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Is Obesity Incurable?

I also recall being very active as a child.

I watched the second episode of "The Men Who Made Us Fat". It's a bit conspiracy theorist for my liking but one of the facts they trotted out was a study showed that kids today are as active as they were 30 years ago. This does not correspond to my experience.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Low breastfeeding rates, and scheduled rather than demand feeding probably have an impact on how the child will grow.
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What kind of impact?

I didn't breastfeed, and I fed on demand.

But I raised four normal-weight children who are now all normal-weight adults.
 
DragonLady said:
What kind of impact?

I didn't breastfeed, and I fed on demand.

But I raised four normal-weight children who are now all normal-weight adults.
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A statistical impact. Obviously not every bottle fed by schedule baby will end up fat, and not every breastfed on demand will end up slim, but the research does suggest there might be a link - though its not certain yet whether it is causal because studies in this area tend to be epidemiological rather than experimental.
 
Horatius said:
If.
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Ah. So you picked up on that. And your evidence, one way or the other, is?

As a general argument, it certainly seems credible that the average length of intestine does in fact extract most of the nutrition from our food. If not, the value of increased length, and its associated increase in nutrition, would seem to strongly favor its evolutionary selection.
 
Puppycow said:
Yes. Alcohol and tobacco cravings eventually go away. Food cravings never do, except in people who have had bariatric surgery. It seems that bypassing a stomach actually changes something in their brain so they don't crave food anymore.
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I have doubts about these statements, but to be honest, only based on my personal experiences. Do you have evidence or links I could verify this, please?

Also, what do you mean by not craving food anymore? I'm presuming you mean 'craving' as in 'wanting to eat all the time' versus 'feeling normal hunger pangs'.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
Ah. So you picked up on that. And your evidence, one way or the other, is?
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Mostly anecdotal. Corn anyone?


As a general argument, it certainly seems credible that the average length of intestine does in fact extract most of the nutrition from our food. If not, the value of increased length, and its associated increase in nutrition, would seem to strongly favor its evolutionary selection.
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Only if there were severe shortages of food for long enough to favor such adaptations, but short enough to not wipe out everyone. Otherwise, "Good enough" works well enough. If you have sufficient food that a less than perfect digestive tract still provides enough energy to live, then there's no pressure one way or the other.
 
Horatius said:
Mostly anecdotal. Corn anyone?
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Butter and salt on mine, please.

Only if there were severe shortages of food for long enough to favor such adaptations, but short enough to not wipe out everyone. Otherwise, "Good enough" works well enough. If you have sufficient food that a less than perfect digestive tract still provides enough energy to live, then there's no pressure one way or the other.
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Your premise seems to be that famines always wipe out the affected population, and therefor do not provide selective pressure, but that seems unlikely. Lean years are, as far as I can tell, a fact of life. We're talking about a selection period of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. And if food availability is not a classic population limiter, what is? A classic counterexample to your argument is the Pima indian tribe. Their extreme tendency toward obesity in modern times is generally seen as an adaptation to periods of famine.
 
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I have been pointed toward this study:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/82/1/222S.long

Which seems intent on proving how easy and common long-term weight loss is, but the only study they cite (one in which of 500 random adults, 27 were reported to returned to normal weight from being obese) was conducted with a telephone survey. As in, it was just people self-reporting that they had totally done it.

Unless I'm reading that wrong, the rest of the results they cite show the same as everyone else (that the average person participating in a controlled weight loss program loses 3% of their starting weight over the long term). They mention a study of 1,000 adults enrolled in a diet program for some glucose tolerance study, but I don't see where among the thousand they had any examples of permanent "obese to regular person size" weight loss.

See I started this thread hoping somebody would jump in here and immediately show me I was wrong.
 
DragonLady said:
I think I agree with this. Many children are taught to see food as a reward, a gift, a proof of love and belonging. I can see that directly leading to serious weight issues if they grow up stuffing food in their mouths everytime they have either a good day or a bad one. :(




When I grew up, kids were shooed out the door the moment they woke up for "fresh air and sunshine". I remember a typical weekend day meant eating a bowl of cereal, then rushing out the door and staying lost 'til I was called for dinner. I spent my days playing with my dog, riding my bicycle, playing ball in the street, and building backyard forts for miniature wargames with the boys in the neighborhood.

Now, parents spend their weekends in mortal terror of letting youngsters out of their sight. They keep 'em indoors watching tv, playing board games, or texting all day long, and everytime they get bored they wander into the kitchen for a snack, and never, ever miss a meal. The fear of pedophiles, kidnappers, bullies, rabies from dog bites and even social services makes the parents err on the cautious side and if a kid participates in any sports or activities at all they are structured group events.

I live just a few blocks from one of the same grade schools I attended as a child. When I was a student there the playground was full on the weekends. Kids played basketball, raced on the ballfield, hung upside down on the monkey bars for hours.

Now, I drive by there and the gate is locked and the grounds are deserted. I suppose the school is afraid of lawsuits if an unattended kid gets hurt, and I understand that. But I also believe that lock is a huge factor is the number of kids that are 20 pounds or more overweight. They just no longer have the lifestyle that makes a kid become completely lost in the joy of climbing a 30' tree or or riding a bike nine times around the block or getting into a snowball fight with a bunch of semi-strangers from five blocks away.

