Calories-in, Calories-out is a distraction. A red herring. True but useless. Nobody here is disputing the laws of physics. Obviously, a caloric deficit is required to lose weight and a surplus is required to gain it.
Does that explain the obesity epidemic? Hardly. Why the sudden change? Has humanity never had enough Calories before? Is it a cure? Hardly. It implies the “willpower” diet (Just stop eating so many Calories!), which doesn’t work. Yes, the Caloric deficit makes you lose weight in the short term, then you get hungrier until you binge and gain the weight back with interest. Or just gradually give up because you’re miserable and gain it back slowly, again with interest.
As living organisms, we have various mechanisms to maintain homeostasis, including our weight. Somehow these have stopped working in the recent past, for a large fraction of the population. Something environmental has changed (it’s too sudden to be genetic). Our set points are going up. A true explanation would tell us why. I have heard many plausible hypotheses. Some of them readily evaporate upon closer inspection. Na:K seems to be one of these, given the history of salt consumption you just shared.
See my more extensive answer below—I’d propose the reason for the obesity epidemic is constant effortless access to highly processed high calorie, low satiety foods, with zero need to move. With human genetic make-up, the automatic response to that is overeating calories and hence obesity unless one intervenes to resist the impulse (indeed hard to sustain, albeit not impossible—anorexia is a thing), or changes one’s immediate environment (e.g. the food one keeps in one’s home and one’s movement routines.)
I disagree with this. The fact that the active mechanism of any functional weight loss strategy is having lower caloric intake than expenditure is obviously a critical aspect of dieting that makes sense to talk about, so I disagree with calling it a red herring.
Calorie counting doesn’t work well for everyone as a weight loss strategy, but it does work for some people. Obviously a strategy that works well when adhered to, and which some people can successfully adhere to, is worth talking about. Also obviously, people who have trouble with implementing it themselves should try other strategies. Find the strategy that works for you, and combine with a form of exercise that you enjoy.
Calories-in, Calories-out is a distraction. A red herring. True but useless. Nobody here is disputing the laws of physics. Obviously, a caloric deficit is required to lose weight and a surplus is required to gain it.
Does that explain the obesity epidemic? Hardly. Why the sudden change? Has humanity never had enough Calories before? Is it a cure? Hardly. It implies the “willpower” diet (Just stop eating so many Calories!), which doesn’t work. Yes, the Caloric deficit makes you lose weight in the short term, then you get hungrier until you binge and gain the weight back with interest. Or just gradually give up because you’re miserable and gain it back slowly, again with interest.
As living organisms, we have various mechanisms to maintain homeostasis, including our weight. Somehow these have stopped working in the recent past, for a large fraction of the population. Something environmental has changed (it’s too sudden to be genetic). Our set points are going up. A true explanation would tell us why. I have heard many plausible hypotheses. Some of them readily evaporate upon closer inspection. Na:K seems to be one of these, given the history of salt consumption you just shared.
See my more extensive answer below—I’d propose the reason for the obesity epidemic is constant effortless access to highly processed high calorie, low satiety foods, with zero need to move. With human genetic make-up, the automatic response to that is overeating calories and hence obesity unless one intervenes to resist the impulse (indeed hard to sustain, albeit not impossible—anorexia is a thing), or changes one’s immediate environment (e.g. the food one keeps in one’s home and one’s movement routines.)
I disagree with this. The fact that the active mechanism of any functional weight loss strategy is having lower caloric intake than expenditure is obviously a critical aspect of dieting that makes sense to talk about, so I disagree with calling it a red herring.
Calorie counting doesn’t work well for everyone as a weight loss strategy, but it does work for some people. Obviously a strategy that works well when adhered to, and which some people can successfully adhere to, is worth talking about. Also obviously, people who have trouble with implementing it themselves should try other strategies. Find the strategy that works for you, and combine with a form of exercise that you enjoy.