And what about non-humans? Animals are getting fatter, too [2]. Some of this can be explained by humans eating more, hence making more food available to those animals that eat human leftovers or steal human food. But this weight gain has also been noted in laboratory animals which are on controlled diets.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/why-it-wa...
"People in the 2000's weighed about 10% more than people in the '80s who ate the same amount of calories, with the same micronutrient distribution, and did the same amount of exercise [1]"
To say that the cited study is laughable gives it far too much credit. For instance it specifically and only considers leisure activities. As to self-described dietary results, the only takeaway is that people are far more full of shit now than then. It is Ginny in the Sopranos boasting about their diet while eating chocolate bars in the laundry room.
It's interesting how gullible people who are otherwise so discerning are when it comes to diet, particularly for dietary excuses. There is no field that has been so rife with study that upsets study, and gross scientific malpractice, as nutrition. But hey, here's one study where they mangled numbers from sets decades apart and drew some viral result. Serious groan.
However, when your parents constantly ask you if you want to eat, it's a bitch to resists the temptation.
I had lost 20 lbs without needing to keep track of how much food I eat, as opposed to how many meals I eat.
Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going to keep your desired weight. CICO in the long term is a failure. Partly, because our model is actually wrong. Exercise is basically useless for reducing calories, because it's both very hard to do a lot of it, and your basal metabolism adjusts in the long run by adjusting itself to be lower. You should still do exercise, and if you can around 750 minutes per week, which is when you start hitting diminishing return.
People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm.
The Japanese eat, on average, 25% less calories than Americans. They have an obesity rate of 4% versus 36% in the US. This despite eating loads of "bad" calories like simple carbs (white processed rice).
The word 'psychological' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We have no reason to believe it is more or less likely for overeating to be caused by psychological rather than metabolic or other systemic reasons.
The fact of the matter remains that some people struggle with their weight while others don't. CICO doesn't address this at all.
Of course, CICO also doesn't work very well when comparing between people, despite your claim. For example, people with endocrin disorders are well known to lose or gain weight disproportionately in relation to their diets. Base metabolic rates vary significantly between people, even healthy ones. There are other discrepancies as well, which mean that, knowing person A and person B eat the same amount of calories and exercise the same amount will not help you to predict the weight gain/loss difference between them.
We are biological machines, and the amount we eat is biologically determined by our bodies (assuming food is widely available). We can somewhat influence that with rational thought, but to a limited degree, just like we can choose to breathe in faster or slower, but we can't maintain that for any length of time.
If it is endocrine instead, we would be looking for a drug to fix it, or a specific pollutant that could be removed. No one will tell you 'hey, it's your thyroid, just make it go a little faster'.
It's like having a thermostat that adjust the temperature to 70 degrees, and you want it to be 75. So your solution is to bring in more heat while ignoring the thermostat. The thermostat adjust by engaging the air conditioner. Which certainly will work, but also very inefficient.
Your body isn't that stupid and it's not certainly a dumb engine.
But hard exercise is hard! Folks don't want to do it. They want to stretch and walk around a track and pretend. But they don't want to do 20 miles on a bike. They convince themselves that they can't. Or they try and get aches and pains and decide that's bad. Pretty much throwing up roadblocks right and left, anything to avoid the work.
We all know this. It's why there are 1000 books about tricks and diets and how to fool yourself. Because we want to do that instead. But we can stop enabling that; stop making excuses for small issues about body adjustments and so on.
Most people are busy, they have jobs or families or kids. Yet decades ago, these same people aren't fat.
We all know this. It's why there are 1000 books about tricks and diets and how to fool yourself. Because we want to do that instead. But we can stop enabling that; stop making excuses for small issues about body adjustments and so on.
There's certainly no magic trick, but being dogmatic or smug isn't helpful either.
Smugness is nowhere in sight. More like resignation and sadness.
Why, of all things, do you think forcing people to do hard exercise would be effective for the vast majority of people, compared to, say, an improved diet?
The mirage of 'an improved diet' is the current fad idea and the topic of this conversation. Why doesn't it work for most people? Why are there 1000 books about it, and still no consensus?
> The basic metabolic rate varies between individuals. One study of 150 adults representative of the population in Scotland reported basal metabolic rates from as low as 1027 kcal per day (4301 kJ/day) to as high as 2499 kcal/day (10455 kJ/day); with a mean BMR of 1500 kcal/day (6279 kJ/day). Statistically, the researchers calculated that 62.3% of this variation was explained by differences in fat free mass. Other factors explaining the variation included fat mass (6.7%), age (1.7%), and experimental error including within-subject difference (2%). The rest of the variation (26.7%) was unexplained. This remaining difference was not explained by sex nor by differing tissue size of highly energetic organs such as the brain.
