Slashdot Mirror
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.
saying one can be fat eating "300-600" kcal per day, is false. And trivial to prove so.
Really? For you and me it is. My body burns 1500 kcal at rest! Not everybody's you or me.
Everyone agrees but fat people looking for an excuse and snake-oil sellers looking for a way to lie to fat people.
No, not it's not. You calorie in - calorie out fuckers are the ones lying. Science doesn't mind how smug destroying these people's self-confidence and utterly destroying any kind of hope at being thin makes you.
Blaming everyone and everything else.
In the end why the fuck do I care if I can maintain my body weight by drinking all the time and eating whatever the unhealthy fucking shit I want! After all, if somebody isn't like me, they must be wrong and just deserve what's wrong with them!
Calorie in - calorie out is just as much snake oil as the rest. At best, it's a woefully inadequate attempt to "help" people who struggle with their weight. What it actually is, however, is a tool of psychological abuse.
In order for your theory to be complete, you need to explain people like me who just eat whatever the fuck stay at a somewhat decent body weight. Yeah, I could be Calvin Klein model if I put some effort into it, but why would I fucking want that? And hell, I'm not even really in the hyper-metabolic range of people who need to eat somewhere in upwards of ~3,000 kcal every day to prevent themselves from needing medical care from being underweight.
Naah, but I'm just wasting my fucking time, aren't I? You're perfectly happy smugly moralizing about anybody for whom what works for you doesn't work!
As much as you quoted my comment, you seem to have missed the part where I was merely using myself as an example of somebody that the calorie in - calorie out thing doesn't apply to. My body just maintains itself, maybe a little above the Calvin Klein ideal. Is it just too fucking hard for you to use your imagination a little bit and imagine what it must be like to be somebody who can't stop gaining weight even while eating 300-600 calories per day?
Yeah, I guess it was. Fucking moron. People like you are the reason society is falling the fuck apart.