[mirceal]

The weight loss is not really what matters. anybody can lose weight. with a little education you can do it. the problem is doing it in a sustainable way and to actually keep it off.

the hardest part about weight loss is keeping it off. you have limited will power and unless you are willing to change the way you live your efforts are in vain. Sure it may make you feel good about yourself and your journey but it's doomed to fail.

i'm going to repeat this: if you are not willing to adjust your lifestyle and consistently make the better choices when it comes to diet you will fail.

also, weight loss in 90% kitchen, 10% gym. Do go to the gym, but if you are eating unhealthy it's not going to matter.

LE: while we're on this subject. If there is one thing you can do today that will have a positive impact on you for the rest of your life is to stop eating sugar and refined carbs. If you only do one change to how you eat and you do this, in the long run, you'll be most successful than 95% of "dieters". Also keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

[Negitivefrags]

The hardest part of dieting is realising that in order to keep it off, you will have to continue like that forever.

In the back of your mind, you want to think that the diet is temporary. Once you have lost the weight, you can go back to eating all the great tasting foods that you ate before.

True success is the acceptance that, no, your life will be worse in very real ways. You will no longer be able to just eat whenever you feel like it. You will no longer be able to eat until you are full, ever again. And you have to accept that this trade-off is worth it.

[taneq]

The biggest scam the weight loss industry ever pulled on society was to redefine "diet" from "a description of what you eat" to "a temporary modification to what you're eating".

You don't "go on a diet", you HAVE a diet. And if your diet is what is making you fat, then to not be fat, you have to change your diet, permanently.

[thepete2]

In German, they're still separate words, I think "diet" made its way into German and became "Diät".

[pluma]

Ironically, the wages of government representatives are also called "diets" in German. I'd say "diet" for "Ernährung" just fell out of use at some point and was reintroduced when diet fads became a thing.

[gaius]

The Vietnamese parliament is called the Diet but I don’t think it’s etymologically related.

[sshine]

In Danish there's both "en diæt" (what you eat, permanent) and "på diæt" (on a diet, temporary).

I didn't even think about the fact that that word didn't always have the temporary meaning of the word.

[hvidgaard]

The meaning is more fluent. The doctor can put you on a strict diet with a mealplan "lægen har sat mig på en streng diæt med kostplan og det hele", that isn't necessarily temporary.

[MindTwister]

There is also "slankekur" which more or less translates to "slimming-cure"

[chongli]

True success is the acceptance that, no, your life will be worse in very real ways. You will no longer be able to just eat whenever you feel like it. You will no longer be able to eat until you are full, ever again.

None of these things are true. With a good diet and exercise, you will feel better and be happier, with way more energy. That makes your life better, not worse.

As another commenter mentioned, abstaining from sweets increases your sensitivity to sweetness. If you go long enough, you'll find most candy cloying rather than addictive. So throw away those cheap, mass market candy bars. By some expensive dark chocolate candy from a reputable chocolatier. Eat one piece instead of a whole bunch and just take your time to enjoy the flavours. It is sooooo much better!

The way I see people (including myself at times) eat candy bars and potato chips bears more resemblance to a starving dog than a human who really enjoys good food. Stop being a dog! Take your time and enjoy something really good instead of swallowing a whole bunch of junk in front of Netflix.

[Negitivefrags]

> None of these things are true. With a good diet and exercise, you will feel better and be happier, with way more energy. That makes your life better, not worse.

I never said your life won’t be better overall. I said it will be worse in real ways.

Eating pizza, Soda and so on are awesome. There is a reason these foods are popular. No amount of pretending is going to make that not true, and a life where you could eat them with no downsides would be better.

[john61]

> Eating pizza, Soda and so on are awesome

It depends what you are used to eat. A few years ago I would have agreed that pizza and Soda is great. But today after changing my live style I cook for myself fresh vegetables from CSA and small bio farms I do not like pizza and all the crap any more. That goes so far that I can not go to restaurants anymore, because 95% of them serve crap for my todays taste.

[pluma]

> That goes so far that I can not go to restaurants anymore

I would call that a direct impact to quality of life (if only because you're missing out on the social experience), which is the exact point the GP made.

[john61]

There are some restaurants with high quality food. And I enjoy them. After all my quality of live is way better than before. My social experience improved because I met interesting people with the same interest / taste at my local Foodcoop for example.

[KozmoNau7]

Pizza is only crap, if you eat crap pizza.

Making good pizza at home, with high quality ingredients is maybe not 100% perfect nutrition, but it is damn good, and much better than anything you'd buy from a pizzeria or (heavens forbid) frozen pizza.

Soda is junk, though. Only fit for extremely occasional use as a mixer in a good drink.

