6 Comments
User's avatar
тна Return to thread
Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

If he found that "any caloric restriction works" I can already disregard the study because it must've been wrong, because that's clearly nonsense. And, in fact, I do not think Kevin Hall is a good-faith source. I've seen some stuff that just makes me shake my head.

He doesn't even have a useful definition of success (which I've written about here: https://exfatloss.substack.com/p/the-definition-of-diet-success). So he couldn't possibly find a correct answer. This is obvious from stuff like "any caloric restriction works."

Expand full comment
John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that any caloric restriction works! It may be horrifying and pointless, and the weight lost may all come back on the minute you stop starving yourself, but if starving people don't lose weight then I'm a Dutchman.

Expand full comment
Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

"the weight lost may all come back the minute you stop starving yourself" exactly

That's not a success in my book. If you don't differentiate between "actual, lasting fat loss" and "we starved him for 2 weeks and he gained it all back and then some but hey science is hard amirite" then you're never going to find the solution to obesity.

Expand full comment
Harry Lime's avatar

That's true but there isn't a single kind of 'success'.

Expand full comment
Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Sure. But I've defined what I mean by success in fat loss (link in the other comment) and temporarily starving yourself ain't it. If that's someone's goal, they should be honest about it. I see that as failure unless you're a bodybuilder getting ready for a competition.

Expand full comment
Harry Lime's avatar

"If he found that "any caloric restriction works" I can already disregard the study because it must've been wrong, because that's clearly nonsense" I meant in the context of the study, not as a blanket statement of course. All the groups in the study lost weight fairly quickly, the keto group just faster.

"He doesn't even have a useful definition of success (which I've written about here: https://exfatloss.substack.com/p/the-definition-of-diet-success). So he couldn't possibly find a correct answer." But he wasn't finding an answer to begin with. He put groups in a controlled environment and measured their body stats to see what happened based on diet. I think we should be careful as to straw man certain claims on his outcomes. He never claimed that X 'works' or that 'any kind of Y works' here. I just worded it like that in the sense that he didn't find a group that maintained weight.

Expand full comment
ErrorError