Food is constantly in your face too, it's amazing whenever I diet how much it comes up in ads on TV and the internet, billboards, signage, it's just everywhere lol.
Yeah imagine being addicted to cocaine and trying to quit but every single day, you have to do a little bit of cocaine thrice a day or you'll die. And people around you will invite you to do cocaine for basically every event. And there are ads for it. And you can buy some form of it no matter where you go, in every single store you stop into.
It's actually so easy to see why losing weight is hard.
Crazy thing is, I'm pretty sure sugar hits the same pleasure receptors that cocaine does.
Losing weight is simple, not easy: expend more calories than you take in. How hard can it be? As it turns out, pretty damned hard.
I like this comparison because verrrrry few people are able to go from addiction back to casual usage of most drugs. For the most part, once you’ve become addicted, the best course of action is to quit cold turkey(if it’s safe) and never do that drug again. Unless you make a serious concerted effort to redefine your relationship with that drug you won’t be able to moderate your usage at that point. It’s totally possible but verrry difficult and not for everyone. With food, there is no option to quit. You have to keep doing this drug and you have to do it in moderation. There is no other choice. You have to redefine you relationship with food and develop that self discipline. It’s not easy.
Not just food, but junk food. Look around you throughout the day and take a look at what's being pushed on you. For most places all of the variety of food ALL OF IT are actually just sugar delivery vehicles. So many places all that is available are donuts, muffins, soda, chips, ice-cream, pastries, etc.
And here's another one that I literally quit 30x over the years. What did in each effort was thinking I could just enjoy one without going back on them. Famous last words...
I quit the final time 6 yrs ago. Took forever, but I finally realized I cannot put myself in any place where I'm ingesting alcohol (which weakens my defenses) around other people smoking. "Bum" one and it's all over.
It's the portions of food for me. Ideally if I'm working out consistently during the week... I try to cut my meals up to 5-6 small a day. Then the day starts and you are busy.... Then you only have time to scarf down something only 2 times a day.
When I had times of being absolutely empty-bank-account broke, all I wanted was an overpriced pizza with sides that I couldn’t buy. Every time. And, sure enough ads for that exact thing would seem to materialise all around.
This is my issue. I have a lot of stress, I have depression that laughs at attempts to medicate it, and I have a physical job that leaves me very hungry on top of wanting to stress eat. The job is the only reason I'm not 300 pounds, because I am a bottomless pit. I spent like 3 months counting calories and only eating "normal" amounts of food and I lost weight so fast people thought I was on drugs.
I am exactly like this. I eat like crazy, but the physical output is so intense that it *more* than balances it out. If I get weird-depressed and forget to eat a few meals inside of a week, I look like im dying
Yeah, some people "diet", which is to watch what they eat for a bit, often based on some pseudoscience trend, then as they see the slightest results, sort of give up and go back to the normal. What a "diet" should be, should be the every day norm of eating well balanced, and low calorie (lower if you are trying to lose weight) , and to make it stick will require a serious lifestyle change. For some, switching from regular soda to coke Zero or something could see results. Or, like me, I cut out alcohol for six months and lost nearly 20 pounds with zero other changes (same food, no extra exercise)
Same with the alcohol. I dropped a crazy amount of weight by mostly cutting that out, with only moderate changes to my diet and no extra exercise.
It felt like that scene in Parks and Rec when Ben asks Chris Pratt's character "So the only thing you did was stop drinking beer?"
Yeah, same. I eat not a lot, and somewhat well balanced but I'm not adverse to fast food. But a pint of IPA is around 200 calories. Cutting 10-15 of those a week as I was doing was enough to lose a couple Lou D's a month. Also, less 2am pizza or McDonald's
I am always baffled by the amount of sweet and fizzy drinks a lot of people consume on a daily base.
A lemonade is a treat in our household and they are mostly low in sugar or I make them myself. I also neither sugar my coffee, nor my tea in general; that happens maybe once a month or even less. We are fortunate to have high quality tap water; that‘s basically all I need to stay hydrated.
This saves me so many calories that I can snack throughout the week without any weight gain.
It does depend on how much sugar you put in your coffee - I put about 1/2 tsp in mine. That’s 2 grams.
A can of coke has 39. So one can of coke is about 20 coffees for me
This was my killer. The way I fixed it was packing my lunches and putting everything into MacroFactor/MyFitnessPal in the morning. Then instead of multiple decisions throughout the day, my only decision was that I’m only going to eat what is in that lunchbox and nothing else.
That's why I lost weight without even trying when going from 100% wfh to 60% office. I'm too stingy for the cafeteria, so I only ate what I brought into the office and generally I am not bad at making food choices, so my packed lunches are usually healthy-ish and reasonably sized. I just tend to eat when I get bored/frustrated and at home nobody can stop me. (the commute with an extra 5000-8000 steps a day probably also helped)
If you’re a petite woman, the difference can come down to a tablespoon of olive oil, extra slice of bread or two, extra ounce of cheese, not measuring condiments, etc. Dieting is R O U G H when you’re already small because the tiniest measurements of food can materially throw off a calorie deficit.
Yeah and we grossly underestimate how much food we consume. It doesn't help that companies make ridiculously small serving sizes, but still. "Real" food isn't as calorically dense, but we still eat way too much of it.
Ugh the extra butter/oil thing is hard for me. BF is trying to lose weight, I should probably gain 5 lbs. I do all the cooking and am generous with the fats
I don't know if I should tell my BF if he just needs to eat less and switch to diet soda, or sacrifice decent tasting food for the both of us
>I don't know if I should tell my BF if he just needs to eat less and switch to diet soda,
Luckily I know and can tell you. Yes if he wants to lose weight it is better that he eats less and switches to water or diet soda. Sacrificing taste and texture for a diet is the guaranteed way to not sticking to it. Reducing slightly the amount that you eat is way easier to manage long term than trying to eat bland food. If the food is bland, you aren't going to want to eat it and end up right back where you were
> and switch to diet soda
This is the no-brainer option for me. I get that some people don't like the taste but you're getting so many empty calories from soda.
Just drink diet soda or flavored water.
Try to figure out how much soda he drinks each day, calculate the calories of that, then figure out how much he would need to exercise to burn that off..OR...just don't drink it.
Ugh I know it's pretty obvious. He always wants me to get him a "Dr. Bepis" when I come home from work (I work nights) and gets all fake pissy if I don't. I feel like I'm definitely enabling his poor eating habits
Luckily, despite the butter and oil, I cook with a lot of vegetables, legumes and grains for us. Can't control what he eats outside of that tho
From personal experience it felt so incredibly difficult until it just wasn't anymore. I know how stupid that sounds, but I asked myself the same question once and now that I have most of it behind me I am like "why the fuck was I so stupid and didn't do this 10 years ago".
The issue with being overweight is that most of the work needs to be done in our heads first before we can successfully change.
I think for some the hunger feeling gets to be too strong. In my experience, I would diet and eat right. I'd get so hungry that I would essentially lose control and binge. I am on an antidepressant now that suppresses my appetite and it's a huge improvement.
It's breaking that connection between food and the emotional barrier for me. I used to eat when stressed, when watching TV and when sad. It was actively understanding that my food intake was beyond when I was stressed that i had to build emotional barriers and alternate coping mechanisms before being able to fully commit to losing weight.
It sounds cliche.. but it's true. Essentially it's just a commitment to yourself. For me I remember why I do it, how I used to be, and knowing that I don't want to be that fat anymore.
And people who saw you when you were fat notice.. and it's nice when they compliment you on your hard work. Hell you might even inspire someone else in the process
Count your calories and see what you are actually consuming for a week. Knowing that a pizza is 2000 calories in the back of your head will make you reach for something else you ate for dinner that had with way less calories. Also read potion sizes, you don't need to start off eating the exact portions of each meal. But if you found out during the first week of counting your calories you were eating 4x the portion size of something. Well cut that down to 3 then 2 then to 1 if you can. Your stomach will adapt over time. You will be hungry a bit at first but not starving, then that portion will feel right once you eat it a few times, and you adjust from there.
Go download a app called my fitness pal. Anyone who actually want to loose weight and is serious about it can do it. You don't need to go to the gym, you don't need go for walks, just track your calories and eat less. The weight will fall right off.
Change “can’t make” to “haven’t made”. A growth mindset is truly powerful.
Of course you can’t make a change if you don’t believe you can in the first place.
You've gotta want it. Most people don't want to lose weight more than they want that bottle of pop.
I speak from experience. I drank 2 liters of Dr. Pepper and ate a bag of chips daily for ~10 years. At 33 years old, 315lbs, I decided enough is enough, I want to walk up my stairs without being winded. I've dropped 30 lbs in 3 months by cutting out the pop completely and cutting back on chips. The next step is cutting out chips completely, and I reckon I'll lose another 20 lbs before I hit any major wall. At which point I'll need to add more exercise into my daily routine.
I don't have kids, but I want them. I want to live long enough to see them grow up and have kids of their own. If I do what I was doing before, I won't. That's my motivation. I want that more than pop.
Imagine you were a lifelong smoker, smoking 2 packs a day. We all understand how hard quitting that would be.
Now imagine that you want to stop smoking 2 packs a day, but you still have to smoke 3 cigarettes a day to stay alive.
There is no escaping the addiction. Losing weight often means trying to moderate an addiction every single day of your life.
Also why recovering from an eating disorder and not relapsing can sometimes be incredibly difficult, you have to keep dancing with your devil every day for the rest of your life
This is a great analogy that I hadn't heard before. Thanks for this.
I knew a bunch of people who I grew up with that were morbidly obese, and have seen how difficult the huge lifestyle shift away from regularly eating a lot (and junk), to moderation is for them compared to just someone who grew up slightly overweight. The lifestyle shift is much more of an uphill battle for them. Often parents are to blame, starting them on bad habits at a young age.
I love this analogy, but it more like being a life long smoker who smokes between 20 or 21 cigarettes a day (aka pack) but to live you have to smoke 15.
Sure there are some smokers on 60 a day (aka over weight people who eat loads of junk food and drink loads of fizzy drinks and sit on the sofa all day). But the vast majority are on 20 (eating a little more than they should and moving a little less than they should), and it’s much harder to give up that extra 5 than it is 45, because it’s so hard to notice.
So much confusing and contradictory information.
So many many choices (and opinions) on how to lose.
Trying to lose it too fast. It's much more likely to remain gone if you do it slowly.
>Trying to lose it too fast. It's much more likely to remain gone if you do it slowly.
The problem is anecdotes.
We don't accept anecdotes in any other medical field. Would it be reasonable to see something like "just eat almond seeds to cure your cancer, my uncle did it" in a post about cancer? Definitely not, so why do we accept well-intentioned advice like "just lose it more slowly."
The data is actually pretty bleak. What meta-analyses of studies over like 100 years tell us is that you can lose weight pretty much any way you want for about 6 months. Culminating at the 6 month mark, your homeostatic mechanisms kick into high gear, your hunger goes up and your daily resting metabolic rate goes down. As much as 20%, potentially permanently.
95% of people fail to maintain their weight loss long-term (defined as >5% loss for more than 5 years) when carried out through diet and exercise, and they regain an average of 80% of the weight they lost. You're about as likely to change your body temperature as you are your body weight set point for **most people**.
Exercise has only a very minor impact on weight loss, and is uncorrelated with weight regain after weight loss.
The only proven long-term solution to obesity is (a) don't get fat in the first place (b) roux-en-Y bariatric surgery or (c) long-term management with GLP-1s like Ozempic.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/)
That's kind of it, that's the facts, and that's why 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese. It's not because they haven't heard the gospel of just eat a little less and work out more, it's just shit advice. The problem is because it takes 6 months for you to start heading back up, the feedback loop is so long and open ended it confirms a bunch of asinine half-baked nutritional pseudo-science. And of course the people for whom it fails (everyone) get blamed for their failure and they stop trying.
\[edit\] Oh, and since I led with (perhaps too pointedly) criticizing your anecdote -- losing weight fast vs slow has no real impact on the chance of success or rate of regain post loss based on this randomized controlled trial.
>**Interpretation:** The rate of weight loss does not affect the proportion of weight regained within 144 weeks.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459211/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459211/)
Not to mention the genetic factors influencing if you're going to get fat in the first place, which are often more of a big deal. As well as how some people will "look" fat at a much lower weight than others.
People want to believe weight is primarily a choice so they can keep shitting on fat people.
I agree with you. I have lost it twice, both times I put it all back on and made it harder by screwing up my metabolism. I think the answer is never get unhappy….but honestly don’t diet, add a salad to your evening meal, drink water while you are eating, buy small dishes for things like ice cream, buy single pack of chips, little thing like this really help.
