When Men Diet

"The Silicon Valley execs who don't eat for days: 'It's not dieting, it's biohacking'", course it is, *wink*. Biohacking would be to find the right way to reverse weight, our bodies already know how to regulate their own mass. They're doing it NOW.

Back in the day men hardly made a fuss of dieting, maybe they starved themselves occasionally till they dropped whatever weight they could and carried on.

Now this is purported a new thing because certain people are doing it. Mmmokay. The entry of men into committed dieting duties has thrown women for a loop,

San Francisco-based eating disorder specialist Shrein Bahrami was concerned that extended fasting was another fad that could be used as a cover for not eating.

Ha, ha, ha, you don't say?

“The hyper focus on tracking vital signs and food has become normalized, so it’s difficult to know when it’s become obsessive,” she said,

Normalized eh? Of course, the influence of the 'obesity' cult. And "trracking vital signs" is right, you'd better do that and more. 

....but people with eating disorders typically feel a lot of shame and other negative emotions around food and body image, which doesn’t tally with the experience of people like Libin and Woo.

You want (mucho/macho?) shame? The subtitle; "it's not dieting, it's biohacking." Reahlly?

“There’s a mild euphoria. I’m in a much better mood, my focus is better, and there’s a constant supply of energy. I just feel a lot healthier. It’s helping me be a better CEO,” he said over a cup of black coffee – one of many that day – at All Turtles’ Soma office. “Getting into fasting is definitely one of the top two or three most important things I’ve done in my life.”

Lols. 

He’s lost almost 90lbs and describes getting into fasting as “transformative”. 

Gettin' in! Some of us are getting out and staying out!

Libin is one of a growing number of Silicon Valley types experimenting with extended periods of fasting, claiming benefits including weight loss, fewer mood swings and improved productivity.

Ode to the familiar.

However, Libin and others like him are pushing that idea further and with a focus on performance over weight loss.

Yeah, it's nothing to do with weight loss, it's the emeaushun no wait, it's all about the performance, so if these guys were gaining weight, they'd still be doing it, for the performance. Sweet honey on the rock....(in a few days obvs.)

They aren't pushing anything, that's what it takes. 

It all started with intermittent fasting or 5:2 etc., but that wasn't enough, as shown by the paltry few fatz who can get into the acceptable crew after having their stomach amputated to merely to aide being close to this extent of non-eating.

Yes, the world of ED's is butchin' it up.

If you do not alter function, as I managed to somewhat accidentally, you will have to starve around the function that is in place, how behind the curve this all is to women. Not very Silicon Valley seeming, or is it?

Are they just really a bunch of follow-fashions dressed up as the cutting edge? I wouldn't be too surprised.

As for the health benefits, those countries where people go to bed hungry are not well known for their longevity. Look at the poor people of Venezuela, do they sound like they're reaping benefits from their "emotional" disentanglement with the (apparently) unnecessary outer energy supply?

Even if we accept that circumstances make a difference, we must consider that for half a century now, fat people have been told to starve themselves not in the midst of peace and positivity but of self eviscerating self loathing which is still being enforced today, including by a sidle of both sides of their mouths-talking MF claiming to be "sympathetic" whilst telling you to part with your healthy organs.

Fasting is most conducive [not saying much] rooted in positive circumstances of privilege, prestige and peace, not internal war, pathology and a surround of palpable hatred. That is why fat phobia hurts starvation efforts, not because fat hating boo boos make fatz eat emeaushunally.

Well, denial that starvation is the only way to make CRIWL do what its supposed to do-make us slim- is still in effect. That's a hell of shame right there.

No Surrrender!

A man called Hiroo Onoda has just died. He was a solider from the second world war who was said not to have believed in surrender until 1974, 29 years later. That's when he was persuaded to surrender from his Philippine jungle hideout.

He was a man loyal to an ideal, to the end. And beyond.

