5 ms·

> The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower affecting two-thirds of the U.S.A. Fifty years ago, two-thirds of

> The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower affecting two-thirds of the U.S.A. Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has?

SerLava 10y ago
>Biology has not changed in that time. Oh, yeah it has. Changes in food and environment have modified our biologies. The effects of food energy overexposure are semi-permanent.
wmeredith 10y ago
Well, not willpower. The human condition is pretty steady. The industrialized food chain, on the other hand, has changed dramatically.
gnur 10y ago
Easy access to cheap calories.
rayiner 10y ago
Impulse control is fundamentally biological, so obviously a "lack of willpower" can't be the explanation.
padobson 10y ago
The agriculture, restaurant, and food industry. Quite a bit, actually.
amelius 10y ago
Intake of refined sugars. The amount of time spent sitting at a desk.
- bb85 10y ago
  That doesn't explain how someone can just let it happen to the point of suffering of it every day without taking simple measures to reverse it. Most of the time the difference between steady gaining or losing weight is a few hundred calories a day. That's far from a lifestyle change. When moving around becomes difficult, when dating becomes harder, when the aches and pain start... there's gotta be more to it than just a lot of sugar in your everyday stuff. I always wonder (for other drugs too), if they're a way to slowly remove yourself from situations, or whatever it is, that make you uncomfortable. A way to permanently disqualify yourself from the race, because the idea of running (no pun intended) makes you anxious?
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    The food industry has a significant number of people employed whose whole job is to make you think foods are healthier than they are and get you to eat more of them. I mean it's not by accident that almost every food in the supermarket ended up with some health claims on the box (my favorite examples of this are, like, "natural" eggs and "gluten-free" meats). That's assuming you're buying your own food; if you're eating in a restaurant or something you don't even really know what you are consuming.
    - bb85 10y ago
      Interesting, so I guess it's an education problem? I guess just like real-talk sex-ed went against the interest of big-church, teaching some basics when it comes to nutrition would hurt a lot of big-food...
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        I don't think it's just that, although many have found it suspect that the dairy industry gave a lot of funding that helped the development of the original food pyramid with dairy as a core food group. To me it's more like the current environment, to borrow a programming term, makes it difficult to "fall into the pit of success." The NYT ran a great article on this a few years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...
  - JabavuAdams 10y ago
    People generally do what those around them do. Why was smoking so much more popular 50 years ago? Why do people still smoke in 2016? Why is spanking almost child abuse, now? It's not like we're rationally considering each small action. Instead, at any time, in a give society, there are a set of behaviours that are considered within the normal range. We're mostly on autopilot.
  - VLM 10y ago
    "That doesn't explain how someone can just let it happen to the point of suffering of it every day" Abstract out the obesity, and you've described every chronic health condition, ever. A huge number of emergency room admissions read something like: I thought it was normal that road signs were getting a little blurry after 40. Sure my heart screams in agony when I climb stairs, but who's doesn't? My knees are in crippling pain for days if I hike more than two miles. Every time I drink, I drink till I pass out or are arrested, but doesn't everyone? After I eat sugary food (aka modern american diet) I feel faint and fuzzy, that's normal, right? I hear voices in my head more often as time goes on. Why how odd that pain pill has smoothly and gradually gone from something to make life bearable after surgery, to life is unbearable without it, to life is unbearable even with it. People tend to be pretty good at getting medical care for acute things like bleeding out more than a quart or so, or broken bones, but not so good at getting help for chronic things. Gettin fat is obviously not an acute problem.
- VLM 10y ago
  If you believe the internet memes, the desk was not invented until 1980. Ditto the car, the burbs, the commute... Pictures of my great grandpa's accounting firm open office compared to a typical 2016 open office from 1920 (yes I'm old, a sterotypical HN reader's G-Grampa would be in the 50s) are pretty enlightening WRT just how little of an effect the magical post-1980 desk has on obesity. Now what happened in the 80s ... well, not the magical fat generating desk. HFCS? Hmm. What a coincidence. Another pictorial example of a consistent social class for decades is the local masonic lodge has an annual pix of the lodge leaders and members going back to the civil war. Yes a hallway lined with over a hundred annual photographs. Even among the semi-wealthy who sat at desks all day, nobody was fat until post 1980s pix. I'm the first in four generations not to be a Mason. If you're into genealogy its very interesting to pull group family reunion photos from the last century or so. Same people, same genetics, same social class, same lifestyle, same geography, suddenly in the 80s people start getting real fat, across the board, across occupational classes, across lifestyles. Even the jocks got fat (note that jock fat is a staggering doubling of body fat from 4% to 8%, they're both skinny compared to the general population AND twice as fat as they were)
  - CPLX 10y ago
    It's anecdotal observation of course, but my memory is that the 80's were the era where suddenly people became afraid of high fat diets. Hence a corresponding increase in sugar and simple carbs.
  - monknomo 10y ago
    Could it be we all quit smoking in the 80's?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    People didn't just start getting fat in the 80s. Where is that coming from?
    - duderific 10y ago
