Obesity: five facts

[Aractus]

Thanks for the advice and concern Aract. I already smoke, it helps (lol).

Actually, it doesn't help long term. I just checked. According to Mozaffarian et al. 2011 "Changes in diet and lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men."

Changes in smoking status: never smoked, changed to current smoker: 0.67 lbs weight gain per four years! Current smoker changed to former smoker: 4.99 lbs gain per four years! YIKES! Current smoker, no change: -0.67 lbs per four years. It has a very slight therapeutic weight-loss benefit long term, but health problems associated with smoking are far worse than the benefits.

I just wanted to add my two cents in so that anybody else who's having trouble with weight loss could at least see that a long distance runner and human pack mule, a lifelong manual laborer who eats the right things (though, admittedly....not always in the right amounts)..... who's aware of the issue, has will aplenty, and has formerly grasped the grail of being underweight.....empathizes, and shares in their experience.

Yep, and hopefully now you know why. If you're not obese then it's more likely that you can lose weight and keep it off, although the body may still try to regain most of it, your mileage may vary. Once you become obese there's really no going back... at least not until they either come up with a better hunger-suppressant drug, or start using leptin injections to suppress appetite.

---

Thank you for your thoughtful investigation.
Do you believe that capital market forces in the form of desire creation are primarily to blame for the prevalence of body image dissatisfaction? Or do we all really want, deep down in our reptile brains, to be desirable and Madison Avenue works with that?
When I look at the Willendorf Venus, I have to say that skinny wasn't always sexy.
I've never believed that weight is under conscious control any more than height is. Who would suggest to a person of small stature that they would be taller if they had sufficient moral rectitude?

If diet factors influence weight, then they probably influence height as well - at least I think that would be true long-term. Look at south-east Asian people, their smaller stature could well be associated with a diet that has been centred on rice much more than people elsewhere in the world. They have both lower body fat mass and lower body muscle mass. It would certainly be plausible that diet factors could influence individual growth, i.e. could make the difference between a certain person from growing to 5'7 to growing to 5'9, I haven't seen any literature to suggest this, but it's at least a plausible hypothesis.

Body image is a psychological issue more than a physiological issue, I'd have to look up when body image is formed but I believe it's first formed in early childhood - so if you want people to feel good about their bodies you'd have to look to start doing so in childhood. Children who get teased for being fat or too skinny can easily form distorted body images.