Diet advice from the WSJ via Jane Galt: Doctors have long been fascinated by people who claim to eat very little but can't lose weight -- people who blame their dieting problems on metabolism, for instance, or heredity... A New York study monitored a group of obese patients who complained they couldn't lose weight on 1,200 calories a day. But researchers found there was nothing metabolically unusual about the patients. Instead, the study found the group was eating, on average, 47% more than it claimed and exercising 51% less.