“If food is on the plate and it’s any good, I’m going to eat it.”
This. So much this.
I don’t understand how people can leave food on their plates. I will eat food in front of me even if it’s *not* particularly good. I was at a restaurant recently and there were fries that someone ordered for the table and after a while I realized I was the only one eating them. They weren’t very good fries, but they were there! In front of me!
I ended up asking if my table mates wanted any more, because if not, I was going to dump my water on them to make them inedible, because I wanted to stop eating them. People laughed, thinking I was joking, but when I picked up my glass someone said “Joe, you could just *stop* eating them.”
But I can’t. I mean, of course, yes, physically, I could stop eating them. But to me, dumping water on them was by far the easier way.
Why isn’t everyone like this? How can I not be like this?
I’ve learned that I only have self control at the point of acquisition. If it’s in the fridge or on my plate, it’s too late. I’m eating it. And yes, bad fries are the ultimate telltale for our type.
I can choose not to open a bag of chips. It's much harder to stop eating the chips once open.
I can follow strict rules: Only 2 girl scout cookies / night (easier rule because it helps make them last and I can only buy them once a year), but any fuzzy "don't eat too many chips" means I eat too many chips.
For me, I've learned to NEVER eat junk food out of the bag. Always have some intermediary place like a small bowl that you eat out of. So, you measure how much you intend to eat from the package, put it in the bowl, and then when that bowl is empty, snacking is DONE.
"Toad baked some cookies. “These cookies smell very good,” said Toad. He ate one. “And they taste even better,” he said. Toad ran to Frog’s house. “Frog, Frog,” cried Toad, “taste these cookies that I have made.”
Frog ate one of the cookies, “These are the best cookies I have ever eaten!” said Frog.
Frog and Toad ate many cookies, one after another. “You know, Toad,” said Frog, with his mouth full, “I think we should stop eating. We will soon be sick.”
“You are right,” said Toad. “Let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop.” Frog and Toad ate one last cookie. There were many cookies left in the bowl.
Frog,” said Toad, “let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop.” Frog and Toad ate one very last cookie. “We must stop eating!” cried Toad as he ate another.
“Yes,” said Frog, reaching for a cookie, “we need willpower.”
“What is willpower?” asked Toad.
“Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do,” said Frog.
“You mean like trying hard not to eat all these cookies?” asked Toad.
“Right,” said Frog.
Frog put the cookies in a box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.
Frog tied some string around the box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can cut the string and open the box.” said Toad.
That is true,” said Frog.
Frog got a ladder. He put the box up on a high shelf. “There,” said Frog. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.
Frog climbed the ladder and took the box down from the shelf. He cut the string and opened the box.
Frog took the box outside. He shouted in a loud voice.
“Hey, birds, here are cookies!” Birds came from everywhere. They picked up all the cookies in their beaks and flew away.
“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” said Toad sadly.
“Not even one.”
“Yes,” said Frog, “but we have lots and lots of willpower.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,” said Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”"
Anyone ever run into the milk & cookies death spiral? Take two cookies to dip in milk. Have milk left over. Get two more cookies for milk. Then run out of milk while still having cookie left. Get more milk........
If you can arrange things so that ‘clean your plate’ is the correct choice most dinners it is somewhat easier. That requires a lot of work on the back end tho.
Continuous self control is hard! If you choose not to eat the fries, 5 seconds later they're still there, and you have to choose not to eat them again. And again. Which makes it hard not to slip up.
I think a lot of people struggle with that, to various extents, but most people would be too embarrassed to do the water dumping trick due to the implicit admission of the absence of self control. But I think it's genuinely a clever solution!
I am lucky to have no issues with the food, but I absolutely have to do the thing where I choose the seat at the table that doesn’t have direct line of sight to the TVs in the restaurant. Even if it’s just some sportsball I don’t understand, the flashing lights make me look.
To genuinely offer the perspective of someone who is able to regularly leave food on my plate, I really don't believe it is solely a mental/self-control thing. Even if I'm truly enjoying what I'm eating, I reach a point relatively quickly where I physically feel uncomfortable if I eat more - my stomach truly does feel "full", and continuing to eat makes me feel sick. I have no idea if this is medically true, but I tell friends that I really do think I just naturally have a small stomach, similar to what other people may try to achieve through surgery. Anyway, that's probably not helpful for you, but I don't like others thinking I've unlocked some magic self-control mechanism because that's giving me too much credit!
Give yourself some credit - if something is particularly tasty I will keep eating even when I'm uncomfortably full. The idea of leaving delicious food behind is more painful to me than the physical pain of eating too much.
When I say "leaving behind," I don't really mean "throwing out." I know people who hate wasting food, and the doggy bag thing works for them. But that's not my issue.
When I say "leaving behind," I mean "not eating right now." I could eat it right now! And it's delicious! Why would I save it for later? It's right there, in front of me, right now! Did I mention that it's delicious?
I recognize that probably sounds ridiculous to you. I'm not saying it's rational. But it is how my brain works.
I finally understood people like you during pregnancy. I got to a point in my meals where I couldn't eat more without feeling sick, so I stopped with food on my plate.
Sadly for my waistline, this only happened during pregnancy and now that the baby is here, I'm back to being a plate cleaner. But it was good to know that there's no actual willpower difference between me and people who can leave food on the plate.
Origin story: I was hanging out with 7 other guys and we were discussing ordering pizza for dinner, and someone suggested we get two pizza.
I quickly did the math and realized that meant I would get 2 slices, and so I spoke up and said I was pretty hungry and would want more than that. A few others agreed, “yeah I could eat 3 slices” and someone even spoke up and said “man I’m starving, I might eat 4 slices,” at which point I felt like I was in a safe space, so I said what I really felt, which was that if I didn’t eat four slices, it wouldn’t be because I had stopped at 3, it would be because I had five.
Not everyone wanted more than 2 slices, though, so we ended up getting 3 pies, which I was secretly concerned about. When the food came, the original 2-pie suggester loudly announced he was taking both of his slices now because he didn’t want his second slice taken “by Joey-five-slice over here.”
This fits nicely with my image of your nickname being introduced with all the Goodfellas mobsters. "This guy over here, we called him Joey Five Slice because any time he showed up we'd have to order an extra pizza..."
Maybe this wouldn’t work so well in the pizza scenario you describe below, but I find restaurant portions to be really big, so I often order with a strategy of taking a lot home and getting more meals out of it. If I eat too much (which I sometimes do) I feel really crappy and get a kind of “food hangover,” so I have an incentive to not overeat. I guess it also helps that I’m cheap!
One of the classic weight-loss pieces of advice (which is useful!) is to ask for a to-go box when your meal comes out and pack up half of it right away. Like Matt and Joey, I have a hard time stopping if it’s in front of me and tastes good. Out of sight out of mind (somewhat).
I try to remember to bring Tupperware in my backpack since we usually have leftovers. I prefer ordering too much and having leftovers in the fridge, and the Tupperware saves a bit of single use plastic.
Same. I personally, in part, blame the Shakers [1]. When I was young, I visited a restored Shaker village as part of a family trip. They ate in a communal setting and were expected to “shaker their plate” --- meaning to finish everything they put on their plate. I thought this was a great idea (don’t waste food!), but the thing that was lost on me was that the Shakers chose how much to put on their plates, but modern restaurants don’t work that way. Now, leaving food behind takes a lot of effort on my part.
"At Sabbathday Lake, near Poland Spring, Maine, the small Shaker religious community of true believers is known for living a simple life, which includes simple meals three times a day. They eat according to the motto 'Shaker your plate' - which means polishing off every last bit and crumb."
How about that! I live in Shaker Heights Ohio and, while I would not say I know a ton about the namesake religious group, had never heard the "shaker your plate" version. Thanks for sharing! Hope I didn't come across as too "someone on the internet is wrong" in my first comment.
I used to live in Shaker, and I also never heard that story! My son was required in Middle School to write an essay about how wonderful the Shakers were.. He chose instead to write something rather snarky about how being celibate led to their demise, and got a bad grade!
No worries. Just wanted to share a reference (and also to fact check myself since I'm going off an old memory).
The Shakers fascinate me, and I check in on them now and then to see if they still exist. In fact, apparently their numbers increased by 50% (from 2 to 3) in the last couple years.
You're not alone. I can't remember the last time I made a 3 lb rotisserie chicken and didn't eat the whole thing in one sitting. Even when I had the healthiest diet in terms of food (lean meats, vegetables, minimal refined carbs, healthy fats) I'd still get overweight because I just ate so much of it. Basically relegated to the fast and feast style diets if I want to maintain a healthy weight, but they really suck and it's kind of embarrassing.
This reminds me of a teacher my kid had in middle school. He announced that he was a vegan, and immediately said, "I know what you all are thinking. How can he be a vegan and be so fat? Well, a eat a lot of the things I do eat."
This is a widely generalizable observation and why it is good to travel and meet a wide variety of people and have diverse experiences. You learn a lot about how different people are in their approaches and drives.
Come on, what? Did you not previously understand that there are people who are compulsive? Compulsive gamblers, who can't stop gambling even though they ruin their life? Compulsive drinkers, who when in long-time recovery still will arrange to never have alcohol sitting in front of them, because they'd drink it all?
And compulsive eaters. I'm eating those fries unless they're bad.
Reasoning? There is no reasoning involved here. It's not about reason. The part of the body that reaches out for the french fry is not the reasoning part of the brain.
Look to the external programming: Eventually I managed to overcome the childhood training from parents who grew up during the depression to clean my plate in restaurants. (I can even leave a glass of wine unfinished since I need a lot less alcohol to get a buzz on as I age.) But at home, yes: I spend a lot of energy not wasting food. Luckily vacuum-sealers make it possible to freeze anything I can't finish right away.
The other things is that once upon a time I took the Lay's motto "you can't eat just one" as a challenge. Rebellion against all those forces trying to exploit us was strong enough to help cultivate the habit of eating only a couple of fries, and only while they're still hot and fresh.
I can stop when I’m full. But every thirty seconds a little voice asks if I’m still full. Maybe I could eat one more French fry? No, not now? Okay, how about now? Or now? Or now?
I realize this is a late response, but, I literally just saw a link to this article. That’s the thing about Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. For the first time, you really can leave food (even good food!) on the plate or table. And some dietary feats, like finishing the gigantic Tomahawk Chop, are physically impossible.
Thank you for describing this. Like other respondents, it's a foreign concept to me, but you really described it well, and gave me something to nosh on (pun intended)
That was, to an extent, how I was raised. If food was in front of me, I was to eat it or be punished.
In Midwest households run by people who grew up in small or medium-ish towns, the rule is you will be given food and you will damn well eat it all, at a brisk pace, or else. I've been to Russia on study abroad, and it is exactly the same and more.
(Often, older generations in the household have early memories of growing up on a collective farm and not eating some days. Tracks.)
Thing is, I'm a rebel and stubborn. And I was punished for not eating what was put in front of me--a LOT. There were times when I wasn't hungry, and I just refused to do what I was told for the sake of doing what I was told.
I think, ironically, that saved me a lot of grief later in life. It's helped me avoid, or at least delay, getting overweight as quickly as other relatives I had did. There really is something about growing up every day with a giant bowl of oatmeal in front of you and being tacitly threatened with a spanking if you didn't eat it all, right then, fast.
Of course, metabolism slows down, age happens, and now I have to diet and exercise like everyone else to avoid getting bigger pants, let alone shrinking them. But for a while, being a stubborn rebel helped me skirt the unspoken cultural mandate of eating all the shit in front of you, like it or not, want it or not, need it or not. It really is a societal thing, where I come from. :/
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. The analogous thing would be if an attractive woman came on to you and asked you to sleep with her. Would it be hard to say no? For many, in a committed relationship say, they could easily pass. Many others would struggle. The fries didn’t walk past him on the street; he wasn’t compulsively taking them from someone else’s table or from a random countertop. They were in front of him for the sole purpose of being eaten by him or anyone else at the table. Eating each individual extra fry has negligible downside. Being tempted by them is understandable. But I agree with Joey that I wish I were like folks that weren’t tempted.
Cool article, appreciate you putting yourself out there to write it. Generally I think everyone can use more empathy. I work in a non medical profession where my job leads my to have deep insight into many individuals and families lives. I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone that has no self control issues anywhere in their life: substance abuse, overeating, but also compulsive working, or shopping, or a lack of ability to budget, or totally unchecked anxiety/lack of mental discipline. I’ve seen people spiral in self destructive relationship patterns, knowing full well they weren’t behaving well, but not having the self control to “do the right thing.” Being overly egotistical and argumentative in an antisocial way. The list goes on and on.
I’ve noticed, most people have a “thing,” and they always seem to “value” most the character traits that they themselves have: “sure I drink a lot, but I’m a good dad and my family loves me”. “Yes I’m a bit overweight, but look at the business I built.” “Sure, I can’t keep a steady relationship or be an adequate companion, but look at the great things I’ve built”.
More than GLP-1 or barometric surgery, I think more people could take to heart the sentiment behind this post. Very cool to see a wildly successful person volunteer to air their personal challenges publicly instead of moralizing about how other people *should* be.
Great comment. Learning to work with where we are, including our rigid or compulsive tendencies, in areas we define as problems of concern in an incremental, personally manageable way is so valuable, and yet it can be a hard mindset to adopt and put into practice. I think the saying "The best exercise plan is the one you can stick to" has application far more broadly.
From sometime during the winter of lockdown to the summer after high school I dropped and kept off thirty pounds. My father asked me how I did it a few years ago and I apparently told him that “I got tired of being fat.”
First year of college my diet was shit: I didn’t eat enough normally and then pigged out when I went out. I drank like 3-4 nights per week, and went to the gym 3-4 days per week. But because I was a 19 year old male it worked out fine and I put on maybe 10 pounds of mostly muscle.
Now I have a much better diet and a more balanced lifestyle and I’m in the best shape of my life, hands down. The goal is to make sure these habits get deeply ingrained over the next 3 years so they stick with me for the rest of my life.
The real real test is when you’re 35 and have a slightly more dignified but still demanding version of that job, a spouse who desires your time and attention, two kids under 5, and an aging parent you care for.
I'm 35 and have prioritized weight training since I was 18 - in the last 17 + years I almost never work out less than 4-5x a week. Now that I have two kids under 4, this is the first time that I've truly been tested but working remotely full time has saved me. I no longer have the time to go to the gym for an hour but I can easily sneak in a 30 minute workout in my garage between calls. I really do feel bad for people who aren't as fortunate as I am, especially those in a similar familial situation who haven't engrained training into their life style. I couldn't imagine being 35, working full time with kids and also just starting to train.
Women deal with this on a whole other level. That said I also like to say I put on a little pregnancy weight due to inability to resist some sharing in my wife's cheeseburger cravings!
It's probably a little different for everyone. I put on weigh in law school in my mid 20s but took it off pretty easily in my late 20s. I found it easiest in my early 30s when my wife and I were living together but no kids yet. Now a year off from 40 with two kids and it is tough again.
I agree with both of you but regardless of habits, it’s typical to hit a metabolic wall in your mid 30s. I certainly did. Really had to change the way I eat.
Yep. I stayed slim easily until my 30s when I suddenly started gaining weight eating the same way I always had. Just had to make continual incremental adjustments to my diet.
That wall is real and so hard to overcome. I eat less than half of what I ate at 20 and most of the time its still to much. Between the change in metabolism and lifestyle, being healthy is hard.
I found trying to cook food that both I liked and the kids liked led to weight gain for me. When I switched to focusing on making something healthy and tasty for me and my wife, I was able to lose some of the weight. But that meant a lot of hot dogs, Mac n cheese etc from the kids since the is only so much food attention budget. Idk.
You have to make your health a priority and figure out what else to sacrifice. My dad gave me the same excuse at one point, that he didn't have time to exercise. I said "do you have time to save your life?"
Yeah. You need to manage your health in a way that is consistent with the time confetti of early career and child rearing. You also need to get your brain sated on demand if your career demands it. Works out to a very different schedule than student health and can be tough.
Great to hear you're hitting the gym like that. So much of this is just trying to form long lasting habits (easier said than done obviously).
I've noted my own backstory with exercise before but worth relaying it again. I actually suffered a pretty bad bout of depression when I was your age; actually had to leave college and go to therapy for a semester. Given this is a time period when Prozac and anti-depressants were being given out like candy* I actually got kind of lucky; therapist basically recommended as treatment going to the gym. He didn't recommend it in lieu of therapy by any means but something that could really help my mental health as much as my physical health.
And so I've been going to the gym 5-6 times a week ever since (basically 20 years now). And most definitely has huge physical and mental benefits. And I think the latter is a key for why I'm so diligent. I look at going to the gym as medicine; no different than if I had to take heart medication or something. I don't honestly want to make this a "one weird trick", but I think looking at exercise as medicine or something to literally keep me sane has really helped me stick to the habit of going 5-6 days a week for 20 years. Could maybe at least help.
*I'm not anti-anti-depressants. I have people in my life who both take and probably need them. And aware they can be literally life saving for many people. But I think I'm right in saying that it was likely way overpersribed late 90s and early 2000s much like OxyContin.
Another mental health benefit I experienced once I started a consistent barbell lifting program in my late 20s was a huge boost to my sense of self-efficacy. Seeing results from putting in the work gave me a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that I could tackle other problems in my life. +1 for exercise as a powerful and underappreciated antidepressant (and a complement that helps reinforce the effects of other interventions like CBT and medication).
The issue is the people who have good, active habits and eat moderate, balanced meals and get fat anyway. They can't really get more active without getting a lot hungrier, and their meals can't be any more "balanced", they can only get smaller, and then they're hungry all the time.
I think that if you peg your definition of moderate to US social cues - big restaurant portions, having a donut at staff meetings, tasty snacks that are cheap and ubiquitous - you’d likely start to consider “moderate” a calorie intake that’s well above the amount that’s moderate for your metabolism - roughly what it needs for work, repair, etc.
That’s not to say limiting calorie intake that wS is easy. The social pressure is real and for a lot of us (me included!!) eating is fun, relatively affordable, and relieves stress. So, people may well find they need a drug or the surgery and I don’t fault them. But this doesn’t call into question the point that calorie intake vs expenditure is the key - that’s why the diet meds and surgery work.
