The stupid explodes: obesity now a disability

[marplots]

This implies that the chemical and hormonal responses to food that have evolved over 4 billion years are not biological in nature - again, it's just stupid. Contrarian waffle at its worst.

Great. Now we get to lump in psychology with biology as well to reach the point? Are you really prepared to go down the road that says we are nothing more than pre-programmed biological machines?

It doesn't fix the error anyhow. Throw in all the hormones you want, all the urges you like. Call it biology or evolution or whatever. You'd still have to show that not eating is burning more calories than eating - which is certainly something amenable to experiment.

What should be easy to show, if it suits you, is that not being eaten burns more calories than being eaten does. That's pretty plain.

The disconnect here is that people are reading a straightforward biological claim - not eating requires fewer calories than eating - as if it said that losing weight is something people should be able to do without any trouble. But that's not the claim at all. Behavior is an entirely different question than metabolic measurements. One is based on what people do, the other is biochemistry/physics.

I could make the no-brainer claim that the quickest way to lose weight is to chop off a limb, and some would tell me that cutting off a limb isn't something people would willingly do, therefore my claim is false.

Sheesh.

 

[bit_pattern]

Great. Now we get to lump in psychology with biology as well to reach the point? Are you really prepared to go down the road that says we are nothing more than pre-programmed biological machines?

Umm. What? Genes that result in biochemical signals being misfired can't be hand waved away as "psychology".

It doesn't fix the error anyhow. Throw in all the hormones you want, all the urges you like. Call it biology or evolution or whatever. You'd still have to show that not eating is burning more calories than eating - which is certainly something amenable to experiment.

No I wouldn't, your contention is stupid.

What should be easy to show, if it suits you, is that not being eaten burns more calories than being eaten does. That's pretty plain.

No. The whole notion that you can boil things down to such reductionist woo is just that - woo.

The disconnect here is that people are reading a straightforward biological claim - not eating requires fewer calories than eating - as if it said that losing weight is something people should be able to do without any trouble. But that's not the claim at all. Behavior is an entirely different question than metabolic measurements. One is based on what people do, the other is biochemistry/physics.

You're wrong. I suggest you watch the BBC doco I referenced on the previous page. There are all kinds of biochemical responses involved in overeating whereby the brain is being told that fat reserves are low when they're not, or the gut sending signals that it isn't full when it is.

I could make the no-brainer claim that the quickest way to lose weight is to chop off a limb, and some would tell me that cutting off a limb isn't something people would willingly do, therefore my claim is false.

Sheesh.

No. They would tell you your claim is stupid and not worthy of much more consideration than stating that obvious fact.

 

[marplots]

(combined similar statements for effect)
No I wouldn't, your contention is stupid.

No. The whole notion that you can boil things down to such reductionist woo is just that - woo.

No. They would tell you your claim is stupid and not worthy of much more consideration than stating that obvious fact.

So it's stupid. But that doesn't make it any less true.

If someone has to abandon the scientific fundamentals and add layers of nuance to make an argument, then I propose "stupid" is worth revisiting. It has a clarifying quality about it.

My next question is why someone would want to dismiss the underlying thermodynamics in the first place? The only rationale I can think of is that the science isn't producing the required answer.

 

[bit_pattern]

So it's stupid. But that doesn't make it any less true.

If someone has to abandon the scientific fundamentals and add layers of nuance to make an argument, then I propose "stupid" is worth revisiting. It has a clarifying quality about it.

Yeah but that's not happening. Hand waving away reality isn't about scientific fundamentals, it's just hand waving.

My next question is why someone would want to dismiss the underlying thermodynamics in the first place? The only rationale I can think of is that the science isn't producing the required answer.

Again, noone is doing that. Noone is disputing that on a really stupid level the idea that consuming less energy requires less energy is a fact, just that it has no bearing on the reality of the system that is the human body.

 

[casebro]

The OP was right- "The stupid explodes:"

 

[rustypouch]

I get your point, but you are not arguing against anything I have said. It was a strawman.

While, simplistically put, it is true that you must burn more energy than you take in in order to lose weight. However, it is actually more complicated than that. It isn't just about caloric intake vs. metabolic rate. It is about "what foods, and in what quantities should be consumed that will maximize an individual person's metabolic rate, while burning more fat than calories you are taking in?"

You are right about one thing: It can be difficult. The argument I have been making....the one you dismissed outright with your NDT comment....was an argument against the ridiculous notion that "gaining weight is much easier than losing weight." Nowhere in my refutation have I said anything about what you are arguing.

