Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 81 posts

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#41

Post by danielbarla »

gozo wrote: post #28
danielbarla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at the…

Yes, but it also a losing proposition for most people. Do we really think that people who are overweight, especially in a body focused society as the US, haven't tried to "just eat better"?

Interesting point, though I do think people tend to do it the hard way. By that, I mean that most people have probably tried some form of extreme calorie deficit diet, which typically doesn't work in the long run. It's exceptionally hard to conform to these for any period of time. Even if it's successful once or twice, I suspect people will have a negative perception of the experience, perhaps feeding a bit into denial in the future.

I'm advocating a much slower approach, based on a little bit of knowledge about what you're eating, plus some convenience tricks like swapping out your heavy staple meals for something a bit healthier (that's still easy to make). My guess is that most people want to see rapid, drastic changes, and are demotivated when that doesn't happen (or takes too much effort), hence the failure.

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#42

Post by imgabe »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #11
Shivetya wrote: post #5

The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and l…

> exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. Anecdote here, but I've found that for me the key to weight loss has been exercise-first. I decided that I'd never be very good at reducing my dietary input (I really enjoy food) so I focused instead on increasing my energy output by incorporating progressively more physical activity into my lifestyle. Over the past few years I have steadily and gradually r…

My own Saturday morning run is about 4 miles and burns ~500 calories according to Runkeeper, so I estimate you're running about 16 miles every Saturday? Do you really expect an overweight, out-of-shape person to jump into a 16-mile run to burn 2000 calories a week? If they drink 2 sodas a day, they could switch them to water or even diet soda and remove even more calories for less effort.

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#43

Post by irixusr »

Hormones act in blood concentrations of 1E-12 [1]. This is by design, they act as triggers.

When you consider hormones affect everything, from how and where you put weight, to sexuality, to behavior it's incredible how little thought lay people give to them and the endocrine system. (The Intercept has a very interesting 3 part series about an endocrine disruptor that DuPont splashed all over WV and Ohio causing thousands of cancers [2])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_blood_components

[2] https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti...

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#44

Post by olympus »

aabajian wrote: post #4

"Weight management is actually much more complex than just ‘energy in’ versus ‘energy out." No, it's not. Maybe it's more difficult to measure calories (that salad ranch dressing has more calories than that hamburger), but people should be encouraged to balance their calorie intake everyday. For what it's worth, here's why Americans are obese: 50 extra calories / day x 365 days / year x 1 lb / 3,500 calories = 5 lbs…

I've gotta chime in and express my support for aabajian. It really is this simple. Everyone else that says it isn't and that we aren't accounting for the burn rate of different calories (carb vs fat vs protien) are just making excuses. The simple fact is that today's foods are easier to eat and more energy dense. If you don't want to gain weight you have to eat fewer calories. The talk about balance is good for your overall health and maintaining proper bodily function, but there is a direct relationship between calories that your body digests and your weight (coupled with your energy expenditure).

The fact is that a man in 2006 burns less energy than the man in 1988, so if they ate the same diet the 2006 man should weigh more (as the study finds). We move less, have more comfortable environments (energy is cheaper so we can afford to keep our homes at a better temp). A man in 1988 had to walk down the hallway to send a fax, now we just send emails. A man in 1988 used to physically move to attend meetings, now we just [video]teleconference. Life was just a little bit harder in 1988, and that means that we burned more energy then. Coupled with the increase in average height (healthy tall people have higher BMIs than short people, and height increase is a trend in humans that has existed for a long time), people in 2006 are clearly going to be bigger. If you want to weigh the same amount you either have to burn more calories to make up for the fact that your life is easier now or you have to eat less.

aabajian has pretty much hit the nail on the head. I will point out that as you gain weight your resting metabolic rate increases to support keeping your extra mass alive, so 50 calories extra per year may not exactly turn into 100 lbs of extra weight, your energy expenditure to keep the mass alive and to move it all around may catch up to that extra 50 calories.

