Obesity: five facts

[Aractus]

Also i was speaking of myself and others that are not that fat. When I started out I was about 18% BF ( nearest i can figure) not even close to what Aractus was saying in his post.

Yes and as I explained, physiologically speaking at 18% body fat you did not have excess adipose tissue - it would have been very unlikely. You only had an excess (if it was even that) of fatty lipids stored in your adipose tissue.

You cannot speak for obese people. David Elmore Smith - the "650 pound virgin", he lost around 400 lbs over two years with a personal trainer who became his best friend. Then he had surgery to remove the excess skin folds. Then he spent the next two years regaining 300 lbs. He blamed himself, his best friend blamed him and they lost their friendship. Tell me how is it possible that he regained 300 lbs so fast if it is not biochemical? I mean it took him 30 years or so to get to 650 lbs, and after he lost 400 lbs it only took two years to regain 300 lbs? Do the maths - it doesn't work. It should have taken him at least 15 years to regain 300lbs just going by the maths of his previous weight gain, not two years!

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Congrats on the grade Daniel!

Very interesting thread.

Thanks Kichi, you want to know the funny thing? When I asked Michael if I could use science to critique policy he seemed very sceptical "make sure you don't let it take the focus away from policy" he said or something similar. Looks like I pulled it off okay though! I was a little worried about where I lacked substance - for instance I couldn't find the costs to the government of "Swap It" and "Shape Up Australia", and I couldn't find very much peer review material on those two campaigns either, and I glossed over policy recommendations by the Committee and the Panel without actually acknowledging the polices that were adopted by the government (because those ones weren't directly relevant to obesity nor my focus). Also I probably should have referenced my claim that they weren't adopted with the response documents (which I did have).

And I used a lot of assumed knowledge - for instance when I brought up the food pyramid I mentioned that it was very similar to Japan's, I originally had a sentence explaining that the Japanese are generally speaking the healthiest and live the longest anywhere in the developed world but I deleted it (because it wasn't directly relevant to Australia) and assumed the reader could work that out themselves. Although to be honest I could have at least said "Unlike Australia, Japan doesn't have a serious obesity problem". I think I was very lucky to get an HD really. I thought I might lose marks for doing this - I did it so I could use less words on the more complicated aspects of what I was talking about. And I also never mentioned overweight/pre-obesity - I assumed the reader would appreciate the topic of the essay was only concerned with obesity and not the pre-obese.

So yeah, I can see quite a lot of room for improvement myself, but hey he gave me 92% and he can't take it back now!