reasons someone can't lose weight

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My point was that there are many people who *already* do those things, and have done-so the entire time they've been fat.
It's great that you can change your habits and lose weight.
But it gets a bit old for fat people to be told, for instance, lay off the soda, when they haven't had one in decades, or stop eating fast food, when they've never indulged in it in the first place. I don't think the conversation is about obvious truisms, such as people who stop eating garbage and start eating healthier will probably shed some poundage.

No one argued with the input-output principle, that much is given.
The idea was that some people won't burn in an entire day of activity what others will in a half hour of sitting,
even without a "valid medical reason".
Variation works like that.

There is variation but nowhere near the amount you are claiming.

If you strip out activity levels the thing you are looking at is the basal metabolic rate (BMR).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

If you look at the article there are several formulas you can use to calculate and you are correct there is variation and but it is only very slight. The largest variation is when you have very high ratios of fat to muscle (eg obese and sedentary or hulk like body builder with low fat).

The most extreme thing you can do to change your BMR is to kick your body into a 'starvation mode' by taking in a very inadequate number of calories. Even then the maximum change in the BMR is only 10% and is accompanied by as much as a 1 degree Celsius drop in body temp.

(pedant mode)
You can alter it upwards by more if you have a fever (and your core body temp goes up very high), but it really depends on whether you are classing the increase in immune system activity as a change to the activity level or to the BMR.


If you want to know why obese people can eat very little and still put on weight it is because they are lying about how much they are eating but they don't realise it.

When you place someone like that in controlled conditions and test/study them several interesting things happen.

1) They are hopeless at estimating the numbers of calories in food always on the low side of course.
2) They are hopeless at estimating what a 'normal' portion size is always on the high side of course.
3) When asked to write down what they eat or drink over a day they are hopeless at it. Eg "I was very good today, I had a helping of fruit salad for breakfast and a piece of chicken with salad for lunch." When you watch the video though they actually had, orange juice, sweetened coffee, several rounds of buttered toast AND a huge bowl of fruit salad for breakfast. Then during the morning they had several sweet drinks, 3 packets of crisps and a chocolate bar they forgot to mention. For the 'light lunch' they had the 3 biggest pieces of chicken, salad with a really fattening dressing, a big helping of chips, a sugary yoghurt and a cake.

All in, the obese that claim they diet and eat very little are underestimating their calorie consumption by a factor 5. If the person is willing to believe that and accept they need to change to get around the fact their brain is deceiving them they can successfully lose weight.

Unfortunately these days the prevailing attitude seems to be lets ignore the evidence, scientists are suspicious and evil, reality is optional and I'll just go on living in my own little fantasy world and you can't disagree with me because I have an opinion and I have rights and trumps everything. La la la la la.

Obese people as a class being very likely to underestimate the number of calories they eat doesn't negate that there are in existence obese individuals who truly-do eat what they say they do and are nevertheless overweight through no incompetence of theirs or identifiable causative pathology. We're not by definition discussing the rule, but rather exceptions to it.

No one here that I saw once said scientists or evil, or has any aversion to reality. ( ) They merely resent others' definitions of reality (IE, eat less, move more, lose weight) being forced on them when in many cases it's contrary to their entire life's experience.

Crisps? Dressing? Chocolate? That's absurd.
I've eaten quite literally *nothing* but salad and steamed vegetables and water for years at a time, and nevertheless remained obese.

Insisting that I'm, by virtue of not fitting in with a dogmatically, without-exception worldview, either deluded or lying by saying the above is more than slightly-outrageous.

Sigh.

Define:Dogmatic

US Version
Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles
English Version
based on assumption rather than empirical observation

I'm afraid you don't get to 'define your own reality' and neither do I. Reality is the same for everyone, the laws of physics don't change because you disagree with them, or wish they were different.



*If* that is true then you were eating too much salad and steamed veggies.

In decades of study across the globe not a single person has ever managed to 'beat' a calorimeter room test. In centuries of study not a single person or thing, not even black holes, have managed to operate outside of the laws of thermodynamics.

If you take in fewer calories in food & drink than you use up, you will lose weight. (Not accounting for any changes in the amount of water in your body ofc) It is quite simply impossible for anything else to happen. It is not a matter of opinion or a lifestyle choice, you obey the laws of physics just like everyone else does whether we like it or not.


Try something.

Cook your steamed veg tonight and weigh it, put it on a plate and take a photo.

Before you cook tomorrow, go to the web page I posted and work out your BMR. Subtract 200 from the number. Assuming you have 3 meals a day, divide by 3.

Now look up the calorie content of your veggies, weigh out each veg to the nearest gram and steam yourself some the same veggies with that exact number of calories.

Take a picture.

Which of the photos looks like the bigger portion?
Is it the portion you normally eat or the portion you need to eat in order to lose weight?

Now try eating the new portion size for every meal, for two days and only drinking water. By now you should be feeling hungrier than normal, if you aren't it is because you have probably been sneaking snacks without realising it.

Once again, it is only you who is defending caloric intake vs expenditure despite it not being criticized as a concept.

The BMR is garbage, though- I became obese (I was 150 lbs in 5th grade) eating the same as all the other kids if not less, so excuse me for not putting stock in something that magically knows my caloric expenditure based on no more variables than height, weight, sex, and age.

I'm sure whatever number it'd churn out would be far higher than the 450 I lived on per week when I was 19-20, or the *0* calories I consumed for eight months when I was 16, or the maybe 500 I try to eat now that my vascular and renal systems are falling apart from years of starvation.

"Sneaking snacks"? This is an example of what I'm talking about- you truly-believe all obese people are deluded rather than that a few have unbearably-inactive metabolisms. (And who, exactly, would I be "sneaking" to avoid consequences by? )

Uh-huh and what about when their caloric total equalled zero?
And the months of my life I ate nothing at all and lost a negligible amount of weight, if any at all?
Three meals a day? I've eaten at most one a day, since puberty, and far more days I've eaten nothing at all.
I've had weeks where a warmed lemon slice was my one and only meal.

You're not paying attention-
the question is what a person is to do if their diet through trial and error seems to require near-starvation or starvation for them to not gain weight, let alone lose it.

FWIW, I believe you, VW. I spent literally every moment of 2 months with the girl I mentioned previously. She was absolutely not sneaking snacks or anything of the sort. And I don't believe it's physically possible to eat too much steamed veggies. The idea is hilarious.

I am down to a 1200-calorie per day diet, and my weight has plateaued at around 200 pounds on my six-foot frame*. I can not exercise, even on a stationary bicycle, and I might have to starve myself to get down to 180 pounds, which is what I weighed 20 years ago. I know how hard it is, especially with medical issues, and all that I'm saying is that losing unhealthy weight can be done, even if it requires a physician's constant medical care.

Also, one system says that my ideal weight is 165 pounds, another says 200 pounds, and yet another says 171 pounds. According to Oprah, ideal weight is whatever a person can maintain without adversely affecting his or her health. Which is correct? Who really knows?

I'm sorry if anyone infers that I'm judging them harshly for not being what some might call "perfect", as all I'm trying to say is that changes can be made, even if extreme measures must be taken.

(*That is, I would be six feet tall if I could ever straighten my spine enough, and if standing itself weren't so painful.)

I didn't infer that at all, Fnord- it's fantastic you're seeing success.

It's just insulting, the constant character presumptions some people make about those who aren't successful.
I, myself had to resort to 6 months on a prescription weight loss pill.