And our bodies are just machines. We can’t create fat if were using the calories we consume. I don’t really get anyone who “tries” to lose weight for years. If you keep putting more food in your body than you need, your body converts it to fat. The idea of since “strange reason” that a body won’t lose weight is silly. There’s just no way for a body to keep weight on unless they are taking in more calories than they are using. So if OP can’t bear to eat less, they need to get really active. There really isn’t a mystery here. Its math. If you only add to the equation, the figure only increases. This is a willpower issue. … Or maybe we found the one obese American whose body defies caloric mathematics.
communism@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
My weight varies around 50kg and there was a stretch of a few years where I tried bulking up to put on muscle. I found it very difficult and only got up to about 65kg where I plateaued (and it was damn difficult to get to that point—required an annoying amount of calorie-counting). I think my body is just naturally averse to putting on weight. It naturally follows that there are some people with the inverse problem, where their bodies naturally want to keep fat. I have friends who say they have this problem, and I have no reason to believe they’re lying; they know I wouldn’t judge if they just said they like eating and don’t feel like changing. There’s 8 billion people on Earth and plenty of genetic diversity among us. Of all the fat people in the world, you really think every single one of them is incapable of simply eating less? Or do you think I’m too stupid to decide to eat more food? Come on.
s38b35M5@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Just because a rock falls down doesn’t mean it “naturally follows” that some rocks fall upward too. There is no way to invoke a system that stores excess energy as fat if there is no excess. Could some energy that is actually needed get stored as fat? Okay, but… Not for long, as the body would need energy, since it isn’t getting calories. Unless it is getting calories from food.
I went from 175lbs to 125lbs in four months during divorce proceedings. My metabolism didn’t change. I wasn’t on a new miracle drug. I was depressed and didn’t eat, and I took up running a 3.2mi circuit around the bay where I live.
To your point, I bet OP’s diet would help you bulk up, just not likely with muscle. Chow a few gallons of ice cream each week. Eat American fast food three to ten times a week. Put cheese on everything. Ignore the “added sugars” part of the nutrition label. My weekly intake fits in a single shopping bag. I doubt OP can say the same. They weigh 2.5 times my weight.
Willpower is much harder to muster for a whole year, and its exceedingly difficult to avoid bad calories in this country.
communism@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
Nobody can defy the laws of thermodynamics, but some people can be genetically predisposed to being fatter, just as some people are genetically predisposed to being taller. Plenty of skinny people (myself included) can eat through loads of fatty fried foods and not put on a single kg. Meanwhile you see a fat person eating all salads and they get told maybe they should eat fewer salads.
And even if it were entirely down to what you eat, calling it an issue of willpower is just insulting. Do you think people struggling with drug addiction just have a willpower issue? If OP is in the US (which I’m assuming she is from the described healthcare system), the food there is designed to be practically addictive and unhealthy. I doubt OP has a diet of cheeseburgers and doritos—it wouldn’t make sense for someone trying to lose weight to eat like that—but if she did, that’s clearly a social issue of both fast food companies under capitalism, availability of healthy food, and a US food culture centred around destroying your arteries. Sure, a drug addict could simply physically not pick up the needle, but they can hardly be blamed for doing so when there is an obvious material reason for them doing so, ie a chemical addiction.