When you say this is the issue, what do you mean? I don’t expect this is very common (or else obesity would have been more common than it was in the pre-war era) but I also don’t know what there is to say about people whose natural body type is large, other than that they shouldn’t be judged or discriminated against (neither should those who are fat due to lifestyle choices, to be clear)
You don't understand what the issue would be if you ate moderate balanced meals, eschewed snacks and sodas, engaged in regular exercise, and were still fat? Well, one issue would be all of the idiots telling you to cut back on the donuts and candy bars they assume you're eating. The other issue would, of course, be the impacts on your health from excess adiposity.
Sorry if I was unclear: I understand why it would be an issue for those people. It sounds like an intensely difficult experience for anyone in that situation. I guess I mean, when someone shares his weight loss story that involves eating a moderate diet, and you say “the issue is the people who eat moderately and are still fat,” in what sense is that rare condition “the issue” with the statement that eating less led to weight loss? Should people refrain from sharing weight loss stories because they might not benefit everyone? What about in other areas--if someone found a good way of reading more, could one respond “the issue is people with dyslexia”? Does that clarify my question?
Well, the increase in the adult and pediatric obesity rate is among people who eat moderate diets and are regularly active. That's pretty weird, don't you think? A problem we should solve? And it certainly limits the applicability of advice like "skip dessert" if people aren't generally having desserts.
Also I'm a person who eats even more minimally than I did five years ago, with no change to my weight. So the issue has substantial personal impact - I want to be less fat, I don't really care if other people are or not.
Can I ask what you’re basing that first sentence on? You’re saying that obesity has increased in this population without any increase in calories consumed?
It seems to me that obesity rates at a population level track pretty well with calorie consumption. The increase in Americans’ portion sizes and consumption of sugars is well known, for instance. So it would take pretty convincing evidence to show that in this case, the reverse is true and obesity is increasing precisely among the people who aren’t eating more calories.
It's impossible to gain weight without consuming more calories than you expend. If you are gaining weight, then your meals are not moderate for your size, and/or your habits are not active enough to cancel out what you're eating.
This is just a meaningless statement - one of the ways your body expends calories is by using them to manufacture fats. If there are calories in your food you haven't expended, they've left your body in the form of feces.
You don't get fat from the calories you "don't expend." You get fat by the calories you do expend specifically towards the production of fats.
I think I mentioned this the last time you posted about your workout routine, but will say it again:
Build a habit now of getting up early and working out, because later in life it will become by far the easiest way to ensure life doesn’t get in the way and it’s a much harder habit to add when you’re older (at least it is for me).
This advice is a bit handwavy about how hard it is to "build a habit" of doing something your body doesn't want to do, and how easy it is to destroy that habit. I'm a night owl, and any habit of getting up early is going to vanish any time real life intrudes, because my body wants to stay up late and get up late.
You're right, it provides no guidance for how to build said habit, because it's referencing a prior comment from Milan where he discussed that he'd been waking up at 5am to work out and the point was to emphasize that it's beneficial to do this young, as defaults matter.
I am also a night owl now and have struggled with early rising ever since I shifted my sleep patterns in college (I avoided early class, stayed up super late, and rarely was out of bed before 10), so I know how hard it is. However, in high school, I was the reverse - I went to bed earlyish and woke up at 4am, often doing my homework and studying in the early morning. In contrast, my brother was a night owl in high school, but then playing a sport in college forced him to wake up early to work out for 4 straight years and it never faded. It's just very clearly something that can be shifted.
It really isn’t, or at least not for everyone. I have about 20% of the physical strength and stamina at 7 am as I do at 7 pm. I’ve run a few marathons, and I would often try to run in the mornings, because I felt unsafe jogging into the late evening. At the height of training, where I could easily run 16 miles in the afternoon, I would struggle to do 3 in the early morning. I also always had a hard crash a few hours later.
As an aside, it is very annoying to be told “you can do this with enough practice/willpower! I did it, and that proves everyone can.” Just give yourself credit for being exceptional. Or in this case, your brother.
I will say the hardest time to stay in shape in my life was when I had my daughter. That first year is just brutal for any type of healthy life style. Granted, I didn't really try hard to lose weight until after that period but mostly because I gained so much over that year. Good luck building those healthy habits!
I even think describing it as "hunger" can be an understatement though... Look up "the elephant and the rider". This model of our big human brains taking in signals from the body & making controlled decisions about what to do is not exactly accurate. It is not "you" overcoming your cravings - those cravings are equally YOU, perhaps more so. The wiring is so similar to (if not literally the same as) addiction.
Yes CICO math is true (with a couple mild disclaimers: calories out is not a constant and can go down in response to reduced intake, and also bad weight loss can reduce muscle and therefore reduce calories out.) But for people trying to cut weight, the math is not the problem, and trying to weight knuckle the calorie numbers is not a likely path to long-term success.
This is the second time in these comments you've compared the urge to eat past hunger to sex addiction and it just underlies the fact that you clearly don't know what you're talking about and honestly it's adding nothing to the conversation. It's a weird comparison that's really out of place in this discussion.
They are different. Rubbing yourself against random women is a violation of that woman. Eating a slice of cake that is available to you and would otherwise go to waste hurts no one else, and in moderation won’t even hurt you. Porn is a better comparison. How many men are able to resist porn entirely?
I saw your comment higher up and was going to respond there but figured there's no reason in engaging in a one-off with one bad comment, but I see your responding more often, so I feel the need to chime in.
These are terrible examples you're providing and they demonstrate a real unwillingness on your part to actually educate yourself on this topic. One of the big problems I see with how most people engage with the problems around excess calorie consumption in our culture is that everyone eats food all the time so therefore everyone feels like they understand this issue dramatically better than they actually do. The way you're talking about this subject is wildly off base- these comparisons and analogies you're using are absurd and, frankly, pretty insulting to hundreds of millions of Americans who are struggling with their weight loss. Not knowing a lot about a subject is fine (I don't know much about tons of things!), but you don't seem aware of how little you know and you're putting out these statements with Dunning-Kruger like certainty. It's not helpful to the discussion. Excess calorie consumption isn't akin to sexually assaulting women. It's not similar to avoiding punching people who anger you. It's none of those things. Stop comparing it to things it's not in any way similar to.
I'm not emotional about it. You're just making egregiously inaccurate statements and comparisons that are insulting, not to mention demonstrating an utter lack of understanding about human agency, dignity, and overeating. As I stated above, rather than making off-base statements, you would do better to ask questions and be open minded about what you're not aware of. There's a lot to learn on the subject, and you clearly lack that background and education.
I understand that analogy is always imperfect, but in this case I think its just a bad one. The sexual and regular assault you have described here require much more effort than eating a French fry and involve much more immediate and server consequences to both you and others.
I am incapable of ignoring the salt and vinegar chips in front of me, but I am very capable of not immediately eating every chip in the grocery aisle.
To your larger point "we are better than animals,"... well maybe... I'm not sure...though I guess am better at resisting salt and vinegar chips than my dog...
Meaning I am able to mostly control my passion for and cravings for food. And yet, bizarrely, I am also able to understand how many people have so much trouble with that.
For me this is not a loaded or hot topic at all. It's that you are coming off as deliberately obtuse.
I mean, you do find people struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors and people with anger management issues... And they can be helped/changed, but the process is not as simple as "hey don't do that thing you know you shouldn't do."
That said, I don't know those challenges personally so I can't speak to the sensations of them. Have you had to go through any withdrawal, like maybe quitting smoking? It is very disconcerting to find your body urging you to do something that your mind has decided not to do. And your body can get quite unhappy with you if it feels you are attempting to die of starvation (even if you are not actually getting near that threshold).
People make bad/suboptimal decisions about sex and violence all the time lol. It's objectively the case that a lot of people struggle with overcoming urges and that the smart part of your brain isn't always in charge.
The problem with this is that sex and violence are evolutionary instincts for medium-term gene reproduction (make babies, kill/defend against other people trying to do the same). However, food is pretty important for literally surviving in the short-term and also doing sex and violence! It would stand that our instincts are harder to manage regarding energy accumulation and expenditure than sex or violence.
Also your example regarding horniness doesn't even correspond to the average obese person. They aren't going around hoovering anything in sight. - when they do eat, they are eating too many calories. A better example might be a married person who is being seduced by another person to cheat on their spouse in the moment and giving in. That's still a failing, but not the same one as your example
Are there no alcoholics where you live? Do you not understand that having difficulty resisting available alcohol is pretty much the same as having difficulty resisting available food? Do you go around explaining to alcoholics that they should resist alcohol *and that is a simple thing for them to do*, or do you realize that they should resist alcohol and it is far from simple for them, even though it might be simple for you?
I dunno, this seems like a reasonable comparison to me, just to demonstrate the expectation of free will. You're making a point about the possibility vs. impossibility of exercising restraint on impulses. The analogy relies on the ethical difference between assaulting other people (bad) and harming yourself by overeating (not bad, since you're only hurting yourself.)
If I can resist my urge to grope, it suggests it should be, possible (though potentially much harder) to resist my urge to eat french fries.
I, personally, have enough willpower to resist urges that would directly. and obviously harm other people, but not enough to do a lot of things that would help myself (regularly exercise...) I don't think that conflicts with your point here.
You're comparing being horny to a compulsive behavior. For most people, being horny is not compulsive. For people who violently assault others, it may be that they are compulsive , but we still have to arrest them.
A lot of people are extremely resistant to point 1. There are some footnotes to CICO - some foods are easier than others to digest, some food labels regarding calories are incorrect etc - but they are not refutations of CICO.
If CICO wasn't true, humans would be perpetual motion machines and we could solve global warming by syphoning fat from them to use for energy.
Calories in, Calories out isn't a helpful model when human biology is too complex to actually know how many calories people are obtaining from food post digestion or how many calories people burn. "2,000 calories a day" wasn't something people came up with by carefully modeling how much thermal energy is required to pump blood through your body. They literally just did a survey asking people to recall how much they eat (which probably seriously undercounted how much they were eating) and then rounded down the number (to give people a lower target to shoot for). That's it! I don't know how they come up with the number of calories burned when running or weight lifting or whatever, but it's really different for someone who runs regularly and someone who just started a 5k.
I mean, CICO isn’t really “too complex” in any real sense of the phrase. We have entire fields of science (physiology, exercise science, sports nutrition) dedicated to extremely precise applications of this model.
Consider how BMI is a generally helpful but still flawed simplification of “overweightness / obesity”; although there are better measurements, such as professional caliper measurement, DEXA scans, and hydrostatic testing, BMI is trivial to estimate at no cost and is thus the best bang-for-buck method for the majority of people. The ineffectiveness of BMI in edge cases does not call the entire concept of healthy bodyweight measurement into question; more precise methods can be used when necessary.
Similarly, the science of calorie expenditure was not fabricated whole cloth by a bunch of interns administering surveys; there are significantly more accurate modern ways to measure calorie expenditure – you can use a smart wearable device to estimate a variety of basic health metrics, such as heart rate, blood oxygenation, and NEAT, in order to craft a rough approximation of your calorie expenditure, or you can up the ante with significantly more expensive methods of accurate measurement, such as respiratory calorimetry or direct gradient calorimetry, to determine exact numbers.
In terms of your individualized calorie expenditure, the precision of your estimation depends on how much effort you want to dedicate. If you just want the roughest approximation, go ahead and use the NIH/FDA measurement! If you track your calories consumed and find that you’re gaining weight on 2000 calories, reduce your intake! If you’re losing weight you don’t want to lose, increase your intake! Ultimately, you can find your own maintenance-level caloric requirements with consistent meticulous calorie tracking without the need for any more advanced tools. If you’re not satisfied with this approach, go ahead and book a visit with a clinical physio technician and get your DEXA scan and respiratory calorimetric measurement done!
In general, I think you should reevaluate your prior on the likelihood of entire subfields of science being based off of a single flawed group of studies conducted 50 years ago and blindly trusted and administered by subsequent researchers. Outside of some really awful areas of social science research, that just isn’t as likely as you seem to think.
As Peter Attia (MD) says, we understand quantum mechanics better than we do nutritional science. It is an unbelievably complex field. Just because a lot of people study it doesn’t mean we understand it that well. We studied alchemy for thousands of years.
CICO is true, but given that a huge amount of CO is just the basic metabolism of running a body, and things like fidgeting or twitching or shivering, it’s very hard to actively control CO if your body is subconsciously doing things to keep it just beneath (or just above) your CI.
I'm a bit bothered by the absolute(?) use of the word "true" here. A concept like CICO might be "true" in many cases, but individual human bodies, not to mention human societies are far too complex to assume that this scientific finding can be "true" in all possible cases. I generally use "valid" or even "has a great deal of validity" instead.
Learn to question science, people! Here the issue seems to be that "CICO is true, therefore anyone can lose weight by force of will." In the case a scientific "fact" ends up being used culturally to imply certain consequences about human behavior, which in turn leads to moral judgements like fat-shaming. Science is a cultural artifact, both with regard to the origins and goals of research and in the ways results are absorbed by society.
CICO is absolutely true. It is scientifically impossible for it not to be true. You cannot add fat without the calories contained in it, and you cannot supply those calories to create fat unless you consume more than you burn.
The person you responded to also made the point that the fact that this is true and rather simple arithmetic doesn’t make it easy for all people to maintain a healthy weight, which seems to be your point entirely. So you aren’t disagreeing, except to object to stating a true fact because of the existence of another true fact also noted by the person you responded to.
The fact that our discourse has gotten to this point where people are bothered by the description of accurate information is really quite disheartening. And quite unhelpful.
It's true tautologically. Global warming can also truthfully be described as the earth taking in more calories than it loses, but it's meaningless to do so.
Except that is literally what is happening! CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause the earth to absorb more calories increasing its temperature. Beyond that when it comes to diet you just make small adjustments to how much you exercise and how many calories you eat until your weight is moving in the direction you want it to. Its a pain to track calories. It requires a lot of self control not to eat too much. And the vast majority of people aren't successful at it, but there are also a lot of very complicated and contradictory diet and exercise plans out there out there and to the extent that any of them work it is because of caloric balance.
Right, that's exactly my point. The earth is taking in more calories than it's losing. Of course, that's a completely tautological statement, so it has no bearing on how we fix it, which is by finding the mechanism by which the earth is taking in more calories than it's losing (CO2) and fixing that.
> and to the extent that any of them work it is because of caloric balance.
This is the problem with thinking of CICO as useful, you've now inverted what's going on. Caloric balance is an accounting description of what's happening, not a plan. If you are losing weight, tautologically CI < CO. If you are gaining weight, tautologically CI > CO.
Sorry, but my "entire point" is about how the concept of "truth" gets expressed and exploited in our society. Certainly most of the comments here are on the same page with regard to the complexities of human behavior. But my own temperament makes it irresistible to mention some of the "meta" concepts that philosophical thinking about culture, society and yes, science, can bring to the table (discourse got to this point awhile ago btw.)
Broader viewpoints don't necessarily invalidate narrower ones, they just provide more context for understanding.
Yes, I agree. I have found that now that I have reached middle age, it is a lot more complex. Besides gaining weight while eating the same number of calories as before and exercising MORE, I have discovered that certain foods will lead to more weight gain then others even though they have the same number of calories. I am female. This may not be true for males, as most of the literature I have discovered about this phenomenon is aimed at females.
CICO-resistant NIMBYs should upzone a city block full of obese people. Infinite money/energy hack.
We would eventually have a hundreds-of-stories-tall Borg cube with a liposuction/generator facility on top, beaming power to the rest of the planet. A manmade horror beyond comprehension.
CICO is obviously true, but we need to recognize that CO is influenced by metabolic downshifting triggered by both increased calorie burn and reduced calorie intake. We didn't survive eons of scarcity by having clueless metabolisms.
Obviously CICO is true. However, we wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't possible for the calories to come out 40 years later as they were consumed by worms.
When I am successful at shedding weight, it's when I accept the pain and discomfort of hunger for a prolonged period. If I can view the hunger as "this is the diet working", it's tolerable. Obviously this is not sustainable in the long run, so you need a plan to satiate hunger without excess calorie intake to maintain weight.
I think Matt’s original piece on getting his surgery was extremely insightful. He talk about just how daunting it is to make the choice to be hungry all day every day for the rest of your life. Just genuinely imagine that being the choice you have to actively battle every single day.
The research doesn't bear out that a lot of people are able to make that choice indefinitely. It's why the success numbers are so low in for sustained weight loss without medical intervention.
I'm familiar with the Biggest Loser study about weight regain, but not this one about an inability to lose weight. First reaction is I have doubts they were actually 700 calories in deficit, or that they gave it enough time.
(I do think the rapid pace targeted in that show is a bad idea & is unlikely to have long-term great outcomes. I've never watched it myself, actually.)
This was after the show. To maintain their weight loss they had to eat 700 fewer calories than the average person of their size/build. To stay skinny they didn’t have to eat the same as a currently skinny person, they had to eat 700 calories less than that person.
I think it's more likely the people that felt like they were starving overate without realizing rather then their bodies becoming 30 to 50% more efficient at getting calories from food
If a very obese person goes on a very calorie-restricted diet, they'll lose weight, but their body (often?) will rewire itself to use fewer calories. They'll be cold all the time and they won't fidget, for example.
Except it's not at all simple. Macro nutrient composition is what matters - not calories (e.g., a gram of simple carbohydrates is processed differently than protein and differently still from the different types of fat). Feed fast cycle timing also matters but to a lesser degree. "Calorie In / Calorie Out" is an oversimplification that confuses how weight gain / loss - maybe more specifically how fat gain / loss actually works. Said differently ... if you hold calories constant, a diet consisting of all protein and fat (i.e., the Atkins Diet) will produce radically different fat loss outcomes / create a different body composition vs. one high in carbs and vs. a balanced macro nutrient diet (i.e., the Zone Diet).
This belief in macro nutrient composition is strongly contested.
I'm tempted to debate the theory, but it might be more useful for people to try it and just see what works for them. I do find low carb diets give me a better sense of fullness and avoid "carb binging" problems.
