of Ozempic.

>I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day.

>Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.

An often overlooked factor is how much snacking is done. If you eat "all the carbs and fats", but they're contained to a single meal a few times a week, and the portions are reasonable (ie. you're not stuffing yourself every meal), that has far less caloric impact than someone eating "salad" everyday, but loaded with dressing and snacking voraciously on the side.

I had an overweight BMI when I could run a sub 3-hour marathon, I’ve concluded my body just doesn’t match the normal range.

Visceral fats leading to diabetes can be present without someone being visibly overweight.

Similarly people who appear overweight may have low volumes of visceral fat. Health is hard to determine without analysis and testing.

> Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is easier, except that you have to do it forever.

That second part makes it harder. Losing weight was pretty simple for me, but maintaining that low weight was much harder. Someone said that it takes about half a year to form a habit. I maintained lower weight for about a year, then it came back.

> if I were, I do think I'd try a GLP-1 agonist to get my weight down.

Don't they only prescribe these for the morbidly obese? As someone "merely" overweight (BMI ~27) I'd like to try but I don't think I'm fat enough to get a prescription.

Agreed. I lost about 10 kg back to ~60 kg of the teen myself (now I'm 50). It took quite a lot of exercise but that was the easy part. The most difficult part was avoiding eating off hours apart from avoiding alcohol and sugar altogether. Now. Maintenance is surely easier.

On a side note, I keep exercising at least 2-3 hours per week and honestly I feel physically much better than I used to feel in my 30s.

What's working for me now is just deciding what I want to weigh, but I couldn't do that for years. First I had to learn to actually control my eating, like not eating every time I felt like stuffing my face, getting enough sleep so I wasn't constantly fighting urges, and figuring out how much I need to walk to burn off extra calories.

'Just eat less and exercise more' never worked because I needed to learn how to do these smaller skills myself first. Once I learned what it actually takes to eat less and actually exercise more, that simple advice started becoming possible. It's still a work in progress.

Cannabis made me lose 20kg in a short span (~2 months). But the main reason was extreme loss of appetite. I cooked normal and after 40% of a plate I was full.

You do this for a few days and then you start changing your cooking habbits. This was a year ago and I've held the weight since and simply started eating less. My old eating habbits did not make me gain weight though as my old weight was constant for 10 years.

My main liquid is 98% water. I cant stand soda unless its mixed with 90% water.

> I cannot simply abstain from eating.

Eating is usually (insert a number of asterisks) not a problem, more often than not it is snacks snacks.

The problem is twofold. First, snacks are typically extremely calorie dense. Even a small snack can easily offset caloric deficit coming from reduced portions. Second, leptin, the satiety hormone, is barely secreted from carbs, which are again calorie dense and main ingredient of snacks.

With these two in mind, it is no coincidence that it is hard to not overconsume snacks and snacks quickly lead to caloric surplus.

You don't need to abstain. You can either eat less or simply eat more low caloric food (greens, potatoes, lentils, etc)

But we can presumably learn to abstain from eating certain things. Like sweet food and sweet drinks. Or certain foods with high fat content. We can learn to eat some things rather than others. It hard to get fat from eating too much of a healthy diet.

Eat only every other day? Fast one week on and off? All entirely possible.

You can recognize foods that trigger the addiction cycle and quit those.

You could split eating into meals and snacks. And for snacks, you can totally quit it. And according to my experience, it's the snacks that cause the extra weight.

So quick snacking.

I mostly agree, though you could generously say the analogy would be "don't consume high-cal/low-satiety junk foods". I don't think one needs to deprive themselves forever of any indulgence to lose weight, but maybe some find it easier to fully abstain.

There is also something to be said about doing exercise at a gym/class and seeing other healthy/fit people. It gives you practical evidence right in front of your eyes on how you COULD look. As well as likely becoming friends with people in those spaces that also have healthy habits. I have always found that motivation to be very strong.

> unless you make cycling a major hobby

Cycling specifically is incredibly good. It's easy to stay at a low-moderate zone 2 effort you can maintain for many hours, unlike running. It's also very easy on your body

Exercise is also a very strong predictor of long-term success in keeping weight off. Plus it's important for overall health anyway. Protects lean body mass, so that when you're shedding the pounds, you lose less muscle and more fat.

