7 ms·

> Doing research on what people eat is VERY hard, it's very hard to get accurate data. AKA, don't bother with any studies with self-reported data. No one wants

> Doing research on what people eat is VERY hard, it's very hard to get accurate data. AKA, don't bother with any studies with self-reported data. No one wants to admit it's their fault they got fat, but it always is.

onion2k 11y ago
No one wants to admit it's their fault they got fat, but it always is. If that were the case then studies to find out why two people can eat the same thing and do the same amount of exercise yet one of them can end up fatter than the other wouldn't be necessary. It seems to be the case that, all external factors being equal, how fat you are can be determined by something outside of your control (genetics, gut microbes, etc). To that end, someone could be fat without it being their fault.
- randlet 11y ago
  It's tough to hear but no matter what your genetics or internal flora are, being overweight is still your fault. It may not be "fair" that someone puts on less weight than someone else eating the same diet, but ultimately you're the one responsible for maintaining your own weight (by controlling what you put in your mouth) no matter what the state of your gut microbes. edit: not picking on you Onion2k...I end up commenting a lot on these stories because it really irks me when so many articles and people are looking for something external to blame for their weight problem. You may or may not be able to change your metabolism but you absolutely can change the number of calories you're consuming.
  - mightybyte 11y ago
    And to add to your point, you also can absolutely change the number of calories you're burning. Exercise (especially at high intensity) can make a huge difference.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.ht... - Mammals that live near or with humans, from lab rats to pet pooches, have gotten fatter over recent decades. - Fatter lab animals are the hardest to explain, since their diet is tightly controlled and well documented. - Endocrine disruptors, pathogens or temperature changes might play a role and could also factor into human obesity http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 A study showed that transplanting gut bacteria from obese people into mice led to the animals gaining weight, while bacteria from lean people kept them slim. The findings were published in Science. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, Missouri, took gut bacteria from pairs of twins - one obese, one thin. The bacteria were then put into mice which had grown up in completely sterile environments and had no gut bacteria of their own. Mice with the obese twin's bacteria became heavier and put on more fat than mice given bacteria from a lean twin - and it was not down to the amount of food being eaten. --- Ok, so you may need 1300 calories a day to maintain an "ideal" bodyweight but The Minnesota Starvation Experiment shows that amount of food intake causes severe emotional stress and depression. So yeah
    - randlet 11y ago
      Where did the 1300 calories a day number come from? How big is the person that number is for? What is their activity level?
      - nommm-nommm 11y ago
        I made it up completely as an example. I used to exercise 3-4 days a week. Lifting weights, cardio, and yoga. I wasn't losing weight. I started gradually counting and cutting calories and when it didn't help I cut more. The only way I was at a good weight was on 1400 calories/day. This made me completely miserable and anti social (I wouldn't eat outside my house). This may be sustainable for some, but it wasn't for me, eventually I just had to eat more. I kept it up for a couple years though. I didn't have a body image problem either, my weight was a couple pounds below "overweight" BMI. On the other hand a decade before that I ate junk food every single day and was very thin. Something seems to have changed in my body, but I don't know what. When I was thin my diet was truly horrible! Even when I was a kid - Every single Halloween I would eat an entire pillow case worth of candy over the course of around 3 weeks, but I never gained a pound. There is SO MUCH we don't know on this topic! Yes, one can cut back on food, but willpower and the ability to control are limited to some degree.
  - nsxwolf 11y ago
    It's not really worth it, though. If I eat much less than I do now I just suffer, and the weight loss quickly plateaus at a point that doesn't have any aesthetic value and isn't likely to improve my health. So I can weigh a little less by becoming obsessed with what I eat and always being in a bad mood. And I get no credit from the smug thin people who still see me as a lazy obese person.
