| It very certainly is. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. However, as most people do not count their calories (an underrated activity I'd say, it makes weight control trivially simple if you can keep it up) what's more important is how much your food and activities makes you eat in relation to what you need. This is what makes exercise not as obvious as a solution. If you move more, you will generally want to eat more. The function of diets is to have the opposite effect, by eating certain kinds of foods you can trick your body into feeling satiated on a calorie deficit. Generally this happens for instance when you make restrictions on your diet, like eating a limited amount of fat or a limited amount of carbohydrates. Some foods are designed to be tasty and make you eat more, sometimes your body won't compensate for that and you get on a calorie excess. Processed food and snacks are often in this category. By eating less of those, and more of whole foods you often will naturally reduce your calorie intake. Using less added sugar and fat is often helpful as well. Going into details of how the body manages your calorie intake like your digestive system and the insulin system is interesting in itself, but it's usually not very relevant for adjusting your diet. This is because the way these affect your body is both non-obvious and often not as well known as it might seem. |