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Brillyant comments on Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December - Less Wrong Discussion
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BMR won't affect this. My weight, excluding temporary deviations due to illness, has been between 120 and 130 pounds for the last forty years. I only have a detailed record for the last 11 years (4011 days, to be precise), during which I have weighed myself nearly every day. Linear regression on the data gives a gradient of about -0.1 grams per day, or -400 grams over the whole period. However, as the standard deviation of the weight is about 700 grams, this is indistinguishable from zero (as I knew already from eyeballing the graph). In terms of calories, using the usual (but, it seems, not very accurate) estimate of 3500 calories per pound of fat, this is less than 1 calorie per day.
0.1 grams and 1 calorie per day are at least two orders of magnitude smaller that the precision with which you could measure daily diet or exertion.
According to an online BMR estimator based on age, weight, and height, my BMR has declined by 70 calories per day over that time, i.e. 700 times the daily trend in body weight. Add to that the fact that in the first half of the period I was driving somewhat more and cycling somewhat less than in the second half, yet no corresponding change in weight is visible in the graph. (Average weights for the first and second half differ by 0.22 pounds. My scales only have a resolution of 0.2 pounds.)
So it is clear that the factors varying from day to day and year to year completely overwhelm the size of the long-term trend. Yet despite that, the long term trend is effectively zero.
The only type of mechanism that can produce phenomena like this is active regulation. But the regulation is not being performed by "me", i.e. by deliberately chosen actions in response to observing my weight. (It was just as steady before I began daily measurements.) By what, then? I don't think anyone knows the answer to that.
Now, what would happen if I were to eat less? My experience is pretty much the same as what Eliezer has described: I get light-headed with hunger, and great mental and physical efforts become beyond me. I am fortunate enough to have no reason to do so. But I recognise that it is nothing but good fortune, and I am not going to smugly tell anyone else that they just have to pay the price, when the price may be beyond their means, and the price to me is zero. Eliezer's job and vocation is thinking, and if he cannot do that while dropping 100 pounds, then he cannot drop 100 pounds.
The mental and physical effort of many pursuits may be beyond many people...this does not change the reality of what must be done. There is nothing smug about that.
The difficulty of disciplining your diet, like anything else, decreases over time. It's near torture, at first, to deprive yourself of calories you're used to. But it gets easier. I've experienced this and heard the same from many people.
I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on this.
Individual resting metabolism varies quite a bit between individuals. While age plays a factor, my understanding is ~65% has to do with lean muscle mass. (Ergo, it's a great idea to accumulate lean muscle in order that you can burn calories without exerting extra effort. Strength training and protein consumption help.)
IIRC, ~25% of BMR is a big giant mystery, and my assumption is it's genetic differences. This is a significant difference between any 2 people (sometimes 100's of calories per day). So, I'm not saying it will be as easy for any two people to maintain a given weight. In fact, it will X% harder for some people—leading them to need to devote that much more time, effort and resource just to keep up with other people who are more fortunate in this way.
And so again, how is this different than anything in life? If I want to excel at math, I would need to devote X% more time, effort, resource than other people who are fortunate in this area. It would require great mental and physical effort for me. Same if I want to excel at long distance running. Or chess. Or ventriloquism. I'd be predisposed to success in some pursuits and at a deficit in others.
If your body has a high weight setpoint because you have a virus infection, then curing that virus infection to lower that setpoint might be a more viable strategy then trying to starve your body.
If that's true why do you think we see the yoyo effect?
The other things you listed aren't regulated by the body around a setpoint.
Apathy? A culture that includes lots of high calorie food choices? A lifestyle that doesn't require the expenditure of calories for survival?
I am arguing that the presence of biological control systems radically affects how things behave, in ways that may seem impossible to someone who is unaware of these concepts.
For some of those, you may not be able to succeed at them at all, regardless of how much effort you put in. The equations have no solution for X. The word "enough" is not a magic spell: sometimes there is no such thing as "enough to succeed".
I agree.
I think individual differences in BMR are a big part of why certain individuals have a more difficult time controlling their weight.
I see no reason to believe this is true of people in general.
Which part?
And what do you suppose happens instead?
There is no evidence to think this is true, especially if you were eating less to the extent that it's near torture.
What I think happens instead is that most people find that dieting continues to be quite difficult. Some of them stop eating less than they want. Some (a much smaller proportion) maintain eating less than they want, but it's a considerable ongoing effort. Some attempt to automate the effort in ways which result in anorexia or bulimia.
I used the word "torture" to communicate that I understand the difficulty of the initial phase of dieting. It's an exaggeration. It can be very uncomfortable—physically and psychologically—to eat less than you are used to. It's not actually torture.
Interesting.
I think people ought not eat what they want, but instead eat with they need from a nutritional basis. This isn't that difficult to do within most people daily caloric budget, though it may require a drastic change in the types of foods consumed—which can be very uncomfortable.
This is my guess as to why most diets fail. People just don't wanna eat the proper foods. They could eat raw vegetables, fruits, lean meats, etc. to stay within their caloric budget and get proper nutrition, but they don't value the benefits vs. the psychological value of eating a less nutritious diet.
How do you tell what you need? The sorry state of nutritional science has been frequently remarked on here -- what do you think?
I tell from my subjective sensations, i.e. I eat what I want when I want it. It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
We can make some educated guesses about "better" or "worse" diets.
While nutrition is complex, we have pretty thorough information available on most foods, and we can build a common sense diet that satiates and provides a good basis of the nutritional components we need.
As an example, have anyone who isn't start eating 5 servings of raw vegetables, 3 servings of fruit, 2 liters of water and 1 protein shake per day. They can eat whatever else they'd like as long as they consume these items. Adjustments can be made to accommodate individuals. Scheduling meals can be used to aid the process.
In my experience, this is (a) easy to do and (b) will significantly change someone's diet by adding guaranteed "good" calories into the daily equation (versus just saying "no" to bad stuff). I think simple steps like this can be used to transform a diet into one that is intentionally (more) nutritious.
WTF?
Since when a protein shake (mostly soy protein and sugar) is food and even mandatory food?
I'm not sure I'm catching your drift.
First, you can get a very pure whey protein with very little sugar.
B) I'm not saying it's mandatory. I'm saying a protein shake, along with fruits, vegetables and water, is a good, reasonable, nutritious base of foods on which one can build a diet. There are many routes.
Protein is specifically important in gaining lean muscle, which aids BMR.