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Neuroscience Explains Why Dieters Rarely Lose Weight (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: According to a new study, the chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with severe obesity, suggesting that current weight management programs focused on dieting and exercise are not effective in tackling obesity. Now neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt writes in the New York Times that "in the long run dieting is rarely effective, doesn't reliably improve health and does more harm than good". And according to Aamodt, the root of the problem is not willpower but neuroscience.
Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters' weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. This coordinated brain response is a major reason that dieters find weight loss so hard to achieve and maintain. According to Aamodt dieting can actually lead to weight gain because dieting is stressful. Calorie restriction produces stress hormones, which act on fat cells to increase the amount of abdominal fat. Such fat is associated with medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, regardless of overall weight.... Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands.
Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters' weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. This coordinated brain response is a major reason that dieters find weight loss so hard to achieve and maintain. According to Aamodt dieting can actually lead to weight gain because dieting is stressful. Calorie restriction produces stress hormones, which act on fat cells to increase the amount of abdominal fat. Such fat is associated with medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, regardless of overall weight.... Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands.
Gut bacteria.
--sf
There are several whole industries devoted to convincing people that it's as simple as a bit of diet and exercise and if you or someone you know can't lose weight it's because they're fat and lazy. "Health" food, diet plans, pills and potions, exercise machines, surgery. All waiting to grab a dollar. And billions of people too scared or too stupid to know that if they're thin it's their good fortune, not a reason to put others down. Fat shaming is more socially accepted than any other form of discrimination on the planet.
It's trying to justify you're going to be stuck at your unhealthy weight whether you like it or not so you should just accept it fatty mclardbucket.
Worrying. Ms. Aamodt has links to the Healthy at Every Size (HAES) obesity apologists. HAES are as insane as anti-vaxxers, only they believe medical science is a worldwide racist conspiracy against fat people. Oh, and if you don't want to buy into their excuses, you're literally oppressing them.
In short, I'm worried that she appears to be peddling snake oil to people who are very, very desperate to avoid having to take personal responsibility for their unhealthy lifestyles. Diet and Exercise work -- as part of a lifestyle change. We know this, we have known this for years.
The problem is that humans are extremely, extremely poor at making judgements about food, and we have an entire industry ("Big Food") dedicated into manipulating people into overeating and eating cheaply produced unhealthy garbage.
It's not my fault I sit on my ass all day and stuff myself full of fatty foods! It's my gut bacteria / neuroscience! That's how I became a fat ass in the first place!
It cites self-help books, not scientific studies.
It's probably somewhat correct. It's probably also somewhat incorrect. It differs from my personal experience.
These types of articles seem to consistently confuse hunger and appetite with eating. Hunger isn't eating. Appetite isn't eating. Only actual eating is eating. A hungry person can procrastinate eating a long time, especially if he or she doesn't keep anything ready to eat in the house. It doesn't even take much "will power". Just don't buy snacks (or cereal, or anything else that's edible without preparation) when you shop.
Fat people aren't a "race", so you can't really be racist against them.
Fat people aren't a "race"
Sure they are, they just don't race as fast as thin people unless you drop them from an airplane.
Just another day in Paradise
I think the main issue here is that HEAS and fat acceptance people are overdoing it. Some people can be slightly overweight but everything can be fine health wise and try to force them to a normal weight is more likely to make things worse. There are also some complaints against "fat shaming" that are justified. Obesity is a significant lifestyle-based health issue, but there are many others such as smoking, lack of sleep, drug abuse, risky sexual behavior or being underweight. Shaming should to be fair: If people ignore smoking but are shaming slightly overweight people and claim that shaming is based on health concerns instead of aesthetics that is just bigotry or bad information.
A little big of overweight (BMI 25-27), especially with low levels of abdominal fat is not a big health issue, it might even be slightly more healthy than normal weight. Something like BMI 27 to 30 is unhealthy most of the time, but on average still causes smaller health issues than smoking. But many people are significantly fatter than that. They almost always have health issues caused by their weight and should really lose weight and could easily do so by swapping some high calorie count items in their diet with vegetables.
Jan
No, you're still the land whale you always were. The only thing that's changed is you've discovered denial.
This comment has opened my eyes. Back to hot dogs and Netflix I go.
You can't go back to something you never left.
You cannot force yourself to lose weight.
You can will yourself to lose weight.
The two are distinct. The first is a method of control, which means that without changing your will, you put in place external methods of regulating yourself. The second is how most people lose weight, which is by regulating their desire by balancing it against their desire to be thinner. It's not a diet, it's a reduction.
All the people I know who lost weight and kept it off did so by focusing on their appetites and not rules for limiting consumption. They found ways to want less food, thus eat less, and if exercise played a role it was secondary.
Of course, none of them were obese by any realistic definition. Fifteen to fifty extra pounds is not out of the range of normal.
