I think js2 agrees diet and exercise is a good first course of action, but is responding to the subtle implication, intended or not, that diet and exercise are sufficient; that no further (more drastic) measures are needed. From his post he clearly agrees diet is the preferred course of action if it works on its own (as it does for him).
I was trying to imply that diet and exercise should be sufficient most of the time, but not always. That's why I said "and then see what happens".
Research is needed and more good research is always welcome but until we know how these things actually work, my bias is toward the simpler, more well understood options.
I think the problem with you being so glib about this is that the "common sense [...] diet and exercise" shtick has been treated as the last word. This pokes a major hole in that orthodoxy. And that orthodoxy is already pretty tattered.
That's important in this context because many people use the orthodox view as a club: if you're fat, then obviously you're a bad person, a lazy glutton who can't be bothered to take some simple actions.
Not only that, it completely overlooks the current obesity epidemic. If it was really such an open-shut case, we probably could've at least contained the problem by now.
If a theory depends on mass laziness and ineptitude from the same ingenious species that brought us all our modern innovations and wisdom, then something's not right. It's disingenuous to suggest that such behaviour should be so natural and prevalent amongst human beings; especially when it has only just exploded in the last few decades...
Why should we have contained the problem? It's not like coca cola and McDonalds are going out of business. The obesity epidemic correlates just fine with the notion that a poor diet leads to obesity. Diets are increasingly poor.
Correlation isn't necessarily causation and a group observation isn't necessarily applicable to individuals.
It frankly pisses me off when people tell me to stop drinking soda and eating fast food to lose the fat I have right now, and that going to the gym will fix it all. I don't drink much soda. I drink 95% water and unsweetened tea I make at home (jasmine or barley tea bag and one pitcher of water) and the other 5% being milk, juices and soda in that order - and this is a habit I've had for over half my life. Fast food and delivery is generally limited to 1x a week, and I may rely heavily on packaged foods (like trader joes frozen stuffs) but it's usually accompanied with a huge salad with only a little vinaigrette as dressing for a total of 1.5-2k calories a day most days. That's if I even eat much because I'm on Adderall _and_ Alli (the OTC version of xenical) quite literally pooping what little fat I'm eating. I have also gone to the gym anywhere from 2 to 7 times a week with workouts of all sorts, and at some point I even had a trainer looking after me for months as I spent 2-3 hours a day every day with him. And I. look. even. fatter. than. ever. even if I might be able to climb 10 flights of stairs without a sweat and I feel healthy - like how I'm on track to hit 100k steps (w/fitbit - 10k is about 5 miles) this week without much effort. The only thing that I can't do is getting out of my chair more often, and that's because I damaged a nerve after doing so a few months ago. For as long as that's lasted that hasn't done anything noticeable either.
A lot of my friends are in the same boat, and we're all sick of the same advice. There has got to be something in the equation that people are missing where fat is concerned. There are definitely people out there that eat junk food that need to stop, but not every overweight person is the same. The current advice being thrown out there and hammered into our heads isn't very helpful.
Since that doesn't work, you should try something different -
Seth Roberts' Shangri-La "diet" seems to work extremely well for about 80% of the people (and not at all for the remaining 20%). I quote "diet" because it involves ADDING 200-400 calories a day to your intake (albeit with some weird specific constraints).
It worked for me for a while, and then stopped. Other things worth trying are atkins style diets, Dave Asprey's BP diet (4500kcal/day, but with extreme attention to details) or even the Tim Ferriss advocated "slow carb" system.
It seems that no diet works for 100% of the people, and those that are not crackpot work for 80% but not more. I guess variance (biome or otherwise) is much larger than assumed - or there's a missing ingredient in diet that is being overlooked.
