Fat Logic

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

That would be silly.

Although, when it was pointed out to you that none of your links worked, you didn't post working versions.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Biological drive to eat:
new clue to the roots of hunger, neurons that drive appetite

Over the past 20 years, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) neuroendocrinologist Bradford Lowell, MD, PhD, has been untangling the complicated jumble of neurocircuits in the brain that underlie hunger, working to create a wiring diagram to explain the origins of this intense motivational state. Key among his findings has been the discovery that Agouti-peptide (AgRP) expressing neurons – a group of nerve cells in the brain’s hypothalamus – are activated by caloric deficiency, and when either naturally or artificially stimulated in animal models, will cause mice to eat voraciously after conducting a relentless search for food.

Original article here behind Nature pay wall:
An excitatory paraventricular nucleus to AgRP neuron circuit that drives hunger

Hunger is a hard-wired motivational state essential for survival. Agouti-related peptide (AgRP)-expressing neurons in the arcuate nucleus (ARC) at the base of the hypothalamus are crucial to the control of hunger. They are activated by caloric deficiency and, when naturally or artificially stimulated, they potently induce intense hunger and subsequent food intake1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Appetite control and energy balance: impact of exercise.

Exercise is widely regarded as one of the most valuable components of behaviour that can influence body weight and therefore help in the prevention and management of obesity. Indeed, long-term controlled trials show a clear dose-related effect of exercise on body weight.

And if you have a condition that limits your ability to exercise?

Mechanisms of appetite control and their abnormalities in obese patients.

Human appetite is a complex mixture of physiological and psychological phenomena which include feelings of hunger, total energy intake, ingestion of particular nutrients, distribution and sizes of meals and snacks, specific cravings and food preferences. These phenomena can be assembled into a profile of motivation and a pattern of eating which represents the way in which appetite fluctuates over time. The satiety cascade shows the processes through which nutrition exerts effects on the biological system and, therefore, on feelings and behaviour. Within the biological system, the control of appetite involves post-ingestive mechanisms, including signals arising from the gastrointestinal tract and the release of hormones when food is processed. Post-absorptive mechanisms include the detection of important products of digestion, such as glucose and amino acids, together with the nature of the fuel mix oxidized and other metabolic variables. In obese patients, evidence points to a defect in the control of fat intake. In these people, dietary fat exerts only a weak action on satiation and satiety; it fails to generate strong responses in the mechanisms of the satiety cascade. An imbalance between fat intake and oxidation favours weight gain. A consideration of the psychobiological system (interactions between behaviour, peripheral physiology and neurochemical profiles) suggests strategies for treating or preventing the development of weight gain in vulnerable individuals.

If you can hold your breath, shouldn't you be able to override the biological drive to breathe?

 

[marplots]

If you can hold your breath, shouldn't you be able to override the biological drive to breathe?

Just to pin this down, are you equating the ability to resist the demands of appetite and hunger to the task of not breathing? I mean as a biological drive that cannot be resisted?

Or, are you making the weaker claim that, just as people can breathe less, or acclimatize themselves to areas with lower air pressure, the caloric-needs homeostat can be adjusted, but only with supreme effort?

I am curious to know how far the analogy is supposed to extend. Mostly because I don't see a strong parallel between eating and breathing.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Although, when it was pointed out to you that none of your links worked, you didn't post working versions.

As I said, the editing window was closed, and the error was not total.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Good point, and I will add more to it: I have 3 cats, all the same age, all raised in our household for the same amount of time. They get the same play times and the same access to food. Two of my cats are fit. The third is a fatty-fatty-boomba-latty. Clearly, two of my cats can manage to not overeat... but clearly, there's also more to it than only calories in vs calories out.

I work in a veterinary hospital. This is not an acceptable answer.

Don't get me started on obesity in pets. It's gotten so bad in the US, even in the shows, that we have owners of healthy animals thinking they are malnourished.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

As I said, the editing window was closed, and the error was not total.