So this study [1] claims ~25% difference in BMR that is NOT explained by sex, weight, height, lean body mass etc. That can mean some people can eat an extra burger a day compared to others without gaining more weight.
It's also important to note that BMR is not the only biological component here. Both CI and CO are biologically determined, they are not under 100% rational control. There are clear differences in people in terms of appetite/hunger reaction, and in terms of desire for physical activity, that we don't have a known explanation for (psychology? endocrinology? metabolic causes? gut biome? other?). This is, in fact, the biggest biologically determined component of obesity that is usually entirely ignored and blamed entirely on the individual's self-control.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Causes_of...
It is uncontroversial that by reducing calories in one's diet that it will cause weight loss. The controversy is centered around weight control, whether an individual can keep the weight at a stable level over the long run. In that sense, all diet fails.
I would contend that how many calories a person eat is only a proximal cause of obesity, especially since CICO is actually an incorrect model of how our body work.
Several people as in how many out of those that failed. If the statistics tell us that 90% of people failed, then these diets or programs are still an utter failure. By saying it is some kind of moral failing or willpower means we decided to be lazy about investigating the cause of obesity.
Remember, the obesity epidemic is a modern phenomenon. There are countries around the world that are still relatively lean.
[0] put about 30lb on during the pandemic period that I'm working off again.
I lost about 30kg (105 -> 75) by eating less, excersing more, all in about the span of a year. I never stopped feeling hungry overall for this period, constantly had to fight the urge to eat more. In periods where high stress reduced my willpower, I started putting back weight. I've put on about 10kg back in the following 5 years, so on balance I'm still in pretty good shape, but the trend is clear.
The mystery is why I have this relationship with food, and why other people don't. Most thin people are not going to bed dreaming of tomorrow's meal.
I eagerly await the day science figures out how to stop my food cravings and delivers it in a form I can obtain easily.
Unfortunately, loads of people in this very thread are disputing it. This submission is based upon the bizarre hope that there's a mysterious external influence that's actually causing people to gain weight, and not the merely coincidental simultaneous rise in caloric intake.
The psychological element is complex and profoundly difficult. That is without question.
People in cushy office jobs eating as much calories as they want in 1900 are much less obese than similar people in 2000. How come? It's not that the 1900s office workers put in more effort or attention to limit their calorie consumption and burn more calories, it's entirely the other way around.
People in another culture eating a very sweet-heavy diet (and eating as much of it as they want) apparently consume much less calories than similar people in USA. How come?
The psychological element apparently wasn't as difficult some decades ago - people in 1960s who had as much food as they wanted, and the same kinds of tempting calorie-rich snacks available, were much less obese not because they were better at overcoming some psychological difficulties, but because apparently much fewer of them had such difficulties to overcome. How come?
It would be valid to reduce weight gain to "How to eat as much calories as you should instead of as much calories as you intuitively want" if and only if wanting to eat much more calories than you should is some innate, natural thing. The article points out that the spread of this tendency is a novel thing, it used to be rare, and perhaps it can be made rare again, so it's worth investigating the cause of that unhealthy appetite miscalibration instead of having people fight through the symptom (which they're failing at, because it's hard).
If someone's organism was working properly, they should not need to pay attention to CICO as the body will balance both "CI" and "CO" to get a decent non-obese result - the experience of earlier times and other cultures shows that the human body almost always (96% of non-obesity) does that naturally. If now the same mechanism is failing for 40% of the population instead of 4%, that is not caused by a change in ignoring CICO, people were ignoring CICO hundred years ago as well.
I believe that the problem is not that different from the problem of alcoholism. Everyone lives in a society soaked with alcohol, some people do not feel an urge to drink at all, some people manage to keep their consumption in healthy limits for 50 years, some end up as hopeless wretches in 10 years.
The fact that you can force yourself to eat less than you feel the need to and lose weight in the process does not prove, as you seem to think, that weight gain is simply explained by people being weak willed and eating burgers instead of salad. You still have to ask why this change actually occurred, since it seems that it has occurred in the general US population about 50 years ago and most of the world has been following suit.
Only for fat people. People like me find it fairly easy.
Over my adult life[currently 75yo], my weight has fluctuated modestly year to year (as measured by the tightness of my belt). When my abdominal circumference has grown by a couple belt notches, I tend to eat less for a while, until the belt is less tight. THIS REQUIRES ALMOST NO WILLPOWER OR CONSCIOUS ATTENTION ON MY PART. Why????
But there are massive industries[1] that exist to tell people that no, it's really that you aren't eating enough food that is red. Or that fell to the ground. Or whatever. Whatever magical, simple fix means that they can still eat an excess of calories. These diets have a failure rate approaching 100%. The US is the most diet focused country in planetary history, yet also one of the fattest.
Maybe pretending that the basic thermodynamics are just some unachievable mirage is a really profoundly stupid approach?
