Comment on Open thread, Aug. 17 - Aug. 23, 2015

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:55:02 GMT

No. More precisely: I'm pretty sure I can. I'm pretty sure most alcoholics can't. But they may be able to will themselves to drink no alcohol at all, just as it may be easier to follow a diet like "nothing containing sugar" than one like "no more than 2000 kcal/day".)

I suggest that we should actually care less about whether in some abstract sense we can do these things (exactly what we "can" do will probably depend strongly on the definition of "can"), and more about whether we will. And on that, I think the empirical evidence is pretty good: for many people, just deciding to eat less will probably not result in actually losing weight and keeping it off.

Discuss