alt Hacker NewsWell, the difference is just eat less does work. Calories in calories out is literally thermodynamics. We are an energy equation. We don't collect energy from the air or the sun either. If you cease to eat, you will starve. And of course if you do not want to just eat less, you can increase your burn rate. Once again going back to the energy equation. Actually bust your ass. A good intense run should make you feel like you are going to puke afterwards. You may in fact puke. A hard set on the weights should get your heart rate surging and prevent you from even formulating words.
The issue with these things isn't that they don't work. It's that people attempt them and do not go all the way. They go on a little diet in some ways but fail to account for all their daily calories from stuff like beverages or snacks, maybe they aren't weighing their food either and just assuming a lot with what they are eating. They try and work out but it looks like walking on a treadmill or moving some 5lb weights around, far from running until lactic acid stops you or lifting to failure.
I think there is a lot of misjudgement of how intense a workout really is or how a diet should look like. And that feeds into this idea that it will not work.
But, you can't argue against thermodynamics. We don't make energy from nowhere. We are bound by the same laws of physics as anything else. If you can't lose weight with how you are eating, then the answer is obvious why that is the case: you are still eating too much given your activity level.
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HN guidelines strongly encourage me not calling you an asinine twat, so I won't do that. As your other reply highlighted, no one's arguing thermodynamics with you. It's clearly a behavioural phenomenon, and one that isn't half as well understood as we may like to believe. It's at the intersection of advertising, biology, dietetics, economics, genetics, neuroscience, nutrition, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, the disciplines go on. Consider all the myriad ways those factors may interact and compound, then look at the statistics: that the overwhelming majority of adults fail to lose significant weight long term through "eat less" should tell you all you need to know about the state of the problem. If your conclusion is as simple as "they mustn't have considered to put the fork down and try harder, en masse," I feel it says more about you than anything else.
> And of course if you do not want to just eat less, you can increase your burn rate.
Multiple studies prove you wrong, IRL. Humans are not isolated test guinea pigs in a cage. It is simply not feasible to live one's life by a spreadsheet of accounting values.
Nobody is arguing with you about thermodynamics.
You’d go far in life if you could read as well as you can write.
> If you can't lose weight with how you are eating
The problem is people find it difficult to change how they eat.
This is largely an environmental problem - observe that obesity rates vary over time and location.