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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1616 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 22, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I think you're misunderstanding the 'caloric reduction doesn't work' thesis he promotes (and which I share). Obviously CICO is true as an accounting tautology, if you're losing weight, then your body must be consuming/expelling energy at a greater rate than it is consuming it.

But CICO as a description of weight loss is very different from CICO as an actionable weight loss strategy. Simply eating fewer calories on a standard diet doesn't actually work. The weight always comes back because obesity is fundamentally a problem of a broken lipostat. This is the consensus among obesity researchers because obviously the entire world didn't just decide to start eating more in the 1970s for no reason and then get obese. As for what caused the broken lipostat? Gary Taubes think it's hyper-palatable food, I personally think it's vegetable oil, or rather an excess of linoleic acid that vegetable oils provide, far beyond what our biology requires.

The ExFatLoss diet (and high carb, low protein, low fat diets like the potato diet) are attempts to fix the lipostat by resaturating the body's fat stores. I recommended this one because CertainlyWorse was trying keto, and I think if keto is going to work then minimising polyunsaturated fats is the key part.

I simply think hyperpalatable food makes you overeat. I've eliminated most hyperpalatable foods from my diet and can now quite reliably hit my maintenance calories without feeling hungry.

Simply eating fewer calories on a standard diet doesn't actually work.

This is not true. In fact, you admit as much in the silence between this period and the next sentence, because presumably something happened during this silence.

The weight always comes back because obesity is fundamentally a problem of a broken lipostat.

This does not follow. There is a missing intermediate step.

This is not true. In fact, you admit as much in the silence between this period and the next sentence, because presumably something happened during this silence.

Be charitable. You know what I meant. Appetite goes up, metabolic rate goes down, and then yes, people either eat more food and regain the weight, or their metabolism slows down so much that it doesn't make a difference how little they eat, they still regain the weight.

Simply white-knuckling your way to thinness doesn't work for 95% of people because the body fights back. People don't decide to get obese by choosing to eat more calories, telling them to simply choose to not be obese by eating less calories doesn't work. To recommend a strategy which will fail almost everyone who tries is cruel, particularly if it involves judging them for lack of willpower afterwards.

By contrast, ExFatLoss describes his weight loss through his version of keto as easy, compared to calorie controlled diets that he had tried before. Something else is clearly going on. Much better to try and work out what it is than just sneering at the fatties.

Be charitable. You know what I meant. Appetite goes up, metabolic rate goes down, and then yes, people either eat more food and regain the weight, or their metabolism slows down so much that it doesn't make a difference how little they eat, they still regain the weight.

Yup. And where this plateau occurs controlling for height and sex is determined by genes. Some ppl have such crappy metabolism genes they are still fat cutting to 1500kcal/day and cannot lose more. many such cases. ironically, being a bigger glutton makes wight loss and leanness easier. A guy who maintains at 250 lbs eating 5kcal/day will find weight loss easier than the same guy at same height and weight who eats 3kcal/day.

Some ppl have such crappy metabolism genes they are still fat cutting to 1500kcal/day and cannot lose more.

Any specific examples?

https://x.com/Ed_Realist/status/1837975714622296202?

There is enormous individual variably of metabolism, about as much as IQ, controlling for height,.

There is some variety of metabolism: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/32865, but not as much as random dudes that can't lose weight claim.

I wish the study used fat-free mass instead of total mass: fig.2 shows that RMR (measured in kcal/(kg*hr)) drops in overweight and obese individuals, but this is explained by the fact fat doesn't affect RMR much.

people either eat more food and regain the weight

Ah, so there is an intermediate bit that lives in the silence.

metabolism slows down so much that it doesn't make a difference how little they eat

This is not true. We know, from science, how this works.

easy

I didn't hear any claims from you about things being easy or not; that's pretty subjective and hard to measure with science. You made factual claims that are scientifically false.

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