This isn't because eating less and exercising more don't make you lose weight (they do). It's because people don't follow the messaging.
Also, aren't Twinkies the exact kind of food that this says makes you obese? How does the Twinkie diet work then?
I think where mainstream nutritional science is going is understanding that people's 'maintenance calories' is insanely hard to calculate for people outside the average. For instance hormones playing a much bigger role, where your calorie range is off from what models will say, so unless you know how to safely find that maintenance and treat your diet like science to find it you're going to constantly be over/under weight.
This science is showing more the combination of extremely fatty and carby food at once has a distinct reaction in our body. Where yes it is 'calories in calories out' but that doesn't mean that our bodies don't have their own agenda in terms of using the calories in for fat stores vs energy for activities. Almost like moving your maintenance calories to a lower number when you're eating mostly heavy fats and heavy carbs while being extremely stressed out has a ton of hormones that screams to your body save as much of this as possible.
If your diet is 30-40% protein and not having refined sugars, you'll feel fuller and won't feel the need for more carbs besides indulgence/treat. You don't need to do this to lose or maintain weight, but look at 300 calories of beef or chicken breast vs 300 calories of bread.
The only problem is cost, if you're not careful you go from a daily cost of 3-5$ in groceries to 10-15$ to eat enough protein. However, means doing bare minimum exercise daily with this diet going over in calories will build muscle, and going under (not going past 400-500 deficit) you can lose fat and gain muscle.
Isn't this a fairly easy problem to solve? Don't you just need to make a reasonable guess, calculate your expected weight change over some time period, then follow the diet to see what actually happens to your weight, and adjust your guess accordingly?
> If your diet is 30-40% protein and not having refined sugars, you'll feel fuller and won't feel the need for more carbs besides indulgence/treat. You don't need to do this to lose or maintain weight, but look at 300 calories of beef or chicken breast vs 300 calories of bread.
Agreed. Eating healthier kinds of food can make it easier to lose weight, by making you not still feel hungry after you've eaten the correct amount of food, and so making it require less self-control to stick to the diet.
It is 'calories in calories out', but you have to actively find what your maintenance calories is over 2 to 3 week periods. So you effectively have to do cycles of cutting and maintenance to maintain an effective loss.
Doing this and keeping 30-40% protein in your meals will have you lose weight doing pretty much anything
Not really, though it needs expanded: Calorie surplus + high carb diet leads (via contributing to or exacerbating various metabolic conditions) more and harder to resolve obesity than the same calorie surplus with other macronutrient composition.
Our dietary guidelines for the last few decades have been largely designed to serve the interests of the food industry and agriculture.
With my previous 2 cats, one pigged out and gained weight but the other cat didn't. Since both were about the same body size (length & height), I decided to measure how much the non-overeater was eating and feed that to both cats every day.
It worked great. What was amazing was how little food they really needed (both were indoor-only). I was feeding them about half of what the bag said to feed them based on their weight.
If the bag says to feed 1 cup per 15 lbs for example, it's a good bet they will gain weight. And the solution according to the bag's guidelines? Feed them 1.25 cups of course, because bigger animals need more food! Sheesh, what a racket...
This, and eating breakfast made a change. If you don't feel like eating breakfast is because you ate too late in the evening and still have food in the system.
Disclaimer: I don't know that the claim that sugar (and similar carbohydrates) are what causes weight gain is true, I'm just saying that this argument has been around for a long time.
