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On the one hand, you have people who are not trying to sell you anything telling you the simple (but difficult) truth:

Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight.

On the other hand you have people who are trying to sell you something tell you all manner of complicated ways of losing weight that basically amount to being what overweight people want to hear.

In this case, you have a company called Fitocracy telling you:

Willpower will not bring you success.

It's a great statement that absolves overweight people of much of their responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. Fitocracy should sell well with this technique.

[dicktalens]

I'm just gonna copypasta the end of the article here, since you seemed to angry to actually read (not skim) past the title. ____________________________________________________________________________________

At this point, I know what some people are thinking. “Well, Dick. If you’re so smart and it’s not about willpower, I guess no one is at fault for being fat then, huh?”

On the contrary. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in my decade of talking to thousands of people between forums, clients, Fitocracy, and real life, it’s that people are responsible for their own failures. Most times, it is their fault. But it’s not for the reasons that most people think. Most don’t fail because they didn’t eat less or move more.

They failed because they could not see beyond the oversimplification of “eat less, move more.”

Many times, this is a problem of hubris; they failed to be curious, introspective, and mindful. These people also beat themselves up for all of their past failures, not realizing those plans had them doomed for the start.

The Biggest Loser will have you believe that fitness success is about being tough, being hardcore – dangerously hardcore. In fact, it’s about the exact opposite.

Fitness success is about humility – realizing you cannot reduce one of the world’s most challenging problems to “eat less, move more,” and then seeking out the knowledge to improve yourself. Success also requires compassion – forgiving yourself for past failures so that you can try again.

Those things are the exact opposite of being “hardcore.”

That’s the ultimate irony. It’s why people are ultimately responsible for their failures – not because they failed to shrink their waist, but because they failed to expand their horizons." ____________________________________________________________________

Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013

[xiaoma]

>Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013

It isn't constructive to add this kind of barb to the end of your comment. From the top of the HN commenting guidlines:

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[dicktalens]

Let's be honest. HN comments are the cesspool of the Internet, and really, if someone isn't going to read the article IDGAF. :v

HTH! ^_^

p.s. I suspect you're mad about the cardio comment. Let's not try to sugar coat the fact that science suggests your "feelings" are wrong, ty.

p.p.s – would say this all to anyone's face. good luck with your suggestion of 1 hr of cardio/day to people new to fitness... lmk how that pans out!

[xiaoma]

I'm not angry, but I have noticed you have a certain axe to grind and that you have a tendency to cherry-pick citations to support it, make sweeping comments that go against the bulk of current research and that you're extremely hostile to those who disagree with you. I was only reminding you of the guidelines since belligerence wins over nobody and makes HN a less pleasant place to be.

>good luck with your suggestion of 1 hr of cardio/day to people new to fitness... lmk how that pans out!

Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were asking in earnest... can only assume you're referring to what I shared earlier on HN—pretty much everyone who joined my high school swim team team made tremendous improvements in their fitness levels. Ditto for sedentary students joining cross-country. It already "panned out" years ago and it was a huge success!

[eaurouge]

Here's the statement I have the biggest problem with:

That’s because willpower is a finite resource. No amount of willpower alone will make you get up every morning to run if you hate running.

You're just making excuses for your potential customers. Your willpower may be finite but you can choose to spend it on the things that matter the most to you. You can also improve your willpower, and you can place yourself in environments where you have to use less willpower to achieve your goals.

So, yes, if you're healthy enough to do it and you want to get up every morning and run, you can build up enough willpower to do it. Period.

I have to admit that after I read that statement, I just skimmed the rest of your article. You can't just make a bunch of fallacious statements earlier in the article then expect a few qualifications in the ending paragraphs to make it all okay.

[jc4p]

I promised myself I wouldn't read the hacker news comments on this because HN comments are always a cesspool of people trying to prove they're smarter than the author of the post, but I just have to respond to this one.

It's very clear that you didn't read the article. Dick, the author, is my best friend and comparing him to a fat apologist is the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

He's a fat-kid-turned-competitive-bodybuilder and has helped a very large amount of people lose a lot of weight by cutting out the crap diets and mentality that try to confuse people into eating less than their TDEE every week. Dick's simplified diets for me and explained to me that fucking up every once in a while is ok, and I went from failing Atkins 2 times to losing 65lb in 8 months, and as I'm writing this I'm currently eating ice cream and waffles.

I understand that the fitness industry has a lot of negative stereotypes around it, for good reason, but please dear god read the article before you try to convince yourself that this person is just like the rest.

[greenyoda]

"HN comments are always a cesspool of people trying to prove they're smarter than the author of the post..."

They frequently are smarter or better-informed. Just because someone writes a post on a blog doesn't mean they're smart or have deep knowledge about their subject matter.

And referring to peoples' comments as a "cesspool" is not particularly civil.

[jacques_chester]

> They frequently are smarter or better-informed.

On the topic of health, diet and fitness, HN is particularly bad. It is a war between favourite self-promoting authors by proxy. Nary a dietitian to be seen. Everyone has their pet secret history and by god they will proselytise it.

[dicktalens]

Listening to HN for fitness advice :: Doing a seminary at a porn convention. :v

[jacques_chester]

Your notorious twitter feed appears to be leaking, sir!

[dicktalens]

Lettuce beef air... Even FCJ has to unite with me against a common enemy – i.e. HN re: naive, uneducated, opinions on fitness.

[xiaoma]

You really should point out that you work for fitocracy when making a comment like this.

[nitrogen]

Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight.

If you put less gasoline in your car, you will produce less pollution. Simple as that. It's just basic conservation of mass. Just don't put as much in at the pump! Easy peasey. Problem solved. Get better mileage and pollute less just by buying less gasoline! Right?

Perhaps instead of focusing on the "moral inferiority" [those are scare quotes, I'm not saying you actually wrote those words] of the obese for their inability to accept basic thermodynamics, we should ask the question of what actually works in the big picture; what will actually produce the motivational or metabolic changes necessary to ensure a positive outcome. Asking what people do who have been thin their whole lives is probably not going to help.

[6d0debc071]

Article is more like: Willpower is a finite resource and you need some sort of motivation to keep going in a fitness regime.

[rdouble]

The article is not the obesity apologetic you'd expect from the title. He's arguing that creating a positive feedback loop is a more powerful motivational tool than willpower. It doesn't seem like you read the article.

[joe_the_user]

absolves overweight people of much of their responsibility...

So our object, scientific explanation for obesity is ... lack of personal responsibility!

I suspect Fitocracy is selling their explanation rather than your "explanation" because at least their explanation seems to offer a rational way of changing the situation rather being a mere gesture blaming people (not to say that their system would work for everyone, everyone's different and some people might even find shame and guilt useful for losing weight - still it's unlikely to be an appealing marketing campaign).

[bchjam]

If it said 'willpower alone ...' I might have disagreed with you, there was definitely a bit of a tone of selling something in the midst of condemning Biggest Loser.

In spite of that, it's true that willpower is a limited resource and if you push too hard you'll burn out (just like with programming but exercise gives you more immediate physical pain and high risk of injury from overuse)