That's one effect people are less aware of. One reason your metabolism drops as you lose weight is you can also lose lean body mass. Muscle and organs.

Exercise is also something you can "get into". For example, you force yourself to go to the gym a few times, or to go running a few times. And then you start beating your previous records, at which point you get more ambitious. You try to research the best supplements on the web, or the best pull-up bar for at home, and before you know it, you are transforming into a "gym bro" without previously intending to. It's remarkably easy to get into various obsessions, even if they are entirely healthy.

As a single almost 40yo overweight man I've gotta disagree.

McDonald's doesn't taste better, it tastes worse, but what working adult has the time next to their day job to eat healthy?

You have to be either

1. Rich enough to be able to spend a premium at restaurants for most of the week

2. Be rich enough to have a partner that doesn't have to work a 40-50h work week

3. Be rich enough to have a personal cook

4. Not work and get by via other avenues.

> Because going to McDonalds tastes better.

this is a problem for a some people

however for many more people, the issue is affordability

unhealthy food is cheap and widely available

healthy food is more expensive and in some neighborhoods unavailable -- so there's the cost and effort of going somewhere where you can actually get it; food deserts are a real thing, while soda and chips vending machines are ubiquitous

this is why there are much higher rates of obesity among lower income populations

it's a solvable problem (not entirely, but it's possible to greatly reduce levels of obesity), but there seems to be very little social willpower to fix it

I tend to agree. It's pretty easy to have cooking skills that out pace the trouble of driving, waiting, and ultimately only kind of enjoying fast food.

The advice I give people when rarely solicited, is that you work all day to ensure you have food and shelter. 1/3 work, 1/3 food, 1/3 shelter. If you routinely don't have time to cook and enjoy your food -- frankly, what are you doing with you life? Planning a menu, shopping for groceries, cooking meals, these things should take up your time! It's what you need to be doing. That's the point of this all!

The less time you have, the harder it is to make healthy choices. You're more likely to grab fast food or something that is easy to throw together in the microwave. It's not just time, but also energy. The more you work and the harder your job, the less energy you have to expend on preparing food. Add in mental health issues and/or chronic illness, and you have even less energy. Usually, when I say I don't have time, I mean that I don't have energy. I don't have enough time to mentally prepare myself for the task, then execute the task, and then recover from doing the task.

It's not so much about "time", but rather mental bandwidth. It takes effort and energy, that you may not have if you have lots of things going on.

When people say they "don't have the time" this is often what they mean.

It's like the joke from Airplaine!: "Guess I picked a bad time to quit smoking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit drinking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit sniffing glue", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit amphetamines", etc.

Somewhat on/off topic, but I'd also wager that a lot of folks who call themselves "busy" are really just bad at time management. They're not so much "busy" as they are wasting a ton of time and then using that lost time as an excuse to not have to do things.

So they are busy but it's because of a lack of time management which then plays into their inability to make good dietary choices. Being "busy" is their excuse and they make it happen by not managing their time.

Things like having to hit up starbucks before work, which wastes 10-15 minutes. Then going to grab lunch instead of bringing it from home, which wastes 45 minutes. Then they spend a large amount of time doing their outfit for the day, which wastes time in the morning. 30 minutes on social media before/after bed. Etc. These things add up to hours every day. And then "I'm too busy to eat healthy" comes out.

I say this cuz I know plenty of people who are "busy" but still manage to make great choices. I've noticed it has more to do with how people manage their time and the priorities they make throughout that time management. Time management is a skill that needs to be worked on. When one avoids managing their time well then of course they're going to be so inefficient that things get difficult.

Eating healthy takes more time than eating junk. The busier I am the less time I have for food shopping and the more likely I am to be away from home and need food, which means eating out.

being able to still focus and complete your daily busy schedule while restricting is a different sort of obstacle, so that mostly moves the costs around.

I found the best weight loss success eating about 1200 or 1300 measured calories a day and using a fairly strict routine, but it left me on edge and distractible. And that kind of diet has social costs too - much more of a pain to eat with coworkers at lunch, for instance.

CICO is easy to say, but the trick is actually knowing both of those measurements and being able to control them.

I think people forget that mild hunger is a normal part of existence.