I didn't say you could have edited working version in to the OP, I said that you didn't post working versions. This doesn't seem like the behaviour of someone who actually wants people to follow the links.

It seems that Agatha has taken the time to fix all the links, but I would have thought someone who actually wanted people to follow the links' reaction to learning that none of them work to be a little more proactive than just posting "oh well".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just to pin this down, are you equating the ability to resist the demands of appetite and hunger to the task of not breathing? I mean as a biological drive that cannot be resisted?

Or, are you making the weaker claim that, just as people can breathe less, or acclimatize themselves to areas with lower air pressure, the caloric-needs homeostat can be adjusted, but only with supreme effort?

I am curious to know how far the analogy is supposed to extend. Mostly because I don't see a strong parallel between eating and breathing.

I'm saying that biological drives are not simple things to override. The analogy isn't that overriding one drive is impossible so the other must be impossible as well. The point is overriding the biological drive to consume calories is being seriously underestimated when people claim it's just a matter of will power.

No it isn't. It's a matter of changing the biological drive, not just willing yourself to override it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I work in a veterinary hospital. This is not an acceptable answer.
....

What's that supposed to mean? She didn't say the owner wasn't responsible to not let the one cat over eat. She said two of them didn't need any assistance and one did.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I didn't say you could have edited working version in to the OP, I said that you didn't post working versions. This doesn't seem like the behaviour of someone who actually wants people to follow the links.

It seems that Agatha has taken the time to fix all the links, but I would have thought someone who actually wanted people to follow the links' reaction to learning that none of them work to be a little more proactive than just posting "oh well".

I find the focus people have on my posting style to be hilarious. If I didn't want people to read the data, Dr. Squeegee, what was my motivation? Does it have to do with my obese mother?

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

What's that supposed to mean? She didn't say the owner wasn't responsible to not let the one cat over eat. She said two of them didn't need any assistance and one did.

That is not my reading, given the "more to it than CICO" conclusion. And the cat "is" fat. Maybe I misread.

 

[theprestige]

Up date us in a year. Let's see if you keep it off.

Certainly. I can't promise that I'll remember or care about this thread a year from now, but I'm game.

For avoidance of doubt, what is your claim, exactly?

That if I maintain the same eating and exercise habits (including increasing the difficulty of my exercise to keep my body from adapting and storing energy), I will regain some or all of the weight I've lost, sometime within the next year?

That sometime within the next year, I'll choose to eat more or exercise less, and I'll regain some or all of the weight I've lost?

That sometime within the next year, I'll choose to stop increasing the difficulty of my exercise, and I'll regain some or all of the weight I've lost?

What you described sounded different (and less simple) than what Cain described.

My experience has been that the details of the method that I use have not amounted to any substantial increase in complexity over the simple form of the principle, 'eat less, exercise more'.

Show me a person who finds a major issue of complexity between 'eat less' and 'eat less carbs and eat more vegetables', and I'll show you a person who's struggling with motivation, not with the innate complexity of weight loss.

 

[theprestige]

Here's another thing that's been bugging me, purely from a conservation-laws standpoint:

I forget if it was this thread, or one of the other current weight loss threads, but a member claimed that they had gained a lot of weight rapidly, without changing their diet and exercise. Something around 2500 calories/day of weight gain. They attributed this to medication.

So I've been trying to figure out what could be going on there. My first thought was, if they were previously burning that 2500 calories, and now they're storing it, then their overall energy level must have gone down significantly. They must have gone from bouncing off the walls to being a lethargic couch potato. Maybe not that extreme, but you can't start banking calories you were previously burning, without losing steam.

My second thought was, what if their body was never processing those 2500 calories in the first place? What if they were eating all these surplus calories? Somehow, for whatever reason, their body was burning the calories it needed, banking a few for a rainy day, and just excreting the rest unprocessed? And what the medication did was cause the body to actually start processing those surplus calories? And because they were surplus, the body stored them, leading to weight gain without a corresponding reduction in energy level? Is that even possible?

