Reading through these comments is scary. And I'm lucky. I've never put on weight in my life but always been active. 50 now and still snowboard, scuba dive and martial arts three times a week. Only ever ate two meals a day (lunch and dinner) and have never paid attention to sugar. Drink fewer sodas than I used to but still average about one a day. I eat a lot of meat but also a lot of vegetables and bananas. Maybe 50/50 meat/veg. Guessing metabolism has a lot to do with it. Nobody in my family ever got obese either.
The upshot is that what works for Peter may not work for Paul. And somehow I fell into a healthy lifestyle...
Most people don't realize just how small a lifestyle change it takes to affect weight into middle age. When habits are amplified by the fulcrum of consistency over decades it makes a huge difference.
Just consider that all it takes to become 100 lbs overweight by age 50 is an extra 38 calories a day starting at age 25. The difference between morbid obesity and healthy weight can literally come down to one donut a week or walking an extra quarter mile a day.
It's way more complicated that that. The body is not a stupid mechanical device where you make a change in one place and then the rest of the system reacts in a straightforward and predictable way. There is a brain in the middle of everything. And that brain affects motivation. Good luck doing something when you're not feeling motivated.
> Just consider that all it takes to become 100 lbs overweight by age 50 is an extra 38 calories a day starting at age 25.
Source? Sounds very hard to believe, when you starting getting weight from that 38 calories you also start to require more energy to do the same thing, just because you weight more. And there are a ton more factors to add, the human body is not as simple as that.
I don't think that's right. As you gained weight, your basal metabolic rate would also go up until you reached some equilibrium.
If a pound of body fat consumes about 2-4 calories per day, then your extra 38 calories is only enough to maintain an extra 10-20 pounds of weight, not 100 pounds.
You also need to subtracting the extra calories you burn carrying the extra weight around.
The upshot is that what works for Peter may not work for Paul. And somehow I fell into a healthy lifestyle...