  - codingdave 11y ago
    > ...no matter what the state of your gut microbes. Or your mental state. Or working hours. Or illness and injury. Or depression. Or lifetime habits, possibly due to choices your parents made. Yes, it is all our own faults. That doesn't mean it is easy to change. Nor does it make somebody a lesser person for having made poor choices. BTW, It is also your own fault for everything else that is wrong in your life. Ever answered a question wrong, made a mistake, messed up a project, gotten a speeding ticket, injured yourself, or hurt anybody in any way? All your fault. Perhaps throwing blame at problems just isn't a good approach to making things better?
    - randlet 11y ago
      I certainly did not mean to imply that it was easy. Simple yes, easy? Hell no. (I lost 45lbs last year, not fun). Nor did I imply that someone was a lesser person for being overweight. However, I do believe if you want to change your weight you need to take responsibility for the things you can control.
  - mtviewdave 11y ago
    >...being overweight is still your fault Citation needed. The ability of human beings to control their biology through willpower is limited (if you don't believe me, try holding your breath for 30 minutes, or not drinking anything for a few days). Willpower itself is limited, and motivation is itself influenced by mental health. And diseases like Prader-Willi and Emery-Dreifuss demonstrate situations in which motivation and willpower are irrelevant. And that's only what we know. Sometimes when I have dinner with friends, I'll observe a situation where two of them will order the same thing, the bigger one will wolf down the dinner and the thinner one will pick at it and eat maybe half. I don't see two people equally tempted, where one gives it to his cravings and other is morally strong. I see two people with two different drives. Why do different people respond so differently the same meal? What is it our society that leads so many people to consume a calorie surplus? It's disappointing the number of people that don't even want to investigate the biological and psychological origins of such phenomenon, instead claiming (without evidence) that it's all about moral failure. In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. That's nonsense, of course, but people really wanted to hold onto their moral judgements, even at the expense of biology, good medicine, and relief of suffering. I think we should be suspicious of any impulse to use moral judgement to avoid investigation into the causes of medical conditions. Like obesity.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      > In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. And it doesn't even make sense. Obesity is rising dramatically in developed countries. Is the current generation just morally inferior to the ones that came before? Obesity is peoples' fault in the same way car accidents are. That doesn't mean the proper response is to simply blame people, instead of using science to devise solutions.
      - 11y ago
  - xenadu02 11y ago
    Having been 330 lbs at one point and now being less than 220 you're both right and wrong at the same time. Your statement is the equivalent of saying its a heroin junkies own fault: Technically true but useless. It also has many parallels in the way you grew up, differing genetics, etc. If it were just a matter of willpower or simply eating less then I would already be my ideal weight. It isn't that simple. You can't detox off food and quit eating. At least a drug addict doesn't have to take just the /right/ amount of the drug every day to stay healthy! The drive to eat is one of the most basic instincts. Evolution has created signals and feedback mechanisms far more powerful than our puny frontal lobes. The problem of too much food has simply never existed before. Fruit eventually falls to the ground and rots. During winter food becomes scarce. Excess food is consumed by other animals. For our entire evolutionary history the correct long-term survival move was to eat while the eatin' was good because there was definitely going to be some kind of lean time ahead. The only simple or easy part of losing weight was cutting out sugared soda. That dropped 30 lbs. The rest was a slog and using various techniques to trick my body (like eating a large meal before going to the grocery store so I wouldn't buy anything outside my meal plan). It also involved lots of extremely strong urges to eat more and hunger pains. I have to think about what I eat every day and no matter what I do I will never be my ideal weight. Internal or external, this is a battle a lot of people just never face. They just eat when they are hungry and stop when they feel full. Of course their myopic view says it's just "calories in, calories out" (which the research has already proven is false... Some people gain more weight on the same calories).
    - leshow 11y ago
      > At least a drug addict doesn't have to take just the /right/ amount of the drug every day to stay healthy! spoken like someone with no experience with drug addiction. ever heard of a maintenance program?
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        That's an option, not a necessity. It also tends to involve restricted access. But with food is it impossible to go to rehab and stop eating over a period of a couple weeks. If lifelong drug maintenance programs were the only option to quit abusing, there would be a lot more relapses.
