6 ms·

The Weight Loss Trap

45 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

chiefalchemist 9y ago
"Mommy? Why are healthcare cost so high?" "Obviously Virginia, it's Uncle Sam and the healthcare industrial complex. It has NOTHING to do with our diets, lifestyle, etc. You have a Good given right to over indulge..." Per the article: "The vast majority of American adults are overweight; nearly 40% are clinically obese. And doctors now know that excess body fat dramatically increases the risk of serious health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, respiratory problems, major cancers and even fertility problems. A 2017 study found that obesity now drives more early preventable deaths in the U.S. than smoking."
- ams6110 9y ago
  > A 2017 study found that obesity now drives more early preventable deaths in the U.S. than smoking. Well, smoking has declined a lot in the past few decades. So it's not surprising that something else has taken the lead in causing preventable death.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    This is actually true and I have no clue why you were downvoted for it. >The percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 16.8 percent in 2014. Cigarette smoking was significantly lower in 2014 (16.8 percent) than in 2013 (17.8 percent) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consum...
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    Keyword: preventable. Point being, we're not ill because we need to be, we're ill because - wait for it - we want to be. Welcome to The Matrix. We're just fuel for the machines. And apparently, we're more that happy to be as such.
- mikelyons 9y ago
  You're not taking into account the dairy, meat, sugar, and corn lobbies. They are at least partially responsible for the diet and lifestyle of the lower-consciousness population.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    Could I add them? Sure, but I was being sarcastic, and making a simple point. That point is, NO ONE BUT YOU controls: what goes in your shopping cart, what goes in your mouth, and whether you decide to go for a walk or watch more Oprah, Keeping Up with The Kardashians, etc. Futhermore more, people (especially "liberals") keep complaining about the cost of healthcare, but have ZERO interest in discussing the cost of bad personal health i.e., diet, lifestyle, etc.) Expecting the healthcare system to make mostly preventable disease cost-free is ridiculously. Sure, that doesn't cover everything. I get that. But if we stopped wasting soooooooo much money on the preventables, we'd have plenty for the truly ill. Instead we blame the system. p.s. When you look down and can't see your own "thing" when you pee, isn't that a red flag? Instead, we keep eating ice cream - it's our right, right? - and blame anything but ourselves. Again, ridiculous.
    - ItendToDisagree 9y ago
      Damn them LIBRULS! Never mind that actual healthcare costs are more expensive than in other countries on a pill by pill and procedure by procedure basis. Healthcare cost in the United States isn't about liberal or conservative or progressive or whatever label. Get over your tribal blame game. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/26/21-gr... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-...
      - tbihl 9y ago
JoshMnem 9y ago
The article mentions a probiotic pill. I think that the microbiome is the place to look for answers, but not with pills, just with better fuel. I managed to lose 70 pounds (from 215 pounds down to 145) and keep it off so far. At the moment, I have to make efforts to get more calories now, not less. - I think of food as fuel that goes into a fermentation-based engine. I make sure to add the right ingredients for proper fermentation. - I only eat high-nutrient, whole foods that I mostly cook from scratch. The staples are vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts, seeds. - No meat or dairy except for fish (salmon, herring, and sardines). - I eliminated: refined foods, alcohol, grains (except small amounts of brown rice and grain-like seeds like buckwheat), sugar, sweeteners, oils (except small amounts of coconut oil and high quality olive oil). - I don't eat nightshade-family vegetables (including potatoes), but I do eat sweet potatoes (the regular yellow ones and satsuma "yams"). - I say, "I don't eat those foods", not "I can't eat those foods." (self identity vs. permission) I view junk food as a recreational drug. I don't eat junk in the same way that I don't smoke cigarettes. - If I'm out, and there is nothing on a menu that I can eat, I don't eat, or I find some fruit or buy nuts and dried fruit at Berkeley Bowl. - I restrict calories on some days, similar to the calorie restriction in the 5:2 diet. - I eat a lot of fermented foods, often homemade: sauerkraut, pickles, water kefir, etc. - It's sometimes difficult to get enough calories, but I often eat one avocado per day, plus a few handfuls of nuts. I've also experimented with 2-5 day water fasting (very difficult) and alternate day fasting (too difficult for me to continue more than a week). I don't know if those methods would work for anyone else, but maybe there is some information there that other people could find useful. (I'm not making recommendations -- just sharing my experiments. Check with a doctor before trying any unusual diets.) The plan is based on thinking about the body as a farm of microorganisms. Different foods cultivate different microorganism. As far as I can tell, things like refined carbs and animal products (beyond small amounts) are not beneficial. It isn't "paleo" though -- I don't think that paleo is a good idea.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Fruit, nuts, seeds, fish -- sounds at least in the "paleo" ballpark.
  - 9y ago
gragas 9y ago
I like to stick with the first law of thermodynamics. It's worked very well my entire life.
- grzm 9y ago
  Do you have something specific to the article to contribute? While as far as we know the laws of physics apply to human respiration, a general statement like this ignores at least endocrinology and amounts to trolling.
- starchild3001 9y ago
  Human biology is complex. Reducing it to simple thermodynamics completely ignores factors like metabolism, psychology and microbiome. Eating nutrient deficient/extremely tasty sweets (or junk food) has very different effects than eating nutrient dense/bland red meat or vegetables with the same calories. Reductionism is counterproductive in this case. You should re-read the article. It describes a number of ways where human metabolism responds to calories and/or body weight in unexpected ways (hence the biology is 'complex').
  - Double_a_92 9y ago