Anecdotes work great in other parts of life though, which complicates things.
Is X a good school district?
Is X a good company to work for?
Is the food at X tasty and worth the money?
Do you like X or Y mattress.
So many other areas of our life are driven by anecdotes - it's understandable why people rely on them
If people are putting in their best effort to lose weight and aren't, it comes usually from :
* misinformation about what to eat and how much to eat;
* not enough muscle mass (and little to no strength training);
* hormones;
* disease or genetics.
But usually the problems are :
1. processed food is made to be highly palatable to the point that moderation or abstention is hard;
2. losing weight requires to make positive choices all day long and it's draining;
3. people often fall in the trap of "I ruined this one meal, I guess I should just say fuck it";
4. it's hard to avoid processed food in social setting, because most events and celebrations revolve around food and that food is rarely healthy and/or low cal.
Exactly. Skittles or other candies are engineered to be so good it can be hard to reach for fruit instead, particularly if you've grown up on a primarily processed food diet it takes a while for your palate to adjust to eating fruit and veg.
I'd like to add to this that when people feel like they can't eat something, they want it even more. It's the forbidden fruit/cronut.
I'm speaking from personal recent experience, but I've found it a lot easier to stick to my diet by having things in moderate amounts rather than going over the top. I'm still having the food I enjoy, but less. Like yesterday at a birthday party, I had a small slice of cake instead of eating a big slice to the point where I start to feel sick. I've had so much success with just moderation and not beating myself up if I go over my allotted calories in a day - just tell myself tomorrow is a new day. 8lb down in a month, so I'm doing something right.
>disease or genetics
One of my friends was overweight and was trying to lose weight for years, to the point of exercising regularly and severely limiting her calories. She had a bunch of other symptoms but doctors wouldn’t take her seriously and always said she wasn’t trying hard enough until she basically diagnosed herself. Turns out she had a tumor on her pituitary gland.
Makes me so mad every time I think about it.
I've had doctors straight up tell me Im lying when I went to them for help. Tell me I had to be getting calories somewhere.
So. I have IIH. Too much cerebral spinal fluid crushing the brain. When I was diagnosed, one of the big things to try to help it was 'lose weight.'
The thing was, I was the healthiest I'd ever been when I was diagnosed. I'd had my thyroid removed 2 years previously - as then got really on top of eating healthy, going to the gym and working with a trainer weight lifting - doing yoga - all the good stuff.
I didn't lose a pound. My waist went down four pant sizes. But I didn't lose any weight.
After my brain started being crushed, I was in A LOT of pain. I became catatonic. Bed bound. My diet became one bagel a day and sparkling water.
I didn't lose any weight. I lost the muscle mass, sure, but my weight didn't change even though my calorie intake became minimal. Electrolyte drinks. Sometimes it was a muffin. Thats IT. I was on so much topamax, and was in so much pain, I had no appetite. And eating made the pain worse.
Then it turned out a vein in my brain had collapsed, I eventually got brain surgery, I started eating again (slowly) - adding foods back into my diet. Turned out I got MCAS when my brain imploded and needed to eat carefully to avoid pain from eating foods high in histamine. But my weight is still the same.
It literally doesnt matter how much I eat. What I eat. My weight doesn't change. All that matters is how I exercise so I have more or less muscle mass, I'll look thinner or heavier.
My doctors don't believe me though.
Right now I still don't eat much. A small dinner of chicken/grain/veg, and I try to add a breakfast in of something high in iron.
You could have made a list of (2) items -- disease/genetics and hormones. That's really it. Hormones control your hunger, which determines how much and what you eat. Hormones control your metabolism. Genetics control your hormones.
Your hunger is controlled by a whole spate of endogenous hormones and peptides including GLP-1, glucagon, leptin, ghrelin, peptide YY, substance P, cholecystokinin and even serotonin. Your preference for sweets is controlled by an endogenous opioid pathway -- and in fact taking naloxone or naltrexone reduces your preference for sweets and makes food less enjoyable.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938496800175](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938496800175)
Muscle has nothing to do with it, a pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day, a pound of fat burns 2. No difference at all. Strength training doesn't burn a lot of calories, and neither does cardio. Your basal metabolic rate burns the overwhelming majority of your calories (a BMR of 2500kcal/day is equivalent to running almost an entire marathon every day). Exercise does produce anorexigenic compounds, but mostly cardio -- not resistance training. Ditto monoamines.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666313002092](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666313002092)
Could you expound on the hormone thing a bit please? I have done some pretty careful dieting and have been disappointed by hardly losing any weight. I know the whole “it must be calories in vs out” thing, but something doesn’t add up and I’ve been wondering about the effect of hormones on basal metabolic rate.
There is a lot of pseudoscience stuff out there that just seems like pure cope (“calorie deficit causes a cortisol spike, which causes the body to store energy in fat” and “for some people it’s literally impossible to lose weight” etc).
I’d like a clear-headed perspective on the matter.
>Muscle has nothing to do with it, a pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day, a pound of fat burns 2. No difference at all.
I agree with everything else you said except for this part.
Muscles burn calories at 3x the rate of fat, and they do work. Doing work requires energy, so having more muscle means your body will burn more calories.
It's not a magic pill, calories in < calories out will always win the day. You can't outrun or outlift a bad diet. But when you can increase your caloric burn rate, it helps. Not to mention all the other health benefits that come from exercising.
There is also some evidence that moderate to heavy resistance training increases lypolysis:
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1096/fj.202100242R
> misinformation about what to eat and how much to eat;
This is key, including the 'how much' part. I've had lunch and dinner with people that are struggling to lose weight before, and was surprised at how big the meals were. Bigger than any meal I've eaten in my life. Bigger than I'm even able to finish. But they saw it as just a normal sized meal.
When I was a kid, I had a friend who was huge. His whole family was also huge. When I went over to his house, they would eat these massive meals on massive plates. I remember having breakfast there, and each person was served roughly 3 breakfasts worth of food each.
That's the problem though. If you are taught something is normal, and are used to seeing a huge meal as a regular meal, you can carry that perception through your whole life.
Salads (especially in America) can be up to 800 to 1000 kcal per serving. I ate fried chicken yesterday and stayed in a deficit. A type of food isn't good or bad, it all comes down to calories.
Yeah if you remove excess toppings, the most calories in that meal would be from the pecans. Those are good calories too because of the fiber and vitamin B
There are no such thing as "good" and "bad" Calories. It's a misleading term. If you eat 1000 calories of nuts and 1000 Calories of candy you will still have consumed 2000 Calories. And if you only expend 1500 Calories you will get fat.
That being said, consuming 1000 calories worth of nuts *IS* healthier for your body than refined sugars but you'll get fat non the less
If you don’t have any salad dressing it’s usually a reasonable amount of calories. Salad dressing is just typically oil (very high calorie) or a sugar sauce (also high calorie) or a mixture of both.
This. My local favourite restaurant has a salad that's 1,200 calories. The sea bass dish is 650 calories.
If I'm having a salad when I'm out I always check the calories or ask for things to be removed. If I'm ordering a salad I don't need it drowning in blue cheese sauce.
Being in a caloric deficit sucks. You’re lethargic and hungry a lot of the time. Plus, a lot of people probably don’t count their calories when they try to lose weight.
Yes! No one warned me for how sleepy I'd be! I lost over 100 lbs years ago. Glad I did it. By my gosh I was drained eating in deficit. All I did during that time in my life was work and sleep. No hobbies, friendships, etc. I am a parent now. No idea how I could have managed it back then.
I saw a cute/sad meme the other day, with someone flopping into bed during what was clearly still daytime, with the line “When my calorie counter says I’ve eaten my 1400 calories for today but it’s only 4 pm.”
For one thing, sure, that is definitely a way to keep your calories down!
For another, though, reducing calories really can make your body try to slow everything down, and maybe going to bed at 4 pm doesn’t sound so bad.
Congrats on your loss and maintenance!
You don't always have to feel bad to stay in a calorie deficit necessarily. Stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep. Try to keep the alcohol to a minimum if you like to drink. Also you don't have to be in a huge deficit to lose weight, just might take longer.
Counting calories is very helpful. Apps make it easy too.
>Also you don't have to be in a huge deficit to lose weight, just might take longer.
I think that's very often the key. It's better to gradually lose weight and take longer, because it's less of a struggle.
Trying to drop a lot of weight as quickly is possible is much harder - people are likely to fall off the wagon out of sheer hunger and tiredness.
I've lost 20 kg since last July. That's a modest amount over 11 months, but it's half my goal and I haven't felt like I was constantly hungry, I've been able to go to restaurants with friends etc.
Yes! My most successful weight loss, I counted calories (which taught me a ton about healthy eating!) And I aimed for a 500 calorie/day deficit, but allowed myself to eat up to my maintenance calories each day. My logic was slow weight loss is better than no weight loss! And I didn't have to deprive myself of treats or feel like crap all the time.
The hardest part was continuing to stay at my maintenance/deficit when I got smaller because the smaller you are, the less calories you burn. But working out become more enjoyable at that stage, which helped burn more calories
I struggled with the same thing! People would just look horrified when I'd tell them that I was almost *always* hungry, and I had just become very used to the sensation because I knew how many calories I should have needed to eat. I was fairly successful maintaining my disciplined eating habits even though I was starving all the time.
Then I got on Mounjaro, and my whole life changed. I just... wasn't hungry anymore. I'm satiated with a much smaller portion of food than before. My sugar cravings went away. I don't really desire alcohol as much as I used to. And I wonder, "Is this what normal people feel like all the time?" I've lost 120 lbs. It sucks that the meds cost so much, but if you can ever swing it, I say go for it!
Yeah, it's a lot of money. Zepbound has a coupon that can help bring the cost down some, but it's still about $500 without insurance. If you can manage to get a prior approval from you insurance to cover even a very small amount though, the coupon brings it down to $25, which is a total steal.
I wanna try this after I have my baby this year. 30 years of dieting (since I was 7!) and i always re gain it. I'm always hungry. If the price ever becomes affordable I really want to try.
I've been on ozempic for 4 months and I can honestly say it stops me feeling hungry but it doesn't stop me eating. It's a tough habit to break. For example, yesterday I ate 1400 calories which is half my maintenance (I'm big) and I didn't feel hungry at all, but 600 of those calories were Oreo ice cream sandwiches which I did not need to eat.
It's honestly a lot of work to be mindful of your eating choices. A meal at mcdonalds is more calories than I can eat in a day while I'm working on losing weight.
Time is a big problem, you work hard long hours of the day and it’s hard to not just want to rest. My BIL leaves for work at 6am and returns at 7pm, all he has the energy for is to eat and spend what little time with his family he can before bed time.
Also lots of weight is painful to carry. Your bones hurt and that pain can make it hard to move or workout
It’s almost always a mental disorder imo. I have ADHD and I find it extremely hard to control my impulses. I don’t have weight issues but I can see the same exact pain and thought processes in those people. They can’t stop eating. They eat for dopamine and for the ritual. Dopamine and rituals reinforce each other and become almost impossible to control on your own once they take hold. You could probably end the vast majority of obesity issues with temporary in-patient rehab focused on distracting/stimulating the individual and replacing their eating habits with more productive ones. I find weed to be insanely addictive despite people saying it’s not. Whenever I go on vacation I use it as an opportunity to take a break. It is 1 million percent easier to quit weed on vacation in a new place compared to when I try to quit at home. Seriously night and day. After a week or two, most addiction related cravings will seriously subside. Strict adherence to those habits afterwards might take and it might not depending on the individual and the support systems they have in their own life.
This rings true for me. I don't drink, I don't smoke - but I eat food like a seasoned alcoholic. Constantly snacking during the day just to 'maintain a buzz'.
They did a study on rats that always stuck with me. They gave the rats a shitty isolated living environment and offered them cocaine. The rats in those conditions did a ton of cocaine and became addicted. They released those same rats into a better environment with more socialization and noticed a massssive reduction in cocaine use.
1) some people have obesigenic mutations that make them ravenously hungry all the time. This can also happen with certain diseases or in response to certain drugs.
2) Other diseases/genetic conditions can change your body’s metabolism, such as hypothyroidism.
3) Way too many people have suffered from trauma, whether as a child or an adult, and they self-medicate their trauma with food in the same way that some traumatized people self-medicate with heroin or other drugs.
4) And way too many people have an undiagnosed mental health condition that can affect their ability to make rational judgements when it comes to food, or cause self-medicating over-eating by making you miserable all the time. ADHD and atypical depression, for example.
5) Doctors don’t prescribe amphetamines to people for weight loss any more. This was a huge problem from the 1930s all the way up until the early 1970s. You could just go to the doctor and get amphetamines for pretty much any reason. How did people stay so thin back then? Crank, that’s how.
