[now__what]

If you've ever tried to lose weight though, you know how it can become a struggle--you're doing fine for a few days or weeks, then suddenly it's like an invisible switch flips and you might spend a day having an intense battle of willpower. Then the next day you might be fine again. It's reasonable to want to know the root cause(s) of those seemingly random struggles, imo.

Edit: this comment isn't as relevant after the original was edited, alas

[yamtaddle]

IMO the strongest argument against "just use willpower!" is that skinny people from other countries, with evidently-healthy eating habits, routinely move to the US and then pack on pounds.

How can someone already in this society be expected to fight it successfully, when the typical result for someone coming into it with a lifetime of healthy eating behind them and a good BMI is that they find themselves struggling with weight in short order?

Which isn't to say don't try, but also indicates to me that there's a 0% chance we're going to willpower our way out of the obesity epidemic, and it indicates to me that willpower is not the key factor in keeping other countries skinnier than us. If that's all we've got, we're just gonna keep getting fatter.

[EDIT] Though, full disclosure, I think our problems are deep, structural, and tied heavily to our kinda-awful and very messy "culture" and "society", such as they are, so am not optimistic we're capable of fixing this even if we knew exactly what to do.

[throwaway22032]

You're right, but you're confusing some factors here I think.

The US has higher calorie fast foods, larger default portions, and walking is involved far less in the typical day than in most countries.

That means that if you just do what feels natural, in the US you're going to be eating more and doing less exercise than you would elsewhere.

That's not an argument against willpower, it's in fact the opposite. In the US _more_ willpower is required - you're explicitly going against the norm to an extent, if you move to e.g. Paris and get the metro and walk everywhere then by default you're going to be eating less and exercising more.

I don't think that anyone is claiming that we can reduce the statistical incidence of obesity via willpower. It's more that you, as an individual, can choose to be healthy. It's empowering and therefore important to know that.

[throwaway22032]

Sorry, I didn't mean to change the substance of my comment.

What you've written makes sense. I feel that "relapse" carries strong connotations of ongoing failure though, not just like, having a couple of rough days.

Food isn't like alcohol or heroin or gambling or whatever whereby one binge day can really fuck you up. You don't get skinny by skipping meals for a day, and you don't get fat by eating 6000 calories in a day once.

[now__what]

No worries :) I mostly agree. With the caveat that, IME, it's easy for one bad "trigger day" to throw you completely off track, and perhaps lead to the full "relapse" you describe. Certainly not in the same sense that heroin or gambling could do so (unless maybe you have a food addiction).

One of the core skills of keeping any daily habit is to not get so discouraged by momentary lost progress that you give up the whole game; but that's easier said than done.

[0xcde4c3db]

Another part of the messy reality of weight loss is that some people "successfully" lose weight, but then "relapse" because they just feel like shit at the lower weight despite it allegedly being healthier.