Site is a link aggregation of a series of blog posts that cite various studies about the mystery of why the obesity rate is increasing, and why the rate of increase is itself accelerating. Authors make a compelling argument that normal homeostatic processes (the theorized lipostat specifically) tend to keep people within a certain BMI range. Authors argue that environmental contamination is breaking the lipostat, driving obesity rates upwards, and faster where there's more contamination.
Interesting read and a great reason to switch to :vegan-v: with a focus on not buying anything wrapped in plastic.
Definitely, I completely agree. It shouldn't be necessary to count calories because we shouldn't be pressured by the society we live in to so severely overeat. Personally, I don't count calories, but that's only because I now understand enough about nutrition to eyeball it. And not only was I never taught any of this stuff about nutrition before, what I was taught about nutrition growing up was complete bullshit made up by :porky-happy: to sell me more food and hopefully also fad diet bullshit.
However, "nutrition is just magic that is impossible to understand and im somehow gonna store extra fat despite consuming fewer calories than I burn" is a sentiment I absolutely cannot stand.
Oh yeah for sure, that comes off as magical thinking to me. Part of it does come from realistic problems though, food education in most industrialized countries is incredibly corrupt and compromised. There are lots of people who simply don't realize how many calories are in something like salad dressing or the beer they drink, so even when they try to track they don't record it properly.
I've lost maybe about 100 to 110 lb over the past two years, and that's something that I noticed of myself and the difference between all my failed attempts before vs now. I didn't realize that bowl of cereal should probably have the milk counted, that getting the large fast food meal everyday was eating the equivalent of like 170 strawberries or 10-12 bananas in a single serving. I can't even eat three bananas without feeling done! Those are very satiating fruits. And yet for the meal I'd just jot down like 500-800 instead and move on and despite them actually being a thousand+ calories I would be ready to eat in just a few hours.
So I think a lot of people really do try to lose weight, and they tried to follow the calorie in carry out method and it failed. It's not really because the principles of burning off more energy than you consume are wrong, but because so much of society is built up against being able to this properly. You aren't educated for it, and all the pressures and marketing and everything else imaginable work against you. And when you fail, it's easy to just throw it off and say it doesn't work, much harder to confront the systemic flaws and your own misunderstandings after all. I don't blame people who do it honestly, there's extreme amounts of money making sure we never see it.