[edanm]

> EBM is just begging the question. You gain weight when you have a positive energy balance, and you have a positive energy if you eat more than burn. It's trivially true, otherwise you are violating laws of conservation of energy. Therefore, it has no real explanatory power.

That's not true. You can see it's not true by the fact that so many people do in fact dispute consequences of this claim, despite it both being trivially true and proven multiple times in studies with actual humans.

If you eat at a calaoric defict, no matter what you are eating, you will lose weight. That is both undeniable and widely denied, and has lots of explanatory power, because at the end of the day, a correct question to ask about the world is "why are people eating more calories?".

There are certainly other factors which matter, depending on why you are asking the question: if it's for personal weight loss reasons, a good question to ask is "what kind of diet will allow me to eat less calories in the easiest way". If it's to explain the obesity epidemic, the answers are "why are people in general consuming more calories now than they were in the past".

But if you discard the base mechanism by which people are gaining weight, you don't even know what questions to ask.

[davidjytang]

EBM makes it seem that the only thing affecting the weight of human is calorie balance and there will not be any scenario where calorie deficit might not always lead to weight loss.

If water is free of calorie, has weight, affects body in some way, shouldn't that be taken into account?

Weeks of 1000kCal deficit without weight loss might not necessarily mean EBM is wrong. But EBM doesn't explain the phenomenon.

[edanm]

Usually what's looked at is average weight, since you're absolutely right - weight can fluctuate for many other reasons, including amount of water in your body. You can drink a liter of water before weighing yourself and weigh 1 liter more, though obviously that isn't anything we care about.

But if you're running a 1000kCal deficit for weeks, you are going to lose weight. Just think of the limit case - if you normally eat 3000kCal to be at maintenance, then running a 3000kCal deficit will cause you to lose weight quickly, then eventually die for lack of food. Eating at 3000kCal will cause your weight to stay the same. Deficits in between will cause you to lose weight more slowly.

[frankus]

> "what kind of diet will allow me to eat less calories in the easiest way"

I think this is still kind of missing the point about why people think that the EBM is unhelpful.

Intentionally eating fewer calories to lose weight is a little bit like lowering the mains voltage going to your house because the thermostat is stuck at too high of a setting and your house is too hot. In the extreme case it will work (how could it not?) but it's going to cause all sorts of other problems in the meantime.

In the case of diet those other problems take the form of constant intrusive thoughts of eating, irritability, inability to think clearly, feeling cold all the time, and disinterest in any kind of movement/exercise.

And it also (in the mind of the CIM adherents and friends) focuses attention away from the real problem (maybe my thermostat is broken) and toward something that doesn't really have anything to do with the real problem (maybe the voltage that seems to work for everyone else is too high for my heating system).

[edanm]

> I think this is still kind of missing the point about why people think that the EBM is unhelpful.

I don't think it's missing the point so much as disagreeing with the point :)

> Intentionally eating fewer calories to lose weight is a little bit like lowering the mains voltage going to your house because the thermostat is stuck at too high of a setting and your house is too hot. In the extreme case it will work (how could it not?) but it's going to cause all sorts of other problems in the meantime.

So this is why I have a problem with people arguing against the EBM and arguing against carbs (assuming I'm right of course!). It's teaching people a wrong underlying mechanism, that CICO "doesn't work", and that what foods you eat is more important than how much you eat.

What we should be teaching people is that any diet will produce weight loss, assuming it causes them to consume fewer calories. They need to find a diet that works for them and fits their lifestyle, and doesn't cause the above side-effects.

For one person that might be going keto and getting rid of carbs, because that seems to be a fairly "automatic" way of doing things, that causes people not to have hunger, and also not count calories. Great! They should do that.

For other people, getting rid of carbs is simply not something they can do for a sustained time. For them, other options might be better. Finding ways to make less calorically-dense foods, finding more fulfilling or lower-calorie versions of foods they like, etc.

For me personally, when I started my (relatively small) weight-loss journey a year ago, I just did pure calorie counting, which seemed to fit my life the best. I could still eat whatever I wanted, I just had to be smarter about amounts. I also had to learn to sometimes eat more fulfilling foods, otherwise I'd be hungry. It was a great way to learn about how nutrition and hunger work, and it's what I think will help most people.

So many people I ran into were surprised that this worked for me. After all, the only way to lose weight is to stop eating carbs, or so think a huge chunk of the population (including me a year and a half ago!).

> In the case of diet those other problems take the form of constant intrusive thoughts of eating, irritability, inability to think clearly, feeling cold all the time, and disinterest in any kind of movement/exercise.

Yes, just saying "eat less, move more" is definitely not the end of the conversation, because it's hard. You need to learn about foods and nutrition. You need to learn to substitute lower calorie alternatives or have more satiating meals. But you need to understand the underlying mechanism to even get there - if you think it's just about carbs, you're severely limiting your options and understanding.