The stupid explodes: obesity now a disability

[GlennB]

Also the normalisation of excessive weight and bulk. When you see so many other people like that, it re-calibrates your "normal" and you start to think you're probably OK really. That's what go me. Except I knew I wasn't OK and eventually acted on it.

Amen. As one of nature's walking 2-irons there's been no shortage of 'large' people telling me I could do with putting on some weight. But if I mentioned, equally freely, that they could do with losing some I'd probably get my head chewed off.

 

[Rolfe]

Amen. As one of nature's walking 2-irons there's been no shortage of 'large' people telling me I could do with putting on some weight. But if I mentioned, equally freely, that they could do with losing some I'd probably get my head chewed off.

Absolutely! Rather a few people have recently been telling me not to lose any more weight. This started about the point when I started to look "normal", and my BMI was pretty much bang on the mid-point of the quoted healthy range. (Come to think of it, one person started on at me when my BMI was still in the upper part of the healthy range.) I'm afraid I was reduced a couple of times to saying, "you didn't tell me not to gain any more weight when that would clearly have been a reasonable thing to say (and my BMI was significantly over 25), so you don't get to tell me not to lose any more weight now (when my BMI is nowhere near the bottom of the healthy range)."

My two best friends are pretty slim. Both have BMIs between 20 and 21 I think. With them, I was reduced to saying "you don't get to tell me not to lose any more weight while I still have a BMI higher than you do!"

As a vet, I'm trained to assess an animal's body condition by touch more than by sight, and I can say categorically that with a current BMI of about 20 I am most definitely not too lean. It's only as I've got down to that BMI that I've lost the pads of fat on my hips that I'd down-grade an animal on as "a bit on the plump side", Orphia Nay's shape in that picture I linked to above is really how people ought to be. A bit heavier isn't going to hurt, particularly in people doing a lot of power exercise, but really, our norms are way way out.

 

[Rolfe]

Personally, I have hard time beleiving that we evolved to have a metabolism that is sensitive to some extra weight. It ought to make use stronger, not die younger.

With respect, that is absolute baloney. I don't know your personal circumstances, but a lot of what you say sounds like someone trying to rationalise a too-heavy body mass into "this is OK really".

We have evolved to seek out nutrition wherever we can find it. We have evolved strong tastes for energy-dense foods because these have always been scarce until very recently in evolutionary terms, and finding them in the quantities they were actually available was exceedingly advantageous.

We have evolved to be persistence hunters, expending a lot of energy pursuing prey over long distances, then later using the same energy to cultivate the land. I've worked on farms, and there's a reason farmhouse meals are generous and high in energy. If I ate that sort of diet when sitting at a computer all day instead of shovelling potatoes into bags or cow-**** into a wheelbarrow or chasing sheep to give them their worming dose, I'd be a fair size. (Oh wait, I was doing that, that's why I had to go on a calorie-controlled diet for a year.)

We have not evolved to sit on our backsides all day, living in heated houses, and surrounded by a glut of energy-dense food. But that's where we are. In many people the appetite seems to remain where it might have been if they were out chasing down elk, but all they're chasing is an arrow on a screen. And they're not shivering in a cave all night either.

Not to say we are not sick, but that there may be an underlying issue that we are not even looking for with our superficial diagnoses of "eating to much".

Yes, there is. What I just outlined above. Energy-dense food, for which we have evolved a strong liking, being available in vast quantities while we sit on our backsides all day.

It'll probably be individual genes, maybe a hundred different ones for a hundred different people. No, 100 for a billion people. A leptin problem for you, a digestive enzyme problem for my Niece (pancreatitis),... But, if it takes combinations of three or four genes each, 100,000,000 combinations? We all unique baby, just like everybody else. Computer power is helping, right now.

Or maybe it's as simple as matching what we eat to the activity level of our day-to-day lifestyle. Now admittedly that's simple in concept and simple to say, but far from simple to achieve. But that's the crux of it.

 

[Rolfe]

I've been in a number of JREF threads like this before, and several of them have degenerated into an offended, huffy slanging-match over the question of will-power. Some people took grave offence at the notion that a proportion of the population was "lacking in will-power", or that lack of will-power was the reason for them being overweight.