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#45

Post by FilterSweep »

monochromatic wrote: post #29
thomasahle wrote: post #26

TL/DR: It's gotten harder to lose weight, because people eat more crap: artificial sweeteners, steroids, pollutants, plastic packaging, pesticides, meat, antidepressants. A positive read would be: if you want to be healthy, don't focus solely on energy intake, but also what chemicals you are subjecting your body to.

Plastic packaging makes people fat?

"Makes people fat" is a bit of a reach, but it has an effect on the holistic reasons why one becomes fat.

The links are dubious, but they are there. Plastic Packaging contains a high amount of BPA (Bisphenol A) which acts as a xenoestrogen - slightly unrelated: the generational drop in testosterone in males has been tied to this[0].

Back on topic, cells containing the metabolite of BPA, BPA-Glucoronide, have been found to accumulate more fat than untreated cells.[1] [2]

This is part of the reason why "BPA-Free" plastic products (think: Nalgene water bottles) use this tagline in sales.

[0] http://www.livescience.com/29401-bpa-testosterone-levels.htm...

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-may-prompt-mor...

[2] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/777288

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#46

Post by Mimu »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #15
cousin_it wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so simple. People are different. Some people won't need your plan because they stay at low weight no matter what they eat. Others won't be able to follow your plan because it would require superhuman willpower. I'm an example of the first category. I'm 6'2'' and 160 lbs, and have been like this for years. At age 27 I spent a whole year working from home, eating at McDonalds 1-2 times every day, going to slee…

My favorite explanation I found on the issue is on "The Hacker's Diet" (free ebook). https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/ The author's theory is that the issue is not on of metabolism, but that people overeating do not have a good "I'm full" mechanism. Most people like you that "can eat all they want and not gain weight" in reality... don't. They balance out their intake naturally, if not in the scope of a meal, ove…

I am one of the "eat whatever shit in a big quantity and never gain weight" people, and I think you may have a point. After discussing it turns out if you add anything I don't eat that much.

First, I never eat in the morning. And I mean never, I can't eat after waking up, I always need a few hours before being able to eat without being disgusted, I know it's bad but I don't think it has an effect really (I don't do it since I'm like 12 or 13).

Second, I NEVER eat between meals. I don't do snacks, unless someone give one to me or whatever, but you get the point, I don't fucking eat some chocolate bar everyday at 4pm, or eat chips all day because I'm bored.

I often only eat good food, or what I think is good food at least. I never use the microwaves, always buy "fresh" meat, eat vegetables aswell (only recently, not when I was a teenagers).

So in the end, I may eat like a savage during the meal earning my reputation, but in the end I don't really eat a lot of shit.

Anyway since I watched Fed Up I understand while US kids are obese. Their public cafeteria in school literally are fast food. Not to mention the retards crying out for freedom when the gouvernement even think about taking action into kids diet.

I won't even start on the sugar and science thing because it sound very threatening but I don't know enough to judge how accurate it is, even though I have no doubt it's very likely given history (hello smoking industry).

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#48

Post by CaptainAmerica »

leemuro wrote: post #33

This is such a bad study and this post is your usual garbage of the media just confusing people and making them think weight loss is impossible, all while giving them more excuses to do absolutely nothing. The idea that this "data" is in any way an accurate representation of how many calories the average person eats is just absurd. The average person cannot tell you how many calories they eat per day, they have no id…

Completely agree that this is total crap and is only going to hurt the population more. They lost in the first paragraph when they stated they're using BMI. BMI is total bs and I'm pretty sure we all know it. I'm male, 24, 6', 195 lbs. I work out 5 days a week, run, play sports and eat healthy, but according to BMI I'm overweight.

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#49

Post by [deleted] »

Shivetya wrote: post #5

The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and l…

[deleted]

Re: It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

#50

Post by linkydinkandyou »

danielbarla wrote: post #9
Shivetya wrote: post #5

The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and l…

> lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at the…

You can't outrun your fork!

And exercise just makes you hungry.

Fat people should eat less until they're a healthy weight (BMI of < 24.9). Then think about exercise.

Post reply on HN