Have you read any of the other comments here? People aren’t just “refusing” to change their diets. I’m not going to type my response again but see my comment here. Or maybe this comment by someone else. Or maybe this one. The point is that when 20+% of the population are afflicted with something, it’s not a problem of them “refusing” to fix it themselves. It’s a systemic issue.
Dieting is effective in a vacuum. Much of the time dieting isn’t effective because people are too busy, uninformed, too stressed, working 2 jobs, have mental disorders, don’t live near accessible sources of healthy food, have incredibly low willpower, are being lied to by food companies, lied to by their governments health systems, coerced into an unhealthy but profitable lifestyle, or all of the above.
Sure you could say “well just fix all of that and you’d be healthy” and you’d be right. But we all know that’s not going to happen, especially en masse.
Semaglutide helps people in those situations avoid the consequences of obesity. Sure it may have its own downsides. But it’s the easiest of many solutions, often the only one that will feasibly work for someone.
Not everyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get healthy without help. If they could, the world wouldn’t be so obese on average. You have to acknowledge this is a mostly global issue and traditional solutions would have fixed it by now if they always worked.
How about you actually do some research before you make claims like that? It’s a bit worse in the US, but obesity is a global problem. Any country with an obese population of 20% or more of the total population I would consider as having a serious national obesity problem. Several first world countries are at above 30%. A couple are above 40%, including the US. Even half of that is still in “crisis” territory.
Studies show dieting doesn’t work for most of the population. Studies have shown this for the last 60 years. Sure, it works in a vacuum, but that’s not where real people live.
And what do you suppose we do about that? It has become a global epidemic. Just “get good” and start eating healthy? Clearly that does actually work, and yet obesity is more of a problem now than it has ever been.
Obviously it does. “Eating healthy” in this case means eating fewer calories than you burn. But don’t just pick at one small part of one example and not acknowledge the rest of my comment. What do you suppose we do about the obesity epidemic? How do we save as many lives as possible? Many things have been tried, and many have failed. Including telling people to lose weight and how to do it themselves.
I think they are trying to say that you can technically lose weight without changing how you eat by spending more calories. Which… is technically true. But obviously doesn’t relate to the point I was making, and I feel like they’re purposefully avoiding talking about the fact that the biological mechanics of how one loses weight have nothing to do with the general population’s inability to lose weight with willpower alone.
They’re trying to spring some sort of “gotcha” on the fact that I didn’t over-explain my terminology in a throwaway example, ignoring the rest of my comment and the meaning behind it.
Right, you are correct. Now how do we get people to actually follow diets and eat less? How do we save the billions of people who are overweight? Because clearly telling them “stop being so lazy and eat less or exercise more” hasn’t been working for decades.
Dieting is effective if you can stick to it. I watch my calorie intake and have no problems staying at a healthy weight. Even considering that I go out drinking practically every weekend. I also have the advantage that I don’t really think about food until I’m starving and even then it’s not an issue for me to put off for a few more hours.
That is not the case for many people. There are so many things working against us when it comes to eating healthy. Fast food is all designed to be as addictive as possible. Meal planning and preparation takes a lot more time and healthy food is expensive (although at this point all food is expensive so maybe that one is a wash). People’s lives are stressful as fuck and they have so much to deal that uses up their mental energy. That additional stress from trying to maintain a diet is just too much. Food brings them joy so they overeat. These drugs help to curb their appetite without the additional stress. I see no problem there even if they shouldn’t technically need the help in a perfect world. The world’s far from perfect and we don’t know what people are dealing with.
Your oversimplification of complex biological processes is mindbogglingly ignorant. Please find a study that shows a diet that produces results that are over a 10% reduction in body mass and with results that last for over two years. If you can’t do even that miniscule baseline, if you can’t find one diet that has actual scientific macking, please stfu about subjects you know next to nothing about and have no evidence for. I know it’s really difficult for you to understand concepts that can’t be boiled down to a single sentence, but let’s try this one time, okay?
So you think a single phrase can encompass something useful in such a complex system?
Yes. Absolutely. So do all dieticians and nutritionists, as this is the principle that all diets are based on, because it is correct. It is both “technically” true and useful. Your body cannot store calories that you do not consume or that it burns, because your body cannot do magic or make something from nothing.
