"You can't outrun a donut" has been a truism for decades, and it didnt take this study to figure it out. It is literally true that if you eat a donut, you would have to run for an unreasonable amount of time before you became calorie-neutral again.

However, we still all know those people who talk about how they eat organic vegan toast every morning (or whatever) and are still grossly overweight. Most of us have tried counting calories at some point, only to fail to meet our goal and rebound to the same weight - if not heavier. And at the same time - if exercise doesnt make you skinny, then how come all the skinny people I know exercise?

The answer is this. While various factors influence individuals differently, on the whole, obesity is driven by overall poor physical and mental health.

Bodyfat exists for a reason - to keep us fed during hard times. Modern people eat lots of processed foods which are bad for their overall health. They drink alcohol. They smoke. They dont sleep enough. They don't exercise enough. They dont spend much time outside in sunshine, or enjoying nature. They dont spend much time with friends, and dont have many strong relationships. They often find their lives lack meaning, and are stressed out by work, bills, family obligations, commuting, social media, politics, and all the rest.

All this signals to the body that hard times are coming, so it should pack away as many calories in reserve as possible. So it increases feeling of hunger, increases cravings for calorie-dense foods, and decreased involuntary energy expenditure.

Take an obese person from the city. Put them in a nice villiage in the middle of a forest. Villiage has no electricity - so no electronics, and no lights other than candles after dark. Villiage had no food delivery - all food is hunted or foraged in the forest, or grown as crops or livestock. The villiage gets one newspaper per month about the goings-on of the world, which is delivered via bicycle. The villiagers spend their time ensuring they have enough food, building or repairing their homes, and talking to each other. Once per season, the brewer opens a few barrels of beer for the villiage festival, but otherwise everyone is pretty sober. That obese person will soon be of normal bodyweight. And I think we all intuitively know that.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

However, we still all know those people who talk about how they eat organic vegan toast every morning (or whatever) and are still grossly overweight.

Wait, what? That hasn't been my experience at all. The health nuts are inevitably the ones who are in (at least somewhat) good shape. And people who are obsessively fixated on their diets tend to be much better at calorie counting than folks who don't give a shit.

Take an obese person from the city. Put them in a nice villiage in the middle of a forest.

They'll die, because they don't have any clue how to survive as a domestic farmer. Or they'll get by on a diet that's lackluster at the best of times and starvation-inducing during the lean years. For all the sins of industrial agriculture, the advent of modern fertilizers and farm automation has - quite literally - been a lifesaver for billions of people.

You can definitely wag a finger at the deplorable state of commercialized junk food. But there's no reason we need to live at the edge of civilization just to escape a parade of process sugars and saturated fats. You can stick to refrigerated vegetables and fruits and dried legumes and grains, with modest amounts of meat (if that's your vibe). Cook using oil and salt and sugar to taste, rather than letting some factory or fast food kitchen set the portions for you, and so long as you're not pulling from the Paula Dean cookbook you'll be fine.

This notion that you need to be a hermit in order to be healthy is just another absurdist fad diet. Stress definitely plays a role in eating habits and health issues, but do you know what's stressful af? Living way out in the fucking wilderness without a steady supply of basic necessities.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Wait, what?

My experience is that the healthiest people arent super in the weeds about nutrition. They instead look at their health wholistically. They exercise, sleep well, have fun, and eat real food that they mostly cook themselves. They arent measuring out teaspoons of chia seeds.

They’ll die

It's an established villiage with other existing inhabitants who have been caring for themselves self sufficiently and without trouble for an indefinite period of time, for the sake of this analogy. Also assume they are given additional supplies in lean times when needed.

But there’s no reason we need to live at the edge of civilization

I was making an analogy to illustrate my point about how bodyweight management is a product of a wholisticly healthy lifestyle, rather than a function of a specific diet. I'm not suggesting that everyone actually live in subsistance farming villiages.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They exercise, sleep well, have fun, and eat real food that they mostly cook themselves. They arent measuring out teaspoons of chia seeds.

This reads more like an idealized stereotype than any actual person's life.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Um... okay. Well today I woke up, drank coffee+protein shake, did some chores, lifted weights, then joined my friend at the climbing gym, came home and ate some tacos that I'd meal prepped, then did some more chores in the back yard, and now I'm feeling sleepy, so I'll shower and go to bed soon.

I feel like I'm hitting all the marks.

[–] xep@fedia.io 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Counting calories is inherently inaccurate, since the margin of error for measurement on food labels is 20%. Calories are a unit of heat energy and aren't all that useful for the management of ones diet.

fail to meet our goal and rebound to the same weight - if not heavier

If calorie counting isn't working, and there is a rebound, then perhaps there is something else in our bodies that underlie the condition of being overweight that isn't just how much you eat, which I think you described well in the paragraph after.

rural village scenario

Unfortunately most of us are unable to go live in one of these, but in that scenario you described I do agree that the obese person would get a lot healthier. The removal of all processed foods would have done a lot of good by itself. Better sleep, good circadian rhythms, etc, would all contribute considerably too.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Counting calories is inherently inaccurate

I mean, you arent wrong. But at the same time, you can get a rough estimate and adjust up or down to suit your needs. We don't need six sigma accuracy to figure out that we shouldnt eat 12 donuts.

If calorie counting isn’t working, and there is a rebound

There are a few ways our bodies might adapt and rebound even with calorie restriction. But I was referring to the most common reason why calorie counting fails - which is that it sucks to do, so you stop doing it, and return to your previous eating habits.

rural village scenario

I'm not saying this is a realistic, or even desireable, solution for most people. Just illustrating how we all already intrinsically know that living a wholistically healthy life would lead to a healthy bodyweight (for most people, assuming no significant medical conditions). And so in the lives that we are living, we should aim to live wholistically healthy lives if we want to maintain a healthy bodyweight.