    The difference between junkfood and healthy food is the "calorie density". A big mac is 500kcal, but you are still hungry after eating one.
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      Again, an oversimplification. Different flavors, salt intake, even psychology can come into play in how your appetite is affected and how your body may react to what you just ate.
    - beagle3 9y ago
      That's not the whole story. Do this experiment: drink/eat fat, 38% sweet cream is probably the friendliest to the uninitiated, but butter, olive oil, coconut oil would also work. It doesn't get more dense than pure fat (and only about 2.5 as much as 38%fat sweet cream), and you will NOT be hungry afterwards.
didibus 9y ago
I didn't see anything in the article that showed that people lost weight without eating less then they burn. This is still as far as I know the only way to lose weight. What's stated in the article is that different people seem to manage to maintain doing so for longer with different strategies. They give as example people who are motivated enough to work through multiple plans and stratetegies over many years and continue to do so even when the weight loss is slow. It makes me conclude that to sustain weight loss you simply need to be very motivated, have good discispline and great patience. It seems they adapted strategies based on people's motivation. The girl who found logging all her meals too tedious instead adopted a more exercise strategy, etc. Nothing seems related to identifying which nutrients or foods are better processed, etc, for each individual. I'm sure there could be genetic, social, or chemical related causes to obesity, but I'm not seeing this article say that we identified any of those. It seems to all be about simply getting your act together and sticking with it. I suspect most people who gain back the weight lost do not do so while maintening the diet they used to lose it. The article makes it sound like so, but doesn't actually says so.
- danaliv 9y ago
  I think the problem with the "calories in < calories out" idea is that while it's not necessarily untrue, it's too simplistic to be useful. It's a bit like saying, well, if you'd just stop putting cocaine up your nose, you wouldn't be a drug addict anymore.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    And it also ignores the very difficult problem of counting "calories out". There are so many factors that affect calories out.
    - credit_guy 9y ago
      It's also very difficult to count "calories in". Pop quiz question: how many calories are there in a gram of fiber? If you answered zero, you are wrong. The correct answer is "nobody knows". Check the wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber "In some countries fiber is not listed on nutrition labels and is considered to provide no energy. In other countries all fiber must be listed and is simplistically considered to provide 17 kJ/g (4.1 kcal/g) (because chemically fiber is a type of carbohydrate and other carbohydrates provide that amount of energy). In the US, soluble fiber must be counted as 4 kcal/g (17 kJ/g), but insoluble fiber may be (and usually is) treated as not providing energy and not mentioned on the label."
bobbington 9y ago
For some people the issue really is that they eat too many cookies. However science shows that much of the body's weight is hormonal regulated - i.e. The body can just dump calories if it wants to. However reducing calories while increasing excercise is usually a terrible, terrible way to lose weight. What happens is your body believes its starving and hangs on to every calorie by shutting down glucose usage wherever possible. You won't be able to think clearly because the body is saving glucose instead of letting your brain work, and you'll feel so tired. It also makes you more hungry so all you can think about is food A much more effective way to lose weight is adopt an active lifestyle with reasonable exercise, and to eat healthy foods only. Studies show that in rats fed the same calories either as sugar or high fructose corn syrup, the rats eating hfcs gained like 30% more weight. Ladies need to understand that their Bodies are not meant to look uber skinny. Their body has a natural weight and trying to lose more will just make them miserable, feel guilty, and never work. We unfortunately as a society encourage an unhealthy level of skinny in girls. I read an incredibly informative study on what calorie reduction does to a person over time. People were given fewer calories than normal daily for something like a year. After the diet people reported eatin huge amounts of food and feeling bad for doing it. Interestingly they did not stop the "overeating" until they had gained 20% more Wright than their starting weight. Then their urges to eat huge amounts subsided and they went back to normal weight.
cbanek 9y ago
In the article, they mention that RMR (resting metabolic rate) goes down when your weight goes down, but they don't really explain why, or how crash diets affect your RMR. RMR calories are used for basic movement, body heat, keeping your brain and organs working, etc. If there's less of you (weight wise), there's less of you to maintain. You carry less when you walk, etc. Also, different types of body (bone, organ, muscle, fat) have different requirements. Muscles and organs take a lot of calories to keep going, and rebuild. A lot of people when they diet, they lose both fat and muscle. The body will break down muscles as energy too, as well as your fat. This is usually because you're eating less than you expend, calorie wise, and you're probably not strength training. Lifting weights is a great way to increase your RMR. It takes calories to build and repair muscles after working out, and those bigger muscles also take more calories to maintain. It also forces your body to build up something, preventing the saggy skin you may see on those TV diet shows. Overall, if you work on building up your muscle, your metabolism will slow less, or maybe even increase, depending on how much you get into it.
- tbihl 9y ago
  I'd be more specific and say that you can far more easily increase your body's wastefulness by strengthening your legs rather than your arms, because a given increase in muscle should be smaller percentage-wise. And lunges don't take any equipment (you've already got resistance, moreso if you're overweight.)
  - _h_o_d_ 9y ago
    .. although please folks, take the care (and pay a trainer, preferably) to teach you the techniques to do it safely so that you don't hurt your knees / back, which you can much less easily fix.
jedisct1 9y ago
How I changed my body shape in 7 months: https://00f.net/2017/03/07/weight-loss/ https://00f.net/2017/03/07/weight-loss/

