For many people, no it's not. Becuse their metabolism just decreases by the exact same amount they cut calories. They cut out the daily donut, and they find themselves fidgeting less and wearing a sweater because they're suddenly a little chilly a lot of the day. And the scale doesn't budge.
For many people, losing weight is a whole lot more complex than reducing by x calories per day. Getting your body to burn fat rather than slow its metabolism can be maddeningly difficult.
That said, as someone who struggles with weight loss, it's still hard. There are both physioloical and psychological issues that make it challenging.
As an aside, keto is the only thing thats worked reliably for me so far - largely because of the caloric restriction it inherently forces. I stopped following it because people kept telling me they were concerned it was unhealthy, but I'm sure the weight is worse than anything else.
Not sure who told you it was bad for you, I've predominantly heard it being touted as beneficial and longevity-increasing.
I've seen people losing 40kg (120kg to 80kg) by just walking and counting calories. It's the last 5-6 kg that are harder than the first 20kg is almost trivial to lose - one all the right habits are in place.
And habits are the hardest part. It's not the body, not laws of thermodynamics, it's just your habits (most of the time).
Obviously different people are different.
And it has utterly nothing to do with habits, you can see my other comment. It's about the whether you can even manage the other health consequences you suffer from your metabolism being so low.
Given lightweight excercise (walking,kettlebells, etc) that's almost impossible!
Yes, but at the cost of your immune system severely degrading so you suddenly get colds all the time. At the cost of extreme fatigue and brain fog. At least that's what's made weight loss difficult for me at times.
Because for some people (like me), your body drops its metabolism to well below what's healthy before it even thinks about burning fat. It's not any question at all of willpower or psychology, it's purely physiological.
For a few people losing weight is complex. For most people, it’s simple.
Eat less. Move more.
Saying otherwise is a cop out.
Unless you have some fundamental food-related disorders it's not that hard. Our bodies were meant to gain weight weight quickly - and lose it if necessary. For most people losing 10-20 kg is a question of 3-4 months, or even less.
If it were that simple, most people would be able to do it. The actual evidence shows it's far more complex than you think.
There's no cop out here. Many people's bodies simply refuse to burn fat until their metabolism has gone so low it has other dangerous health consequences.
Also, as for "move more", the evidence shows that people generally eat even more after exercise to compensate. Exercise is great for general health, but it's a terrible strategy for most people for losing weight. It simply backfires.
Similarly, people probably walk way way less than you would expect. It is kind of scary to see how few steps I can get on a standard day.
That's maybe the magic of "walkable neighborhoods." You just walk over to the store/the cafe/the restaurant real quick, and then you walk back. It was only maybe a few hundreds steps, but that's enough to put away a ton of the glucose you just dumped into your bloodstream.
It is shocking how little walking is necessary to have a massive impact on glucose. 500 steps or so is easily enough for me.
I went down to 1800 calories and the remaining 10kg were gone in 6 weeks.
I wrote earlier that reforming my diet to protein-centric, 1800-2000cal a day + 15k steps walking + some lightweight kettlebell work was enough to get things going. I used myfitnespal, really useful.
It wasn't too hard, to be honest, as I am relatively used to training. For some ppl even walking 10k a day is a challenge.
For comparison, I recently went from 132kg (290lbs) to 111kg (245lbs) in the last 5 months without counting calories, on a very-low-protein, ultra-high-fat diet.
Re. the abs, I've never had them but my impression is they're hidden by basically the last 5lbs of fat you'll lose. So nothing and then they're suddenly there makes sense. Congrats!
Back when i doing boxing in early 2ps I was as low as 69kg, and still didn't see the full 6-pack. Go figure....
My collegue went from 115kg to 85kg some time ago. I know it's a different kind of game. Took a year for him. He was younger, in his late 20s, so running was still an option for him. I am In my late 30s, and traumas accumulated so i had to accept that calorie counting was the only remaining option.
Also, I'd suggest still working from a high-protein approach. You get to keep you muscle, especially if you do some reasonable amount of training.
I counted the steps. Under 600 steps. Not even around the block, and a ~20mg/dL reduction in blood glucose.
While I'm completely behind your post in general, unfortunately it's much more complicated. It comes down to calories in vs energy consumption. If you oversupply your buddy with calories however most science I read states 7.000 calories of surplus to be one kilo in fat in the average human. Highly recommend the Huberman episode about nutrition.
Much easier to say no to a 300 cal donut than to run 30 minutes.
Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat.
Maybe we need a “just say no” to junk food campaign like we had in the 90s.
Lean meat, tofu, tempeh, seitan, veggies, low calorie sauces, limited fruits, protein smoothies (watching the sugar/fat)
Do a few pushups, a light run, increase slowly.
Make it sustainable, not a flash crash.