The doctors have adjusted the definition of "obese" (apparently) to include pot-bellies and thunder thighs. They are doing this in the War on Obesity, which like other Wars on Social Problems, is based in forcing people to do what is not natural for them. They think this will work because all humans are the same, identical and grey, without any context or surrounding needs. But as you point out, people vary. For some, a little extra weight is a good thing, especially in middle age.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to find some eclairs...
Sure they are, they just don't race as fast as thin people unless you drop them from an airplane.
Idiocy is more of a problem than obesity will ever be - as evidenced by the fact that you think more weight would make someone fall faster.
Where did he say that? He said "as fast as", not "faster than".
When did they stop talking about how gravity works in public schools?
Ironic.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
In other words, 'dieters' are not to blame for anything they do in their lives. The 'feelings' are just too 'strong' to resist. This is all complete and utter bullshit. Overweight people can only become overweight by repeatedly, day after day, for MONTHS, overeating - eating way past satiation, eating until they feel completely bloated with food, every single day, for MONTHS. This is just more excuse making, which is exactly what overweight people DON'T need to hear - that it's not their fault. It IS their fault, THEY alone are responsible for being overweight, and they alone can change things. The sort of person who becomes overweight in the first place is, by definition, the sort of person who will find it very hard to lose weight again, not because of the bullshit in this article, but because they eat to excess beause they feel unhappy, period.
When the Texas school board found out gravity was a "theory".
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
When did they stop talking about how gravity works in public schools?
When they moved on to talking about how air resistance works? Although I suppose it does depend on the density of fat.
Sure, but the same low breeding that leads to racism now leads to fat shaming.
They eat to much?
Seriously: You fat? Eat less. It's that simple.
Whenever my belt only buckles one notch further out, I consciously skip meals or just eat one small bowl of food per meal. Until I comfortly fit into my Jeans again. Usually takes 10 days to 3 weeks. If you have to ditch more than 4 kilos, that's be a tad longer for you. 2-3 kilos per fourtnight is easy if you consciously change your eating habits. If your 50 kilos overweight, that'll be a year of eating normal. 21 days to build a habit - search the internet on how it's done. If you absolutely need to spend money, get this guys book.
But the trick is simpler: ... Does the trick for me.
Get smaller dishes. I mean, really small. That bowl I linked is a small japanese soup-bowl. Just enough for 4 spoons of delicious pasta, with italian herbs, parmesan, pepper and veggiebroth. Tastes delicious as if laced with crack and has way enough calories for a full meal. Perpare your own meals, eat slowly and enjoy.
And perhaps get a bike and use it.
My two cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."
He's right, assuming you're on a planet with an atmosphere.
i've never bought into any of the dieting fads nor tried them because they blamed random things without the science to back it up. one fateful day last summer i watched a documentary that claimed sugars in our food were to blame but it actually had the science to back it up.
Sugar is a drug, addictive and causes food cravings. This begs the question of why we aren't going through withdraw and the answer is that sugar has been added to all your foods specifically so you do not go through withdraw. Look at your raw pasta which has zero reason to have sugar added, it has about 3g of sugar added for every 56g (2 oz).
To make matters worse, food makers started using High Fructose Corn Syrup in products because it's inexpensive because corn is subsidized. Fructose is processed by your liver and it gets stored as fat unless you have low blood sugar. so products with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) are most likely to make you fat.
After removing sugar from my diet (not easy to find products without sugar!) I went through a few days of withdraw. After that, I actually felt like I more energy to do things, so much so that I wanted to exercise (that was never my goal). I started walking regularly and losing weight without any crazy diet, just not eating things with sugar added. Apples are a great source of sugar that have the fiber to balance it out so that it's absorbed slowly avoiding a traffic jam in your liver.
In the last year I have lost 65 lbs of fat and gained 15 lbs of muscle without ever having to go hungry or restrain myself from eating. I'm still overweight (for now) but I'm no longer obese.
The food supply is being drugged to increase profits.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
My sister did that, she got fat, she was a teen, she went to the doctor, doctor disgnosed her with a thyroid problem and put her on medication and she lost the weight.
EXCEPT
She got fat because our parents divorced and she ate herself silly to compensate. The doctor cannot prescribe medicine for being fat, so he interprets her thyroid result as being a bit on the low side and gave her uppers to fix her thyroid... or rather her fatness. But it cause brain pressure and she nearly died.
And people like you? Well you're part of the problem, I guess your fat yourself. So you're clinging to others excuses. There's really no excuse for being fat, you don't even need to feel hungry on high-protein, no carb diets. Your teacher isn't responsible for your fat, you are. And why on earth would your science teacher be the same one for 8 years, and share personal stuff with you? Did you even invent your science teacher to justify your fatness?