And yes, people who have actually lost weight (or, more often than not, not gain it in the first place) simply ate less (it's magnitudes harder to burn more calories to any meaningful amount). Virtually universally.
But this makes obese people angry. It always makes them angry.
[1] - And authors. This paper cites Stephen Guyenet casually dismissing "CICO". The guy makes his living pitching easy "AHA" moments to fat people. It is, ironically, his bread and butter.
But lets assume it all boils down to calories in/calories out, your solution is singularly focused on calories in (eating less), that in a vacuum has no effect of calories out except generally a negative effect (your body will adapt and try to burn less calories). Thus, you are ignoring that the form of calories in directly effects the calories out, and that there are better ways to balance the equation by increasing calories out without necessarily reducing calories in, or in some cases increasing calories out might even require a caloric surplus (such as muscle building).
"that in a vacuum has no effect of calories out except generally a negative effect (your body will adapt and try to burn less calories)"
This is comically overstated. No, your body doesn't magically become super efficient. This is, again, feel good pablum to make people feel better about their situation, sure it is an unwinnable battle without Magic Product or System ("buy my new book and subscribe to my It's Everyone Else's Fault newsletter!"). But the feel good stuff clearly is astonishingly ineffective. This tact hasn't worked.
Find any person who is overweight but claims they starve themselves and log and count calories. In 100% of cases you will find a calorie excess, likely significant. Find someone who is a healthy weight but claims they "eat anything they want". In 100% of cases -- okay 99.9% maybe they have a big tapeworm -- they will have a lower caloric intake.
The latter is someone who likely skips meals. They don't snack. They don't drink giant sugary drinks. And then when it's pizza day they have four slices and all of the high BMI sorts lament how they wish they had such a "high metabolism" and that they can "eat anything". It's all bullshit.
There is a significant, very difficult psychological component to eating in excess. It is a very hard problem. But I'll take every angry downvote by people who seriously want to refute the core, fundamental truth about calories, likely while parroting nonsensical myth.
I take great issue with you saying 'they claim to starve themselves'. The entire point is that people who are obese can feel that they are starving while eating twice the calories that they should. Some other people feel full after eating half the calories that they should. This is the almost the entire problem, the unexplained difference.
And, despite your claim, there are also demonstrable differences in the base metabolic rate between people. One of the most basic is the difference between men and women, which is usually estimated to be about 25% — men are generally accepted to have to eat about 2500 Cal per day to keep their weight, while women should only eat about 2000 Cal (for example, by the NHS [0]). There is no reason to think that, if there can be a 25% difference in the BMR between men and women, there can't be similar differences between individuals as well. Of course, you won't find anyone who eats 10k Cal and is not gaining weight (outside professional athletes, perhaps), or anyone who is eating 100 Cal and not losing weight. But it's quite plausible for someone to eat two extra pizza slices and still lose weight compared to someone else.
[0] https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/wha...
I'm being pretty overt that when people make that claim they are often being dishonest. They know they are eating too much. There are psychological issues underlying this, but if someone tells you how little they eat yet they're gaining weight, they're likely lying.
> And, despite your claim, there are also demonstrable differences in the base metabolic rate between people.
Nowhere did I contest this. Men have more muscle mass than women and are generally larger. But between people otherwise equal, claims about varying metabolisms are largely bullshit. It is magnitudes less of an influence than it is held as.
I've been cited as a "fast metabolism" examples many times in my life. I skip meals constantly, can manage to go through a movie without eating a bucket of butter-soaked popcorn and a jug of coke, etc. I eschew all of those things. Then there's a bbq and I eat two burgers and the upper BMI people all gather around to tell the tale about how easy it is for me, what with my "fast metabolism". It's horseshit. It's destructive, self-enabling nonsense.
Another guy mentioned that when his belt size starts getting tight he knows it's time to cut back. Precisely my tactic. There have been a few times where suddenly slacks are a little tight and it isn't a signal that I need to buy new clothes or go to the next rung, but instead means it's time that I skip the occasional snack.
The fact that they are overeating doesn't mean that they aren't also feeling very hungry, truthfully. And again, neither you nor I know if it's a psychological issue or metabolic or endocrine or anything else (or a combination).
These are the two key facts that the article is discussing and you are completely ignoring in favor of feeling superior about your self control ("I can go through a movie without eating a bucket of butter-filled popcorn").
I think you're the one with the misconception. Obesity is consistently a contributor to health problems. Losing weight is definitely healthier for anyone who is obese and the way you lose weight is to eat less. Period. Full stop.
There are strategies for eating less that may or may not be more effective for most people, but it when it gets right down to it anyone telling you that you don't have to eat less is a snakeoil salesman.
What if someone eats the same but creates the caloric deficit through increased exercise? Will they lose weight?