When does persistence become fanaticism, derangement? It's admirable to persevere and necessary to achieve anything past the short term. But, when you refuse to see the signs that your effort is at an end, you can waste a whole heap of time just pressing on. Doing the same thing over and over again simply because it feels too bad to contemplate letting go.

What can add confusion is, a certain suspension of judgement is be required to keep the faith long enough to see an initiative through to success. But the moment will come when you just know against the weight of your internal dynamic that this is it; it's over. Anything more requires a willing state of delusion that can only be voluntary and heartfelt. And your heart isn't close to being in it anymore.

Mr Onoda went on to live to 91. He had other people to implore him sir, enough is enough. You've done your best, you've done your duty. In that way he was fortunate.

Sometimes you are the one that has to implore yourself to let it go, in the face of everyone insisting otherwise.

Robin Thicke versus Feminists LOL!

S'hard not to laugh, really.

Is this about the tenth wave?

Ladies and Gentlemen

Okay, I decided I wasn't going to comment on this. "Blurred Lines" harks back to an old lyrical theme. Complaining about the effect patriarchal double standards have in putting women out of sync with their (true) sexual desires. Revealing the room that leaves for projection of exactly what those desires might be, too.

It's from the partner's point of view. As if it's the fault of the woman rather than her adaptation to society's rules. In this case, it's a man, I wonder if many a lesbian could also sing a similar tune, though it'd be expressed with differently no doubt.

A tad pompous I guess, but sometimes one has to be brave.

Anyway, the "blurred lines" concerned are the woman's internalisation of the Madonna part of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. The clashing of her actual desire-which according to the narrator is more in the much admired but at the same time despised "whore" direction.

i.e. she wants to get down, but doesn't like the implications of that. This is doubly useful. It can be a (man's) rationale for a woman not living up to expectations/wishful thinking and a way of her refusing (further) sexual advances in the first place.

Imagine if you fancied doing some press ups. I did say imagine, lol. You'd just make sure all was well, you had a space and ground that could support you etc, then just do your press ups right? You wouldn't think oh, just getting down to press ups like that, merely because I feel like it, means I'm dirty and bad. Rather than someone who just wants to get take an opportunity to er, get active.

The source of the wrong kind of friction is, how reliable is this narrator in divining the woman's wishes? He does warble about "The way you grab me" "Go head get at me", rather than say, "The way you look at me" or, "The way you were flirting with me", i.e. the way you are being polite and nice like ladies are taught means I say you want to do the vertical boogaloo with me.

However, the point is this is deliberately intended to push feminist buttons. It moans about the way women dress as being too provocative for a red blooded male to handle. And adds, "Just let me liberate ya".

If this baiting was too subtle. Singer Robin Thicke said in an interview;

People say, "Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?" I'm like, "Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women."

[My emphasis]

Now this is the sentiment that really caught my ear (call me bored/cynical). When I first got to FA I lamented being the target of this very kind of impulse. Whilst others tried to insist other women, feminists included indulged in fat hating due to "brainwashing." I felt, witnessed and experienced that the above was exactly the true urge at the heart of all this, i.e what a pleasure it is to degrade human dignity.

Anyone's really, especially whilst retaining or increasing your own. At their expense. With the permission of often them and authority. One doesn't pass up an opportunity like that easily.

And the video? Well, that's a lot like it is to be fat in a system designed for slimness as the dominant expectation, emotionally stripped whilst everyone else is fully clothed. The interviewer added;

Calm down, folks, it's a joke and everyone in the video is in on it. Thicke's a real Southern gentleman and his soul's as good as his hair. 

I'm not pointing this out to excuse Pharrell, Robin Thicke et al. It's just so people can better connect with the impulse under the lens. We do have the urge to degrade our own humanness, so the question is why and what do we do about it?

Helpful as ever. Well, I am a laydee.

[The most repellent thing about this effort for me was the state the "Southern gentleman's" section proposed to leave a certain part of the woman in question's anatomy. Eurech.]

"Lose like a man"

T/W For weight loss dieting.

