So clickbaity stuff. Ofcourse exercise doesnt help if one over eats. Cico is just basic physics. No magic here. The thing is though it is mentally difficult to lose weight. Its hard. But it is doable for everyone.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
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I do a fair bit of exercise, mostly I run, but also some weight training. I have also struggled with my weight and have lost quite a bit of weight counting calories.
Working out makes you fucking HUNGRY. Sometimes I have to stop running for a few weeks in order to get my diet in order. If I run, the willpower required to resist overeating will swamp me. Nothing is easy.
Amen. This is why so many former athletes gain so much weight. Eating habits stay the same when training habita go nonexistent.
Cico severely oversimplifies things. Check this out for one possible alternative: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916522005172?via%3Dihub The only downside is you can't boil down a whole bunch of complex processes to a useless catchphrase. From its abstract:
Conceptualizing obesity as a disorder of energy balance restates a principle of physics without considering the biological mechanisms that promote weight gain.
That is true. It is very much over simplified. It still remains for general purposes very accurate. Humans as a species have no knowledge in breaking the laws of physics as we know them. Ofcourse it works differently for all subjects and cico doesnt take ones mental abilities in to account. Cico only states blatant non human side of things.
For most people cico is very usefull and only thing standing in a way for ones weight loss is will power. Excuses are easy to make in our modern society where food is cheap and plentiful.
I did skim through the link you send but couldnt really find anything that contradicted cico in itself.
I shed pretty much all the weight I put on during the years my kids were infants using this approach. The thing is that it comes back. Slowly, but it comes back. I have had to conclude that either via genetics or just through years of being overweight my brain is wired up to do this to itself.
So what do you do? Well, the only thing I’ve found is that I have to be at it forever. I have to chose constant applications of willpower or, put on weight. That is exhausting and I go months where I really can’t face it. It feels like addiction but you can’t cut it out completely, you gotta eat.
I have talked to lots of people who don’t struggle with weight gain and there seems to be a big difference in what is going on in my body vs theirs. I cannot turn off the noise, my body will always be telling me to eat garbage. I can resist it but it is ALWAYS there.
Irrespective of my health or looks, I would give anything to turn the noise off, even for a year or two. What could I accomplish if I pointed all that willpower at something productive? It is highly fashionable to shit on drugs like ozempic. “Fatty needs an easy mode button…” It may not be the answer, but people living longer healthier lives and getting to be free from the noise sounds pretty great. I’m stubborn but I won’t say I have not considered bringing it up with my doc.
CiCo works. Full stop, and it will work for anyone who can convince themselves to do it. But if you do it, you soon realize that you are treating the symptoms not the cause.
This is so true. I have struggled with weight and cravings for many years now as well. The one thing that works for me has been going on full carnivore diet. It really makes sweet and garbage food taste bad and really encourages discipline. Not as a lifestyle change but for a month or teo and then leaning to general moderation diet with low carb intake. I never count calories my self but this approach seems to work it self automatically. Might be something to look into? :)
Yeah I have all sorts of tricks to make it easier. Low carbs is great, not because it matters what you eat but I have much more manageable cravings. Intermittent fasting is a good trick too, if you push yourself not to eat until 2PM, you have fewer hours left in the day to spread your calories through.
On and on… I’m pretty good at the mind game but it still fucking sucks that I got stuck having to play it forever.
Here's the part where it says cico (ebm in the paper) hasn't really produced any results, since your skimming missed it.
Furthermore, conceptual adoption of the EBM has failed to stem the obesity pandemic.[emphasis mine]Governments and professional health organizations heavily promote energy restriction (especially with low-fat diets) and exercise; nutrition labels on packaged foods prominently display calorie content; and personal responsibility to avoid excess weight gain is emphasized in patient care. Nevertheless, obesity prevalence continues to increase worldwide, prompting spectacularly complex formulations of the EBM addressing myriad biological, behavioral, environmental, and societal factors converging on energy balance (Supplemental Figure 1), with questionable practical translation.
Tldr even with cico being pushed at a population level, 70% of Americans are still overweight or obese. Why do you think that is?