It's just too well understood they will have a sit-down breakfast, and be home for lunch, and afternoon snacks and back again for dinner. They will be supervised every minute (and what adult wants to stand there and wait while a kid rides around the block nine times?) and called on the phone every two minutes if they wander around the corner. If they ever leave the house at all.
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So what can one do now to keep their kids from growing up fat? Is the "mortal terror of letting youngsters out of their sight" a rational fear, or an irrational one that can be safely dropped? Also, the bit about lawsuits -- doesn't this suggest our society is too sue-happy to the point it's actually causing harm? Why wasn't that such a big problem at the time you were growing up?
 
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Horatius said:
Only if there were severe shortages of food for long enough to favor such adaptations, but short enough to not wipe out everyone. Otherwise, "Good enough" works well enough. If you have sufficient food that a less than perfect digestive tract still provides enough energy to live, then there's no pressure one way or the other.
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Those individuals who can, on average, turn the same amount of food into slightly more offspring spread slightly more genes/generation (on average). Those genes spread through the population.
 
I have learned that if you are hungry you WILL NOT keep weight off. The secret is to make your body crave less food. A craving is eventually satisfied.

I lost 90lbs after gaining 80lbs being pregnant but not until I got less hungry. The first 50 came of easily just by not having pregnancy hormones anymore (and not having a 10lb baby in there with all the extras)....it did take 2 years though. I did the rest by totally changing my diet after leaving my ex.
The foods I chose were different than what I used to cook for him. I cooked for me and my daughter instead of 3 of us. I lost the last 40bs in 5 months without noticing any effort on my part! I was just less hungry.
 
Sherkeu said:
I have learned that if you are hungry you WILL NOT keep weight off. The secret is to make your body crave less food. A craving is eventually satisfied.

I lost 90lbs after gaining 80lbs being pregnant but not until I got less hungry. The first 50 came of easily just by not having pregnancy hormones anymore (and not having a 10lb baby in there with all the extras)....it did take 2 years though. I did the rest by totally changing my diet after leaving my ex.
The foods I chose were different than what I used to cook for him. I cooked for me and my daughter instead of 3 of us. I lost the last 40bs in 5 months without noticing any effort on my part! I was just less hungry.
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We have heard from another poster about very strong cravings that "never go away" even after a long time at the lower weight (years?) -- is this your experience as well? They were described as so strong that one could think of nothing else but the next allowed meal. And that part about never going away is important too. What do you think?
 
marplots said:
We have heard from another poster about very strong cravings that "never go away" even after a long time at the lower weight (years?) -- is this your experience as well? They were described as so strong that one could think of nothing else but the next allowed meal. And that part about never going away is important too. What do you think?
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For me, I was never obese until pregnancy at 37yrs old. But I did fully understand that if I had felt that way all the time, with strong cravings, I would always be overweight. For some, it may never be curable without a life of suffering hunger. This is the major obstacle. The cravings. The obsession. It is brain chemistry. Mine went away and back to my previous self.
I think unless people have gone through it they do not understand the intense desire to eat and how powerful it can be.
 
Sherkeu said:
I think unless people have gone through it they do not understand the intense desire to eat and how powerful it can be.
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I guess, like anything, it varies. Here's part of an abstract about success stories (at 5 years out) and in this group, about 40% said losing weight was harder than keeping it off: (http://www.ajcn.org/content/66/2/239.short)

"The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest study of individuals successful at long-term maintenance of weight loss. Despite extensive histories of overweight, the 629 women and 155 men in the registry lost an average of 30 kg and maintained a required minimum weight loss of 13.6 kg for 5 y. ... Members also appear to be highly active: they reported expending approximately 11830 kJ/wk through physical activity. Surprisingly, 42% of the sample reported that maintaining their weight loss was less difficult than losing weight. Nearly all registry members indicated that weight loss led to improvements in their level of energy, physical mobility, general mood, self-confidence, and physical health."
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mike3 said:
So what can one do now to keep their kids from growing up fat? Is the "mortal terror of letting youngsters out of their sight" a rational fear, or an irrational one that can be safely dropped? Also, the bit about lawsuits -- doesn't this suggest our society is too sue-happy to the point it's actually causing harm? Why wasn't that such a big problem at the time you were growing up?
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Well, while no one can claim that nothing bad ever happens, I have say the risk of terrible injury vs the near certainty of obesity makes the fear pretty irrational.

And yes, I think our society is too sue-happy and it's causing harm.

I don't know why it wasn't a bigger problem when I was growing up. Maybe it's the constant media campaigns, restrictive school policies, state prosecutors who are willing to press charges against parents for negligence when accidents do happen, parental support groups that feed horror stories to each other, and the advertising tactics of businesses that sell nanny cams and full-body armor to paranoid parents....
 
I'm about to step out of the bounds of political correctness, but here goes...

There is a social willingness (at least that I've noticed) to accept the "glandular problem" or "slow metabolism" or "thyroid condition" excuses for obesity. I concede that some people are more predisposed to gaining and keeping on weight than others, but regardless of one's individual disposition obesity boils down ultimately to willpower and self-control. Some people will have to be much more disciplined than others to stay at a healthy weight, but with discipline it is never impossible.
 
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