I see WW are trying to repeat the inroads they made into the consciousness of white mainstream middle class/aspirant folk. As usual travelling on the tracks laid by 'obesity' cultism, they're seeking to widen their market in terms of race, class and sex.

In this case to men, black men in particular. They've possibly been most to the edge of weight loss diet culture and are presumably now being seen as a potential untapped opportunity in an overly saturated market. Presumably, less likely to know the bitter sweet 'joy' of being told exactly what to eat and when by commercial interests. And being blamed when that doesn't tame biology.

This is helped along by increasingly vocal fat haters amongst black communities who are seeking to use it to repeat one of the more tiresome aspect of being black. The eternal "This why BP's are in the state we're in" blah, blah.

Diet and fatness are added as current favoured ah-ha tools to 'prove' supposed the supposed degeneracy of BP with their appetite for "self destruction".

Insufficiently abject veneration of pathology as the response to health issues is represented as black people's ignorance/ carelessness about themselves.

Not to speak of another round of the agenda of those who deem "lower class" blacks too uppity. Like the universal race of shame dealers, they can sniff out an opportunity to stymie the progress of others with some grinding social shame, to make them seem better without doing anything directly.

Black people are the most shamed race of people on earth, yet according to these types it's just not enough, because we are too fat. Urrgh.

Anyway, the major weapon for this slimming industry sortie is Charles Berkeley in a dress.

He seems admirably comfortable in his attire though the way he negotiates his walk up in cuban heels made me laugh, with not a little knowing. There isn't the usual bad feeling I can get from black men dolled up. Even his hair shaking/ flicking feel more like a mutual understanding, rather than a vicious uppercut of judgement  too many dragged up BM seem to feel the need for.

(Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy etc.,, I'm thinking of you. Mind you.)

Why this vision of CB is going to encourage black or any other men to go on diets I can't say.

It's a pretty desperate sounding script that doesn't feel like it quite knows how to get its message across. Taken out of it's usual context of talking down to women, it's trying to find something similar for men. But can't find the tender spot to jab its finger into the male psyche prompting them to drop everything and make dieting imperative. Something that can create the same mutual collusion of agreed falsehood, like holiday/bikini season, going to a wedding/getting wed etc.,

Bikini bodies-it is bodies that wear clothes, not clothes that wear bodies, or pre wedding-if the person proposed marriage to you as you are et.al. Often it's preparation for living some dream of feminine perfection.

The equivalent with heterosexual men would be gettin' with the laydeez. If they can link losing weight to becoming a chick magnet then it could be game on. Not that I'm here to give them any ideas.

In this ad the BS machismo feels laughably out of date, a sort of men by numbers-was it actually written by a man I wonder? With it's talk of being able to have "man food" that's food to the rest of us, it seems rather condescending echoing the inane you can have chocolate on this diet!!!

When it comes to the idea of men being drawn into weight loss diet culture, "lose like a man" is about right.

Bad habits of self appointed calorie police

The conviction is someone made this person an expert in diagnostic medicine with the right to shout like a drill sergeant on crack, merely due to the level of his disgust of fatness? When did that happen?

Solution; Permission rescinded, you are now just a random arse who really needs to pipe down. People like this;

Presume to be above their own standards

Our hero insists "I'm tired" 3 times in his first two line paragraph (not for the last time in the article) yet admonishes;

You have an energy drink for breakfast. How many people do you see walking around with a jumbo can of fizz thinking they are providing 'energy' for their morning? These drinks are loaded with strange chemicals, sugar, and caffeine.

I'm presuming our hero has none of these in his pristine body yet seems as knackered as a retired stud horse.

Solution; Understand the energy hate drains.

NOTE: Inability to apply your own standards to yourself. I quoth;

It is the dumb choices of unhealthy people that make me angry

Solution; Acknowledge you are not "made" to do anything. Your anger, your choice. Be sure to audit yourself with your own standards.  

The incontinence of your loathing.  

You say things like: "But I hate broccoli". Guess what? So do I. But I eat broccoli and other fresh veggies because they contain nutrients my body needs.

