dieting works longer term for 1 in 4000 people
On average obese people eat fewer calories per day than people with a normal BMI (about 200 less on average)
There is a big difference between overweight and obese. Overweight is probably normal for some people and may confer some health benefits like increased survival post cardiac arrest.
Obesity is rooted in complex physical and psychosocial issues sometimes stemming way back into early childhood and even pre birth. The poster who said their very underweight sister ultimately died from obesity is not atypical. Early childhood malnutrition is a significant risk factor for adult obesity. Social factors in childhood such as poverty, food scarcity etc play a huge role.
If obesity was about gluttony, rich people with their access to more desirable food in greater quantities would be more likely to be obese. This was the way it was for generations. In reality now obesity and poverty go hand in hand and we should look to our society for that. How we are failing to address childhood food insecurity, forcing many adults to live on toast and chips so they can feed their children. How food insecurity and scarcity play into the choices those children make as adults, how they affect their psychological and physiological response to food.
The psychological and physical response to food is bound together. You absorb more nutrients from food you enjoy. Your previous experience of hunger likely impacts your body’s feelings of satiety when consuming meals much later in life. There are ways we can manage obesity as a society but they are far more complex than diet clubs.
However it’s rare many people on threads like this actually gives a shit about the obese or future obese usually they want to feel good because they’re thin. Sadly they often have nothing else in their lives and this is all that’s good about them, clinging onto body size for their worth and value.