Obesity: five facts

[Aractus]

If fat people would just eat a bit less then their daily maintenance they would lose some weight, feel and look better and not cost us so much.

Incorrect. If they do that they will feel worse. I know it's counter-intuitive and the opposite of the lies you're told by the ineffective diet industry, but it's the God's honest truth.

Interesting write up.
I have been with very overweight people when they ate.
2 of them, ate like shoveling it in and eating far more than myself or others nearby.
Another (my wife's good buddy) can't help herself from eating constantly.
Wife says (kiddingly) that they are like rats- if food is around -they eat.

So do you think there is more than intrinsic body design involved, because of the above?

The quantity of energy you need, as a man, is 2500 kcal on average. If you put on weight you increase your BMR and consequently increase your weight maintenance level, perhaps to 3,000 kcal or more if you're obese. Your body uses the ghrelin hormone to make you feel hungry, and when you've eaten enough your fat cells release leptin which works on exactly the same receptors in the brain as ghrelin, but to reduce hunger and stop you from eating. Obese people have a decreased effectiveness of their leptin hormone. The easiest way to explain this is to think of type 2 diabetes - in type 2 diabetes your pancreas still produce the correct amount of the insulin hormone, however it has become less effective because the cells they work on have begun to shut down their insulin receptors. We now know that pre-diabetes (the medical condition that leads to type 2 diabetes) is in fact reversible, but once a person has diabetes it is no longer reversible. This is much the same with leptin, hunger and obesity. Once a person becomes obese their body no longer responds correctly to the leptin hormone.

Furthermore, adipose tissue as I mentioned is essentially a permanent structure in the body and if more of it is built it never goes away. Generally speaking pre-obese people have not increased their adipose tissue, they've only increased the amount of lipid stored in the adipose tissue. But once people become obese a good quantity of them have increased their adipose tissue, that is now a permanent fat structure in the body, and when they lose weight the body tries to put it back on. As Joe Proietto says, "we now know body weight is very vigorously defended by the brain. In that following weight loss the hormones that control hunger (that circulate in our blood) change in a direction to make people more hungry. And hence making it very difficult to maintain weight loss." (See the fact-check video in the links I provided in the op).

If you want a much simpler version of this concept that's easy to get your head around hop onto youtube and watch "the skinny on obesity". Robert Lustig is an expert in this area and does a very good job of explaining why the cause of obesity is biochemical and not lifestyle options. It's important to remember though that his hypothesis is that increased sugars are the culprit, whereas there are others who think it is in fact cereal grains and not refined sugars that are most to blame. I don't know who's right, and in fact no one knows for certain. It may not be that simple either, it may be more complicated.

To address the issues you raised: it doesn't matter if a person is a complete pig. Their hunger hormones should stop them from over-consuming, for the vast majority of people.