That being said, if a conversation around fasting is what gets people in the door, perhaps it’s not the worst thing in the world.
And being obese impacts all those things. Sure if you are slightly overweight, then _maybe_ diet isn't at the top of the list of things to care about.
But if you are obese, suddenly sleeping well becomes harder because you are more likely to have sleep apnea. You are more likely to have low testosterone making exercise harder to recover from. Being obese means you are more likely to injure yourself when exercising as well. There's probably a link between obesity and stress as well.
All these things are linked, to dismiss diet as minutiae is not the right approach. If you are obese, you should almost definitely think about you diet and not dismiss it (among other things of course).
Personally I had to vow to myself I would never use delivery apps again after I started using it almost daily, I just don't have the willpower to allow myself it every once in a while.
Nevertheless, none of them will prevent you to become overweight. Only controlling your diet can enable you to control your weight.
Being overweight is guaranteed to cause health problems, especially at an old age. For example, my father could not take a certain cancer medication that had very good chances to prolong his life by 4 or 5 years, because he was too overweight. He also had a type of renal cancer that appears much more frequently at overweight men.
For most people, exercise can prevent gaining weight with a poor diet only when it is done during many hours every day, which is something that only professional athletes or movie stars can afford to do.
An adequate diet will prevent gaining weight even in a couch potato.
I have verified this in my personal experience, because I have been overweight during many years, despite doing a lot of exercise.
Only after I have altered my diet and I have begun to measure the amounts of everything I eat, I was able to return to an appropriate weight. Now I can increase or decrease my weight at will to reach any desired value, regardless if I also exercise or not.
This is why there exist official recommendations for an adequate daily intake for proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, for anyone to be able to plan a diet that does not lead to starvation.
Experiments on humans are difficult, so it is not known with accuracy which are the best daily intakes. For example some believe that a daily intake of 0.8 g of proteins per kg is enough, while others believe that a daily intake of 1.2 g/kg would be better.
Even when choosing the maximum daily intakes for all essential nutrients that anyone believes to be adequate, the corresponding energy intake is much less than needed by a human.
So the control of the weight can be done by adjusting only the daily intake of carbohydrates and/or fat that are eaten additionally to a diet that is complete for the other nutrients.
When the daily intake of energy is less than necessary for maintaining the current body weight, one will be hungry all the time, but with an adequate diet there is no starvation that could cause health issues.
Just skipping over meals, without a plan of how to ensure that you eat enough of what matters, could cause real starvation and health issues.
Obesity is an epidemic in the US.[1] A direct and practical culture-change about food consumption is urgently needed.
Overeating is generally encouraged socially and in advertising. People are literally crippling themselves with fat.
Once the overconsumption of calories is corrected, a person can start exercising to achieve all the benefits of regular activity.
If you just diet but at not active or sleeping well or are stressed, you are not necessarily leading to a long and healthy life. Perhaps weight loss, but not the stated goal of a long and healthy life.
Moderate exercise + perfect diet VS lots of exercise and junk diet ?
imho diet is as important as the rest, you can't be healthy eating mcdonalds everyday no matter how much you lift.
What I’m saying is that if you are thoughtful about exercise, sleep, and stress, then you will be paying attention to your mood and energy level. And thus you will notice that eating junk food has detrimental effects on your mood and energy level.
People tend to follow diets blindly, and sometimes pure weightlifting routines, but rarely do people blithely exercise, manage sleep, and track stress without increased awareness of what effect diet has on them.
I’ll ask in return: let’s say you have a great diet and do yoga twice a week, but you are constantly sleep deprived and high cortisol from stress, does that lead to a long and healthy life?
Are you saying that nutrition scientists should ignore diet, and concentrate on the random things in other fields that you find important?
And eating properly...
Very easy to say “but I was so busy” and not do it, but sticking to a consistent schedule is how the habit (exercise) forms.
Examples I see all the time: excessive phone time (all activities there), stuffing too many things into one day and subsequently completing only a small portion of those things, distractions at work (non-work web sites), etc.
There are good reasons to use your phone, have a big to-do list, and etc. But it's also easier than you think to schedule 45 mins into your day to power through a fitness activity.
I personally think running/jogging is a top activity in terms of value for your time. Burns calories, improves cardio, the list goes on...