Of course “eating less than you burn” works. That’s not the point here. The point is that despite knowing this as fact, the world continues to become more obese. “Oh it’s because people are lazy” Sure, then how do we treat that? How do we save lives from this global epidemic of obesity? Ignoring the fact that humans naturally can have a difficult time losing weight even while knowing the right things to do isn’t going to solve the problem.
The mechanics of how weight loss works mean nothing when you don’t have the time, ability, or mental stability to enact the changes required. You can’t just blame individual people for this. It’s a large portion of the entire world that is experiencing this issue. When it’s one person with a problem, it could be their fault. When it’s billions of people, maybe consider acknowledging that it’s a systemic issue that cannot be solved with willpower alone.
I haven’t blamed anyone or spoken about laziness. I’ve only stated what is true, with respect to biology and physics.
Of course “eating less than you burn” works. That’s not the point here.
This actually was the point here, from the other commenter:
“Your oversimplification of complex biological processes is mindbogglingly ignorant.”
“if you can’t find one diet that has actual scientific macking, please stfu about subjects you know next to nothing about and have no evidence for”.
The other commenter seemed to allude that biology is too complex for thermodynamics to apply, which is of course incorrect, and that is what I responded to. Dieting does work and is always effective if one maintains a caloric deficit. My understanding of their comment was that they were not arguing that dieting is hard due to systemic factors that lead to unsuccessful dieting attempts, but that “complex biological processes” prevent a correctly maintained dieting from working. Again, that is completely false.
Obviously people struggle with dieting for many different reasons, and there are valid reasons why people would benefit from or choose other options.
The mechanics of how weight loss works mean nothing when you don’t have the time, ability, or mental stability to enact the changes required.
“if you can’t find one diet that has actual scientific macking, please stfu about subjects you know next to nothing about and have no evidence for”.
While a bit rude, this point by the other commenter is the one where there’s a disconnect between us.
Whether or not a diet works does not just come down to the biological mechanics of if sticking to it means you’ll lose weight. Humans’ ability to stick to it is still part of the diet. If humans can’t, collectively, stick to a diet long enough to make it work, the diet doesn’t work. If humans could turn off parts of their brain and follow diets like robots, that would be fine. But the point of contention here is if diets work. And largely, they do not, for reasons unrelated to calories in/out.
Because of biology and psychology, humans cannot reliably follow diets, at least not a significant portion of the population. (Though there are non-biological factors too.)
The other commenter is not arguing that thermodynamics do not apply. They are arguing that diets themselves do not work because people cannot stick to them. This does not mean that “diets work, you just need to stick to them”. If people cannot stick to them, the diets don’t work.
If it’s useful for weight loss universally, please provide evidence. All I’m asking for is a study that shows saying the same thing over and over out of context has made anybody lose any weight. If it’s such a bulletproof concept, than should be easy. If you can’t do that, then your idea sucks.
Yeah, I want evidence that’s weight loss is as simple as repeating that phrase that without understanding it. I don’t think people quoting it a) know what it means b) understand biology, psychology, hormones, disease. I’m tired of idiots going unchallenged on their dumb ideas.
Dieting is effective in a vacuum. Much of the time dieting isn’t effective because people are too busy, uninformed, too stressed, working 2 jobs, have mental disorders, don’t live near accessible sources of healthy food, have incredibly low willpower, are being lied to by food companies, lied to by their governments health systems, coerced into an unhealthy but profitable lifestyle, or all of the above.
Sure you could say “well just fix all of that and you’d be healthy” and you’d be right. But we all know that’s not going to happen, especially en masse.
Semaglutide helps people in those situations avoid the consequences of obesity. Sure it may have its own downsides. But it’s the easiest of many solutions, often the only one that will feasibly work for someone.
Not everyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get healthy without help. If they could, the world wouldn’t be so obese on average. You have to acknowledge this is a mostly global issue and traditional solutions would have fixed it by now if they always worked.
Go find me a study that backs up your truth. Easy parameters, find one that shows a 10% reduction in body mass that is sustainable for two years by a quarter of the participants. Otherwise you’re just spouting unscientific crap out of ignorance and should really just not speak on topics you don’t know anything about.
You guys are talking about two different things. He says changing your diet is effective and it is.
You’re saying hardly anyone sticks with the diet changes after losing weight so they end up regaining the weight and that’s also true.
Though I’m going to add that a lot of the reason people fail to keep the weight off without drugs is we’re ok with companies outright lying about how healthy their product is. You should not be able to pretend that highly processed crap full of sugar is good for you. It’s really obvious that hardly anyone reads nutritional info and does the math on sugar content by weight.
