2 ms·

So I was always very thin. Never cared about what I ate. Kept a very, very steady weight for a decade naturally without conscious effort on my part. I then went

So I was always very thin. Never cared about what I ate. Kept a very, very steady weight for a decade naturally without conscious effort on my part. I then went on a medication that has weight gain as a known side effect. When my doctor gave it to me she said "just don't eat extra." My diet did not change a bit. I didn't feel extra hungry. I gained a massive amount of fat and I gained it extremely fast. Three months later I was clinically obese. I then paid extra attention to my diet. Started micromanaging my calories, weighing food, gave up 99% of junk food and all alcohol. I gained more weight. I dropped my calories down to 1000 calories a day and started losing weight. But it was basically an uphill battle to keep that up. That's not living, you try it. I thought about food all day. If I started eating even a little more I'd gain again. I gave up and went off the drug. My weight is going down now but it's extremely slow going. I don't know if I am capable of being my former weight. I certainly am not not ever was addicted to food. The doctor assumed weight gain had to be caused by extra food intake. It was not. Sure you can say "rah, rah, 99% of obesity cases aren't drug induced." That is true, but my experience shows that people can be physiologically different. Or there may be something in the environment that is triggering abnormal fat storage. Who knows? But it can't be as simple as "food addiction." Food addiction can be a cause or maybe even a symptom but it's not the be all end all. Humans are much more complicated than that.

wdewind 10y ago
I can't really respond to an anecdote in any kind of useful way. There are simply too many factors that could effect this. What I can say is that the data does not support what you are claiming. This doesn't mean what you are claiming is incorrect, it means nutritional science is very very difficult and we don't have good evidence that supports your claim. Right now there is not reason to think obesity happens outside of a caloric surplus, and there is a fair amount of basic science that supports that view. If that view were not true, it would invalidate many things that we think are true about the physical world. That being said, while calories-in/calories-out is basically inarguable, there are many things going on that can effect calories-out even if calories-in remain the same. Body composition is one thing. I could definitely imagine medications that are catabolic leading to decreased muscle mass and increased fat storage. But I still don't think this would account for a massive change in bodyweight, not one that would make the difference between obese and not obese.

wdewind 10y ago

I can't really respond to an anecdote in any kind of useful way. There are simply too many factors that could effect this. What I can say is that the data does not support what you are claiming. This doesn't mean what you are claiming is incorrect, it means nutritional science is very very difficult and we don't have good evidence that supports your claim. Right now there is not reason to think obesity happens outside of a caloric surplus, and there is a fair amount of basic science that supports that view. If that view were not true, it would invalidate many things that we think are true about the physical world. That being said, while calories-in/calories-out is basically inarguable, there are many things going on that can effect calories-out even if calories-in remain the same. Body composition is one thing. I could definitely imagine medications that are catabolic leading to decreased muscle mass and increased fat storage. But I still don't think this would account for a massive change in bodyweight, not one that would make the difference between obese and not obese.