45 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

"Mommy? Why are healthcare cost so high?" "Obviously Virginia, it's Uncle Sam and the healthcare industrial complex. It has NOTHING to do with our diets, lifestyle, etc. You have a Good given right to over indulge..." Per the article: "The vast majority of American adults are overweight; nearly 40% are clinically obese. And doctors now know that excess body fat dramatically increases the risk of serious health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, respiratory problems, major cancers and even fertility problems. A 2017 study found that obesity now drives more early preventable deaths in the U.S. than smoking."

ams6110 9y ago
> A 2017 study found that obesity now drives more early preventable deaths in the U.S. than smoking. Well, smoking has declined a lot in the past few decades. So it's not surprising that something else has taken the lead in causing preventable death.
- paulcole 9y ago
  This is actually true and I have no clue why you were downvoted for it. >The percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 16.8 percent in 2014. Cigarette smoking was significantly lower in 2014 (16.8 percent) than in 2013 (17.8 percent) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consum...
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Keyword: preventable. Point being, we're not ill because we need to be, we're ill because - wait for it - we want to be. Welcome to The Matrix. We're just fuel for the machines. And apparently, we're more that happy to be as such.
mikelyons 9y ago
You're not taking into account the dairy, meat, sugar, and corn lobbies. They are at least partially responsible for the diet and lifestyle of the lower-consciousness population.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Could I add them? Sure, but I was being sarcastic, and making a simple point. That point is, NO ONE BUT YOU controls: what goes in your shopping cart, what goes in your mouth, and whether you decide to go for a walk or watch more Oprah, Keeping Up with The Kardashians, etc. Futhermore more, people (especially "liberals") keep complaining about the cost of healthcare, but have ZERO interest in discussing the cost of bad personal health i.e., diet, lifestyle, etc.) Expecting the healthcare system to make mostly preventable disease cost-free is ridiculously. Sure, that doesn't cover everything. I get that. But if we stopped wasting soooooooo much money on the preventables, we'd have plenty for the truly ill. Instead we blame the system. p.s. When you look down and can't see your own "thing" when you pee, isn't that a red flag? Instead, we keep eating ice cream - it's our right, right? - and blame anything but ourselves. Again, ridiculous.
  - ItendToDisagree 9y ago
    Damn them LIBRULS! Never mind that actual healthcare costs are more expensive than in other countries on a pill by pill and procedure by procedure basis. Healthcare cost in the United States isn't about liberal or conservative or progressive or whatever label. Get over your tribal blame game. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/26/21-gr... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-...
    - tbihl 9y ago

