Very solid argumentation…

It is not. I am not saying people should not eat healthy or should not try to lose weight. I am just saying that pushing the oversimplification that for everyone it is just calories in vs calories out and that it is only about willpower is not correct. People should get the right help with losing weight and the factors that cause the weight gain or makes people not losing the weight should be addressed.

There is lots of scientific work on this. I copied some links from another comment I made.

For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

If you disagree, please provide some substantiation. I would be interested in reading it.

Thanks! I think you are describing what a lot of people experience. Weight loss is highly complex and by oversimplifying it, lots of people do not get the help they need and are made to feel bad about themselves.

There is actually quite some scientific work supporting what I am saying. For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.

I think for most people it is not the best advice. In most cases, there are many other factors at play than just willpower and “calories in vs calories out”. Obesity should be viewed and treated more like a disease, because it is. If you are interested, I can link you some interesting papers on this.

My experience is that if you spend time on providing sources, people usually are not interested in them and will not change their mind anyway. So I do not feel like it is worth the effort in every discussion. However, if you are interested in the work on this topic that substantiate my claims, then I am very glad to provide some links to some interesting articles.

This is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

In conclusion many people with obesity who agree obesity is a disease appear to have an imperfect understanding of the causes and treatment options. The presence of beliefs and perceptions that support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.

I hope that this provides you with enough evidence to at least take the things I was saying into consideration. Please let me know if you find this useful. I have a lot more to share if you are interested.

Like I said, that is an oversimplification. There are many other factors that play a role, like the body working against the weight loss and lowering metabolism and increasing appetite, as I already discussed. There are also psychological factors and environmental factors that can have a big impact on weight loss.

Just ignoring those makes losing weight more difficult and means you have to do it entirely based on willpower. If you are one of those people for which these other factors play a big role it becomes very difficult to keep the weight off in the long term just based on willpower. This can be the case, for example, if you have an eating disorder, very high stress, untreated medical conditions (e.g. hypothyroidism), not enough money to buy healthy food, problems with the body signaling hunger or fullness, unsolved emotional issues, and so on.

Of course there are some people who just eat too much and who can just lose the weight easily by eating less. However, especially for people who are very overweight, these factors will play a role. They hear they should just eat less all the time and if they fail they are made to feel like a failure themselves and as if they have a lack of willpower. This is not the case. For them losing the weight is more difficult and the underlying issues should be addressed. You cannot just generalise like that and apply what works for you to everyone else.

Edit: please find sources for my claims in my comment below.

Thanks for saying this. I think the idea that it is just willpower causes so much unnecessary suffering. As someone suffering from an eating disorder and thyroid disease, I was getting a bit down reading all the “it’s just calories in vs calories out” remarks. It is so much more complicated than that.

It is not as simple as just calories in vs calories out. Your body has a setting point for what weight it thinks it should be. Once you are overweight, your setting point will be higher and your body wants to get back to that higher weight. It will start working actively against you. This might mean your appetite will increase and your metabolism will slow down. I think that is what you are describing here.

Trying to push yourself to lose more weight despite your body working against you can cause rebound weight gain if you are not able to keep the diet (which might become increasingly difficult due to increasing appetite). The most important thing is to keep a healthy diet that does not reduce your quality of life too much and is doable on the long term, I think. If you are struggling everyday, then it might be better to eat a little bit more and stay on a higher weight a bit longer to ensure that you will maintain the weight loss.

Maybe this is already what you meant. But the phrase “calories in vs calories out” and stating that nothing else matters made me want to respond. I think it is a popular oversimplification that causes a lot of unnecessary suffering for people trying to lose weight.

Eating fruits and vegetables might definitely help and it is in any case very healthy! However, people should not always expect to lose more than 10% of their weight in the long term (over years). This 10% can already provide great benefits for your health, so definitely try to lose that weight if you are overweight.

Often it is said that it is just calories in vs calories out. This is only true up until a certain point. For many people, after losing about 10% of their weight, their body starts to work against more weight loss. Their metabolism starts to slow down and their appetite will increase, making it more difficult to lose weight. It might make it almost impossible to keep on a diet and it might even cause people to gain more weight back than they lost.

The theory behind this is that your body has a set point or settling point for what it thinks your weight should be. When you are overweight, the set point changes to a higher weight. When you lose weight, your body wants to get back to this higher set point. The set point can be changed to a lower weight, but that might take years and years. There also is some limited evidence that building more muscles might help somewhat.

I think it is important to add this to the discussion, as often there is the idea that weight loss is just based on self-control and limiting calorie-intake. While this might play a role, the idea that these are the only factors that determine your weight causes a lot of suffering for people. It might also cause more weight gain in the long term.

So, try to lose about 10% of your weight and if you feel like you are struggling after that, go to a specialised doctor who can help you with losing more weight (doctors without this specialisation are often clueless about weight loss in my experience). In addition, a psychologist might be able to help if your are overeating due to an eating disorder.

To be honest, I was thinking about the man who was trying to show me his penis when I was hiking in the woods a couple of weeks ago, when I heard this question. He was white. Actually all men that harassed me were white, thinking about it now.

Racist stereotypes are a real issue and I am not trying to deny that. And if women needed to imagine some hypothetical situation when thinking about dangerous men, you might be right. However, I think you might be underestimating the number of women who have been harassed, or worse. Most women do not need to imagine, they can just remember.

Thank you so much. The kind reactions really help me feeling better about it. I really hope it helps someone!

Thank you! That is very kind.

I hired the personal trainer too. I just kept thinking I was doing something wrong and I should just follow his schedule. So I did exactly what he said, and that did not work either. I even did worse on the stamina test after training with him for a while than on the test at the start. That is when I quit.

