Obese Epidemic: Political, Economic and Scientific

[Aractus]

I am also curious about the weight gain in people who already have a healthy diet and do exercise. Found this on YouTube

---

http://youtu.be/VgnbRK8pij8

---

You know, I was thinking about this a little bit today. Back in one of the videos one of the scientists mentioned that they couldn't make rats obese just by feeding them rat food - they went to the store and got high calorie sweets and all their rats got obese. Well the same is true for other animals - cattle don't generally get fat from eating grass - they have the opportunity to eat as much grass as they want, but they all stay about the same size (most of them that is), until they're taken to feedlots and given grain, instead of grass, to fatten them up.

On my Aunt's farm she has cattle and horses, and one of her horses is fat. It chooses to eat as much as it can whenever it can, but most do not. This is how obesity has been historically in humans, we've had some obese people, but only because they had a hunger for overeating for some reason.

Research has shown, as mentioned in those videos I posted, that obese people want to exercise less overall. Now this isn't at all surprising since their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is actually higher than normal due to the energy needs of carrying extra bulk (there's more blood to circulate, etc), and their calorie needs are higher even though they do less physical activity than they would if they were smaller.

Now, in yestey-year back when we had a small number of obese people, did we find that those people struggled with losing weight? Well I would assume so - and we have the same thing on a broader scale now, which is why I compared it to giving up smoking. I know a couple of smokers that have "given up" smoking numerous times, but at present are regular smokers. Even with the assistant of aids like nicotine patches.

Well, obesity is similar - loosing weight itself is not difficult, but making long-term permanent changes is. That's why most people get to a certain point - be it their goal weight, or wherever and then they return to their old "pre-diet" eating habits - they go back to their "comfort zone", back to what feels good and releases all that dopamine in the brain, etc. Back to eating methods that cause leptin resistance - but if they wanted to stay healthy they could if they'd only stayed on a healthy weight-management eating plan, it's really not rocket science.

It's also why I don't 100% agree when Dr. Robert Lustig simply says that "diet and exercise doesn't work" - that's as stupid as saying that nicotine patches don't work, and I haven't seen the data, but let's say that the average smoker has to give up six times to give up forever - that's 5x "failures" for every "success", and many may have given up or died before they got to that 6th attempt, so you would at the raw statistics and conclude "hey, only 10% of the people using this product are actually giving up smoking, that's placeebo surely!"

His conclusion that diets don't work (or for that matter exercise) is based on the same basic principle, people can and do in fact loose weight through diet and exercise, but it's difficult, especially if after you've lost weight you don't know how to keep it off, and so many will relapse and have to go through it again.

Most people after they come off a successful diet and keep their weight down do in fact regain a small amount after coming off the diet. That's actually normal - but what I think happens, or could happen, is that when people see the extra 5kg come back on they instinctively "give up" and thin that it's failure, when in fact it isn't - it's simply the body re-adjusting to healthy eating again.