Which relates to the previous. You've chosen lifestyle hate and yet cannot contain it within yourself.  Because you do an injustice to yourself-forcing things on yourself in a angry aggressive manner, you resent those who either aren't or appear not to be doing the same.

Solution; Recognise this leads you to feel like doing the same to others and treat yourself better. Your arrogant conviction that everyone sets as low a standard as you.

And it isn't only the overweight that get me ranting and raving. I'm also tired of hearing about skinny model wannabe's surviving on ciggies, energy drinks, and vodka-soda-fresh limes.

Get this, leave our skinny brothers and sisters alone. You do not endear yourselves to us by picking on them. We don't want you to spread your disgust, we want you to stop it.

Sensitizng yourself needlessly in this way is not a thoughtful stance;

I'm tired of obesity. I'm tired of the whinging and excuses. I'm tired of hearing about hospitals full of self-inflicted illnesses.

Solution; stop winding yourself up about it. This over stimulates your nervous system tiring it out unnecessarily. 

The addiction to junk food is one thing – but if you think adding diet cola will make a difference you're kidding yourself.

Get this, compulsive eating disorder is an eating disorder, not a weight.

Solution; Say over and again, eating disorder isn't weight. Until it becomes automatic.

The injury fat haters do to themselves cannot be contained within them. Many feel entitled to spread their misery. They are not. Entitled that is.

There's something unwholesome about witnessing someone in this amount of distress. The lack of self awareness, or awareness that others have done far more to far less effect and the vitriol aimed at others, because you're hurting yourself makes it hard to be sympathize. 

Channelling man

Fillyjonk was talking about a subject close to FA hearts, mansplaining. What she didn't mention is the mansplaining of female sockpuppets who come to life through channelling the master. Once man has 'splained, everything must order itself around that, even if that's around something that's flat out wrong.

This includes many feminists who through the aegeis of 'science' are -they think- able to fulfil the surrendered wife part of their psyche that few of us can seem to fully shake off. Whether it's some kind of a belief in the expression of power, or just an operational sado/masochistic mode I don't know.

It's clear we cannot find a way to lose a predictable amount of weight and that doesn't matter worth a damn. Sciencemenz aren't on board with recognizing it. And we who have the nerve to state plainly from our own experience are "arrogant". Science, reality, stuff like that, must pass through men to have any validity. Without their confirmation, approval recognition, acknowledgement? Fah-gettit.

Puppetsplainers notice nothing without that.

We have to continually prove, what is evident to all. Yet we don't say this. We toddle off to find 'proof', from those who are mainly building a case for their imagined biological philosophy. We have to take delusion seriously, because it's ballasted by manly fibre. And that's worth more than anything reflected through the biology of women.

Feminists 'think' fat phobia is objectionable because of our hurt fee-fee's. That's not the same old sexist trope though........ because.....erm, well d'uh, it is.

If women have a problem it's our e-meaushuns! Not say an intellectual disagreement or difference. They don't realise it's not about the veneration of the anorexic gamine as the feminist body ideal, versus chubtastic. It's that men are blatantly telling us all that we are somehow not quite sentient in the way they are or capable of knowing what goes with our own bodies.

Too many feminists don't recognise that they are supposed to have an instinct, alerting them to this. Their rejection of this effortless. On principle that women are human beings. Remember that one?

Instead all we want is a pat on the head, because a little tlc and attention is the answer to women's fractiousness as always.

Catch a tiger by the tail

One thing shocked that no one has anything to say about his ordeal. No one. Don't like golf. Don't like people who are ashamed of their humanity in general, their blackness specifically. It's not even necessary.

I do not care for Tiger Woods, or how he comes across, but his existence does not offend me. On an animal level, a cursory look at him in action marks him out as special. He has an intense free and yet contained physicality that is present in so many how are gifted athletically, whether dancers or heck just movers.