As a neuroscientist, I always feel a bit bad when I see headlines like "neuroscience explains X". It usually doesn't and here also it doesn't really (although that's not say the work is without merit, the blurb in the summary seems reasonable). However, neuroscience obviously doesn't tell us why people are getting so fat in the first place. This matters because it affects how to handle weight loss. I accept that different people may have different "natural weights", but this doesn't explain the steadily increasing obesity levels. Something is clearly changing with our relationship to food. Maybe it's increasing sugar levels. Maybe it's that fewer people cook and that encourages over-eating. Maybe it's increasing portion sizes. Perhaps all of those. The point is that there is a driving force to increasing obesity in the population at large, and as an overweight individual you are fighting against it (whatever it is). So if you want people to start losing weight then I reckon you need to understand very well why they're gaining it at such unprecedented levels. The food industry is, in general, not helping to clarify the issue.
soylentnews.org
Not necessarily, all depends on volume (and somewhat surface area) and drag coefficient. If I was as big as a blimp the rate all of fall would be significantly less than the same weight if I were the size of a pea. In fact the same weight distributed over large enough volume could mean that I actually float, once my density was less than that of air.
So, I guess, his point about education still stands ;-)
Since when did cod psychology get renamed to "Neuroscience" ?
Obligatory get off my lawn post but here it comes anyway. Back when I was young (1960's) there were fat kids but not nearly as many and some of those that were considered fat back then would not be considered so now. Our parents were bigger then the kids but not remarkably so. Most of this stark change in obesity rates has taken place in 1 generation. To me, that is the question that needs an answer. What has caused this dramatic change?
Neuroscience explains why German guys named Dieter rarely lose weight.
Weight, what?
I call BS on the NYT article ...
I reckon the basic problem with diets is the kind of diets ... the typical "reduce by half" diet, or counting calories etc. will not work over the long run, because they are either tedious to follow, or deprive the body of necessary nutrients along with calories.
The way out of the whole dilemma is by not reducing what you eat, but by changing your food to healthy food. And not even looking at how much of that healthy (mostly vegetables) food you eat, but rely on the relatively low calories of those food to take care of your excessive calorie intake.
Check out e.g. books by Dr. Fuhrman, like "Eat to live" or "End of dieting" ... his explanations - combined with referencing literally hundreds of studies done in the area of food and nutrition - will help most likely just about any person wanting to live healthier, and as a by-product - lose weight when followed ...
E.g., some 10 years back I decided I needed to lose weight (albeit I didn't have any noticeable health issues even though I would have been classified as slightly obese). I managed to go down something like 60 pounds within 3-4 months by reducing the amount of food - and snacks - I ate, and even managed to keep my weight down decently for several years, though over the last 3-4 year regaining my weight.
Last August, with a BMI of 31.5 (anything above 30 is classified as obese), I started going on a "diet" based on Fuhrman's books, managing to get down to 25.5 within 3 months; currently I'm down to 22.5, with a total of almost 70 pounds lost. My personal goal is reacing a BMI in the area of 21.5 and a total loss of about 75-78 pounds. By switching to about 90-95% vegetarian/vegan food, I've had not much of a problem losing the weight, without /ANY/ of the typical "dieting" problems like suffering from hunger etc. ... when hungry, I'll just eat something - like carrots, bell peppers etc. for snacks, or a nice bowl of salad ... I've never not eaten vegetables, but were pretty picky ... and the amount of meat etc. that I usually ate of course added to the calories ...
Of course, I won't be able to supply long-term results yet, but by effectively changing my general food source and type of eating, I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to keep the weight off, and iron out the occasional "rare and appropriate" (thanks to Penn Jillette for his inspiration!) event of eating "normal", unhealthy food ...
Mindful Eating is actually a really good way to lose weight.
More so if you use smaller plates to eat and make it conscious effort to get up and get more food.
Eating over the period of an hour also helps. There is no rush. Take your time.
Preferably find a love for cold foods for this. Or eat hot foods first, stored on a hot plate, then cold foods.
Separating your foods is good because it makes it slightly more effort to deal with. Having those different courses has a pretty big effect on the eating process.
Bulking up food with nutritionless-as-possible foods can help fill you up quicker.
Iceberg Lettuce is a great one for this. Good hydration source, bulks up food, done.
The biggest issues with dieters is trying to do a crash diet. That doesn't work well for most of these people. It does more harm than good, actually.
Crash diets only work well for a mildly fat person, but when you hit obesity it becomes more psychological than digestive related. (and for helping the diabeetus, as recent research has shown with hugely important implications)
They have to reduce their intake over time, eating slightly less and less, similar to reducing a dose of steroid treatment so the body gets back to normal.
This with mindful eating will make people more conscious of what they eat.
If they use a visual reference from other people eating, it goes so much farther to help them realize they are eating too much.
Others eating reinforces eating habits. Social eating is a well-known cause for obesity. Especially the usual cause: time to go round the friends house on the weekend and eat take-aways.
Take-away portions are sometimes even larger than a typical home-made meals portions!
Watching someone eat far less than you and being totally fine with the amount they ate will have a huge influence on them.
I actually do eat take-aways on the occasion when at friends, but I also don't eat half of the thing and keep it for a whole separate meal the next day.
Luckily said take-away isn't a generic awful one with crappy quality food and cooking filled with cheapo vegetable oils that should be banned already. Reason I know this is it is a friends family that owns it.
