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Never underestimate the power of self-willed delusions.
My brother and I have to deal with our mother effectively killing herself by her lack of exercise. She developed a bloodclot from sitting still too much, and has refused to change her activity level, in addition to her near morbid-obesity. We have begged, pleaded, harassed, done meal prep, purchased equipment - nothing. Meal prep was a special kind of clusterfuck, as it merely resulted in her consuming the prepared meal shakes in addition to her normal food intake.
And yet, despite all this, she still claims she's more than capable of helping out outside with yard chores(she isn't). Commentary on her health and various drugs she's taking will have her brush it off, commenting on how many of her sisters were long-lived. Same with my advise that she needs better self-scheduling and to manage her food intake better(3 meals instead of 2).
All ignored.
The only time, the only time when she lost weight was when her and my father were on strict dietary regime due to his health(and hers).
That's what it takes - someone riding her near 24/7 with shame in order to actually eat properly.
That isn't to say that she hasn't tried to loose weight. Sugar-free snacks, drinks, meal shakes(as mentioned) - all of them treated like magic totems and talismans and potions that if she consumes this, she'll loose weight as if by magic while not altering her diet in the slightest.
I don't know if there's an official term for this. I like to think of it as 'Magic wand' thinking. That somewhere, somehow, something is out there that fixes everything - a magic wand, a golden ticket, that one thing that does it all without them having to expend one iota of effort, one dram of pain.
Mind, there's an aspect of culture, as well. I wonder how my mother would react if America was more like Asia in this regard - that, when getting fat, would have people actually tell her she's getting fucking fat - and, when reaching out to the wider culture as a whole to affirm her delusions, would instead be met with a cacophony of 'You're fat. Loose some fucking weight, fatty.'
Still. Her latest magic potion is ozempic. So, we'll see how that goes.
As for me, well, I've already learned my lesson long ago. And I get re-affirmation of the value of consistent exercise watching my friends barely a year or two older than I am - helping them with projects, seeing their stamina flag and suffering from minor ailments and injuries that I don't have to deal with - yeah, I'll stop exercising when I'm dead, thank you very much, and I intend for that to be a very, very long day off in the future.
(Also, don't think being educated doesn't mean you're immune to self-delusion. I have a friend of mine who's a lawyer, who doesn't believe in CICO dieting. He tends to bluescreen when I tell him how much I lost just by doing that alone.)
Now, as far as dieting goes - y'know what, I've ranted enough. Needless to say, 90% of the people who've I've seen try to diet start off on the entirely wrong foot to only have it crash and burn two weeks later.
I agree that there's a lot of magic wand thinking, but as I alluded to, I think this is aided by an absolutely abhorrent culture on the topic. You have the people trying to sell you something, so they're going to promise the moon. Then, when people give up, they turn to a different magic thinking (e.g., @jeroboem's "There's something else going on, IMO") and just imagine that it must be some magic chemical or something. Even when my wife agreed that we would track our calories and see how it went, she would repeatedly have times where her weekly windowed average weight wasn't visibly going down for like a single data point (maybe even two points) and would go off on "MAYBE IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE" with no real rational explanation of why it would suddenly stop working. Just some sort of unknown magic. Spoiler: it always kept working. After enough time and then seeing the summary data over a year or two, she said, "I knew, but I didn't know know." Now she "know knows". Before, there was always a gap, a gnawing hole, where magic could constantly sneak in and make her default to thinking that it's just too weird and complicated and that there's probably "something else going on".
Perhaps ozempic will actually be a magic wand for a lot of people. It seems genuinely useful for a lot of folks. I don't think I've seen any indication that ozempic magically causes people to exercise more, though, and exercise has significant bodily benefits beyond just caloric balance.
There clearly is something else going on. People didn't just suddenly lose willpower. Nor did they suddenly lose the knowledge that diet and exercise were important. More importantly, people 50 years didn't have to try to be skinny, they just were.
No one has a compelling theory, supported by evidence, for why the obesity epidemic happened. You might not agree with SlimeMoldTimeMold, but they do a good job of explaining why all the various folk theories are wrong. If you think the problem is simple, then I'd argue you just don't understand it.
Of course this doesn't mean an individual person can't use diet and exercise to lose weight. It just means that, when measured across the population, few will be able to.
To solve the obesity crisis we have to stop trying the same failed ideas from the 1990s that only made the problem worse.
This is a bad strawman, and you should feel bad.
SMTM acknowledges that calories have something to do with it. He just thinks there's some magic 'nonlinearity' somewhere in the middle. Fine, whatever. Give me a model. Tell me how we can design an experiment to confirm or falsify your belief. Imagine that we have enough resources to run a lab-controlled study with a double digit number of subjects for a year or two. What do you do?
You're asking me to explain the obesity epidemic. I can't.
But I can disprove standard medical advice. Honestly, I don't even need to because we are already running the experiment and the results are overwhelming.
But anyway, here's my experiment. We have a control group and an experimental group. The experimental group goes to a location once a week, for one hour, where they receive diet and exercise information provided by you. You can also do anything you want during that hour, including exercise. However, you may not recommend or mention any pharmaceutical intervention. To ensure compliance, each person is paid $50 per hour but people who drop out still count in the experimental group. After 8 weeks, the intervention ends.
Then we check back in 2 years to see how the BMI of the control group and experimental group has changed. I predict with a high degree of confidence that there is no significant difference.
No, I'm not. It would be simple enough for you to just propose an experiment to show that CICO doesn't work. You know, to demonstrate that "something else is going on". For example, you could propose an experiment where subjects are fed maintenance level calories, but gain weight. Or where they're fed deficit level calories, but maintain weight. You could show something specific about a weird nonlinearity that actually contributes to a claim that "something else must be going on". Anything. Literally anything at all that contributes to that. In any way whatsoever.
But I don't think you want to even try to demonstrate that "something else must be going on". You simply want to say that many people don't choose to do a thing, even given extremely mild informational content. That has never been contested, nor does it imply that "something else must be going on".
Who is saying that CICO doesn't work? No one is saying this.
What do you mean when you say, "There's something else going on"? What is the "something other than X"? Please speak plainly and directly about what you are meaning to say. Also, please take into account SMTM's writing on CICO in your description, as that appears to be related to one of the "folk theories" that you said were wrong, according to his explanation.
Sure. Something in our natural environment is causing us to eat more food than we need, thus gaining weight. Throughout most of history (and even today in countries like Vietnam and Japan) people were able to effortlessly stay thin. They eat when they're hungry. Some days, they eat excess calories. Other days they have a deficit. But overall, there is an almost EXACT match between calories eaten and consumed. Being off by even 200 calories a day would lead to serious weight gain over time.
This is homeostatis. And, importantly, it does not require CONSCIOUS thought.
The mistake most people make is the assumption that thin people are thin because they continuously monitor their weight and exert willpower to maintain it. This is the same flawed mental model as the closeted gay who thinks that straight men want to bang other dudes but just resist it. No, straight men don't want to bang other dudes. Likewise, skinny people don't have to RESIST eating that second donut. They simply don't want to. Because they are full.
Something in our diet or environment has disrupted this homeostasis. This "something else" causes our bodies to send signals to eat more than we need. It might be sugar, it might be seed oils, it might be pesticides, it might be lithium. It could even be hyperpalatable foods. But it's causing people to continue to eat when they should feel full.
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