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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1451 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 14, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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You say many true and almost-true things.

Count calories all you want (and most people don't want to spend tons of time doing that), but what you eat is gonna determine whether you feel fine and satiated or hungry and miserable. Being hungry and miserable all the time is a great way to quit a diet. So why not skip the part where you count calories, eat the right foods, and don't feel hungry and miserable all the time.

Because the vast majority of people have absolutely no bollocks idea what the goal even is. They've been constantly lied to on this topic. How do you pick "the right foods" to eat? What are some plausible metrics? I would interpret from your comment that one plausible metric is "good satiety", but how do you even measure that? Do you have some normalization? Is it satiety per liter? Per kilogram? ...per calorie? You sort of can't even get off the ground if you're someone who has been taken in by the lies and doesn't believe that calories can possibly matter because I guess the body magically adjusts and makes them meaningless anyway or something.

Once a person actually acknowledges that calories matter. Not in a, "Sure, calories theoretically matter, BUT [insert any of a million excuses people give to proceed to immediately ignore calories]," way, but in a genuine, "Ok, my weight actually does meaningfully correspond in the long run to the calories I consume and the calories I expend, even if my measurement of the phenomena is noisy," way. Then a person can start to make meaningful choices and tradeoffs with eyes wide open. They won't fall for things like, "I heard once that nuts are the right foods, so I constantly snack on nuts all day."

Many people are never going to read a study on satiety of various foods. But if you get them to actually acknowledge that calories do matter (again, not in the fake and gay way where you immediately follow it by saying they don't matter), many folks can figure it out. "Oh, I can have that much of Food A and it's like the sort of equivalent of this much of Food B?!" And maybe they won't reconstruct satiety studies on their own, but they will likely be a lot more open to you bringing it up. At that point, they have a goal, and you have a valuable piece of information that can be very useful to their goal. If, instead, they think it's just about picking "the right foods", why do they care about that? "Haven't you heard, man? Avocados are like, a 'superfood'. That means they're the right food."

There are a lot of different ways for a person to ultimately put in place a selection of foods that satisfy their nutritional needs and also fit within their caloric budget. They may depend on many lifestyle factors. There is no one single "right way". If you're telling people that you have the magic one single right way, then first, you have to compete with all the other folks who have their own single magic right way, like the avocado guy or whatever. Those guys are also saying that calories are bullshit. Second, your magic right way may not actually fit with another person's lifestyle.

Instead, a person needs to understand that there are many ways, but calories do matter (yet again, not in a bullshit way where one immediately follows it by saying calories don't matter). One can certainly try different ways that are out there, but it is sure a useful diagnosis tool. "Joe is telling me to eat nothing but avocados. Since I know I'm targeting X calories, that means I can eat Y avocados. I guess I'll see if I can make this work?" Versus just randomly shooting in the dark aimlessly.

Once a person uses this diagnostic and is able to wrap their head around what the tradeoff space actually looks like, in terms of things like satiety as well, then they may not actually need to count calories anymore. But it's an invaluable tool for the people who are serious and real, whereas the vast majority of folks who forever chase the latest "right food" will never have enough grounding to even know what the point is.

Ok, my weight actually does meaningfully correspond in the long run to the calories I consume and the calories I expend, even if my measurement of the phenomena is noisy

The problem with the calorie-based paradigm of weight-loss and gain isn't that its wrong, it's that its advocates conflate describing a process and fixing it. Saying 'you gain weight because you ate more calories than you burned' isn't an explanation of weight gain, it's just describing weight gain with more steps.

It's akin to a bar owner asking 'why does my bar fill up on Friday night?' and responding with 'because more people enter than leave' when the real answer is 'most people don't have work on Saturday so they're more willing to go out and drink'.

Whereas advocates of the calorie paradigm (which notably doesn't include actual researchers of obesity) act as if the description is the solution. As if all you need to do is decide to consume fewer calories or decide to expend more. Whereas in reality, how many calories we consume is driven primarily by our hunger, and how many calories we expend is almost entirely out of our control. If you decide to undereat (without chemical assistance*), your body will reduce your metabolic rate and make you hungrier, if you decide to exercise more, your body will reduce the amount of calories that your body consumes at rest. And even calories 'stored' can be allocated to fat or lean mass depending on the body's hormonal environment.