On that note: eliminate vegetable oils from your diet entirely. All of them. They are horrible inflammation-causing junk.
Use fruit oils and similar. Olive oil, coconut oil being the 2 champions of cooking oils.
Google up on cooking oils and health to figure out the rest of them, there are quite a few sources out there with measurements on their nutrition, fat types, etc.
There are a few differences between them, but all of them lack (or have very little of) the thing which most veg oils have: excessive amounts of omega 6.
Yes, your body does need a decent supply of it, it is very important in the immune system. The issue is most vegetable oils have way in excess of what your body needs. It is on levels as bad as hypervitaminosis (excess of certain vitamins).
The things chronic inflammation can do to your body over time is immensely bad, it is basically THE source of the majority of western ills.
It is the biggest causation of illness in the western world. Period. It is worse than smoking 50 a day.
I actually told one of my friends who is obese (partially due to steroid treatment, partially due to habit) to eliminate it from his diet and he lost weight on that alone.
He is even working with someone to get rid of more weight, including the mindful eating and smaller numerous portions and it is going well.
2 other friends hopped on-board with the idea as well.
Not only does it make you lose excess weight, it has made all 3 of them feel better overall. (especially the one with an underactive thyroid, it made massive changes in him)
Equally, another thing you can do if you are only mildly fat and want to lose some weight, here is a good way to do that.
Replace all of your meals with small meals.
Any time you feel hungry, drink water.
Enjoy. That's it.
This article is a load of crap that contradicts the study's conclusion:
"those subjects maintaining greater weight loss at 6 years also experienced greater concurrent metabolic slowing." ...
"Metabolic adaptation persists over time and is likely a proportional, but incomplete, response to contemporaneous efforts to reduce body weight."
What they're saying is that the body will adapt to the change in calorie intake such that the person can maintain the weight loss. The NYT article makes wild and incompatible conclusions based on this very simple and narrow study.
Worrying. Ms. Aamodt has links to the Healthy at Every Size (HAES) obesity apologists. HAES are as insane as anti-vaxxers, only they believe medical science is a worldwide racist conspiracy against fat people. Oh, and if you don't want to buy into their excuses, you're literally oppressing them.
In short, I'm worried that she appears to be peddling snake oil to people who are very, very desperate to avoid having to take personal responsibility for their unhealthy lifestyles. Diet and Exercise work -- as part of a lifestyle change. We know this, we have known this for years.
The problem is that humans are extremely, extremely poor at making judgements about food, and we have an entire industry ("Big Food") dedicated into manipulating people into overeating and eating cheaply produced unhealthy garbage.
Since we're dealing with fat instead of race, the word "fatist" would apply instead of racist.
Just my $0.02 (adjusted for inflation - no pun intended).
Is it proper English to say that the probability is "increasing" when something becomes less probable? (1/1920 1/210).
Seriously, ditch the carbs, eat protein instead, eat green leafy veg for the vits, and exercise for your health. Beer? No problem. Cheese? Yep, in moderation no problem. Carbs? NO NO NO FUCKING WAY NO.
The carbs are the problem. Sugars, bread, rice, pasta potatoes, these are the problem.
Whoever modded parent to -1 has no idea what they're talking about. This is the basis for Atkins diet and its known to work very very well, and yes it goes against that "low fat, low meat" healthy diet, but that diet is simply wrong. If you eat carbs, you'll feel hungry when the sugar runs out and need to eat again. Eat protein and you're soon skipping meals because you feel too full.
Sure, but the same low breeding that leads to racism now leads to fat shaming.
That argument is so thin it's can't even be rebutted.
Are you implying something? Something beyond "fat shaming is bad and people who do bad things are bad"?
What does racism have to do with anything here? Are we abducting fat people now to sell into slavery? We're certainly gonna need a bigger boat for that.
If you e.g. do fasting, after a few days you have no feeling for hunger anymore.
While it is true that the body as soon as you do a diet tries to convince you "hey you are starving, eat more! because you see: I have to burn the fat!" it should not be to hard to trick the body buy eating stuff that is hard to digest and has a relatively low amount of energy.
For every study: why diets don't work, there are plenty of diets and studies that actually do work.
For many people losing weight is actually not that hard, keeping it down and not falling back to bad eating habits is mich more challenging.
As far as I observe, the main reason for obesity â" besides eating to often and to much â" are wrong gut bacteria. Bacteria that allow you to digest fibers like a cow. A piece of bread with something like 80 kcal suddenly has 300 kcal if you can digest the fibers. Every vegetable that usually is only water, a bit of carbs, sugar and a few proteins transforms into a kcal bomb if you can digest the fibers.
(Fibres are basically the same as carbohydrates but to long chains to be able to broken up by the ordinary digesting enzymes)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You mean they don't create as much force on impact when dropped from an airplane... gravity is not fattist like that
Yeah, healthy at any size sounds a bit excessive. On the other hand, I have run into more than a few people who were the "proper size" and excessively unhealthy. A moderately obese person who exercises regularly and eats good food (albeit, perhaps excessively) is likely serving their body better than a thin person who does minimal exercise and eats garbage with little nutritional value.