      Here is a chart that supports exactly that: https://lanekenworthy.net/2012/05/31/why-the-surge-in-obesity/ https://lanekenworthy.net/2012/05/31/why-the-surge-in-obesit... The hockey stick starts exactly at 1980.
simonbarker87 10y ago
Fat cells never go away once you've got them. Fat cells also really don't want to be empty. When you loose weight the fat is broken up in to H2O and CO2 (you literally breath and pee fat away) but the fat cell generally holds onto the water for a while and then, along with a load of other fat cells, will expel that water in one go(which is why you tend to keep a stable weight for a few days and then find you've lost 1 or 2 lbs "overnight"). It's called the Woosh effect I think? Problem is that the body doesn't want to get rid of that fat cell because "hey, it might be handy one day to store extra energy when we can't eat for a few days because the baboons ate everything" and so it's fairly easy to top that cell back up with fat in the future. With regards to the slow metabolism refereced in the article (I skimmed it) this is tied to leptin levels which needs to be topped up with "refeed days" every now and then just to kick start you metabolism again. A refeed day is basically a day where you eat a lot of carbs and keep your protein and fat as they usually are on the normal diet days. Very broadly speaking (and short cutting lots of science and variations), it is easier for a previously fat person to get fat again than it is for a skinny person to get fat in the first place.
- garyrob 10y ago
  You are supplying potentially very interesting information... could you please point to sources?
  - simonbarker87 10y ago
    No specific sources for my official comment, this is knowledge I've accumulated from 4 years of lifting weights and tracking calories. Places I learn from along the way: http://strengtheory.com http://strengtheory.com - Greg knows his stuff http://fitness.reddit.com http://fitness.reddit.com - has gone downhill since becoming a default sub but they are looking at changing that, still good bodybuilding.com is pretty good to be honest once you get over the hard sell of supplements, Jim Stoppani has a PhD and was a researcher at Yale I believe "The mathematics of weight loss" TED talk by Ruben Meerman is pretty solid from memory Elliott Hulse is a YouTuber (so take some of the stuff with a pinch of salt) but pretty good.
- 10y ago
jazzyk 10y ago
The food has changed a lot - as other commenters have pointed out. But our lifestyles have changed a lot, too. Most people in sub/urban areas spend 1-2 mins walking to/from their cars and the rest of their waking hours (12+ hours) sitting/eating.
pjc50 10y ago
See HN passim "The Sugar Conspiracy" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941
scld 10y ago
1) How do you know biology hasn't changed? The human gut microbiome has changed wildly over the past 50 to 100 years due to changes in modern diet. 2) Another point, the article is talking about the biology of people who have already been obese and then lost the weight. Given that people have more disposable income and obesity trends have risen, the inability to lose weight only after you first become obese would help explain why things like childhood obesity have negative impacts for the rest of a person's life.
- tamana 10y ago
  Environment (available food type and quantity) has changed massively. We have the same potential as before, expressed diffeently now.
Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
>Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has? Other commentators have mentioned the food aspect, but there are significant lifestyle changes since the 50s. The rise of the suburbs greatly reduced the amount of walking for many Americans to basically just walking to a car in the morning and walking from a car in the evening, with maybe some walking back and forth to a bathroom or water cooler in between. Contrast that to the past where most American cities were laid out with public transit in mind (including LA; it used to boast a larger rail system than NYC). This meant burning more calories just to exist. I myself moved from the land of sprawl to a walkable urban city and I lost quite a bit of weight since most, but not all, of my trips were on foot, bike, or public transit. Very few trips were undertaken in a car. I then moved to NYC and get even more activity, though that's counterbalanced by the delicious food everywhere. You'll notice that most walkable urban areas tend to be slimmer than sprawling areas, all else being equal.
- neffy 10y ago
  I think this is it. Cars. The Fitbit general population statistics - which I would presume is a self-selected group of at least activity interested people, are quite scary in terms of the large number of people in the <5,000 steps bracket, and the relatively few in the > 10,000 bracket. 10,000+ steps is a normal day walking around London for me, to from work etc. but if I'm driving I may not even get up to 3,000.
yabatopia 10y ago
Often forgotten is the incredible increase in drug consumption. Popular drugs like painkillers or antidepressants can have a significant effect on body weight. For the pharmaceutical industry it's like having a cake and eating it too: develop new drugs to fight weight gain, weight gain that can be caused by other drugs.
npsimons 10y ago
> Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has? I wish more people would ask this question. It's extremely innocent and straightforward, and replies to it are incredibly revealing of the respondents' understanding of biology . . .
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. 2/3 are not obese now. (2/3 are overweight, including about 1/3 that are obese.) > Biology has not changed in that time. Assumes facts not in evidence, but lets assume that's true. > What has? Well, the sharp uptick in obesity (which pretty much drives the overweight including obese upward trend, the overweight-but-not-obese proportion has stayed pretty flat) starts in the late 1970s, immediately following the peak in real hourly wages. Given that (ironically, given that richer countries have higher rates of obesity than poor countries) individual obesity in the United States is correlated with poor economic status, its not entirely implausible that there's a significant economic contribution to the obesity epidemic.