When you say "I eat a few slices of pizza, I gain several pounds of fat," or "My best friend can down an entire 12' pizza pie, eat a 12' hoagie, and drink two liters of pepsi and gain not an ounce of fat," how am I supposed to interpret it? You seem to be implying that food intake and weight have no correlation. Those claims are getting into MDC territory.

It can be tricky to accurately estimate how much you're consuming, and very easy to overeat, especially with snacking, liquid calories, and calorie dense condiments. The UK TV show "Secret Eaters" does a great job of demonstrating this.

 

[Beerina]

IIRC scientists measured metabolism of fat people, and with extremely rare exceptions (the proverbial glandular condition) they had the same metabolism as normal weight people, as measured by oxygen burning.

The friend who ate a 12" pizza (which isn't that large) probably didn't have two Big Macs and a large fries for lunch, and a couple of sausage McMuffins for breakfast, or two bowls of Raisin Bran...for the last six months.

 

[blutoski]

There's probably just some vagueness with the word 'metabolism'. Peoples' BMR - the base rate of calorie consumption during inactivity - varies with weight, age, and muscularity. I think this is what most dieticians think of when they use the word metabolism.

In that sense, people certainly have different metabolisms when it comes to how many calories they can consume in a day without gaining/losing weight.

Bigger, younger, more muscular people can eat more than smaller, older, and less muscular people while maintaining their weight.

This is why an ex-athlete like myself gained weight suddenly about two years after I stopped competing even though I had already ratcheted down my calorie intake to accommodate for the reduced activity - my body both aged and lost muscle mass, so I had to reduce calories further to accommodate a lower metabolism.

The point is that if hundreds of people eat the same meals, we can expect the results to be a normal distribution - some people will gain weight, some people will lose weight, some will maintain. It emphasizes the importance of scaling portions.

IIRC scientists measured metabolism of fat people, and with extremely rare exceptions (the proverbial glandular condition) they had the same metabolism as normal weight people, as measured by oxygen burning.

This may be specifically about efficiency of calorie extraction, rather than vague 'metabolism'. This is the thermic effect of food^WP I brought up earlier. ie: the metabolic expense of obtaining calories from foods. The theory was that more efficient digesters get more calories from food. However: the variation appears to be very small, in the sub +/-1% range, and the variability may even be bigger within an individual from meal to meal than from person to person, and may balance out to neutral over time.

The friend who ate a 12" pizza (which isn't that large) probably didn't have two Big Macs and a large fries for lunch, and a couple of sausage McMuffins for breakfast, or two bowls of Raisin Bran...for the last six months.

Or they could also just have predictable factors that give them a higher BMR - youth, size, muscle mass, and they could have a more active lifestyle and burn off a few more calories a day here and there. A standing job vs a sitting job.

 

[Nihilianth]

Did you receive this as a medical diagnosis, or is this something you have determined for yourself based on your proclivity to gain weight easily ?

My experience is purely anecdotal but back when I was 225lbs I would tell people that I had a slow metabolism. I was pretty active (a few games of squash a week and a couple of hours in the gym) and thought that I ate healthily and in moderation, plenty of fruit and vegetables, no desserts or chocolate, gallons of fruit juice.

Then Mrs. Don joined weight-watchers and we measured and weighed everything carefully. It turned out that my modest portions weren't modest at all, my pasta portions (150g per person dried pasta) were more than twice the recommended serving size and that some of my dietary choices (slathering a sandwich with mayo, drowning a salad in dressing, eating a jacket (baked) potato with butter, drinking litres of fruit juice) were less that ideal. It transpired that I was woefully underestimating my calorie intake.

The flipside of this is a friend who is stick thin and claims that he cannot put on weight no matter how hard he tries. He claims to have a fast metabolism, which he may, but having worked away with him on a number of occasions and so having seen what he eats and drinks in a typical working day, he simply doesn't eat that much and what he eats tends not to be particularly calorie dense.

tl;dr version, you may have a slow metabolism but there are far more people out there who just aren't very good at estimating how much they actually eat and so underestimate this very badly.

It is true that I do not watch every little calorie I take in. I do know that when I eat a salad, I am very careful what I put on it. (Dressing can be downright horrible for your weight.) I also avoid mayo at all costs. I prefer to make my own Italian dressing anyway, and use that for a sandwich, and for a dressing.

Also, I have acid reflux, so I have to automatically avoid bad foods as much as possible, or else I get sick. Though I love a good slice of pizza, I cannot eat very much. Same with pasta with tomato sauce.

And also, I did talk with my physician about my weight. He did in fact, say that I am as healthy as a teenager. (My bone density is through the roof with a Z-score of 2.9. I was 29 years old at the time. Two years ago.)

