Obesity: five facts

[Ryantology]

Sorry Ryan, it is as easy as "Just do it" That's what did. I decided on my diet and went to the gym, not to mention I e-mailed with some doctors, who are body builders to get any help I could. I did not look good when I started, you bleed too much.

It was as easy as that for you. You are not everybody. There are far more factors at work than you can imagine. Take it from me. I come from a family full of people who have struggled with this, myself included.

If it was just as easy as "just do it", there'd be no fat people. Nobody wants to be fat and disgusting, but there are plenty of people who are resigned to it because it seems like an impossible wall to scale, because they've tried and tried and tried and failed and failed and failed. And, no offense, but that sense of despondency is intensified when you hear someone insist that you're failing repeatedly at something "easy".

[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!

[The Grand Nudger]

Thanks for the advice and concern Aract. I already smoke, it helps (lol). My diet is already centered around those things (grew up in Central and Coastal Florida) but the corn...oh the wonderful corn! I doubt I'll ever nix that (but I've done better on that count in the last few years - it's really hard to give something like that up, a food so integral that it forms part of your identity). It's in my blood -and- on my plate. Shit, you can probably tell that I'm not -too- worried in the present, but I realize that even if I gain a minor amount of weight - fractions of a pound a year- over time it adds up. I'll be content to lose 10lbs and hold at 210 until I'm at least 55, no small feat when you think about it. Bariatric is off the table (and I think I'd be better served by the full knee replacement I've been putting off).

It's a fight against time, I know the objective - I have reasonable goals and I know my limitations...but, as you said, the control that a person has to exert is daunting. 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.

I'm not going to be the guy who says "Hey, fatass, just exercise and stop stuffing your face" - I know it's not that simple. Figured I'd back up your science with a little experience.

[JuliaL]

Also, just because some body-builders and other athletes consciously control their kcal intake doesn't mean that it's healthy to do so. It can lead to eating disorders if you're ignoring your body's signals to eat.

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?

[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.

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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.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hehehe, buddy, I know it doesn't help (and even if it did help me lose a few pounds...I wouldn't point to that as a reason for smoking), just a joke.

[psychoslice]

But still, most of obesity is because of gluttony, well this is what I have observed while setting in food places, and observing trollies in supermarkets.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and what do you imagine compels a person to eat like that? Is the food itself actually that tasty, for example?

[Aractus]

Hehehe, buddy, I know it doesn't help (and even if it did help me lose a few pounds...I wouldn't point to that as a reason for smoking), just a joke.

Yep I know, I just wanted to give you another reason to quit.

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@psychoslice like Rhythm said - what do you think makes people over-consume?

[pocaracas]

Aractus, great essay you must have there!

Now, for everyone else, a little more info.
Obese people, and those on their way to becoming obese, eat a lot... and aractus has given us a piece hinting that they eat a lot because of a hormone imbalance... but what are they eating?
What is in the food that accumulates in the adipose tissue?
Could they eat something that does not accumulate like that, thus leaving the hormone imbalance bearable?

We all know, from all the campaigns, that energy rich foods are the culprits here... calories that go unspent turn to fat, to put it simplistically.
Why is that? Evolution supplies an answer: from our far hunter-gatherer ancestors, food sources were, sometimes, scarce. It was then an advantage to be able to store energy from times of plenty to use in times of lacking. Typically, eat a lot during the warm times to burn through in the cold times.
Summer brings with it fruits, bees and honey, vegetables, lots and lots of them... and game, animals, meat, fish, protein.
Winter brings almost nothing, so you need to store whatever you can, dry fruits, salted meat and fish.... and that's not enough so you need to use up your own inner reserves.

The body was built to get fat and slim with the seasons...
However, nowadays, food is always available.
http://www.movieweb.com/movie/over-the-h...ive-to-eat
or
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/o...at/5we7mmx
(sorry, no youtube link for this clip... )


You can, if unrestrained, eat too much, all year round.


In the olden days, there was also something which we'd call exercise: hunting and gathering required walking, running, picking things up, carrying, etc... physical activity.
Nowadays, exercise if faked, but it works for those who start it before going over the limit of obesity, as Aractus explained.
The obese seem to be, pretty much, hopeless.. they can improve a bit, but it's a daunting chore. The pre-obese have it easier and I think it's at them that the policies are aimed.


So, what's in food that get you fat?
Well... fat does the trick. Eat pork, bacon and other fatty meats and fish, and you're ingesting fat directly. duh!
Then you have sugars...
Sugars are the new salt.
Salt and sugar are the main ingredients when you want to make something taste good. The more, the better.
Sugar is part glucose and part fructose.
Both glucose and fructose are "absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion".
However they then take different roles:
"Some of the glucose is converted to lactic acid by astrocytes, which is then utilized as an energy source by brain cells, some of the glucose is used by intestinal cells and red blood cells, while the rest reaches the liver, adipose tissue and muscle cells, where it is absorbed and stored as glycogen (under the influence of insulin)."

Fructose, however, "after absorption, [...] enters the hepatic portal vein and is directed toward the liver." In the liver it is metabolized and then stored nearby....gut fat.
And is also a major factor in liver disease: "Virtually unknown before 1980, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease now affects up to 30% of adults in the United States and other developed countries, and between 70% and 90% of those who are obese or who have diabetes.
Early on, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is reversible. At some point, though, the liver can become inflamed. This can cause the low-grade damage known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (steato meaning fat and hepatitis meaning liver inflammation). If the inflammation becomes severe, it can lead to cirrhosis — an accumulation of scar tissue and the subsequent degeneration of liver function."

So, in general, sugar should be avoided. But it just tastes so good! And is virtually ubiquitous in processed foods. Read the label on any soda and you'll find some 20~30% of sugar in there; ketchup is also high up there; ah, heck, ALL processed food is about 20% sugar!
Trouble is... the least expensive foods are also the most sugar rich... The other day, I read an article on National Geographic about hunger in America, where low income families eat less, but also worse, so they end up obese.... counter-intuitive, huh? hungry, but obese!

So, eat this not that... but what is this?
A first step is to avoid all sodas. Tap water, in most developed countries is good... and cheap... the cheapest hydration source in most homes. Sure it tastes of nothing, but you drink to to sate thirst, not because it tastes good. And water is the number one liquid for thirst.

Avoid processed foods. The old advice, cook your own food from the basic ingredients. Not so easy when you're on a tight budget and have little time... but try to do it as often as possible. Around here, chicken and pork is quite inexpensive, have them grilled or baked.

Avoid sauces, gravies, ketchup, mustard, etc. Olive oil isn't so bad, but still...don't overdo!

Do note I said "avoid", not stop altogether... you can have the good things of life, just try not to overdo them. Make it a treat for when you do something awesome... the exception, not the rule.