So was Idi Amin. So was your grandmother (fat, anyway). The only recent thing about any of this is that the industries behind it (food and anti-weight gain) need to make more money than ever, and to keep making more money that ever.
Like cancer, there is no money in a cure!
Ugh... This is a textbook example of poisoning the well by making some nonsense claims about HAES. The link to someone who is clearly upset and venting a little, spun into "oppression", is particularly awful.
HAES promote two basic ideas:
1. People should live a healthy lifestyle for the sake of well-being, rather than just for weight loss. So they are against binge diets, and for changing lifestyle to be more healthy. Seems sensible.
2. Simply dieting and increasing exercise is not effective for some people. This study and several other recent ones seem to confirm this. The medical community recognizes it too - surgery is recognized to be a reasonable option when diet and exercise fail in the UK, for example.
So while I'm sure you can dig up some quotes to show how awful HAES is, keep in mind that they have been making this argument for decades and after being dismissed for most of that time are now being proven right all along. People get upset and say stuff, there are idiots etc, but their basic ideas are good and shown to be valid by scientific study.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Don't drag anti-vaxxers down to this level.
Anti-vaxxers do not believe the current consensus for one medical issue, that the medical establishment is doing a good job making and using vaxxines. Which is not completely impossible because people makes mistakes and vaxxines are not magically infallible. the medical establishment has be horrendously wrong before, it's not particularly great are science, and it is really good at being greedy and caring about money more the patient health.
What Fat-Acceptance morons believe is that the theory of Conservation of Energy is not only false, but that are thousands and thousands of people in the word right now that are not only perpetual motions machines, but actually produce a net positive amount of energy/matter.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
How did a "Scientists say" NYT diet article wind up on Slashdot? Just because the NYT is turning into the National Inquirer doesn't mean Slashdot should.
This article defies the laws of physics; it is bogus science. If you take in X calories and expend X + 1 calories you lose weight . If you expend X - 1 calories you gain weight. If set points were really running the show then in 1945 we would have busted down the gates at Dachau and the Japanese POW camps and found a fair number of fat people. We didn't. Calories in; calories out.
Set points are real and self control is a bitch. Your body is yelling at you "I want more food". Don't feed the body more than it needs, get some exercise and you will lose weight and eventually the body will adjust- it will shut up and stop yelling. The laws of physics are not related to the human urge to have a another bag of jellybeans before bedtime. Slashdot should stick to technology and science.
about twelve years ago I lost 30 lbs just by deciding to. I don't know how I did it, but I decided to lose weight, decided it was going to happen, didn't change my diet or activity and 30lbs was gone in a very short period of time.
I have been unable to do it again since gaining it back.
I've found that when I'm stressed, mentally exhausted regularly and feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders I gain weight easily. When I feel unburdened and things are going great I lose weight easily. Some of it is that I'm more likely to do recreational exercise when I'm less stressed, and indeed the last time I got down to a good weight that was the case, but I can't contribute it to that every yo-yo.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
That is incomplete science. They are describing an effect, not a cause. Barring things like thyroid issues, it really is because people eat crap and are totally sedentary. The only way to fix it is to feed the body well and start moving again regularly. Our physiology is a lot more than just our brain chemistry. Bad science! Baaaad science!
This is from yesterday, and while I generally don't like John Oliver, this is a great segment on the reporting of "scientific studies".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Of course, the term "healthy" is somewhat subjective as well.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Yeah, Idiocy is a problem as evidenced by your post. Are you familiar with terminal velocity? It's a phenomenon that occurs when things aren't falling in a vacuum, such as it would be if someone were to jump out of an aircraft. It's determined by the objects shape and, wait for it, weight (or mass if you want to be pedantic). Two objects shaped identically but weighing differently will fall at different speeds. They will start off accelerating at the same speed since gravity acts on all objects equally, but as air resistance builds, the heavy one will accelerate for a longer time and will have a higher terminal velocity because its larger mass will not be as easily effected by air resistance. I hope you find this introductory physics lesson useful.
Great. Now in addition to the chronically obese using the 'muh genetics' excuse, they can use the 'muh hardwired neurology' excuse, too.
Has it not occurred to anyone else that the current obesity epidemic is a relatively new thing, and not something that was a problem decades ago, or hundreds of years ago? That the crap food that we're eating (or that many of you are eating -- some of us don't) is more likely responsible? Seriously, I'd like to slap the shit out of these people who come up with this 'research' that just gives people with weight problems more excuses.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Actually he may be right - I wonder would the increased mass of a fatter person result in a higher terminal velocity, or would the increased surface area offset this through drag?
People have this deep-seated need to believe that the universe is a just world. They don't want to believe in a world where some people are arbitrarily's given great advantages while others suffer, so they will resort to all sorts of non-scientific nonsense: everything from bogus economic beliefs to karma. Apparently this also includes beliefs about dieting and exercise.