JoshMnem 9y ago

The article mentions a probiotic pill. I think that the microbiome is the place to look for answers, but not with pills, just with better fuel. I managed to lose 70 pounds (from 215 pounds down to 145) and keep it off so far. At the moment, I have to make efforts to get more calories now, not less. - I think of food as fuel that goes into a fermentation-based engine. I make sure to add the right ingredients for proper fermentation. - I only eat high-nutrient, whole foods that I mostly cook from scratch. The staples are vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts, seeds. - No meat or dairy except for fish (salmon, herring, and sardines). - I eliminated: refined foods, alcohol, grains (except small amounts of brown rice and grain-like seeds like buckwheat), sugar, sweeteners, oils (except small amounts of coconut oil and high quality olive oil). - I don't eat nightshade-family vegetables (including potatoes), but I do eat sweet potatoes (the regular yellow ones and satsuma "yams"). - I say, "I don't eat those foods", not "I can't eat those foods." (self identity vs. permission) I view junk food as a recreational drug. I don't eat junk in the same way that I don't smoke cigarettes. - If I'm out, and there is nothing on a menu that I can eat, I don't eat, or I find some fruit or buy nuts and dried fruit at Berkeley Bowl. - I restrict calories on some days, similar to the calorie restriction in the 5:2 diet. - I eat a lot of fermented foods, often homemade: sauerkraut, pickles, water kefir, etc. - It's sometimes difficult to get enough calories, but I often eat one avocado per day, plus a few handfuls of nuts. I've also experimented with 2-5 day water fasting (very difficult) and alternate day fasting (too difficult for me to continue more than a week). I don't know if those methods would work for anyone else, but maybe there is some information there that other people could find useful. (I'm not making recommendations -- just sharing my experiments. Check with a doctor before trying any unusual diets.) The plan is based on thinking about the body as a farm of microorganisms. Different foods cultivate different microorganism. As far as I can tell, things like refined carbs and animal products (beyond small amounts) are not beneficial. It isn't "paleo" though -- I don't think that paleo is a good idea.

ams6110 9y ago
Fruit, nuts, seeds, fish -- sounds at least in the "paleo" ballpark.
- 9y ago

gragas 9y ago

I like to stick with the first law of thermodynamics. It's worked very well my entire life.

grzm 9y ago
Do you have something specific to the article to contribute? While as far as we know the laws of physics apply to human respiration, a general statement like this ignores at least endocrinology and amounts to trolling.
starchild3001 9y ago
Human biology is complex. Reducing it to simple thermodynamics completely ignores factors like metabolism, psychology and microbiome. Eating nutrient deficient/extremely tasty sweets (or junk food) has very different effects than eating nutrient dense/bland red meat or vegetables with the same calories. Reductionism is counterproductive in this case. You should re-read the article. It describes a number of ways where human metabolism responds to calories and/or body weight in unexpected ways (hence the biology is 'complex').
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  The difference between junkfood and healthy food is the "calorie density". A big mac is 500kcal, but you are still hungry after eating one.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Again, an oversimplification. Different flavors, salt intake, even psychology can come into play in how your appetite is affected and how your body may react to what you just ate.
  - beagle3 9y ago
    That's not the whole story. Do this experiment: drink/eat fat, 38% sweet cream is probably the friendliest to the uninitiated, but butter, olive oil, coconut oil would also work. It doesn't get more dense than pure fat (and only about 2.5 as much as 38%fat sweet cream), and you will NOT be hungry afterwards.

