or, more precisely, it’s not just willpower. At SciTechDaily there’s an article about how Stanford researchers have found that weight loss is more complicated than generally assumed:
Strictly following a diet— either healthy low-carb or healthy low-fat — was what mattered for short-term weight loss during the first six months. But people who maintained long-term weight loss for a year ate the same number of calories as those who regained weight or who did not lose weight during the second six months.
Basically,
- The “simple thermodynamics” (weight loss = calories consumed – calories expended) is wrong.
- The same diet doesn’t work equally well for everybody.
- Willpower doesn’t explain the differences, either.
Researchers were able to predict who would maintain their weight loss based on a few “biomarkers”.
It’s always gratifying when they can determine experimentally what you’ve been saying all along.
I might mention that BMI is similarly garbage or, more fairly, it’s a first order approximation at best.
The first law of thermodynamics is fundamental, so the first item on this is absolutely wrong, and if the researchers are claiming otherwise, they are charlatans. Of course, nutrition “science†is saturated with charlatans, so that is expected.
Weigh loss requires a reduction in calorie uptake so that uptake is less than calorie expenditure. Any study that claims otherwise is ipso facto wrong.
The other two items are possible, and maybe even likely. I have a daughter who has struggled with obesity since puberty. Some part of her biochemistry is screwed up. There is likely a problem with the biochemical signals that prompt hunger, perhaps blood sugar.
The Atkins diet works, but it is nearly impossible to sustain. I once did it for the better part of a year, but my wife’s offer of a baked potato ended it forever. (The Atkins food products in the frozen food aisle are truly awful.) A partial Atkins can be sustained, some cheating is necessary. I was able to lose 30 lb by a studious avoidance of pasta, and avoiding meals after lunch, and and I have kept it off for three years.
If the human body were a simple machine you’d be right. But different people can eat the same quantities of the same things and get the same amount of exercise and get different results. That’s because their bodies obtain different amounts of energy from the foods they’re consuming and expend different amounts of energy for the same work.
That doesn’t violate the laws of physics. It just tells us the world isn’t fair. It’s harder for some people to maintain a healthy weight than others. That doesn’t absolve them from the goal.
And there is evidence that once someone gains weight, their metabolism changes to try to maintain that weight – returning to the previous caloric intake doesn’t return the person to the previous weight.
which it would if the “simple thermodynamic” model were correct.