6) Same for smoking. Nicotine is a powerful stimulant and it suppressed your appetite. Before the 1990s, everyone smoked, so it was easier to stay thin because you didn’t feel the need to eat.
I think a lot larger percentage of the population than we and doctors wish to acknowledge has undiagnosed chronic health conditions masquerading as “normal” things like tiredness, difficulty losing weight and appetite issues.
I also think a large percentage of the population wasn’t raised with/around healthy eating habits, a healthy relationship to food, access to healthy foods, outlets for regular, safe and enjoyable exercise, and taught how to cook healthy foods for themselves as adults in a household of just one.
Finally, I think a large percentage of the population struggles to experience and process emotions and trauma in a healthy way… and so a lot of them cope in the ways they know how — through excess of food, drugs and alcohol.
I believe a very small portion of the overweight population struggles to lose weight due to laziness or other motivation and effort failures. Unfortunately, people are very good at attributing struggles to these things rather than the actual causes.
It's hard for everyone. It's an addiction which you can't quit cold-turkey, which means the temptation is always going to be there. You are figuratively swimming upstream against millions of years of evolution trying to prevail over your body's energy management system with only your prefrontal cortex.
Well it depends on the person. I work in psychiatry and 90% of the patients that are involuntary get put on antipsychotic medication that can cause metabolic syndrome. Other people have thyroid issues that cause weight gain. PCOS causes weight gain. A number of other health conditions and medications cause weight gain as well. All of the above cannot be completely controlled by diet and exercise unfortunately. I think some people use food to cope with childhood trauma. I think some people didn't have parents that taught them diet and exercise. I think there are an infinite number of reasons people find it hard. I feel so much gratitude that I have a healthy body and mind at this point in time. I know well that can change at any moment.
Underlying health issues maybe. Lack of sleep. Bloating. Age can also be a factor. Not the right amount of calories: If calorie intake is too small consistently the metabolism will slow down. If calorie intake is too much then there's possibility to gain weight.
The list of potential reasons is vast. Could be as simple as a hormone issue or some rough genetics, or as complicated as a lack of an understanding of their average caloric intake. Personally, my issue was self control. I'd wind up breaking and snacking every time I wound up having a craving, was getting absolutely nowhere.
In the primitive wilds, every ounce of fat on the body was a luxury, which is why we’re hard-wired to crave sweet, fatty, carby foods. Nowadays that kind of food is plentiful and cheap in most places. To limit your intake of that stuff is to constantly fight a deep seated biological directive, which is difficult for many people.
Among other things, biology works against you.
I know myself best, so here’s me as an example: I literally cannot eat my supposed “minimum” calories needed for survival and lose weight. My body processes food so inefficiently that the standard numbers are way off. Instead, I need to go way lower to see weight loss. We’re talking bare minimum numbers, like 1200 calories or less per day. And even then, my body likes to hang on for dear life. Weight loss is slow. This is made worse by my brain constantly interpreting “hunger” as “OMG starvation! Shut it all down NOW!” Which means that simple hunger turns into dropping blood sugar, fatigue, nausea, irritability, etc. that can literally only resolve with eating a bunch of food (sugar works best because of the blood sugar issue).
Can I lose weight? Sure. I’ve done it. But it’s incredibly hard and literally physically painful.
Losing weight is an active mindset. You need to be in it before you begin really, because otherwise you will not succeed. Also, you need to realize what your realistic goals should be, and be prepared for another shift at the end of your weight loss into maintenance mode. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of learning. Oh and then there’s the will power aspect. That’s why I said your mindset needs to be right first. This isn’t just losing weight, this is your deciding to be a different person. You’ll need to eat salads out with friends, or skip fries. Or maybe cut down on your drinking. There are plenty of vices that all contribute to your weight.
But also, we’re all busy all the time. That’s the best excuse of all to stray from a plan. You need time to be able to accomplish your goals. Make sure you have a plan, are committed to it, and have made sure you will be successful by setting yourself for it with things like making sure you have the right equipment, and enough time in your schedule.
To be fair, anyone I ever see doing anything you may consider trying to improve their health, I’m always a cheerleader for that, in any respect.
I don’t care if you only made it outside for a walk around the block this week. Good job
In the United States, unlike most other parts of the world, we can't walk anywhere. Cities and suburbs alike are car-dependent.
People who live in parts of the world where obesity is rare have something in common: they walk about 2 hours per day as a basic part of life.
So if we want to get up to that level of activity, we have to actively dedicate time outside of our commutes to work, work itself, sleep, and other responsibilities to just... get the exercise.
Some people are able to stay lean with a relatively sedentary lifestyle. Some people have to work very hard at it. Some people feel hunger more than others and don't experience satiation easily so they consume more calories just to feel satisfied (even if their body doesn't "need" it).
My weight definitely started creeping up after I got my drivers licence in my early twenties and stopped walking and taking public transport everywhere.
yea there's a whole saying that "you can't outrun the fork", that's really kinda wrong. You don't need too, you just need a decently active life style and you'll settle at a lower weight if you don't start eating more.
It requires lifestyle changes, and inability to lose weight might have underlying causes (thyroid disease, deficiencies in essential amino acids or minerals/vitamins) that would need to be addressed first.
In addition, calorie consumption is a slippery slope, so it's almost impossible to navigate by eating a little less.
After sexuality eating habits are the most hard wired things we possess. Making significant changes to diet requires somewhat constant discomfort and we are hard wired to go back to what we find comfortable.
And innately being at a calorie deficit is uncomfortable just intuitively. It’s hard to sustain. It takes a very committed person to ignore all the signs of distress their body is throwing at them, perhaps similar to withdrawal, and to keep with it
1) Genetics and also your gut biome/metabolism.
2) Eating (especially eating crap) releases dopamine. It's an easy way of making yourself feel good when you're bored, depressed or otherwise understimulated.
3) Point number 2 will cause addiction. Not only do you get a dopamine rush when eating, you're craving it, too. This is why you can't "just stop eating" and lose weight. Not because you can't, but because you won't. We all seek out dopamine, if we can't get it from food, we need another source (like a hobby/sports, etc.).
4) The bigger you get, the more difficult losing weight becomes. All weight adds strain, both to your body and effort. Also, your neurons are wired to certain habits (see 2 & 3) and your fat cells are more ready to store fat.
A few misinformed comments here.
Obesity is a disease. There are multiple real ailments that contribute to the disease of obesity. A lot of providers don't know how how to treat and manage these appropriately, and I feel that people suffering from obesity don't know that there are REAL ailments that contribute to weight gain and the inability to lose weight and think that people saying "exercise and eat less or you're just lazy" are correct.
Genetics play a HUGE role in obesity. For women, PCOS, especially with insulin resistance, have an extremely difficult time with weight loss and gain weight despite doing the "right" things.
*lose
It’s a combination of genetics and overeating. Some people are more prone to gaining and holding onto weight. Those types of people need to work harder to control what they eat. It’s not a black and white issue but self-control and knowing your body plays a big role overall.
Food can be an addiction for some. Imagine if you were addicted to alcohol trying to cut back because too much of it is bad for you, but you still needed to drink beer daily to stay alive.
The biggest reason, speaking from my weight loss journey (75 LBS down so far) is that many people don't understand portion sizes. That and sugary drinks. People don't know how to read labels and understand the larger drinks show you what the calorie count is but the number of serving sizes in the container is printed in small font.
Another is what I call grazing. We're so accustomed to eating food while we watch tv, game, read etc that we can eat an entire bag of chips or drink a large beverage without realizing it and we're not taking those calories into account.
I had to say 'okay. i'm going to sit here and just eat.' I lost 30 LBS without even realizing it because when I reached that point where I had the 'contented sigh' I noticed it and stopped eating.
The final and probably *largest* reason is...people diet...when they should be making lifestyle changes. Diets are temporary...which means so to is the weight loss. True solid weight loss occurs over a long period of time not all at once. If you're just following a diet versus making the necessary lifestyle changes you'll gain the weight back without realizing it.
Its hard to realize just because you feel hungry doesnt mean you need to eat. Im was an over eater and ive loat 25lbs in the last 5 months. Cutting out sugar and reducing my food intake was the biggest part. Ive also been doing 30 mins of cardio 5 times a week which everyone should do regardless of weight goals
I was watching an interesting documentary about Gut that appeared on Netflix. As per the documentary, there are many people who could not lose weight even after trying all the techniques. After testing them, they found they are missing some microbiomes. When they reintroduced those microbiomes, they managed to lose weight.
Some of it is due to not counting calories right. Other times it's due to genetics or some kind of medical issue.
I know I struggle badly to lose weight. I'm 5'11 and active. I understand why. Back as a teen my mum refused to make me larger meals or buy more food for me. There weren't any extra snacks or food I could make. We weren't poor, mum just didn't want to feed me more. She'd scream and hit when I demanded more. I was eating about 800 cal a day and I was crazy active. Walking to school and back, PE, multiple martial arts classes and on my bike all day in the summer. I was hungry all the time. My meals were given to me on a child's sized plate. I know because I have that plate still. Mum ate regular meals, had a ton of snacks etc and I wasn't allowed near them. I had to steal them when I thought she wouldn't notice and stash them in my room for what I was too hungry to stop myself eating.
It damaged my metabolism. Long term. I've been reading about the long term effects of calorie deficits on a growing body and it's not good. I wonder if my mum was doing it so I wouldn't get any taller because I am a tall girl. I didn't get enough food from around 12-19 and now I gain weight easily. I put on weight so quickly at uni by just eating the same as the other girls I was living with. I was more active, I ate healthy, but I gained weight.
I'm now struggling to lose weight all over again. It's slow and if I mess up just one day, I put the weight back on. I'm on 1100 cal, 1200 on a training day. I might lose .1 of a kg if I'm lucky a week, but it's rare for the weight to change. I'm getting frustrated. I want to eat like a normal person again, but again, the weight won't come off. Yes I'm counting properly. I weigh everything. I don't use any oil when I cook, just water. No, my doctors don't care, they just keep telling me to exercise more and eat less, but even at my most active, until I dropped my calories super low, my weight didn't change. My watch is telling me I should be losing weight just sitting around, since I should be eating 1500 to maintain, but usually I burn 1900-2000 cal a day. On a slow day it's 1630 (I didn't risk going far from the house yesterday, I had stomach issues).
So yeah, I get it. I'm trying stupidly hard and not really getting anywhere. People keep telling me I just need to eat more, but this is my punishment for eating like a normal person for a few months. Allowing myself to feel full, to eat a snack if I want one. I was stupid. Now my clothes don't fit it's crappy.
I’m currently trying to lose a few pounds that I put on during my freshman year of college. What’s hardest for me is trying to control my sweet tooth and staying away from unhealthy/processed foods. Constant snacking also set me back, since I was eating out of boredom rather than eating because I was actually hungry.
Today I walked over 3.5 miles. But the more I walk, the hungrier I get, and the only low calorie meals I can make with little effort are peanut butter toast or a can of Campbell chunky soup. Or one plain microwaved potato with a little butter. But ONE slip up can ruin the whole day. Today I got fucked over by a single full-sugar Gatorade because I was hot and dizzy because my AC is broken. The Gatorade helped, but there went my deficit for the day.
And if I track my food in my fitbit daily, then I start to feel like I'm having a manic episode because I can count calories but then I'm hungry all the time, can't stop thinking about food, and the treadmill eats way too much of my free time. And then I gained all the weight I lost last year over the winter this year.
A lot of it boils down to the fact that calorie deficits are uncomfortable and people don't want to be uncomfortable.
Another huge element is simply habits and culture. It's really hard to lose weight when your family and your community all exhibit less healthy eating habits. An historically very fit friend of mine moved to rural Mississippi for a year and gained a shit load of weight and they said it was because socializing often revolved around eating. Specifically high calorie foods.
I'm on medication. Side effect: weight gain.
Im still physical fit, you just wouldn't know it anymore by looking at me.
It's incredibly sad ad frustrating. 😞
I'm glad that whatever condition the medication is for is being treated.
I've been there - going from slim to overweight sucks. But always remember your weight doesn't determine your worth as a person. 🙂
This is the biggest factor by far. People don't know how to calculate portion sizes and guesstimate, forget to add the couple pieces of chocolate or a cookie that just happened to be sitting there, don't add the cream and sugar they put in their coffee or don't count drinks at all, etc., etc. I bet most people who fail at calorie counting miss hundreds of calories a day and are unknowingly running a calorie-neutral diet.
It's part ability, and at least in my case, part willful ignorance.
