My brother was on it for a bit (and should go on it again) and the thing he noted was that it makes it easy to not eat but it gives you no useful habits to keep that up because it's so easy.
Which makes sense. I still calorie count everything generally because I know I'll let myself creep portion sizes unchecked.
Agreed 100%. I think if your strategy for maintaining a good diet relies on weighing food and counting every last calorie, you are inevitably going to fail. Something more fundamental, natural, habit forming, whatever -- that will be the right answer. Naturally trim people don't count calories to stay that way, either.
Of course naturally “trim” people don’t count calories - they don’t have to. Just like I don’t have to monitor my blood glucose level, but my Type 1 diabetic friend does.
You can’t apply to habits of one physiologic group to a different group and expect the same results.
To be fair, 12 step programs would be a counter argument. The maintenance of homeostasis requires constant attention in those programs. You could say overeating is different from other addictions, and I would agree, but there are a lot of similarities too..
One might argue that homeostasis is, itself, a kind of attention that our bodies pay. Maybe by consciously changing our habits we can change our set points. In certainly way more aware of how full I actually am 3 weeks into hitting a 2000 calorie a day diet.
I think durable habits there are just hard honestly. I was losing weight when I was very strict about calorie counting and lived with a roommate who was on the same diet, but when I moved out and stayed with family my habits and intuition about safe foods didn't last long and temptation got me again.
It does make me think we're applying bandaids over some other issue with the available foods - it's hard to imagine that everyone 50 years ago was just much better about dieting and counting calories?
> it's hard to imagine that everyone 50 years ago was just much better about dieting and counting calories?
Do we just have a lot more food available now? Not just bad food, but calories of all kinds? Combined with steadily automating nearly all of the hard work, I'm not surprised people get fatter these days than 50 years ago. I bet the average person today is actually much more aware of what healthy eating looks like, it's just that there aren't that many really physical jobs anymore and food is extremely cheap and plentiful for most.
It's really closer to 70 years ago to see the roots of the obesity epidemic in the US and had a lot to do with the post war world. To put it in another way, machines have taken over the vast majority of labor. Even people that do 'hard' jobs are still using a ton of tools that decrease the amount of physical effort they put in the job. Add in we converted the country from a human oriented place to one where cars rule, all while increasing the ease of consumption and we now have an epidemic.
It also coincides with the rise of manufactured foods available for incredibly cheap prices. And the average percentage of a monthly budget spent on food going down.
Basically incredibly tasty food became plentiful and cheap and convenient right when physical labor went away.
Which makes sense. I still calorie count everything generally because I know I'll let myself creep portion sizes unchecked.