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I see this repeated all the time on Hackernews and this is absolutely not the case. Aging, gut microbiome changes and an enormous variety of medications can directly induce weight gain - while diet and exercise remain the same.



    > ...aging 
Aging causes the calories out to decrease as a function of reduced metabolic activity and baseline caloric load. It is therefore necessary to reduce calories in to maintain weight.

There can be no other way for the body to gain mass if not for caloric intake. Zero. You cannot gain any meaningful mass from water and air. Body mass is a conversion of ingested proteins, fats, and carbohydrates (along with other micronutrients); remove excess sources of protein, fats, and carbohydrates and the body has no mechanism to store excess energy.


Right - we're in agreement. There are numerous factors which influence metabolic activity, all of them can influence weight gain or loss independently diet and exercise.


It's still calories in vs calories out.

You age and the calories out decreases; therefore, to maintain a stable body mass, your calories in must decrease as well. If you do not decrease calories in, then the result is gain in mass due to storage of excess calories.

Calories in, calories out.


That's reductive to the point out outright inaccuracy.

The calories you consume affect your weight differently depending on your level of metabolic activity. So the key mediator here is how your body processes the calories you consume.

But talking about calories is wrong in any case. All calories are not the same. For example increasing glycemic index by consuming sugars and carbohydrates will lead to greater and more prolonged weight gain than consuming the same calorific load in protein - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12081852/

It's simple misinformation to focus on calories rather than carbohydrate levels, physical activity, healthy gut bacteria etc.


Sorry but you are not correct. If you find the number of calories you burn daily with your current diet, and you eat 500 calories below that, I will bet you $1000 that you can't find any combination of foods, whether its pure corn syrup or pure hog fat or anything else that cause you to gain weight as long as you keep the calories below that threshold. I'll bet another $1000 that there are no foods you can find where you don't gain weight eating 500 above that threshold.

Show me the study that says otherwise. The "complex interaction" theory is just an excuse used by people for failing to cut calories enough to lose weight. Notice that people taking GLP1 drugs don't have to adjust for all these complexities at all.


So certain are you? How are we measuring the calories for this bet, by what's on the package?

How does that number on the package get measured?

When I eat nuts, cashews, etc., did 100% of the food get digested and absorbed? A day later or so, there seems to be counterevidence of that plainly visible in the bathroom.


You are mixing up 2 issues here. We're not debating what % of food gets digested, so it's off topic.

We are talking about the theory that if you eat fructose, or if you eat 'highly processed foods' there is some complex hormone response that causes those calories to be preferentially stored as fat or to slow the metabolism down so they aren't burned.

For sure you are correct when you say that the calories on the label of a food is just an estimate, and not a very good one.


> You are mixing up 2 issues here.

When people talk about "restricting your caloric intake", they are very obviously talking about what's written on the package and not after making calculations based on whether it's fat, protein or carbohydrates. So I think both issues are very tightly related.


I was hoping I gave myself plenty of buffer by making it 500 calories of deficit (which is pretty large), but maybe you can teach me something new.

What's the diet you would eat every day to get into a calorie surplus even though you are in >500 calorie deficit according to the labels?


Unfortunately I never look at the calories on the label as I only look out for salt and proteins.

However, you can make the calculations based on the numbers I gave in my other comment - which are taken from Why Calories Don't Count from Dr Giles Yeo.


I think you still can't overcome 500 calories of deficit. If you ate pure protein you will still be in 150 calories of deficit using the most conservative numbers (30% overhead to process protein).

But this is assuming you calculate your daily calorie burn with one diet that is pure protein and then convert to one that has 100% calorie availability, you still can't overcome 500 calories of deficit on paper!

Realistically you would change diets, then find your baseline based on the new diet, and then calculate a calorie deficit from there. In that case you would be very close to a 500 calorie deficit, and you would unavoidably lose about 1lb of fat per week. A 500 calorie deficit sucks but you will adapt to it in a few months if you stick to it. I've managed to lose over 50lbs in the last year, probably close to 75lbs of fat mass. (I did use a GLP1, dieting is hard)


It's worth noting that our metabolisms slow down when we start losing weight so it gets harder and harder to lose fat.


Our metabolism slows down primarily because it takes more energy to keep a fat person alive than it does to keep a healthy person alive. After you lose 20% or more of your body weight you might start to notice this, it isn't a real concern. The effect is negligible and again notice that people taking drugs thet let them comply with a calorie deficit diet don't have to resort to excuses like this to explain a failure to lose weight.

The cause of a failure to lose weight with moderate calorie restriction is always a failure to maintain the calorie restriction aka cheating on the diet (because it is incredibly hard to do when you aren't used to it).


I think you know more than me on the subject. I have never cared about calories in my life and never really cared about my weight.

I lived abroad for a year and, when coming back home, started eating healthily (i.e. more greens and less reds, avoiding added salt). In about 3 months, I managed to reduce my weight by 10% - about 6kg. Although I have to admit, if anything, I wanted to keep those kilograms because it was helping me for weight-training lol. My objective was never to lose weight.


> I'll bet another $1000 that there are no foods you can find where you don't gain weight eating 500 above that threshold

oh well, you lost money then. It is not even difficult to understand, some types of food/digestion/absorption will hold more or less water weight to the body so it’s possible to lose total weight even eating above the daily needs, for example a nocarb diet


It's not reasonable to account for water weight gains in talking about weight loss. Water weight is transient in that it will reach some maximal state, and often times it is only at the onset of a diet change (i.e., the first day or two) and then it comes right back off. Weight in general flucuates a LOT more than people think. My weight can flucuate by as much as 1-2 lbs per day, even while eating the same exact meals. The only appropriate way to look at weight gain/loss is on a weekly sliding average... and at a 500cal deficit per day, you almost certainly would see that weekly average change downwards.


