This is a touchy topic, but I would like to point out that you're missing the obvious confirmation bias that comes with this observation.

There are many people who modulate their weight by changing what they eat, how much they eat, reducing snacking, meal planning, and changing their shopping habits.

You don't see them among the millions of people failing to lose weight or paying for expensive solutions because they quietly solve their problem.

I'm also not suggesting it's easy, but we should acknowledge that many people do successfully control and modulate their weight through dietary and habit changes. There's a survivorship bias problem that occurs when you only look at the remaining sub-group who has the most difficulty with this.

This is a myth.

When you actually track what these people eat, their daily caloric intake averages out to numbers you'd expect. At best, the difference between "fast metabolism" and "slow metabolism" people in studies comes out to a couple hundred calories per day.

You may witness someone consume 2 pizzas and a soda in one sitting without getting fat, but that person is consuming fewer calories for the rest of the day or the week to offset it.

Some people just only want to eat an amount that doesn't get them fat. They aren't using any willpower or anything, they just don't want to eat more than a healthy amount for them.

I am not one of those people (I am overweight when I eat as much as I want), but I am for other things. For example, I don't drink very often (only maybe 10 times a year) and don't get very drunk when I do. I just don't feel a desire to drink very often. It takes zero self discipline to not drink for an extended period of time because I don't have the desire for it.

On the other hand, many alcoholics struggle mightily to avoid drinking. It takes all their willpower to not drink.

Everyone is different in their ability to avoid different addictions.

So, metabolism is really just an expression of how active we are. Some athletes eat 5-10,000 calories a day just to maintain their weight. Hard working laborers also need a lot more calories than office workers.

Meanwhile, people blame their metabolism as if it's just a trait they can't control like their height. You absolutely can increase your metabolism, just move more. This is also likely a big reason why many people gain weight in adulthood - in school we have weekly gym classes and we spend lots of time running around ad playing with friends etc. Then we grow up and our activity level plummets, but we don't adjust our diet to accommodate our much lower metabolism.

If you construct your argument to exclude the 2 out of 3 people who are not overweight and then point out that the remaining 1/3 is overweight, that's the definition of confirmation bias.

It's also a disingenuous argument because not all of those 40% are actively trying and failing to modulate their weight in any way. Most people just don't care.

For example: weightlifters. It’s standard operating procedure to “bulk up” - periods where lifters overeat to promote muscle growth - and then diet to “cut” weight to drop the fat gained during the bulking period while keeping the muscle. They tend to be extremely motivated individuals though.

It IS simple to reduce your weight. There are like, two things you need to do. It is, however, VERY hard to actually do those things.

I've always been skinny but for some reason I've gained weight recently. Even with keto, intermittent fasting, tirzeptide, and workouts twice a week I have only lost 5 lbs in months. When I was skinny and forgot to eat, I would feel a little crappy but still could function. Now I begin to feel incredibly depressed, I can't sleep nor focus. This solidified it to me that there's a circuit in your brain that controls feeding and if it's out of whack it'll punish you until you eat. Dieting takes months and no one can go that long without sleep. So it's still a practical problem, its just hard to see if your system is well calibrated.

If you're combining a ketogenic diet AND intermittent fasting AND a GLP-1 inhibitor AND exercise and you're still losing less weight than observed in the Ozempic studies, it's likely that there's more to this story.

Ketogenic dieting does not automatically translate to weight loss. Keto simply makes it easier to reduce caloric intake. It's actually very easy to gain weight on a keto diet due to the high caloric density of consuming that much fat.

> Now I begin to feel incredibly depressed, I can't sleep nor focus.

Honestly if you're having these dramatic negative effects from minor caloric restriction with GLP-1 inhibitors, something else is going on.

There's other zero-calorie foods too, but they tend to cause intestinal discomfort rather than improve it.

Started having sweetened oatmeal for a midnight snack and already I feel better all over.

"it's so easy"

"it's just calories in, calories out"

"if you eat according to this plan and make sure to get 8 hours of sleep a day, you won't even feel the cravings"

Is stuff that fat people say. They totally buy into it and buy all of the products to help them convince themselves this is true. Then they get disillusioned when it doesn't work, have a crisis of faith, then go to the next fad to get over the self-hatred caused by their failure at sticking to something so easy.

Intermittent fasting is great. It got me from 225 to 165, kept it off for the past few years with no effort (my entire metabolism recalibrated to 165-175, I guess.) I also know people who cry actual tears when they're very late for a meal, or panic. Those people need therapy and/or maybe an injection to artificially lower their appetites to the level where I also artificially lowered my own appetite.

Intermittent fasting is no more natural than injections. Dieting is modernity.

So, yeah, dieting is modern, but so is an abundance of food. Both are equally unnatural.

We also didn't get vaccines for most of history. That doesn't mean remaining unvaccinated is good.