But AFAIK the research is pretty consistent that it's the actual calories that matter. Tools like macro composition and food timing (e.g. intermittent fasting) are more about managing your appetite.
But again - people can give it a try and see what works for them! Especially during the early water loss part of a keto/Atkins diet, the psychology of watching the scale move fast can be very rewarding. If you can handle the headaches.
There is pretty much no good research on nutrition. To some degree, CICO self-evidently true. Grossly underfeed and overwork people, and they will lose weight and eventually starve to death. BUT, to give just one example, it is unclear if the “quality” of the calories matter. It’s very possible that you will gain more weight eating an extra 500 calories of Oreos than you will eating an extra 500 calories of stone-cut oatmeal. We truly do not know.
There is also some evidence that lack of sleep and cortisol will cause you to hold/gain fat, and that can possibly act through multiple channels. But it really varies. One of my friends really enjoys being hungry. He’s a doctor and father to two boys, so he’s had plenty of times in his life where he was exhausted and stressed. But they didn’t affect his weight at all. Eating is an affirmative choice for him.
My first comment was too pithy (in a meeting, sorry). I replied down tread to Testing123 but I have to image we're just talking past each other with this statement: "AFAIK the research is pretty consistent that it's the actual calories that matter." Or maybe we're talking about different things. I'm talking about fat loss - once someone is overweight. The average human has 100 grams of glucose in the blood, 100 grams of glycogen in the liver, and probably 500 grams of glycogen in the muscles. It's just so exceedingly difficult to burn fatty acids when you remain in fed state. You have to get into higher and higher levels of ketosis. That why macro nutrient composition is what matters.
Calorie deficits don't reduce RMR. Losses in body mass do, which is what you'd predict. A smaller mass requires less energy to sustain. Combine that with the fact that people who are restricting calories often restrict NEAT and you have a recipe for reductions in weight loss rates, as well as regains. Not to mention changes in appetite, etc..
It's complicated. But the literature is excessively clear that specific blends of macronutrient diets, timing, etc., are no more likely to induce weight loss than any other method that reduces calories to equivalent levels. The trick is finding whatever mechanism makes it most likely for each individual to remain compliant with the program and in a calorie deficit. For some people, IF can do that. For others, waiting 22 hours between meals might mean that they gorge when they do eat, or it may simply be impossible for them to wait that long and they can't retain the diet itself. Low carb might work for some, low fat for others, etc. etc. etc.. None are intrinsically superior to any other- it's all a matter of what works for each person's psychology to allow them to maintain a calorie deficit if weight loss is their goal .
also, re how to do long-term deficits, there is a lot of anecdotal experience backing up the MATADOR study on diet breaks... Basically agreeing that you don't want to do indefinite calorie deficits, but lose for a bit, stabilize, lose for a bit, stabilize, etc.
Also again, try to avoid rapid weight loss as that often involves a loss of lean tissue, worsening the RMR hit.
It matters a lot what your biochemistry is, what kind of calories you eat, and what portions at what times. Insulin does a lot to regulate your metabolism, and it's why diabetics can lose weight fast by varying their insulin levels. Unfortunately, that means some people gain and keep weight much more easily than others.
Underrated comment here, both for how it affects our health (insulin resistance) and our ability to eat well (carbohydrates--sugar--sure do seem addictive in the classic sense.)
I expect this is because the macronutrient balance of your diet has big effects on your body’s calorie expenditures (through shaping your metabolism or whatever).
There's no way to know how many calories you're taking in, and no way to know how many calories you're expending. That's why "eat fewer calories than you expend" is meaningless advice - you'll only know you're doing it if you're losing weight, but a lot of people who are trying to do it don't lose any weight at all.
It's possible to know with adequate accuracy how many calories you're taking in; I've done this myself with tools like the MyFitnessPal app MY mentions.
Similarly, it's possible to know roughly how many calories you're expending by logging exercise and activity.
This is difficult; logging everything is a PITA. My go-to technique is to just stop eating at a certain time (usually 6PM).
MyFitnessPal can't even agree with itself how many calories a given food has, and most of its listings are given in the totally-meaningless "servings" or "portions" unit. Unless you're weighing everything including the portion you don't eat on a scale, there's no way to measure caloric intake at sufficient accuracy.
I have half a theory that calorie tracking increases calories consumed just by virtue of incentivizing full consumption so you don't have to weigh a dirty bowl.
It sounds as though the argument is no longer "There's no way to know how many calories you're taking in," but now that doing so is a hassle. Which I agree with.
Although you can express the basic thermodynamics of CICO pretty simply, instrumentalizing the idea to manage weight is much more complicated.
Common measurements for both the input and output variables are pretty bad. Calorie content estimates for food are based on “how much energy do the proteins, fats, and carbs in this release if we set them on fire?”— probably not an amazing proxy for energy bioavailability. Calorie expenditure estimates for exercise, tend to be based on some sort of Physics 101-level energy expenditure calc which doesn’t account for the inefficiency of the biological processes that make our limbs move. And “how many calories do you burn thinking, resting, and maintaining homeostasis” seems to be highly variable.
Even worse, weight loss affects expenditures on the “CO” side (heavier people need more energy to move and stay alive, and the human body seems to respond to food restriction by downregulating energy expenditures.)
So, even somebody who didn’t struggle with increasing hunger/satiety problems might have a lot of trouble maintaining a stable weight just by trying to measure calories.
(I’m pretty thin and have stayed that way into my thirties, but I think it’s mostly some combination of building muscle mass that consistently throws off a lot of waste heat, a base metabolic rate/satiety threshold that makes me less disposed to gain weight, and the evolutionarily maladaptive tendency to lose appetite and get GI problems when I’m stressed.)
Thankfully there's ways to get around all this estimation with either TDEE calculator spreadsheets or the MacroFactor app. If you consistently log weight and calories in for a month or so, you can calculate out your calories out from only your weight change and intake.
As someone who's lost nearly 50 lbs from calorie/macro counting and exercise alone, I do concede that "just acturately track every bite you eat and either work out 10 hours per week or eat tiny meals forever" isn't actually actionable advice for many, but it does work. Personally there was no way in hell I could've done it until I got my mental health in order, and I'm lucky to not have a particularly ferocious appetite and that I'm pretty damn stubborn and have the free time to work out a ton.
There are ways to sate your body with less calorie dense foods to some extent. But it’s a hell of a lot more complex than in/out to do that. Pistachios seem to help.
And just to demonstrate how variable this is — those are both terrible snacks for me. Pistachios frustrate me and I keep eating them in a vain hope that they will frustrate me less, while sunflower seeds are too easy. I can’t keep nuts, or nut butters in the house.
The hard part of that equation, to me, is that folks seem to ignore that calories in also influences your energy levels. Which helps to see that calories in influences calories out.
Following that, I am convinced you will find that many people eat things that literally drain them of energy to get out there and be active. Akin to a panda that basically gorges on enough bamboo that they just sit there and don't do anything anymore.
This is actually a good ride on to the idea that you can't emulate healthy people directly. They are actively burning more, already, so adding extra energy is the point. Think of a currently burning fire, if you add a damp stick, no big deal. Do that to your kindling as you are trying to get the fire up, and it makes things ridiculously tough.
They all do, but the industry selects so strongly for people with good genetics (both physically and re this form of self control) that the advice isn’t really actionable for most people. have found lots of it useful for adding muscle though
While you theoretically completely control your calories in, the calories out have a huge component driven by your subconscious activities of keeping your metabolism running and/or things like fidgeting. If people’s bodies manage those subconscious parts very differently, then some people might be able to effect change by targeting the controlled calories in and the controlled calories out, while others will be sabotaged by their uncontrolled calories out.
As a person with inattentive-type ADHD, I have to explain this often. I actually use weight loss as an example frequently, "just sit down and focus" is simple to say but not easy to do, like "just eat less." Some people are resistant, but almost everyone has something they're failing at in life for which a difficult solution can be stated in a few words. "Just don't use tobacco." "Just go to sleep at 10 PM."
Really enjoyed this one. I think there is a serious lack of empathy from many slimmer people that fails to consider the possibility that anyone’s experience with weight could *possibly* differ from their own—“it’s simple: calories in, calories out. Why isn’t it as easy for you as it is for me?!” But when the rebuttal from the fat acceptance side of the house is to completely ignore medical truths about obesity by highlighting individual exceptions to aggregate correlations, it doesn’t do anything to advance the conversation.
One of my most validating experiences was going on a weight loss medication called Contrave (well, sort of; Contrave is a mix of bupropion, or Wellbutrin, an antidepressant, and naltrexone, an opioid receptor inhibitor used for treating alcohol use disorder and drug withdrawal—I was already taking Wellbutrin so I added the naltrexone separately). The experience was crazy. I suddenly became way more in tune with the feeling of fullness. Like, I would be in the middle of a meal and realize I’d had enough to eat. For whatever reason, I had just become numb to that feeling over the years and this brought it to the forefront. Of course, no medication can make you choose salad for dinner, but for me, this one helped me realized midway through that second slice of pizza that, oh, I’m starting to hit my wall.
My weight went down a bit, and had gone up or down since based on various factors, but my god, it was just one of those moments where you think... “is this what other people experience all the time?” It just drove home for me how true it is that the conversation is much more nuanced than simply willpower, and it’s not a conversation we can have in any meaningful way if we refuse to accept that we don’t all experience food and hunger the same way.
To me, the evolutionary mismatch point is key. Almost every human in history lived and died consuming zero refined sugar. An apple or bit of honeycomb was the sweetest thing they ever ate. It’s wild to think that in the modern day, there are entire research labs at major corporations dedicated to making snacks that are optimally compulsive with almost no constraints. It’s kind of a miracle that anyone’s brain is able to withstand that kind of sustained assault.
Humans of the 20th cent ate plenty of pretty dubious stuff. Coming to think of it humans of the 1st cent did too (contrary to romantic notions of the past fresh food is actually very expensive and preserved food was important in many premodern societies)- but I digress.
Processed food wasn’t invented this generation. Our parents and grandparents ate it too (probably more than us!) and weighed less. Our European neighbors eat it - and weigh less. I call bullshit on the evolutionary explanation.
Food being 'processed' isn't really the problem, food being hyper-palatable is. Like, cured meats are in fact really bad for you, but not because they make you gain weight. An actual ancestral human (it's key to remember that settled peasant life was also extremely unnatural in its own way) had a varied diet with lots of options, but basically none of those had the concentrated deliciousness of even a Sausage Egg McMuffin Meal, let alone a Doritos Cool Ranch chip or (god forbid) a slice of marbled cheesecake from Publix
I think it's easier to cut out snacks than to lose weight though--as Matt Hagy says elsewhere in the comments, part of what's hard about dieting is that you can't just cut out a swathe of foods, you have to limit your consumption of everything. I've been a vegan for almost fourteen years and I very rarely have desserts or sugary snacks but what's hard about losing weight is that I also have to limit the things I do eat.
I'd say it depends on where you are currently. I know folks who have lost significant amounts of weight by cutting out just certain snacks (my dad used to eat like 6 oreos every night before bed as a treat, and he lost a good amount of weight just by cutting those out. That amounts to about 300 calories a day). But he had gotten a lot heavier than he was comfortable being, so eliminating those kinds of treats and snacks made a big difference to get him back to a weight he was happy with. But if he wanted to lose more weight to become fairly slim, or other folks who want to get lean for whatever reason, it can absolutely get to the point where they have to cut calories everywhere. So I'd say it all depends on your goals and your starting point.
I am not an expert on the empirical evidence of weight loss but I think it is often true that if you cut out snacks to produce a calorie deficit but don't otherwise control overall calorie intake, you will eat more of other things because your body reacts to decreased intake with decreased satiation. This is the strength of CICO, for all that it is not 100% true (some calories are more satiating than others) the basic dynamic is that you need an overall deficit and to reliably achieve that it's helpful and often/usually necessary to be watching intake across the board.
I'm a little bit unclear on the claim you're making here. Snacks are part of the overall, "across the board" intake of a person. If you think that cutting out calories means "you will eat more of other things because your body reacts to decreased intake with decreased satiation" then that is true for any cuts you make. Obviously it is POSSIBLE to lose weight, and since the only way to do that is get into a calorie deficit, then cutting out some calories don't automatically result in replacing them with other foods at other times. If your current baseline calorie consumption is X, then X-300 will reliably result in SOME weight loss, and cuts of 10-15% of daily calories have been shown to be maintainable and not result in intolerable increases in hunger. So if your current homeostasis/maintenance-intake includes snacks, then cutting out those snacks would be a perfectly reasonable way to get into a calorie deficit.
Again, I'm not sure what this distinction your making when you define across the board intake that would exclude reductions in snacking calories from the calculus, or that would treat calories from snacking differently from other consumption (what are you including in the non-snack category? Just calories consumed at meals?).
I'm also unclear as to what you mean when you say that CICO isn't 100% true due to some calories being more satiating. That claim would seem to be a potential rebuttal to an IIFYM strategy or something, but it's entirely consistent with CICO.
Let me try again. Weight loss is possible through controlling calorie intake. To control calorie intake, the most straightforward way is to set a goal for overall calories and stick to it. If the calories you cut out to hit your goal are snacks, that's fine. The point is just that you still need to be adhering to the overall calorie goal, which means refraining from eating any more of your other foods even as you experience diminished satiation/increased hunger. That's what I was saying in my initial comment: part of what's hard about weight loss is that you can't just cut out a category of food and then not worry, you need to be monitoring your overall level of food intake, including from the foods you continue to eat.
re: "a bit of honeycomb" --- one of the pieces of evidence that is often pulled out in these sorts of discussions is the Hazda, who are hunter-gatherers who apparently get 15-20% of their yearly calories from honey. (And 80% of calories from honey in some seasons, per https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.03.006)
Thanks for offering this personal story, I can imagine it being difficult to do.
And you did a great job illustrating how all three major arguments surrounding weight--dieting vs. fat acceptance vs. medical technology--all have some truth to them, but also each have considerable limitations that thus can't let any one of them dominate the discourse. I wish more people have the nuance like you do.
Hey Matt. Thanks for writing this up. I had been wanting to write you about your experience. You are one of the reasons I finally decided to lose weight. So thank you for the motivation and giving me hope that I could do it too. :) My weight had gone up quite a bit as covid was winding down (March 2022) to 285 at my doctors appointment. That freaked me out and the doctor encouraged me to try Weight Watchers. So I signed up in the car before I left her parking lot. I've currently lost 78.3 lb and am down to 206.7 lb.
I remember learning when you explained on your podcast that you did the surgery after I had been on WW for a while, and I laughed. Had I known there were alternatives, I might have picked another route. I do love WW. It has taught me a ton about food and updated my priors on food. I now think in points. When I learned a grilled cheese was basically 2 pieces of pizza (I frame everything against my favorite food of all time), I realized it wasn't worth it. I eat a ton more fruits and vegetables (I've always liked them so that was easy) and lots of air popped popcorn now. I eat a lot less pizza and other bad stuff, but when I do eat it, I eat only delicious, well made stuff. Same with desserts. Why bother eating something bad that's also insanely unhealthy?
The one issue I have is that I still have basically the same appetite as before. I just eat a lot of healthy choices now and enjoy that. It would be even better if I could eat those healthy choices and also eat a little less. I'd like to know if your appetite is still less.
As an aside, it's weird to buy "L" sized clothes and have them fit fine! It's weird to basically feel good a lot of the time, physically/mentally/emotionally. It's weird to have people come up and comment on how good I look; I try to recommend they go see an eye doctor.
Also, I've kinda plateaued at this weight. I'm not sure why I want to get to 200, but I really do. Anyway, thanks again for the push. Never thought someone I'd never met would get me to make a dramatic change...oh wait... I realize as I write that I'm a Catholic. It's incredibly normal for me to make a change because of someone I've never met saying or doing something. Haha.
There is a stigma against what I call self improvement medicine.
I got diagnosed with Low Testosterone a year and a half ago. I had gained 20lbs, zero sex drive, low energy, etc...
I ended up on TRT. Specially Jatenzo, an oral testosterone replacement. All my symptoms have been relieved, my quality of life is better. Yet, there is a serious pushback I have received from a certain set of testosterone is toxic masculinity crowd.
I see the same sort of pushback against the new weight loss drugs out there.
I got prescribed Rybelsus for weight loss, but insurance companies won’t pay for it. Over the counter it costs 1000 a month. Luckily I work overseas where I am able to get it for $100 a month.
For the record it works. Kills your appetite. Ask me if u want to know more.
Anyway. I am now basically a bodybuilder. I am training to do a show next year. In fact today I have an appointment at Boise State to have my body fat measured. I suspect I am down to 18 percent. I actually have a
Six pack starting to develop.
On a side note, weightlifting is much better in my opinion for body composition than cardio, and is way more beneficial for us as we age.
I think a bit of the anti-testosterone sentiment comes from Alex Jones and his crowd shilling “testosterone supplements” to men who want to be more like the Andrew Tates of the world. It’s not fair to those out there who have a medical need, but I think that it gets all swept in together.
Yeah— and it doesn’t help that if you go overboard on T, it will make you a lot more anger-prone, impulsive, and dangerous to the people around you. Raising you to normal levels good, juicing bad.
Is it especially difficult for a man to get his testosterone levels tested and then obtain a prescription for a medication to help raise his testosterone in the US? Or do you mean that stigma makes it unlikely for them to seek treatment?
Done correctly, you do get some cardio from weight training. But given choice, as long as your normal life is not sedentary, weight training is much more beneficial to aging.
I’d like to add that it can be very worthwhile also to hire a professional trainer or take a small group class when you’re getting started with weight training. For me at least it was useful to have other people around to make sure I trained harder.
Or check out my TikTok which is geared toward new weightlifters!
I’m not a big fan of personal trainers. They tend to over complicate things, but I am sure that there’s a wide variety.
My biggest advice to new weightlifters is to not overdo it. I never work out for longer than 30 or 45 minutes. My motto is last person in the gym, first person out.
Higher T levels being correlated with higher levels of violent and antisocial behavior— especially at the most extreme part of the spectrum—is a pretty well-established scientific result (see this lit review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/ ). This also tracks with baseline common sense ecological observation of things like men doing the vast majority of murder and other violent crime in pretty much all documented human societies.