I don’t disagree with you just replied that by logic it is indeed possible to gain or lose weight depending on the type of calories you ingest


But it’s not when we’re talking about this in the context of weight loss/gain. When people colloquially say “gain weight” or “lose weight” they almost always mean gain/lose fat and/or muscle. Water weight is neither of those, and is generally bounded (unlike fat loss/gain).

Whether you gain or lose weight through water weight has little to do with calories at all. If you take creatine, for example, it’s pretty normal to gain a few pounds of water weight until your creatine levels equalize in your body. That doesn’t mean that your body’s “metabolism” changes or something based on the calories you ingest. You’ve just got another pathway to gain/lose apparent weight, albeit temporarily.


I'm going to guess people find you overly pedantic?


It's a tiresome bit of pedantry.

Try this: when people on hn claim "ah but it's not calorie intake versus calorie expenditure!" you can assume in good faith that what they REALLY mean is "you are correct that it IS calorie intake versus calorie expenditure, AND there are subtle factors which impact both how efficient your body is at extracting energy from food and how efficient it is at performing work"

It's unlikely for the poor grandparent poster that they unlocked some latent ability to extract calories more effectively by reducing their sugar intake, and of course Occam's razor SUGGESTS that they simply started consuming more or exercising less to compensate, but there ARE reasons we study things like this.


Strongly disagree - I've seen and had this argument multiple times on HN. There absolutely are a large cohort of people who do not accept that there are any factors other than 'calorie in, calorie out' that affect weight.

Side note - this is remarkably similar to the 'when we say abolish the police, we mean abolish the police' conversation from a couple of years ago. In other words a classic motte and bailey.

If we're going to have sensible conversations about diet and weight gain. Which socially in the West we are long past the necessity for, we need to start addressing these issues holistically. The pedantry here is the repetition of silly mantras like 'calorie in calorie out' or 'just exercise'. The nuance required is understanding - and indeed researching how the composition of diet, the pricing and availability of nutritious food, our perniciously sedentary workplaces etc all contribute to obesity. And more importantly what can be done about these things on an individual and societal level.

Personally - I've found intermittent fasting to be the only way to control my weight. The research consensus seems to be that it's impact is simply through reduced calorific intake. However - this misses the fact that say one meal a day will actually change your gut microflora enough, and relatively rapidly, to reduce the cognitive load of healthier diet choices. You literally get less hungry and want highly processed, sweetened food less. And yes of course there's a complex interaction of motivation, behaviour patterns and so on at work also. This is why systemic approaches are always necessary to behaviour modification.

And just to add - these aren't subtle effects. Age related weight gain, while keeping diet and exercise consistent is something all of us experience. Similarly, most women will experience menopausal related differences in metabolism, usually leading to weight gain. Eliding the reality of how weight gain and maintenance work isn't useful.


I would have a hard time understanding how other factors would make up a heavier weighting than calories in vs calories out. I am certain there are other factors but I am not certain that those factor have make up the majority.


Sure, happy to explain. Here's one example. "The mechanism of antipsychotics-induced weight gain (AIWG) is generally hypothesized by the alteration of glucose metabolism and increasing cholesterol and triglyceride levels." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9170991/#:~:text=Th....

The problem seems to be that people confuse psychical activity with metabolic activity. The body isn't some kind of linear internal combustion engine. Numerous disease processes, medications etc will alter metabolic activity. A classic example is weight loss due to hypothyroidism.


I am not disagreeing that there are other factors and in some tail cases, like people who take antipsychotics, it may have larger weightings but fundamentally we are talking about caloric intake. I think we largely saying the same thing but with different views.


    > ...psychical activity with metabolic activity
"Metabolic activity" therefore, you can still counter this by reducing your caloric intake to maintain a stable body mass.


Evidence?


See my responses to other replies. Metabolic activity != physical activity.

Theres a moralistic inclination on HN to view complex descriptions of weight gain as defences of sedentary lifestyles and bad diets. Inarguably both are bad, obesity is bad etc. That's a separate issue from understanding why weight has increased globally - independently of dietary changes - including in both wild and lab animal populations - https://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9194579/obesity-animals


Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Unless it's in a Hacker News thread containing the phrase "gut flora."


Could it be possible that the sugar in the soda was being process by the gut microbes and their byproducts were blocking the absorption of the excess calories? By ceasing the sugar consumption, the byproducts were no longer present and the calories were then consumed by the body?

Matter is neither being created nor destroyed, you are dealing with a bio reactor that has inputs and outputs and the bio reactor doesn't process everything with 100% efficiency.


How much biology do you know?

The sugar in soda is already pretty simple, so what would gut flora actually do to it? What possible byproducts could there be from microbes processing fructose? If the sugars were entirely processed by the gut flora then that would generate a ton of heat and gas in the gut that would be uncomfortable at best or most likely just kill you.

Does gut flora influence how nutrients get absorbed? Almost certainly. Is there a behavioral and/or metabolic component to weight loss? Again, almost certainly.

But if you measure how many calories you were eating at maintenance and then eat 500 less per day, you will 100% lose weight. Will you lose a pound a week, the amount predicted by the simple caloric model of weight? You might lose a little less, but you will lose weight for sure.


Evidence?




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