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Weight Loss (...yes, again...)
I listen to a variety of podcasts, and I generally do what I can to avoid listening to ads along the way, even if that's just manually skipping ahead through them. But occasionally, my hands are busy with something else, and I just have to deal. In any event, last week, I heard an ad for GOLO, a weight-loss program.
I'm not at 'current episode' on all of my podcasts; I'm listening to back catalog for some of them. I didn't think to go check the date on it, and I don't even remember which podcast it was in at this point, so I don't know if it was a few years old or brand new, but at whatever time it was, they were touting it as a "new approach". Forbes' review of GOLO says 2023 on it, so presumably it's pretty recent.
I was curious about what the Kids These Days are doing, and you may have seen me here before talking about weight loss, so I decided to check it out. I was sooooo ready to hate it. After checking it out, though, in some sense, it actually pleases me a fair amount. In another sense, it illustrates quite well a phenomenon I've been seeing in terms of our society's collective psychology about the topic.
What's GOLO about? From their website... insulin resistance! Muscle loss! These are the bad buzzwords. Metabolic efficiency! Immunity Health! Hormone Balance! These are the good buzzwords. Plus, they have a magic supplement! It's easy! Just take one capsule with each meal. It's in a paragraph that starts with "The Science Behind GOLO", in bold and everything. The Science (TM) is right there! They even shit on CICO, helpfully pointing out in all caps:
Let's dive in, see what's really going on. Obvious first place to start is their supplement; what's in it? 7 plant extracts and 3 minerals, of which, best as I can tell, chromium is the star of their show. Of course, best as science can tell, there is just the barest degree of plausibility, and Examine concludes by pointing out:
Ok, so if their magic suppliment isn't exactly Ozempic, what do they have going on? Gotta dig into 'More Information' on their site.... then be careful! Don't fall into the trap of clicking on any of the distractions, even the one that promises to tell you what their 'GOLO For Life Plan' is. Gotta go to the FAQ. That's where you've gotta dig down into the question about what the GOLO For Life Plan is. It helpfully states:
I tried to be helpful and cross out all the noise that isn't relevant for us at this point. What is the real key to a fancy new diet for weight loss that has all the buzzwords that people use when they say that CICO is garbage? It was CICO all along! There are more telltale signs that this is just a recycling of what we've known for a long time. 1300-1800 is a pretty wide range, so what's going on? Two more items further down in the FAQ, under How is the GOLO For Life Plan Personalized?, we see:
That Forbes article fills in some more details:
The government of Canada has helpfully published basically exactly this sort of thing on their website for years. We've known how to do this for years. Weknowdis. Moreover, the real, actual science has confirmed for decades that to a pretty darn good level of approximation, 500cal/day from your TDEE is right about a 1lb/wk weight loss/gain. Weknowdis.
Forbes says, "Programs range from 30 to 90 days," but I can't find solid details on the GOLO website. Most of the examples are people who did stuff for 6mo-1yr. Best I can tell, they're basically just selling the supplement, and then I guess giving away the meal planning to put you in the right calorie range. So, for a bit, with the Forbes wording, I was wondering if they were actually going to have some trick to try to get you to do it for 1-3mo, then 'cycle off', but try to figure out how to get you to just go back to maintenance caloric intake, then say that you should start another 1-3mo cycle. Maybe that's buried somewhere in the planning tool they're giving away with every purchase of the supplement. Final thing to point out, which I couldn't really find in detail on the GOLO site, Forbes says:
In the end, what have they done here? It actually almost makes me proud of capitalism. They've found a way to package and monetize the bog standard, traditional advice for losing weight. You could just listen to the CICO people, the honest doctors, the fitness people, etc., who tell you the same basic advice. Stop eating total crap like piles of dessert all the time. Stop drinking big gulps of straight sugar calories, no matter whether they're soda, juice, or whatever other trendy beverage is happening right now. Eat at about a 500cal/day deficit to shoot for 1lb/wk of weight loss, eat regular foods, and maybe if you're feeling physical/psychological effects after getting somewhat deep into a cut, go back to maintenance for a bit, and then start again.
