re: Gary Taubes: ‘Obesity isn’t a calorie problem, it’s a hormone problem’

You can’t jumpstart your metabolism and what you eat makes zero difference for weight loss. It might make it easier to adhere to a particular WOE, but you can eat McDonald’s fries and slurpies and lose weight, you would be unhealthy and feel like shite, but you could lose weight. No diet is superior to any other in terms of weight loss, only which WOE a person can adhere to.

And with that I’m out. Arguing weight loss is worse than religion or politics. I think we agree on about 75% of this.

Look...this isn't very hard. People eat like slobs in the present day much more than they did 30 years ago. Fast food options have become more and more prevalent as has junk food. People also aren't as active as they used to be. The current generation of children for instance probably spend more time indoors than any other generation that has come before them. What are they doing indoors? They're watching Netflix on their parents' Smart TV or playing League of Legends on the computer. Older adults aren't exempt from this newfound behavior either. My mom sits on the couch all day playing on her iPad while dad sits in the computer room staring at a computer screen all day.

Combine all of that and you have some overweight and obese people.

1500 calories of Ice Cream and 1500 calories of lettuce are the same thing. 1500 calories. Its not a hard concept

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1500 calories of Ice Cream and 1500 calories of lettuce are the same thing. 1500 calories. Its not a hard concept

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I'm mostly on your side, a calorie is a calorie and reducing your calorie intake means losing weight. But the way your body handles both of those foods biochemically is different.

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But the way your body handles both of those foods biochemically is different.

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Dude, the CICO people have obesity blinders on. They would cut off their nose to spite their face. All they care to discuss is weight loss absent the larger, overall health picture. Sure, consuming nothing but ice cream, in a caloric deficit, may indeed lead to weight loss. It will also lead to malnutrition and other health problems. But the CICO people are fine with that. They will trade obesity for any host of other health problems because they refuse to look at the larger picture. As humans, the food you shove down your throat on a daily basis plays a bigger role than anything else in your overall health and wellness.

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Taubes is a hack

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lol I told you that for years and you argued against it, glad to see you've changed your mind

Most of our ancestors in the south ate a steady diet of fried food, usually in lard. Of course they did manual farm labor 10-12 hours a day too.

The average lifespan in 1900 was about 40. Its now about 75. I know that modern healthcare has driven this number, but people act like our forefathers were some superhuman species because they didn’t have Macdonald’s and ice cream. Paleo man ate a paleo diet, he lived about 28 years.

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Pretty sure people who eat 3000 calories a day weigh more than those who eat 1500 calories a day.

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Or as my dad used to say, "No one ever gained weight in a lifeboat."

At the end of the day, the answer is calories. Are you going to lose more weight if you eat whole foods instead of junk, yes, but it ultimately still comes down to calories.

Whole foods are more difficult to digest and your body expends more calories to digest them. It can take up to 30% of the calories in protein to digest it, so you get this extra benefit by eating protein that not only is it extra satiating, your body has to work harder.

At the end of the day though, even though you don't see that process, it is still calories in calories out, but eating whole foods can optimize that process even further.

At the end of the day though, if someone ONLY focused on staying in a calorie deficit instead of carefully choosing foods, they would lose weight. People get so far away from this idea that they end up fricking up. A nutrition label calorie deficit is 90% of the battle. The last 10% of that is if you want to optimize that and get into macros and calm down on processed foods.