The article cites scientific evidence that the body's metabolism and hunger response will struggle to maintain body fat, which is why so few people can sustain weight loss through any method. Nature doesn't give a shit about your opinions about personal responsibility. It's not going to take a survey about what metabolic response would be the most fair.
So if you are aware of any actual, fucking science that contradictions the author's conclusions, by all means please post them so we can better understand this issue. But if all you have to offer are shitty, unvalidated, opinions stemming from your psychological need to believe that fat people are bad and lean people are good and thus they deserve what they get, then please STFU,
But really, he should've said "faster than". Objects of different masses fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Since we're talking about dropping things from an airplane, the lack of vacuum is implied, and now you've got to account for things like air resistance. If we dropped a feather and a plumb bob from an airplane, they're not going to hit the ground at the same time.
" keep the body within a certain weight range"
I was a pretty good 180 lbs until I moved from downtown to the burbs. Within six months, I was 215. Nothing I did stopped this increase.
So if there's all these powerful mechanisms trying to return me to the set point, how is it that 210 is a set point but 180 wasn't?
Hmmmm.
These mechanisms have been known for a long time. Likewise, it's been known for a long time that "willpower" and "dieting" don't work for weight loss; hunger is just too compelling. You need to change what you eat and how you live. I suppose it's good that even the NYT is waking up to the idea that "the science is settled... again".
But using BMI is not a good tool to measure fat.. They should have been measuring body-fat %.
I have been struggling with my weight for some time, but slowly getting to where i would like to be.. One issue with loosing weight with calorie-restriction is that you get really tired, and spending several month's mentally tired is not optimal when you work as a developer...
Only way, that worked for me at least, was a low-carb diet that put the body in ketosis. But this does require alot of planning so really hard to follow.. Going in and out of ketosis was not fun either due to the headaches i got the first few days every time my body went into ketosis, but after reaching ketosis i had tons of energy and never really felt hungry.. I managed (with a few slips) to stay with this for 1½ year and managed to loose ~20kg (down to ~85-86kg) from start to finish, but regained ~5kg during the first month after but managed to stay at 91kg for about 2 year now.. First year i did notice i had to think of what i eat but after that year things just evened out and now i can eat pretty much what i want without thinking and my brain tells me when to stop...
** I did not start any training-program or anything during this, just lived my life as normal.. If i would have i would probably have managed to drop even more, but it would have required even more will-power than i had at that point..
So i do agree with the article that loosing weight it highly related to the way our brain is wired, but i there are more than just "that simple fix"..
- Type of diet.. Calorie-restriction probably works for people with a normal weight that wants to loose a bit, but when going long-term it does become problematic.. we need more knowledge into how the body handles different types of food and what effects different types of food have on they body..
- Neuroscience - Probably a huge part in terms of re-learning what healthy eating is about.
- Psychology - Ways to keep up the spirit, because loosing >10kg is not something you do in a few months... it takes years, and that does take it's toll.
- Body-chemistry - Loosing weight in a way where you do no get mentally tired... Ties together with Psychology and type of diet..
- Exercise - You need mental strength here.. See psychology and body-chemistry.
If we can find out more things like this we can find out better ways for people to loose weight permanently instead of jumping down/up in weight like most do with those pure calorie-restrictive diets..
Gut flora are turning out to be huge in this respect. But here are my simple counters to the above. If you put a bowl of candy(and keep it topped off) on everyone's desks at work, will they gain weight? If people walked to work (or at least a few miles of their journey) every day, would they lose weight?
I think that these "set points" are set by the body optimizing itself to a high caloric availability, and a low amount of work.
In the 1800s I don't think you found a whole lot of fat lumberjacks. HR people on the otherhand have a propensity to being blimps.
What you're saying is not correct.
First of all this, this study does not confirm that "dieting and increasing exercise is not effective for some people". No where does it say that. It looked at a large number of obese people who did not receive bariatric surgery and tabulated the number and percentage of them that became normal weight. It doesn't say what percentage of them actually conformed to a diet and exercise regimen on which weight loss down to a normal weight would be predicted. It may be that the number who conformed were the exact number that became normal weight (1 in 124 for women and 1 in 210 for men). Indeed, if the population of obese people were at all likely to conform to effective weight loss regimens, then it is unlikely they would have become obese in the first place. So the result is not surprising.
Second of all, official HAES principles are posted online. Number 4 is "Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control."
No where does this say it is just against "binge diets". It's against any diet that is intended for weight loss, or weight gain, or weight maintenance even; any "weight control". Mainstream, scientifically-based dietitians, nutrition scientists and medical doctors advise diets for weight control all the time. The standard treatment for anorexia nervosa is to first and foremost enforce a diet which brings weight back up to healthy levels. The standard treatment for an obese woman showing Pseudotumor cerebri is to lose weight. Etc.
For HAES to reject these practices is pseudoscientific.
Diet alone will never work. People's notion of a diet is that you do it for a while, then go back to how you used to eat.
To gain or lose weight, because bulking up in the gym is just as hard, it requires a lifestyle change.
