The Weight of the Evidence: Diets do not work (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The Weight of the Evidence: Diets do not work (2015)

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9 pointspaulpauper15 comments

Population statistics cannot be applied in order for you to decide what to do with your life because you are an individual.

The article states that 97% of "dieters" fail.

Okay, so too do 97% of people fail to get into Harvard or MIT or Cambridge or Facebook or whatever else. Yet here we are, you're on HN and oh look, loads of us made it, maybe even you.

It saddens me to think that one, even one person, would give up on their dream, simply because they were confronted with a statistic that most will fail. Sure, most will fail.

You want to be most?

This comment completely missed the point. The point is, if you're trying to lose weight (setting aside whether that's a good idea), a diet isn't likely to be effective. Your response is exactly what MLM scams tell people who point out that 95% of their distributors lose money, and it just serves to deflect.

A diet is 100% certain to be effective for losing weight, with the obvious conditions that it must be well conceived (to contain all the necessary nutrients, but less energy than needed for maintaining the current weight) and that it must be followed precisely.

After a weight-losing diet is followed until a desired weight is reached, the diet must be changed to an appropriate weight-maintaining diet.

The parent article is completely stupid, because it formulates the problem wrongly. The reason why a large number of people, after losing weight, gain weight again, is not that diets do not work. The reason is that those people stop following an appropriate diet and they revert to their previous style of eating, which obviously can have only a single consequence, gaining weight again.

So all diets work perfectly and they deterministically cause losing weight, gaining weight or keeping a constant weight. The problem is that most people are not willing to change their eating habits and follow precisely a certain diet.

I have been obese for more than 15 years and I also had the wrong impression that nothing that I do can make me lose weight permanently. Nevertheless, about 15 years ago, I have started for the first time to follow a diet with accuracy. After a year of losing weight continuously I have reached the desired weight and then I have kept it ever since (by never reverting to my previous eating style).

Following accurately any kind of diet is impossible when you just eat randomly until feeling satiated. The only way to follow a diet that works is to measure everything that you eat, either by mass or by volume, and eat only the planned quantities, no more, no less.

If you measure what you eat, any diet you choose will have exactly the desired effect, and you can reach and maintain any weight you want.

Unfortunately, for many people this does not work because they either find it too tedious to measure their food, or they are not willing to stop eating after reaching the planned quantity, or they cannot stop themselves to eat some extra snacks between meals, besides the food that was planned in their diet.

This is a problem of psychology, not of physiology. The diets work perfectly, if, and only if, people are willing to follow them forever.

Obviously, any diet must be adjusted differently for each human, by measuring the weight every day for some time, to find out which are the quantities that ensure losing weight, gaining weight or keeping a constant weight.

The evidence says otherwise. “Even if someone loses weight, they will always need fewer calories and need to exercise more,” says Skinner. “So we’re putting people through something we know will probably not be successful anyway. Who knows what we’re doing to their metabolisms.”

Well yes they will need to eat fewer calories to prevent themselves from gaining even more weight. If they're eating too many chocolate bars and soft drinks then yes they may need to eat less of those.

For me, I've never understood dieting, I'm not going to be dieting for the rest of my life, so why would I do it now? How about I just be conscious of the foods I'm eating, exercise more and eat less junk and focus on cooking my own meals. A lot of people don't actually realise the caloric density of the foods they're eating.

If you have a desk job you need to do some form of consistent exercise. Doesn't have to be lots, doesn't have to be overly intensive. But if you don't and you also eat too many high calorie foods you will gain and continue to gain weight.

You don't need to diet precisely because your body and hunger mechanisms are calibrated properly, and yet you somehow twist that around into disparaging people who don't have this luxury.

It's trivial to retrospectively say "oh I've never had this problem because X Y Z" and gain leverage over people who do, but it's naive at best and malicious at worst to assume that people struggling with weight aren't aware or trying the very same thing.

To me it just reads as more just world fallacy bullshit.

I disagree, perhaps I was a little too blunt in my response. But while I am a fairly active person, I still do gain weight if I find myself eating too much junk or if I've been lax on exercising. Especially after starting an office job.

The problem I see (from my small world) is that some people when they go into "diet mode" they go to extremes. They start counting calories, eating super healthy food that they wouldn't normally eat and in fact don't really enjoy. They might even start exercising a lot more than normal which makes then even hungrier, especially if they're also trying to cut calories.

To me, people shouldn't be dieting, unless they have an intolerance to a particular type of food or have diseases such as Diabetes. Otherwise, the best "diet" is everything in moderation, but the majority of which should be wholefoods. You should be maintaining a slight calorie deficit, of which can be adjusted based on your life circumstances. But cutting gluten, cutting sugar, going keto, going paleo, cutting fat, these type of restricted diets are unsustainable.

I agree that losing weight is really hard and keeping it off requires you to maintain a combination of eating a suitable amount of calories, in line with the amount of exercise you do. Even having the odd dessert a few too many times a week can throw off the scales over time. I'm not saying that people aren't trying, but I do think many people try too hard in a way that is unsustainable, where they bite off more than they can chew.