High testosterone is also associated with people who risk their lives to save others.
There’s more good people than there are bad people.
You’re exactly the sort of guy that makes people hesitant to just go and get their testosterone, checked, and have better quality of life. I am not advocating to go on steroids. Just therapeutic testosterone.
Yet, we had this whole conversation about the evils of abuse of high testosterone. Which is the sort of thing that immediately comes to peoples mind… Which adds to the stigma.
I doubt the woke crowd would feel the same way about a menopausal woman taking synthetic estrogen. The objection you pinpoint is very much one to undomesticated masculinity.
I think hormone optimization as we age is the next health frontier. In my early 30s, I was prescribed a 3-4 month cycle of Clomid as a fertility treatment. Results were super impressive. Strength wise I rewound the clock probably 10 years (e.g., back into the 30+ pull up range, 315lb reps. on bench, etc.). Body fat probably got close to 10% again (NOTE - I didn't hydrostatic test but did while wrestling and continued through my early 20s so have a good sense for what a real body fat measurement is). Only issue was noticeable higher levels of aggression. IDK. Tough balance. Haven't tried since but definitely measuring T levels annually.
I feel like CICO is a perfect microcosm for so many issues where people are smugly sure they understand the issue because they’re absolutely correct by the numbers, but they assume because their math checks out, they can ignore everyone’s squishy lived experience.
CICO is 100% true, the problem is that the more salient math is something closer to “Natural weight next year“ = “The most you’ve ever weighed” + 2lbs - “Willingness to count calories/restrict portions very close to 100% of the time - “Level of hunger you’re willing to be all the time”. The exciting part about drugs and surgery is they actually change that math (by reducing hunger).
For most people, counting calories is the easy(er) part, it’s the “I’m starving/feel light headed and I know my body is lying to me but this is miserable so I’m going to have a snack” that’s the hard part. Exercise generally is accepted not to help people lose weight because every calorie burned makes you hungrier, so unless you are on a diet where you completely ignore your hunger cues forever, you will just eat more to make up for the exercise. And the fact that your default weight ratchets up to the most you ever weighted means that for people who have gotten fat, they will (absent medical intervention), be both hungrier (and have a lower baseline metabolism, so have a lower CO) for all of their life than someone of the same weight who never put on the pounds to start with—which I think leads to the empathy gap a lot of people have. I have 5 million times more respect for someone who went from obese to overweight than someone who’s been normal weight their entire life.
When I was 24 and about to graduate from law school, I was 6,3” and weighed 280 pounds. I somehow got a job offer and decided if I was going to be a professional I should look like one. I also leased a harbor view apartment and resolved to have plenty of young women visit. I ate 2,000 calories a day and worked out five hours a week. The weight came off asymptomatically, first four pounds a week, then three then two. In six months, I lost 80 pounds. The day before I met my future wife, I weighed 198.
Then I fell in love with her and got comfortable and no longer had a young bachelor’s incentives towards discipline. I went back up to 225. Absent very good reasons to be disciplined, I have trouble keeping my weight under control while working a full time job. I simply like food and wine too much. They represent a very material portion of the pleasure I get from life and I want to enjoy them. When I was 30, I started my own law practice. I have never worked consecutive 40-plus hour weeks since I began it. I exercise 15-20 hours a week, and that keeps my weight in the 218-223 range. In the years after my son was born, I cut back to 8 hours a week, my weight shot up to 245, and I felt like shit.
As I have the culinary instincts of a Pleistocene era hunter gatherer, I need to exercise as much as a hunter gatherer. The only alternatives are self-abnegation, obesity and medical interventions.
My lifestyle is certainly quirkier with Matt’s. By the time I began my practice, I was married to a successful CPA, it was clear to me my career was unlikely to sparkle, that I could make enough money working part time, and that focusing on my body and intellectual interests would be more edifying than trying to get rich. Matt’s career has sparkled, his time commitment to working has probably been worth it, and bariatric surgery may have been a good choice for him. He could never have built his career to the point he has while getting as much exercise as hunter gatherers need. I’m ok with someone like Matt having surgery when his writing is actually important, but I would hate to see a middling lawyer get cut up to bill more hours or a real estate agent have surgery to sell more houses. Better to work less and live more.
that’s absurd. you burn more calories moving than not moving. if research tells you otherwise, don’t trust it. the issue is most people don’t exercise enough to atone for their dietary choices. it takes a robust amount of exercise and some restraint at the table to do that
maybe a clarification - if you eat the same but add exercise, yes that will change your weight trajectory. The point around exercise not causing weight loss is that your appetite will also adjust to match your intake.
It's the NET calories that matter, and the deficit can be achieved with or without exercise, depending on your food intake.
if you exercise 30 minutes a day, your appetite will increase. but there are physical limits to how much food your body wants process. exercise enough to burn that many calories, you’ll keep a good figure.
But I assure you I have been able to eat in surplus even while training for half-marathons... My body is excellent at consuming and I have not personally encountered these "physical limits to how much food your body wants process" :)
I think you have that backwards. It I dramatically easier to eat more than it is to burn off calories. Consuming 200 calories can be done in virtually no time at all, whereas burning that many (in addition to NEAT and other regular daily activities) is far more difficult. There are far more physical limits on how many calories you can burn in a day vs. how easily you can consume in excess. Diet is much more important for weight loss. The old adage "you can't out train a bad diet" is 100% true.
It's kind of akin to a pocketbook- even guys like Mike Tyson could spend the tens of millions of dollars he was making when he was a pro. So sure, you can tell him to just go make more money, but spending it is far easier than you imagine. Unless you have the time and energy and ability (without injuring yourself) to train like an Olympic athlete, than you're definitely not going to have much difficulty consuming more calories than you burn. And I say that as a former personal trainer who has contemplated competing in bodybuilding competitions- I know what it takes to train incredibly hard, pack on muscle, etc. etc. etc., and even when I was trying to GAIN weight I had to be careful because working my ass off at the gym didn't mean that I could eat whatever I wanted to. If I just tried outtraining my diet I would've ended up very fat, very easily.
As counterintuitive as it seems, it's actually generally recognized that exercise has minimal impacts on weight loss. We're talking about general propositions of course, so each person's experience will be different, but typically exercise induces increased appetite, which is offset by increased consumption. So you typically see minimal, if any, WEIGHT LOSS* benefit to exercise because for every 200 calories you burn you're likely to consume an extra 200 calories throughout the day (and this can be done incredibly easily, which is kind of the whole point of Matt's post and this discussion- absent mindedly consuming a few hundred extra calories is shockingly simple to do).
*I put weight loss in caps because exercise is super great for overall health, so people should absolutely exercise. But losing weight is driven overwhelmingly by diet instead of exertion, and the literature is relatively clear on that.
A question for you since you seem to know the literature --- is it uniformly true that exercise increases appetite? Because that was not my experience with exercise, and I feel like I have heard of studies claiming that exercise increases appetite for overweight people but not for normal-weight people (or increases appetite less for them).
I find the Hadza study very interesting, but perhaps not relevant to people attempting a lifestyle change... I do think most Americans who add a daily hour of walking without changing their diet will find they lose weight. Sure the Hadza study suggests it will not work forever, but the research is unclear on when your body will adapt, and in practice most people find they can go a long way.
I think the Hadza study would be less compelling were it the only such research that pointed to this effect. But I keep reading about other, similar findings that seem to be revealed regularly. I personally find the idea intuitive, though others' mileage might vary. We're the descendants of creatures who survived food scarcity—perhaps fairly frequently. A number of adaptations would have helped us (including being omnivorous). But the capacity for metabolic downshifting triggered by both excessive energy expenditure and calorie scarcity strikes me as highly probable. One reason the idea may generate pushback is that it's misinterpreted to mean "exercise confers no health benefits" or "exercise isn't necessary." But exercise is important for cardiovascular health, lung capacity, muscle strength, the immune system, cognitive health, and so on. Just don't expect to out-exercise a poor diet and you'll be fine.
Big picture I'm not disputing those points you made. But I still observe that as a practical matter, that adaptation is slow enough that exercise can contribute to a calorie deficit and facilitate fat loss. E.g. a relative recently went on an intensive mountain hiking trip, and he commented that he just couldn't eat enough to keep up with all the exercise & lost 8 pounds.
And as I keep pointing out throughout these comments, obviously people can starve to death and waste away. That may not be disagreeing with you - like I agree your body probably gets REALLY efficient before it lets you die. But there are limits to how far it can go!
I personally find there is an annoying range where I am a little hungry but don't lose weight! Vs during bulking I can eat a pretty decent surplus and feel very warm & not actually gain weight that fast. I'd guess for me it's about a 300-400 daily calorie buffer, probably from NEAT.
But I totally agree with you on "don't expect to out-exercise a poor diet"
I’ve always heard that you lose weight through diet and maintain it through exercise. For me, though, exercise has always been a crucial part of losing it. An hour of hard cardio every day. (I should note, however, that I’m not overweight - it’s just about losing that ten pounds at the upper end of my natural weight range)
When I’ve lost a lot of weight (and I have, multiple times), I think the biggest benefit I gained from exercise was that it gave me the energy and good mood and motivation I needed all day to make a waterfall of healthier choices about food and activity. When I’ve gained a lot of weight (and I have, multiple times), the lack of exercise and the lack of energy and the lack of willpower all snowball and result in semi-depression that triggers overeating.
People greatly overestimate the calories used in exercise. One mile of walking or running burns about 100 calories. Creating a 500 calorie deficit requires nearly an hour of running for the average person. Bicycling burns half that rate, so twice as much time is needed.
My understanding (and personal experience) is that it is possible to lose weight just by exercising, but the amount of exercise you need to do is pretty impractical for most people with jobs and/or kids.
My close friend is an Army Ranger and he burns like 2,500 calories per day exercising, but he’s doing 12 mile rucks with 60 pounds on his back regularly.
It’s actually possible to burn similar calories in a lower impact way on a bicycle, but you have to devote *a lot* of time to it. 10 hours a week, ideally 12+.
I think he's saying 2,500 is burned just via the exercise, so he's not claiming that is total calories burned through the day. NEAT, BMR, etc., aren't included in that number.
It’s also important to understand that there are different types of exercise with different goals. Weight training will build muscle that will add weight and also burns more fat than an equal amount of fat. Cardio exercise accelerates weight loss among many other health benefits. But yes, what you eat after the exercise matters.
I lost 90 pounds more than 15 years ago by eating better (and less), and routinely exercising, and it was a slog. Nothing happened quickly but when my body figured out it wasn't starving a couple of years after I started my new routines, the weight started coming off at a rapid pace. I've kept it off, but I'll never be thin, because I'm not willing to give up more than I already have when it comes to food or time to exercise.
My understanding of the research is that NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, i.e. walking around and living everyday life) is very helpful, but more intense exercise is partially cancelled out by higher hunger.
Yeah, my strategy to losing a bunch of weight was to be on the treadmill for 1-2 hours almost every day for 9 months. Probably wouldn't have been sustainable if I wasn't the kind of sicko who enjoys that sort of thing.
right, this just circles back to CICO... it is not that hard to "outeat" your exercise. I used to run half-marathons but a steady flow of ice cream ensured I never dropped to a truly lean weight :)
well, also a vote for low-impact steady-state cardio when attempting weight loss. No need to push your V02 max or anything - you are mostly burning glycogen at those high intensities anyhow. Walk on an incline or use the exercise bike instead. (my two cents)
I exercise a lot, but I have a hard time losing weight. In fact, I have gained quite a bit of weight. Most of it is muscle because I do a lot of weight lifting but I still need to lose the gut. The thing I learned most is the importance of both patience and discipline. Do what you can, stick with it, and evolve your workouts (level up). I’m much healthier and stronger. I can do things I never thought I could do. I can trace a lot of my issues to habits I started when I was a kid. Someday, I’ll lose the weight. I try not to obsess about it.
I knew an Olympic rower. He trained full time for 3 years. When he retired he had to do a careful diet programme to get down from around 6300 calories a day to the normal level.
Happy to hear the surgery was largely a success. Discussions about weight sometimes remind me of discussion on climate change: the climate doesn’t care if you believe in it or not. Heart disease doesn’t care that you’ve convinced yourself it’s healthy to be overweight.
Curious- while we wait to find out the longer term side effects and dollar cost of drugs like ozympic, are there any ongoing medical costs to the surgery you had? I’m wondering about the short and medium term dollar cost comparisons between the two (when ozympic is $1K a month)
🙏❤️- good luck with your journey, love you guys. And thank you for this article, it’s really helpful and insightful. I continue to be on my own weight journey, with the general idea “eat less, move more”; designing more continuous walking into our lifestyles has really helped (eg driving less, using public transportation more).
Good luck, I think you’re on the right track! I don’t do much “exercise” but I’m lucky to live in an urban setting and I also hate driving. I usually walk at least 5 miles a day just doing normal things like going to the grocery store. Recently I broke my foot and kind of freaked out thinking about not walking much for 6 weeks (I find that walking is also a necessary component of mental health for me). So I bought a cheap 50-year-old Raleigh 3-speed and it’s been a lifesaver.
The bottom line, in my experience, is that this kind of exercise is easy and pleasant to do, so sticking with it is much less challenging.
I'm glad you wrote this but sorry you felt ashamed telling people you wanted the surgery. There's fat shaming and then society doubles down with will power shaming. Neither are shameful. I think will power is mostly just random luck not to have a compulsion.
“If food is on the plate and it’s any good, I’m going to eat it.”
This. So much this.
I don’t understand how people can leave food on their plates. I will eat food in front of me even if it’s *not* particularly good. I was at a restaurant recently and there were fries that someone ordered for the table and after a while I realized I was the only one eating them. They weren’t very good fries, but they were there! In front of me!
I ended up asking if my table mates wanted any more, because if not, I was going to dump my water on them to make them inedible, because I wanted to stop eating them. People laughed, thinking I was joking, but when I picked up my glass someone said “Joe, you could just *stop* eating them.”
But I can’t. I mean, of course, yes, physically, I could stop eating them. But to me, dumping water on them was by far the easier way.
Why isn’t everyone like this? How can I not be like this?
I’ve learned that I only have self control at the point of acquisition. If it’s in the fridge or on my plate, it’s too late. I’m eating it. And yes, bad fries are the ultimate telltale for our type.
I can choose not to open a bag of chips. It's much harder to stop eating the chips once open.
I can follow strict rules: Only 2 girl scout cookies / night (easier rule because it helps make them last and I can only buy them once a year), but any fuzzy "don't eat too many chips" means I eat too many chips.
For me, I've learned to NEVER eat junk food out of the bag. Always have some intermediary place like a small bowl that you eat out of. So, you measure how much you intend to eat from the package, put it in the bowl, and then when that bowl is empty, snacking is DONE.
I add more to the bowl...
"Toad baked some cookies. “These cookies smell very good,” said Toad. He ate one. “And they taste even better,” he said. Toad ran to Frog’s house. “Frog, Frog,” cried Toad, “taste these cookies that I have made.”
Frog ate one of the cookies, “These are the best cookies I have ever eaten!” said Frog.
Frog and Toad ate many cookies, one after another. “You know, Toad,” said Frog, with his mouth full, “I think we should stop eating. We will soon be sick.”
“You are right,” said Toad. “Let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop.” Frog and Toad ate one last cookie. There were many cookies left in the bowl.
Frog,” said Toad, “let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop.” Frog and Toad ate one very last cookie. “We must stop eating!” cried Toad as he ate another.
“Yes,” said Frog, reaching for a cookie, “we need willpower.”
“What is willpower?” asked Toad.
“Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do,” said Frog.
“You mean like trying hard not to eat all these cookies?” asked Toad.
“Right,” said Frog.
Frog put the cookies in a box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.
Frog tied some string around the box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can cut the string and open the box.” said Toad.
That is true,” said Frog.
Frog got a ladder. He put the box up on a high shelf. “There,” said Frog. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.
Frog climbed the ladder and took the box down from the shelf. He cut the string and opened the box.
Frog took the box outside. He shouted in a loud voice.
“Hey, birds, here are cookies!” Birds came from everywhere. They picked up all the cookies in their beaks and flew away.
“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” said Toad sadly.
“Not even one.”
“Yes,” said Frog, “but we have lots and lots of willpower.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,” said Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”"
"One bag" is technically a measurement.
Anyone ever run into the milk & cookies death spiral? Take two cookies to dip in milk. Have milk left over. Get two more cookies for milk. Then run out of milk while still having cookie left. Get more milk........
Chips, man. My nemesis.
If you can arrange things so that ‘clean your plate’ is the correct choice most dinners it is somewhat easier. That requires a lot of work on the back end tho.
Continuous self control is hard! If you choose not to eat the fries, 5 seconds later they're still there, and you have to choose not to eat them again. And again. Which makes it hard not to slip up.
I think a lot of people struggle with that, to various extents, but most people would be too embarrassed to do the water dumping trick due to the implicit admission of the absence of self control. But I think it's genuinely a clever solution!
Agree. Though usually I go for the “can we move these to the other side of the table?” move, gets fewer funny looks.
I am lucky to have no issues with the food, but I absolutely have to do the thing where I choose the seat at the table that doesn’t have direct line of sight to the TVs in the restaurant. Even if it’s just some sportsball I don’t understand, the flashing lights make me look.
To genuinely offer the perspective of someone who is able to regularly leave food on my plate, I really don't believe it is solely a mental/self-control thing. Even if I'm truly enjoying what I'm eating, I reach a point relatively quickly where I physically feel uncomfortable if I eat more - my stomach truly does feel "full", and continuing to eat makes me feel sick. I have no idea if this is medically true, but I tell friends that I really do think I just naturally have a small stomach, similar to what other people may try to achieve through surgery. Anyway, that's probably not helpful for you, but I don't like others thinking I've unlocked some magic self-control mechanism because that's giving me too much credit!
Give yourself some credit - if something is particularly tasty I will keep eating even when I'm uncomfortably full. The idea of leaving delicious food behind is more painful to me than the physical pain of eating too much.
My brain is broken!
"The idea of leaving delicious food behind"
OK, but you're not (or don't have to be) "leaving it behind": you're going to take it home in a doggy bag (right?). You're just saving it for later.