I am by no means, worried about my current weight. I do think about keeping it stable between 260 and 270.

Now, your post did actually prove my point for me anyway: It is not easier to lose weight than to gain it. You have to be knowledgeable about proper nutrition and exercise. It far easier to gain weight for most people. A small portion of mayonaise for example, doesn't fill you up, but it does pack in a lot of fat and calories. Same with Ranch dressing. You can smother something in Ranch, and the ranch itself wouldn't make you feel any more full than you otherwise would have without it.

 

[Nihilianth]

I have moved no goalposts. The whole mix-up comes from misunderstanding what "easier" means. You insist on making it about choices between eating and not eating (or eating one thing instead of another) and then pointing out that choices which lead to weight loss are harder to make (and keep) than choices which either add or maintain obesity.

Plainly, that's so, or people wouldn't have difficulty losing weight.

But "easier" has a biological meaning as well - the one I've been using since this whole thing started. And I'll stick with it. If it takes energy to consume food (which it does) then not consuming food takes less energy - which it does.

Perhaps this is more obvious to me because I often find eating to be a burden and notice the effort it takes to seek out, prepare, and consume food. It's something I need to do to stay healthy, but it's certainly not without effort. And, if I didn't make the effort to eat, I'd certainly lose weight.

Unintended weight loss in the elderly is a direct result of this fact. They lose their appetites and don't expend the effort to eat. They lose considerable weight.

I did not respons to you. I responded to someone else when they said "it is easier to lose weight than to gain it." You jumped into the conversation. You do not get to choose the definition for "easier" in the middle of said conversation. That is the very definition of moving goal posts.

But as bit_pattern (and myself) keep pointing out to you, you have certain impulses (called "instincts" which are chemical responses to stimuli,) that can be downright difficult to control or ignore.

 

[Nihilianth]

When you say "I eat a few slices of pizza, I gain several pounds of fat," or "My best friend can down an entire 12' pizza pie, eat a 12' hoagie, and drink two liters of pepsi and gain not an ounce of fat," how am I supposed to interpret it? You seem to be implying that food intake and weight have no correlation. Those claims are getting into MDC territory.

It can be tricky to accurately estimate how much you're consuming, and very easy to overeat, especially with snacking, liquid calories, and calorie dense condiments. The UK TV show "Secret Eaters" does a great job of demonstrating this.

I was speaking in terms of metabolism. Some people have much faster metabolism than others, and therefore, burn more calories. That would necessarily make it harder to gain more weight; in a simplistic manner.

But proper nutrition is not a simple matter of "eat less than you burn." That's pretty obvious. But the human body requires more than just "calories." It requires various different nutrients. Vitamins and minerals, as well as a proper balance of carbohydrates, sugar, and sodium. So all of those things also need to be taken into consideration as well.

In order to maintain a proper diet, one must do a lot of reading, researching, and speaking with specialists. (Nutritionists and doctors must go to school for this stuff. I tell you; it isn't easy. If it were, nutritionists would not exist, and doctor's jobs would be a hell of a lot easier.)

And that is just the nutrition portion of it. Nevermind the instinctual portion of not just simply reaching for the next cookie, as opposed to actively and cognitively choosing to expend more energy to prepare a nutritionally valuable salad.

 

[The Atheist]

And, this is my main point, some people have higher metabolism than others.

You know, if you'd read the thread, every single point you attempt to make had already been made, but thanks for repeating it all.

I see the main point of your rant was this gem:

Losing weight for me is extremely difficult, and very time-consuming. I have a low metabolism.

Have you tried eating less?

 

[The Atheist]

The point is that if hundreds of people eat the same meals, we can expect the results to be a normal distribution - some people will gain weight, some people will lose weight, some will maintain. It emphasizes the importance of scaling portions.

Bingo.

 

[blutoski]

I was speaking in terms of metabolism. Some people have much faster metabolism than others, and therefore, burn more calories. That would necessarily make it harder to gain more weight; in a simplistic manner.

Not really. It's an orthogonal property. BMR is a very weak predictor of body fat percentage.

I think metabolism elements like BMR are only related to weight in the sense that recipes and restaurants have a uniform portion and people tend to eat the whole portion, regardless of their underlying caloric requirement.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about things like hunger and satiety. In principle, a person with a lower metabolism would be satisfied after eating fewer calories. In general this is actually the case, which is why BMR is a very weak predictor of body fat percentage.