There’s also a ton of psychological aspects that make keeping weight off harder. Your brain will literally self sabotage you repeatedly because humans are designed to gain and keep weight, not lose it.
Adding more exercise? Well that must mean we need to eat more! Eating less? Well obviously we’re starving, so now your brain will tell your body to move less. Lost weight for awhile? Clearly we need to slowly increase portion sizes over time.
Long term weight loss is a literally a struggle against yourself and your body does not want you to win.
You guys are talking about two different things. He says changing your diet is effective and it is.
The point was that the drugs help fight the effects of obesity by keeping weight off permanently. If dieting cannot do the same, then it isn’t effective at fighting that threat. Losing weight for 2 years and then relapsing isn’t all that helpful in fighting the long term health effects of obesity.
We are talking about different things. I’m talking about evidence and they’re not.
and it is.
You say in your very next line people stop doing it and that’s why it doesn’t work. Yes. These interventions are not sustainable. If that’s your gotcha, that people can’t stay on them but crash dieting, starvation, disordered eating, etc is a reasonable idea, then that’s a lazy strawman. If you don’t have a scientific study to back up that dieting works for actual people, please shut up. I’m really sick of people proping up bullshit without ever trying to figure out if it’s true. If you can’t find evidence of a diet that actual people can do that results in a 10% loss over 2 years for even a third of the participants, then it’s time to update what you think. Short of surgery, nothing works long term for weight loss. Even Ozempic has to be taken for as long as you want the weight off, it stops working for some people after 6 months to a year, and about 75% of people stop taking it within two years.
The entire point of glp1 is to prescribe when dieting isn’t effective.
You mean when people refuse to change their diets and restrict caloric intake.
Have you read any of the other comments here? People aren’t just “refusing” to change their diets. I’m not going to type my response again but see my comment here. Or maybe this comment by someone else. Or maybe this one. The point is that when 20+% of the population are afflicted with something, it’s not a problem of them “refusing” to fix it themselves. It’s a systemic issue.
Dieting is literally effective 100% of the time, thanks to Newton and his second law and all that.
Sticking to it is another thing entirely - but let’s not pretend words don’t have meaning anymore
Dieting is effective in a vacuum. Much of the time dieting isn’t effective because people are too busy, uninformed, too stressed, working 2 jobs, have mental disorders, don’t live near accessible sources of healthy food, have incredibly low willpower, are being lied to by food companies, lied to by their governments health systems, coerced into an unhealthy but profitable lifestyle, or all of the above.
Sure you could say “well just fix all of that and you’d be healthy” and you’d be right. But we all know that’s not going to happen, especially en masse.
Semaglutide helps people in those situations avoid the consequences of obesity. Sure it may have its own downsides. But it’s the easiest of many solutions, often the only one that will feasibly work for someone.
Not everyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get healthy without help. If they could, the world wouldn’t be so obese on average. You have to acknowledge this is a mostly global issue and traditional solutions would have fixed it by now if they always worked.
you know obesity is really only a US problem? Right?
How about you actually do some research before you make claims like that? It’s a bit worse in the US, but obesity is a global problem. Any country with an obese population of 20% or more of the total population I would consider as having a serious national obesity problem. Several first world countries are at above 30%. A couple are above 40%, including the US. Even half of that is still in “crisis” territory.
Studies show dieting doesn’t work for most of the population. Studies have shown this for the last 60 years. Sure, it works in a vacuum, but that’s not where real people live.
Its because people lie about their diet homie willingly or out of ignorance because they misjudge portion sizes etc,
And what do you suppose we do about that? It has become a global epidemic. Just “get good” and start eating healthy? Clearly that does actually work, and yet obesity is more of a problem now than it has ever been.
Lol losing weight has nothing to do with “eating healthy” im noticing a trend here.
Obviously it does. “Eating healthy” in this case means eating fewer calories than you burn. But don’t just pick at one small part of one example and not acknowledge the rest of my comment. What do you suppose we do about the obesity epidemic? How do we save as many lives as possible? Many things have been tried, and many have failed. Including telling people to lose weight and how to do it themselves.
I’m not sure what you are getting at with this statement.
How else does one lose weight then?
I think they are trying to say that you can technically lose weight without changing how you eat by spending more calories. Which… is technically true. But obviously doesn’t relate to the point I was making, and I feel like they’re purposefully avoiding talking about the fact that the biological mechanics of how one loses weight have nothing to do with the general population’s inability to lose weight with willpower alone.