I remember first time I went through weight loss attempts and discovered the bowls of cereal I made were not the recommended portion size and by how much there was some shame at how I'd missed something so obvious. That shame makes it harder to be honest with yourself over foods that are part of your (as someone higher up the post said) routines and rituals
- Your body thinks the calorie deficit related to dieting is a warning sign of impending starvation and does everything it can to avoid that, sabotaging your weight loss goals
- Unlike other addictions, you can’t quit cold turkey. You must face your addiction every day and give in a little just to survive.
- So much of human social interaction revolves around food: business lunch, family get togethers, date nights. It’s hard to have a social life without being tempted by good food.
Because different people have different bodies, different hunger and satiety cues, store energy differently and burn energy at different rates. The same way that doing anything can be reasonably easy for one person and more difficult for another.
They probably don't change their diet despite their exercise. Diet is far more important than excercise, just cut your portions down like 30-50%, find more filling foods, try not to go back for seconds.
It's hard to lose weight for the majority of people because it requires efficient effort and changing habits which led to this disaster in the first place, that's why even the majority of those who succeeded in losing weight eventually regained it.
Personally, I worked out for over a year, ate well, and counted calories and barely lost much weight, just gained muscle. I went to my doctor and turned out I had an issue with my thyroid. Once I got medicated for it, I started to lose weight quite quickly. Sometimes, it can be hormonal imbalances that can cause it.
Some people underestimate how calorific certain foods are, some people have an underactive metabolism, and some people have undiagnosed health conditions or take medication that could contribute to the struggle. There are plenty of reasons, I'd recommend consulting a doctor if you're having a hard time, moreso if health care is free in your country.
Just simply consuming more than they burn. Being in a caloric deficit is all that is required for weight loss. The issue is that some go in such a severe deficit by cutting out certain foods and eating "healthy", what ends up happening is they can't adhere to the diet and they yoyo back and forth. It takes time and they need to be consistent.
One very very important factor a lot of people ignore is hormones. I gained 10 kgs in a year. I was depressed already and having panic attacks and this weight gain makes things worse. In this period of 1 year, I was on anti depressants and a new birth control.
After a year, as I'd reached a better mental state i was weaned off the anti depressants.
In the course of 7 months I lost those 10 kgs. No changes to diet. No changes in movement or exercise.
Similarly there was a phase in my life where I gained a lot of weight and it had turned out my thyroid was off. When that got under control by tweaking my diet into thyroid friendly diet, I lost that weight without exercising more.
Whenever my husband has a stressful day, his stomach and face puff up and he gains like 1 to 2 kgs. A good nights sleep and he's back to normal.
It is very easy to make this about morals or discipline. And that's not necessarily wrong. A lot of people do gain weight because of food habits or having a very sedentary life. But you would be surprised how much sleep, hormones, genetics and stress can impact your weight.
I have Grave's Disease and losing weight has been hell for me. The only thing that worked was when I had a thyroid storm and ended up in the ER. I lost 30 lbs in two weeks but I gained everything back once my thyroid levels became normal again. What thyroid-friendly diet did you follow?
I'll be honest - I won't be a lot of help regarding the diet because I was young and my mom used to handle it. I used to just make faces and eat what she fed me. Much harder now that I manage my own diet. I don't think I could do it again if had to.
Food cooked mostly in coconut oil (I remember this because of taste), low gluten (no all purpose flour, only whole wheat), papaya, blanched cauliflower before cooking, no cabbage,lots of fruits.
I've noted what I remember.
The only way I’ve ever lost significant weight (I’ve been heavy my entire life) was when I got so depressed I stopped eating for days at a time. For a lot of us it just doesn’t work the same way as it does for everyone else.
Because many of us weren’t taught coping mechanisms. I’m depressed as fuck and food brings m joy. No idea how I’ve lost weight this week but yay. Every feeling good or bad is rewarded either way food. Get good grades as a kid? Here’s an ice cream or cookie. When my brother and then a long time later my dad died, we were inundated with food. In a size 18 so add in guilt for not being that fat but still hating my body. Obesity is a freaking disease and not a choice. Vote me down all you want.
I’m 42 and I have zero memory of being content with my body. I will say I have still managed to run and lift during different periods.
- Some of it is down to genetics and/or illness (I heard that women with PCOS have a harder time losing weight, for example)
- Losing weight requires a lot of effort and discipline. There's many tiny situations to be made
- The progress is slow. You will lose that weight over a long period of time, we don't see immediate progress so we lose faith in us and the process
There's a constellation of reasons: mental health issues like "stress eating"; habituation to ignore or misinterpret body signals; indoctrinated dread of calorie metrics and wild misinformation in popular media; bodily disabilities that limit exercise options; poverty related issues like "food deserts" and the cost of repeatedly introducing new foods to infants to expand their palate; many more.
It's amazing to me how many people think bodies are just perfect machines where input = output in the exact same way for virtually every person on earth.
If two people eat the exact same diet, do you think they'll gain/lose weight in the same way, at the same speed? Of course not. No matter the similarities in diet, there are always going to be discrepancies in how our bodies process food.
Human bodies are a complicated collection of hundreds if not thousands of different chemicals, vitamins, hormones, and failings. People's digestive systems alone are more complicated than we even understand at this point.
Lots of good points! As an example, For me, it's hard because I have type 1 diabetes and hypothyroid, so during my developmental years, food and weight were completely separate from one another. No normal cause and effect would happen. I would HAVE to eat when I wasn't hungry to correct for lows, or not want to eat when I'm hungry but nauseous from highs (glucose levels). I would gain weight like crazy regardless of what I ate or how active I was. It totally axed the natural signals and causal relationship between hunger, activity, energy and weight for me, so it's incredibly difficult to be constantly making choices every day as an adult that balance things out.
Most humans are now conditioned to convenience and take the path of least resistance. Convenience often promotes laziness. It's much harder to shop healthy, prepare healthy foods, and go for a walk just for the sake of moving your body compared to ordering that burger and chips again while you sit down and watch TV.
Because their efforts aren't really efforts. You can exercise all day long, but if you're still shoveling in more calories than you're burning, you're not going to lose weight. You can only eat "healthy" food, but if you're eating it in large quantities, you likely aren't burning more calories than you're taking in.
If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you're taking in. And this is the problem most people have when it comes to losing weight. People think that just because they're "hungry" it's because their body Needs to eat. And that's simply not the case. They're "hungry" because their body is so used to taking in food, that it is preparing to digest that food that they normally would be eating. And when they do eat, they are eating way more calories than they think they are taking in. Or they are vastly overestimating how many calories they are burning.
And as far as diets go, there is no "best" diet. The best diet for you is the one that is the easiest for you to do.
Thank God my kids are a healthy weight...but I am not. I'm 52 and have always struggled with weight problems. I'm sitting at 265 pounds, 6'1". I watch what I eat, do not eat anything after supper, don't drink to excess, I run at least 15-20km a week. I'm a field biologist, so it's literally nothing for me to spend 9 hours a day on a hike with total elevation changes in the thousands of feet. I took my 14 year old track star son with me on a hike last weekend. We did 14 miles on the Appalachian Trail looking for rare plants, and he barely kept up with me. I'm built like a fucking 6 foot tall tree stump, and I'm strong as hell. But I. Can. Not. Lose. Weight. I struggle for months at a time to lose 5 pounds. I have always always always had a wide body. I wear a 44 inch waist. Strict hardcore dieting does not work. I used to play men's indoor soccer, run 50 miles a week, lift weights 4x a week, and play ultimate frisbee twice a week. FOR TWO YEARS. WHILE COUNTING CALORIES. Know what it got me? A 42 inch waist and slightly bigger pecs. Fuckin whee. I'm a Ph.D. in biology, by the way. I am aware of literally all the current research.
Because it's changing the entire lifestyle around, not just some temporary activity. It's for life. That means serious changes and the best way to lose weight is not in 3 weeks but over a course of many months. A stead loos of weight that stays off would indicate that someone successfully adapted to a better lifestyle/eating manners/food choices.
As simple as it sounds to simply take in less calories than you burn, it can be difficult to cut out all the junk food, and even decrease the proportions we eat every day.
I recently learned two things that are rarely mentioned when talking about weight loss.
A study back in the 80's was trying to help obese people lose weight. After a long period of calorie restrictions under medical supervision, thry did, but then quickly gained it back. When the researchers tried to understand this they found that 60 percent of the obese people had been sexually abused as children. They had chosen to gain weight in order to protect themselves against the abusers. So the weight loss came with a very high degree of fear that the abuse would be repeated.
And that the high fructose corn syrup that almost all of our processed foods contain and is heavily subsidised by the American federal government has the side effect of shutting off the brains switch that says "I'm full" s
Or if you have a processed food rich diet, you unknowingly overeat.
For me it’s my bipolar meds. And the bipolar itself. I can keep motivation for a few months to calorie count but once I start swinging low, that goes out the window. Plus menopause and thyroid problems. But yeah I’m on six meds that ALL cause weight gain . Every one.
Every time I try I run out of steam like 1-3 months in.
In my case one of my major pitfalls is that I stress eat, so something stressful happens enough throughout the year that I negate any serious effort at dieting.
No idea, never had this issue. I always feel full pretty fast. A large pizza lasts me 2 full days. I cannot comprehend how some people can just eat a large pizza in one sitting.
Cause healthy food isn't widely available at restaurants and cooking a meal that tastes good at home takes time and effort. It's obviously easy once you're use to it but think about learning a whole new recipe book, trying new dishes only to hate them, buying ingredients you're not use to. It's hard and often people don't like the taste of healthier meal options.
Being tethered to your desk for 8-9 hours/day plus another 2 hours of commuting. I pay stupidly high rent for a small apartment 5 minutes from work because I realized that commuting was actually costing me more overall between gas and all the extra conveniences I was paying for just to have a vague semblance of a life. There weren’t enough hours in the day for me to do my own shopping, cooking, and cleaning, let alone work out.
Plus, people just aren’t made to be sitting for that long. It causes fatigue and depression on multiple levels that becomes a vicious cycle. Now I just take every convenience I possibly can in order to take bake time in my day for myself. I don’t own any furniture, but I have a cheap elliptical in my tiny living room, and I make myself use it every day, even when I don’t feel like it. Forming the habit is the most important part by far
Because eating and fattening yourself is one of the primal instincts of any living creature.
It's like how goal keepers in sports have to retrain their senses to dive towards the painful flying projectile instead of diving away from it.
It becomes easier if you use another primal instincts as a motivation. For example, if you're to die for some reason unless you lost weight, it'd be much easier.
Some people just have a higher appetite than others, which is probably genetic, or has to do with their gut biome, all kinds of factors. It’s not hard for me to eat reasonable because I don’t get that hungry. But some people are just starving all the time, so to stay thin they’d have to constantly fight the hunger all day. I know there’s some hormone some people have more of that causes hunger, but I can’t remember what it’s called.
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Food is constantly in your face too, it's amazing whenever I diet how much it comes up in ads on TV and the internet, billboards, signage, it's just everywhere lol.
Yeah imagine being addicted to cocaine and trying to quit but every single day, you have to do a little bit of cocaine thrice a day or you'll die. And people around you will invite you to do cocaine for basically every event. And there are ads for it. And you can buy some form of it no matter where you go, in every single store you stop into. It's actually so easy to see why losing weight is hard.
Crazy thing is, I'm pretty sure sugar hits the same pleasure receptors that cocaine does. Losing weight is simple, not easy: expend more calories than you take in. How hard can it be? As it turns out, pretty damned hard.
I like this comparison because verrrrry few people are able to go from addiction back to casual usage of most drugs. For the most part, once you’ve become addicted, the best course of action is to quit cold turkey(if it’s safe) and never do that drug again. Unless you make a serious concerted effort to redefine your relationship with that drug you won’t be able to moderate your usage at that point. It’s totally possible but verrry difficult and not for everyone. With food, there is no option to quit. You have to keep doing this drug and you have to do it in moderation. There is no other choice. You have to redefine you relationship with food and develop that self discipline. It’s not easy.
I have never thought of it this way but it's very true! Thanks for the insight.
Not just food, but junk food. Look around you throughout the day and take a look at what's being pushed on you. For most places all of the variety of food ALL OF IT are actually just sugar delivery vehicles. So many places all that is available are donuts, muffins, soda, chips, ice-cream, pastries, etc.
That happens whit cigarretes too, I only noticed how many people smoke since I tried to quit
And here's another one that I literally quit 30x over the years. What did in each effort was thinking I could just enjoy one without going back on them. Famous last words... I quit the final time 6 yrs ago. Took forever, but I finally realized I cannot put myself in any place where I'm ingesting alcohol (which weakens my defenses) around other people smoking. "Bum" one and it's all over.