Obeying cico does work. The study seems to state the obvious. People are not very good at obeying rules that bring long term benefit causing short term mild discomfort.
It is too easy to eat too much without it affecting ones ability to survive and reproduce. Priority of physical health is very low in most peoples lives.
All in all. The answer is easy to losing weight but getting there mentally is hard when were are used to everything being easy.
"Obeying cico does work." and "People are not very good at obeying" are right next to each other in your comment. So people, that aren't good at doing x, should do x? I'm not getting how that's helpful. Can you explain how a solution that relies on people doing something they're bad at has any chance of working?
There are people in jails as well despite we all knowing that crime is bad. People tend to break all kinds of rules. We as a society should make getting exess calories more difficult and force the individual take more responsibility in their own choices. For example having way higher taxes for products that contain sugar. This should encourage people to switch to noncaloric sodas for example. Having your health insurance price take a hike for every pound on the obese side of things.
So in short. Make it more expensive and inconvenient to eat too much and get obese.
You would be penalizing people for decisions made by the food industry. The very large and powerful food industry. In America, you already usually pay more money to get bread without corn syrup added to it (as just one example). It's in almost everything. YOu pay more money for the equivalent lower calorie/more natural food. Add on to that the fact that most Americans are no longer taught to cook whole foods (most never have a single Home Economics class in their education), and you have long term effects from decisions made by large social systems. Yet, we blame individuals, no matter their social class or individual biology.
Individuals are to blame as well. We can tax the companies and/or individuals for making poor choises. Food doesnt have to be healthy to lose weight. Just smaller protion size. So if one is able to afford so much food that one becomes obese the price of unhealthy food has definitely room for extra taxes.
I live in northern europe and here soda without sugar is cheaper since we have sugar tax. Its great! I just wish we would prioritize our free healthcare more towarss those who actually try to better themselves.
Force the individual to take more responsibility for their own choices? By reforms like making soda more expensive? Soda taxes are not an individual choice, they're a systemic solution. Look, you've been saying a few things that are contradictory, so I don't think you have a really well formed idea about what causes fatness, either on an individual or population level. I'd suggest looking into the research a bit more and seeing if you can reconcile what you find with your ideas about how humans work, both individually and as a population. If you can't, then it might be time to update some of your beliefs. I don't think either of us have anything further to gain from this exchange until you do. Have a good one.
The title is correct in that it doesn't really confirm anything. It depends on what exercises you're doing and how much you eat. It also doesn't look at mental health at all. Is yoga included or just aerobics in that? What about heavy weights vs high rep low weights. 🤷♂️
It’s all irrelevant. Calories in, calories out is all the matters for weight loss. Exercise isn’t needed to lose weight. Changing eating habits is 100% the only solution.
Exercise can help you build muscle mass, which can help with weight loss/keeping weight off, but if you’re eating more calories than your body needs you’ll gain weight. It’s also seemingly why people have this misconception about metabolism slowing down around 30. Most people (from the US at least) become significantly more sedentary when they leave college, get settled and start a family (coincidentally late 20s to early 30s) which results in loss of muscle mass. The way they used to eat isn’t sustainable and they gain fat.
What you're saying is to treat your body like a machine and ignore everything else. You're not wrong in that it's calories in and calories out, but if you're running and feeling great and you do it long enough to get the runners high, you'll be addicted to exercise and you're less likely to eat. You also feel better. As I said, we're complicated or diets would work long term. That article doesn't really say anything.
That’s not how that works. lol. Am runner. Can confirm. It may take a bit after I run to want food but I promise I want LOTS of food. The longer I do it, the more I want healthy, nutritious, whole foods, as opposed to processed shit too. I feel better when I eat healthy, I run faster, I can workout longer, I don’t get tired as easily. I KNOW when I haven’t been eating right, or especially enough, because my body tells me.
The reason diets don’t last is because people view them as something temporary to get through, instead of the life changes that are needed. It’s hard (I lost about 50lb in 2016c and have kept it off since). It’s a huge commitment to stay healthy. Especially in USA. I get it. Not everyone want to commit to it. But none of that changes reality. The only way to lose weight is to consume less calories than you expend.
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