[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.