[kstenerud]

I moved off those a few years ago. It was painful for a year and a half. Now I can't even eat them anymore; they taste vile. It was the salt and sugar that made them addictive, but now that I'm off them, I can finally taste the rest of the ingredients that went into them, and they taste terrible.

[coldtea]

>Eating pizza, Soda and so on are awesome

In a teenage-like definition of awesome.

[hvidgaard]

You're completely neglecting that sugar is addictive. No matter how sensitive to sweetness you are, the very moment you eat anything sweet, you will need something that is either more sweet next time to get the same chemical "fix" in your brain, or you will need to abstain from sweet stuff until your palate and brain have reset.

So even when you cut back on sweet stuff, you will need to continually and consciously hold back, otherwise you will crave it more and your palate will desensitize to the sweet flavor - this is simple biology that no one can escape (except for rare medical conditions).

[mirceal]

stop being a dog :| unless it's in another context where dog-like qualities are appreciated ;)

[thepete2]

What's great though is that your body adapts. If you abstain from sweets for example, after a week or so fruit will taste much sweeter.

[tvmalsv]

Very true. A few years ago I quit drinking sodas and switched to sugar-free flavorings (eg. Crystal Light, Mio, etc). After a year or so I ordered a Mt. Dew, my previous vice, while at a restaurant and it tasted like pure sugar syrup. Mind you, I got used to quickly ;)

[atom-morgan]

> You will no longer be able to eat until you are full, ever again.

Wrong. I just ate and I'm very full. I could even fuck off and eat like shit more often than I do but I choose not to. I'm 6'0" about ~175lbs/80kg.

And yet I often have people approach me in the gym to ask questions, advice, etc: https://www.instagram.com/adamjmorgan/. It's possible to eat until you're full and still look good.

-Signed, former chubby kid.

[Negitivefrags]

It’s great that your body is in a place where you are able to do that, but let me ask you something.

Have you ever been more than 130kg?

I have, and getting down to being no longer overweight requires a substantial mindset change.

It’s extremely unhelpful to talk to people who have been as large as I have about how you can eat how you want and still feel full.

Maybe you can lose the weight and still few full, but it’s just not realistic to paint that picture because all you are doing is undermining the reality of long term change.

[borski]

I’ve been 118kg, and I’m 5’9’’.

I started a keto diet 3 months ago and have lost 33 lbs. here’s the interesting part: I definitely feel full when I eat now, because fat and protein are just that much more satiating. It takes less food to make me feel full. Provided it’s high in fat.

[quicklime]

The article references a few studies that conclude that there is "no significant difference" between a low carb and a low fat diet. It also suggests that whether a keto (or any other) diet will work is an individual thing:

> In this regard, saying that “diet X is the best way to lose weight” is probably not a globally-correct statement given the evidence so far. Instead, it should be the much less interesting: “no diet performs meaningfully better on average, but there exists some diet that is the best way to lose weight for you.”

This matches up with my experience. I know a lot of people like yourself who swear by a low-carb/keto diet, whereas I find I have no problem maintaining a healthy weight (BMI=22) with a fairly high-carb diet with a lot of rice, noodles, pasta, oats and bread. I actually feel very unsatiated when I'm just eating meat/vegetables alone.

I love to eat, and once or twice a week I'll literally eat until my stomach physically hurts (and I do mean literally, kind of like how some people feel after a Thanksgiving dinner). I exercise, but not a lot - probably 3-4 hours a week. I'm not saying this to brag, or to make overweight people feel bad (I'm sorry if I do), but just to give some anaecdata to balance out what the keto people are saying.

One thing that I should mention is that I don't really eat much sugar, apart from fruit, and sports drinks and energy bars when I'm doing long bike rides. I just don't enjoy the taste of soft drinks (I almost exclusively drink water, and sometimes coffee or tea), or most heavily processed foods (most of my meals are home cooked, or at non-fast-food restaurants). I also find the sauces that most restaurants slather on food to be overpowering and over-sugared, so I don't eat a lot of that either (although this seems to be a US-only problem).

[borski]

I am not saying anything about the diet being successful or not for you. It is, I agree, an individual thing.

I am saying that, in general, fat is more satiating than carbs. And, in addition, that that applies to everyone, not just people who have never been “their size” as parent puts it.

[barry-cotter]

I’m happy for you that you can eat whatever you want and not put on weight, or put on very little. My wife is the same. I’m not. I lost over 10kg for our wedding and put it on again quickly thereafter. Everybody has a set point weight that their body will naturally return to. This isn’t to deny exercise or changes in diet or environment can’t make lasting changes. Americans who move to Shanghai lose weight because the portions are smaller and you don’t need a car, you can take public transport and walk. I weigh about as much now as I did five years ago but substantially more of it is muscle because I go to the gym. But if I stop my weight will stay about the same and my body fat percentage will go way up.