When I say "leaving behind," I don't really mean "throwing out." I know people who hate wasting food, and the doggy bag thing works for them. But that's not my issue.
When I say "leaving behind," I mean "not eating right now." I could eat it right now! And it's delicious! Why would I save it for later? It's right there, in front of me, right now! Did I mention that it's delicious?
I recognize that probably sounds ridiculous to you. I'm not saying it's rational. But it is how my brain works.
I finally understood people like you during pregnancy. I got to a point in my meals where I couldn't eat more without feeling sick, so I stopped with food on my plate.
Sadly for my waistline, this only happened during pregnancy and now that the baby is here, I'm back to being a plate cleaner. But it was good to know that there's no actual willpower difference between me and people who can leave food on the plate.
I have a physiological reflex that causes my nose to start running if my stomach stretches beyond a certain point.
Username checks out!
Origin story: I was hanging out with 7 other guys and we were discussing ordering pizza for dinner, and someone suggested we get two pizza.
I quickly did the math and realized that meant I would get 2 slices, and so I spoke up and said I was pretty hungry and would want more than that. A few others agreed, “yeah I could eat 3 slices” and someone even spoke up and said “man I’m starving, I might eat 4 slices,” at which point I felt like I was in a safe space, so I said what I really felt, which was that if I didn’t eat four slices, it wouldn’t be because I had stopped at 3, it would be because I had five.
Not everyone wanted more than 2 slices, though, so we ended up getting 3 pies, which I was secretly concerned about. When the food came, the original 2-pie suggester loudly announced he was taking both of his slices now because he didn’t want his second slice taken “by Joey-five-slice over here.”
An internet name was born.
This fits nicely with my image of your nickname being introduced with all the Goodfellas mobsters. "This guy over here, we called him Joey Five Slice because any time he showed up we'd have to order an extra pizza..."
"I'm gonna got the pizza, get the pizza".
I just hope we don't read about "Joey5slice" ending up hanging in a backroom pizza place freezer.
Gotta include the necktie adjusting gesture with that!😀
Maybe this wouldn’t work so well in the pizza scenario you describe below, but I find restaurant portions to be really big, so I often order with a strategy of taking a lot home and getting more meals out of it. If I eat too much (which I sometimes do) I feel really crappy and get a kind of “food hangover,” so I have an incentive to not overeat. I guess it also helps that I’m cheap!
One of the classic weight-loss pieces of advice (which is useful!) is to ask for a to-go box when your meal comes out and pack up half of it right away. Like Matt and Joey, I have a hard time stopping if it’s in front of me and tastes good. Out of sight out of mind (somewhat).
Also, if you eat half your meal and then... a little more, the remainder doesn't seem like a meal worth saving, so might as well eat that too!
If you put away half of it immediately, you've got 2 meals.
Exactly. Have to save a meal worth saving.
That is a fantastic idea and I am going to try that! Thanks for sharing!
I try to remember to bring Tupperware in my backpack since we usually have leftovers. I prefer ordering too much and having leftovers in the fridge, and the Tupperware saves a bit of single use plastic.
Great strategy which I will steal!
My fiancé is constantly trying to split her portions with me where in I get 1.5 meals and she gets half a meal. I opt to stop eating.
It doesn’t stop her from splitting left overs. I am just letting food sit in the fridge.
Same. I personally, in part, blame the Shakers [1]. When I was young, I visited a restored Shaker village as part of a family trip. They ate in a communal setting and were expected to “shaker their plate” --- meaning to finish everything they put on their plate. I thought this was a great idea (don’t waste food!), but the thing that was lost on me was that the Shakers chose how much to put on their plates, but modern restaurants don’t work that way. Now, leaving food behind takes a lot of effort on my part.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
Thanks. The only thing I remember from my visit to the Shaker Village is that they sometimes at pie for breakfast. Yum!
From that wikipedia page: They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.
Don't know I've ever heard the shake the plate story...interesting one.
"At Sabbathday Lake, near Poland Spring, Maine, the small Shaker religious community of true believers is known for living a simple life, which includes simple meals three times a day. They eat according to the motto 'Shaker your plate' - which means polishing off every last bit and crumb."
https://www.deseret.com/1990/7/31/18874174/shaker-your-plate-offers-simplicity-with-an-emphasis-on-flavorful-herbs
How about that! I live in Shaker Heights Ohio and, while I would not say I know a ton about the namesake religious group, had never heard the "shaker your plate" version. Thanks for sharing! Hope I didn't come across as too "someone on the internet is wrong" in my first comment.
I used to live in Shaker, and I also never heard that story! My son was required in Middle School to write an essay about how wonderful the Shakers were.. He chose instead to write something rather snarky about how being celibate led to their demise, and got a bad grade!
No worries. Just wanted to share a reference (and also to fact check myself since I'm going off an old memory).
The Shakers fascinate me, and I check in on them now and then to see if they still exist. In fact, apparently their numbers increased by 50% (from 2 to 3) in the last couple years.
You're not alone. I can't remember the last time I made a 3 lb rotisserie chicken and didn't eat the whole thing in one sitting. Even when I had the healthiest diet in terms of food (lean meats, vegetables, minimal refined carbs, healthy fats) I'd still get overweight because I just ate so much of it. Basically relegated to the fast and feast style diets if I want to maintain a healthy weight, but they really suck and it's kind of embarrassing.
This reminds me of a teacher my kid had in middle school. He announced that he was a vegan, and immediately said, "I know what you all are thinking. How can he be a vegan and be so fat? Well, a eat a lot of the things I do eat."
Not doubting you in any way - but this sounds insane!
I know! Your brain works differently than mine, and I’d much rather have your brain.
I don’t think you sound insane. I’ve heard lots of things that sound insane and this doesn’t even show on the radar. Ignore UK.
I was not claiming Joey is insane - just that the experience of having no control over what you eat - is well outside of my experience.
This is a widely generalizable observation and why it is good to travel and meet a wide variety of people and have diverse experiences. You learn a lot about how different people are in their approaches and drives.
Come on, what? Did you not previously understand that there are people who are compulsive? Compulsive gamblers, who can't stop gambling even though they ruin their life? Compulsive drinkers, who when in long-time recovery still will arrange to never have alcohol sitting in front of them, because they'd drink it all?
And compulsive eaters. I'm eating those fries unless they're bad.
Not UK, but I think "insane" should be taken literally: that Joey5slice's reasoning, as described, is not logically sound.
Reasoning? There is no reasoning involved here. It's not about reason. The part of the body that reaches out for the french fry is not the reasoning part of the brain.
Look to the external programming: Eventually I managed to overcome the childhood training from parents who grew up during the depression to clean my plate in restaurants. (I can even leave a glass of wine unfinished since I need a lot less alcohol to get a buzz on as I age.) But at home, yes: I spend a lot of energy not wasting food. Luckily vacuum-sealers make it possible to freeze anything I can't finish right away.
The other things is that once upon a time I took the Lay's motto "you can't eat just one" as a challenge. Rebellion against all those forces trying to exploit us was strong enough to help cultivate the habit of eating only a couple of fries, and only while they're still hot and fresh.
The old Weight Watchers method was to dump a ton of salt on your food after you’ve finished (if you weren’t taking it home).
...but salt is delicious...
I can stop when I’m full. But every thirty seconds a little voice asks if I’m still full. Maybe I could eat one more French fry? No, not now? Okay, how about now? Or now? Or now?
Is this how Sloppy Steaks were born? https://youtu.be/buK45NW_ikI?si=NpmvleH3Px1pbmsq
i was looking for exactly this comment
I realize this is a late response, but, I literally just saw a link to this article. That’s the thing about Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. For the first time, you really can leave food (even good food!) on the plate or table. And some dietary feats, like finishing the gigantic Tomahawk Chop, are physically impossible.
Yeah, I’m very intrigued! I haven’t asked my doctor about it yet, but it does seem like I’m a good candidate.
Thank you for describing this. Like other respondents, it's a foreign concept to me, but you really described it well, and gave me something to nosh on (pun intended)
That was, to an extent, how I was raised. If food was in front of me, I was to eat it or be punished.
In Midwest households run by people who grew up in small or medium-ish towns, the rule is you will be given food and you will damn well eat it all, at a brisk pace, or else. I've been to Russia on study abroad, and it is exactly the same and more.
(Often, older generations in the household have early memories of growing up on a collective farm and not eating some days. Tracks.)
Thing is, I'm a rebel and stubborn. And I was punished for not eating what was put in front of me--a LOT. There were times when I wasn't hungry, and I just refused to do what I was told for the sake of doing what I was told.
I think, ironically, that saved me a lot of grief later in life. It's helped me avoid, or at least delay, getting overweight as quickly as other relatives I had did. There really is something about growing up every day with a giant bowl of oatmeal in front of you and being tacitly threatened with a spanking if you didn't eat it all, right then, fast.
Of course, metabolism slows down, age happens, and now I have to diet and exercise like everyone else to avoid getting bigger pants, let alone shrinking them. But for a while, being a stubborn rebel helped me skirt the unspoken cultural mandate of eating all the shit in front of you, like it or not, want it or not, need it or not. It really is a societal thing, where I come from. :/
Yeah, I’m not saying I’m happy about it…
Eh, It's a great evolutionary tactic. The people who have food in front of them and pick at it wouldn't have done as well for most of human history.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. The analogous thing would be if an attractive woman came on to you and asked you to sleep with her. Would it be hard to say no? For many, in a committed relationship say, they could easily pass. Many others would struggle. The fries didn’t walk past him on the street; he wasn’t compulsively taking them from someone else’s table or from a random countertop. They were in front of him for the sole purpose of being eaten by him or anyone else at the table. Eating each individual extra fry has negligible downside. Being tempted by them is understandable. But I agree with Joey that I wish I were like folks that weren’t tempted.
It's evolution, baby! See food, be compelled to eat it because you don't know if you'll be able to get more in the immediate future.
It makes sense! I don't think it's that hard to wrap your head around.
Wouldn't our overly horny ancestors have lots of progeny?
Cool article, appreciate you putting yourself out there to write it. Generally I think everyone can use more empathy. I work in a non medical profession where my job leads my to have deep insight into many individuals and families lives. I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone that has no self control issues anywhere in their life: substance abuse, overeating, but also compulsive working, or shopping, or a lack of ability to budget, or totally unchecked anxiety/lack of mental discipline. I’ve seen people spiral in self destructive relationship patterns, knowing full well they weren’t behaving well, but not having the self control to “do the right thing.” Being overly egotistical and argumentative in an antisocial way. The list goes on and on.
I’ve noticed, most people have a “thing,” and they always seem to “value” most the character traits that they themselves have: “sure I drink a lot, but I’m a good dad and my family loves me”. “Yes I’m a bit overweight, but look at the business I built.” “Sure, I can’t keep a steady relationship or be an adequate companion, but look at the great things I’ve built”.
More than GLP-1 or barometric surgery, I think more people could take to heart the sentiment behind this post. Very cool to see a wildly successful person volunteer to air their personal challenges publicly instead of moralizing about how other people *should* be.
Thank you, Matt!
Superlike™️!
Great comment. Learning to work with where we are, including our rigid or compulsive tendencies, in areas we define as problems of concern in an incremental, personally manageable way is so valuable, and yet it can be a hard mindset to adopt and put into practice. I think the saying "The best exercise plan is the one you can stick to" has application far more broadly.
From sometime during the winter of lockdown to the summer after high school I dropped and kept off thirty pounds. My father asked me how I did it a few years ago and I apparently told him that “I got tired of being fat.”
First year of college my diet was shit: I didn’t eat enough normally and then pigged out when I went out. I drank like 3-4 nights per week, and went to the gym 3-4 days per week. But because I was a 19 year old male it worked out fine and I put on maybe 10 pounds of mostly muscle.
Now I have a much better diet and a more balanced lifestyle and I’m in the best shape of my life, hands down. The goal is to make sure these habits get deeply ingrained over the next 3 years so they stick with me for the rest of my life.
You are doing the right thing to instill the habits now. Just keep in mind they probably won't truly be tested until later in life.
The real real test is when you’re 35 and have a slightly more dignified but still demanding version of that job, a spouse who desires your time and attention, two kids under 5, and an aging parent you care for.
I'm 35 and have prioritized weight training since I was 18 - in the last 17 + years I almost never work out less than 4-5x a week. Now that I have two kids under 4, this is the first time that I've truly been tested but working remotely full time has saved me. I no longer have the time to go to the gym for an hour but I can easily sneak in a 30 minute workout in my garage between calls. I really do feel bad for people who aren't as fortunate as I am, especially those in a similar familial situation who haven't engrained training into their life style. I couldn't imagine being 35, working full time with kids and also just starting to train.
FWIW, I also had to gain and then try to lose the weight of the pregnancies, which is its own odyssey!
Women deal with this on a whole other level. That said I also like to say I put on a little pregnancy weight due to inability to resist some sharing in my wife's cheeseburger cravings!
It's probably a little different for everyone. I put on weigh in law school in my mid 20s but took it off pretty easily in my late 20s. I found it easiest in my early 30s when my wife and I were living together but no kids yet. Now a year off from 40 with two kids and it is tough again.
I agree with both of you but regardless of habits, it’s typical to hit a metabolic wall in your mid 30s. I certainly did. Really had to change the way I eat.
Yep. I stayed slim easily until my 30s when I suddenly started gaining weight eating the same way I always had. Just had to make continual incremental adjustments to my diet.
100%. No avoiding it. But the habits still help. I can’t imagine trying to exercise for the first time at 38.
That wall is real and so hard to overcome. I eat less than half of what I ate at 20 and most of the time its still to much. Between the change in metabolism and lifestyle, being healthy is hard.
I found trying to cook food that both I liked and the kids liked led to weight gain for me. When I switched to focusing on making something healthy and tasty for me and my wife, I was able to lose some of the weight. But that meant a lot of hot dogs, Mac n cheese etc from the kids since the is only so much food attention budget. Idk.
We've thus far avoided introducing ours to the notion that there is food other than "this is dinner tonight."
That's how most of the globe works, in my experience, and it works better than American pandering to different dietary preferences and whatnot.
She might not *love* everything but she's growing just fine and will make up at different meals what she didn't want from a previous one.
You have to make your health a priority and figure out what else to sacrifice. My dad gave me the same excuse at one point, that he didn't have time to exercise. I said "do you have time to save your life?"
Yeah. You need to manage your health in a way that is consistent with the time confetti of early career and child rearing. You also need to get your brain sated on demand if your career demands it. Works out to a very different schedule than student health and can be tough.
Like I said, something has to be sacrificed.
Great to hear you're hitting the gym like that. So much of this is just trying to form long lasting habits (easier said than done obviously).
I've noted my own backstory with exercise before but worth relaying it again. I actually suffered a pretty bad bout of depression when I was your age; actually had to leave college and go to therapy for a semester. Given this is a time period when Prozac and anti-depressants were being given out like candy* I actually got kind of lucky; therapist basically recommended as treatment going to the gym. He didn't recommend it in lieu of therapy by any means but something that could really help my mental health as much as my physical health.
And so I've been going to the gym 5-6 times a week ever since (basically 20 years now). And most definitely has huge physical and mental benefits. And I think the latter is a key for why I'm so diligent. I look at going to the gym as medicine; no different than if I had to take heart medication or something. I don't honestly want to make this a "one weird trick", but I think looking at exercise as medicine or something to literally keep me sane has really helped me stick to the habit of going 5-6 days a week for 20 years. Could maybe at least help.
*I'm not anti-anti-depressants. I have people in my life who both take and probably need them. And aware they can be literally life saving for many people. But I think I'm right in saying that it was likely way overpersribed late 90s and early 2000s much like OxyContin.
The mood altering benefits of exercise are definitely under-appreciated. I never feel better than at the end of a run.
Another mental health benefit I experienced once I started a consistent barbell lifting program in my late 20s was a huge boost to my sense of self-efficacy. Seeing results from putting in the work gave me a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that I could tackle other problems in my life. +1 for exercise as a powerful and underappreciated antidepressant (and a complement that helps reinforce the effects of other interventions like CBT and medication).
The issue is the people who have good, active habits and eat moderate, balanced meals and get fat anyway. They can't really get more active without getting a lot hungrier, and their meals can't be any more "balanced", they can only get smaller, and then they're hungry all the time.
I think that if you peg your definition of moderate to US social cues - big restaurant portions, having a donut at staff meetings, tasty snacks that are cheap and ubiquitous - you’d likely start to consider “moderate” a calorie intake that’s well above the amount that’s moderate for your metabolism - roughly what it needs for work, repair, etc.
That’s not to say limiting calorie intake that wS is easy. The social pressure is real and for a lot of us (me included!!) eating is fun, relatively affordable, and relieves stress. So, people may well find they need a drug or the surgery and I don’t fault them. But this doesn’t call into question the point that calorie intake vs expenditure is the key - that’s why the diet meds and surgery work.
When you say this is the issue, what do you mean? I don’t expect this is very common (or else obesity would have been more common than it was in the pre-war era) but I also don’t know what there is to say about people whose natural body type is large, other than that they shouldn’t be judged or discriminated against (neither should those who are fat due to lifestyle choices, to be clear)
You don't understand what the issue would be if you ate moderate balanced meals, eschewed snacks and sodas, engaged in regular exercise, and were still fat? Well, one issue would be all of the idiots telling you to cut back on the donuts and candy bars they assume you're eating. The other issue would, of course, be the impacts on your health from excess adiposity.
Sorry if I was unclear: I understand why it would be an issue for those people. It sounds like an intensely difficult experience for anyone in that situation. I guess I mean, when someone shares his weight loss story that involves eating a moderate diet, and you say “the issue is the people who eat moderately and are still fat,” in what sense is that rare condition “the issue” with the statement that eating less led to weight loss? Should people refrain from sharing weight loss stories because they might not benefit everyone? What about in other areas--if someone found a good way of reading more, could one respond “the issue is people with dyslexia”? Does that clarify my question?
Well, the increase in the adult and pediatric obesity rate is among people who eat moderate diets and are regularly active. That's pretty weird, don't you think? A problem we should solve? And it certainly limits the applicability of advice like "skip dessert" if people aren't generally having desserts.