Ihave tried bicycling and I had similar issues with that. But maybe I did not keep enough to my own pace. That was back when I did not understand how it worked and just tried a schedule to build up stamina. You are exactly right, it should not be about performance. Maybe I should try it again with my new mindset. Thanks!

Swimming does work if I go slow! So, I am in the lane with the elderly and just go slowly back and forth. The physiotherapist did tell me I should not go into water that is too cold, because my stress might increase from that as well. So, I found somewhere to swim when the water is warm. I try to do it once a week.

Thank you so much! I am very lucky with where I live. There are lots of beautiful forests here!

Yes, my first psychologist really was terrible. She really made things worse. She just always made me feel like I just should try harder and like a failure. That was the opposite of what I needed.

I was actually much too harsh on myself. I am trying tor learn to be more kind to myself and to take how I feel seriously. It is difficult if you are not used to it, but that helps me really well. My physiotherapist keeps telling me that I only have to do things I want. This sounds like a very basic thing, but it is quite new to me to ask myself “do I want this?” instead of just pushing myself because I think I should.

I am glad exercise works fine you. I think it works for most people. However, I have never in my life felt good after exercise. So, I think that is the difference.

If it helps for you, definitely start doing it again. Maybe you can be kind to yourself too and see how you can make your life easier in another way to have more room mentally to get yourself to start.

Exercising just does not work for everyone. If your stress levels are extreme, it might not benefit you. You might need to find another way to reduce stress first.

Yes, I agree! My physiotherapist explained to me that this can have to do with your level of stress. If it is already extreme, your body cannot deal with with the extra increase in stress that running creates. Pushing yourself can in that case further disregulate your nervous system and walking is better.

Could be the case that your stress levels are too high for exercise to benefit you. Moving, like walking, is fine in those cases. But anything that gets your stress levels up, like weight lifting or running might feel like torture and not provide benefits afterwards. You have psychosomatic therapist who might be able to help with this.

I had the same experience. I think exercise works for a lot of people, but not for everyone. The people who it does not work for het pressured into doing it anyway, which is harmful. In my case, my stress levels were consistently extreme and exercise would put it into an even higher zone where my body was unable to deal with it. All the pressuring me into exercising really harmed me. It took me years until a specialist explained this to me and all this time I felt like a failure and I tortured myself with exercise.

No, not at all. It made things worse. I really think it is very good that many people benefit from exercise. However, it can in some cases also harm your mental health. I think it is important for people to know this. The benefits of exercise are so well known, that the people who it is harmful for often are pressured into exercising anyway and made to feel like a failure if it does not benefit them. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to find this out. I want to tell my story in case someone is in the same boat as me.

Years ago I was feeling so bad I could not get out of bed for a couple of months. The psychologist I was seeing kept pressuring me to exercise. So, I tried it and I hated it. I really had a lot of trouble even doing the smallest things, like making food for myself or go to the supermarket. It all seemed like an impossible task. Now I had to spend the little energy I had to regulate myself to go to the gym or to run.

When I was exercising, it felt like genuine torture. I just hated every second. Afterwards, I would just feel extra tired and very sad about the pain Inhad been in and anxious about having to go again next time.

I was too timid to really stand up for myself and I did not want to fail at yet another thing. I thought it was just my fault and I just was too lazy and should be harder on myself. So, I tried to keep going, even though I could not sleep the night before and I went there crying. When I said something about it, the psychologist kept pressuring me to do it like it was some magic fix for everything. I just needed to do it often enough.

On my way to the gym, I started to wish more and more that I would be in an accident and get wounded so I did not have to go anymore. One time, on my way to the gym, I tripped and fell. I had a big bruise on my knee, but it was not bad enough to not have to exercise anymore. So, I sat on my knee on the bruise the whole night in the hope that it would get worse. It hurt, but it was not nearly as bad as exercising. When I told my psychologist she said that she could not help me if I self-harmed and I should go somewhere else. However, I was not self-harming to harm myself. I was actually protecting myself against something that was bad for me. I could not explain that at the time.

Years later, I went to a psychosomatic physiotherapist. In the years in between, I got the advise to exercise for my mental health numerous times. Each time I tried it, I failed. No matter how much I tried, it keep feeling like torture, my mood got worse and physically I did not improve at all. I always kept thinking that it was my fault and just not trying hard enough.

So, when I went to the new physiotherapist, I started out with telling him that I knew I should exercise and that I was stupid foe not doing so. He immediately stopped me and told me I should not exercise at all. He explained to me that when you exercise, your stress levels go up temporarily and then they go down and usually lower than they were before you started exercising. That is why most people benefit from stress reduction after exercise.

However, in my case, my stress levels were extremely high, all the time. They were so high that if I started to exercise, they would be pushed up above the maximum that my body was able to handle (he drew a chart where the line hit the top of the chart). So, for my body, exercise did not feel like a temporary increase in stress that would go down after a while, it felt like an extreme emergency situation that it could not adapt to. This would further disregulate my stress system. That is why it felt like torture, and why my mood got worse and why I did not have any physical improvement from exercise.

He told me moving was good to calm my nervous system. So, slow walking in the forest and things like that. And just quit as soon as I did not feel like it, or it gave me stress and just try some other time when I felt like it again. And that worked like a charm. I walk now for 4 to 6 hours a week and it calms me down. I do not have to push myself. I just feel like doing it and if I don’t, I just won’t go.

So, the point is that exercise can be great to help with stress, if your stress is maybe at 70% or 80%. However, if your stress level is consistently at 95% then it is harmful and you should not do it. (Mindfulness probably will not help either in that case btw.) If exercise keeps feeling like torture and it does not help you, do not feel like a failure and keep torturing yourself. It is not your fault if it does not work for you! Go to a psychosomatic therapist instead that has expertise in stress management. They might be able to help you.