The problem from what we can tell is that the very strong evolutionary force to eat even when we're not hungry creates a slight calorie creep in most people - again, there's a distribution; but not a symmetric normal distribution - it's heavily weighted to the weight gain side of the equation. The mode is to eat a few extra calories a day to achieve satiety. A few extreme genetic combinations eat quite a bit more per day to achieve satiety. And a few go the other way - they are satiated when they have more or less balanced their daily expenditure, and don't lose or gain weight.

It feels unfair, but it is what it is.

 

[jimbob]

Did you receive this as a medical diagnosis, or is this something you have determined for yourself based on your proclivity to gain weight easily ?

My experience is purely anecdotal but back when I was 225lbs I would tell people that I had a slow metabolism. I was pretty active (a few games of squash a week and a couple of hours in the gym) and thought that I ate healthily and in moderation, plenty of fruit and vegetables, no desserts or chocolate, gallons of fruit juice.

Then Mrs. Don joined weight-watchers and we measured and weighed everything carefully. It turned out that my modest portions weren't modest at all, my pasta portions (150g per person dried pasta) were more than twice the recommended serving size and that some of my dietary choices (slathering a sandwich with mayo, drowning a salad in dressing, eating a jacket (baked) potato with butter, drinking litres of fruit juice) were less that ideal. It transpired that I was woefully underestimating my calorie intake.

The flipside of this is a friend who is stick thin and claims that he cannot put on weight no matter how hard he tries. He claims to have a fast metabolism, which he may, but having worked away with him on a number of occasions and so having seen what he eats and drinks in a typical working day, he simply doesn't eat that much and what he eats tends not to be particularly calorie dense.

tl;dr version, you may have a slow metabolism but there are far more people out there who just aren't very good at estimating how much they actually eat and so underestimate this very badly.

It has been mentioned before, but looking at the energy density of foods, it also takes a surprising amount of exercise to burn a small amount of food. An hour a week isn't going to do much for weight, but it often is possible to fit more in without too much hassle. For various reasons, but chiefly because I was starting to lose fitness I decided to cycle commute. My (20km each way) commute takes a little longer than the car would but is more reliable - several times a year it is *far* faster and the first 8-weeks, when there were really bad roadworks, it was about 30-mins faster per day. I am thus using otherwise "dead" time but do have to factor extra food cost into the cost of commuting - it is still far cheaper and more enjoyable than a car, but most website calculators suggest it is about 700kCal a day extra compared to typical requirements of about 2000kCal, which explains why I do eat a fair amount for my size.

 

[The Atheist]

Meanwhile, instead of normalising being overweight, 30 forum members are supporting each other in an effort to lose weight.

#30.

I used to use a sig line about the difference between talk and action.

 

[Elaedith]

Oh, yes it certainly does. My metabolism is a lot lower than my friend's. It takes a lot less work for me to gain weight, than it would for him. Simply because my body just happens to not metabolize calories as rigorously has his does.

The original claim that I responded to, was an overarching broad brush of "losing weight is easy. Gaining weight is much harder."

It's such a ridiculous claim, because of the variety of ways in which different human bodies react to the same foods. I have acid reflux. Eating spicy things...hell, just drinking coffee...makes me sick. I know people who are lactose intolerant. Eating dairy products makes them sick. I have a cousin who is severely allergic to peanuts. Eating a peanut could potentially kill him.

Just sitting here, and making the idiotic statement that: "It is easy to lose weight, but hard to gain weight" (probably because you, yourself are a decent weight and maybe with a high metabolism) is so simplistically shortsighted. Again, I eat a few slices of pizza, I gain weight. My best friend can down an entire 12' pizza pie, eat a 12' hoagie, and drink two liters of pepsi and gain not an ounce of fat. Why? Because he is him, and I am me. Our bodies process food incredibly differently. As differently as someone who is lactose intolerant, and someone who is not.

Essentially it's the same broad-based argument as: "Drinking fresh pasteurized milk cannot make you sick." I am arguing that for some people it does make them sick. "It's easier to lose weight than to gain it." I am arguing that for some people that is completely false. That's my argument.

Predisposition to obesity, BMI, and other measures of adiposity are highly heritable, but I don't think there is much evidence that this related to what is commonly called metabolism. The primary mechanisms seem to implicate biological processes involved in appetite and satiety, and dysfunction in homeostatic mechanisms intended to preserve fat stores. However, there is definitely strong evidence that individuals differ in response to positive or negative energy balance. This was known since earlier studies on identical twins:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005243222101

The critical issue was within-pair similarity in contrast to between-pair variability in response to overfeeding which was used to infer genetic mechanisms. The findings are similar with negative energy balance. However, this does not appear to be caused primarily by differences in slowing of metabolism in response to calorie reduction, as findings generally show any changes in metabolism were accounted for by weight change :

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/127/5/943S.short

The interesting thing is there has been progress since then in identifying some genes involved.