Your set point will determine what happens to you with no willpower or discipline. It also effects achievable goals. Most men could look like the Rock given his fitness regimen, diet and “supplements” routine.

But your fat set point is no more under your control than your extraversion or conscientiousness one. The expression can change, the phenotype, just like I could start a conversation with anyone when I did sales and I’m now more nervous, or like the age related increase in conscientiousness but the genotype doesn’t.

In an obesigenic environment some people will still always be skinny. If that’s you great. It’s not everyone.

[atom-morgan]

> I’m happy for you that you can eat whatever you want and not put on weight

I never said that.

I'm very meticulous about my diet and I'd say I'm more disciplined about it than 95%+ people. For that I can "even fuck off and eat like shit more often than I do".

[barry-cotter]

Forgive me for having misinterpreted you. If that’s your position I don’t see much daylight between your position and the person you were originally responding to though. You have a diet to which you stick not quite religiously. They say you need to stick to a diet religiously to lose weight and keep it off. The difference between your respective positions seems nugatory.

[atom-morgan]

I said the exact opposite actually. I stick to my diet religiously. That's why I believe I'm more disciplined than 95% of people and why I have the freedom to deviate occasionally if I wanted to to eat junk food.

[ksec]

>Wrong. I just ate and I'm very full.

May be some people aren't easily "full" as you do. I have big stomach and I eat a lot. Most of friends don't quite understand how I stomach 3.5Kg of beef ( Raw, more like 2.5Kg cooked )in two hours, along with meshed potatoes and all sort of other things.

I now eat and stop. I changed my diet and I am never really full again, I know I wont be hungry, but I am definitely not full.

[nonbel]

>"You will no longer be able to eat until you are full, ever again"

This is totally false. Just eat a low-carb diet and you will feel "full" after consuming much less food.

[erik_seaberg]

Protein has as many calories as carbohydrate, and fat has even more. To feel full you have to stuff yourself with placebos like fiber instead of food.

[nonbel]

It isn't the calories that matter. To feel full your brain needs to receive signals from your body that you should feel full. It appears that carbohydrates mess with these signals so that your brain thinks you are not yet full when you should be. You can easily try it for yourself.

[cthalupa]

>The hardest part of dieting is realising that in order to keep it off, you will have to continue like that forever.

Yes and no. It depends on your goals.

Some form of modification is needed from whatever you did that made you fat in the first place.

Some form of modification is needed from what is currently keeping you fat.

But you could 100% have a diet that is meant to shed weight quickly, and then switch to something to maintain weight. Add in moderate amounts of exercise and you can eat a bit more.

You need a sustainable, long-term, somewhat permanent diet. It doesn't necessarily need to stay the same for forever, because there might be less radical diets for maintaining. This might be a completely different diet than what got you to your target weight.

[ambivalents]

I don't actually think that's true. If you're making positive lifestyle adjustments (and not just going on a flash diet hoping for instantaneous results), then there really isn't a "there" to go back to. You gradually adopt healthier habits, replacing older ones, and they become learned behavior. Your tastes change. Your stomach gets smaller. Not to mention your "set point" average weight will decrease and your body/metabolism adapt to living at a lower weight.

This sounds a little vague, apologies. I've done many diets (paleo, keto, South Beach, etc.) and nothing worked. So instead, over the course of six months I gradually gave up sugar, I gave up meat, I stopped eating snacks between meals. I still ate delicious foods, but in smaller portions. Only sweets I had were fruit. I kept my exercise the same (3-5x/week).

I lost 15 pounds and have kept it off. Have no intention of gaining it back. I can't imagine reincorporating old ways, they are an older me. I cringe at the thought of eating a full pint of ice cream after dinner, which I used to do on a near weekly basis.

Tl;dr: as your body and habits change, so too do your desires and preferences.

[flukus]

> The hardest part of dieting is realising that in order to keep it off, you will have to continue like that forever.

Why would that be? To lose why your are taking a net negative mass balance, once the weight is lost you probably can't go back to the exact diet you had (otherwise you wouldn't need to lose weight) but an mass neutral one should suffice to keep you at the same weight.

[yetihehe]

I've tried mass neutral diet and it didn't work. Somehow my body was able to sustain 105kg on about 1000kcal daily for two weeks. After that, my mind broke and I thought about food like a narcotic, just couldn't continue that diet.

[hnuser1234]

If you are a 300 pound person and want to be a 150 pound person, you have to eat like a 150 pound person. Forever.

[ramblerman]

You are both correct, not sure why OP is downvoted though.

If your caloric requirements are 2400 calories a day. You might eat at a deficit for your diet, say 1700. And after that you can eat 2400 again.