I think the question of will-power is too important to be sidelined because some people get huffy about it. It's clear from the weight control thread in Community that some people are able to restrict their input while others have much more difficulty. I've found, after following advice from a friend, that I can go an entire day on only 250 calories, and do that three times a week (not consecutive days). That totally cuts the week's calorie consumption off at the knees and makes the other four days of the week relatively plain sailing. Other people declare they can't do that.

I don't think lack of will-power in this respect should be seen as a moral failing. It's the way people are. We're all different, and this is another way we're different. If there was some way to instil in people both the desire to lose weight and the ability to stick to their calorie limits, we'd be laughing. But I don't know of one.

 

[casebro]

With respect, that is absolute baloney. I don't know your personal circumstances, but a lot of what you say sounds like someone trying to rationalise a too-heavy body mass into "this is OK really".....

.....

Yup, we do tend to build a too-heavy body mass after a life of working hard enough to burn 7,000 calories per day. My lean body mass in my avatar was 220 pounds. Giving me a target weight of 185 is ridiculous. I did feel pretty good at 235, still obese.

But I think you may have missed the point of my evolution discussion. We've had 300-600 generations to evolve to handle easy calories and the comensurate overweight. Other mammals -Whales, hippos, and elephants- do it without health consequences, why can't we?

Question for your expertise- Another omnivorous mammal, Hogs can get greatly fat. (mmm, lard) How is their cardiovascular fitness then ? Diabetic and hypertensive?

 

[Rolfe]

They don't live very long. Not nearly as long as the species would live in a leaner condition. Even breeding animals usually have to be culled because they're too heavy. Joints give up. Thoroughly bad medicine.

Cetaceans have adipose tissue for insulation as much as anything else, and they really have evolved to cope with it. The other animals you mention are large, but I'm not certain that they're actually fat. In any case, inter-species comparisons have very limited validity. These species have either genuinely evolved to be like that, which we haven't, or are artificially bred to be like that and couldn't survive in the wild in that condition.

We really haven't had hundreds of generations to evolve to cope with a constant glut of calorie-dense food. There hasn't been such a glut until about the last 50 years, for the vast majority of people.

 

[The Atheist]

...Another omnivorous mammal, Hogs can get greatly fat. ...

Not in the wild, they don't.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

...

We really haven't had hundreds of generations to evolve to cope with a constant glut of calorie-dense food. There hasn't been such a glut until about the last 50 years, for the vast majority of people.

All you have to do to confirm this, is look for street scenes from the 40's, 50's and 60's... Over-weight people are noticeably lacking..

I have no doubt a graph of the rise in obesity would look a lot like a graph of fast food and sugar drink sales over the last 50 years..

 

[The Atheist]

All you have to do to confirm this, is look for street scenes from the 40's, 50's and 60's... Over-weight people are noticeably lacking.

TV documentaries from the '60s and '70s are telling as well. There was usually one fat kid at school, but usually only one, and that's out of 200-1000 kids, going by my school days of that period.

It seems to me that 99% of people were slim up until the late 1970s.

 

[Jules Galen]

All you have to do to confirm this, is look for street scenes from the 40's, 50's and 60's... Over-weight people are noticeably lacking..

I have no doubt a graph of the rise in obesity would look a lot like a graph of fast food and sugar drink sales over the last 50 years..

And you would be right. Seen those graphs. However, there seems to be more to it than that. I think the move to "Low Fat" foods also had a lot to do with it. In an efforts to lose weight. we replaced a slow-metabolizing fats with quick-metabolizing carbohydrates.

Also, there is the rise of Corn Chips and Potato Chips. Low fat, or not, Corn and Potato Chips are the road to obesity - they are quick-metabolizing carbs.

And the "Sugar Drinks" you pretty much nailed that. That's a huge contributor.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

There are a number of studies showing that there is both cultural blindness (particularly amongst Black women in the US), as well as a more intrinsic blindness in obese people themselves (they are consistently more inaccurate when judging healthy weights). Less Americans think they need to lose less weight than in 1990, despite crazy increases in obesity since then.

The Beebs just aired an autopsy of an obese body (and received a fair amount of criticism, at least online) which I think is necessary because I so often hear things from people that just aren't anatomically correct. I also like x-ray and other imaging comparisons as well.

Another interesting perception aspect is how often I've heard people who have gone from obese to still overweight have had people tell them to stop because they are concerned or they look emaciated or what have you.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

And you would be right. Seen those graphs. However, there seems to be more to it than that. I think the move to "Low Fat" foods also had a lot to do with it. In an efforts to lose weight. we replaced a slow-metabolizing fats with quick-metabolizing carbohydrates.

