[jumpman500]

> On average, the participants lost 10% of their body weight; reduced their waist circumference by 11% percent; and had lower blood pressure, body mass index, triglycerides, blood sugar levels and insulin resistance.

Any person that loses 10% their body weight through a diet is going to feel much better.

[lenerdenator]

Also, diets, regardless of what they make you eat, also have a habit of forcing you to make better choices regarding what it is you put in your body, meaning fewer foods loaded with ingredients that might not jive with the human neurological system.

[looseyesterday]

I agree, also the act of following a routine or following through on a commitment could all help you make feel better.

[Cthulhu_]

> loaded with ingredients that might not jive with the human neurological system.

This seems... handwavey at best, do you know of any concrete ingredients with proven negative effects on the neurological system or is this pure conjecture?

[0xdada]

Any overweight person. I gained 10% of my bodyweight in the last 6 months and I haven't felt better. (Mostly eating plants though.)

[throwaway22032]

Same here, though through eating meat.

The complex people have around weight I find really strange.

I'd be surprised if most of the mental health effects don't simply follow from the realisation that you are in control of your own weight.

Feeling powerless is pretty shit.

[slowmovintarget]

It's not weight, it's BMI. If you shift your composition to muscle without changing your weight, that's still a dramatic improvement. This is not "a complex." Discussions of "losing weight" are typically short hand for reducing the percentage composition of fat in the body.

If you're obese, changing composition will likely add many health benefits, and very often the overall weight of the person shifting said composition will be lower because they were carrying a lot of fat, and only added a reasonable amount of muscle if they took up exercise.

[jonhohle]

BMI doesn’t take into account muscle, just height. Bodybuilders, for example, usually have a “terrible” BMI and <5% body fat.

[nradov]

True, but the amount of people who are technically "overweight" due to high muscle mass are statistically insignificant. Even most professional athletes are in the normal BMI range; it's only a few sports or positions that rely on power where they tend to be heavier.

[wredue]

BMI is a perfectly fine societal tool. It is a bit less effective individually, but that’s between you are your doctor. If your doctor says your BMI is bad, it ain’t cause you’re a body builder (and for the record, body builders leaving normal BMI also increases their risks of various health problems)

Also, the vast majority of body builders are in “overweight”. Most muscle heavy gym goers should still be in normal BMI, or maybe the low end of overweight at a 10-15% body fat.

[anonporridge]

Waist to height ratio is a better measure for individuals that better measures the real problem of excess visceral fat.

Should optimally be <0.5.

[boringds]

I'd like to understand why, this doesn't sound obvious to me? Unhealthy overweight people, I can picture it, but otherwise? An athlete at 240 lbs might not see any benefit whatsoever for instance. In other cases I can also picture people gaining weight feeling much better under the right circumstances.

All in one weight in itself doesn't mean much in isolation. That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.

[bumby]

I suspect its because health is complicated, but eating less calories correlates with many more healthy outcomes.

>An athlete at 240 lbs

As a contrived example, somebody this big (athlete or not), is probably at an increased risk of sleep apnea. I know of some competitive athletes (with visible abs, no less) that were surprised to learn they have sleep apnea. After a CPAP they felt better. Alternatively, they could probably have lost weight (but no longer be as competitive in their chosen sport.) Some of the risk factors (gender, neck circumference) aren't the typical proxies we use to subjectively assess health as a layperson.

>That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.

This can be true, but it is not generalizable. Last I heard, something like 1% of people with a high BMI would fall into this camp.

[watwut]

> but eating less calories correlates with many more healthy outcomes

Like, at some point, dying, lower heart rate, loosing hair, being cold, your weins collapsing, body eating own muscles.

