Mysterious fat.

We're still talking about fat. Back here.

Freeman Hunt said:

[I]t ... comes down to math... There is no mystery to getting in shape.

Noumenon said:

I think it's a complete mystery. As some magazine article I read pointed out, it's impossible to do controlled experiments with diet regimens because there's no proven way to lose weight and keep it off to use as a control group. We haven't a clue.

I said:

I agree that it's a mystery, but you can extract one truth: if you're still fat, you need to eat less. It doesn't matter why other people don't get fat when they seem to eat the same thing. Look at your own situation. If you're still fat, cut down. Eat less, and weigh yourself. Do it every day for the rest of your life. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just the natural impulse that allowed your ancestors to survive through famines. You have a healthy urge and a healthy body, but in times of affluence, that will make you fat. You've got to go against your nature and eat less. Until you're not fat any more. Or, as Roseanne Barr once said: "Just be fat and shut up."

UPDATE: Some people are getting very upset at that Roseanne Barr quote -- which is from that great concert she did before she had her sitcom. It's almost as if people don't remember that she's a comedian... and that she's fat. Some folks are reading this post as insulting fat people and calling them lazy. Huh? Where is that? And many, many of the comments here and on other blogs are testament to how amazingly strong the mental defenses are. People simply do not want to face the fact that if they are fat they've been eating too much, which is all I said. It is utterly irrelevant to that point that some people can eat a lot more than others without getting fat or that if you'd exercise more you could get away with eating more. If you are fat, you are eating more than you need to fuel your body as you are using it. That doesn't mean it's easy to just eat less, and it doesn't mean that there aren't some ways of eating less that are better than others. But, good lord, it's absurd to keep denying that you're fat because you're eating too much!