My third thought was, maybe there's something wrong with my starting assumptions about calorie burning, calorie storage, and overall energy levels.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

So. Pretty simple. Less food, more activity. Diet and exercise. Was I wrong? Did I oversimplify? Did I not lose 60 pounds in 6 months? Obviously I did. But what about back in January? If I told you back in January that I was planning to lose weight and keep it off, by a simple program of diet and exercise, would you have agreed that sounded plausible?

Or would you have told me that it's not that simple? That fat people can't lose weight by diet and exercise? That eating less food doesn't mean losing more weight? That my metabolism isn't something that can be easily hacked to perform better, and that my metabolism change can't start with the very simple step of exercising harder, more often?

Well, good for you, but this is an anecdote, not evidence.

I stipulate that there must be outliers, people for whom the simple program of diet and exercise will not make a major change in their weight. But everybody can't be an outlier. In fact, most people aren't outliers. The conventional wisdom is that most people are fat the way I'm fat: Overabundance of cheap and delicious calories, a sedentary lifestyle, and a lack of motivation.

Have you considered the possibility that you're the outlier? It's more plausible to me that the person who easily loses weight is the exception, not the rule.

All this talk about how it's complicated. About how calorie math isn't the answer. About how metabolism adapts to an unchanging activity level. About how it's too hard to lose weight. I call shenanigans.

If it's so easy, why are there all these diet books? Why is everybody searching for the perfect diet or pill to burn the weight off? You're taking a specific case (yours) and using it to generalize about the rest of society, which I believe is a logical fallacy.

I apparently can't become addicted to nicotine. During my youth, I started smoking and stopped dozens of times. I could buy a pack or two, smoke them all, and then not touch another cigarette for three months. What if, based upon this, I decided that quitting smoking was really no big deal, and the people who really had issues with quitting were "outliers"? Wouldn't that be silly?

Diet is simple and easy. Exercise is simple and easy. Motivation is simple and hard. Very hard. But get the motivation. Get the motivation, get the diet, get the exercise.

Here we go again. So, motivation is all you need? Where does the motivation come from? Do you have a simple and easy way to get motivated? Because if you do, you're going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Kind of a dick move, if you are implying the fat logic that he will fail.

How is that "fat logic"? Let's ignore the fact that an anecdote is being used as evidence, which is a fallacy in the first place. As a skeptic, why wouldn't you want to follow up to see if the weight stayed off? Especially since "yo-yo dieting" is a known phenomenon.

More like creating an unfalsifiable situation for your beliefs by discouraging and discounting others. If that's what he was doing.

What's unfalsifiable is the notion that all you need to do to lose weight is just decide to do it. This is thinking similar to that found in What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret.

A: "Anyone can lose weight by eating less, exercising, and getting motivated."
B: "Well, I ate less and exercised, and I was very motivated, and I still didn't lose weight."
A: "You weren't really motivated. Or you weren't motivated enough. You just have to try harder."

See? Unfalsifiable.

 

[marplots]

Somehow, for whatever reason, their body was burning the calories it needed, banking a few for a rainy day, and just excreting the rest unprocessed? And what the medication did was cause the body to actually start processing those surplus calories?

Certainly possible. In fact, you can do it with a medication called insulin. Someone who "spills sugar" in their urine will retain those calories if you start giving them insulin to lower blood sugar.

It can also come from starting and stopping heavy laxative use. Laxatives can be used to promote weight loss (or prevent weight gain as the case may be) by shortening the transit time - the amount of time the body has access to food in the bowel. If it goes by quicker, you don't absorb as much as you might otherwise.

I'm certainly not recommending either insulin or laxatives for their effects on weight, just pointing out your idea is correct, or could be in some cases. But all this does is change where calories are measured. Do we measure what goes into the mouth, what gets absorbed, or what turns into fat?

 

[Cain]

This seems very simple to me. It's also very much in line with what I've done to achieve my own weight loss goals. Except for the TV part. I still watch a lot of TV--I just make a point of trying to take a break from TV every day to exercise for 30-40 minutes instead.

