I saw this:
Some people have such terrible genetics their body just tries to get fat from any diet missteps.
Often this is some kind of hormonal and metabolic issue, with absolutely no quick fixes.
These people usually have a large hole to dig out of, and that just makes it take even…
— AntiDoc | Mass Mentor (@antidoc32) September 1, 2025
The predictive value of HBD is unrivaled. It looks like he came to the same realization I had. After coaching many clients, he likely observed that many were not losing weight as predicted, or regained weight too easily relative to much they were eating, suggesting some sort of underlying metabolic slowness.
For myself, it was by reading studies and anecdotal evidence on Reddit and elsewhere, as I summarize in the 4500-word post slow metabolisms are not a myth. “Bad genes” are a thing; it’s not just poor diet compliance to blame for the propensity of many to gain weight despite their best efforts.
The metabolism pill, like the IQ pill, is a hard one to swallow. One of the biggest fitness lies is muscle mass plays a major role in metabolism; it doesn’t. The internal organs, immune system, and other processes (e.g. NEAT) accounts far more for intraindividual differences of metabolism.
If muscle were effective at staving off fat gain, the most muscular people in the world would struggle to get fat; this is clearly not the case, such as NFL players during retirement. Same for Pacific Islanders, who have the highest obesity rates in the world despite possessing a lot of muscle mass. The obesity situation has gotten so bad over there, it even has its own Wiki page.
Nature does not abide by our notions of virtue. It’s not fair how this works, because one would naively assume that by building a lot of muscle it would be easier to get and stay lean, but building lots of muscle is very hard, and even if you could, it would not help as much as assumed.
This is why going to the gym, weight training, and cardio does not work as well as led on by social media. In the end, you have to cut calories. Or swap bodies with someone who is lean and get his or her metabolically-hungry organs and immune system or NEAT. Like IQ, you cannot raise it short of switching brains.
It’s similar to ‘lookmaxxing’. You cannot fix a bad jawline or absent cheekbones without surgery, and even that is of limited efficacy. Or become taller. As someone in the comments writes, “at the end of the day a lot of people just aren’t genetically cut out for bodybuilding or really just looking good in general.“ You’re stuck with what you have. Which is what makes HBD a hard pill to swallow.