alt Hacker NewsI'm one of those examples. I've never been obese or really even overweight, but mid-2023, I noticed my clothes were no longer fitting, and I decided to take off some weight. I lost 20 pounds over the course a a few months and have managed to keep it off since. Body scans aren't accurate, but the 1 scan I took after losing the weight put me at 13% body fat.
It's one of the hardest things I've done. I'm no stranger to hard physical things - I've run marathons, raced cyclocross, done daily bike commuting through several Chicago winters, and I'd rate the weight loss as up harder than all of those. At the risk sounding too hubristic - if that's the effort it takes to lose weight, doing so is beyond the abilities of large swaths of the population. Not to mention that I have the time and financial resources to weigh my food, buy foods that were optimal for my diet (so much yogurt and chicken!), etc.
(As a side note, exercise isn't a very good way to lose weight in my experience. It's valuable to do for all sorts of other reasons, but I actually gained weight when training for my first marathon, while running 60-70 miles/week).
> As a side note, exercise isn't a very good way to lose weight in my experience.
Generally people who don't normally exercise are going to gain muscle faster than they lose fat. This was the origin of HAES before it got corrupted: Health At Every Size, not "Healthy". Encouragement to keep going because with exercise you'll get healthier even if you're not losing weight.
Also, by weight, muscle burns more calories than fat just by existing. Personally I think that's where most of the weight loss attributed to exercise comes from, rather than the exercise itself. You have to gain the muscle first to actually burn more calories.