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Comment by qz2 | Hacker News Reader

Oh joy another diet fad. They’re just stupid. Just eat a balanced diet with less calories and do exercise. It works. If it doesn’t it’s because you’re cheating.

231lb to 157lb here this year doing just that. 1600 calorie cap and regular exercise, mostly walking. After weight was gone, calories back up to normal and maintain the exercise.

I should note that this was achieved by eating less potatoes and fruit and eating more broccoli and cabbage. 99% of it was replacing my broken relationship with food with a healthy one, not an even more broken one.

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> If it doesn’t it’s because you’re cheating.

Well, that's the catch, isn't it? The meta-technique is where the problem is. "Study hard for the exam. If you can't study, that's the problem". Useless advice to the guy addicted to games.

And we know one true answer for effective weight loss: pharmaceuticals. Ludicrous success rate. All of this other stuff is slow.

Cheat. Life's too short to play fair.

If there was truly a safe and effective pharmaceutical remedy for weight loss whoever made it would be the biggest company in the world right now.

Are there actually any pharmaceuticals proven to aid weight loss? As far as I knew it was mostly all supplement bullshit to get you to waste thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it.

My doctor wants me to look into bariatric surgery but the side effects of that look horrifying long term.

Stimulants and appetite supressants work for some people. Side effects are pretty bad though.

Also smoking is effective for some. Again, bad side effects.

Almost all stimulants will work for this but have questionable side effects

Bariatric surgery is more effective than the pharmaceuticals for long-term weight loss AFAIK. Non-surgical intervention is slow in every form: lifestyle change, pharmaceuticals, all slow.

Not going to name the drugs, sorry, but your doctor will know of them. He knows your situation better, so I'll leave it to him.

I know two people who had surgical intervention. It was a way out that they could put money into and make the problem go away. Both are fucking miserable and it ruined their lives. But no one tells those stories.

If you're in line for bariatric surgery and your doctor doesn't inform you of the risks and possible adverse outcomes then she hasn't received informed consent from you yet.

Care to elaborate ? Why did it ruin their lives ?

Across two people: Hair loss, hernias and one obstructed bowel.

This took a few months. If you have to cheat to make a life changing health difference then you’ve not solved the problem. You’ve replaced it with another one.

This is classic Hardship Theology which rests upon the tenet that things must induce some hardship in order for there to be benefit. Reality has no such restriction.

You’re right. But it does have unexpected side effects and other consequences.

There are side effects certainly but they're well understood. Many are undesirable, as you no doubt are alluding to, but I believe they are rarely unexpected.

Pharmaceuticals? I’m afraid I don’t follow. Feel free to elaborate :)

I would guess at stimulants, such as amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine etc. Will work to increase activity and reduce appetite. Major dose-dependent side effects in that they are bad for the heart, reduce impulse control, loss of sleep, addictive, amongst others

Sorry to point it out but you went on a low carb diet to lose weight. The more extreme version of that is keto. Both could be considered fad diets. Keto is exceptionally effective in losing body fat because you stay satiated for longer and don't eat junk. Excess sugar gets converted to fat in the liver and stored for later.

Actually it wasn’t low carb. The entire diet was balanced properly based on what the body required. Aggregate less carbs yes but less of everything and everything in proportion.

I found myself regularly having to eat more carbs to make up what I wasn’t eating.

> do exercise

Exercise does nothing in losing weight. (If you've seen the people doing physical labor for 10 hours a day, you know they're not necessarily thin.)

Well, technically not nothing. Exercise can get you a few hundred extra calories burned a day, which will have an impact.

But the sentiment is correct. 90% of losing weight is eating less calories. Exercise is still good though, without it a lot of the lost weight is going to be muscle.

>Exercise can get you a few hundred extra calories burned a day, which will have an impact.

Not if the increased appetite after the exercize (and the "I exercized for now I'm entitled to some nice food") gets you to gulp more at lunch/diner....

Of course it does. Or I should say it can. It's burning calories. If calories in are less than calories used, you lose weight. What is true is that it's very easy to eat more calories than you can practically hope to burn off by exercise. The people doing physical labor for 10 hours a day who are still fat are probably eating Big Macs, Fries, and 48oz cokes for lunch and having 3-6 beers after work.

> It's burning calories.

Not really. The human body doesn't have a power saving mode like computers do. The vast majority of burned calories are burned simply by the body existing and keeping its metabolism running.

This x100. I known plenty of people who spend the day on their feet lifting heavy things, and are classed as overweight. I sit at a desk all day and I'm skinny AF.

I really watch what I eat.

Never heard of this potato diet before... Human metabolism is complex!

Power lifting training easily smashes just over 1k cals a day for me.

If I don't lift, I'll get fat. It definitely has significant effects on metabolism, body fat % and building muscle.

I imagine that most peoples 'exercise' doesn't come close to 1k calories burned though.

Your physical labour people probably consume more calories than they use.

> Your physical labour people probably consume more calories than they use.

It really comes down to this at the end of the day. Assuming someone is reasonable about what they eat (not garbage), if you consume more than you expand, you're gaining weight that is mostly fat, unless you're doing some type of resistance exercise like barbells, which would result in both fat and muscle gain if, again, you don't eat trash diet.

Exercise gives you a calorie deficit. It accelerates the loss.

It can help you achieve calorie deficit, but controlling what you eat has a much bigger impact than exercise.

Completely. It’s also about the psychological impact. Building physical strength up through exercise has mental health benefits too which are added to the feedback loop of trying to fix your head, which is the real issue.

I can run a 5k now. Now that has some calorific consequences.

Yes and then people who don't have their diet under control will eat all the calories back up (because of the bigger deficit and exhaustion) and then some. So no I would say you should get your diet under control first.

It does a lot towards making you healthy though.

>Just eat a balanced diet with less calories and do exercise.

That's the easy way.

There is more than one road to rome. And if he sticks with his plan it will work.

Of course the only thing that matters is calories in, but that doesn't mean it's a valuable instruction for most people.

This is a stupid road though. Sorry but it is.

To be fair, genetic variation makes this significantly harder for some. Up to a point where they need to do rather extreme things.

But overall I agree..

> It works. If it doesn’t it’s because you’re cheating.

If people are tempted to cheat... then the diet isn't working, is it?

The diet is working. If you’re cheating then you need to fix you not the diet.

No a bad diet makes people vulnerable to cheating. A good diet helps you not cheat. That’s the whole goal in designing weight-loss diets! Help people reduce their calorie intake while not going mad or cheating.

An otherwise brilliant diet that drives everyone to cheat is useless.

It's not a diet issue. It's a psychological issue. You have to fix both independently. One is not effective without the other.

That’s just not how people work. Their weaknesses are exposed differently by different diets. That’s why people are encouraged to find the diet that works for them, and why diets are more than just absolute maths and science.

That's where the point of failure is. Procrastination through finding the right diet rather than throwing science at it (backed up by our health authority here in the UK). It's easy to keep changing and pretending you're doing something than actually doing it and people are lazy and need to fix that first.

> people are lazy and need to fix that first

That's what their diet plans are supposed to help them fix!

The diet plans are allowing them to remain being lazy which is a faulty outcome.

I have absolutely no idea where you're coming from with this angle.

If people could just magically decide to be perfectly disciplined and motivated all the time, then we wouldn't need any diets would we? We'd just say 'great now just eat healthily all the time'. But people struggle to do that, so we have diet programmes to help them.

The diet plan is there to help work around the laziness and ill-discipline which is a natural and eternal part of being a flawed human being.

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