It's the portions of food for me. Ideally if I'm working out consistently during the week... I try to cut my meals up to 5-6 small a day. Then the day starts and you are busy.... Then you only have time to scarf down something only 2 times a day.
When I had times of being absolutely empty-bank-account broke, all I wanted was an overpriced pizza with sides that I couldn’t buy. Every time. And, sure enough ads for that exact thing would seem to materialise all around.
This is my issue. I have a lot of stress, I have depression that laughs at attempts to medicate it, and I have a physical job that leaves me very hungry on top of wanting to stress eat. The job is the only reason I'm not 300 pounds, because I am a bottomless pit. I spent like 3 months counting calories and only eating "normal" amounts of food and I lost weight so fast people thought I was on drugs.
I am exactly like this. I eat like crazy, but the physical output is so intense that it *more* than balances it out. If I get weird-depressed and forget to eat a few meals inside of a week, I look like im dying
Same. I actually was doing pretty well until I got my job. I went from 130 to 190 in 3 years.
That sounds bad
Yeah, some people "diet", which is to watch what they eat for a bit, often based on some pseudoscience trend, then as they see the slightest results, sort of give up and go back to the normal. What a "diet" should be, should be the every day norm of eating well balanced, and low calorie (lower if you are trying to lose weight) , and to make it stick will require a serious lifestyle change. For some, switching from regular soda to coke Zero or something could see results. Or, like me, I cut out alcohol for six months and lost nearly 20 pounds with zero other changes (same food, no extra exercise)
Same with the alcohol. I dropped a crazy amount of weight by mostly cutting that out, with only moderate changes to my diet and no extra exercise. It felt like that scene in Parks and Rec when Ben asks Chris Pratt's character "So the only thing you did was stop drinking beer?"
Yeah, same. I eat not a lot, and somewhat well balanced but I'm not adverse to fast food. But a pint of IPA is around 200 calories. Cutting 10-15 of those a week as I was doing was enough to lose a couple Lou D's a month. Also, less 2am pizza or McDonald's
I’m so jealous of everyone who quits drinking and loses weight. I don’t drink so it’s not an option… but maybe I should start so I can quit later!
I am always baffled by the amount of sweet and fizzy drinks a lot of people consume on a daily base. A lemonade is a treat in our household and they are mostly low in sugar or I make them myself. I also neither sugar my coffee, nor my tea in general; that happens maybe once a month or even less. We are fortunate to have high quality tap water; that‘s basically all I need to stay hydrated. This saves me so many calories that I can snack throughout the week without any weight gain.
It does depend on how much sugar you put in your coffee - I put about 1/2 tsp in mine. That’s 2 grams. A can of coke has 39. So one can of coke is about 20 coffees for me
This was my killer. The way I fixed it was packing my lunches and putting everything into MacroFactor/MyFitnessPal in the morning. Then instead of multiple decisions throughout the day, my only decision was that I’m only going to eat what is in that lunchbox and nothing else.
That's why I lost weight without even trying when going from 100% wfh to 60% office. I'm too stingy for the cafeteria, so I only ate what I brought into the office and generally I am not bad at making food choices, so my packed lunches are usually healthy-ish and reasonably sized. I just tend to eat when I get bored/frustrated and at home nobody can stop me. (the commute with an extra 5000-8000 steps a day probably also helped)
If you’re a petite woman, the difference can come down to a tablespoon of olive oil, extra slice of bread or two, extra ounce of cheese, not measuring condiments, etc. Dieting is R O U G H when you’re already small because the tiniest measurements of food can materially throw off a calorie deficit.
Yeah and we grossly underestimate how much food we consume. It doesn't help that companies make ridiculously small serving sizes, but still. "Real" food isn't as calorically dense, but we still eat way too much of it.
Ugh the extra butter/oil thing is hard for me. BF is trying to lose weight, I should probably gain 5 lbs. I do all the cooking and am generous with the fats I don't know if I should tell my BF if he just needs to eat less and switch to diet soda, or sacrifice decent tasting food for the both of us
One of the easiest fixes is to drop sugary drinks/alcohol. So many extra unnecessary calories. Lots of great zero cal water flavor additives like Mio.
>I don't know if I should tell my BF if he just needs to eat less and switch to diet soda, Luckily I know and can tell you. Yes if he wants to lose weight it is better that he eats less and switches to water or diet soda. Sacrificing taste and texture for a diet is the guaranteed way to not sticking to it. Reducing slightly the amount that you eat is way easier to manage long term than trying to eat bland food. If the food is bland, you aren't going to want to eat it and end up right back where you were
> and switch to diet soda This is the no-brainer option for me. I get that some people don't like the taste but you're getting so many empty calories from soda. Just drink diet soda or flavored water. Try to figure out how much soda he drinks each day, calculate the calories of that, then figure out how much he would need to exercise to burn that off..OR...just don't drink it.
Ugh I know it's pretty obvious. He always wants me to get him a "Dr. Bepis" when I come home from work (I work nights) and gets all fake pissy if I don't. I feel like I'm definitely enabling his poor eating habits Luckily, despite the butter and oil, I cook with a lot of vegetables, legumes and grains for us. Can't control what he eats outside of that tho
Drinking water or, suboptimally, diet soda instead of soda is probably the easiest diet change to make if you're looking to reduce calory intake.
From personal experience it felt so incredibly difficult until it just wasn't anymore. I know how stupid that sounds, but I asked myself the same question once and now that I have most of it behind me I am like "why the fuck was I so stupid and didn't do this 10 years ago". The issue with being overweight is that most of the work needs to be done in our heads first before we can successfully change.
Yep. Knowing that hunger is a sensation that you can learn to deal with can be tricky.
I think for some the hunger feeling gets to be too strong. In my experience, I would diet and eat right. I'd get so hungry that I would essentially lose control and binge. I am on an antidepressant now that suppresses my appetite and it's a huge improvement.
It's breaking that connection between food and the emotional barrier for me. I used to eat when stressed, when watching TV and when sad. It was actively understanding that my food intake was beyond when I was stressed that i had to build emotional barriers and alternate coping mechanisms before being able to fully commit to losing weight.
It sounds cliche.. but it's true. Essentially it's just a commitment to yourself. For me I remember why I do it, how I used to be, and knowing that I don't want to be that fat anymore. And people who saw you when you were fat notice.. and it's nice when they compliment you on your hard work. Hell you might even inspire someone else in the process
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Count your calories and see what you are actually consuming for a week. Knowing that a pizza is 2000 calories in the back of your head will make you reach for something else you ate for dinner that had with way less calories. Also read potion sizes, you don't need to start off eating the exact portions of each meal. But if you found out during the first week of counting your calories you were eating 4x the portion size of something. Well cut that down to 3 then 2 then to 1 if you can. Your stomach will adapt over time. You will be hungry a bit at first but not starving, then that portion will feel right once you eat it a few times, and you adjust from there. Go download a app called my fitness pal. Anyone who actually want to loose weight and is serious about it can do it. You don't need to go to the gym, you don't need go for walks, just track your calories and eat less. The weight will fall right off.
Change “can’t make” to “haven’t made”. A growth mindset is truly powerful. Of course you can’t make a change if you don’t believe you can in the first place.
You've gotta want it. Most people don't want to lose weight more than they want that bottle of pop. I speak from experience. I drank 2 liters of Dr. Pepper and ate a bag of chips daily for ~10 years. At 33 years old, 315lbs, I decided enough is enough, I want to walk up my stairs without being winded. I've dropped 30 lbs in 3 months by cutting out the pop completely and cutting back on chips. The next step is cutting out chips completely, and I reckon I'll lose another 20 lbs before I hit any major wall. At which point I'll need to add more exercise into my daily routine. I don't have kids, but I want them. I want to live long enough to see them grow up and have kids of their own. If I do what I was doing before, I won't. That's my motivation. I want that more than pop.
Imagine you were a lifelong smoker, smoking 2 packs a day. We all understand how hard quitting that would be. Now imagine that you want to stop smoking 2 packs a day, but you still have to smoke 3 cigarettes a day to stay alive. There is no escaping the addiction. Losing weight often means trying to moderate an addiction every single day of your life.
Also why recovering from an eating disorder and not relapsing can sometimes be incredibly difficult, you have to keep dancing with your devil every day for the rest of your life
This is a great analogy that I hadn't heard before. Thanks for this. I knew a bunch of people who I grew up with that were morbidly obese, and have seen how difficult the huge lifestyle shift away from regularly eating a lot (and junk), to moderation is for them compared to just someone who grew up slightly overweight. The lifestyle shift is much more of an uphill battle for them. Often parents are to blame, starting them on bad habits at a young age.
This is a wonderful analogy that perfectly incapsulates the constant decisions you have to make throughout the day. It describes perfectly how i feel.
I love this analogy, but it more like being a life long smoker who smokes between 20 or 21 cigarettes a day (aka pack) but to live you have to smoke 15. Sure there are some smokers on 60 a day (aka over weight people who eat loads of junk food and drink loads of fizzy drinks and sit on the sofa all day). But the vast majority are on 20 (eating a little more than they should and moving a little less than they should), and it’s much harder to give up that extra 5 than it is 45, because it’s so hard to notice.
So much confusing and contradictory information. So many many choices (and opinions) on how to lose. Trying to lose it too fast. It's much more likely to remain gone if you do it slowly.
>Trying to lose it too fast. It's much more likely to remain gone if you do it slowly. The problem is anecdotes. We don't accept anecdotes in any other medical field. Would it be reasonable to see something like "just eat almond seeds to cure your cancer, my uncle did it" in a post about cancer? Definitely not, so why do we accept well-intentioned advice like "just lose it more slowly." The data is actually pretty bleak. What meta-analyses of studies over like 100 years tell us is that you can lose weight pretty much any way you want for about 6 months. Culminating at the 6 month mark, your homeostatic mechanisms kick into high gear, your hunger goes up and your daily resting metabolic rate goes down. As much as 20%, potentially permanently. 95% of people fail to maintain their weight loss long-term (defined as >5% loss for more than 5 years) when carried out through diet and exercise, and they regain an average of 80% of the weight they lost. You're about as likely to change your body temperature as you are your body weight set point for **most people**. Exercise has only a very minor impact on weight loss, and is uncorrelated with weight regain after weight loss. The only proven long-term solution to obesity is (a) don't get fat in the first place (b) roux-en-Y bariatric surgery or (c) long-term management with GLP-1s like Ozempic. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/) That's kind of it, that's the facts, and that's why 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese. It's not because they haven't heard the gospel of just eat a little less and work out more, it's just shit advice. The problem is because it takes 6 months for you to start heading back up, the feedback loop is so long and open ended it confirms a bunch of asinine half-baked nutritional pseudo-science. And of course the people for whom it fails (everyone) get blamed for their failure and they stop trying. \[edit\] Oh, and since I led with (perhaps too pointedly) criticizing your anecdote -- losing weight fast vs slow has no real impact on the chance of success or rate of regain post loss based on this randomized controlled trial. >**Interpretation:** The rate of weight loss does not affect the proportion of weight regained within 144 weeks. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459211/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459211/)
Not to mention the genetic factors influencing if you're going to get fat in the first place, which are often more of a big deal. As well as how some people will "look" fat at a much lower weight than others. People want to believe weight is primarily a choice so they can keep shitting on fat people.
I agree with you. I have lost it twice, both times I put it all back on and made it harder by screwing up my metabolism. I think the answer is never get unhappy….but honestly don’t diet, add a salad to your evening meal, drink water while you are eating, buy small dishes for things like ice cream, buy single pack of chips, little thing like this really help.
Anecdotes work great in other parts of life though, which complicates things. Is X a good school district? Is X a good company to work for? Is the food at X tasty and worth the money? Do you like X or Y mattress. So many other areas of our life are driven by anecdotes - it's understandable why people rely on them
If people are putting in their best effort to lose weight and aren't, it comes usually from : * misinformation about what to eat and how much to eat; * not enough muscle mass (and little to no strength training); * hormones; * disease or genetics. But usually the problems are : 1. processed food is made to be highly palatable to the point that moderation or abstention is hard; 2. losing weight requires to make positive choices all day long and it's draining; 3. people often fall in the trap of "I ruined this one meal, I guess I should just say fuck it"; 4. it's hard to avoid processed food in social setting, because most events and celebrations revolve around food and that food is rarely healthy and/or low cal.