For the record, keto works for me (including bloodwork to prove it) but is unsustainable. My mind is never sufficient compared to when I'm eating normally. It's observable in my work and parenting. Although, last time I was on keto, my cholesterol was through the roof. I went off keto and three months later numbers were back to normal. And I wasn't consuming a shitton of meat and butter or anything. I was pretty close to exactly the right numbers for optimal health. Just...something made the numbers terrible and I've no idea why. Did a re-test to confirm. Same awful cholesterol.

On IF I actually got fatter. Numbers worse. Less healthy. Couldn't exercise as vigorously.

For me, calorie counting works. It's also not sustainable, because with kids you get in a rush and if you have a normal social life you eat at places you can't calorie count.

To stay healthy I just try as hard as I can and exercise (distance running, weightlifting, tennis when I can, which is pretty rare with three young children).

Why is this such a complex concept for so many? I literally cannot think of anything simpler.

What you're referring to, is the basic concept of thermodynamic calorie in/calorie out. Yes, you can "just" reduce food and lose weight if you hit deficit numbers.

But if you don't do it correctly, you'll feel like trash, you'll suffer bad cravings, and put yourself in a stressful mental situation for days, possibly putting your job at risk.

You have to:

- Eat less than what you're already eating

- But enough to nourish yourself so you keep being in good shape for your work and hobbies

- Manage hunger

- Make the change sustainable so you can keep doing it for the rest of your life.

It's specially hard when your work is entirely sedentary, you live alone and, ironically, when you have a salary that let's you order food every day.

A lot of people don't have it hard. Maybe because they have someone cooking for them at home, because they meal prep the entire week, or because their work is so physically intensive they can just wing it and burn everything with what they need to do for a living anyway.

Except your calories are from pop tarts.

If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter.

If you ate 1800 calories of pop tarts once a day in 1 hour, you might maintain weight or loose a little. Maybe.

If you had 3600 calories of pop tarts in a few hour window, and then didn't eat again for 48 hours, you'd lose weight in a month.

Insulin control is 99% of losing weight. Yes thermodynamic blah blah, but unless you pay attention to hormone control that controls metabolism in general, it's not going to work without insane willpower to keep your 'calories out' higher than your body wants.

If you repeated the 3600 calories every 48 hours with beef instead, you'd lose weight like never before.

You don't even need to do keto or wacky "just meat" diets to handle insulin. Protein consumption prevents insulin spikes for around 1-2 hours after eating. Also, proteins and fats slow down digestion.

Turns out, the good old Mediterranean diet is spot-on for a healthy lifestyle.

But yes, meat and vegetables is basically what I'd recommend. Never pasta or bread or sugar unless you need help gaining weight.

How about: some pasta and bread to enable physical exertion.

My father and I have avoided carbs for a few years now. Can do home renovations, gardening, dirt bike riding, and hikes better than we ever did eating carbs. Unless you're doing long distance hikes/running/hard core sports, I really don't think that's true.

This is thermodynamically impossible unless your daily calorie use is less then 1800 calories.

Not that I agree that for a human metabolism meal timing makes much of a difference in energy extraction, but it wouldn't be thermodynamically impossible.

Realize that WHAT you put in can change what energy out is.

If I gave you 1800 calories of vodka at 8am, would your use the same amount of energy during the day, and even make it to your 7pm gym? No.

Ok, well sugar isnt exactly the same obviously, but it can also affect what you do that day, how your body acts, your brain even.

Your energy out gets totally messed with after you have tons of alcohol for obvious reasons. Something similar happens on sugar/spiked insulin levels. Can you willpower through it and increase your energy out by running til you drop dead and lose weight? Sure. But it's not easy.

What's way easier is not having the insulin spike in the first place.

Nobody claims that the quality of what you eat has no effect on you, but every study shows that if you maintain the same calorie intake and expenditure it doesn't really matter how you consume the calories or how you expend it.

To not understand that would mean that while believing some studies, you completely ignore all the studies that have been done on insulin and weight gain.

I agree that you would feel very differently in those situations and it's likely you wouldn't spend the same amount of energy unless you really make an effort to do it.

I don't agree that if you do make an effort to spend the same amount of energy you would have different results with regards to weight loss.

2, that in the face of crazy long term insulin/hormone disruption, people will continue to be just as active as if they had a sane diet of mostly meat and vegetables.

I'm starting to see why everyone is so unhealthy.

What metabolic effect do you expect from raising your insulin levels hourly?

If you add extra modifiers like "I want to feel great while doing it" and "I want to lose weight while sedentary" and "I want to continue eating whatever stupid thing I want" and "I need to be able to scroll tiktok for at least 3 hours, leaving no time for cooking", it gets much more complicated.

Side note: LOL at "but if you're craving food you might get fired!!1!" - this is professional victimhood at its finest.

Not true for most people. You need to eat fewer calories, not less food. I counted calories for a few weeks an was very surprised.