[hnuser1234]

As body mass increases, the caloric intake required to maintain said mass increases. Likewise, as body mass decreases the caloric intake required to maintain said mass decreases. Fat people need to eat like the not-fat version of themselves in order to both lose weight and maintain their new mass. If "balance" is 2400 calories for their fat body, resuming eating 2400 calories will lead to them becoming fat again.

[oska]

> The hardest part of dieting is realising that in order to keep it off, you will have to continue like that forever.

I'm going to reverse this. For me, the idea of having to eat what an obese person consumes every day to maintain their weight is an exhausting one. I think it's actually fairly easy to be a normal weight and only consume the amount of food necessary to maintain that weight and much harder to consume the amount of food required to be obese.

[Noumenon72]

I think you're correct assuming you're eating a healthy diet made of stuff like oatmeal, beans, and chicken. It's hard to keep enough of that on hand and hard to fit it all in your stomach.

It's easy to consume 3500 calories in a day in cheese curls or going out to eat ribs.

[kortilla]

Good luck eating 3500 calories of ribs. Easy calories come from carbs so unless you drink the sauce the ribs are glazed with you’re not gonna make it.

[clappski]

2 full racks of ribs will bring you pretty close: https://www.nutritionix.com/i/nutritionix/bbq-ribs-1-rack-12...

[nsxwolf]

No wonder that almost everyone who attempts this is certain to fail, and it will always be so.

[nradov]

The common theme for many people who succeed in losing weight and keeping it off through making a sustained lifestyle change seems to be some form of "hitting bottom" experience. Sort of like the experience that some drug addicts go through before getting sober (although food isn't really addictive in the same way). For some it's a health scare like a heart attack or diabetes diagnosis. For others it's an embarrassing social incident like being unable to fit into an airline seat.

But that's all anecdotal. It wouldn't be practical to codify "hitting bottom" experiences in a clinical study since they're so individualized.

[ImaCake]

>although food isn't really addictive in the same way

While broadly true, specific things such as sugar seem to be addictive in similar ways to drugs.

[atom-morgan]

> if you are not willing to adjust your lifestyle and consistently make the better choices when it comes to diet you will fail.

This statement applies to anything in life you want to get better at.

[Fricken]

If there's a pattern that I've noticed amongst the people in my life who struggle with their weight is that they all have an emotional relationship with food. They eat not to serve their metabolic needs but to serve their emotional needs. They say they are counting their calories, but they aren't being honest with themselves about it. They can't make clear headed diet decisions because their feelings are so wrapped up in the act of eating.

[beaconstudios]

100% this. I've been overweight to varying degrees for most of my life, but my weight has been at its lowest when I'm happy and highest when I have high stress or anxiety. Anxiety especially seems to lead to poor eating because you go into survival mode and stop being able to think long term, while loading up on food as if you were a hunter gatherer about to go through times of extreme food uncertainty.

[mirceal]

yes. people don’t normally see it as getting better at eating. it’s a problem they’re solving.

[ksahin]

You're right! I agree with your "90% kitchen / 10% gym" for weight loss, but to maintain your weight I think the gym is more important than that.

The problem with people doing hardcore diet is that they will lose a high % of muscle, and after their weight loss their basal metabolism will be really low.

The gym itself doesn't burn that many calories, but increases your muscle mass, leading to a much higher basal metabolic rate, which in the long run, help you not to gain fat easily.

[hvidgaard]

If you're not looking at it from the point of view where weight is about the food you eat, and health is about the exercise you get - you're bound to run into trouble at some point.

The only way to control your weight is to control your diet. It doesn't matter what your basal metabolic rate is. Will it play a role? absolutely, but it's not what you adjust to keep your weight in check. If you can manage your weight with a low metabolic rate, you can manage it with a high metabolic rate. Gaining muscle mass will make your body signal for more food, so it can be counter productive if you want to lose fat.

[jammygit]

Disappointing that the 100 studies neglected long term success so much that the author didn't have much to say about it after reading them all

[taurath]

Your comments while I agree with the correctness are incredibly disheartening and demotivating.

[zbentley]

Not as disheartening or demotivating as dieting with a target body shape in mind, achieving it, rejoicing, and being right back where you were before the diet 6 months later.

Source: it me.

[taurath]

Sure. It’s me as well but after 2-3 years.

[lawrenceyan]

When you start eating less, you’re body adapts after consistent dosage, and you will no longer feel as hungry. The OP is wrong, as in the long term you’re quality of life that can be derived from food is no different.

Yes, perhaps in the short term you will experience cravings/withdrawal, but this is temporary.

[fgandiya]

I heard this perspective once.

People struggle getting of cigarettes multiple times even after a year long break. So sure you fail at weightless, but you can try again.

The only issue I have with the view is that losing and gaining weight over and over again can place a toll on your body.

[mirceal]

sorry. it's meant to be motivating.

it's telling you in compressed form what you need to do to be successful