Trouble with this is that, while there may be people who genuinely ‘can’t lose weight’ there are definitely loads of people who would describe themselves as having tried all sorts of diets, haven’t lost weight, but do lose weight when they take up the right diet/exercise. Which often means ACTUALLY FOLLOWING pretty much any diet/exercise regime.
Unless you have solid reasons to believe that most people who claim to be ‘unable to lose weight’ or that ‘diets don’t work’ actually have this particular metabolic issues, telling them that they should go to medical approaches or give up entirely is pretty terrible advice: you’re encouraging people to give up on something that could improve their quality of life.
If you think it’s a common problem, the advice should be to have a period of very focused and well-observed efforts (drawing on all the productivity/motivation hacks on this site amongst others) to at least see whether there’s something that works for you: if there is, it’s good to know!
On a sidenote: while it might work in specific scientifically/evidentially led communities who already respect you, I suspect very strongly that a random very overweight person going around telling everyone thinner they are ‘metabolically privileged’ would not increase their attractiveness...
In my experience, any diet or exercise comes with an unlimited number of excuses from various different people for how you might not be doing it exactly right. Oddly enough, when the diet (temporarily) works on somebody, they don’t bother to check whether every tiny thing was done according to their own playbook. Thus the hypothesis “this diet doesn’t actually work for everyone” is prohbited.
I’m not arguing that every (or any) particular diet is perfect for everyone. I’m objecting to your claim that ‘if you’ve tried a couple of diets and failed then you probably can’t lose weight’. That’s a hell of a strong factual claim, and if it’s wrong then it’s incredibly unhelpful. So what’s the evidence? From what I can make out the case is
1) you believe there’s strong evidence that it’s nigh-impossible for a few people (mostly yourself?)
2) lots of people try fail
3) lots of different methods are put forward and lots of crap is talked about it.
I imagine that the same points are true for plenty of things that lots of people set out to do but which are difficult: learning a language, becoming a good cook, proficiency at an instrument, stopping procrastinating, getting a well-paying job… The last place I’d expect to see a counsel of despair would be here, tbh.
If there is stronger evidence that I’m missing, I’d be massively interested… and obviously you can ignore all the above!
I realize it would be insufficient compensation, but has bumping up against the religion of weight loss led you to find out anything new about biases, or was it all covered by trying to convince people of the dangers of UFAI?
Trouble with this is that, while there may be people who genuinely ‘can’t lose weight’ there are definitely loads of people who would describe themselves as having tried all sorts of diets, haven’t lost weight, but do lose weight when they take up the right diet/exercise. Which often means ACTUALLY FOLLOWING pretty much any diet/exercise regime.
Unless you have solid reasons to believe that most people who claim to be ‘unable to lose weight’ or that ‘diets don’t work’ actually have this particular metabolic issues, telling them that they should go to medical approaches or give up entirely is pretty terrible advice: you’re encouraging people to give up on something that could improve their quality of life.
If you think it’s a common problem, the advice should be to have a period of very focused and well-observed efforts (drawing on all the productivity/motivation hacks on this site amongst others) to at least see whether there’s something that works for you: if there is, it’s good to know!
On a sidenote: while it might work in specific scientifically/evidentially led communities who already respect you, I suspect very strongly that a random very overweight person going around telling everyone thinner they are ‘metabolically privileged’ would not increase their attractiveness...
In my experience, any diet or exercise comes with an unlimited number of excuses from various different people for how you might not be doing it exactly right. Oddly enough, when the diet (temporarily) works on somebody, they don’t bother to check whether every tiny thing was done according to their own playbook. Thus the hypothesis “this diet doesn’t actually work for everyone” is prohbited.
I’m not arguing that every (or any) particular diet is perfect for everyone. I’m objecting to your claim that ‘if you’ve tried a couple of diets and failed then you probably can’t lose weight’. That’s a hell of a strong factual claim, and if it’s wrong then it’s incredibly unhelpful. So what’s the evidence? From what I can make out the case is 1) you believe there’s strong evidence that it’s nigh-impossible for a few people (mostly yourself?) 2) lots of people try fail 3) lots of different methods are put forward and lots of crap is talked about it.
I imagine that the same points are true for plenty of things that lots of people set out to do but which are difficult: learning a language, becoming a good cook, proficiency at an instrument, stopping procrastinating, getting a well-paying job… The last place I’d expect to see a counsel of despair would be here, tbh.
If there is stronger evidence that I’m missing, I’d be massively interested… and obviously you can ignore all the above!
I realize it would be insufficient compensation, but has bumping up against the religion of weight loss led you to find out anything new about biases, or was it all covered by trying to convince people of the dangers of UFAI?
The latter.