I would push back and say that a lot of people didn't actually know that. They came up with elaborate reasons why eating less doesn't work, but keto works, or paleo works, or eliminating sugar works, or vegan works, or it's just physically impossible to lose weight.

▲

NikolaNovak 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am constantly arguing with all of my friends and family who believe primary way to loose weight is to exercise more.

Exercising is great, absolutely, but eating less is the actual primary method. While acknowledging complications of metabolism and psychology and weird states body goes through when it's hungry, primary part is to reduce calory intake vs expenditure.

So as snide and silly as it may be, in my neck of the woods, I would agree, lots of people don't believe eating less is the primary method of losing weight.

▲

JohnMakin 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s just physics, really.

A bag of doritos is 200+ calories. The exercise involved to burn that off is running or walking multiple miles. It’s way easier in terms of physical expenditure to just not eat the doritos, or skip the sugary soda.

▲

mnw21cam 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I go hiking for a couple of weeks (with significant elevation gain each day), I eat like a pig. I mean, something like 5000 calories a day. I lose weight over that time. So it's possible to lose weight through exercise, however you really do have to spend a very significant chunk of each day doing it for it to work.

Not eating as much takes much less of your busy day.

▲

JohnMakin 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If you are exercising on a caloric deficit, you are going to feel constantly tired and shitty. I find it way easier to just be on a caloric deficit.

▲

nemomarx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

it's so much faster to do both at once though, and you retain more muscle mass during it and so on

so long as you can live like a monk and hit the gym every night for a few months it's pretty good. this is dependent on you being able to stand being hungry and cranky and going to bed exhausted for all that time though

▲

skeeter2020 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

this is not true; I do extended bikepacking trips nutrionally similar to the GP's experience and you feel amazing. Maybe your first time or the first day can be tough but the human body loves to move and consume. I think a good frame of mind is you're a high efficiency furnace pumping out the heat on a very cold day. but this machine actually heals & improves the more it's used!

	▲	Retric 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s only true over a relatively short period. Stuff you can do for a week doesn’t automatically extend to maintaining that over the next 50 years.

▲

ttoinou an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The calorie theory is the same theory that leads people to believe they can exercise to loose weight

▲

skeeter2020 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I do agree that losing weight is easier at first with just eating less, but to play the advocate role: you need a gap of about 3500 calories to lose a pound, but there's a hard daily floor of zero calories. You need to eat less over a long period of time (ideally the rest of your life) and exercise (or medication more commonly) is what keeps you going.

▲

watwut 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I eat less, I feel shitty, tired and passive. I move less naturally, because it sux. When I exercise, I feel good, eat as much as I feel like and am keeping/loosing weight.

▲

chistev 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"you can't outwork a bad diet"

▲

bonesss 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“You can’t outrun the fork.”

▲

mrguyorama 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem, as it is for a shitload of women, is that the delta between "Minimum amount of calories needed to not be somewhat malnourished" and "calories you eat now without losing weight" is sometimes zero. Short women working desk jobs are fucked

I was with a girl that barely ate, and couldn't get her weight down for about a decade because of that. Eventually she got really excited about a local dance studio and suddenly her weight dropped like a rock. She had to exercise more, but that was miserable until she found exercise that was effective and actually clicked, then it was trivial

Meanwhile it was trivial for me to eat less, because my budget should be around 1800 calories a day, and I was eating 3000. It's easy to cut out an entire bag of doritos. It is less easy to literally starve yourself.

People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts. My body was convinced I was starving while I was 50 pounds overweight and eating 2000 calories because I had previously eaten more. Your body did not evolve in an environment where that was ever the wrong thing to feel! "Please eat more or we die" is one of the most powerful biological signals.

That these medications cut that signal is entirely why they work! If people just "couldn't stop eating" then not having hunger or appetite signals wouldn't have worked either.

	▲	the__alchemist an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Correct - feeling hungry is part of it. It's the biggest (And only notable one IMO) downside. It's temporary, while the loss is happening. Stops once you stabilize.
	▲	nemomarx 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Getting down to 1200 or 1400 calories is pretty restrictive yeah. You can't do it without counting and meal prep the same way you can go from 3000 to 2000 by skipping snacks As soon as the diet requires cutting out a daily meal or changing the contents of meals in really harsh ways (like no bread) it's going to get on your nerves and make you neurotic.
	▲	watwut 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts When the body does not scream that murder, it is called anorexia. And it is much worst for your health then obesity.

