The excuses I've heard so far on Project Harpoon "I'm healthy despite being morbidly obese" - Uhm, no you're not, not by any empirical, scientific standard in existence.  "I retain water weight!" - Water has no caloric content, so unless you're the Kool Aid Man you're definitely confusing "water" with adipose tissue (i.e fat) "I can eat at a 1700 calorie deficit and still not lose weight!" - You've just violated the concept of Conservation of Energy and Mass. Go pick up your Nobel Prize as you've just figured out how to create mass and energy out of thin air. The more likely answer is that you suck at counting calories. And no, the article you Googled saying Thermodynamics doesn't apply to weight loss because the human body is not a "closed system" is crap. You literally have to absorb 1700 calories worth of sunlight or air in order to account for the discrepancies, because those are the only things your body intakes after food and liquids. And no, air doesn't have calories "We've evolved to be large/ it's genetic" - Evolution in the human species takes thousands, if not millions, of years to manifest in the population, so what you're saying is that millions of Americans have suddenly undergone a significant mutation within the last 20 years that causes them to violate Conservation of Energy and Mass. Yeah, no. "My weight doesn't affect you." - It may not be apparent now, but who's footing the bill to keep you alive when you develop obesity-induced complications such as heart disease, diabetes, joint failure, high blood pressure, and certain cancers? The taxpayers, considering that at least half of our tax money goes towards Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (or 400 pounds for some of you) Goddamn I think the fat tissues are killing off their brain cells.