SerLava 10y ago

>Biology has not changed in that time. Oh, yeah it has. Changes in food and environment have modified our biologies. The effects of food energy overexposure are semi-permanent.

wmeredith 10y ago

Well, not willpower. The human condition is pretty steady. The industrialized food chain, on the other hand, has changed dramatically.

gnur 10y ago

Easy access to cheap calories.

rayiner 10y ago

Impulse control is fundamentally biological, so obviously a "lack of willpower" can't be the explanation.

padobson 10y ago

The agriculture, restaurant, and food industry. Quite a bit, actually.

amelius 10y ago

Intake of refined sugars. The amount of time spent sitting at a desk.

bb85 10y ago
That doesn't explain how someone can just let it happen to the point of suffering of it every day without taking simple measures to reverse it. Most of the time the difference between steady gaining or losing weight is a few hundred calories a day. That's far from a lifestyle change. When moving around becomes difficult, when dating becomes harder, when the aches and pain start... there's gotta be more to it than just a lot of sugar in your everyday stuff. I always wonder (for other drugs too), if they're a way to slowly remove yourself from situations, or whatever it is, that make you uncomfortable. A way to permanently disqualify yourself from the race, because the idea of running (no pun intended) makes you anxious?
- emodendroket 10y ago
  The food industry has a significant number of people employed whose whole job is to make you think foods are healthier than they are and get you to eat more of them. I mean it's not by accident that almost every food in the supermarket ended up with some health claims on the box (my favorite examples of this are, like, "natural" eggs and "gluten-free" meats). That's assuming you're buying your own food; if you're eating in a restaurant or something you don't even really know what you are consuming.
  - bb85 10y ago
    Interesting, so I guess it's an education problem? I guess just like real-talk sex-ed went against the interest of big-church, teaching some basics when it comes to nutrition would hurt a lot of big-food...
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      I don't think it's just that, although many have found it suspect that the dairy industry gave a lot of funding that helped the development of the original food pyramid with dairy as a core food group. To me it's more like the current environment, to borrow a programming term, makes it difficult to "fall into the pit of success." The NYT ran a great article on this a few years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...
- JabavuAdams 10y ago
  People generally do what those around them do. Why was smoking so much more popular 50 years ago? Why do people still smoke in 2016? Why is spanking almost child abuse, now? It's not like we're rationally considering each small action. Instead, at any time, in a give society, there are a set of behaviours that are considered within the normal range. We're mostly on autopilot.
- VLM 10y ago
  "That doesn't explain how someone can just let it happen to the point of suffering of it every day" Abstract out the obesity, and you've described every chronic health condition, ever. A huge number of emergency room admissions read something like: I thought it was normal that road signs were getting a little blurry after 40. Sure my heart screams in agony when I climb stairs, but who's doesn't? My knees are in crippling pain for days if I hike more than two miles. Every time I drink, I drink till I pass out or are arrested, but doesn't everyone? After I eat sugary food (aka modern american diet) I feel faint and fuzzy, that's normal, right? I hear voices in my head more often as time goes on. Why how odd that pain pill has smoothly and gradually gone from something to make life bearable after surgery, to life is unbearable without it, to life is unbearable even with it. People tend to be pretty good at getting medical care for acute things like bleeding out more than a quart or so, or broken bones, but not so good at getting help for chronic things. Gettin fat is obviously not an acute problem.
