I’m not looking for a “pat on the back” and I apologise if I come across as supercilious but it should be possible to normalise for calorie requirement based on a persons activity level, an elite cyclist will burn 6000 calories a day, a middle of the road gym goer burns 3000 and a sedentary office worker who walks the last half mile to work burns just under 2000. If any of them consume more than what they burn they will gain weight, only it is easier to eat 2500 when you are the office worker and gain weight without realising why than it is to eat 3500 while going to the gym a lot and not realise why.

My concern is that while the obesity problem is getting worse we are looking for more and more complex reasons when in reality most people consume more calories than they require.

I think you are missing the point. If you are active you don’t need to worry that much about it.

However if you are not then nutrition plays a key role and not all calories are equal on a macro level, and more importantly more and more it seems that there are better and worse combinations of calories.

People that cut out carbs experience a lowered appetite, more stable blood sugar levels and are less likely to accumulate fat as their main energy cycle will be either ketogenesis or glucogensis depending on the fat to protein ratio they consume on a low carb diet, with Keto seem to be the most effective at maintaining lean body mass.

Now are there long term negative effects of such diets? maybe, are there better diets? also maybe.. I was also very skeptical about this until I tried both a ketogenic and carnivore style diets and despite consuming 2800 kcal a day (I’m only 181cm) I’ve seen very impressive results. And don’t get me wrong I was and am still active mainly running and with the exclusion of a 2 week set back when I tried Keto in both cases my running performance was better at the end than on a balanced diet with pre-run carb loading.

1000 times yes. We don't need to make this complicated.

It's just extremely hard to properly track what you're eating if you're unwilling to pay attention to it, which I don't blame people for.

There's so many calorie dense foods because we wind up adding sugar and oil to so many things when we process them and you don't even realize how many calories you're bringing in.

It ain't easy out there!

Oil is a killer for calorie control. Amazingly so many people just don’t factor it in, even when they are tracking calories they forget about the tablespoon of oil in the pan at the start or in the dressing on the salad.

I’m keen not to blame people for their weight, I’m keen to make sure we are researching the right problem. I think the “how to control weight” is solved, the harder problem, as I mentioned in a previous comment above, is how do me help people control the appetite and impulses to stand a fighting chance.

His point still stands.

Yes, he can handle a 3500 Cal/day diet with his activity level. Maybe you only need 1500-2000 (like most people in the first world not working manual labor jobs). Okay, so if you're gaining weight, it's because of metabolic processes adding to your body mass. This is one of two things: building muscle, or storing fat (adding bone is pretty minimal, and likely going to be strongly correlated with activity that builds muscle, so we'll just ignore it)

If you're building muscle, it's because your body is taking in more materials (especially proteins) and using them to repair tears to your muscular system due to activity/damage than it is eliminating through use. If you're storing fat, it's because your body is taking in more materials (typically carbs/fats) and storing them in your body in case you need them later than it is eliminating through use.

It's always because you take in more than you use. And weight loss is the opposite.

It's that simple. Whether you eat all carbs or 0 carbs, weigh 100LB or 400 LB, lay in bed 24 hours a day or move constantly, it's a very simple mechanism for what causes obesity. Calorie surplus = storage. Calorie defect = weight loss.

The point is that effective nutrition is still the best way to lose weight and as I’ve seen more than a few people going going on ketogenic diets while consuming a normal caloric intake and losing weight at a rate greater than any deficiency there is something to this.

We also need to understand if there are reasons for far occumulation other than simply excess calories. Fat is an organ it is connected to the nervous system and it stores a lot of crap in it, now does your body accumulate fat to protect it self from junk you eat I’m not sure it’s that simple but obesity is a real problem and we need to find a solution for it which is more nuanced than eat less and excercise because at least to me it seems like a far more complicated issue.

I studied nutrition in college. If the question is "why am I gaining weight" then the answer is ONLY "you're eating more calories than you need".

"Health" and "wellness" and "obesity" are all 3 completely different things. You can lose weight in healthy and unhealthy ways. You can gain weight in healthy and unhealthy ways.

Without getting into fad diets' actual biological effects(keto, atkins, whatever the flavor of the week "high fat/protien low carb" diet is) people who are on diets are paying more attention to how they eat than people who aren't on a diet. There's so many confounding factors, plus just people saying "I feel like i'm healthier!" just because they're on a diet. It's a mix of "doing better things than you were doing", your body adapting to a new mix of macros, and placebo affect more often than not.

I am and was keeping a record of what I eat and I tried multiple diets while maintaining the same level of activity and I went into that just as sceptical as you.

I run about 80KM a week, I used to have a very well balanced diet with carb loading before long runs.

I first tried a carnivore diet as a joke to tease a friend that was going vegan because of his then new boyfriend and while I’ve seen good results I had blood sugar spikes because of the high protien intake and my lean body mass flactuated quite a bit.

I’ve then tried Keto and for me it worked, my performance and overall endurance improved my blood sugar is now constantly in the range of 4.3-4.7 mol with the lower being just after excercise which is honestly very good for me considering that while eating carbs it did jump to above 7 after a carb loading meal.

Lean body mass has also increased considerably I’ve dropped from 21% body fat to 13% over a period of 14 months while maintaining the same level of activity as I have had for the past decade.

Again n=1 but I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence and more importantly actual research to think that there is something there.

And that is the whole point it isn’t that simple and there needs to be much more research into this hopefully without commercial interests butting in.

Of course there's differences in how the body metabolizes different macros, and I'n not saying that certain diets aren't going to "work" for certain people.

Here's my specific points

1- In many parts of the developed world where food scarcity has been minimized/eliminated, we see increased rates of obesity across all demographics. This is a messy knot of factors that covers everything from social behaviors to availability of nutritious food to education and wealth. If you're going to tackle "why are people so much more likely to be obese than before?" you have a TON of factors to attempt to control for in the decision making. 2- If you're not trying to figure out why people are making their choices, and looking at it from a strictly "how does the body work and is that contributing" the simple answer is: your body more readily converts various carbs into body fat than any other macros (Protein, Lipids, Alcohol), people eat a lot of carbs, and finally most people tend to overeat if presented with more food than they actually need. This is the basic scientific consensus, and explains why your experience with a keto diet was positive. The issue is, as you said, that people are interested in selling meal packages and books and lifestyles and generally getting rich off other people's body image issues/health problems. Carbs play a part of in the obesity spike in recent years, but WHY people eat the way they do is what we need to figure out if we want to solve things.

If you are a tall male 3500 kcal is not professional athlete region. Hell, if you are a young male < 25 thats not a huge amount.

Outside of exteeme cases it is: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/07/24/157317262/ho...

People also tend to overestimate how much calories they consume a day when you average it out over a period of time.

You can have days with 4500 kcal and days with 2500 kcal.

Yeah, a couple of my taller buddies gave up on the gym as they saw no results. In hindsight it was clear they just weren’t eating anywhere near enough, if you are tall and active 4K+ is not insane

Yup I am 170lbs and 3500 Calories a day is just enough for me to play an hour of basketball a few times a week and be able to gain a little bit of muscle.