Also, there is the rise of Corn Chips and Potato Chips. Low fat, or not, Corn and Potato Chips are the road to obesity - they are quick-metabolizing carbs.

And the "Sugar Drinks" you pretty much nailed that. That's a huge contributor.

Eh, I've not seen strong evidence that, besides being incorrect, this lead to obesity. Also, I have not seen evidence that increased carbohydrate vs fat consumption leads to obesity. It's still CICO.

 

[Modified]

TV documentaries from the '60s and '70s are telling as well. There was usually one fat kid at school, but usually only one, and that's out of 200-1000 kids, going by my school days of that period.

The kid in my class 40 years ago who we considered "the fat kid" would not be considered so by today's standards.

I've also known parents who are concerned that their healthy, normal-weight children are "underweight".

 

[The Atheist]

Less Americans think they need to lose less weight than in 1990, despite crazy increases in obesity since then.

That's quite scary.

The kid in my class 40 years ago who we considered "the fat kid" would not be considered so by today's standards.

That's probably true, too!

 

[Rolfe]

I think the move to "Low Fat" foods also had a lot to do with it. In an efforts to lose weight. we replaced a slow-metabolizing fats with quick-metabolizing carbohydrates.

Also, there is the rise of Corn Chips and Potato Chips. Low fat, or not, Corn and Potato Chips are the road to obesity - they are quick-metabolizing carbs.

While there's something in this, I don't think it has any real connection to anyone's "efforts to lose weight". Anyone who is really trying to lose weight, who really wants to lose weight, can do it. That sort of person isn't shifting their diet from fats to carbohydrates, then saying "oh dear I weigh more than ever!" and giving up.

It has a lot more to do with the desire of food manufacturers to sell more and more product, and so to produce products that press all our evolutionary buttons as "here's something really good I need to grab it and eat it now." And if these products happen to leave us feeling hungry for some more quite soon afterwards (good luck finding another honeycomb-packed hive in the "wild", but there's always more food in the shop) then so much the better.

 

[jimbob]

But men are fertile far into old age. And 12,000 years is 600 generations, plenty of time to evolve to handle the extra weight. If there even was a problem to begin with. Whales and elephants don't seem to have any problem with weight.

Hmm, makes me think... maybe it is estrogen that causes the debility of obesity? Isn't cholesterol a building block for estrogen? Lower cholesterol, lower estrogen?

We really haven't had hundreds of generations to evolve to cope with a constant glut of calorie-dense food. There hasn't been such a glut until about the last 50 years, for the vast majority of people.

Yes. I mentioned 12,000 years since the Neolithic Revolution which was about the first time that any animal could build up and reliably store a glut of food at least in good times. The good times were only brief.

What happened during the good times was that then the population would increase. I actually think that Malthus might be more important to the history of Biology than Darwin (although I would be willing to be convinced otherwise). We are only now decoupling ourselves from having our population growing until constrained by the four horsemen.

Except that even for most of those 12,000 years the population would still rise to the carrying capacity of the land. The fertility rate of newly colonized land was far higher than for established land, where one had to wait for technological or agricultural improvements to increase the supportable population. For most of these 12k years the reproductive success of 50-year old men was not an issue.

 

[casebro]

While there's something in this, I don't think it has any real connection to anyone's "efforts to lose weight". Anyone who is really trying to lose weight, who really wants to lose weight, can do it. That sort of person isn't shifting their diet from fats to carbohydrates, then saying "oh dear I weigh more than ever!" and giving up.

It has a lot more to do with the desire of food manufacturers to sell more and more product, and so to produce products that press all our evolutionary buttons as "here's something really good I need to grab it and eat it now." And if these products happen to leave us feeling hungry for some more quite soon afterwards (good luck finding another honeycomb-packed hive in the "wild", but there's always more food in the shop) then so much the better.

Nah. No processed food in my house, and I can't afford to eat out. Meat and veggies, maybe rice and beans. No soft drinks either, just one glass of jug wine with dinner. A large glass, but just the one.