  - randlet 11y ago
    Based on all this discussion I regret using the phrase "it's your fault" which sounds too aggressive. Instead I wish I just emphasized that regardless of biological and societal pressures everyone of us does possess the ability to control your weight. Specifically by accurately counting calories (with a food scale) and tracking your weight you can adjust your caloric intake to lose, gain or maintain weight.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      >everyone of us does possess the ability to control your weight. Yes, buy only to a degree.
    - aantix 11y ago
      It's just not the simple. The body fights back with a caloric reduction either through drowsiness, reduced thyroid, and hunger pains. The body wants to maintain. It's easy to posit so that some people's responses may be more intense than others.
      - npsimons 11y ago
        It is that simple; it's just not easy. Having been there, yes, it was hard. But it was also worth it, and I didn't have to change my gut biome or epigenetics to do it.
        aantix 11y ago
        Again, that was you. And your level of difficulty may not be equivalent to someone else's. Our responses can be different, some more intense than others.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Without it being entirely their fault. I know I am at least partially at fault for being fat. I sit on ass all day and rarely exercise. That certainly doesn't help. But I also know that several of the reasons for obesity do not originate in the frontal lobe of the brain, and are therefore not the result of conscious decision-making. And that absolves me from some fraction of the burden of culpability. But not the whole thing. I could make conscious choices to make my body healthier. But I don't, and therefore I can accept at least a little bit of the blame. It's more important to me that I don't care one little bit about how strangers feel about my obesity. The only one I am answerable to for the condition of my body is myself. So if you choose to view me as a slothful glutton, you may. If you choose to view me as the unlucky product of genes, microbiome, and advertising, you may. I only care to the extent that you can help me achieve my own health goals. Continually reiterating the thermodynamic dietary hypothesis to me (energy eaten minus energy expended) does not help. I doubt it helps anyone except possibly those who do not already know what a kilocalorie is. That's why I like that research in this vein is being pursued. Even if no one loses even a single gram of white adipose tissue as a result, it could at least help kill off the multitude of fad diets that do not work for anyone, regardless of their individual physiology. And it might instill a bit of humility and understanding in those who never quite grasped that their fit bodies are the result of hard work and good fortune, not just the former.
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    "But not the whole thing. I could make conscious choices to make my body healthier. But I don't, and therefore I can accept at least a little bit of the blame." I think this is the sad truth of the matter (at least for now). People tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) Those who believe that obesity is largely (if not entirely) the obese person's fault; 2) Those who believe that obesity is heavily influenced by factors outside of conscious control, and therefore, there's nothing to be done about it. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Some people are luckier than others, genetically or epigenetically. The unlucky ones will put on fat more easily, and they will have a much harder time losing it. So that means they need to work twice as hard (if not 100x as hard) to keep it off. It's a shitty break, but it's the truth. I grew up fat. Losing that fat took nothing short of a Herculean (and borderline unsustainable) dietary effort. I mean, I lived like an ascetic monk, depriving myself of any and all pleasurable food, for the better part of a decade. I worked out like a crazy person. And even today, keeping off the fat requires a constant vigil over everything I eat, and the amount of exercise I do. I wasn't responsible for getting fat in the first place -- I lost a prenatal dice roll -- but I did take responsibility for battling the bulge. "Continually reiterating the thermodynamic dietary hypothesis to me (energy eaten minus energy expended) does not help. I doubt it helps anyone except possibly those who do not already know what a kilocalorie is." Agreed. It's also willfully reductionist, and it smacks of passive-aggressive moralizing. To me, rattling off the calories-in-calories-out line is no more helpful than calling obese people lazy, stupid, irresponsible, or sinful. (And in basically 90% of the contexts in which someone says it, that's the subtextual insinuation.) It's unproductive. It's an attempt to close the case summarily, and this case needs to stay open.