Imagine if Tiger had been the woman. As far as we can tell, he was struck inside his own home fled to his car. Pursued by his spouse brandishing what could be a lethal weapon, which she allegedly proceeded to use to hit the car. This caused him to become, understandably distracted and crash into something hard and unyielding-at speed enough to injure/ concuss him apparently. Is this an acceptable pursuit, regardless of the so called provocation?

I get the impression that he was absolutely terrified. Some people may find that amusing, that he was terrified of his wife's anger, That it's somehow OK, for a man to be in this position, but unconscionable if reversed. I don't think so.

The extent of his fear meant that he could have sustained greater injury. This from a woman who apparently on finding out of previous infractions was moved to re negotiate her pre-nup. Classy. It's interesting that one of the ladies Tiger dallied with, apologized to his wife, as if she's a big chief that must be palliated and paid tribute too. Extraordinary.

Internal balance

I've been thinking about this for a while now, although I haven't quite got to the point of posting much about it. I've bee thinking that men and women hate and love themselves, differently-or tend to.
Women hate themselves more on the surface, and deep down inside, think they are good.

Men love themselves more on the surface but deep down, think of themselves as bad. That badness feels like the space men need to be male, which requires greater moral leeway.

I've always just assumed men liked themselves through and through, even though I've been aware of certain mystifying facts. Like the fact that so much misogyny just ends up reflecting an underlying assumption that men are somehow, toxic.

There's the obvious slut shaming, which says that if women have sex with men, they are degraded by it and should therefore be ashamed of their contact with men.

Women who sleep with women are merely frigid or are evilly refusing to make themselves available for men to void their toxic (over)load. 'Forcing' men to be poisoned by it. No wonder they are taught to behave as if they will die if they don't have sex.

No wonder they are disgusted by homosexuality, two men 'polluting' each other. They too accord low status to men who are seen in the passive role.

It's always assumed this is straight out hatred of women, forms of misogyny . But in this equation, it's as much anxiety about managing their sense of internal balance.

Men's groups

This could be very bloody. The discourse may get a lot worse before it gets better. Men seem more welded to the idea that masculinities were created for their needs (ha, ha, ha) rather than to train them to take up the role assigned for them.

Too many still trade in trad sexuality is nature. It's natural, it's fracking Darwin and shit?!

Looking poor

Just thinking, in a patriarchal capitalist system, men are supposed to have the lion's share of wealth. Women should look as if they need feeding. Poorer women who are plump/ fat, look as if they have enough ingenuity to survive. Gaining enough resource from the meager allowance allocated to the poor by society. That they can take care of themselves and therefore, others connected to them, perhaps this explains why men are allowed to be fatter, to look like they are prospering.

And poorer people are offensive when their bodies suggest ingenuity and ambition enough to make the most of little and get a bit more. Some like their poor feckless and in need, helpless and looking famished.

Boneheaded misandry

I've just heard via this that there is skepticism about the concept of misandry. Apparently there is no such thing. I find this hard to believe. When you lift up the hatred of women there seems to be a loathing of maleness lurking underneath.

Misanthropy rules in the end.

Our ability as humans to use one part of our minds to abstract ideas about how we should be seems to be a vehicle for being ashamed of ourselves the whole time. Our current abstraction of calories in/out is an example of how our conception of how we are supposed to work doesn't match the reality of how we work.  Too often, instead of adjusting our thinking, we attempt to adjust ourselves to what cannot be.

Not sure why.

I find there is boneheaded misandry, around in circles that are supposedly 'traditional' and supposedly respectful of men. Treating men as if they are children and need women to civilize them and so on. In fact that seems to be required in order for men to fulfill their role in that scenario.

I agree though that a lot of the cry of man hater directed at feminists is in the main deeply disingenuous. You can see this especially when women who fit into the more desired models often get a free run to be far more insulting to men than most feminists usually are.

However women cannot be, nor should they have to be perfect. Some don't like men or their influence over us, whether you feel that is an understandable reaction to what men put down is another story.