They’re trying to spring some sort of “gotcha” on the fact that I didn’t over-explain my terminology in a throwaway example, ignoring the rest of my comment and the meaning behind it.
People are lazy. That’s it. CICO works by definition.
Right, you are correct. Now how do we get people to actually follow diets and eat less? How do we save the billions of people who are overweight? Because clearly telling them “stop being so lazy and eat less or exercise more” hasn’t been working for decades.
Newton’s second law is force is equal to mass times acceleration. You’re probably wrong about some other things, too.
Dieting is effective if you can stick to it. I watch my calorie intake and have no problems staying at a healthy weight. Even considering that I go out drinking practically every weekend. I also have the advantage that I don’t really think about food until I’m starving and even then it’s not an issue for me to put off for a few more hours.
That is not the case for many people. There are so many things working against us when it comes to eating healthy. Fast food is all designed to be as addictive as possible. Meal planning and preparation takes a lot more time and healthy food is expensive (although at this point all food is expensive so maybe that one is a wash). People’s lives are stressful as fuck and they have so much to deal that uses up their mental energy. That additional stress from trying to maintain a diet is just too much. Food brings them joy so they overeat. These drugs help to curb their appetite without the additional stress. I see no problem there even if they shouldn’t technically need the help in a perfect world. The world’s far from perfect and we don’t know what people are dealing with.
Your oversimplification of complex biological processes is mindbogglingly ignorant. Please find a study that shows a diet that produces results that are over a 10% reduction in body mass and with results that last for over two years. If you can’t do even that miniscule baseline, if you can’t find one diet that has actual scientific macking, please stfu about subjects you know next to nothing about and have no evidence for. I know it’s really difficult for you to understand concepts that can’t be boiled down to a single sentence, but let’s try this one time, okay?
Complex biology is emergent from and constrained by the laws of physics.
There is no process, no matter how complex, that does not abide by thermodynamics.
If you burn more calories of energy than you consume, your body mass will decrease.
So you think a single phrase can encompass something useful in such a complex system? Is it better to be technically true or actually useful?
Yes. Absolutely. So do all dieticians and nutritionists, as this is the principle that all diets are based on, because it is correct. It is both “technically” true and useful. Your body cannot store calories that you do not consume or that it burns, because your body cannot do magic or make something from nothing.
Of course “eating less than you burn” works. That’s not the point here. The point is that despite knowing this as fact, the world continues to become more obese. “Oh it’s because people are lazy” Sure, then how do we treat that? How do we save lives from this global epidemic of obesity? Ignoring the fact that humans naturally can have a difficult time losing weight even while knowing the right things to do isn’t going to solve the problem.
The mechanics of how weight loss works mean nothing when you don’t have the time, ability, or mental stability to enact the changes required. You can’t just blame individual people for this. It’s a large portion of the entire world that is experiencing this issue. When it’s one person with a problem, it could be their fault. When it’s billions of people, maybe consider acknowledging that it’s a systemic issue that cannot be solved with willpower alone.
I haven’t blamed anyone or spoken about laziness. I’ve only stated what is true, with respect to biology and physics.
This actually was the point here, from the other commenter:
The other commenter seemed to allude that biology is too complex for thermodynamics to apply, which is of course incorrect, and that is what I responded to. Dieting does work and is always effective if one maintains a caloric deficit. My understanding of their comment was that they were not arguing that dieting is hard due to systemic factors that lead to unsuccessful dieting attempts, but that “complex biological processes” prevent a correctly maintained dieting from working. Again, that is completely false.
Obviously people struggle with dieting for many different reasons, and there are valid reasons why people would benefit from or choose other options.
Right, I do not dispute this.
While a bit rude, this point by the other commenter is the one where there’s a disconnect between us.
Whether or not a diet works does not just come down to the biological mechanics of if sticking to it means you’ll lose weight. Humans’ ability to stick to it is still part of the diet. If humans can’t, collectively, stick to a diet long enough to make it work, the diet doesn’t work. If humans could turn off parts of their brain and follow diets like robots, that would be fine. But the point of contention here is if diets work. And largely, they do not, for reasons unrelated to calories in/out.
Because of biology and psychology, humans cannot reliably follow diets, at least not a significant portion of the population. (Though there are non-biological factors too.)