- npsimons 11y ago
  Every single time someone says "I eat the same as them" it's been shown to be self-reported, and therefore not verifiable in the least, including this current study. There's a show called "Secret Eaters", you should really check it out. People lie, to themselves included, about how much they eat and how much they exercise. Add to this a 4ft woman will not have the same BMR as a 6ft man, and there's no reason to go searching for some external influence. There are psychological issues, to be sure, but except for rare exceptions (like Crohn's and extreme outliers, ie, not common) people of the same height and weight are within 200-300Kcal of each other BMR wise (source: http://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ http://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-peop...)
- leshow 11y ago
  No they can't. While it's true that people's metabolisms vary widely, and the amount of calories for one individual to maintain weight might make another gain, it's not true that the weight gain is outside of their control. They have control over how much food they eat. If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. This is not as attractive an answer as "i just have the wrong gut microbiota" but it's far more accurate.
  - npsimons 11y ago
    > If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. This is spot on. So you have a slow metabolism/bad genetics/conditions/etc? Sucks to be you. Sorry. It's like that saying by Schneier about copy protection and the speed of light. If you want to lose weight, adjust your intake downwards. That's all it takes. Hungry/craving something? Try substituting something more filling (less calorie dense), or eating a little bit to see if that makes the craving go away.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. Or your body is skipping the usable energy stage completely for some foods and storing them as fat directly without it ever having the chance to be used. Then some of the food you eat makes you gain weight regardless of the amount of activity you do - you just run out of energy and get fat. The mistake you're making is assuming that humans are perfect machines for turning food in to energy, and simple mechanics means extra energy is stored as fat. It's far more complex than that.
    - rdancer 11y ago
      If fat were deposited and not burnt under starvation, body would be unable to perform work (law of energy conservation), and organs would fail. Ultimately, starving people would be dying fat. But we know this is not the case. Starving populations are very skinny. This is not to say that starvation is healthy, only that starvation is a reliable, affordable, and obvious way to lose weight.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - SerpentJoe 11y ago
    Oh please. Energy from food gets stored in fat molecules, that's true, but it's not like physics decrees exact equality in people's outcomes. Someone who digests less efficiently will receive less nutrition from the food they eat. People with tapeworms manage to put on less weight than you'd expect from their diet, for example, and it doesn't seem to be worrying any physicists I've met.

onion2k 11y ago

No one wants to admit it's their fault they got fat, but it always is. If that were the case then studies to find out why two people can eat the same thing and do the same amount of exercise yet one of them can end up fatter than the other wouldn't be necessary. It seems to be the case that, all external factors being equal, how fat you are can be determined by something outside of your control (genetics, gut microbes, etc). To that end, someone could be fat without it being their fault.

randlet 11y ago
It's tough to hear but no matter what your genetics or internal flora are, being overweight is still your fault. It may not be "fair" that someone puts on less weight than someone else eating the same diet, but ultimately you're the one responsible for maintaining your own weight (by controlling what you put in your mouth) no matter what the state of your gut microbes. edit: not picking on you Onion2k...I end up commenting a lot on these stories because it really irks me when so many articles and people are looking for something external to blame for their weight problem. You may or may not be able to change your metabolism but you absolutely can change the number of calories you're consuming.
- mightybyte 11y ago
  And to add to your point, you also can absolutely change the number of calories you're burning. Exercise (especially at high intensity) can make a huge difference.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.ht... - Mammals that live near or with humans, from lab rats to pet pooches, have gotten fatter over recent decades. - Fatter lab animals are the hardest to explain, since their diet is tightly controlled and well documented. - Endocrine disruptors, pathogens or temperature changes might play a role and could also factor into human obesity http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 A study showed that transplanting gut bacteria from obese people into mice led to the animals gaining weight, while bacteria from lean people kept them slim. The findings were published in Science. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, Missouri, took gut bacteria from pairs of twins - one obese, one thin. The bacteria were then put into mice which had grown up in completely sterile environments and had no gut bacteria of their own. Mice with the obese twin's bacteria became heavier and put on more fat than mice given bacteria from a lean twin - and it was not down to the amount of food being eaten. --- Ok, so you may need 1300 calories a day to maintain an "ideal" bodyweight but The Minnesota Starvation Experiment shows that amount of food intake causes severe emotional stress and depression. So yeah
  - randlet 11y ago
    Where did the 1300 calories a day number come from? How big is the person that number is for? What is their activity level?