Also I'm a person who eats even more minimally than I did five years ago, with no change to my weight. So the issue has substantial personal impact - I want to be less fat, I don't really care if other people are or not.
Can I ask what you’re basing that first sentence on? You’re saying that obesity has increased in this population without any increase in calories consumed?
It seems to me that obesity rates at a population level track pretty well with calorie consumption. The increase in Americans’ portion sizes and consumption of sugars is well known, for instance. So it would take pretty convincing evidence to show that in this case, the reverse is true and obesity is increasing precisely among the people who aren’t eating more calories.
It's impossible to gain weight without consuming more calories than you expend. If you are gaining weight, then your meals are not moderate for your size, and/or your habits are not active enough to cancel out what you're eating.
This is just a meaningless statement - one of the ways your body expends calories is by using them to manufacture fats. If there are calories in your food you haven't expended, they've left your body in the form of feces.
You don't get fat from the calories you "don't expend." You get fat by the calories you do expend specifically towards the production of fats.
I think I mentioned this the last time you posted about your workout routine, but will say it again:
Build a habit now of getting up early and working out, because later in life it will become by far the easiest way to ensure life doesn’t get in the way and it’s a much harder habit to add when you’re older (at least it is for me).
This advice is a bit handwavy about how hard it is to "build a habit" of doing something your body doesn't want to do, and how easy it is to destroy that habit. I'm a night owl, and any habit of getting up early is going to vanish any time real life intrudes, because my body wants to stay up late and get up late.
You're right, it provides no guidance for how to build said habit, because it's referencing a prior comment from Milan where he discussed that he'd been waking up at 5am to work out and the point was to emphasize that it's beneficial to do this young, as defaults matter.
I am also a night owl now and have struggled with early rising ever since I shifted my sleep patterns in college (I avoided early class, stayed up super late, and rarely was out of bed before 10), so I know how hard it is. However, in high school, I was the reverse - I went to bed earlyish and woke up at 4am, often doing my homework and studying in the early morning. In contrast, my brother was a night owl in high school, but then playing a sport in college forced him to wake up early to work out for 4 straight years and it never faded. It's just very clearly something that can be shifted.
For you and your brother it can be shifted. That doesn't mean it can be shifted for everyone.
It really isn’t, or at least not for everyone. I have about 20% of the physical strength and stamina at 7 am as I do at 7 pm. I’ve run a few marathons, and I would often try to run in the mornings, because I felt unsafe jogging into the late evening. At the height of training, where I could easily run 16 miles in the afternoon, I would struggle to do 3 in the early morning. I also always had a hard crash a few hours later.
As an aside, it is very annoying to be told “you can do this with enough practice/willpower! I did it, and that proves everyone can.” Just give yourself credit for being exceptional. Or in this case, your brother.
I will say the hardest time to stay in shape in my life was when I had my daughter. That first year is just brutal for any type of healthy life style. Granted, I didn't really try hard to lose weight until after that period but mostly because I gained so much over that year. Good luck building those healthy habits!
You gotta send me updated photos, man. I’m going to get my body fat checked today. I’m down about 14 pounds in the last two months. On a cut.
I’m glad you had this experience and are seeing good habits.
Don’t think, however, that you can generalize your experience. Most people will struggle
I feel like discussions about weight loss often end up extremely unproductive because so many people seem to struggle with the ideas that:
1. Weight loss is actually simple. Take in fewer calories than you expend (CICO) and you’ll lose weight.
2. Weight loss for many people isn’t easy. Hunger can be a huge enemy to eating less, an exercising more can worsen that.
I even think describing it as "hunger" can be an understatement though... Look up "the elephant and the rider". This model of our big human brains taking in signals from the body & making controlled decisions about what to do is not exactly accurate. It is not "you" overcoming your cravings - those cravings are equally YOU, perhaps more so. The wiring is so similar to (if not literally the same as) addiction.
Yes CICO math is true (with a couple mild disclaimers: calories out is not a constant and can go down in response to reduced intake, and also bad weight loss can reduce muscle and therefore reduce calories out.) But for people trying to cut weight, the math is not the problem, and trying to weight knuckle the calorie numbers is not a likely path to long-term success.
This is the second time in these comments you've compared the urge to eat past hunger to sex addiction and it just underlies the fact that you clearly don't know what you're talking about and honestly it's adding nothing to the conversation. It's a weird comparison that's really out of place in this discussion.
They are different. Rubbing yourself against random women is a violation of that woman. Eating a slice of cake that is available to you and would otherwise go to waste hurts no one else, and in moderation won’t even hurt you. Porn is a better comparison. How many men are able to resist porn entirely?
Well Aristotle says we are political animals, so…
Yes, “for most of us,” precisely.
I saw your comment higher up and was going to respond there but figured there's no reason in engaging in a one-off with one bad comment, but I see your responding more often, so I feel the need to chime in.
These are terrible examples you're providing and they demonstrate a real unwillingness on your part to actually educate yourself on this topic. One of the big problems I see with how most people engage with the problems around excess calorie consumption in our culture is that everyone eats food all the time so therefore everyone feels like they understand this issue dramatically better than they actually do. The way you're talking about this subject is wildly off base- these comparisons and analogies you're using are absurd and, frankly, pretty insulting to hundreds of millions of Americans who are struggling with their weight loss. Not knowing a lot about a subject is fine (I don't know much about tons of things!), but you don't seem aware of how little you know and you're putting out these statements with Dunning-Kruger like certainty. It's not helpful to the discussion. Excess calorie consumption isn't akin to sexually assaulting women. It's not similar to avoiding punching people who anger you. It's none of those things. Stop comparing it to things it's not in any way similar to.
I'm not emotional about it. You're just making egregiously inaccurate statements and comparisons that are insulting, not to mention demonstrating an utter lack of understanding about human agency, dignity, and overeating. As I stated above, rather than making off-base statements, you would do better to ask questions and be open minded about what you're not aware of. There's a lot to learn on the subject, and you clearly lack that background and education.
I understand that analogy is always imperfect, but in this case I think its just a bad one. The sexual and regular assault you have described here require much more effort than eating a French fry and involve much more immediate and server consequences to both you and others.
I am incapable of ignoring the salt and vinegar chips in front of me, but I am very capable of not immediately eating every chip in the grocery aisle.
To your larger point "we are better than animals,"... well maybe... I'm not sure...though I guess am better at resisting salt and vinegar chips than my dog...
Dude! I'm thin person.
Meaning I am able to mostly control my passion for and cravings for food. And yet, bizarrely, I am also able to understand how many people have so much trouble with that.
For me this is not a loaded or hot topic at all. It's that you are coming off as deliberately obtuse.
Please, we like to say "person experiencing thinness."
You don’t think saying that someone is doing the equivalent of sexual assault is emotionally charged? Why don’t you find a better example?
I mean, you do find people struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors and people with anger management issues... And they can be helped/changed, but the process is not as simple as "hey don't do that thing you know you shouldn't do."
That said, I don't know those challenges personally so I can't speak to the sensations of them. Have you had to go through any withdrawal, like maybe quitting smoking? It is very disconcerting to find your body urging you to do something that your mind has decided not to do. And your body can get quite unhappy with you if it feels you are attempting to die of starvation (even if you are not actually getting near that threshold).
People make bad/suboptimal decisions about sex and violence all the time lol. It's objectively the case that a lot of people struggle with overcoming urges and that the smart part of your brain isn't always in charge.
The problem with this is that sex and violence are evolutionary instincts for medium-term gene reproduction (make babies, kill/defend against other people trying to do the same). However, food is pretty important for literally surviving in the short-term and also doing sex and violence! It would stand that our instincts are harder to manage regarding energy accumulation and expenditure than sex or violence.
Also your example regarding horniness doesn't even correspond to the average obese person. They aren't going around hoovering anything in sight. - when they do eat, they are eating too many calories. A better example might be a married person who is being seduced by another person to cheat on their spouse in the moment and giving in. That's still a failing, but not the same one as your example
Are there no alcoholics where you live? Do you not understand that having difficulty resisting available alcohol is pretty much the same as having difficulty resisting available food? Do you go around explaining to alcoholics that they should resist alcohol *and that is a simple thing for them to do*, or do you realize that they should resist alcohol and it is far from simple for them, even though it might be simple for you?
I dunno, this seems like a reasonable comparison to me, just to demonstrate the expectation of free will. You're making a point about the possibility vs. impossibility of exercising restraint on impulses. The analogy relies on the ethical difference between assaulting other people (bad) and harming yourself by overeating (not bad, since you're only hurting yourself.)
If I can resist my urge to grope, it suggests it should be, possible (though potentially much harder) to resist my urge to eat french fries.
I, personally, have enough willpower to resist urges that would directly. and obviously harm other people, but not enough to do a lot of things that would help myself (regularly exercise...) I don't think that conflicts with your point here.
You're comparing being horny to a compulsive behavior. For most people, being horny is not compulsive. For people who violently assault others, it may be that they are compulsive , but we still have to arrest them.
A lot of people are extremely resistant to point 1. There are some footnotes to CICO - some foods are easier than others to digest, some food labels regarding calories are incorrect etc - but they are not refutations of CICO.
If CICO wasn't true, humans would be perpetual motion machines and we could solve global warming by syphoning fat from them to use for energy.
Calories in, Calories out isn't a helpful model when human biology is too complex to actually know how many calories people are obtaining from food post digestion or how many calories people burn. "2,000 calories a day" wasn't something people came up with by carefully modeling how much thermal energy is required to pump blood through your body. They literally just did a survey asking people to recall how much they eat (which probably seriously undercounted how much they were eating) and then rounded down the number (to give people a lower target to shoot for). That's it! I don't know how they come up with the number of calories burned when running or weight lifting or whatever, but it's really different for someone who runs regularly and someone who just started a 5k.
I mean, CICO isn’t really “too complex” in any real sense of the phrase. We have entire fields of science (physiology, exercise science, sports nutrition) dedicated to extremely precise applications of this model.
Consider how BMI is a generally helpful but still flawed simplification of “overweightness / obesity”; although there are better measurements, such as professional caliper measurement, DEXA scans, and hydrostatic testing, BMI is trivial to estimate at no cost and is thus the best bang-for-buck method for the majority of people. The ineffectiveness of BMI in edge cases does not call the entire concept of healthy bodyweight measurement into question; more precise methods can be used when necessary.
Similarly, the science of calorie expenditure was not fabricated whole cloth by a bunch of interns administering surveys; there are significantly more accurate modern ways to measure calorie expenditure – you can use a smart wearable device to estimate a variety of basic health metrics, such as heart rate, blood oxygenation, and NEAT, in order to craft a rough approximation of your calorie expenditure, or you can up the ante with significantly more expensive methods of accurate measurement, such as respiratory calorimetry or direct gradient calorimetry, to determine exact numbers.
In terms of your individualized calorie expenditure, the precision of your estimation depends on how much effort you want to dedicate. If you just want the roughest approximation, go ahead and use the NIH/FDA measurement! If you track your calories consumed and find that you’re gaining weight on 2000 calories, reduce your intake! If you’re losing weight you don’t want to lose, increase your intake! Ultimately, you can find your own maintenance-level caloric requirements with consistent meticulous calorie tracking without the need for any more advanced tools. If you’re not satisfied with this approach, go ahead and book a visit with a clinical physio technician and get your DEXA scan and respiratory calorimetric measurement done!
In general, I think you should reevaluate your prior on the likelihood of entire subfields of science being based off of a single flawed group of studies conducted 50 years ago and blindly trusted and administered by subsequent researchers. Outside of some really awful areas of social science research, that just isn’t as likely as you seem to think.
As Peter Attia (MD) says, we understand quantum mechanics better than we do nutritional science. It is an unbelievably complex field. Just because a lot of people study it doesn’t mean we understand it that well. We studied alchemy for thousands of years.
CICO is true, but given that a huge amount of CO is just the basic metabolism of running a body, and things like fidgeting or twitching or shivering, it’s very hard to actively control CO if your body is subconsciously doing things to keep it just beneath (or just above) your CI.
I'm a bit bothered by the absolute(?) use of the word "true" here. A concept like CICO might be "true" in many cases, but individual human bodies, not to mention human societies are far too complex to assume that this scientific finding can be "true" in all possible cases. I generally use "valid" or even "has a great deal of validity" instead.
Learn to question science, people! Here the issue seems to be that "CICO is true, therefore anyone can lose weight by force of will." In the case a scientific "fact" ends up being used culturally to imply certain consequences about human behavior, which in turn leads to moral judgements like fat-shaming. Science is a cultural artifact, both with regard to the origins and goals of research and in the ways results are absorbed by society.
CICO is absolutely true. It is scientifically impossible for it not to be true. You cannot add fat without the calories contained in it, and you cannot supply those calories to create fat unless you consume more than you burn.
The person you responded to also made the point that the fact that this is true and rather simple arithmetic doesn’t make it easy for all people to maintain a healthy weight, which seems to be your point entirely. So you aren’t disagreeing, except to object to stating a true fact because of the existence of another true fact also noted by the person you responded to.
The fact that our discourse has gotten to this point where people are bothered by the description of accurate information is really quite disheartening. And quite unhelpful.
> CICO is absolutely true
It's true tautologically. Global warming can also truthfully be described as the earth taking in more calories than it loses, but it's meaningless to do so.
Except that is literally what is happening! CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause the earth to absorb more calories increasing its temperature. Beyond that when it comes to diet you just make small adjustments to how much you exercise and how many calories you eat until your weight is moving in the direction you want it to. Its a pain to track calories. It requires a lot of self control not to eat too much. And the vast majority of people aren't successful at it, but there are also a lot of very complicated and contradictory diet and exercise plans out there out there and to the extent that any of them work it is because of caloric balance.
> Except that is literally what is happening!
Right, that's exactly my point. The earth is taking in more calories than it's losing. Of course, that's a completely tautological statement, so it has no bearing on how we fix it, which is by finding the mechanism by which the earth is taking in more calories than it's losing (CO2) and fixing that.
> and to the extent that any of them work it is because of caloric balance.
This is the problem with thinking of CICO as useful, you've now inverted what's going on. Caloric balance is an accounting description of what's happening, not a plan. If you are losing weight, tautologically CI < CO. If you are gaining weight, tautologically CI > CO.
Sorry, but my "entire point" is about how the concept of "truth" gets expressed and exploited in our society. Certainly most of the comments here are on the same page with regard to the complexities of human behavior. But my own temperament makes it irresistible to mention some of the "meta" concepts that philosophical thinking about culture, society and yes, science, can bring to the table (discourse got to this point awhile ago btw.)
Broader viewpoints don't necessarily invalidate narrower ones, they just provide more context for understanding.
Yes, I agree. I have found that now that I have reached middle age, it is a lot more complex. Besides gaining weight while eating the same number of calories as before and exercising MORE, I have discovered that certain foods will lead to more weight gain then others even though they have the same number of calories. I am female. This may not be true for males, as most of the literature I have discovered about this phenomenon is aimed at females.
There is a sense in which CICO has to be true, no? I mean the carbon atoms in fat cells have to come from somewhere.
CICO-resistant NIMBYs should upzone a city block full of obese people. Infinite money/energy hack.
We would eventually have a hundreds-of-stories-tall Borg cube with a liposuction/generator facility on top, beaming power to the rest of the planet. A manmade horror beyond comprehension.
CICO is obviously true, but we need to recognize that CO is influenced by metabolic downshifting triggered by both increased calorie burn and reduced calorie intake. We didn't survive eons of scarcity by having clueless metabolisms.
Obviously CICO is true. However, we wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't possible for the calories to come out 40 years later as they were consumed by worms.
When I am successful at shedding weight, it's when I accept the pain and discomfort of hunger for a prolonged period. If I can view the hunger as "this is the diet working", it's tolerable. Obviously this is not sustainable in the long run, so you need a plan to satiate hunger without excess calorie intake to maintain weight.
>When I am successful at shedding weight, it's when I accept the pain and discomfort of hunger for a prolonged period.<
This is it in a nutshell. For most humans, doing voluntarily what are ancestors were forced to do isn't sustainable.
I think Matt’s original piece on getting his surgery was extremely insightful. He talk about just how daunting it is to make the choice to be hungry all day every day for the rest of your life. Just genuinely imagine that being the choice you have to actively battle every single day.
I think there are a lot of people who do make that choice, every day, forever. I am one of them! It's hard, it sucks!
I can't keep junk food at my house, I rarely eat out, and I make sure I go to bed hungry every night.
The research doesn't bear out that a lot of people are able to make that choice indefinitely. It's why the success numbers are so low in for sustained weight loss without medical intervention.
Sure, but I know it can happen because I do it. In fact, I'm hungry as hell right now.
And if you eat less your body thinks it’s starving so it reduces your metabolism.
but have you ever seen people who are actually starving not lose weight?
Sure. They did a study of Biggest Loser participants and some of them weren’t losing weight despite eating 700 calories less than should be required.
If you put some folks on a diet 700 calories lower they would starve to death. These folks were still fat.
I'm familiar with the Biggest Loser study about weight regain, but not this one about an inability to lose weight. First reaction is I have doubts they were actually 700 calories in deficit, or that they gave it enough time.
(I do think the rapid pace targeted in that show is a bad idea & is unlikely to have long-term great outcomes. I've never watched it myself, actually.)
This was after the show. To maintain their weight loss they had to eat 700 fewer calories than the average person of their size/build. To stay skinny they didn’t have to eat the same as a currently skinny person, they had to eat 700 calories less than that person.
I think it's more likely the people that felt like they were starving overate without realizing rather then their bodies becoming 30 to 50% more efficient at getting calories from food
If a very obese person goes on a very calorie-restricted diet, they'll lose weight, but their body (often?) will rewire itself to use fewer calories. They'll be cold all the time and they won't fidget, for example.
Except it's not at all simple. Macro nutrient composition is what matters - not calories (e.g., a gram of simple carbohydrates is processed differently than protein and differently still from the different types of fat). Feed fast cycle timing also matters but to a lesser degree. "Calorie In / Calorie Out" is an oversimplification that confuses how weight gain / loss - maybe more specifically how fat gain / loss actually works. Said differently ... if you hold calories constant, a diet consisting of all protein and fat (i.e., the Atkins Diet) will produce radically different fat loss outcomes / create a different body composition vs. one high in carbs and vs. a balanced macro nutrient diet (i.e., the Zone Diet).
