[Milank]

There is no one-size-fits-all.

Human body is a complex system, with so many twists and turns. The more dramatic diet you are trying to introduce, the more careful you have to be.

There is no quick and easy solution, do the fasting thing and you'll lose weight in 10 days and then you can eat whatever you want. No. It's about the choices you make every day, it's about lifestyle. Eat healthy (most of the time), sleep well, rest, exercise, manage stress.. and you should be fine.

[shapefrog]

> There is no one-size-fits-all.

> The one-size-fits-all solution: Eat healthy (most of the time), sleep well, rest, exercise, manage stress..

[Milank]

Yeah, I sounded a bit like life coaches do these days. Wasn't my intention. Sorry about that.

[horstmeyer]

Yes, to some degree. But what people do when their dogs get too fat? They reduce the amount of food they give them, and after a while their weight goes down. There are many factors like stress, microbiome and sleep, but in the end it still boils down to calories in calories out.

[BlargMcLarg]

People do all that and still end up fat due to how unquantifiable 'healthy' and 'well' are, among others.

There is also nothing dramatic about not eating for most of the day unless you're a growing child.

[turing_complete]

People like to point to the edge cases, even though it is not helpful for 99% of the population. Let's be real: Almost no one ends up fat, if they are not eating badly (i.e. too much).

[aulin]

> almost no one ends up fat, if they are not eating badly

sure... as there is not any obesity and diabetes epidemic caused by 50+ years of wrong nutritional guidelines.

[culturestate]

> as there is not any obesity and diabetes epidemic caused by 50+ years of wrong nutritional guidelines

Which guideline(s), specifically, do you take issue with?

[aulin]

USDA Dietary Guidelines, but it's similar in most western countries (overrepresented carbs, saturated fat demonization)

[Milank]

There are some health conditions that require people to eat less, but more frequently.

I'm not against fasting, to be clear, it's all about what works best for you. And it's up to you to find out what it is.

[fjabre]

Actually for me fasting was quick and easy. I lost most of the weight within weeks and months. Fasting is much more powerful than your comment would indicate.

[asdff]

Theres a rate of fasting thats harmful though. On the TV show Alone, people are out in the woods for a few weeks to months and they end up just sloughing off weight. One contestant lost 86 pounds in 67 days, you'd practically see it fall off you each day. They do have to get medical checkups because losing all this weight too fast can put a lot of strain on your organs. A few people have been forced to leave the show because of starvation.

[aulin]

As someone who suffered from insomnia for most of his adult life, I honestly hate when people include "sleep well" in lifestyle choices. As it's something you can easily, or at all, control. On the plus side, diet specifically low carb diet finally cured it for me.

[Ensorceled]

I get frustrated when people demand a special carve out for their situation in general advice. I mean, I guess they should have written:

Eat healthy (most of the time, unless you are in experiencing food scarcity, sorry), sleep well (unless you have insomnia, then try your best), rest (unless you have small children, then good luck), exercise (unless you have long COVID, there seems to be a trigger effect from exercise), manage stress (unless you are in a war-torn region, then I'm sending my prayers) .. and you should be fine (or your best you if fine isn't possible).

Which seems much less pithy ...

[notyourday]

People over self-diagnose insomnia instead of addressing lifestyle choices:

https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/

[aulin]

Sure I'm probably biased but I believe sleep quality is a little more difficult to control than the other points you listed. I can't even fathom consciously having bad sleep habits and not fixing them given how disrupting insomnia has been for me.

[Ensorceled]

> I believe sleep quality is a little more difficult to control than the other points you listed

More difficult than food scarcity or war induced stress? Really?

[aulin]

those were exaggerated extremes he included to make a point... (straw man?)

[Ensorceled]

Well, I'm the author of both :-)

Honestly, my wife has insomnia and it is not only difficult to manage but it interacts with all the other issues: increases stress, makes eating healthy difficult (reduction of will power) and exercise is harder to recover from.

[nerdponx]

I'm sure it's frustrating to hear over and over again. But generalized advice doesn't and can't apply to everyone. Many people have extremely poor habits around sleep, and don't appreciate or dismiss the importance of it.

Maybe there's some underlying pathology in more cases than you will ever see acknowledged in traditional medical research (e.g. person is mildly addicted to being on a computer screen, or person has breathing problems that make it hard to sleep soundly). But that still doesn't make it bad advice on average and in general!