Having said all of this, there are absolutely going to be edge cases where people's bodies whether genetically or otherwise make it more challenging for them to lose weight. For that, then only certain interventions will work. Otherwise, most of us aren't an edge case.

> The evidence says otherwise. “Even if someone loses weight, they will always need fewer calories and need to exercise more,” says Skinner. “So we’re putting people through something we know will probably not be successful anyway. Who knows what we’re doing to their metabolisms.”

There has been evidence of previously morbidly obese people having a severe metabolic impact, where they need to consume around 500 kcal less a day than someone with their body composition who had not been morbidly obese. This is observed to be independent of appetite - it is not uncommon for people who have lost large amounts of weight to constantly have to eat smaller portions while closely monitoring their intake (count calories) to keep weight off long-term.

The last I read about this (three years ago?), there were investigations into how techniques like intermittent fasting might impact this.

This is IMHO a general problem with the weight loss industry and weight loss oversimplicications like 'calories in, calories out' - we aren't simple furnaces, and there are endocrinological factors that are very important that such simplifications have caused us to ignore.

The most obvious evidence I can point to here is around bariatric surgery for morbidly obese patients. There are many temporary and permanent solutions (e.g. folds, inserting balloons, etc), but generally only the permanent removal of stomach tissue has been shown to have permanent weight loss impact. This has led to additional study on the impact that the hormone ghrelin, produced by the stomach tissue itself, has on appetite, energy storage, insulin sensitivity, etc.

Diets do work, but you have to pick the right one for your situation. You need to understand why it works, and actually stick to it. If you have other sources of stress in your life that could knock you off your path, try to fix them! No aspect of your life is entirely unrelated to another.

I don't know if this will work for you, but here's my experience:

I started on the Atkins diet in 2009 and lost 45 lbs. I was taking my second semester of biochemistry at university at the time, and I discovered the work of Dr. Robert Lusting, and his now-famous "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" lecture at UCSF on YouTube. Then I brought back carbs but decided on principle to refuse to eat anything containing even trace amounts of fructose ever again. I read every label and vet every restaurant before I trust their food. I only eat once a day, and it is always dinner.

I have not had even a slice of birthday cake made with sugar! I was on a flight earlier this year, and they gave me a tonic water instead of a sparkling water. The taste of sugar was awful and I spit it out involuntarily.

I think my rule works because fructose is still by far the biggest problem with processed food. Fructose makes you hungrier than you should be because it messes with hormones that regulate appetite. Pot gives me the munchies while also robbing me of clarity, and alcohol is directly fattening, so I try my best to avoid those things as well.

I have never regained those 45 lbs after shedding them. I am now 42 years old.

I just wanted to remark that if you are physically active, you may want to look into a more Targeted Ketogenic Diet (TKD) regimen.

Simplifying, you have more carbohydrates specifically to fuel a workout and recovery, and you have them around your actual activity.

You can also have natural fructose here if you like, and indeed you may find a mix of glucose and fructose this gives you additional energy or additional aid in recovery due to the differences in transport/uptake.

Old timers were right. Salads before meals fight the buldge. I've lost 15 pounds in 2 months working a stand up job. It is easier than you think. But it is hard as hell to lose weight if you do no physical activity. Mastering my tounge will save my life. Working on a terminal all day does a number on us. Perhaps walking would help computer workers. At food retail I probably walk several miles a day. I've never felt better than I do now at 45.

Ideally you give yourself a higher metabolic rate by e.g. building muscle, incorporating some sort of "required" exercise e.g. cycling to work, N days per week at the gym, whatever.

If you don't, then caloric deficit (or even maintenance) is so much harder because you may end up having to eat tiny amounts.

You're not going to change your metabolism much by building muscle. You really have to eat less or do a significant amount of cardio if you want to lose weight.

"Much" is kind of meaningless here. If you increase your BMR by 100 calories a day that's huge because losses or gains are made at the margins.

My main point is that you need something that's not optional. If you cycle to work once a week that might be a 300 calorie deficit and it's not some sort of task you can "fall behind on", it's an integrated part of your routine now that you'd have to deliberately not do.

The specific example doesn't really matter, more just that it's not some fad "I'll make myself suffer at the weekend on the treadmill" or whatever.

Metabolism has to increase to incorporate a new source of load in daily life. When I started my job my feet were in constant pain but now I can stand for 7 hours with ease and I can stoop, kneel, lift with relative ease. That is just with 2 months from going from slug to lug. It takes too much discipline to hold an excercise routine for me but this new job is the right amount of activity without too much skelital stress.

But if people drink monster drinks and eat candy bars while doing all this, it won't make much difference. I still eat candy. I guess I just don't plan on doing it daily.

Pardon the spelling, I'm using a browser without a spell check.

“You get fit in the gym and lose weight in the kitchen.”

Ample studies demonstrate that reducing caloric intake results in weight loss.

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