How can diet plans be effective for some but not all individuals?
In: Biology
Theoretically, diets for the purpose of weight loss do work for practically everyone. Outside of dietary needs, more calories going out than are going in is going to lead to weight loss.
The problem is adherence: how closely someone is able to follow the diet. If you tell someone that’s routinely over-eating to cut their intake in half….its unlikely to be adhered to, even if it’s theoretically possible. Some people respond well to an entire shift in diet (keto, paleo, etc), while others will only respond well to a reduction in their current diet.
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You have to take into consideration metabolism, age, BMI, race and genetics. In the end, it all comes down to calories in and calories out. Most people who stick to diet plans do not follow it. If they do follow it they consume too much of it. Lastly, people who do not research and take the time to understand how to create an effective weight loss plan for them. As a result they end up creating an inefficient one with miserable results.
Pretty much all diets work for everyone, because they are all based on the same fundamental principal of taking in less energy than you burn so your body burns excess fat instead. But people don’t stick to diets beyond the short term or mislead themselves about how accurately they are following a diet. Eventually people fall into bad habits and often regain weight. But at that stage they are not following the diet anymore so it’s not that the diet has failed but the individual has failed to stick with it.
This is a little bit like asking “why can only some, but not all, people run marathons?” Ignoring that some people can’t walk at all, there are other things that can affect your ability to run a marathon. Some people are just better suited to a different kind of exercise: an Olympic skier is obviously very fit, but the exercise they’re good at is very different from marathon running. Some people have asthma or other medical conditions that make running difficult. Some people simply do not have the time, energy, or inclination to put in the massive amounts of work that goes into running a marathon: you can’t put your free time into training for a marathon if you don’t *have* any free time, or simply less time than necessary to train properly.
Even though there’s nothing technically stopping anybody from running a marathon (other than maybe people who physically can’t run or walk at all), obviously only some people actually do it. If you were to pick a random person and tell them to run a marathon right now, they likely wouldn’t be able to get beyond the first mile or two, let alone finish the whole thing.
So, to answer your question:
* Some diets are better suited for some people/conditions than for others. Someone with high blood pressure is going to need to follow a different diet than someone with a chronic sodium deficiency. Someone with oral allergy syndrome might not be able to eat raw fruits and vegetables, even though generally those things are healthy for most people.
* Some people have medical issues that affect their weight independently of diet. Someone with short bowel syndrome (where you physically don’t have enough small intestine to absorb nutrients normally) may need to eat more than you’d expect for a person of their size, because they’re not getting the same benefits as someone with a healthy intestine from the same amount of food. Chronic sleeplessness can impair your glucose sensitivity, increasing your risk of diabetes and other diseases, even if your diet would otherwise be fine. In general, a very tall and physically active person is going to need a different diet than a very short and sedate person.
* Some people simply do not have the time, energy, or inclination to do the work that goes into following a diet. And it *is* work: most people are not using calipers to determine their body fat percentage (which is one of the things that affects your TDEE), or individually measuring/weighing out everything they ever eat, or completely avoiding any food they haven’t made themselves *because* they can’t weigh it. If your main priority is something like “make food that your entire family will eat, because otherwise that’s wasted money down the drain” or “have a quick snack in between eight hour shifts because you don’t have enough time for more,” other considerations are going to take a back seat.
* And this is all ignoring the inherent “fuzziness” of dieting and food science in general. There is no way to determine the exact calorie count of one granola bar vs. another identical granola bar: the number on the packaging is a very educated guess, but it’s still not perfect. There is no way to determine exactly how many calories you burned on the treadmill today: you can make a good guess, but you’re never going to 100% know for sure. There’s a lot about food science that we just don’t know, or thought we did but it turns out that it was junk. Anyone who confidently says that there’s absolutely no ambiguity or things we don’t yet know in science is lying their ass off.
As someone who has battled weight my whole life I can say from experience that diet alone may work when you are younger but it must be combined with exercise/activity as you get older or it will just leave you feeling drained.
Have you ever noticed how 2 of the same store can be run completely differently? Like one McDonalds might have really motivated staff, be fully staffed, well-supplied, etc, while another is understaffed, overworked, and demotivated. Even though the stores are McDonalds and have the same prices and menu, the 1st store can bring in more money than the 2nd because they are able to process more customers and do a better job at it.
Your gut is similar. Some people may have guts like the first store; their guts are able to digest more of what they eat and do so more efficiently. Other people may have guts with something out of whack that makes them worse at digesting.
In short, everybody’s guts are different, and that makes different people process the same diet differently.
Lots of stupid and just flat out wrong info in this thread. If you eat below caloric maintenance you will lose weight, if you eat over you will gain weight. It’s not any more complicated than that.
People either eat at a calorie deficit or they don’t this determines the effectiveness full stop.
Some people got discipline to actually go through with it, and others lack that, and always giving excuses, constantly having cheat days, or drinking alcohol and all that
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