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      I made it up completely as an example. I used to exercise 3-4 days a week. Lifting weights, cardio, and yoga. I wasn't losing weight. I started gradually counting and cutting calories and when it didn't help I cut more. The only way I was at a good weight was on 1400 calories/day. This made me completely miserable and anti social (I wouldn't eat outside my house). This may be sustainable for some, but it wasn't for me, eventually I just had to eat more. I kept it up for a couple years though. I didn't have a body image problem either, my weight was a couple pounds below "overweight" BMI. On the other hand a decade before that I ate junk food every single day and was very thin. Something seems to have changed in my body, but I don't know what. When I was thin my diet was truly horrible! Even when I was a kid - Every single Halloween I would eat an entire pillow case worth of candy over the course of around 3 weeks, but I never gained a pound. There is SO MUCH we don't know on this topic! Yes, one can cut back on food, but willpower and the ability to control are limited to some degree.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  It's not really worth it, though. If I eat much less than I do now I just suffer, and the weight loss quickly plateaus at a point that doesn't have any aesthetic value and isn't likely to improve my health. So I can weigh a little less by becoming obsessed with what I eat and always being in a bad mood. And I get no credit from the smug thin people who still see me as a lazy obese person.
- codingdave 11y ago
  > ...no matter what the state of your gut microbes. Or your mental state. Or working hours. Or illness and injury. Or depression. Or lifetime habits, possibly due to choices your parents made. Yes, it is all our own faults. That doesn't mean it is easy to change. Nor does it make somebody a lesser person for having made poor choices. BTW, It is also your own fault for everything else that is wrong in your life. Ever answered a question wrong, made a mistake, messed up a project, gotten a speeding ticket, injured yourself, or hurt anybody in any way? All your fault. Perhaps throwing blame at problems just isn't a good approach to making things better?
  - randlet 11y ago
    I certainly did not mean to imply that it was easy. Simple yes, easy? Hell no. (I lost 45lbs last year, not fun). Nor did I imply that someone was a lesser person for being overweight. However, I do believe if you want to change your weight you need to take responsibility for the things you can control.
- mtviewdave 11y ago
  >...being overweight is still your fault Citation needed. The ability of human beings to control their biology through willpower is limited (if you don't believe me, try holding your breath for 30 minutes, or not drinking anything for a few days). Willpower itself is limited, and motivation is itself influenced by mental health. And diseases like Prader-Willi and Emery-Dreifuss demonstrate situations in which motivation and willpower are irrelevant. And that's only what we know. Sometimes when I have dinner with friends, I'll observe a situation where two of them will order the same thing, the bigger one will wolf down the dinner and the thinner one will pick at it and eat maybe half. I don't see two people equally tempted, where one gives it to his cravings and other is morally strong. I see two people with two different drives. Why do different people respond so differently the same meal? What is it our society that leads so many people to consume a calorie surplus? It's disappointing the number of people that don't even want to investigate the biological and psychological origins of such phenomenon, instead claiming (without evidence) that it's all about moral failure. In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. That's nonsense, of course, but people really wanted to hold onto their moral judgements, even at the expense of biology, good medicine, and relief of suffering. I think we should be suspicious of any impulse to use moral judgement to avoid investigation into the causes of medical conditions. Like obesity.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. And it doesn't even make sense. Obesity is rising dramatically in developed countries. Is the current generation just morally inferior to the ones that came before? Obesity is peoples' fault in the same way car accidents are. That doesn't mean the proper response is to simply blame people, instead of using science to devise solutions.