Consider that when girls go through puberty, they go from about 10% body fat to about 20%. That isn't because insecure teenagers decide to consume more calories. Their hormones make it happen. The increased calorie intake is the mechanism of the weight gain, but it isn't the cause. The cause is puberty turning a girl into a woman by adjusting her hormonal profile.

*GLPs are a good example of how the calorie paradigm fails. They adjust your hormones in such a way that you will lose weight whether you like it or not.

Just to be devils advocate on CICO, the big issue is that most people are only paying lip service to the concept. This is true of most hard things.

There is a definite correlation between time spent butt-in-chair working on learning and actually learning things and thus doing well on tests. But … studying is hard and boring, and you would rather be doing something else. So you go after study hacks. And you’ll tell yourself that time spent studying only sort of matters, and that it’s really about something else. You’ll do worse than you needed to because you ignored the concept. Yes, there are more and less productive ways to study, but if you’re not putting in the time necessary, even the best practice will fail because you didn’t do the work.

Saying 'you gain weight because you ate more calories than you consumed'

Word choice is a bit funky. Burned probably better.

Thanks, typo on my part.

If you decide to undereat (without chemical assistance*), your body will reduce your metabolic rate and make you hungrier

Do you believe that this process continues without bound? The more you cut, the more your metabolic rate drops in lock step?

My understanding is that it's more like the body forces you back to whatever weight you had before the weight loss, and part of that mechanism is through reducing the metabolism. The studies I've seen all have people returning to their original weight, but how much of the mechanism is metabolic slowdown vs increased hunger I don't know exactly.

That would be kind of cool. With the right approach, humans would be able to enter a state of suspended animation, slowing down metabolism until such a time that food becomes available again. Like tardigrades, we might be able to sleep like that for decades.

The problem with the calorie-based paradigm of weight-loss and gain isn't that its wrong, it's that its advocates conflate describing a process and fixing it.

Where did I do that? This sounds like tilting at strawmen.

I would say that the fact you talk about a 'caloric budget' puts you in the 'consciously restricting calories as a method of weight loss' camp, although I may be mistaken.

The problem with the calorie-based paradigm of weight-loss and gain isn't that its wrong, it's that its advocates conflate describing a process and fixing it.

Where did I do this? This particular thing that you claim is done by such people whom you bin into a "camp". This particular thing that you claimed was "the problem". Where did I do that thing?

As I said, having a 'caloric budget' is a calorie-controlled weight loss strategy, which doesn't actually work for almost everyone who tries it (see decades of studies). It's fine to describe weight loss or gain in calories, but budgeting them like money in a bank account fails when actual humans try it.

EDIT: This conversation might be more fruitful if you said what you actually believe re diet and weight loss/gain.

yeah he's trolling. report him

For what? What rule? Be serious.

I feel I should note that there's basically never a reason (for a non-mod) to tell other people to report something. You have a "report" button of your own; you could do it yourself.

(I've also been told that the mods tend to take reports more seriously when made by a third party rather than the interlocutor.)

None of that is pointing to a place where I did the particular thing that you claimed was "the problem". That's two words and your own commentary. Two words is not enough to establish conflation of multiple things.

Please show me where I did as described by:

The problem with the calorie-based paradigm of weight-loss and gain isn't that its wrong, it's that its advocates conflate describing a process and fixing it.

At least a complete sentence would be preferred.

I've already done so, twice. If you believe I'm mistaken, please say what you do believe. This cross-examination game doesn't make for a fruitful conversation.

I've already done so, twice.

I don't think you have. You haven't even given me a complete sentence.

If you believe I'm mistaken, please say what you do believe.

I wrote an entire long comment on what I believe.

Allow me to add some additional things I believe.

I believe that people shouldn't conflate describing a problem and fixing it. I also believe that people shouldn't falsely accuse others of doing so. I also believe that if you want me to take you seriously, you need to at least do a "Yes, but" instead of a "But".

Moreover, I believe that your entire initial comment was premised on this false accusation. If this accusation was false and irrelevant, then I believe that your entire original comment was irrelevant. I don't believe there's anything in it for me to respond to unless your accusation is true. Thus, an emphasis on determining its truth value. I believe I need more than two words to support your accusation. A complete sentence would be preferred. Alternatively, if you'd like to admit that your accusation was false, then I would be happy for you to have a redo on your original comment. I'd like to hear some of your thoughts that are responsive to my thoughts. I don't particularly like hearing your thoughts that are only oriented toward a strawman.

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