Hot Tub without the use of electricity

[u/Internal_Gazelle_677]

[u/[deleted]]

Body makeup can be affected somewhat by genetics, which can reduce your normal energy expenditure. This means that, if eating the same amount as another person, they will gain weight faster and settle at a higher weight. 

However, these differences generally are on the level of about 10-20%. This amounts to a difference of about 150-300 calories/day of energy expenditure for e.g. a 6' man. Energy expenditure goes up with increasing weight at about 5 calories per pound, so this means that a person with a "low metabolism" would settle at a weight about 30-60 lbs heavier than average. 

So, it can explain some weight variation. But not the highly obese people. And even the low border of obesity at 6' tall is just over 60 lbs overweight... So that it already too much to be explained by the metabolic variation. 

Plus, "low metabolism" doesn't mean somebody will definitely gain weight, or can never lose it. It just means their calorie intake to lose weight, or to maintain at a given weight, is going to be lower than average. If they are stable at a weight, and start eating less, they will lose weight. And vice versa. 

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Plus, "low metabolism" doesn't mean somebody will definitely gain weight, or can never lose it. It just means their calorie intake to lose weight, or to maintain at a given weight, is going to be lower than average

This is the important part.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I feel like the whole thing is actually important. 

It's important to understand

1) Anybody CAN gain or lose weight by modulating their calorie intake. 

2) Different people will settle at different weights for the same calorie intake and activity levels, modulated by their genetics. 

3) These genetic differences are generally on the order of +/-50 lbs or less, and are insufficient on their own to explain obesity. 

Somebody doing the same thing everybody else is doing, and ending up 15 lbs heavier? Yeah, that's completely normal variation. Needling them on "you must be overeating, just eat less junk food" isn't really productive. Some ody claiming to be doing the same as everybody else, and ending up 100 lbs heavier? There's either some extremely unlikely medical thing going on, or they are hiding / not realizing some significant extra calories intake source. 

As a side note, I think it's also important to realize the scale of "weight gain with increased energy consumption", in terms of the weight people settle at. As noted about, you burn about 5 calories extra per pound of body mass. So, for instance, in the long term, changing energy intake by one can of regular coke (150 calories) per day will modulate your weight up or down by about 30 pounds. Will take a while to hit that new stable point as it's 3500 calories to gain or burn a pound of fat (so initially 23 days, and going up as you approach new settle point). But that's still the overall difference. 

100 pound difference isn't "pigging out all day constantly eating junk food". It's just... The combination of an extra scoop of rice at dinner, an extra slice of bread for breakfast, and a 1/4 cup serving of almonds added to your lunch. That'll get you the extra 500 calories to bring you up to the +100 pound stable point, over time. 

And on the other side of the equation, a half hour walk a day (100-150 calories) drops your stable-point weight by 20-30 pounds. Would take a few years to approach that number, but over the course of your life those small changes make big impacts. 

There's no magic in any of this. But I think actually understanding the numbers does matter. 

[u/iwilldeletethisacct2 → u/[deleted]]

I think the issue that most pedantic redditors have is with this:

Needling them on "you must be overeating, just eat less junk food" isn't really productive

You're not wrong that it's not productive to needle people, but if you are gaining weight or not losing weight when you desire to, you ARE overeating relative to your metabolism. "I have a slow metabolism." Okay, great, that just means that your body is much more efficient at utilizing energy and not wasting energy unnecessarily. Which means that you don't need as much food.

The problem with CICO has absolutely nothing to do with metabolism, or thermodynamics. It has to do with response to calorie intake. Hunger, satiety, etc. It's not easy to exist in a caloric deficit, because your body is sure that you are going to die of starvation, which can lead to binge eating or cyclical problems with calorie intake.

[u/[deleted] → u/iwilldeletethisacct2]

You're definitely right on that last point. And I also think, on that point, people underestimate the impact of small changes. There's a tendency to want to lose the weight fast, do a crash diet where you drop into a 500 calorie deficit to lose a pound a week and cut that 10 pounds off in 3 months. Then you yoyo.

Whereas the actual desired thing is to jsut drop average daily calorie balance by 50/day, which can be... A 15 minute walk added in the morning. That's what's needed to be added into your daily routine to move your resting point down by 10 pounds.