[jumpman500]

I meant overweight/unhealthy people losing weight would feel better. Totally agree that a heavier athlete wouldn't necessarily feel better with weight loss.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Weight is strongly correlated to risk of cancer, heart disease, etc. and BMI strongly correlates to body-fat percentage. If you are a gym-rat outlier then congrats but that doesn't make BMI useless.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/

[dev1ycan]

I don't know but losing weight and feeling much more agile it just improves your life altogether, waking up is easier, moving around is easier, everything in general just feels "better" plus your mind feels more focused.

[alistairSH]

An athlete isn't going to lose 10% of their body weight through a dietary change - they're already eating pretty well.

I suppose they could lose 10% through caloric restriction, but that wasn't part of this study.

[Decabytes]

Dropping 10lbs reduces weight on joints by 40 lbs. This can contribute towards feeling better

[chrisweekly]

Please explain how 10lbs translates to 40lbs?

[yareal]

Mechanical advantage and impact. Weight is not just a constant force in our joints, and it's not applied evenly. As an example, imagine holding forty pounds at arms length vs wearing it in a backpack or letting it dangle to the floor. The forces on the shoulders from all three are radically different.

Additionally, when you walk or run you don't place only and exactly the force of the weight of your body down. Each foot is loaded with an impact and the forces are distributed up the leg. What your knee experiences is a dynamic and spiky load.

[amit9gupta]

. . . "A weight reduction of 9.8 N (1 kg) was associated with reductions of 40.6 N and 38.7 N in compressive and resultant forces, respectively." . . .

. . . "Our results indicate that each pound of weight lost will result in a 4-fold reduction in the load exerted on the knee per step during daily activities. Accumulated over thousands of steps per day, a reduction of this magnitude would appear to be clinically meaningful. " . . .

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15986358/

[alistairSH]

I assumed it was a typo - 10%. Though the math still doesn't work out for the 40lb reduction of weight on joints.

[shagie]

It's one of the "true but over simplified".

Remember that pounds is a unit of force - not mass.

There's the set of "tech neck" images (example https://www.vital-balance.com/en/tech-neck/ though many more can be found) where it shows what the force on the neck is from the head. At 0°, it's 10-12 lbs of force down. If you've got your head tilted at 45° looking at a phone, the infographic says that its 49 lbs of force on the neck.

[InSteady]

>The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain

>There is increasing evidence that psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder stem from metabolic deficits in the brain, which affect the excitability of neurons, Sethi said. The researchers hypothesize that just as a ketogenic diet improves the rest of the body’s metabolism, it also improves the brain’s metabolism.

I wouldn't be so quick to look for the most reductive/simple answer. Drastic dietary changes can have a huge impact on the microbiome, which can in turn lead to substantial changes in all kind of signaling between the gut and brain (in terms of hormones, immune molecules, neurotransmitter precursors, and much more). There may also be implications for cellular metabolism.

As the quote above touches upon, many mental health disorders may have a component of disruptions to metabolism and energy balancing on the cellular level. Possibly including ADHD, autism, treatment resistant depression, and OCD, in addition to schizophrenia and treatment resistant epilepsy.

[looseyesterday]

I agree, I do also wonder what the role of routine and following through on commitments is. Getting things done alone can make people feel better and more confident.

[kelipso]

Yeah, I think the connection between mental illnesses and physical health is a seriously under researched topic. At least, it's not something that's in popular science anyway.

[dukeyukey]

Is that true for the ~30% of people in the US (higher almost everywhere else) who are not overweight?

[bandyaboot]

I think there’s more to it than that. Ketosis clearly has a strong effect on the brain as evidenced by its effectiveness in treating epilepsy.

[loa_in_]

Also they have just got a free dietician to plan their meals. Planning meals is a thing you spend a bit of time on and you want to get it right, a reasonably stressful doing.

[watwut]

At some point, pretty soon, you are underweight and it sux. Especially when combined with anorexia.

[gwill]

unless they're already at a healthy weight or the diet is crap.

[keybored]

The press release is from Stanford itself. Why would they (Stanford Medicine) fail to factor in correlation/causation?