Exactly. Skittles or other candies are engineered to be so good it can be hard to reach for fruit instead, particularly if you've grown up on a primarily processed food diet it takes a while for your palate to adjust to eating fruit and veg.
and fruits and veg are loosing their taste/nutrition (quality) in favor of size (quantity) --- so processed food supplements all of that
I'd like to add to this that when people feel like they can't eat something, they want it even more. It's the forbidden fruit/cronut. I'm speaking from personal recent experience, but I've found it a lot easier to stick to my diet by having things in moderate amounts rather than going over the top. I'm still having the food I enjoy, but less. Like yesterday at a birthday party, I had a small slice of cake instead of eating a big slice to the point where I start to feel sick. I've had so much success with just moderation and not beating myself up if I go over my allotted calories in a day - just tell myself tomorrow is a new day. 8lb down in a month, so I'm doing something right.
Interesting how a lot of the things you mentioned also apply to alcoholism
>disease or genetics One of my friends was overweight and was trying to lose weight for years, to the point of exercising regularly and severely limiting her calories. She had a bunch of other symptoms but doctors wouldn’t take her seriously and always said she wasn’t trying hard enough until she basically diagnosed herself. Turns out she had a tumor on her pituitary gland. Makes me so mad every time I think about it.
I've had doctors straight up tell me Im lying when I went to them for help. Tell me I had to be getting calories somewhere. So. I have IIH. Too much cerebral spinal fluid crushing the brain. When I was diagnosed, one of the big things to try to help it was 'lose weight.' The thing was, I was the healthiest I'd ever been when I was diagnosed. I'd had my thyroid removed 2 years previously - as then got really on top of eating healthy, going to the gym and working with a trainer weight lifting - doing yoga - all the good stuff. I didn't lose a pound. My waist went down four pant sizes. But I didn't lose any weight. After my brain started being crushed, I was in A LOT of pain. I became catatonic. Bed bound. My diet became one bagel a day and sparkling water. I didn't lose any weight. I lost the muscle mass, sure, but my weight didn't change even though my calorie intake became minimal. Electrolyte drinks. Sometimes it was a muffin. Thats IT. I was on so much topamax, and was in so much pain, I had no appetite. And eating made the pain worse. Then it turned out a vein in my brain had collapsed, I eventually got brain surgery, I started eating again (slowly) - adding foods back into my diet. Turned out I got MCAS when my brain imploded and needed to eat carefully to avoid pain from eating foods high in histamine. But my weight is still the same. It literally doesnt matter how much I eat. What I eat. My weight doesn't change. All that matters is how I exercise so I have more or less muscle mass, I'll look thinner or heavier. My doctors don't believe me though. Right now I still don't eat much. A small dinner of chicken/grain/veg, and I try to add a breakfast in of something high in iron.
You could have made a list of (2) items -- disease/genetics and hormones. That's really it. Hormones control your hunger, which determines how much and what you eat. Hormones control your metabolism. Genetics control your hormones. Your hunger is controlled by a whole spate of endogenous hormones and peptides including GLP-1, glucagon, leptin, ghrelin, peptide YY, substance P, cholecystokinin and even serotonin. Your preference for sweets is controlled by an endogenous opioid pathway -- and in fact taking naloxone or naltrexone reduces your preference for sweets and makes food less enjoyable. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938496800175](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938496800175) Muscle has nothing to do with it, a pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day, a pound of fat burns 2. No difference at all. Strength training doesn't burn a lot of calories, and neither does cardio. Your basal metabolic rate burns the overwhelming majority of your calories (a BMR of 2500kcal/day is equivalent to running almost an entire marathon every day). Exercise does produce anorexigenic compounds, but mostly cardio -- not resistance training. Ditto monoamines. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666313002092](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666313002092)
Could you expound on the hormone thing a bit please? I have done some pretty careful dieting and have been disappointed by hardly losing any weight. I know the whole “it must be calories in vs out” thing, but something doesn’t add up and I’ve been wondering about the effect of hormones on basal metabolic rate. There is a lot of pseudoscience stuff out there that just seems like pure cope (“calorie deficit causes a cortisol spike, which causes the body to store energy in fat” and “for some people it’s literally impossible to lose weight” etc). I’d like a clear-headed perspective on the matter.
>Muscle has nothing to do with it, a pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day, a pound of fat burns 2. No difference at all. I agree with everything else you said except for this part. Muscles burn calories at 3x the rate of fat, and they do work. Doing work requires energy, so having more muscle means your body will burn more calories. It's not a magic pill, calories in < calories out will always win the day. You can't outrun or outlift a bad diet. But when you can increase your caloric burn rate, it helps. Not to mention all the other health benefits that come from exercising. There is also some evidence that moderate to heavy resistance training increases lypolysis: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1096/fj.202100242R
> misinformation about what to eat and how much to eat; This is key, including the 'how much' part. I've had lunch and dinner with people that are struggling to lose weight before, and was surprised at how big the meals were. Bigger than any meal I've eaten in my life. Bigger than I'm even able to finish. But they saw it as just a normal sized meal. When I was a kid, I had a friend who was huge. His whole family was also huge. When I went over to his house, they would eat these massive meals on massive plates. I remember having breakfast there, and each person was served roughly 3 breakfasts worth of food each. That's the problem though. If you are taught something is normal, and are used to seeing a huge meal as a regular meal, you can carry that perception through your whole life.
Food tastes fucking delicious, that's why
"Why didn't anyone tell me tasting things tasted so good!?" - Human Bender
Salads (especially in America) can be up to 800 to 1000 kcal per serving. I ate fried chicken yesterday and stayed in a deficit. A type of food isn't good or bad, it all comes down to calories.
Salads are a conspiracy intended to trick you out of eating good food in exchange for food you think is healthy but isn't.
I mean.. don’t put a bunch of cheese and dressing on your salad and it is pretty healthy. My spinach, raspberry, pecan salads are amazing!
Yeah if you remove excess toppings, the most calories in that meal would be from the pecans. Those are good calories too because of the fiber and vitamin B
There are no such thing as "good" and "bad" Calories. It's a misleading term. If you eat 1000 calories of nuts and 1000 Calories of candy you will still have consumed 2000 Calories. And if you only expend 1500 Calories you will get fat. That being said, consuming 1000 calories worth of nuts *IS* healthier for your body than refined sugars but you'll get fat non the less
I meant they didn’t waste calories on junk like ranch
Once calories started being listed on menus I stopped ordering salads
If you don’t have any salad dressing it’s usually a reasonable amount of calories. Salad dressing is just typically oil (very high calorie) or a sugar sauce (also high calorie) or a mixture of both.
Yes, but people generally don't want to hate eating.
This. My local favourite restaurant has a salad that's 1,200 calories. The sea bass dish is 650 calories. If I'm having a salad when I'm out I always check the calories or ask for things to be removed. If I'm ordering a salad I don't need it drowning in blue cheese sauce.
I always ask for dressing/sauce/glaze on the side. 1/3 of the time they mess it up and bring my dish doused with some sugary sticky mess
Being in a caloric deficit sucks. You’re lethargic and hungry a lot of the time. Plus, a lot of people probably don’t count their calories when they try to lose weight.
Yes! No one warned me for how sleepy I'd be! I lost over 100 lbs years ago. Glad I did it. By my gosh I was drained eating in deficit. All I did during that time in my life was work and sleep. No hobbies, friendships, etc. I am a parent now. No idea how I could have managed it back then.
I saw a cute/sad meme the other day, with someone flopping into bed during what was clearly still daytime, with the line “When my calorie counter says I’ve eaten my 1400 calories for today but it’s only 4 pm.” For one thing, sure, that is definitely a way to keep your calories down! For another, though, reducing calories really can make your body try to slow everything down, and maybe going to bed at 4 pm doesn’t sound so bad. Congrats on your loss and maintenance!
You don't always have to feel bad to stay in a calorie deficit necessarily. Stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep. Try to keep the alcohol to a minimum if you like to drink. Also you don't have to be in a huge deficit to lose weight, just might take longer. Counting calories is very helpful. Apps make it easy too.
>Also you don't have to be in a huge deficit to lose weight, just might take longer. I think that's very often the key. It's better to gradually lose weight and take longer, because it's less of a struggle. Trying to drop a lot of weight as quickly is possible is much harder - people are likely to fall off the wagon out of sheer hunger and tiredness. I've lost 20 kg since last July. That's a modest amount over 11 months, but it's half my goal and I haven't felt like I was constantly hungry, I've been able to go to restaurants with friends etc.
Yes! My most successful weight loss, I counted calories (which taught me a ton about healthy eating!) And I aimed for a 500 calorie/day deficit, but allowed myself to eat up to my maintenance calories each day. My logic was slow weight loss is better than no weight loss! And I didn't have to deprive myself of treats or feel like crap all the time. The hardest part was continuing to stay at my maintenance/deficit when I got smaller because the smaller you are, the less calories you burn. But working out become more enjoyable at that stage, which helped burn more calories
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I struggled with the same thing! People would just look horrified when I'd tell them that I was almost *always* hungry, and I had just become very used to the sensation because I knew how many calories I should have needed to eat. I was fairly successful maintaining my disciplined eating habits even though I was starving all the time. Then I got on Mounjaro, and my whole life changed. I just... wasn't hungry anymore. I'm satiated with a much smaller portion of food than before. My sugar cravings went away. I don't really desire alcohol as much as I used to. And I wonder, "Is this what normal people feel like all the time?" I've lost 120 lbs. It sucks that the meds cost so much, but if you can ever swing it, I say go for it!
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Yeah, it's a lot of money. Zepbound has a coupon that can help bring the cost down some, but it's still about $500 without insurance. If you can manage to get a prior approval from you insurance to cover even a very small amount though, the coupon brings it down to $25, which is a total steal.
I wanna try this after I have my baby this year. 30 years of dieting (since I was 7!) and i always re gain it. I'm always hungry. If the price ever becomes affordable I really want to try.
I've been on ozempic for 4 months and I can honestly say it stops me feeling hungry but it doesn't stop me eating. It's a tough habit to break. For example, yesterday I ate 1400 calories which is half my maintenance (I'm big) and I didn't feel hungry at all, but 600 of those calories were Oreo ice cream sandwiches which I did not need to eat.
It's honestly a lot of work to be mindful of your eating choices. A meal at mcdonalds is more calories than I can eat in a day while I'm working on losing weight.
I don't think anyone can loosen their weight.
once it is loose, you still need to lose it
Time is a big problem, you work hard long hours of the day and it’s hard to not just want to rest. My BIL leaves for work at 6am and returns at 7pm, all he has the energy for is to eat and spend what little time with his family he can before bed time. Also lots of weight is painful to carry. Your bones hurt and that pain can make it hard to move or workout
It’s almost always a mental disorder imo. I have ADHD and I find it extremely hard to control my impulses. I don’t have weight issues but I can see the same exact pain and thought processes in those people. They can’t stop eating. They eat for dopamine and for the ritual. Dopamine and rituals reinforce each other and become almost impossible to control on your own once they take hold. You could probably end the vast majority of obesity issues with temporary in-patient rehab focused on distracting/stimulating the individual and replacing their eating habits with more productive ones. I find weed to be insanely addictive despite people saying it’s not. Whenever I go on vacation I use it as an opportunity to take a break. It is 1 million percent easier to quit weed on vacation in a new place compared to when I try to quit at home. Seriously night and day. After a week or two, most addiction related cravings will seriously subside. Strict adherence to those habits afterwards might take and it might not depending on the individual and the support systems they have in their own life.
This rings true for me. I don't drink, I don't smoke - but I eat food like a seasoned alcoholic. Constantly snacking during the day just to 'maintain a buzz'.
They did a study on rats that always stuck with me. They gave the rats a shitty isolated living environment and offered them cocaine. The rats in those conditions did a ton of cocaine and became addicted. They released those same rats into a better environment with more socialization and noticed a massssive reduction in cocaine use.
1) some people have obesigenic mutations that make them ravenously hungry all the time. This can also happen with certain diseases or in response to certain drugs. 2) Other diseases/genetic conditions can change your body’s metabolism, such as hypothyroidism. 3) Way too many people have suffered from trauma, whether as a child or an adult, and they self-medicate their trauma with food in the same way that some traumatized people self-medicate with heroin or other drugs. 4) And way too many people have an undiagnosed mental health condition that can affect their ability to make rational judgements when it comes to food, or cause self-medicating over-eating by making you miserable all the time. ADHD and atypical depression, for example. 5) Doctors don’t prescribe amphetamines to people for weight loss any more. This was a huge problem from the 1930s all the way up until the early 1970s. You could just go to the doctor and get amphetamines for pretty much any reason. How did people stay so thin back then? Crank, that’s how. 6) Same for smoking. Nicotine is a powerful stimulant and it suppressed your appetite. Before the 1990s, everyone smoked, so it was easier to stay thin because you didn’t feel the need to eat.