▲

aeturnum 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, these things are multimodal. For most people it's easier to cut enough calories to lose weight than it is to exercise enough to lose weight (though both are physically possible). But, of course, if you are losing weight you should be exercising! It's the best way to retain muscle mass, which is vital for health.

I am sure that when I've lost weight it's more the portion control than the exercise - but the exercise is a critical component. When you go from being sedentary to doing even casual exercise you feel better and get more energy - which you can then use to be more active. Without some kind of virtuous lifestyle-change cycle you are likely not going to shift your body mass, kind of no matter what ultimately puts you over the edge.

▲

kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Eating less" as a strategy for losing weight is like "make a lot of money" is a strategy for becoming rich.

It certainly works, it is just an unhelpful strategy.

▲

rrr_oh_man 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Nah, the better analogy is "don't spend more than you make".

	▲	kube-system an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No, now you're comparing two variables. That would be plainly analogous to "don't eat more than you burn"

▲

lkey 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Keto changes the way you feel about eating if you enter ketosis for long enough.

Fasting does too, for that matter.

Paleo is just trendy keto with some woo on top.

The don't use the same mechanism as glp, nor do they have same success rate, but similar idea.

Eliminating sugar makes it harder to consume a 64oz soda at 800 calories in 3 minutes and still be hungry.

Anywho, most diets achieve some weight-loss.

But! keeping your mind and body from demanding you eat more to return to homeostasis is actually the 2nd hard part, and the part that most people fail at. And we'll see how much glp losses are sustainable (without shots) here pretty soon.

Regardless, this technology is good and we should subsidize everyone getting to a healthy weight. Searching for reasons they are actually morally inferior or stupid is counterproductive.

▲

skeeter2020 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

isn't it widely accepted that supressed appetite (i.e. what makes glp work) is ONLY sustainable on the shots, and that you're on them for life?

▲

nemomarx 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is true for diets too. You have to keep doing whatever the new behavior is to keep it up.

So maybe the goal is use the drugs to shift your lifestyle to eating less, having less food in the house, and being more active and then wean off it

▲

cameronh90 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

I’ve never really understood the whole lifestyle thing. Maybe it is just simply habit and ritual for some people, but doesn’t seem to be the case for most.

I’ve lost weight many times, maintained the weight loss for long periods of time, but I’m just constantly hungry throughout. It never gets any easier. I’m physically just very hungry - my belly is constantly rumbling to the point that people comment on it, and I get the weird sizzling noise in the back of my neck. I’ll maintain this - for years sometimes - but eventually, like almost everyone who loses weight, something inevitably happens and I fall off the wagon.

I’m on the drugs now and all the grumbling and side effects of being hungry have gone away. Even the ones like being tired, getting sick all the time and having thinning wiry grey hair, which would happen in the past whenever I cut back food.

	▲	nemomarx 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		they do slow your metabolism so that probably explains the hair and stuff the lifestyle habit and stuff to me is eating the same thing every morning or getting used to falling asleep hungry, those kind of adjustments. doesn't mean you get less hungry eventually and then if anything changes (move, new job, new friends start coming over more and you want to be social) you'll fall out of the habits naturally. you can only do it as long as you can do it

▲

projektfu 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

True that. I think that many people who use GLPs to find a healthy weight will be on them, possibly intermittently, long term. It may be possible to retrain their eating habits, but I would not bet on it for most people.

▲

howunfortunate 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> we'll see how much glp losses are sustainable (without shots) here pretty soon.

Will we?

The idea is to be on them for life; I don't know that I've seen anyone recommend differently.

▲

skeeter2020 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree sort of, but the argument here is do the simple thing, like "eat less". There; we're done - ha! My initial reaction (and also with the chose boring tech) is that's not the solution, that's where you start LOOKING for the solution! So boring is great, simple is fantastic - from a position of understanding. Too many people jump onto any "new thing" - diet, technology, whatever - because it's easy and right in front of them. Simple is often neither.

▲

hn_throwaway_99 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would push back against your pushback and say nearly everyone knows that, it's just the brain is great at making excuses when things are physically difficult.

▲

thomastjeffery 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They did that because the other thing didn't work. It doesn't matter that the reason it didn't work is that they can't do it: the implication is identical.

Don't underestimate how impossible it can be to force your own body into a new behavior pattern.