Victimhood, doesn't have to be purified

The theme of spousal rape caught hold in this post about a letter to an advice column. Maybe I'm being dense but this felt like something slightly more complex than rape. Despite that being ground that should perhaps be left alone. 

I kept thinking this unusual illustration of how being bound by an intense sense of obligation can cause us to collude in our own mis-use. I was told to read this. I didn't feel that was what I meant at all. I don't believe women should have to have a fight back test.

The story is of a woman repulsed by her husband due, she says, solely to his 100 lbs weight gain. He was plump when they met and she could see that, but considered him attractive;

When we first met he was probably 25 pounds overweight, but he was handsome and we had great sex.

So for her sexual arousal is directly bound up in the way he looked.

Five years later he’s 300 pounds. I find his naked body gross. His face is bloated, and I can’t see the good-looking man I married.

Her repulsion is palpable. The bit about not seeing "...the handsome man I married", is telling, like she feels he's been replaced with someone else. Sometimes even quite minimal changes in weight are described as a new body. Then comes the chilling part;

Occasionally, I’ll let him “use” my body to appease him so he’ll stop arguing and yelling.

Whilst I do not condone any pressuring anyone for sex, I feel the label of rape perversely, ends up papering over the cracks. There's an element of someone colluding in their own violation. That's important because it can enable us to have the strength to say no and stick with that. And no, I'm not "blaming the victim", I'm trying to point to a way that women's conditioning and our own personal vanity can make the bounds of consent less than straight forward at times.

We all hide from uncomfortable feelings ones we feel we shouldn't have. There's no doubt he should not be arguing to the point where she feels the need to appease him physically. However, I don't know whether he knows that is what's happening here.

Rape is not the only way you can feel violated. Guilt seems to be involved here, though many felt she was physically threatened by him I didn't get that sense, nor did she say such, it was assumed, ironically due to his size. The confusion of boundaries being crossed because of a conflicting set of obligations and feelings. The upshot is having allowed oneself to be used in ways that feel like violation when your contrary feelings catch up with you.

It is not unusual for women especially to try to screw the anger out of men. It's one of the reasons so many end up with a sexual impulse that is absent without leave. Wondering, what happened? I detest the term "sexual dysfunction", because is it dysfunction if you mis-use your sexuality, get out of sync with it, as we women especially are too often sidelined into by the need for us to still be mere adjunct to male (hetero)sex?

It can peter out just like any other mis-used instinct. It happens to some people with their hunger if they overlook or try to suppress it too often. They too can find it becomes 'dysfunctional'.

Offering sex as a placatory soother, as a means to an end parts it from visceral desire. Both men and women do this, but women are taught that their sex is in service of others.

The letter speaks for a sex that still doesn't feel a full sense of ownership of it's own sexuality. If we did we wouldn't be on offer. Let me add that I am not ignoring the fact that this man's reaction to being denied access to the body of his wife is not acceptable. I''m not blaming her for the situation, it's more awareness. I suppose I'm trying to say that sometimes we can leave ourselves open to being victimized because we can't let go of ideas of how we should feel or behave.

That doesn't mean we are not being victimized. We don't have to be put into a narrative of innocence against guilt. Women don't have to be pure and perfect. We can make unwise moves and thinking about them and why, is not colluding with abuse. It's trying to identify patterns that draw us in. 

It's illuminating to know that and how we can and often do pay for the split in our sense of agency, between duty of care-taking the feelings of others and being true to or even identifying our own. In the end, its more reason to end the relationship. Kate makes a very apt point when she says;

So suck it up, accept that you’re the kind of person who can’t be attracted to a fatty even if you’d like to think you’re better than that, and cut him loose.

This is the key to so much of our problems it's not that we don't know what we want but that we also have a judgement about what that makes us and that's the bit that's stopping us from acting.

If the woman had accepted that it's okay to be repelled by the size of her husband and have done with it, she'd have been able to act accordingly, rather than wrestle with the idea of being a better woman.