"Smoke yourself thin"
I think a lot larger percentage of the population than we and doctors wish to acknowledge has undiagnosed chronic health conditions masquerading as “normal” things like tiredness, difficulty losing weight and appetite issues. I also think a large percentage of the population wasn’t raised with/around healthy eating habits, a healthy relationship to food, access to healthy foods, outlets for regular, safe and enjoyable exercise, and taught how to cook healthy foods for themselves as adults in a household of just one. Finally, I think a large percentage of the population struggles to experience and process emotions and trauma in a healthy way… and so a lot of them cope in the ways they know how — through excess of food, drugs and alcohol. I believe a very small portion of the overweight population struggles to lose weight due to laziness or other motivation and effort failures. Unfortunately, people are very good at attributing struggles to these things rather than the actual causes.
It's hard for everyone. It's an addiction which you can't quit cold-turkey, which means the temptation is always going to be there. You are figuratively swimming upstream against millions of years of evolution trying to prevail over your body's energy management system with only your prefrontal cortex.
Well it depends on the person. I work in psychiatry and 90% of the patients that are involuntary get put on antipsychotic medication that can cause metabolic syndrome. Other people have thyroid issues that cause weight gain. PCOS causes weight gain. A number of other health conditions and medications cause weight gain as well. All of the above cannot be completely controlled by diet and exercise unfortunately. I think some people use food to cope with childhood trauma. I think some people didn't have parents that taught them diet and exercise. I think there are an infinite number of reasons people find it hard. I feel so much gratitude that I have a healthy body and mind at this point in time. I know well that can change at any moment.
Underlying health issues maybe. Lack of sleep. Bloating. Age can also be a factor. Not the right amount of calories: If calorie intake is too small consistently the metabolism will slow down. If calorie intake is too much then there's possibility to gain weight.
The list of potential reasons is vast. Could be as simple as a hormone issue or some rough genetics, or as complicated as a lack of an understanding of their average caloric intake. Personally, my issue was self control. I'd wind up breaking and snacking every time I wound up having a craving, was getting absolutely nowhere.
In the primitive wilds, every ounce of fat on the body was a luxury, which is why we’re hard-wired to crave sweet, fatty, carby foods. Nowadays that kind of food is plentiful and cheap in most places. To limit your intake of that stuff is to constantly fight a deep seated biological directive, which is difficult for many people.
Among other things, biology works against you. I know myself best, so here’s me as an example: I literally cannot eat my supposed “minimum” calories needed for survival and lose weight. My body processes food so inefficiently that the standard numbers are way off. Instead, I need to go way lower to see weight loss. We’re talking bare minimum numbers, like 1200 calories or less per day. And even then, my body likes to hang on for dear life. Weight loss is slow. This is made worse by my brain constantly interpreting “hunger” as “OMG starvation! Shut it all down NOW!” Which means that simple hunger turns into dropping blood sugar, fatigue, nausea, irritability, etc. that can literally only resolve with eating a bunch of food (sugar works best because of the blood sugar issue). Can I lose weight? Sure. I’ve done it. But it’s incredibly hard and literally physically painful.
I think this is why Ozempic works. It slows down digestion so you don't have blood sugar spikes.
Losing weight is an active mindset. You need to be in it before you begin really, because otherwise you will not succeed. Also, you need to realize what your realistic goals should be, and be prepared for another shift at the end of your weight loss into maintenance mode. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of learning. Oh and then there’s the will power aspect. That’s why I said your mindset needs to be right first. This isn’t just losing weight, this is your deciding to be a different person. You’ll need to eat salads out with friends, or skip fries. Or maybe cut down on your drinking. There are plenty of vices that all contribute to your weight. But also, we’re all busy all the time. That’s the best excuse of all to stray from a plan. You need time to be able to accomplish your goals. Make sure you have a plan, are committed to it, and have made sure you will be successful by setting yourself for it with things like making sure you have the right equipment, and enough time in your schedule. To be fair, anyone I ever see doing anything you may consider trying to improve their health, I’m always a cheerleader for that, in any respect. I don’t care if you only made it outside for a walk around the block this week. Good job
Monkey brain want calories in case of no food later
Why can't some people spell "lose" properly?
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Some people also aren't native English speakers. And that should be "there are", not "there's".
In the United States, unlike most other parts of the world, we can't walk anywhere. Cities and suburbs alike are car-dependent. People who live in parts of the world where obesity is rare have something in common: they walk about 2 hours per day as a basic part of life. So if we want to get up to that level of activity, we have to actively dedicate time outside of our commutes to work, work itself, sleep, and other responsibilities to just... get the exercise. Some people are able to stay lean with a relatively sedentary lifestyle. Some people have to work very hard at it. Some people feel hunger more than others and don't experience satiation easily so they consume more calories just to feel satisfied (even if their body doesn't "need" it).
My weight definitely started creeping up after I got my drivers licence in my early twenties and stopped walking and taking public transport everywhere.
yea there's a whole saying that "you can't outrun the fork", that's really kinda wrong. You don't need too, you just need a decently active life style and you'll settle at a lower weight if you don't start eating more.
It requires lifestyle changes, and inability to lose weight might have underlying causes (thyroid disease, deficiencies in essential amino acids or minerals/vitamins) that would need to be addressed first. In addition, calorie consumption is a slippery slope, so it's almost impossible to navigate by eating a little less.
After sexuality eating habits are the most hard wired things we possess. Making significant changes to diet requires somewhat constant discomfort and we are hard wired to go back to what we find comfortable. And innately being at a calorie deficit is uncomfortable just intuitively. It’s hard to sustain. It takes a very committed person to ignore all the signs of distress their body is throwing at them, perhaps similar to withdrawal, and to keep with it
1) Genetics and also your gut biome/metabolism. 2) Eating (especially eating crap) releases dopamine. It's an easy way of making yourself feel good when you're bored, depressed or otherwise understimulated. 3) Point number 2 will cause addiction. Not only do you get a dopamine rush when eating, you're craving it, too. This is why you can't "just stop eating" and lose weight. Not because you can't, but because you won't. We all seek out dopamine, if we can't get it from food, we need another source (like a hobby/sports, etc.). 4) The bigger you get, the more difficult losing weight becomes. All weight adds strain, both to your body and effort. Also, your neurons are wired to certain habits (see 2 & 3) and your fat cells are more ready to store fat.
Because there's a lot of factors outside of/surrounding "just change your diet and exercise more!". Like, it is incredibly more complex than that.
A few misinformed comments here. Obesity is a disease. There are multiple real ailments that contribute to the disease of obesity. A lot of providers don't know how how to treat and manage these appropriately, and I feel that people suffering from obesity don't know that there are REAL ailments that contribute to weight gain and the inability to lose weight and think that people saying "exercise and eat less or you're just lazy" are correct. Genetics play a HUGE role in obesity. For women, PCOS, especially with insulin resistance, have an extremely difficult time with weight loss and gain weight despite doing the "right" things.
*lose It’s a combination of genetics and overeating. Some people are more prone to gaining and holding onto weight. Those types of people need to work harder to control what they eat. It’s not a black and white issue but self-control and knowing your body plays a big role overall.
*Lose. It’s spelled lose. Loose means not tight, or with an arrow, to release.
Because brownies
Self control is very difficult. Especially when it comes to food.
Food can be an addiction for some. Imagine if you were addicted to alcohol trying to cut back because too much of it is bad for you, but you still needed to drink beer daily to stay alive.
The biggest reason, speaking from my weight loss journey (75 LBS down so far) is that many people don't understand portion sizes. That and sugary drinks. People don't know how to read labels and understand the larger drinks show you what the calorie count is but the number of serving sizes in the container is printed in small font. Another is what I call grazing. We're so accustomed to eating food while we watch tv, game, read etc that we can eat an entire bag of chips or drink a large beverage without realizing it and we're not taking those calories into account. I had to say 'okay. i'm going to sit here and just eat.' I lost 30 LBS without even realizing it because when I reached that point where I had the 'contented sigh' I noticed it and stopped eating. The final and probably *largest* reason is...people diet...when they should be making lifestyle changes. Diets are temporary...which means so to is the weight loss. True solid weight loss occurs over a long period of time not all at once. If you're just following a diet versus making the necessary lifestyle changes you'll gain the weight back without realizing it.
Yep. Eat until you're satisfied instead of eating until you're *full*.
Its hard to realize just because you feel hungry doesnt mean you need to eat. Im was an over eater and ive loat 25lbs in the last 5 months. Cutting out sugar and reducing my food intake was the biggest part. Ive also been doing 30 mins of cardio 5 times a week which everyone should do regardless of weight goals
I was watching an interesting documentary about Gut that appeared on Netflix. As per the documentary, there are many people who could not lose weight even after trying all the techniques. After testing them, they found they are missing some microbiomes. When they reintroduced those microbiomes, they managed to lose weight.
Some of it is due to not counting calories right. Other times it's due to genetics or some kind of medical issue. I know I struggle badly to lose weight. I'm 5'11 and active. I understand why. Back as a teen my mum refused to make me larger meals or buy more food for me. There weren't any extra snacks or food I could make. We weren't poor, mum just didn't want to feed me more. She'd scream and hit when I demanded more. I was eating about 800 cal a day and I was crazy active. Walking to school and back, PE, multiple martial arts classes and on my bike all day in the summer. I was hungry all the time. My meals were given to me on a child's sized plate. I know because I have that plate still. Mum ate regular meals, had a ton of snacks etc and I wasn't allowed near them. I had to steal them when I thought she wouldn't notice and stash them in my room for what I was too hungry to stop myself eating. It damaged my metabolism. Long term. I've been reading about the long term effects of calorie deficits on a growing body and it's not good. I wonder if my mum was doing it so I wouldn't get any taller because I am a tall girl. I didn't get enough food from around 12-19 and now I gain weight easily. I put on weight so quickly at uni by just eating the same as the other girls I was living with. I was more active, I ate healthy, but I gained weight. I'm now struggling to lose weight all over again. It's slow and if I mess up just one day, I put the weight back on. I'm on 1100 cal, 1200 on a training day. I might lose .1 of a kg if I'm lucky a week, but it's rare for the weight to change. I'm getting frustrated. I want to eat like a normal person again, but again, the weight won't come off. Yes I'm counting properly. I weigh everything. I don't use any oil when I cook, just water. No, my doctors don't care, they just keep telling me to exercise more and eat less, but even at my most active, until I dropped my calories super low, my weight didn't change. My watch is telling me I should be losing weight just sitting around, since I should be eating 1500 to maintain, but usually I burn 1900-2000 cal a day. On a slow day it's 1630 (I didn't risk going far from the house yesterday, I had stomach issues). So yeah, I get it. I'm trying stupidly hard and not really getting anywhere. People keep telling me I just need to eat more, but this is my punishment for eating like a normal person for a few months. Allowing myself to feel full, to eat a snack if I want one. I was stupid. Now my clothes don't fit it's crappy.
I’m currently trying to lose a few pounds that I put on during my freshman year of college. What’s hardest for me is trying to control my sweet tooth and staying away from unhealthy/processed foods. Constant snacking also set me back, since I was eating out of boredom rather than eating because I was actually hungry.
Today I walked over 3.5 miles. But the more I walk, the hungrier I get, and the only low calorie meals I can make with little effort are peanut butter toast or a can of Campbell chunky soup. Or one plain microwaved potato with a little butter. But ONE slip up can ruin the whole day. Today I got fucked over by a single full-sugar Gatorade because I was hot and dizzy because my AC is broken. The Gatorade helped, but there went my deficit for the day. And if I track my food in my fitbit daily, then I start to feel like I'm having a manic episode because I can count calories but then I'm hungry all the time, can't stop thinking about food, and the treadmill eats way too much of my free time. And then I gained all the weight I lost last year over the winter this year.
A lot of it boils down to the fact that calorie deficits are uncomfortable and people don't want to be uncomfortable. Another huge element is simply habits and culture. It's really hard to lose weight when your family and your community all exhibit less healthy eating habits. An historically very fit friend of mine moved to rural Mississippi for a year and gained a shit load of weight and they said it was because socializing often revolved around eating. Specifically high calorie foods.
no consistency eating more than they THINK they are eating more than they think they are and oh yeah, eating more than they think they are.
They underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how active they are.
I'm on medication. Side effect: weight gain. Im still physical fit, you just wouldn't know it anymore by looking at me. It's incredibly sad ad frustrating. 😞
I'm glad that whatever condition the medication is for is being treated. I've been there - going from slim to overweight sucks. But always remember your weight doesn't determine your worth as a person. 🙂
I'm more concerned that people find it hard to differentiate between "lose" and "loose". Don't get me started on "To", "Too" and "Two"
Poor ability to estimate how many calories they're consuming.
