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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

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.
  - ashark 11y ago
    Very similar experience here! 4K+ calorie daily average mostly of junk food from ages ~15-21, maybe 30 minutes/day average of weightlifting, rarely some cardio, visible upper ab muscles, call it a "4 pack", full on six-pack abs if I happened to be slightly more active in a week (a few hours of casual swimming, for instance). Then I decided I wanted to cut down to the six-pack bodyfat level and stay there, so for the initial "cut" phase of that plan I dieted at ~1400 calories a day, every single day (no cheating) for ~2-3 months, and started doing way more cardio. Only lost a couple pounds, little or no visible difference, so, confused and frustrated, I gave up. Makes no damn sense according to any "weight loss calculator" I've ever seen (which all claim that my BMR should sit in the low 2000s), but that's what happened. Packed on fat immediately when I went back to my usual eating patterns, took me years to get that under control. To this day I seem to easily hit a plateau a bit over what I'd call my healthy range when dieting at any reasonable (not near or under starvation level) caloric intake. OTOH I've found that strength training's more effective for me than it "ought" to be but requires time, which sucks. I'd love to be able to diet my way to a trim waist, since maintaining an intake under what weight loss tables/calculators say should work for me is something I find easy to do. Too bad it doesn't. Don't know what the explanation is, but something weirder than the "calories in/calories out, and calories out is fairly easy to guesstimate with useful accurately" orthodoxy is going on.
alextgordon 11y ago
The laws of thermodynamics still apply. If someone does not lose weight on 1300 calories a day then either their body is a marvel of science and should be studied for its amazing efficiency... or they are completely sedentary.
- tptacek 11y ago
  "Thermodynamics"? There are 120 calories in a tablespoon of olive oil. If I pay you $50 to drink a whole bottle of olive oil, do you think you'll gain several pounds of fat?
  - cgh 11y ago
    To elaborate upon this point, let's say I gave you 10,000 calories of sawdust to eat every day for a week. Would you gain weight or lose weight, ignoring the other health consequences?
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      Similar - I saw an episode of Superfat vs Superskinny where the superskinny guy ate almost nothing but chocolate. His calorie intake was probably 4000 calories a day or more yet he was unhealthy skinny. Do you think he was lying?
      - undersuit 11y ago
        I did not watch this show so I have are some questions. 1. Was the skinny individual monitored the entire time? He could have regurgitated his food. 2. Was the skinny person's poop analyzed for complete digestion of the 4000 calories?
        nommm-nommm 11y ago
        No, its not some sort of science experiment, its mindless entertainment. 4000 calories was a wild gestimation of something I saw probably 5 years ago. The premise of the show is they bring in two people - one superfat and one superskinny. They weight them and each person tells what a typical day's food intake is for them. Then they switch diets for a couple weeks and are weighed again at the end. Yes, its possible he lied about eating all that chocolate. Yes, he could be throwing up every day. This isn't a controlled experiment, its a TV show. It seems odd someone would do that though.
adhearn 11y ago
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment was such a poorly designed diet that it's not really relevant to the modern discussion of prevent obesity among a relatively prosperous population. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment#Goals_and_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...), the diet was based on "foods that were expected to typify the diets of people in Europe during the latter stages of the war: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni." In other words, almost entirely carbs, with practically no fat or protein. Almost every reasonable diet I know of (coming from the modern fitness community at least) focuses first on maintaining adequate protein intake as the top priority, usually followed by at least a reasonable amount of fat. While it may have been useful to understanding starvation in a population with food scarcity, it just doesn't apply when looking at obesity in modern America.

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.
- ashark 11y ago
  Very similar experience here! 4K+ calorie daily average mostly of junk food from ages ~15-21, maybe 30 minutes/day average of weightlifting, rarely some cardio, visible upper ab muscles, call it a "4 pack", full on six-pack abs if I happened to be slightly more active in a week (a few hours of casual swimming, for instance). Then I decided I wanted to cut down to the six-pack bodyfat level and stay there, so for the initial "cut" phase of that plan I dieted at ~1400 calories a day, every single day (no cheating) for ~2-3 months, and started doing way more cardio. Only lost a couple pounds, little or no visible difference, so, confused and frustrated, I gave up. Makes no damn sense according to any "weight loss calculator" I've ever seen (which all claim that my BMR should sit in the low 2000s), but that's what happened. Packed on fat immediately when I went back to my usual eating patterns, took me years to get that under control. To this day I seem to easily hit a plateau a bit over what I'd call my healthy range when dieting at any reasonable (not near or under starvation level) caloric intake. OTOH I've found that strength training's more effective for me than it "ought" to be but requires time, which sucks. I'd love to be able to diet my way to a trim waist, since maintaining an intake under what weight loss tables/calculators say should work for me is something I find easy to do. Too bad it doesn't. Don't know what the explanation is, but something weirder than the "calories in/calories out, and calories out is fairly easy to guesstimate with useful accurately" orthodoxy is going on.

alextgordon 11y ago

The laws of thermodynamics still apply. If someone does not lose weight on 1300 calories a day then either their body is a marvel of science and should be studied for its amazing efficiency... or they are completely sedentary.

tptacek 11y ago
"Thermodynamics"? There are 120 calories in a tablespoon of olive oil. If I pay you $50 to drink a whole bottle of olive oil, do you think you'll gain several pounds of fat?
- cgh 11y ago
  To elaborate upon this point, let's say I gave you 10,000 calories of sawdust to eat every day for a week. Would you gain weight or lose weight, ignoring the other health consequences?
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    Similar - I saw an episode of Superfat vs Superskinny where the superskinny guy ate almost nothing but chocolate. His calorie intake was probably 4000 calories a day or more yet he was unhealthy skinny. Do you think he was lying?
    - undersuit 11y ago
      I did not watch this show so I have are some questions. 1. Was the skinny individual monitored the entire time? He could have regurgitated his food. 2. Was the skinny person's poop analyzed for complete digestion of the 4000 calories?
      - nommm-nommm 11y ago
        No, its not some sort of science experiment, its mindless entertainment. 4000 calories was a wild gestimation of something I saw probably 5 years ago. The premise of the show is they bring in two people - one superfat and one superskinny. They weight them and each person tells what a typical day's food intake is for them. Then they switch diets for a couple weeks and are weighed again at the end. Yes, its possible he lied about eating all that chocolate. Yes, he could be throwing up every day. This isn't a controlled experiment, its a TV show. It seems odd someone would do that though.

adhearn 11y ago

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment was such a poorly designed diet that it's not really relevant to the modern discussion of prevent obesity among a relatively prosperous population. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment#Goals_and_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...), the diet was based on "foods that were expected to typify the diets of people in Europe during the latter stages of the war: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni." In other words, almost entirely carbs, with practically no fat or protein. Almost every reasonable diet I know of (coming from the modern fitness community at least) focuses first on maintaining adequate protein intake as the top priority, usually followed by at least a reasonable amount of fat. While it may have been useful to understanding starvation in a population with food scarcity, it just doesn't apply when looking at obesity in modern America.