WWGD said:
I mean, your experiences in being able to control weight, etc. They have worked for you, but this may just be a coincidence and may not generalize, i.e., there may be large numbers of people who may also work out and skip meals when they are hungry and yet not be able to lose weight.
Well, it can be said that results will
vary, but, no, it isn't a coincidence that when I eat less and exercise more I lose weight: qualitatively, these results will
happen for essentially everyone. Conservation of matter/energy (and basic logic) demands it and research shows it. It doesn't mean everyone can be equally skinny, it just means everyone can be skinn
ier.
The media has been blasting lately that this simple mantra isn't true but they either purposely or due to not being very bright misrepresent the studies. Dieting sucks, so it sells newspapers to tell people they don't have to do it.
Here's a study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4227972/
It compares dieting, exercise and dieting+exercise in a meta-analysis. It involved 3500 people in 24 studies and if I'm reading the stats right (in particular, table 2) it says more than 95% lost weight by whatever method they were assigned.
Important caveat: while eating less
or exercising more will cause weight loss, the eating less part is the bigger factor and if you choose only to start exercising and don't pay attention to your calorie intake, your body will demand more food and you will eat more and not lose as much weight. So it is important to pay more attention to the eating than the exercise, lest you accidentally undermine your own fitness regimen.