The other commenter is not arguing that thermodynamics do not apply. They are arguing that diets themselves do not work because people cannot stick to them. This does not mean that “diets work, you just need to stick to them”. If people cannot stick to them, the diets don’t work.
If it’s useful for weight loss universally, please provide evidence. All I’m asking for is a study that shows saying the same thing over and over out of context has made anybody lose any weight. If it’s such a bulletproof concept, than should be easy. If you can’t do that, then your idea sucks.
Energy in = energy out is Newton’s law, not mine. You’re arguing about something else it seems
So couldn’t find one?
A law of thermodynamics?
Are you trying to have a fight? Because lol
Yeah, I want evidence that’s weight loss is as simple as repeating that phrase that without understanding it. I don’t think people quoting it a) know what it means b) understand biology, psychology, hormones, disease. I’m tired of idiots going unchallenged on their dumb ideas.
If you eat less you will weigh less. That is always true because of the laws of the universe.
I don’t make the rules
Right, you’re almost there. How do we get people to reliably eat less?
And to be rich just make more money than you spend. True if you ignore a bunch of things. And useless.
Pissed off some husky lemmings with that.
Bro wants his magic drugs with zero consequences. American style.
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Dieting is effective in a vacuum. Much of the time dieting isn’t effective because people are too busy, uninformed, too stressed, working 2 jobs, have mental disorders, don’t live near accessible sources of healthy food, have incredibly low willpower, are being lied to by food companies, lied to by their governments health systems, coerced into an unhealthy but profitable lifestyle, or all of the above.
Sure you could say “well just fix all of that and you’d be healthy” and you’d be right. But we all know that’s not going to happen, especially en masse.
Semaglutide helps people in those situations avoid the consequences of obesity. Sure it may have its own downsides. But it’s the easiest of many solutions, often the only one that will feasibly work for someone.
Not everyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get healthy without help. If they could, the world wouldn’t be so obese on average. You have to acknowledge this is a mostly global issue and traditional solutions would have fixed it by now if they always worked.
Go find me a study that backs up your truth. Easy parameters, find one that shows a 10% reduction in body mass that is sustainable for two years by a quarter of the participants. Otherwise you’re just spouting unscientific crap out of ignorance and should really just not speak on topics you don’t know anything about.
You guys are talking about two different things. He says changing your diet is effective and it is.
You’re saying hardly anyone sticks with the diet changes after losing weight so they end up regaining the weight and that’s also true.
Though I’m going to add that a lot of the reason people fail to keep the weight off without drugs is we’re ok with companies outright lying about how healthy their product is. You should not be able to pretend that highly processed crap full of sugar is good for you. It’s really obvious that hardly anyone reads nutritional info and does the math on sugar content by weight.
There’s also a ton of psychological aspects that make keeping weight off harder. Your brain will literally self sabotage you repeatedly because humans are designed to gain and keep weight, not lose it.
Adding more exercise? Well that must mean we need to eat more! Eating less? Well obviously we’re starving, so now your brain will tell your body to move less. Lost weight for awhile? Clearly we need to slowly increase portion sizes over time.
Long term weight loss is a literally a struggle against yourself and your body does not want you to win.
The point was that the drugs help fight the effects of obesity by keeping weight off permanently. If dieting cannot do the same, then it isn’t effective at fighting that threat. Losing weight for 2 years and then relapsing isn’t all that helpful in fighting the long term health effects of obesity.
We are talking about different things. I’m talking about evidence and they’re not.
You say in your very next line people stop doing it and that’s why it doesn’t work. Yes. These interventions are not sustainable. If that’s your gotcha, that people can’t stay on them but crash dieting, starvation, disordered eating, etc is a reasonable idea, then that’s a lazy strawman. If you don’t have a scientific study to back up that dieting works for actual people, please shut up. I’m really sick of people proping up bullshit without ever trying to figure out if it’s true. If you can’t find evidence of a diet that actual people can do that results in a 10% loss over 2 years for even a third of the participants, then it’s time to update what you think. Short of surgery, nothing works long term for weight loss. Even Ozempic has to be taken for as long as you want the weight off, it stops working for some people after 6 months to a year, and about 75% of people stop taking it within two years.
You’re conflating fad diets with changing your actual diet as in what you eat day to day for the rest of your life.
I’m talking about diet like saying most bats survive on a diet of insects while you’re hearing ‘atkins can totally work bro’.