    - 11y ago
- xenadu02 11y ago
  Having been 330 lbs at one point and now being less than 220 you're both right and wrong at the same time. Your statement is the equivalent of saying its a heroin junkies own fault: Technically true but useless. It also has many parallels in the way you grew up, differing genetics, etc. If it were just a matter of willpower or simply eating less then I would already be my ideal weight. It isn't that simple. You can't detox off food and quit eating. At least a drug addict doesn't have to take just the /right/ amount of the drug every day to stay healthy! The drive to eat is one of the most basic instincts. Evolution has created signals and feedback mechanisms far more powerful than our puny frontal lobes. The problem of too much food has simply never existed before. Fruit eventually falls to the ground and rots. During winter food becomes scarce. Excess food is consumed by other animals. For our entire evolutionary history the correct long-term survival move was to eat while the eatin' was good because there was definitely going to be some kind of lean time ahead. The only simple or easy part of losing weight was cutting out sugared soda. That dropped 30 lbs. The rest was a slog and using various techniques to trick my body (like eating a large meal before going to the grocery store so I wouldn't buy anything outside my meal plan). It also involved lots of extremely strong urges to eat more and hunger pains. I have to think about what I eat every day and no matter what I do I will never be my ideal weight. Internal or external, this is a battle a lot of people just never face. They just eat when they are hungry and stop when they feel full. Of course their myopic view says it's just "calories in, calories out" (which the research has already proven is false... Some people gain more weight on the same calories).
  - leshow 11y ago
    > At least a drug addict doesn't have to take just the /right/ amount of the drug every day to stay healthy! spoken like someone with no experience with drug addiction. ever heard of a maintenance program?
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      That's an option, not a necessity. It also tends to involve restricted access. But with food is it impossible to go to rehab and stop eating over a period of a couple weeks. If lifelong drug maintenance programs were the only option to quit abusing, there would be a lot more relapses.
- randlet 11y ago
  Based on all this discussion I regret using the phrase "it's your fault" which sounds too aggressive. Instead I wish I just emphasized that regardless of biological and societal pressures everyone of us does possess the ability to control your weight. Specifically by accurately counting calories (with a food scale) and tracking your weight you can adjust your caloric intake to lose, gain or maintain weight.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    >everyone of us does possess the ability to control your weight. Yes, buy only to a degree.
  - aantix 11y ago
    It's just not the simple. The body fights back with a caloric reduction either through drowsiness, reduced thyroid, and hunger pains. The body wants to maintain. It's easy to posit so that some people's responses may be more intense than others.
    - npsimons 11y ago
      It is that simple; it's just not easy. Having been there, yes, it was hard. But it was also worth it, and I didn't have to change my gut biome or epigenetics to do it.
      - aantix 11y ago
        Again, that was you. And your level of difficulty may not be equivalent to someone else's. Our responses can be different, some more intense than others.
logfromblammo 11y ago
Without it being entirely their fault. I know I am at least partially at fault for being fat. I sit on ass all day and rarely exercise. That certainly doesn't help. But I also know that several of the reasons for obesity do not originate in the frontal lobe of the brain, and are therefore not the result of conscious decision-making. And that absolves me from some fraction of the burden of culpability. But not the whole thing. I could make conscious choices to make my body healthier. But I don't, and therefore I can accept at least a little bit of the blame. It's more important to me that I don't care one little bit about how strangers feel about my obesity. The only one I am answerable to for the condition of my body is myself. So if you choose to view me as a slothful glutton, you may. If you choose to view me as the unlucky product of genes, microbiome, and advertising, you may. I only care to the extent that you can help me achieve my own health goals. Continually reiterating the thermodynamic dietary hypothesis to me (energy eaten minus energy expended) does not help. I doubt it helps anyone except possibly those who do not already know what a kilocalorie is. That's why I like that research in this vein is being pursued. Even if no one loses even a single gram of white adipose tissue as a result, it could at least help kill off the multitude of fad diets that do not work for anyone, regardless of their individual physiology. And it might instill a bit of humility and understanding in those who never quite grasped that their fit bodies are the result of hard work and good fortune, not just the former.
