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> The solution for obesity is self control... Absolute, categorical, sweeping, prescriptive assertions like this demand backing citations. If you had used qua

> The solution for obesity is self control... Absolute, categorical, sweeping, prescriptive assertions like this demand backing citations. If you had used qualifiers like "...for obesity in most/some/plurality of people...", then you probably wouldn't be getting down voted, but just the ketogenic diet's impact alone for many people is sufficient to disprove your assertion that it is only about self-control. In those cases, it was incredibly poor information distributed by the US food and medical industries about the food pyramid that led to continual failure to control weight for many people who found the weight melting off when they tried a ketogenic approach, or simply started to eat fats again instead of assiduously avoiding it. And before you dismiss ketogenic's thesis that low carb high fat works, Sweden's medical establishment found the evidence compelling enough [1]. This doesn't even get into what we're seeing with some fecal transplants, or many other matters we are just beginning to explore about human metabolism. Once within "normal" BMI or body fat percentage, then yes, self-control, portion control, etc. are necessary when on a cut, for example. But for obese and morbidly obese people, not all of them categorically are in their situation due to lack of self-control. I might concede perhaps many of them are, but categorical assertions like yours are uncharitable to the researchers who are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of our own metabolisms, and I would rather our species explain by real science what happens around us rather than prescribing moral allegations as "just so" explanations of our world. [1] https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/sweden-becomes-first-western-nation-to-reject-low-fat-diet-dogma-in-favor-of-low-carb-high-fat-nutrition/ https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/sweden-becomes-first-weste...

healthit 10y ago
Shouldn't you have to disprove the obvious explanation (that it's calories consumed that leads to obesity) before we should jump on board with wilder theories? I read the link you posted about the keto diet, and it seems to all be about how it's better for you with regards to cholesterol and glucose levels. It doesn't seem to negate the idea that weight is still simply related to calories consumed. (I recognise there are exceptions, i.e. thyroid/hormonal problems).
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  That's like saying good, on-budget software projects are simply related to number of lines of source code per day. Obviously, you won't get anywhere on zero lines per day for months on end with a 12-month project. Not as obviously, you and I know there are far more other factors to consider than this layman's level metric. We're at that layman's understanding stage with our grasp of human metabolism. Counter-intuitively, Jason Fung among others have discovered that steady caloric restriction has worse body fat loss long-term outcomes than zero-calorie straight fasting over a span of time of >24-48+ hours, even if the net calorie loss between the two methods is exactly the same. We don't really know at the molecular biology level why that happens. We have some good hypotheses and experimental evidence about which hormones are involved in this counter-intuitive result. Even weirder: when you break the fast, if you break it by going onto a low-carb, high-fat diet, your odds of consistently keeping the weight loss off go up. Again, we don't really know why at the nuts and bolts molecular biology level. There are even claims by people on low-carb high-fat diets that they eat more than their computed TDEE as tracked by something like MyFitnessPal's nutritional database, and yet they're still losing weight. I've noticed this tends to be reported more by people who are quite obese; I've yet to see someone who claims this who is in the normal BMI range. I haven't seen any double-blind studies attempting to verify this yet; would be nice if MFP could crunch numbers to share. At a very, very gross global population level, you are absolutely right that it is CICO (calories in, calories out). Digging deeper though, there is a lot we simply don't know enough about. For very obese people, other hypotheses and mechanisms seem to be helping at least a good number of them to the point where the /r/keto board is quite popular, and just repeating CICO in the face of this empirical evidence doesn't advance human knowledge. We should be saying instead, "hm, that's not what I expected, why is that?"

healthit 10y ago

Shouldn't you have to disprove the obvious explanation (that it's calories consumed that leads to obesity) before we should jump on board with wilder theories? I read the link you posted about the keto diet, and it seems to all be about how it's better for you with regards to cholesterol and glucose levels. It doesn't seem to negate the idea that weight is still simply related to calories consumed. (I recognise there are exceptions, i.e. thyroid/hormonal problems).

yourapostasy 10y ago
That's like saying good, on-budget software projects are simply related to number of lines of source code per day. Obviously, you won't get anywhere on zero lines per day for months on end with a 12-month project. Not as obviously, you and I know there are far more other factors to consider than this layman's level metric. We're at that layman's understanding stage with our grasp of human metabolism. Counter-intuitively, Jason Fung among others have discovered that steady caloric restriction has worse body fat loss long-term outcomes than zero-calorie straight fasting over a span of time of >24-48+ hours, even if the net calorie loss between the two methods is exactly the same. We don't really know at the molecular biology level why that happens. We have some good hypotheses and experimental evidence about which hormones are involved in this counter-intuitive result. Even weirder: when you break the fast, if you break it by going onto a low-carb, high-fat diet, your odds of consistently keeping the weight loss off go up. Again, we don't really know why at the nuts and bolts molecular biology level. There are even claims by people on low-carb high-fat diets that they eat more than their computed TDEE as tracked by something like MyFitnessPal's nutritional database, and yet they're still losing weight. I've noticed this tends to be reported more by people who are quite obese; I've yet to see someone who claims this who is in the normal BMI range. I haven't seen any double-blind studies attempting to verify this yet; would be nice if MFP could crunch numbers to share. At a very, very gross global population level, you are absolutely right that it is CICO (calories in, calories out). Digging deeper though, there is a lot we simply don't know enough about. For very obese people, other hypotheses and mechanisms seem to be helping at least a good number of them to the point where the /r/keto board is quite popular, and just repeating CICO in the face of this empirical evidence doesn't advance human knowledge. We should be saying instead, "hm, that's not what I expected, why is that?"