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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.
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.
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...
The issue is that it can be perfectly healthy to eat around 900,000 calories a year, but if you eat just around 15,000 calorie per year too much, people gain 5 pound a year. That is less than 2% over target, but a weight gain of 5 pound per year, will easily cause significant issues in the long term. 15,000 calories a year is just 41 calories a day or about an half an apple every day.
People do not have to eat significant amounts of food to become fat, even tiny amounts of extra food can easily add up to significant gains. Without a closed regulation loop it is basically impossible to eat just the right amount of food. If people have broken internal regulation loop, they build their own regulation loop and permanently count calories and watch their weight to adjust the amount of calories consumed. Unfortunately there is a lot of noise in weight measurements and a broken internal regulation loop often tries to counteract external regulation. It seems that an unhealthy diet can damage the internal regulation. Gastric bands seem to help because they help to readjust the internal regulation loop and not just make it harder to consume a lot of calories.
Jan
Well, I'll certainly trust an anecdote of 1 versus this:
"Methods. We drew a sample of individuals aged 20 years and older from the United Kingdom's Clinical Practice Research Datalink from 2004 to 2014. We analyzed data for 76,704 obese men and 99,791 obese women. We excluded participants who received bariatric surgery. We estimated the probability of attaining normal weight or 5% reduction in body weight."
You didn't even read the article, did you? Nevermind the fact that the summary's first link is to the scientific study in question.
The first link is a scientific study that looks at long term weight trends after an initial weight loss. Not "hunger" or "appetite." Food consumption over as much as 10 year is "actual eating." It doesn't even take much "will power" to locate the study and read it, versus cherry-picking a mass media commentary that itself cites seven studies and a metaanalysis.
Apply a version of your own philosophy. It doesn't even take much "will power." Just don't spew an "opinion" without reading each of the hyperlinked articles to check that little things like "it cites self-help books, not scientific studies" are not so egregiously incorrect that you appear to be a complete moron.
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).
Citation needed. I cannot find this on the ingredient list, after checking several.
Are you sure you're not just complaining about the ~2g of sugar that comes from wheat germ, and is not added?
He was continuing to maintain his diet, so his body was in extreme starvation mode where it burned the absolute minimum calories possible, and on top of that he was feeling tired and lethargic all the time due to the low calorie diet.
No. That is not extreme starvation mode. I've researched this a lot recently--as I'm actually currently seven days into a water fast. I'm down 15 lbs, feel no hunger, no fatigue, my mind is actually sharper, and I feel great. "water fast" is your search term here.
The body can withstand extreme caloric deficits. It doesn't actually enter extreme starvation mode *at all* until you hit very low single digits of body fat %--around 4% *combined with* an extreme caloric deficit. The US military did a grueling study about this on some of their soldiers--and the soldiers fared well--even gained strength while not eating for a month--and did fine up until they hit their lowest limits.
There's a really good write-up about the benefits of water fasting in Harper's titled "Starving Your Way to Vigor" by Steve Hendricks. Benefits include not just weight (fat) loss but also increased longevity, and wrt cancer both reduced symptoms from chemotherapy and increased effectiveness of chemotherapy.
Hunger pangs is your stomach wanting to do its thing. Hunger thoughts are psychological. A lot of our natural food sources contain forms of opiate-like substances that trigger a dopamine response in our brains--that's how we learn what foods to seek out and enjoy. It also works against us because some things that we eat that we shouldn't actually present an even stronger response in our brains. These associations make us psychologically attracted to food--which is usually fine. It's also why breast feeding increases a child's bond to its mother--opiate-like triggers from mothers milk.
Extreme starvation mode only sets in once the body has depleted all the easy, normal battery reserves--first the glycogen stored for easiest access in muscle and tissue. Then the big, long-term battery of fat reserves. Once those are gone it will begin to break down organ tissues--protein that was structure--a more expensive, and a last-resort process. This is when you start to wither away and become in danger.
tl;dr;
There's really 3 modes the body enters:
1) fed state--fed within the last 12 hours--the hormone response to food lasts about that long
2) fasted state--begins about 12 hours after last meal, continues so long as there are easy-to-access energy reserves in the body. HGH actually *increases* during this state.
This state actually has 2 sub-states:
-non ketosis--the body still has plentiful glycogen reserves--this state lasts 24-48 hrs depending on body mass
-ketosis--the body has used up the glycogen stores and is now powered nearly entirely off fat stores
3) starvation state--the body has ran out of both glycogen stores and fat stores--now it must break down organ structure--protein--to meet energy needs--
this only occurs at very low body fat percentages--around 4%--while also in a Caloric deficit.
Article about the military study: http://fitnessblackbook.com/ma...
In Asia only people are "fat" that want to be fat. Because it is a sign of success and luck. Or they don't care for their body.
That's not going to be true for much longer.
Someone had to do it.