But the packaging. Ohhhh the packaging! Insulin resistance! Metabolic efficiency! Immunity Health! Hormone Balance! CICO SUCKS! They do what they can to try to meet people where they are. To try to get them used to the idea that they're shooting for about a pound a week, so it'll be longer than other people promise (though, of course, they say 1-2lb/wk, just to get your brain to think it could be twice as fast). And of course, the cherry on top, a supplement that probably doesn't really do anything is the mechanism by which they monetize. Hell, after people lose the weight, I bet the GOLO For Life thing basically steers them toward how to stay at maintenance for the rest of time... but you probably better keep buying/taking their supplement, just to make sure you don't ruin all your gainz! It's a thing of sheer beauty, designed to bob and weave around all the CICO bashers who are going to scream from the rooftops that CICO doesn't work and trash your weight loss program if it even hints at the idea that CICO is what's going on rather than repeating the buzzwords and bowing at the god of, "It's not your fault, it's... check cue card... insulin resistance!"
In the end, I can't help but love it. Could you have listened to me tell you basically all the same underlying facts? Sure. Could you find a plethora of communities or official government public health documents that outline how you can do all this same stuff, but for free? Yup. But man, we're too dry in the delivery, and we tend to be abrasive to the folks who want to believe that there is some other magic going on in the world. I can't help but think of how Matt Levine might put it. The market wants the bog standard advice that works and that is backed by science, but it also doesn't want it to sound like that. It wants to hear some buzzwords, platitudes, shitting on CICO, and having a magic supplement. That's an arbitrage opportunity, and GOLO seems to have filled it.
EDIT: Sigh, I tried so hard to get the strikethroughs to work inside the bulletpoints. It displays correctly in the comment preview (and still displays correctly in the preview as I'm editing). But it's broken in the actual comment. @ZorbaTHut Help?
I am severely overweight and have been all my life. The only thing that does help (temporarily, so long as I stick to the diet, until I fall off the wagon again) is reducing calories. It doesn't seem to much matter what kind of diet it is, though low-carb ones help most.
The rest of it I have no idea about. The basics - don't eat junk, eat less - are what works. What kind of foods you should eat is a freakin' minefield, because for every "eat green leafy vegetables" there's "EXCEPT IF YOU'RE ON WARFARIN BEWARE VITAMIN K" warnings, and as you get older (and podgier) you rack up more "taking medication" which interacts with everything (e.g. grapefruit. I have never before wanted to eat grapefruit/drink grapefruit juice except now, when one of my medications contra-indicates it).
Exercise? I was one of the "fit fatties" because exercise has never made me lose weight, despite the fact that I walked and cycled everywhere (I can't drive) up to a few years ago. Also, I never got the "but exercise is so fun, it makes me feel good, if I don't exercise I feel terrible" experiences other people seem to get. I'd have to be on one of those "training to ride the Tour de France" regimens to see any shift in weight.
Cholesterol: I think nobody feckin' knows a thing. If you look at my total cholesterol (and this is from always, including my most recent lipids panel), the overall level is perfect. Seriously. LDL - the bad one? Within the limits it should be. HDL - too low, needs to come up. My problem is the triglycerides, which are way too high and which medication and diet hasn't shifted an inch.
"Well, that's because you're fat and eat junk".
Okay, but my sister who has been thin all her life (to the point where she was seriously in danger of anorexia a few years back) also has high cholesterol (though hers is slightly different to mine). So - we don't have a similar diet, we don't have similar exercise regime, she does all the right things (except she used to smoke), I do all the wrong things (except I never smoked) and we both have high (though differing in the details) cholesterol.
Is it genetics? I haven't a clue. So I'm not surprised that gimmick websites like the one above ensnare customers, because nobody knows a damn thing about what you should eat, shouldn't eat, can't or can eat, what is the recommended diet yesterday is the one that will give you cancer today.
The only crude metric we still have is "don't eat so much". Which is tough**! Because diets are hard and are not fun*! You can't eat the things you like any more (and that doesn't mean chocolate cake and candy; I love potatoes but, you know, high carbs bad for your blood sugar no no no, so you can guess why I'm crying about the 'all potato miracle diet the pounds melt off').
*No, "you can eat all the raw, undressed broccoli you like to fill you up!" is not fun or easy.
** If you're one of the "well, I never had any problem cutting back because I don't get hungry and indeed I can fast for days, so I don't get what is so hard about simply not eating" crowd, move closer to the screen so I can punch you in the snoot, Smuggie McSmuggerson.
It takes more exercise than most people think to lose weight. I'm currently about 154lbs, and by the numbers, in order for me to exercise enough to lose a whole pound I have to run a literal marathon. That's more than one 5k per day for a week.
That actually might not be enough. The usual estimate is 100 calories burned per mile, which means that a marathon should burn 2,600 calories, which is not enough to lose a pound of fat.
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