Exercise, healthy eating, and cutting excess sugar out of your life are lifestyle changes. They work slowly, over time.
And you are right, HAES is a self-enforcing cancer. It allows overweight people to escape from the fact that they are overweight because of their own life choices.
If they don't have to be responsible for their own eating habits, it's not their fault that they can't lose weight anymore.
How is it possible for developed nations to be 'suffering an obesity epidemic' if it's also true that there are 200:1 odds against an obese person returning to normal weight due to their 'set point'?
The statistics on obesity tell us that populations in developed nations are getting heavier over a time frame that is measured in years. That can't be a matter of the average 'set point' for humans suddenly shifting towards obesity. Human genetics doesn't change this quickly. This change has to be dominated by diet, exercise, sleep, culture, not be 'set point'.
I'm saying it takes a weak mind and weak character that has a need to feel superior to others even if the reason is manufactured.
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Even iIf you drop them from an airplane, they are slower:
fat people --> approximate with a sphere;
thin people--> approximate with a spear.
You may all disagree with me, but it is my personal opinion that if you are overweight, and do not have an underlying medical reason for it, it just shows you have a lack of self control. Yes I understand some people have actual thyroid conditions, though not nearly as many as claim to. I'm not talking about these people.
You physically lack the willpower to put down the fast food, and the HAES "movement" (as if there was any real movement in that crowd,) just seeks to make you feel better. "It's ok, everyone can be healthy, even at 400 pounds. You're completely healthy." If you don't have the self control to put down the hamburger, what else in your life is out of control. Finance? Education? Parenting? Put the burger down.
If I walk into a hospital with bulimia, I can not physically leave until I am at a healthy weight. Yet if I walk in at 400 pounds, I'm just rolled out again as if there's nothing wrong. This needs to change. Sugar is an addiction, food is an addiction, and it needs to be treated as such.
Permanent changes in weight require lifestyle changes. You didn't get to be 400 pounds overnight; a "diet" (no carbs, no protein, no dairy, paleo, atkins, or the cookie diet) is only temporary. To change your weight, permanent changes are required. A lifestyle change is required. This is too hard for most overweight people, so they sink back into the mire that is HAES.
Count calories, cut out sugar, eat more REAL food (fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy.) If it comes in a box, why are you buying it. Cooking a nice pot of rice and beans, is simple, cheap, and very filling. Hungry? Munch on roasted broccoli tossed with garlic. Put down the potato chips. You can eat a doughnut, or an entire bowl of broccoli. Guess which one fills you up more?
Until Americans wake up and realize that they alone are responsible for shoving food in their fat faces, this will never change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
LOL, came here to say this. Isn't it nice to be "on the spectrum" ?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Food? Sorry, it's not informatious.
We should round up all the fat people and put them into camps.
Fat camps.
The problem I have with the HAES crowd is that they're completely twisting the actual medical facts. Sort of a "knows enough to be dangerous" thing. Yes, every individual has a different natural body size. But that doesn't mean it's healthy for a naturally skinny person to be fat, or for a naturally fat person to be extremely obese (for that matter, it's not healthy for a naturally fat person to be underweight). So, while the message of not shaming fat people is fine, telling people that they are healthy at every size is dangerous. Everyone is healthy at their own size, not the "every size fits all" crap they push.
I lost on average 5.5 pounds per month and do think that people who fail to lose weight, don't really want it enough. I grew up as a fat kid and didn't just get bullied because of it but reached adult age with a lot more fat cells than if you gain weight at an older age. When your body is accustomed to storing a lot of fat, it's harder to get rid of. I tried but failed to lose weight for 20 years (i.e. since my late teens). Then I finally did it, and drew some conclusions that I'm happy to share. The one thing which got me to try once again was a reporter's description of an extreme hard core diet and fitness plan with a personal trainer and saw the before and after photos three months apart. In the past, I had always given up too quickly and decided that three months is such a short time that if I can achieve other things which take a lot longer, then I must be able to commit to a fitness plan for three months (and when it worked, I just kept going). I simply decided to try really, really, really hard this time and whilst I don't have a personal trainer, I'm smart enough to read what to eat and how to exercise. And I finally succeeded. My advice for anyone who wants to do it (and remember, if you fail, you didn't really want to get fit):
1. The by far most important thing to reach your goals is to weigh in every day (accurately, i.e. same scale, same clothes, if any). It helps you maintain faith in your fitness project because even if you don't get results fast, you notice that something is happening. It's not magic. It's simply less calories going in than being burnt. It will seem so simple once you really notice it happening to you that you will feel stupid and regret not having done it sooner (at least that's how I felt).
2. Count every single calorie. There are plenty of good apps for doing that. Then you don't have to listen to your body when it lies to you. You will know when your body says "I'm hungry!" with no other real reason than you yearning for chocolate. And there's even a trick to get rid of that desperate yearning: Think really intensively about how whatever you're longing for tastes for a few minutes and the worst desire to have it will go away. I'm too lazy to look up the study but it was in a Swedish medical journal. Thinking really intensively about a particular taste can have the same effect as actually tasting it.