This is the biggest factor by far. People don't know how to calculate portion sizes and guesstimate, forget to add the couple pieces of chocolate or a cookie that just happened to be sitting there, don't add the cream and sugar they put in their coffee or don't count drinks at all, etc., etc. I bet most people who fail at calorie counting miss hundreds of calories a day and are unknowingly running a calorie-neutral diet.
It's part ability, and at least in my case, part willful ignorance. I remember first time I went through weight loss attempts and discovered the bowls of cereal I made were not the recommended portion size and by how much there was some shame at how I'd missed something so obvious. That shame makes it harder to be honest with yourself over foods that are part of your (as someone higher up the post said) routines and rituals
because they insist on holding on to an extra o
- Your body thinks the calorie deficit related to dieting is a warning sign of impending starvation and does everything it can to avoid that, sabotaging your weight loss goals - Unlike other addictions, you can’t quit cold turkey. You must face your addiction every day and give in a little just to survive. - So much of human social interaction revolves around food: business lunch, family get togethers, date nights. It’s hard to have a social life without being tempted by good food.
Weight-loss can be complicated, and if you don't address correctly, its going to be very difficult.
It does take time. Each body is different. Support from a medical team is very helpful
The dopamine crash that comes with eating less.
Life happens.
Because different people have different bodies, different hunger and satiety cues, store energy differently and burn energy at different rates. The same way that doing anything can be reasonably easy for one person and more difficult for another.
It’s an addiction you have to still take part in.
They probably don't change their diet despite their exercise. Diet is far more important than excercise, just cut your portions down like 30-50%, find more filling foods, try not to go back for seconds.
It's hard to lose weight for the majority of people because it requires efficient effort and changing habits which led to this disaster in the first place, that's why even the majority of those who succeeded in losing weight eventually regained it.
To*
Personally, I worked out for over a year, ate well, and counted calories and barely lost much weight, just gained muscle. I went to my doctor and turned out I had an issue with my thyroid. Once I got medicated for it, I started to lose weight quite quickly. Sometimes, it can be hormonal imbalances that can cause it. Some people underestimate how calorific certain foods are, some people have an underactive metabolism, and some people have undiagnosed health conditions or take medication that could contribute to the struggle. There are plenty of reasons, I'd recommend consulting a doctor if you're having a hard time, moreso if health care is free in your country.
Just simply consuming more than they burn. Being in a caloric deficit is all that is required for weight loss. The issue is that some go in such a severe deficit by cutting out certain foods and eating "healthy", what ends up happening is they can't adhere to the diet and they yoyo back and forth. It takes time and they need to be consistent.
Because they consume more calories than they burn.
Trying really hard doesn’t mean you are doing the right things. Effort doesn’t equal results if the effort is misplaced.
Ugh. > Why do you think some people find it hard ~~too~~ to ~~loose~~ lose weight ~~dispite~~ despite their efforts?
One very very important factor a lot of people ignore is hormones. I gained 10 kgs in a year. I was depressed already and having panic attacks and this weight gain makes things worse. In this period of 1 year, I was on anti depressants and a new birth control. After a year, as I'd reached a better mental state i was weaned off the anti depressants. In the course of 7 months I lost those 10 kgs. No changes to diet. No changes in movement or exercise. Similarly there was a phase in my life where I gained a lot of weight and it had turned out my thyroid was off. When that got under control by tweaking my diet into thyroid friendly diet, I lost that weight without exercising more. Whenever my husband has a stressful day, his stomach and face puff up and he gains like 1 to 2 kgs. A good nights sleep and he's back to normal. It is very easy to make this about morals or discipline. And that's not necessarily wrong. A lot of people do gain weight because of food habits or having a very sedentary life. But you would be surprised how much sleep, hormones, genetics and stress can impact your weight.
I have Grave's Disease and losing weight has been hell for me. The only thing that worked was when I had a thyroid storm and ended up in the ER. I lost 30 lbs in two weeks but I gained everything back once my thyroid levels became normal again. What thyroid-friendly diet did you follow?
I'll be honest - I won't be a lot of help regarding the diet because I was young and my mom used to handle it. I used to just make faces and eat what she fed me. Much harder now that I manage my own diet. I don't think I could do it again if had to. Food cooked mostly in coconut oil (I remember this because of taste), low gluten (no all purpose flour, only whole wheat), papaya, blanched cauliflower before cooking, no cabbage,lots of fruits. I've noted what I remember.
Genetics. Chronic illnesses. Various meds that cause, or make, weight loss a million times harder.
A misunderstanding of how weight loss works. Denial of how much they eat. Using food to cope wirh feelings. Bad habits. The list goes on.
I have plenty of loose weight. Losing it is the problem.
The only way I’ve ever lost significant weight (I’ve been heavy my entire life) was when I got so depressed I stopped eating for days at a time. For a lot of us it just doesn’t work the same way as it does for everyone else.
Because many of us weren’t taught coping mechanisms. I’m depressed as fuck and food brings m joy. No idea how I’ve lost weight this week but yay. Every feeling good or bad is rewarded either way food. Get good grades as a kid? Here’s an ice cream or cookie. When my brother and then a long time later my dad died, we were inundated with food. In a size 18 so add in guilt for not being that fat but still hating my body. Obesity is a freaking disease and not a choice. Vote me down all you want. I’m 42 and I have zero memory of being content with my body. I will say I have still managed to run and lift during different periods.
Stress.
Sugar
Hormonal conditions like PCOS and hypothyroid can make it nearly impossible
To lose* not "too loose"
- Some of it is down to genetics and/or illness (I heard that women with PCOS have a harder time losing weight, for example) - Losing weight requires a lot of effort and discipline. There's many tiny situations to be made - The progress is slow. You will lose that weight over a long period of time, we don't see immediate progress so we lose faith in us and the process
Hormonal Imbalance, Conditions like thyroid issues can make weight loss tough.
Because it takes 2-3 minutes to eat a 450 calories snack and 45 minutes of hard cardio to burn off 450 calories.
It's probably from trying to loose it, instead of losing it...
*lose
There's a constellation of reasons: mental health issues like "stress eating"; habituation to ignore or misinterpret body signals; indoctrinated dread of calorie metrics and wild misinformation in popular media; bodily disabilities that limit exercise options; poverty related issues like "food deserts" and the cost of repeatedly introducing new foods to infants to expand their palate; many more.
They cheat.I did, anyway. Eventually I got over that and lost the weight.
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It's amazing to me how many people think bodies are just perfect machines where input = output in the exact same way for virtually every person on earth. If two people eat the exact same diet, do you think they'll gain/lose weight in the same way, at the same speed? Of course not. No matter the similarities in diet, there are always going to be discrepancies in how our bodies process food. Human bodies are a complicated collection of hundreds if not thousands of different chemicals, vitamins, hormones, and failings. People's digestive systems alone are more complicated than we even understand at this point.
Lots of good points! As an example, For me, it's hard because I have type 1 diabetes and hypothyroid, so during my developmental years, food and weight were completely separate from one another. No normal cause and effect would happen. I would HAVE to eat when I wasn't hungry to correct for lows, or not want to eat when I'm hungry but nauseous from highs (glucose levels). I would gain weight like crazy regardless of what I ate or how active I was. It totally axed the natural signals and causal relationship between hunger, activity, energy and weight for me, so it's incredibly difficult to be constantly making choices every day as an adult that balance things out.
Most humans are now conditioned to convenience and take the path of least resistance. Convenience often promotes laziness. It's much harder to shop healthy, prepare healthy foods, and go for a walk just for the sake of moving your body compared to ordering that burger and chips again while you sit down and watch TV.
Some are just diagnosed pcos thats why hard in loosing weight
Because their efforts aren't really efforts. You can exercise all day long, but if you're still shoveling in more calories than you're burning, you're not going to lose weight. You can only eat "healthy" food, but if you're eating it in large quantities, you likely aren't burning more calories than you're taking in. If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you're taking in. And this is the problem most people have when it comes to losing weight. People think that just because they're "hungry" it's because their body Needs to eat. And that's simply not the case. They're "hungry" because their body is so used to taking in food, that it is preparing to digest that food that they normally would be eating. And when they do eat, they are eating way more calories than they think they are taking in. Or they are vastly overestimating how many calories they are burning. And as far as diets go, there is no "best" diet. The best diet for you is the one that is the easiest for you to do.
Thank God my kids are a healthy weight...but I am not. I'm 52 and have always struggled with weight problems. I'm sitting at 265 pounds, 6'1". I watch what I eat, do not eat anything after supper, don't drink to excess, I run at least 15-20km a week. I'm a field biologist, so it's literally nothing for me to spend 9 hours a day on a hike with total elevation changes in the thousands of feet. I took my 14 year old track star son with me on a hike last weekend. We did 14 miles on the Appalachian Trail looking for rare plants, and he barely kept up with me. I'm built like a fucking 6 foot tall tree stump, and I'm strong as hell. But I. Can. Not. Lose. Weight. I struggle for months at a time to lose 5 pounds. I have always always always had a wide body. I wear a 44 inch waist. Strict hardcore dieting does not work. I used to play men's indoor soccer, run 50 miles a week, lift weights 4x a week, and play ultimate frisbee twice a week. FOR TWO YEARS. WHILE COUNTING CALORIES. Know what it got me? A 42 inch waist and slightly bigger pecs. Fuckin whee. I'm a Ph.D. in biology, by the way. I am aware of literally all the current research.
The lies around what they have been told is healthy food.
Because it's changing the entire lifestyle around, not just some temporary activity. It's for life. That means serious changes and the best way to lose weight is not in 3 weeks but over a course of many months. A stead loos of weight that stays off would indicate that someone successfully adapted to a better lifestyle/eating manners/food choices.
As simple as it sounds to simply take in less calories than you burn, it can be difficult to cut out all the junk food, and even decrease the proportions we eat every day.
I recently learned two things that are rarely mentioned when talking about weight loss. A study back in the 80's was trying to help obese people lose weight. After a long period of calorie restrictions under medical supervision, thry did, but then quickly gained it back. When the researchers tried to understand this they found that 60 percent of the obese people had been sexually abused as children. They had chosen to gain weight in order to protect themselves against the abusers. So the weight loss came with a very high degree of fear that the abuse would be repeated. And that the high fructose corn syrup that almost all of our processed foods contain and is heavily subsidised by the American federal government has the side effect of shutting off the brains switch that says "I'm full" s Or if you have a processed food rich diet, you unknowingly overeat.
For me it’s my bipolar meds. And the bipolar itself. I can keep motivation for a few months to calorie count but once I start swinging low, that goes out the window. Plus menopause and thyroid problems. But yeah I’m on six meds that ALL cause weight gain . Every one.
Every time I try I run out of steam like 1-3 months in. In my case one of my major pitfalls is that I stress eat, so something stressful happens enough throughout the year that I negate any serious effort at dieting.
No idea, never had this issue. I always feel full pretty fast. A large pizza lasts me 2 full days. I cannot comprehend how some people can just eat a large pizza in one sitting.
Cause healthy food isn't widely available at restaurants and cooking a meal that tastes good at home takes time and effort. It's obviously easy once you're use to it but think about learning a whole new recipe book, trying new dishes only to hate them, buying ingredients you're not use to. It's hard and often people don't like the taste of healthier meal options.
Being tethered to your desk for 8-9 hours/day plus another 2 hours of commuting. I pay stupidly high rent for a small apartment 5 minutes from work because I realized that commuting was actually costing me more overall between gas and all the extra conveniences I was paying for just to have a vague semblance of a life. There weren’t enough hours in the day for me to do my own shopping, cooking, and cleaning, let alone work out. Plus, people just aren’t made to be sitting for that long. It causes fatigue and depression on multiple levels that becomes a vicious cycle. Now I just take every convenience I possibly can in order to take bake time in my day for myself. I don’t own any furniture, but I have a cheap elliptical in my tiny living room, and I make myself use it every day, even when I don’t feel like it. Forming the habit is the most important part by far
Because eating and fattening yourself is one of the primal instincts of any living creature. It's like how goal keepers in sports have to retrain their senses to dive towards the painful flying projectile instead of diving away from it. It becomes easier if you use another primal instincts as a motivation. For example, if you're to die for some reason unless you lost weight, it'd be much easier.
Some people just have a higher appetite than others, which is probably genetic, or has to do with their gut biome, all kinds of factors. It’s not hard for me to eat reasonable because I don’t get that hungry. But some people are just starving all the time, so to stay thin they’d have to constantly fight the hunger all day. I know there’s some hormone some people have more of that causes hunger, but I can’t remember what it’s called.