Take down of Sandy S, not

Sometimes it's hard not to feel sad about the way this whole non debate around fatness just repeats itself, revolving around its debased heart. It doesn't even feel like debate at all, just a collection of redundant word rituals specifically designed to go nowhere whilst pretending they've gone somewhere.

The purpose is to preserve the hypothesis of dieting as the answer to fatness, not to discuss it. The best debates are supposed to have a life of their own, surprise, provoke, illuminate.

It's usually really hard to ge anything out of discussing weight with most people, they've taken fat people must diet as absolute. This supposed take down of Sandy Szwarc has already decided what it thinks yet tries to kid us it is drawn logically from scientific fact rather than personal inclination. The writer cannot back up his hyper no matter how hard he tries.

Like other critics, he deals in the worst kind of gossipy bitching inference damning through insinuation, making supposed links between Sandy and organizations which may or may not be dubious as if he is critiquing a scientific paper not a blog post.

Rather rather than trusting us to make up our own minds from carefully wrought assessment of her arguments. It's all about who said what about her and links to x, y, z, what has that to do with the defining principles of mechanics?

Thank goodness one contributor had the capacity to bring some sense of balance to the thread, which unsurprisingly ended it! Obviously, the people who run this blog are supposed to be A Grade brains, but on this particular occasion this man shows why 'obesity' has caused me to question assumptions of what intelligence is supposed to be and how it functions.

Having the nerve to question anything about the received wisdom is predictably linked by inference to creation science - that's the belief that god is the instigator of the universe and if there is evolution or a big bang then god did it, scientifically. This sounds far more like the accusers who've already decided dieting, for sure is going to succeed in making millions of fat people thin if they just stick with it, even though it hasn't yet. It will. Somehow. At some time in the unforseeable future for no reason.

Without them even so much as identifying the crucial missing factor that has prevented it from working thus far. Well, in order to do that, they'd have to admit the truth now and as you can see they can't.

They really, truly believe it in their heart of hearts and that's supposed to be good enough for those of us who know better.

Basically, Sandy did something simple and very clever, whether she pulled it off or not I cannot be sure, she used the rules of thermodynamics to explain why calorie restriction fails. The riposte seems to my amateurish eyes to be largely Blimpish windbaggery.

Making ludicrous gaps between things you couldn't slip a piece of fat reduced soyham, or sham between. There's apparently a distinct division between those who believe a calorie is a calorie-just cut intake and expend energy. And those who believe some calories count more or less than others-cut whole food groups-based on a deeply compelling premise-so that what you eat becomes so unpalatable your intake is reduced.

If he's having a quarrel with Sandy, you'd think he'd be getting pissy about the latter, but no, he treats both perfectly civilly, doesn't even mention in terms of results they are both as crap as each other. Must be out of politeness. He claims her argument is "bizarre" and "incoherent" when his own flummery it's not clear that he fully understood what she was saying nor could explain why he thought she was wrong. 

It is as if she had a reasonable, but dense, argument to make about the complexities of weight control 

There's no such thing as "weight control" the only principle on offer doesn't work. She was explaining why that doesn't work. Nor is it for this man to tell her what the scope of her own efforts should be. It's not up to her to come down to his level.

 And using that weird funky language;

"Thermodynamics must be obeyed...."

Obeyed, is he sure? Surely thermodynamics exposes the functioning of reality? It is not 'obeyed' it just is. It is a function of planet Earth that gravity pulls you toward it and keeps you down, if you jump up, you swiftly return to the ground, you do not 'obey' gravity you just do because it works. Which is more than we can say for bullshit pseudoscience.

This odd use of paternalistic authority crops up when people are trying to impress upon you that you aren't allowed to think for yourself, no matter how unavoidable that is.

I don't know if Sandy's explanation is right, but I do know he's defending what is defunct and claims to be using science, therefore I know he is bullshitting.

I have always thought there must be a way physics-thermodynamics-must be able to explain why diets don't work and it even though my grasp is virtually non existent, just the idea of it feels very exciting.

See if you can sense any of that in the post.