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  "But not the whole thing. I could make conscious choices to make my body healthier. But I don't, and therefore I can accept at least a little bit of the blame." I think this is the sad truth of the matter (at least for now). People tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) Those who believe that obesity is largely (if not entirely) the obese person's fault; 2) Those who believe that obesity is heavily influenced by factors outside of conscious control, and therefore, there's nothing to be done about it. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Some people are luckier than others, genetically or epigenetically. The unlucky ones will put on fat more easily, and they will have a much harder time losing it. So that means they need to work twice as hard (if not 100x as hard) to keep it off. It's a shitty break, but it's the truth. I grew up fat. Losing that fat took nothing short of a Herculean (and borderline unsustainable) dietary effort. I mean, I lived like an ascetic monk, depriving myself of any and all pleasurable food, for the better part of a decade. I worked out like a crazy person. And even today, keeping off the fat requires a constant vigil over everything I eat, and the amount of exercise I do. I wasn't responsible for getting fat in the first place -- I lost a prenatal dice roll -- but I did take responsibility for battling the bulge. "Continually reiterating the thermodynamic dietary hypothesis to me (energy eaten minus energy expended) does not help. I doubt it helps anyone except possibly those who do not already know what a kilocalorie is." Agreed. It's also willfully reductionist, and it smacks of passive-aggressive moralizing. To me, rattling off the calories-in-calories-out line is no more helpful than calling obese people lazy, stupid, irresponsible, or sinful. (And in basically 90% of the contexts in which someone says it, that's the subtextual insinuation.) It's unproductive. It's an attempt to close the case summarily, and this case needs to stay open.
npsimons 11y ago
Every single time someone says "I eat the same as them" it's been shown to be self-reported, and therefore not verifiable in the least, including this current study. There's a show called "Secret Eaters", you should really check it out. People lie, to themselves included, about how much they eat and how much they exercise. Add to this a 4ft woman will not have the same BMR as a 6ft man, and there's no reason to go searching for some external influence. There are psychological issues, to be sure, but except for rare exceptions (like Crohn's and extreme outliers, ie, not common) people of the same height and weight are within 200-300Kcal of each other BMR wise (source: http://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ http://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-peop...)
leshow 11y ago
No they can't. While it's true that people's metabolisms vary widely, and the amount of calories for one individual to maintain weight might make another gain, it's not true that the weight gain is outside of their control. They have control over how much food they eat. If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. This is not as attractive an answer as "i just have the wrong gut microbiota" but it's far more accurate.
- npsimons 11y ago
  > If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. This is spot on. So you have a slow metabolism/bad genetics/conditions/etc? Sucks to be you. Sorry. It's like that saying by Schneier about copy protection and the speed of light. If you want to lose weight, adjust your intake downwards. That's all it takes. Hungry/craving something? Try substituting something more filling (less calorie dense), or eating a little bit to see if that makes the craving go away.
- onion2k 11y ago
  If you're gaining weight, it means you're eating more than your body can burn, so you need to eat less. Or your body is skipping the usable energy stage completely for some foods and storing them as fat directly without it ever having the chance to be used. Then some of the food you eat makes you gain weight regardless of the amount of activity you do - you just run out of energy and get fat. The mistake you're making is assuming that humans are perfect machines for turning food in to energy, and simple mechanics means extra energy is stored as fat. It's far more complex than that.
  - rdancer 11y ago
    If fat were deposited and not burnt under starvation, body would be unable to perform work (law of energy conservation), and organs would fail. Ultimately, starving people would be dying fat. But we know this is not the case. Starving populations are very skinny. This is not to say that starvation is healthy, only that starvation is a reliable, affordable, and obvious way to lose weight.
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- SerpentJoe 11y ago
  Oh please. Energy from food gets stored in fat molecules, that's true, but it's not like physics decrees exact equality in people's outcomes. Someone who digests less efficiently will receive less nutrition from the food they eat. People with tapeworms manage to put on less weight than you'd expect from their diet, for example, and it doesn't seem to be worrying any physicists I've met.