But I am currently very sedentary. Awaiting a knee replacement that keeps getting delayed. And add a bout of stasis dermatitis flare up, so into the recliner with legs up for two months. Knee is re-scheduled for ten days from now, but I hacked up a thumb. If it needs surgery, that will put off the knee for the 3rd time. Once the current knee surgery appointment was made, I took some iburpofen and got busy around here. Lost 5 lbs in a few days. Then the thumb happened, so back to square one. So, doubling my calories out will be easy. At 3,000 calories per day, my weight is stable. Eat the same or less (because I'm too busy to hear the fridge calling) and the weight will fly off.

But portion control was bad training. "Did you get enough to eat? Eat,eat eat." All the kugelis we could eat. Potatoes are cheap, but you better pack then in to get enough protein when dinner was purley spuds, three nights a week. And salad? What's that?
'
Next generation in my family is much better.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, that was a bit of a non-sequitur, as nothing in my post was aimed at anything you said.

3000 calories a day is a lot. If I ate that as a regular thing I'd be enormous. My maintenance is around 1500 calories a day, unless I'm eating out for some reason. And I'm not entirely sedentary although I don't really exercise much just for the sake of it.

I agree with you about portion control. I think it's really important not to overload the plate, and get into the habit of consuming big portions. My mother was big on clearing one's plate, but there wasn't that much on it in the first place. Here's a couple of pictures I posted in the weight control thread, of the evening meals I've been preparing for myself while on the diet.

That's probably only about 350 calories on the plate.

That plateful which includes a double-loin lamb chop, was 435 calories.

One thing I do notice is that even if I don't think I'm particularly full after eating a plateful like that, give it 20 or 30 minutes and I'll be feeling as if I just had a major pig-out.

I've been eating 1300 calories a day while I've been dieting, and that's the days when I wasn't fasting. Of course I'm only 5 feet 7 inches tall and a taller person will obviously eat more, but 3000 calories is, like, gosh wow man how can you eat so much every day?

 

[casebro]

Well, that was a bit of a non-sequitur, as nothing in my post was aimed at anything you said.

What? You can't see how I got from your " the desire of food manufacturers to sell more and more product" to my comment about processed foods?

3000 calories a day is a lot. I

I've been eating 1300 calories a day while I've been dieting, and that's the days when I wasn't fasting. Of course I'm only 5 feet 7 inches tall and a taller person will obviously eat more, but 3000 calories is, like, gosh wow man how can you eat so much every day?

I've got current health probs and am very sedentary. I have nothing else to do but sit on the net, and eat. You put on more miles at the office than I do at home. I looked up my weight/calories baseline, and it says I must be eating 3,000. Which is down from when I was doing bust ass labor as a carousel horse carver. I tallied it up once, 7,000 calories per day. If you haven't been paying attention, I have a lean body mass of 220 lbs. Look at the fore arm in my avatar. Stable calories at that body mass, add a reasonable amount of fat- say 10%, plus it's attendant added water, we get about 250 lbs. Break even calories is probably 2700? Today I am 294, so 3000 is basal.

Or should I starve to cachexia to lose muscle mass? I already pee myoblobin when I work hard. And then pass kidney casts the next day.

Studies are trumped by individual history. Not to mention that I an 98th percentile in every way- ht, wt, glucose, creatinine clearance, number of surgeries to hands, IQ. So I'm off the charts on those studies.

 

[Rolfe]

What? You can't see how I got from your " the desire of food manufacturers to sell more and more product" to my comment about processed foods?

No, not really. Nevermind.

I've got current health probs and am very sedentary. I have nothing else to do but sit on the net, and eat. You put on more miles at the office than I do at home. I looked up my weight/calories baseline, and it says I must be eating 3,000. Which is down from when I was doing bust ass labor as a carousel horse carver. I tallied it up once, 7,000 calories per day. If you haven't been paying attention, I have a lean body mass of 220 lbs. Look at the fore arm in my avatar. Stable calories at that body mass, add a reasonable amount of fat- say 10%, plus it's attendant added water, we get about 250 lbs. Break even calories is probably 2700? Today I am 294, so 3000 is basal.

Or should I starve to cachexia to lose muscle mass? I already pee myoblobin when I work hard. And then pass kidney casts the next day.

Studies are trumped by individual history. Not to mention that I an 98th percentile in every way- ht, wt, glucose, creatinine clearance, number of surgeries to hands, IQ. So I'm off the charts on those studies.

You're obviously in a difficult situation. Enforced lack of exercise, with nothing to do but sit and eat, does make it very hard to get the sums to balance. There is a middle ground between overeating for your activity level and starving yourself into cachexia though.