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:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Glad it's working for you! Honesty, that sounds amazing.
I've become a convert to "set point theory" of hunger and, with a convert's fervor, I now view the opposite view as imbecilic and harmful. Almost no one can sustain weight loss for long periods of time via calorie counting and exercise. The fact that so many people believe otherwise is troubling. How long can a society be so obviously wrong and double down on failure? At least several decades, apparently.
In good news, we finally have something which actually works. As this becomes widespread, I expect obesity to peak soon and then decline - similar to the decline in HIV deaths starting in the 1990s. Life expectancy will increase as well.
As for myself, since I'm only about 20 pounds over my ideal weight, I'll hold off for a few years just in case there are unknown risks.
My guess is that people believe that diet can work both in the short and long term because they see it all the time, because I do. There are people for whom it doesn't work, for some reason, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.
I also believe that in version of set point theory but in my version that set point is possible to affect for the vast majority through persistent weight change.
I'm excited about the new medications though.
Dieting works in the short term. It almost never works in the long term. There are numerous studies which demonstrate this.
To steelman the status quo, there wasn't (until semaglutide) anything that reliably worked. Diet and exercise aren't bad things, and even short term weight loss might have positive benefits. Similarly it's very rare for alcoholics to quit over long periods of time. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't at least try.
This feels like playing word games. To me "doesn't work" means "it won't have an effect, no matter how much you do it", not " people will stop doing it after a while".
Doesn't feel that way at all to me. If compliance is < 10%, then the intervention most assuredly doesn't "work" from a public health standpoint.
It's like saying to a smoker "stop smoking" and then saying your intervention is effective. "It would have worked if they had listened".
Nobody ever tries to put these fat people in work camps.
If WW2 history classes have taught anyone anything, it's that dieting works.
Every time this topic comes up someone posts something like this. Every time.
That's because this argument forces people to disambiguate between two definitions of dieting:
consuming fewer calories
voluntarily consuming fewer calories in the presence of abundant hyperpalatable food by exercising your willpower
CI<CO works. Yes, BMR goes down as you lose weight, TEF goes down as you eat less food, NEAT goes down if you diet too hard, but that doesn't change the laws of thermodynamics: CI<CO? Weight loss.
Voluntarily staying at the level of CImaint=COmaint works for some people, fails for others. Why? Two options:
they let they CO creep below COmaint, probably by dropping EAT. I think it's less probable, since EAT has a small impact
they let their CI creep above CImaint
Why do they stay at CI>CImaint? Because they enjoy it, it gives them hedons. But why do they enjoy it more than staying in shape, while others don't?
does eating more tasty food simply have a larger weight in their hedonic formula? Is it an endogenous or an exogenous weight?
or does their formula discount future hedons/negahedons at a higher rate? Someone might take into account the dieting they will have to do to lose the weight they are gaining by eating this brownie at -6h and eating the brownie at 5h, while someone else might discount the future dieting to -4h
or is there this magic "set point" of CIsp, and every CI<CIsp generates negahedons? Some have it high enough that COsp=CIsp means they have to up their EAT to unsustainable levels
Thank you. I should have posted something like this, but got frustrated. Honestly, I thought understanding this concept was table stakes for having this discussion here, and I was disappointed when a typical normie comment entered the conversation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link