VLM 10y ago
If you believe the internet memes, the desk was not invented until 1980. Ditto the car, the burbs, the commute... Pictures of my great grandpa's accounting firm open office compared to a typical 2016 open office from 1920 (yes I'm old, a sterotypical HN reader's G-Grampa would be in the 50s) are pretty enlightening WRT just how little of an effect the magical post-1980 desk has on obesity. Now what happened in the 80s ... well, not the magical fat generating desk. HFCS? Hmm. What a coincidence. Another pictorial example of a consistent social class for decades is the local masonic lodge has an annual pix of the lodge leaders and members going back to the civil war. Yes a hallway lined with over a hundred annual photographs. Even among the semi-wealthy who sat at desks all day, nobody was fat until post 1980s pix. I'm the first in four generations not to be a Mason. If you're into genealogy its very interesting to pull group family reunion photos from the last century or so. Same people, same genetics, same social class, same lifestyle, same geography, suddenly in the 80s people start getting real fat, across the board, across occupational classes, across lifestyles. Even the jocks got fat (note that jock fat is a staggering doubling of body fat from 4% to 8%, they're both skinny compared to the general population AND twice as fat as they were)
- CPLX 10y ago
  It's anecdotal observation of course, but my memory is that the 80's were the era where suddenly people became afraid of high fat diets. Hence a corresponding increase in sugar and simple carbs.
- monknomo 10y ago
  Could it be we all quit smoking in the 80's?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  People didn't just start getting fat in the 80s. Where is that coming from?
  - duderific 10y ago
    Here is a chart that supports exactly that: https://lanekenworthy.net/2012/05/31/why-the-surge-in-obesity/ https://lanekenworthy.net/2012/05/31/why-the-surge-in-obesit... The hockey stick starts exactly at 1980.

simonbarker87 10y ago

Fat cells never go away once you've got them. Fat cells also really don't want to be empty. When you loose weight the fat is broken up in to H2O and CO2 (you literally breath and pee fat away) but the fat cell generally holds onto the water for a while and then, along with a load of other fat cells, will expel that water in one go(which is why you tend to keep a stable weight for a few days and then find you've lost 1 or 2 lbs "overnight"). It's called the Woosh effect I think? Problem is that the body doesn't want to get rid of that fat cell because "hey, it might be handy one day to store extra energy when we can't eat for a few days because the baboons ate everything" and so it's fairly easy to top that cell back up with fat in the future. With regards to the slow metabolism refereced in the article (I skimmed it) this is tied to leptin levels which needs to be topped up with "refeed days" every now and then just to kick start you metabolism again. A refeed day is basically a day where you eat a lot of carbs and keep your protein and fat as they usually are on the normal diet days. Very broadly speaking (and short cutting lots of science and variations), it is easier for a previously fat person to get fat again than it is for a skinny person to get fat in the first place.