This belief in macro nutrient composition is strongly contested.
I'm tempted to debate the theory, but it might be more useful for people to try it and just see what works for them. I do find low carb diets give me a better sense of fullness and avoid "carb binging" problems.
But AFAIK the research is pretty consistent that it's the actual calories that matter. Tools like macro composition and food timing (e.g. intermittent fasting) are more about managing your appetite.
But again - people can give it a try and see what works for them! Especially during the early water loss part of a keto/Atkins diet, the psychology of watching the scale move fast can be very rewarding. If you can handle the headaches.
There is pretty much no good research on nutrition. To some degree, CICO self-evidently true. Grossly underfeed and overwork people, and they will lose weight and eventually starve to death. BUT, to give just one example, it is unclear if the “quality” of the calories matter. It’s very possible that you will gain more weight eating an extra 500 calories of Oreos than you will eating an extra 500 calories of stone-cut oatmeal. We truly do not know.
There is also some evidence that lack of sleep and cortisol will cause you to hold/gain fat, and that can possibly act through multiple channels. But it really varies. One of my friends really enjoys being hungry. He’s a doctor and father to two boys, so he’s had plenty of times in his life where he was exhausted and stressed. But they didn’t affect his weight at all. Eating is an affirmative choice for him.
My first comment was too pithy (in a meeting, sorry). I replied down tread to Testing123 but I have to image we're just talking past each other with this statement: "AFAIK the research is pretty consistent that it's the actual calories that matter." Or maybe we're talking about different things. I'm talking about fat loss - once someone is overweight. The average human has 100 grams of glucose in the blood, 100 grams of glycogen in the liver, and probably 500 grams of glycogen in the muscles. It's just so exceedingly difficult to burn fatty acids when you remain in fed state. You have to get into higher and higher levels of ketosis. That why macro nutrient composition is what matters.
let me pick up that thread below.
Contested by who? Obviously the biochemistry is well established.
I mean, the biochemistry of *calorie deficit* is well established, and has been for a long time
It is but it runs counter to CICO. Long term calorie deficits - which would be required for weight loss - reduce the resting metabolic rate.
Calorie deficits don't reduce RMR. Losses in body mass do, which is what you'd predict. A smaller mass requires less energy to sustain. Combine that with the fact that people who are restricting calories often restrict NEAT and you have a recipe for reductions in weight loss rates, as well as regains. Not to mention changes in appetite, etc..
It's complicated. But the literature is excessively clear that specific blends of macronutrient diets, timing, etc., are no more likely to induce weight loss than any other method that reduces calories to equivalent levels. The trick is finding whatever mechanism makes it most likely for each individual to remain compliant with the program and in a calorie deficit. For some people, IF can do that. For others, waiting 22 hours between meals might mean that they gorge when they do eat, or it may simply be impossible for them to wait that long and they can't retain the diet itself. Low carb might work for some, low fat for others, etc. etc. etc.. None are intrinsically superior to any other- it's all a matter of what works for each person's psychology to allow them to maintain a calorie deficit if weight loss is their goal .
also, re how to do long-term deficits, there is a lot of anecdotal experience backing up the MATADOR study on diet breaks... Basically agreeing that you don't want to do indefinite calorie deficits, but lose for a bit, stabilize, lose for a bit, stabilize, etc.
Also again, try to avoid rapid weight loss as that often involves a loss of lean tissue, worsening the RMR hit.
It matters a lot what your biochemistry is, what kind of calories you eat, and what portions at what times. Insulin does a lot to regulate your metabolism, and it's why diabetics can lose weight fast by varying their insulin levels. Unfortunately, that means some people gain and keep weight much more easily than others.
Underrated comment here, both for how it affects our health (insulin resistance) and our ability to eat well (carbohydrates--sugar--sure do seem addictive in the classic sense.)
I expect this is because the macronutrient balance of your diet has big effects on your body’s calorie expenditures (through shaping your metabolism or whatever).
There's no way to know how many calories you're taking in, and no way to know how many calories you're expending. That's why "eat fewer calories than you expend" is meaningless advice - you'll only know you're doing it if you're losing weight, but a lot of people who are trying to do it don't lose any weight at all.
It's possible to know with adequate accuracy how many calories you're taking in; I've done this myself with tools like the MyFitnessPal app MY mentions.
Similarly, it's possible to know roughly how many calories you're expending by logging exercise and activity.
This is difficult; logging everything is a PITA. My go-to technique is to just stop eating at a certain time (usually 6PM).
MyFitnessPal can't even agree with itself how many calories a given food has, and most of its listings are given in the totally-meaningless "servings" or "portions" unit. Unless you're weighing everything including the portion you don't eat on a scale, there's no way to measure caloric intake at sufficient accuracy.
I have half a theory that calorie tracking increases calories consumed just by virtue of incentivizing full consumption so you don't have to weigh a dirty bowl.
Not to mention that “calories burned” is basically made up.
It sounds as though the argument is no longer "There's no way to know how many calories you're taking in," but now that doing so is a hassle. Which I agree with.
If it's impossible to do, it's not very good advice.
It's not impossible at all. I have lost weight using MyFitnessPal.
Was it a hassle? Yes. I did end up using a cheap kitchen scale daily. But it was possible.
Although you can express the basic thermodynamics of CICO pretty simply, instrumentalizing the idea to manage weight is much more complicated.
Common measurements for both the input and output variables are pretty bad. Calorie content estimates for food are based on “how much energy do the proteins, fats, and carbs in this release if we set them on fire?”— probably not an amazing proxy for energy bioavailability. Calorie expenditure estimates for exercise, tend to be based on some sort of Physics 101-level energy expenditure calc which doesn’t account for the inefficiency of the biological processes that make our limbs move. And “how many calories do you burn thinking, resting, and maintaining homeostasis” seems to be highly variable.
Even worse, weight loss affects expenditures on the “CO” side (heavier people need more energy to move and stay alive, and the human body seems to respond to food restriction by downregulating energy expenditures.)
So, even somebody who didn’t struggle with increasing hunger/satiety problems might have a lot of trouble maintaining a stable weight just by trying to measure calories.
(I’m pretty thin and have stayed that way into my thirties, but I think it’s mostly some combination of building muscle mass that consistently throws off a lot of waste heat, a base metabolic rate/satiety threshold that makes me less disposed to gain weight, and the evolutionarily maladaptive tendency to lose appetite and get GI problems when I’m stressed.)
Thankfully there's ways to get around all this estimation with either TDEE calculator spreadsheets or the MacroFactor app. If you consistently log weight and calories in for a month or so, you can calculate out your calories out from only your weight change and intake.
As someone who's lost nearly 50 lbs from calorie/macro counting and exercise alone, I do concede that "just acturately track every bite you eat and either work out 10 hours per week or eat tiny meals forever" isn't actually actionable advice for many, but it does work. Personally there was no way in hell I could've done it until I got my mental health in order, and I'm lucky to not have a particularly ferocious appetite and that I'm pretty damn stubborn and have the free time to work out a ton.
There are ways to sate your body with less calorie dense foods to some extent. But it’s a hell of a lot more complex than in/out to do that. Pistachios seem to help.
Pistachios and sunflower seeds are my regular go to snacks at my work desk.
And just to demonstrate how variable this is — those are both terrible snacks for me. Pistachios frustrate me and I keep eating them in a vain hope that they will frustrate me less, while sunflower seeds are too easy. I can’t keep nuts, or nut butters in the house.
The hard part of that equation, to me, is that folks seem to ignore that calories in also influences your energy levels. Which helps to see that calories in influences calories out.
Following that, I am convinced you will find that many people eat things that literally drain them of energy to get out there and be active. Akin to a panda that basically gorges on enough bamboo that they just sit there and don't do anything anymore.
This is actually a good ride on to the idea that you can't emulate healthy people directly. They are actively burning more, already, so adding extra energy is the point. Think of a currently burning fire, if you add a damp stick, no big deal. Do that to your kindling as you are trying to get the fire up, and it makes things ridiculously tough.
Sam Sulek is an immensely popular YouTube bodybuilder who preaches calories in, calories out.
They all do, but the industry selects so strongly for people with good genetics (both physically and re this form of self control) that the advice isn’t really actionable for most people. have found lots of it useful for adding muscle though
While you theoretically completely control your calories in, the calories out have a huge component driven by your subconscious activities of keeping your metabolism running and/or things like fidgeting. If people’s bodies manage those subconscious parts very differently, then some people might be able to effect change by targeting the controlled calories in and the controlled calories out, while others will be sabotaged by their uncontrolled calories out.
I just read a study, talking about how fidgety people… Can burn enormous amounts of calories.
I’m not sure if I would agree with the subconscious part… But maybe.
Regardless of whether you can control calories in, out… The math is still the same.
Putting on weight only happens when you have a calorie surplus compared to your exercise. Whatever those numbers are.
You can’t burn 3000 calories, eat 3000 calories and gain weight… or lose it.
You been watching Sam Sulek.
nah there's a lot of people on the webz who preach similar stuff. Although Sam has definitely blown up out of nowhere lately.
Because he doesn’t use all that flash and music and video effects. Calories in calories out is there a staple in the body building community forever.
Though I do have a beef with Sam Sulek. He stole some of my content!
Not sure who that is
As a person with inattentive-type ADHD, I have to explain this often. I actually use weight loss as an example frequently, "just sit down and focus" is simple to say but not easy to do, like "just eat less." Some people are resistant, but almost everyone has something they're failing at in life for which a difficult solution can be stated in a few words. "Just don't use tobacco." "Just go to sleep at 10 PM."
Really enjoyed this one. I think there is a serious lack of empathy from many slimmer people that fails to consider the possibility that anyone’s experience with weight could *possibly* differ from their own—“it’s simple: calories in, calories out. Why isn’t it as easy for you as it is for me?!” But when the rebuttal from the fat acceptance side of the house is to completely ignore medical truths about obesity by highlighting individual exceptions to aggregate correlations, it doesn’t do anything to advance the conversation.
One of my most validating experiences was going on a weight loss medication called Contrave (well, sort of; Contrave is a mix of bupropion, or Wellbutrin, an antidepressant, and naltrexone, an opioid receptor inhibitor used for treating alcohol use disorder and drug withdrawal—I was already taking Wellbutrin so I added the naltrexone separately). The experience was crazy. I suddenly became way more in tune with the feeling of fullness. Like, I would be in the middle of a meal and realize I’d had enough to eat. For whatever reason, I had just become numb to that feeling over the years and this brought it to the forefront. Of course, no medication can make you choose salad for dinner, but for me, this one helped me realized midway through that second slice of pizza that, oh, I’m starting to hit my wall.
My weight went down a bit, and had gone up or down since based on various factors, but my god, it was just one of those moments where you think... “is this what other people experience all the time?” It just drove home for me how true it is that the conversation is much more nuanced than simply willpower, and it’s not a conversation we can have in any meaningful way if we refuse to accept that we don’t all experience food and hunger the same way.
To me, the evolutionary mismatch point is key. Almost every human in history lived and died consuming zero refined sugar. An apple or bit of honeycomb was the sweetest thing they ever ate. It’s wild to think that in the modern day, there are entire research labs at major corporations dedicated to making snacks that are optimally compulsive with almost no constraints. It’s kind of a miracle that anyone’s brain is able to withstand that kind of sustained assault.
Humans of the 20th cent ate plenty of pretty dubious stuff. Coming to think of it humans of the 1st cent did too (contrary to romantic notions of the past fresh food is actually very expensive and preserved food was important in many premodern societies)- but I digress.
Processed food wasn’t invented this generation. Our parents and grandparents ate it too (probably more than us!) and weighed less. Our European neighbors eat it - and weigh less. I call bullshit on the evolutionary explanation.
Food being 'processed' isn't really the problem, food being hyper-palatable is. Like, cured meats are in fact really bad for you, but not because they make you gain weight. An actual ancestral human (it's key to remember that settled peasant life was also extremely unnatural in its own way) had a varied diet with lots of options, but basically none of those had the concentrated deliciousness of even a Sausage Egg McMuffin Meal, let alone a Doritos Cool Ranch chip or (god forbid) a slice of marbled cheesecake from Publix
If your grandmother lived to an old age she spent most of her life not only after the Great Depression but in the post war era of plenty.
I think it's easier to cut out snacks than to lose weight though--as Matt Hagy says elsewhere in the comments, part of what's hard about dieting is that you can't just cut out a swathe of foods, you have to limit your consumption of everything. I've been a vegan for almost fourteen years and I very rarely have desserts or sugary snacks but what's hard about losing weight is that I also have to limit the things I do eat.
I'd say it depends on where you are currently. I know folks who have lost significant amounts of weight by cutting out just certain snacks (my dad used to eat like 6 oreos every night before bed as a treat, and he lost a good amount of weight just by cutting those out. That amounts to about 300 calories a day). But he had gotten a lot heavier than he was comfortable being, so eliminating those kinds of treats and snacks made a big difference to get him back to a weight he was happy with. But if he wanted to lose more weight to become fairly slim, or other folks who want to get lean for whatever reason, it can absolutely get to the point where they have to cut calories everywhere. So I'd say it all depends on your goals and your starting point.
I am not an expert on the empirical evidence of weight loss but I think it is often true that if you cut out snacks to produce a calorie deficit but don't otherwise control overall calorie intake, you will eat more of other things because your body reacts to decreased intake with decreased satiation. This is the strength of CICO, for all that it is not 100% true (some calories are more satiating than others) the basic dynamic is that you need an overall deficit and to reliably achieve that it's helpful and often/usually necessary to be watching intake across the board.
I'm a little bit unclear on the claim you're making here. Snacks are part of the overall, "across the board" intake of a person. If you think that cutting out calories means "you will eat more of other things because your body reacts to decreased intake with decreased satiation" then that is true for any cuts you make. Obviously it is POSSIBLE to lose weight, and since the only way to do that is get into a calorie deficit, then cutting out some calories don't automatically result in replacing them with other foods at other times. If your current baseline calorie consumption is X, then X-300 will reliably result in SOME weight loss, and cuts of 10-15% of daily calories have been shown to be maintainable and not result in intolerable increases in hunger. So if your current homeostasis/maintenance-intake includes snacks, then cutting out those snacks would be a perfectly reasonable way to get into a calorie deficit.
Again, I'm not sure what this distinction your making when you define across the board intake that would exclude reductions in snacking calories from the calculus, or that would treat calories from snacking differently from other consumption (what are you including in the non-snack category? Just calories consumed at meals?).
I'm also unclear as to what you mean when you say that CICO isn't 100% true due to some calories being more satiating. That claim would seem to be a potential rebuttal to an IIFYM strategy or something, but it's entirely consistent with CICO.
Let me try again. Weight loss is possible through controlling calorie intake. To control calorie intake, the most straightforward way is to set a goal for overall calories and stick to it. If the calories you cut out to hit your goal are snacks, that's fine. The point is just that you still need to be adhering to the overall calorie goal, which means refraining from eating any more of your other foods even as you experience diminished satiation/increased hunger. That's what I was saying in my initial comment: part of what's hard about weight loss is that you can't just cut out a category of food and then not worry, you need to be monitoring your overall level of food intake, including from the foods you continue to eat.
re: "a bit of honeycomb" --- one of the pieces of evidence that is often pulled out in these sorts of discussions is the Hazda, who are hunter-gatherers who apparently get 15-20% of their yearly calories from honey. (And 80% of calories from honey in some seasons, per https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.03.006)
💯 Thank you for bringing sanity to the comments section. The food industry loves profit and hates humans.
Thanks for offering this personal story, I can imagine it being difficult to do.
And you did a great job illustrating how all three major arguments surrounding weight--dieting vs. fat acceptance vs. medical technology--all have some truth to them, but also each have considerable limitations that thus can't let any one of them dominate the discourse. I wish more people have the nuance like you do.
Hey Matt. Thanks for writing this up. I had been wanting to write you about your experience. You are one of the reasons I finally decided to lose weight. So thank you for the motivation and giving me hope that I could do it too. :) My weight had gone up quite a bit as covid was winding down (March 2022) to 285 at my doctors appointment. That freaked me out and the doctor encouraged me to try Weight Watchers. So I signed up in the car before I left her parking lot. I've currently lost 78.3 lb and am down to 206.7 lb.
I remember learning when you explained on your podcast that you did the surgery after I had been on WW for a while, and I laughed. Had I known there were alternatives, I might have picked another route. I do love WW. It has taught me a ton about food and updated my priors on food. I now think in points. When I learned a grilled cheese was basically 2 pieces of pizza (I frame everything against my favorite food of all time), I realized it wasn't worth it. I eat a ton more fruits and vegetables (I've always liked them so that was easy) and lots of air popped popcorn now. I eat a lot less pizza and other bad stuff, but when I do eat it, I eat only delicious, well made stuff. Same with desserts. Why bother eating something bad that's also insanely unhealthy?
The one issue I have is that I still have basically the same appetite as before. I just eat a lot of healthy choices now and enjoy that. It would be even better if I could eat those healthy choices and also eat a little less. I'd like to know if your appetite is still less.
As an aside, it's weird to buy "L" sized clothes and have them fit fine! It's weird to basically feel good a lot of the time, physically/mentally/emotionally. It's weird to have people come up and comment on how good I look; I try to recommend they go see an eye doctor.
Also, I've kinda plateaued at this weight. I'm not sure why I want to get to 200, but I really do. Anyway, thanks again for the push. Never thought someone I'd never met would get me to make a dramatic change...oh wait... I realize as I write that I'm a Catholic. It's incredibly normal for me to make a change because of someone I've never met saying or doing something. Haha.
I remember the first time a girl told me I was hot last year. Did a double take.
#humblebrag
There is a stigma against what I call self improvement medicine.
I got diagnosed with Low Testosterone a year and a half ago. I had gained 20lbs, zero sex drive, low energy, etc...
I ended up on TRT. Specially Jatenzo, an oral testosterone replacement. All my symptoms have been relieved, my quality of life is better. Yet, there is a serious pushback I have received from a certain set of testosterone is toxic masculinity crowd.