Just like OP you want to simplify things as calories in/calories out while entirely ignoring calories out.
Losing weight is not healthy in and of itself, even in obese people, however, losing weight can be a byproduct of making healthy dietary and lifestyle changes.
Calories is just a unit of measurement of metabolic energy, that energy comes in 3 forms fat (ketones), glucose, and alcohol and is metabolized into energy (adp), but that energy production (metabolism) is more a measurement of health than a measurement of the total number of calories in. That is what you are ignoring.
Edit: I’m sure you have lost your weight through eating less. But have you changed and improved the actual foods you consume also? Have you begun to burn more through improved dietary metabolism and/or increased exercise? I have a hard time believing one day you were eating nutritionally deficient and caloric dense foods and lost 150 by making no other changes than simply eating less of the same calorically dense and nutritionally deficient food. Even more unlikely would be you being obese eating low calories nutritionally dense foods, and lost 150lbs reducing the calories.
Yes, but there's a reason for the saying "you can't outrun a bad diet". I get it though, you're technically correct and that's the best kind according to meme science.
> I’m sure you have lost your weight through eating less. But have you changed and improved the actual foods you consume also?
Yes, because that's one of the things that makes it easier. Some foods are more satiating than others. And yes, I did increase in exercise. In fact, the exercise preceded the weight loss because the activity I took up (rock climbing) was what finally provided enough motivation for me to overcome my desire to eat more.
> I have a hard time believing one day you were eating nutritionally deficient and caloric dense foods and lost 150 by making no other changes than simply eating less of the same calorically dense and nutritionally deficient food.
It's harder, but definitely possible: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/....
My point being, you can add all the exercise you want but if you're not paying attention to your caloric intake then chances are you're just going to eat more to make up for the expended calories.
However the basic reality is that it's a lot easier/achievable to significantly change calories in. Simple keeping your body and brain operating is actually a pretty energy expensive function, such that dramatically increasing your activity is only going to mildly increase your daily energy use.
You can not eat that muffin....or exercise on the stair climber for an hour, for instance. As an aside, loads of exercise equipment and guides effectively lie about this by including basal calories with active calories, grossly overstating the calories "burned" by activities.
So again, exercise. Eat healthy. But most importantly of all, eat less.
I think the real question raised by this article is why eating at the level required to maintain a specific body weight is second nature to some and torture to others. 'Calories in calories out' starts to sound a lot like 'if you don't want to be addicted don't do drugs'. It's much easier said than done by someone who doesn't understand addiction. In fact it's almost worse than addiction, as someone hooked on heroin or booze can do rehab or some other form where you just can't get ahold of those. But if you're addicted to food, you have to deal with the subject of your addiction 3 meal times a day (plus advertising!). That's a hard place to be.
Loads of people took in that information and never became addicted (at least until the medical industry tricked them into addiction). The information "if you don't want to be addicted don't do the thing that is sure to get you addicted" is very good advice. It is irrefutable advice.
Once you're addicted it's an entirely different, much more difficult problem. But it isn't a better understanding of addiction to say "Whoa, look I used heroin at a bunch of parties and now I crave heroin, therefore you shouldn't tell people to not do drugs". It doesn't follow.
a) Humans are spectacularly efficient at turning solar energy into bioavailable calories. This impacts virtually every animal.
b) Lab and zoo diets have dramatically changed. For instance in the lab there was a change from specific portioned diets to the notion that food should always be provided. Any study that claims that there was some mysterious rise in obesity is simply lying. And again there is a push for controlled, restricted diets because having sedentary rats and mice who can eat whenever they want is yielding unhealthy subjects.
c) The study this article links was lead by a guy who is an advisor to Coca-cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay, the Restaurant Association, among others. It is a profoundly corrupt industry, and yeah the notion that some mysterious unknown cause is to blame is convenient in that situation.
It seems like the decrease in satiety has a stronger effect.
Haven't people gotten a little less gullible about this stuff yet?
Look, some tribe had fruit on the ground and they weren't obese. Stuff that pizza is your mouth while we get to the bottom of this.
The reality is that calories have never been as available and cheap. And there is an absolutely lock-step correlation between dietary calories and obesity rates. No, it isn't the great mystery that it is held as. Indeed, this article spends most of its time debunking "it isn't the calories" dietary trends -- low fat, low carb, low sugar, low fat.
Don't forget addictive. We've become incredibly good at making food that makes you want to keep eating more of it. Once you pop, you can't stop.
If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less. Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutrient is really the cause, if you just subscribe to whatever the current trend is.
People get really upset about the calories reality.
And indeed if you compare caloric intake between say 1970 and 2010, there was a significant jump in the average diet. Grain products rose, but not nearly as much as fats and oils rose. People ate more and they got fatter. When excess accumulates over time, the increase doesn't have to be large. More calories in, BMI increased.