Does your weight loss community really help you?
Coach! I have just discovered reddit.com/r/loseit. It’s a great community about people trying to shed some weight. Have you heard about it?
Yes, I did. I don’t particularly like it though.
Really? Why? It’s a great place to learn about new tricks and to get some motivation about weight loss.
You know how I feel about motivation :)
Yes I do, but…
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled that you are actively looking for new ideas and information, different point of views. But that being said, you must remember that what people share there is not what worked from them. Most of it probably won’t work for you, some may even be unproductive.
I’m not sure I understand… How could something that work for someone might be counter-productive for someone else?
Let me give you an example. A big trend these days is intermittent fasting. It is viewed by many as the holy grail of fat loss. To make a long story short, it’s not. It is effective only in the sense that havign a feeding window helps some people restrict their caloric intake. But not everyone.
Ok but, how???
I’m going there. Do you know what’s a binge eating disorder?
Yes, I have heard of it. It’s when people can’t help but eat, right?
Yes, more or less. It’s an eating disorder that makes people eat more than they want to. Imagine having eaten so much you feel sick and yet, you somehow can’t stop. I can tell you from personal experience, it is NOT fun. It is the most widespread eating disorder and it’s estimated about 25% of the american population suffers from it.
That sounds awful. But what does it have to do with intermittent fasting?
It has to do that, in my experience, people with binge eating disorder should never EVER try intermittent fasting. It is very likely to worsen the eating disorder.
How is that?
Having binge eating disorder means you want to eat a lot. In that regard, intermittent fasting is very appealing because less meals implies bigger meals, which that little binge eating voice in your head loves. In fact, intermittent fasting enables binge eating disorder
Intermittent fasting enables binge eating disorder
Oooh I can see why… Ok so, I get it, some of the advice given on reddit may not work with me. But I still think I should check it out. I just have to be careful about which advice I am following.
I’m afraid that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You see, most people there lack hindsight to really know what they are talking about.
That sounds a bit contemptuous…
I don’t mean it that way. Look, what kind of people do you think are the most active on this kind of social media?
People who are trying to lose weight, obviously!
Precisely. You don’t hear a lot from people who have managed to lose a lot of weight, to keep it off for years and that don’t obsess over food all the time, simply because there are not a lot of us to begin with! Instead, you hear mostly from people who are trying to lose weight or have just reached their “goal weight”.
And that’s… bad?
Well, what’s your goal? Is it to lose weight?
Ah! I know that one! No, it’s to lose weight and keep it off! Oh wait… I think I see what you mean. There’s no way to know if what they did really work on the long run because it hasn’t been tested long enough…
Yes, that’s it. For example, do you have any idea how many posts I saw of people saying “Thanks to Keto, I finally started losing weight for the last 2 weeks!”, perpetuating the fantasy that Keto is some sort of magic diet, which, in turns, promotes the idea that fat loss has nothing to do with calories but instead with what kind of food you eat.
What’s the big deal about Keto? Doesn’t it really make you lose weight?
Oh! That’s right, we never talked about that. When starting a Keto diet, you lose a lot of weight very fast in the first few weeks. We sometimes call that the Keto flush. But most of it is not fat. Instead, it’s mostly water weight and glycogen. After a few weeks, that effect stops and so does the dramatic weight loss.
So, Keto is… bad?
Oh no, it isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with Keto per se. If you like it and can keep following it for the rest of your life, be my guest, go ahead! What’s wrong is the idea that Keto is a magic diet, that you will somehow lose all your fat if you stop eating bread and pasta and start eating a lot of olive oil and avocado. Fat loss is about satying in a calorie deficit over a long period of time. If eating bread helps you doing that then, please, do so… I’m sorry, I feel like we digressed quite a bit. What were we talking about again?
About why you don’t like social media like r/loseit.
Ah yes, that’s right… There’s one last big reason why I don’t like them and it’s because of something called survivorship bias. Let’s continue with our Keto example. Do you think you would be more likely to talk about it if it worked or if it didn’t?
Clearly, if it worked. If it didn’t, I would probably keep it to myself.
Exactly. That’s the core of this issue, we are more incline to talk about our wins than our losses. And when many people do the same, that skews your perception of its effectiveness, making the perceived effectiveness of the many weight loss tools very different than their actual effectiveness.
So, if I rephrase, the fact that we prefer to share our wins rather than our losses make some tools look better than they should, is that it?
Yep, you got it.
Alright… Everything considered, the overall picture of social media looks pretty grim…
That’s why I said I didn’t like it. To me, social media is the equivalent of junk food for the mind. But look, everything’s not dark and sad. Check out Reddit from time to time if you like it, but you have to remember to keep an extremely critical eye about everything. Do not assume anything, do not trust anything that’s being said, question everything.
Do you have any question or remark? Don’t forget to write it in the comments so that I can answer you!
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