garyrob 10y ago
You are supplying potentially very interesting information... could you please point to sources?
- simonbarker87 10y ago
  No specific sources for my official comment, this is knowledge I've accumulated from 4 years of lifting weights and tracking calories. Places I learn from along the way: http://strengtheory.com http://strengtheory.com - Greg knows his stuff http://fitness.reddit.com http://fitness.reddit.com - has gone downhill since becoming a default sub but they are looking at changing that, still good bodybuilding.com is pretty good to be honest once you get over the hard sell of supplements, Jim Stoppani has a PhD and was a researcher at Yale I believe "The mathematics of weight loss" TED talk by Ruben Meerman is pretty solid from memory Elliott Hulse is a YouTuber (so take some of the stuff with a pinch of salt) but pretty good.
10y ago

jazzyk 10y ago

The food has changed a lot - as other commenters have pointed out. But our lifestyles have changed a lot, too. Most people in sub/urban areas spend 1-2 mins walking to/from their cars and the rest of their waking hours (12+ hours) sitting/eating.

pjc50 10y ago

See HN passim "The Sugar Conspiracy" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941

scld 10y ago

1) How do you know biology hasn't changed? The human gut microbiome has changed wildly over the past 50 to 100 years due to changes in modern diet. 2) Another point, the article is talking about the biology of people who have already been obese and then lost the weight. Given that people have more disposable income and obesity trends have risen, the inability to lose weight only after you first become obese would help explain why things like childhood obesity have negative impacts for the rest of a person's life.

tamana 10y ago
Environment (available food type and quantity) has changed massively. We have the same potential as before, expressed diffeently now.

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago

>Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has? Other commentators have mentioned the food aspect, but there are significant lifestyle changes since the 50s. The rise of the suburbs greatly reduced the amount of walking for many Americans to basically just walking to a car in the morning and walking from a car in the evening, with maybe some walking back and forth to a bathroom or water cooler in between. Contrast that to the past where most American cities were laid out with public transit in mind (including LA; it used to boast a larger rail system than NYC). This meant burning more calories just to exist. I myself moved from the land of sprawl to a walkable urban city and I lost quite a bit of weight since most, but not all, of my trips were on foot, bike, or public transit. Very few trips were undertaken in a car. I then moved to NYC and get even more activity, though that's counterbalanced by the delicious food everywhere. You'll notice that most walkable urban areas tend to be slimmer than sprawling areas, all else being equal.

neffy 10y ago
I think this is it. Cars. The Fitbit general population statistics - which I would presume is a self-selected group of at least activity interested people, are quite scary in terms of the large number of people in the <5,000 steps bracket, and the relatively few in the > 10,000 bracket. 10,000+ steps is a normal day walking around London for me, to from work etc. but if I'm driving I may not even get up to 3,000.

yabatopia 10y ago

Often forgotten is the incredible increase in drug consumption. Popular drugs like painkillers or antidepressants can have a significant effect on body weight. For the pharmaceutical industry it's like having a cake and eating it too: develop new drugs to fight weight gain, weight gain that can be caused by other drugs.

npsimons 10y ago

> Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has? I wish more people would ask this question. It's extremely innocent and straightforward, and replies to it are incredibly revealing of the respondents' understanding of biology . . .

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. 2/3 are not obese now. (2/3 are overweight, including about 1/3 that are obese.) > Biology has not changed in that time. Assumes facts not in evidence, but lets assume that's true. > What has? Well, the sharp uptick in obesity (which pretty much drives the overweight including obese upward trend, the overweight-but-not-obese proportion has stayed pretty flat) starts in the late 1970s, immediately following the peak in real hourly wages. Given that (ironically, given that richer countries have higher rates of obesity than poor countries) individual obesity in the United States is correlated with poor economic status, its not entirely implausible that there's a significant economic contribution to the obesity epidemic.