[dabbledash]

I think it would be a meaningful statement if 90% of advice about saving was some variation of “how to save money without making a budget!”

People seem to desperately want some trick to losing weight that isn’t “eat less food.” It won’t be forthcoming. You can’t trick your body into losing weight. We are adapted to scarcity, but food is not scarce.

[zug_zug]

Let's first define "bad advice" and "good advice."

"good advice" - Advice that actually works, and makes the person like you more

"bad advice" - Advice that doesn't help the person and makes the person like you less.

"Eat less food" would fall in the latter category, pretty obviously.

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"Everybody should have infinite self control" is an obscenely naive starting point that erases the whole practical problem. The practical problem is "What habits require the minimum amount of self-control/unpleasantness to get the results I desire"?

[dabbledash]

I think weight loss is an area where giving advice is a bad idea unless it’s specifically asked for. It’s not like it’s hard to figure out what to do, it’s just incredibly difficult to do it.

If I were asked, i’d say that all diets that produce a calorie deficit are similarly effective and to try different things until you hit on the plan you can see yourself following for the rest of your life (at maintenance calories). Lots of people lose weight, maintaining is the biggest challenge.

[zug_zug]

I do think it can be hard to figure out what to do though -- e.g. diet soda says 0 calories, but does it mess with your metabolism? (research is undecided). Personally I've done keto and found it less effort than working out every day. Some people don't understand that 10 chinups burns comparable calories to walking up the stairs. Also muscle weighs more than fat, so scales may be a fairly bad measurement.

[dabbledash]

That’s true. I remember being so surprised when I found out how few calories I burned running a mile! There are other reasons to exercise obviously, but it’s easy to overestimate how important it will be to weight loss for sure.