3. More than anything, it's psychology. Blame yourself, if you fail. If you fail, you just don't want it enough. Nobody is forcing food down your throat. You do that all by yourself. In your career and in your relationships you control very few of the variables that determine the outcome for you but when it comes to what you eat, you control that completely. So there's simply no valid excuse whatsoever to not lose weight, if you really want it. If you choose to eat more than you should, you just don't want to lose weight. It is that simple.
Nowadays when I see fat people, I don't just think they're unattractive but if they complain about it, I also think they're extremely inept. Harsh but true and it is a conclusion I've drawn spontaneously from what I learnt when I successfully lost weight after two decades of failing to do so. I don't want to be smug or anything but it's simply reality as I now see it. If you're happy being fat that's fine but then it's a choice you've made and it has its disadvantages. Because I was bullied for being a fat kid, I know that very well but now really do think I could have solved that problem any time, if I only had wanted it enough.
As a final note, I should add that you can indeed make food which has few calories but will taste good and fill your stomach. Simply replacing certain ingredients does a lot. So look at those nutritional values!
Oh, and yes, it is awesome to go to a beach with a sixpack instead of love handles :) Compensates pretty well for the crap I got as a kid.
Even then they're slower. More air drag, don't you know?
Stop eating animals and eat more fruits and veggies.
Seriously, the post was meant to be a joke. But, since you decided to be a smartass... I'm well aware that gravity affects us all the same, and that a feather and an anvil would fall at the same rate...in a fucking vacuum, moron, but then how the fuck would the airplane fly?
Just another day in Paradise
Even then they're slower. More air drag, don't you know?
Hmmm, that gives me an idea. Let's drop Chris Christie and Donald Drumpf, and see which hits first.
Just another day in Paradise
As one who has struggled with weight issues, I wholeheartedly agree with most of the article. But after pointing out that the metabolic set point derails most dieters in the long run, the conclusion is:
"Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands"
If the set point is a major component of the problem, how will listening to it help? Shouldn't the conclusion be that we need to learn to change the set point, not be mindful of a process that resists change?
Wouldn't the air resistance of the obese person be greater than the thin more aerodynamic person? We should set this up as an experiment. Throw thing people and fat people from planes and see which ones hit the ground first.
Well a heavier person DOES fall faster. As evidenced by my years of competitive skydiving hobbies that include wearing from 4-25 lbs of lead to fall at the same speed as my teammates.
I have never taken a narcotic drug (unless you count the weakest possible prescription, three or four days post-wisdom tooth removal). My daily expenditure in continuing to not take narcotic drugs is consequently next to zilch.
It's far from a life well lived to accumulate this kind of responsibility for no good initial reason (hair-shirted Calvinists perhaps excepted—bring on temptation so I can resist more good).
As I see this it's nothing short of a human tragedy that so many people—in an otherwise wealthy society—got themselves into this adverse metabolic state in the first place, though it's hard to see how the consumerist free market could have worked differently until the obesity epidemic reached push-back proportion. (Wouldn't it be lovely if we could some day discover an economic system which allows us to become wealthy without also making us collectively stupid—insert Coke commercial here—until the sins of societal wealth delivers its giant bill?)
Where you say "just" I spit.
Doctor: I've got good news and bad news.
Patient: What's the good news?
Doctor: You don't have to be fat forever.
Patient: What's the bad news?
Doctor: To become and remain thin, you will have to think about not eating food every day, all day, for the rest of your life.
Patient: Hooray! I don't have to be fat!
Patient dances a quick jello shuffle complete with an inflated underwear crotch grab, in a passable impression of Weird Al miming a fat Michael Jackson.
Doctor: You aren't by any chance mocking me, are you?
Patient: Of course not. Why on earth would I do that?
A little big of overweight (BMI 25-27), especially with low levels of abdominal fat is not a big health issue, it might even be slightly more healthy than normal weight.
FWIW being a little overweight is significantly better than being a little underweight
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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Second of all, official HAES principles are posted online. Number 4 is "Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control."
Mainstream, scientifically-based dietitians, nutrition scientists and medical doctors advise diets for weight control all the time. The standard treatment for anorexia nervosa is to first and foremost enforce a diet which brings weight back up to healthy levels. The standard treatment for an obese woman showing Pseudotumor cerebri is to lose weight. Etc.
That would come under the heading of "pleasure". It need not always be short term pleasure while eating - the displeasure of disease is great, so modifying diet to get rid of disease is modifying it for "pleasure"
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
A diet is simply what you eat. A Diet is setting yourself up for failure.
About the time people starting putting Flat Earth videos on YouTube.
It would seem that the extra gravity in the South accounts for the extra weight of Southerners. Not their diet.
With no power tools. Just a collection of shovels and cultivators.
Eat the vegetables.
In the winter, shovel snow by hand.
I haven't figured out what to do in the spring & fall to keep from getting fat again, though.