Why YSK: many countries have issues with weight, such as mine with 74% of US adults being overweight or obese. The global weight loss industry is over $200 billion yearly, with many influencers, pills, and surgeries promising quick results with little effort. These often come with side effects, or don’t work long term.
Studies suggest filling yourself with foods low in caloric density and high in fiber, like fruits and vegetables, can help reach and maintain a healthy weight. It’s good to have these foods available in our living spaces to make the choice easy. Your taste buds will likely adapt to love them if you’re not there yet.
I’m like you, and no it’s not simple. As others said, calories in, calories out. Nothing else matters, you need to find your own way to keep it. And no, exercise does not help much with weight, only if paired with a good diet. You would need to work out for hours continuously just to lose the calories from a random extra dessert.
But, you can do it. Two things I wish I had known:
For example, my body was able to keep my weight instead of losing it if I kept calories intake where it should be and had a “cheat day” once a week at most. No cheat days for me, my body is too smart for that.
Sometimes you feel you are on track, and then you get stuck at a certain weight. Even if you keep your diet, you might get stuck at a certain weight despite losing it well beforehand. Keep at it. You will break through at one point, closer than you think. But you have to keep at it.
It is not as simple as just calories in vs calories out. Your body has a setting point for what weight it thinks it should be. Once you are overweight, your setting point will be higher and your body wants to get back to that higher weight. It will start working actively against you. This might mean your appetite will increase and your metabolism will slow down. I think that is what you are describing here.
Trying to push yourself to lose more weight despite your body working against you can cause rebound weight gain if you are not able to keep the diet (which might become increasingly difficult due to increasing appetite). The most important thing is to keep a healthy diet that does not reduce your quality of life too much and is doable on the long term, I think. If you are struggling everyday, then it might be better to eat a little bit more and stay on a higher weight a bit longer to ensure that you will maintain the weight loss.
Maybe this is already what you meant. But the phrase “calories in vs calories out” and stating that nothing else matters made me want to respond. I think it is a popular oversimplification that causes a lot of unnecessary suffering for people trying to lose weight.
This is propaganda from companies that want you to keep gorging on their slop instead of natural portions of food.
It is not. I am not saying people should not eat healthy or should not try to lose weight. I am just saying that pushing the oversimplification that for everyone it is just calories in vs calories out and that it is only about willpower is not correct. People should get the right help with losing weight and the factors that cause the weight gain or makes people not losing the weight should be addressed.
There is lots of scientific work on this. I copied some links from another comment I made.
For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.
This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:
[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.
If you disagree, please provide some substantiation. I would be interested in reading it.