 

[Nihilianth]

Predisposition to obesity, BMI, and other measures of adiposity are highly heritable, but I don't think there is much evidence that this related to what is commonly called metabolism. The primary mechanisms seem to implicate biological processes involved in appetite and satiety, and dysfunction in homeostatic mechanisms intended to preserve fat stores. However, there is definitely strong evidence that individuals differ in response to positive or negative energy balance. This was known since earlier studies on identical twins:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005243222101

The critical issue was within-pair similarity in contrast to between-pair variability in response to overfeeding which was used to infer genetic mechanisms. The findings are similar with negative energy balance. However, this does not appear to be caused primarily by differences in slowing of metabolism in response to calorie reduction, as findings generally show any changes in metabolism were accounted for by weight change :

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/127/5/943S.short

The interesting thing is there has been progress since then in identifying some genes involved.

It's been a long while since I have read up on the literature, and using Google for these sorts of things is....dubious at best.

But from what I understand, your basic metabolic rate has to do with everyday bodily activities (such as breathing, digesting, heart beat, etc.)

Inevitable, people have different lung capacities. Yes, you can train-up your individual lung capacity through vigorous exercise. (Cold-weather exercise is particularly good at beefing up your lung capacity.) But not everyone is going to be a Michael Phelps or a Lance Armstrong. Very few people could even train at their intensity level, or as often as they could. And even if they could, they still would not necessarily get to the same level of lung capacity as those two athletes.

And if (when) they stop training, their lung capacity will not decrease to as low as most people. They will always have a higher lung capacity than most people. Therefore, their base metabolism will always be higher than more people for that very reason.

-----------------

Digestion is also a large factor in metabolizing calories. That's why your metabolic rate tends to drop if you were to attempt to "starve" yourself as a poor "solution" to losing weight. That;s why you do need to eat on a regular basis, and a minimum number of calories in order to lose weight efficiently.

Now, when it comes to digestion, just like with lung capacity, some people have more and stronger stomach acid than others. (I have acid reflux. There is an excess amount of acid and other chemicals in my stomach. It is also stronger than normal. My body has to work a lot less to break down foods. This is a very simplistic explanation of this health issue.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3097951/

The above link describes acid reflux, and the compares and contrasts that with metabolic syndrome.

According to that paper, acid reflux (gastro-esophageal reflux) is not very well understood. There does seem to be a strong correlation between the disease and obesity, but the evidence is inconclusive.

I've always had issues with getting sick on certain foods growing up. (Incidentally, my niece goes through the same things I did. It was much worse when I was really young, just like with her. I couldn't eat pizza at all, until I was about 10 years old. My 11 year old niece refuses to eat pizza. The thought of it makes her want to puke.)

Then you throw in the ****** diet that parents all too quickly and easily throw into their kids' meals these days without much thought, which establishes bad habits and really can screw up an individual's bodily chemicals and how their body processes foods.

----------------------

Sorry, lost my train of thought. I thought of something funny: Conservatives love to talk about "all those lazy fatasses out there." One solution the Democrats have come up with, was limiting junk food in schools. Conservatives turned about and cried about "freedom of choices!" I dunno. I thought of that for some reason as I was typing. Anyway.


-------------------

I guess what I was trying to get at, is the fact that while you can control your metabolic rate to some degree for your individual self through exercise and proper nutrition.....you cannot control who you are. Other people's bodies do, in fact, tend to burn more or less calories, simply because no two human bodies are the same. Lungs could be a little larger or a little smaller. Some people will be genetically predisposed to having more or less muscle mass (another contributor to base metabolic rate.). Stomach acid content is totally different from individual to individual, which can also contribute to base metabolic rate. I cannot believe that everyone would naturally have the same metabolism, given the same environmental conditions, exercise, and nutrition.

 

[bit_pattern]

Meanwhile, instead of normalising being overweight

Cool strawman, bro.

 

[The Don]

And also, I did talk with my physician about my weight. He did in fact, say that I am as healthy as a teenager.

That's great. Getting back to the question I asked earlier, is your diagnosis of "slow metabolism" a physician diagnosis (for which you may require medication, you could have one or more of any number of conditions which require treatment and/or careful monitoring) ?

IANAD (and don't even play one on TV ) but it seems to me that -if it's a self-diagnosis based on propensity to gain weight then it'd be sensible to get it properly checked out just in case. That way you'll know.