alt Hacker NewsYup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.
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This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.
My suspicion as someone with lifelong weight struggles and having tried GLP-1 medication: overweight people require more willpower to lose or maintain weight relative to those of normal weight.
So the advise or admonishment of the normally weighted that losing weight "just requires willpower" is true but facile.
If we were to medically induce a constant feeling of hunger and insatiability into a person of normal weight, I'm sure they could keep the weight off, but would find that their willpower is highly depleted.
There are medications that cause increased appetite and weight gain (ex: some bipolar depression medications, prednisolone). This effect is so pronounced, that if a doctor sees the patient not gaining weight, they will suspect non-compliance and have to rule it out. Of course, some patients use extreme diet and exercise (willpower) to avoid these effects, but a normal person accustomed to expending a normal amount of willpower to maintain weight will find themselves gaining.
Overeating is often a coping mechanism. It’s really hard to displace unless your life is going fantastic. Even with GLPs.
To solve digestive problems, I managed to eat the exact same meal every single meal for 20 straight months. And it didn't help me lose weight.
So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.
I seriously dispute this. I spent weeks not being able to eat enough. I hardly lost weight despite being close to the optimal calorie range to do so.
I wouldn’t phrase it that way. Relying on willpower is a recipe for failure. Humans generally don’t have enough willpower, it goes for most things, even when you don’t have strong physiological forces involved. The key to getting a diet to work is in figuring out how to not require willpower, which means thinking about it differently, forming new habits. Stress and social environment also need attention or they will steamroll your goals.