I see the same sort of pushback against the new weight loss drugs out there.
I got prescribed Rybelsus for weight loss, but insurance companies won’t pay for it. Over the counter it costs 1000 a month. Luckily I work overseas where I am able to get it for $100 a month.
For the record it works. Kills your appetite. Ask me if u want to know more.
Anyway. I am now basically a bodybuilder. I am training to do a show next year. In fact today I have an appointment at Boise State to have my body fat measured. I suspect I am down to 18 percent. I actually have a
Six pack starting to develop.
On a side note, weightlifting is much better in my opinion for body composition than cardio, and is way more beneficial for us as we age.
I think a bit of the anti-testosterone sentiment comes from Alex Jones and his crowd shilling “testosterone supplements” to men who want to be more like the Andrew Tates of the world. It’s not fair to those out there who have a medical need, but I think that it gets all swept in together.
Yeah— and it doesn’t help that if you go overboard on T, it will make you a lot more anger-prone, impulsive, and dangerous to the people around you. Raising you to normal levels good, juicing bad.
That’s more of a wives tale, and they’re talking about steroids, which are different than testosterone.
Steroids pretty much just are exegenous testosterone (sometimes with a minor chemical change, but they work because they bind to the same receptors).
Agreed. Different versions in increased amounts.
I assure you, I am taking medically recommended testosterone. My test level is only in 600/s
Yes. And because of frauds like him, there are men who suffer.
Is it especially difficult for a man to get his testosterone levels tested and then obtain a prescription for a medication to help raise his testosterone in the US? Or do you mean that stigma makes it unlikely for them to seek treatment?
It is not difficult, but you have to actually request it.
I had been having symptoms for years… But my primary care physician didn’t even suggest getting tested until I demanded it.
It should be standard for guys to get tested every five years.
Good for you! It's odd how well-off folks heavily skew toward cardio. I switched to weights a year ago and find it incredibly satisfying.
Done correctly, you do get some cardio from weight training. But given choice, as long as your normal life is not sedentary, weight training is much more beneficial to aging.
I’d like to add that it can be very worthwhile also to hire a professional trainer or take a small group class when you’re getting started with weight training. For me at least it was useful to have other people around to make sure I trained harder.
Or check out my TikTok which is geared toward new weightlifters!
I’m not a big fan of personal trainers. They tend to over complicate things, but I am sure that there’s a wide variety.
My biggest advice to new weightlifters is to not overdo it. I never work out for longer than 30 or 45 minutes. My motto is last person in the gym, first person out.
Higher T levels being correlated with higher levels of violent and antisocial behavior— especially at the most extreme part of the spectrum—is a pretty well-established scientific result (see this lit review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/ ). This also tracks with baseline common sense ecological observation of things like men doing the vast majority of murder and other violent crime in pretty much all documented human societies.
Extreme levels
High testosterone is also associated with people who risk their lives to save others.
There’s more good people than there are bad people.
You’re exactly the sort of guy that makes people hesitant to just go and get their testosterone, checked, and have better quality of life. I am not advocating to go on steroids. Just therapeutic testosterone.
Again, I think that therapeutic use for guys with low T levels is fine.
Yet, we had this whole conversation about the evils of abuse of high testosterone. Which is the sort of thing that immediately comes to peoples mind… Which adds to the stigma.
I doubt the woke crowd would feel the same way about a menopausal woman taking synthetic estrogen. The objection you pinpoint is very much one to undomesticated masculinity.
I think hormone optimization as we age is the next health frontier. In my early 30s, I was prescribed a 3-4 month cycle of Clomid as a fertility treatment. Results were super impressive. Strength wise I rewound the clock probably 10 years (e.g., back into the 30+ pull up range, 315lb reps. on bench, etc.). Body fat probably got close to 10% again (NOTE - I didn't hydrostatic test but did while wrestling and continued through my early 20s so have a good sense for what a real body fat measurement is). Only issue was noticeable higher levels of aggression. IDK. Tough balance. Haven't tried since but definitely measuring T levels annually.
Enclomidine is better. Less use effects.
IIRC, weightlifting is just about the only way you can seriously slow the rate of fast-twitch muscle fiber loss as you age.
Sprint training too but man those knees feel it.
I think the only thing left to do is challenge one of your numerous progressive nemeses to a cage fight.
Don't pick deBoer, though; I think he works out a lot. Maybe Michael Hobbes.
I feel like CICO is a perfect microcosm for so many issues where people are smugly sure they understand the issue because they’re absolutely correct by the numbers, but they assume because their math checks out, they can ignore everyone’s squishy lived experience.
CICO is 100% true, the problem is that the more salient math is something closer to “Natural weight next year“ = “The most you’ve ever weighed” + 2lbs - “Willingness to count calories/restrict portions very close to 100% of the time - “Level of hunger you’re willing to be all the time”. The exciting part about drugs and surgery is they actually change that math (by reducing hunger).
For most people, counting calories is the easy(er) part, it’s the “I’m starving/feel light headed and I know my body is lying to me but this is miserable so I’m going to have a snack” that’s the hard part. Exercise generally is accepted not to help people lose weight because every calorie burned makes you hungrier, so unless you are on a diet where you completely ignore your hunger cues forever, you will just eat more to make up for the exercise. And the fact that your default weight ratchets up to the most you ever weighted means that for people who have gotten fat, they will (absent medical intervention), be both hungrier (and have a lower baseline metabolism, so have a lower CO) for all of their life than someone of the same weight who never put on the pounds to start with—which I think leads to the empathy gap a lot of people have. I have 5 million times more respect for someone who went from obese to overweight than someone who’s been normal weight their entire life.
When I was 24 and about to graduate from law school, I was 6,3” and weighed 280 pounds. I somehow got a job offer and decided if I was going to be a professional I should look like one. I also leased a harbor view apartment and resolved to have plenty of young women visit. I ate 2,000 calories a day and worked out five hours a week. The weight came off asymptomatically, first four pounds a week, then three then two. In six months, I lost 80 pounds. The day before I met my future wife, I weighed 198.
Then I fell in love with her and got comfortable and no longer had a young bachelor’s incentives towards discipline. I went back up to 225. Absent very good reasons to be disciplined, I have trouble keeping my weight under control while working a full time job. I simply like food and wine too much. They represent a very material portion of the pleasure I get from life and I want to enjoy them. When I was 30, I started my own law practice. I have never worked consecutive 40-plus hour weeks since I began it. I exercise 15-20 hours a week, and that keeps my weight in the 218-223 range. In the years after my son was born, I cut back to 8 hours a week, my weight shot up to 245, and I felt like shit.
As I have the culinary instincts of a Pleistocene era hunter gatherer, I need to exercise as much as a hunter gatherer. The only alternatives are self-abnegation, obesity and medical interventions.
My lifestyle is certainly quirkier with Matt’s. By the time I began my practice, I was married to a successful CPA, it was clear to me my career was unlikely to sparkle, that I could make enough money working part time, and that focusing on my body and intellectual interests would be more edifying than trying to get rich. Matt’s career has sparkled, his time commitment to working has probably been worth it, and bariatric surgery may have been a good choice for him. He could never have built his career to the point he has while getting as much exercise as hunter gatherers need. I’m ok with someone like Matt having surgery when his writing is actually important, but I would hate to see a middling lawyer get cut up to bill more hours or a real estate agent have surgery to sell more houses. Better to work less and live more.
that’s absurd. you burn more calories moving than not moving. if research tells you otherwise, don’t trust it. the issue is most people don’t exercise enough to atone for their dietary choices. it takes a robust amount of exercise and some restraint at the table to do that
maybe a clarification - if you eat the same but add exercise, yes that will change your weight trajectory. The point around exercise not causing weight loss is that your appetite will also adjust to match your intake.
It's the NET calories that matter, and the deficit can be achieved with or without exercise, depending on your food intake.
if you exercise 30 minutes a day, your appetite will increase. but there are physical limits to how much food your body wants process. exercise enough to burn that many calories, you’ll keep a good figure.
if that works for you, great!
But I assure you I have been able to eat in surplus even while training for half-marathons... My body is excellent at consuming and I have not personally encountered these "physical limits to how much food your body wants process" :)
I think you have that backwards. It I dramatically easier to eat more than it is to burn off calories. Consuming 200 calories can be done in virtually no time at all, whereas burning that many (in addition to NEAT and other regular daily activities) is far more difficult. There are far more physical limits on how many calories you can burn in a day vs. how easily you can consume in excess. Diet is much more important for weight loss. The old adage "you can't out train a bad diet" is 100% true.
It's kind of akin to a pocketbook- even guys like Mike Tyson could spend the tens of millions of dollars he was making when he was a pro. So sure, you can tell him to just go make more money, but spending it is far easier than you imagine. Unless you have the time and energy and ability (without injuring yourself) to train like an Olympic athlete, than you're definitely not going to have much difficulty consuming more calories than you burn. And I say that as a former personal trainer who has contemplated competing in bodybuilding competitions- I know what it takes to train incredibly hard, pack on muscle, etc. etc. etc., and even when I was trying to GAIN weight I had to be careful because working my ass off at the gym didn't mean that I could eat whatever I wanted to. If I just tried outtraining my diet I would've ended up very fat, very easily.
Or; alternatively, we could believe the vast body of research which says this isn’t true over the one study that says it is.
As counterintuitive as it seems, it's actually generally recognized that exercise has minimal impacts on weight loss. We're talking about general propositions of course, so each person's experience will be different, but typically exercise induces increased appetite, which is offset by increased consumption. So you typically see minimal, if any, WEIGHT LOSS* benefit to exercise because for every 200 calories you burn you're likely to consume an extra 200 calories throughout the day (and this can be done incredibly easily, which is kind of the whole point of Matt's post and this discussion- absent mindedly consuming a few hundred extra calories is shockingly simple to do).
*I put weight loss in caps because exercise is super great for overall health, so people should absolutely exercise. But losing weight is driven overwhelmingly by diet instead of exertion, and the literature is relatively clear on that.
A question for you since you seem to know the literature --- is it uniformly true that exercise increases appetite? Because that was not my experience with exercise, and I feel like I have heard of studies claiming that exercise increases appetite for overweight people but not for normal-weight people (or increases appetite less for them).
I am completely aware of the mechanism you're describing. It is *not* the one which TJ posited at all.
I find the Hadza study very interesting, but perhaps not relevant to people attempting a lifestyle change... I do think most Americans who add a daily hour of walking without changing their diet will find they lose weight. Sure the Hadza study suggests it will not work forever, but the research is unclear on when your body will adapt, and in practice most people find they can go a long way.
I think the Hadza study would be less compelling were it the only such research that pointed to this effect. But I keep reading about other, similar findings that seem to be revealed regularly. I personally find the idea intuitive, though others' mileage might vary. We're the descendants of creatures who survived food scarcity—perhaps fairly frequently. A number of adaptations would have helped us (including being omnivorous). But the capacity for metabolic downshifting triggered by both excessive energy expenditure and calorie scarcity strikes me as highly probable. One reason the idea may generate pushback is that it's misinterpreted to mean "exercise confers no health benefits" or "exercise isn't necessary." But exercise is important for cardiovascular health, lung capacity, muscle strength, the immune system, cognitive health, and so on. Just don't expect to out-exercise a poor diet and you'll be fine.
I can't tell if we're disagreeing :)
Big picture I'm not disputing those points you made. But I still observe that as a practical matter, that adaptation is slow enough that exercise can contribute to a calorie deficit and facilitate fat loss. E.g. a relative recently went on an intensive mountain hiking trip, and he commented that he just couldn't eat enough to keep up with all the exercise & lost 8 pounds.
And as I keep pointing out throughout these comments, obviously people can starve to death and waste away. That may not be disagreeing with you - like I agree your body probably gets REALLY efficient before it lets you die. But there are limits to how far it can go!
I personally find there is an annoying range where I am a little hungry but don't lose weight! Vs during bulking I can eat a pretty decent surplus and feel very warm & not actually gain weight that fast. I'd guess for me it's about a 300-400 daily calorie buffer, probably from NEAT.
But I totally agree with you on "don't expect to out-exercise a poor diet"
I’ve always heard that you lose weight through diet and maintain it through exercise. For me, though, exercise has always been a crucial part of losing it. An hour of hard cardio every day. (I should note, however, that I’m not overweight - it’s just about losing that ten pounds at the upper end of my natural weight range)
When I’ve lost a lot of weight (and I have, multiple times), I think the biggest benefit I gained from exercise was that it gave me the energy and good mood and motivation I needed all day to make a waterfall of healthier choices about food and activity. When I’ve gained a lot of weight (and I have, multiple times), the lack of exercise and the lack of energy and the lack of willpower all snowball and result in semi-depression that triggers overeating.
People greatly overestimate the calories used in exercise. One mile of walking or running burns about 100 calories. Creating a 500 calorie deficit requires nearly an hour of running for the average person. Bicycling burns half that rate, so twice as much time is needed.
go hard enough on the bike, you can burn 900 calories an hour. an old woman could burn 400 an hour on a bike if she’s in reasonable shape.
yeah one of my neighbors posted about having a great bootcamp workout and celebrating with a brownie from the nearby bakery, and I kinda facepalmed
Personal experience, as well as that of others I know, says otherwise.
My understanding (and personal experience) is that it is possible to lose weight just by exercising, but the amount of exercise you need to do is pretty impractical for most people with jobs and/or kids.
My close friend is an Army Ranger and he burns like 2,500 calories per day exercising, but he’s doing 12 mile rucks with 60 pounds on his back regularly.
It’s actually possible to burn similar calories in a lower impact way on a bicycle, but you have to devote *a lot* of time to it. 10 hours a week, ideally 12+.
Biking like that worked well for me... until I had kids. Now I can’t find the time for that much cycling, and my BMI reflects that.
An hour and a half biking a day isn’t going to burn 2500 extra calories!
He probably burns more than. 2500 is maintenance. I would imagine that he could burn 4 to 5000 during a hard day.
I think he's saying 2,500 is burned just via the exercise, so he's not claiming that is total calories burned through the day. NEAT, BMR, etc., aren't included in that number.
I'm shocked he can do that on only 2500 calories! Small guy?
I'm 6'0" and a healthy 210 lbs, and I can hold my weight steady at 2500 cals without any cardio.
I think Milan means the ranger burns 2,500 on top of regular calorie consumption. So he’ll be eating maybe 4,500 calories per day.
That’s my experience of very active people. IIRC professional rowers need 5-6k calories per day.
It’s also important to understand that there are different types of exercise with different goals. Weight training will build muscle that will add weight and also burns more fat than an equal amount of fat. Cardio exercise accelerates weight loss among many other health benefits. But yes, what you eat after the exercise matters.
I lost 90 pounds more than 15 years ago by eating better (and less), and routinely exercising, and it was a slog. Nothing happened quickly but when my body figured out it wasn't starving a couple of years after I started my new routines, the weight started coming off at a rapid pace. I've kept it off, but I'll never be thin, because I'm not willing to give up more than I already have when it comes to food or time to exercise.
Edit: *muscle burns more /calories/ than an equal amount of fat
My understanding of the research is that NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, i.e. walking around and living everyday life) is very helpful, but more intense exercise is partially cancelled out by higher hunger.
Yeah, my strategy to losing a bunch of weight was to be on the treadmill for 1-2 hours almost every day for 9 months. Probably wouldn't have been sustainable if I wasn't the kind of sicko who enjoys that sort of thing.
right, this just circles back to CICO... it is not that hard to "outeat" your exercise. I used to run half-marathons but a steady flow of ice cream ensured I never dropped to a truly lean weight :)
But...but...the second stomach for ice cream...have I been misled?
well that's not MY claim, or experience :)
I can believe it happens eventually, but I also think you can stay ahead of that by varying your exercise routines.
You must cultivate the mass before you harvest it.
well, also a vote for low-impact steady-state cardio when attempting weight loss. No need to push your V02 max or anything - you are mostly burning glycogen at those high intensities anyhow. Walk on an incline or use the exercise bike instead. (my two cents)
I exercise a lot, but I have a hard time losing weight. In fact, I have gained quite a bit of weight. Most of it is muscle because I do a lot of weight lifting but I still need to lose the gut. The thing I learned most is the importance of both patience and discipline. Do what you can, stick with it, and evolve your workouts (level up). I’m much healthier and stronger. I can do things I never thought I could do. I can trace a lot of my issues to habits I started when I was a kid. Someday, I’ll lose the weight. I try not to obsess about it.
I knew an Olympic rower. He trained full time for 3 years. When he retired he had to do a careful diet programme to get down from around 6300 calories a day to the normal level.
Happy to hear the surgery was largely a success. Discussions about weight sometimes remind me of discussion on climate change: the climate doesn’t care if you believe in it or not. Heart disease doesn’t care that you’ve convinced yourself it’s healthy to be overweight.
Curious- while we wait to find out the longer term side effects and dollar cost of drugs like ozympic, are there any ongoing medical costs to the surgery you had? I’m wondering about the short and medium term dollar cost comparisons between the two (when ozympic is $1K a month)
And do you have to follow the rules about never using NSAIDs again, only Tylenol? Do you have to take vitamin and mineral supplements perpetually?
🙏❤️- good luck with your journey, love you guys. And thank you for this article, it’s really helpful and insightful. I continue to be on my own weight journey, with the general idea “eat less, move more”; designing more continuous walking into our lifestyles has really helped (eg driving less, using public transportation more).
Good luck, I think you’re on the right track! I don’t do much “exercise” but I’m lucky to live in an urban setting and I also hate driving. I usually walk at least 5 miles a day just doing normal things like going to the grocery store. Recently I broke my foot and kind of freaked out thinking about not walking much for 6 weeks (I find that walking is also a necessary component of mental health for me). So I bought a cheap 50-year-old Raleigh 3-speed and it’s been a lifesaver.
The bottom line, in my experience, is that this kind of exercise is easy and pleasant to do, so sticking with it is much less challenging.
I'm glad you wrote this but sorry you felt ashamed telling people you wanted the surgery. There's fat shaming and then society doubles down with will power shaming. Neither are shameful. I think will power is mostly just random luck not to have a compulsion.