[Drlee]

look all I know is that unless you actually keep track of what you eat and stick to a calorie deficit diet, all this hogwash about genetic predispositions and exercise means diddly.

Yes. That is "all you know". And it is wrong. It is a recipe for disaster for many people. Just for a change why don't you try learning from the experts rather than mouthing off and proving that you ignored them?

[QatzelOk]

:eh: look all I know is that unless you actually keep track of what you eat and stick to a calorie deficit diet, all this hogwash about genetic predispositions and exercise means diddly. ...

This obsession with crap food as being the source of the obesity epidemic is simply wrong.

It is suburbia that caused the obesity epidemic by removing all opportunities to use up calories on a regular basis. Obesity is a result of our car-based urbanism over the last 70 years.

If we don't smash our suburbs, we will all die of obesity and pollution. It's as simple as that.

All the talk of needing "lo-cal soda and Weight Watchers cookies" is just more of the scavenger entrepreneurial class trying to make a buck on the misery that other entrepreneurs have caused.

"Now that our car-dependent suburbs have made you fat and bored, can I sell you an exciting new lo-cal product and membership to a gym you'll never have time to go to?"

[MistyTiger]

look all I know is that unless you actually keep track of what you eat and stick to a calorie deficit diet, all this hogwash about genetic predispositions and exercise means diddly. Is it really so crazy an idea that if you keep track of what you eat and make sure that the calories are at a deficit of what you need, that you will see results not matter what your genetics are? Like how much mental gymnastics do you want to do when you can do what I am telling you and see the results for yourself.

And who are you and what do you know?

Calorie counting is for people who have nothing better to do than count calories. Labels on foods can be deceiving. OMG food labels tell lies...say it isn't so! Just because it is in print, does NOT make it true.

Calorie needs are not uniform for everyone. The calorie needs for a young male wrestler, for example, will be different than the calorie needs of an overweight middle-aged woman.

Try reading studies about weight gain from reputable scholarly journals. You sound like someone who thinks they know it all and according to my ancestors, those who think they know it all are too full of their own self -importance to realize that they do not know it all.

Based on my experience and my observation of people around me, people who exercise regularly are less likely to gain significant amounts of fat around the holidays. They usually don't gain much during the year. And if they do, they can easily lose it so they do not have to buy bigger sizes in clothing each year. My mother has been running for 10 years or so and she has dramatically changed her body shape and she has gone from 150 pounds down to 125 pounds. Sure she reduces her serving sizes but she also runs 2.5 miles 4-5 times a week plus swims 1 mile in a public pool. If she stops exercise for a week or so, she does gain a pound or 2. I am the same way so I have to keep up with the exercise.

[LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX]

So you tell me to read reputable scientific articles and then tell me an anecdote?

Your mom ate less and exercised. So she lost weight. If you read my posts in the broader context of the thread, you'll see that she followed my plan as I laid it out.

Counting calories is not for people who have nothing better to do, it's for people who want to lose weight and don't know how to eat a balanced diet. I don't need a scientific journal, by the way, to tell me that if you eat a calorie surplus you're going to gain weight; if you eat a calorie deficit you're going to lose weight; and if you eat the same amount of calories as you burn you're going to maintain weight. All I need is the first law of thermodynamics.

[jimjam]

Based on my experience and my observation of people around me, people who exercise regularly are less likely to gain significant amounts of fat around the holidays. They usually don't gain much during the year. And if they do, they can easily lose it so they do not have to buy bigger sizes in clothing each year. My mother has been running for 10 years or so and she has dramatically changed her body shape and she has gone from 150 pounds down to 125 pounds. Sure she reduces her serving sizes but she also runs 2.5 miles 4-5 times a week plus swims 1 mile in a public pool. If she stops exercise for a week or so, she does gain a pound or 2. I am the same way so I have to keep up with the exercise.

I have been running and jogging for 58 years. I estimate that I have circled the globe 1 and 1/2 times. This has helped keep my weight in a decent range but an interesting observation has been that I will not lose more weight if I run more. If I run more ........... I eat more and the weight remains constant. If I run less ..... I eat less with the same result. My body has wisdom built in. Excuse me now ........ I must waddle around the baseball field 9X before the sun sets.

[LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX]

Yes, that's a good point. Just because you run that doesn't mean you're going to lose weight, and that tends to be the problem with a lot of people's weight loss strategy. They run but then they eat a big bowl of ice cream after, or they go to Starbucks and get a frap.

The most winning strategy is a combination of balanced diet and exercise.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

This makes a lot of sense even to someone like me who knows if they gain weight it is due to too much beer.
but, I think all of us have seen the bathroom scales refuse to cooperate with our eating and exercising sometimes. It is like our body metabolism adjusts to our efforts.
Edit: Actually I notice it more when I have been extremely lazy for a long period and been eating like a pig. I get on the scales to see the bad news and am pleasantly surprised.

In addition to this, it looks like the signalling process and reward system is broken in some people. Since getting enough nutrition and preparing for bad times via fat storage guarantees our survival, the human body is set up to take care of it all without us thinking about it. It's going to send you off to find food (or makes you reject food), no matter what you consciously think. You can fight this, but it's another way by which the body becomes your enemy if it's dysregulated.

This may also be related to the microbiota which produces neurotransmitters that are identical to those produced by the body. We are basically in a symbiotic relationship with trillions of microbes, many of which seem to be essential to our health and overall functioning. I don't want to sound like a hippie, but we have for decades fought a war against all bacteria, viruses and fungi under the assumption that they are either detrimental or irrelevant. Turns out this was almost certainly wrong. I'm reminded of scientists naming parts of our DNA "junk DNA" reflecting the thought at the time that these parts are useless. One of the most common and dangerous fallacies is equating absence of evidence with evidence of absence. We just can't help doing it again and again.

:eh: look all I know is that unless you actually keep track of what you eat and stick to a calorie deficit diet, all this hogwash about genetic predispositions and exercise means diddly. Is it really so crazy an idea that if you keep track of what you eat and make sure that the calories are at a deficit of what you need, that you will see results not matter what your genetics are? Like how much mental gymnastics do you want to do when you can do what I am telling you and see the results for yourself.

Why ignore the vast differences in obesity rates between ethnic groups, e.g. two thirds in Pacific Islanders versus teens or even single digits in East Asians (numbers are for several generations of immigrants in Western countries)?

Do you accept that advice to eat more is useless in anorexic people? Before you answer note that we are (finally and slowly) moving away from the idea that illnesses like anorexia are purely "psychological". There is almost certainly a lot more going on on the physical/biological level.

The idea that we have full control over our behaviour has value in daily life, although in my opinion we will eventually also have to accept that this control is limited to some extent for every one of us. It has no place in science, however, where we must follow up clues the data give to us, even if we don't like them or are ideologically opposed.

[Godstud]

You need to all stop attacking fat people. Short people are the real threat!