I haven't read the next page of the thread yet, but I imagine you'll get a lot of replies saying your prescription isn't that simple. Well, it was that simple for me. So maybe either I'm the special snowflake complicated outlier, or everybody else is.

That's because you're actually smart (despite being right-wing).

I only mention TV for two reasons: 1) You shouldn't watch it while you eat because you easily lose track of what you're eating, especially if "snacking." People watch with one hand in the economy size bag of Ruffles potato chips. 2) Food advertisements work. Everyone already knows that Coke exists. We are not going to soon forget about the sweet stuff in the red can. I've seen the Pavlovian reactions to commercials. "Mmmmmm, I could go for that right now."

It's incredible people believe exercise and food choices can be decided on a whim ("intuitive eating"!) when the vast majority of us need to have some sort of structure. The foods you can snack like junk are almost inherently self-limiting. I'm munching on baby carrots right now. According to the label, three ounces equals 35 calories. The entire one pound bag comes in at under 200 calories, but I'm not going to look down and suddenly find I've inhaled over half of these carrots. I couldn't say the same if I had Oreos on my lap. The vegetables people should be eating are almost like free calories. Nobody gets fat on broccoli and cabbage.

Not allowing junk food in the house, and only eating it on social occasions, has been one of my better life decisions. It's really easy for me to resist buying cookies in the store. It's really difficult for me to resist them when they're in my cabinet. They call out to me like a cursed Caribbean talisman. If there is a moment where I feel the urge to go to the store and buy something sugary, half the time I catch myself in a mirror before I leave: "Hey, what are you doin'? This is crazy." Then the devil inside might say, "You already have your shoes on. Let's go."

 

[Emily's Cat]

Okay. So this year I lost sixty pounds. I did it by by eating less and exercising more. As I brought my calorie intake back down to about what I actually needed to get through each day, and as I revved up my metabolism to consistently burn those calories each day, I lost about 2 pounds a week.

Congratulations

Quick question, though: What foods did you cut out when you lowered your caloric intake? Did you cut all types of food out equally and just eat smaller portions of everything (including ice cream and cake)? Or did you cut out particular kinds more than others?

What constituted an "average" meal before and after?

ETA already been answered:

I figured out right away that the only way to eat my fill each day, while staying within my points, was to cut out bread and potatoes almost completely. Meat is a pretty good value for its point cost, and all fruits and vegetables are free.

What this works out to for me is, lunch and dinner is lots of greens, some meat, and a little fat. Lunch is almost always chicken salad with dressing. Dinner is a variety of dishes that all vary on the theme of vegetables stirred in soy sauce and mustard, and some kind of meat. Depending on my mood and what's available, I get my oil at dinner time from a slice of cheese or from cooking with oil.

...

So that's my eating strategy in a nutshell: Lots of veggies, some protein, a little oil. Hardly ever any bread or starch.

The take-away here is that it WASN'T as simple as "eating less". You substantially changed the type of food you were consuming, and reduced your carbohydrate intake by a considerable amount.

Yes, eating less will help you lose weight - too many calories is still too many calories. But what you eat is as important as how much. And Americans have about 40 years of brainwashing to contend with - the bottom of our food pyramid is solidly carbs, which is just fancy sugar.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Have you considered the possibility that you're the outlier? It's more plausible to me that the person who easily loses weight is the exception, not the rule.

What about the person who loses weight by decreasing the amount of food they eat and increasing the amount of calories they burn. Would you consider them the exception or the rule?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Do they all eat the same amount of food?

I'd say no Which supports my point that NOT all animals will overeat if given the opportunity. 2/3 of my animals do NOT overeat, despite the fact that their food bowls are never empty.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I work in a veterinary hospital. This is not an acceptable answer.

Something other than "not acceptable" would be appreciated here.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Anyway... Yes, it's important to take in fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight. Yes, exercise burns calories. But not all calories are created equal. Not all of them process the same.

It's long, but it's worth a read:
What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?