didibus 9y ago

I didn't see anything in the article that showed that people lost weight without eating less then they burn. This is still as far as I know the only way to lose weight. What's stated in the article is that different people seem to manage to maintain doing so for longer with different strategies. They give as example people who are motivated enough to work through multiple plans and stratetegies over many years and continue to do so even when the weight loss is slow. It makes me conclude that to sustain weight loss you simply need to be very motivated, have good discispline and great patience. It seems they adapted strategies based on people's motivation. The girl who found logging all her meals too tedious instead adopted a more exercise strategy, etc. Nothing seems related to identifying which nutrients or foods are better processed, etc, for each individual. I'm sure there could be genetic, social, or chemical related causes to obesity, but I'm not seeing this article say that we identified any of those. It seems to all be about simply getting your act together and sticking with it. I suspect most people who gain back the weight lost do not do so while maintening the diet they used to lose it. The article makes it sound like so, but doesn't actually says so.

danaliv 9y ago
I think the problem with the "calories in < calories out" idea is that while it's not necessarily untrue, it's too simplistic to be useful. It's a bit like saying, well, if you'd just stop putting cocaine up your nose, you wouldn't be a drug addict anymore.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  And it also ignores the very difficult problem of counting "calories out". There are so many factors that affect calories out.
  - credit_guy 9y ago
    It's also very difficult to count "calories in". Pop quiz question: how many calories are there in a gram of fiber? If you answered zero, you are wrong. The correct answer is "nobody knows". Check the wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber "In some countries fiber is not listed on nutrition labels and is considered to provide no energy. In other countries all fiber must be listed and is simplistically considered to provide 17 kJ/g (4.1 kcal/g) (because chemically fiber is a type of carbohydrate and other carbohydrates provide that amount of energy). In the US, soluble fiber must be counted as 4 kcal/g (17 kJ/g), but insoluble fiber may be (and usually is) treated as not providing energy and not mentioned on the label."

bobbington 9y ago

For some people the issue really is that they eat too many cookies. However science shows that much of the body's weight is hormonal regulated - i.e. The body can just dump calories if it wants to. However reducing calories while increasing excercise is usually a terrible, terrible way to lose weight. What happens is your body believes its starving and hangs on to every calorie by shutting down glucose usage wherever possible. You won't be able to think clearly because the body is saving glucose instead of letting your brain work, and you'll feel so tired. It also makes you more hungry so all you can think about is food A much more effective way to lose weight is adopt an active lifestyle with reasonable exercise, and to eat healthy foods only. Studies show that in rats fed the same calories either as sugar or high fructose corn syrup, the rats eating hfcs gained like 30% more weight. Ladies need to understand that their Bodies are not meant to look uber skinny. Their body has a natural weight and trying to lose more will just make them miserable, feel guilty, and never work. We unfortunately as a society encourage an unhealthy level of skinny in girls. I read an incredibly informative study on what calorie reduction does to a person over time. People were given fewer calories than normal daily for something like a year. After the diet people reported eatin huge amounts of food and feeling bad for doing it. Interestingly they did not stop the "overeating" until they had gained 20% more Wright than their starting weight. Then their urges to eat huge amounts subsided and they went back to normal weight.

cbanek 9y ago

In the article, they mention that RMR (resting metabolic rate) goes down when your weight goes down, but they don't really explain why, or how crash diets affect your RMR. RMR calories are used for basic movement, body heat, keeping your brain and organs working, etc. If there's less of you (weight wise), there's less of you to maintain. You carry less when you walk, etc. Also, different types of body (bone, organ, muscle, fat) have different requirements. Muscles and organs take a lot of calories to keep going, and rebuild. A lot of people when they diet, they lose both fat and muscle. The body will break down muscles as energy too, as well as your fat. This is usually because you're eating less than you expend, calorie wise, and you're probably not strength training. Lifting weights is a great way to increase your RMR. It takes calories to build and repair muscles after working out, and those bigger muscles also take more calories to maintain. It also forces your body to build up something, preventing the saggy skin you may see on those TV diet shows. Overall, if you work on building up your muscle, your metabolism will slow less, or maybe even increase, depending on how much you get into it.

tbihl 9y ago
I'd be more specific and say that you can far more easily increase your body's wastefulness by strengthening your legs rather than your arms, because a given increase in muscle should be smaller percentage-wise. And lunges don't take any equipment (you've already got resistance, moreso if you're overweight.)
- _h_o_d_ 9y ago
  .. although please folks, take the care (and pay a trainer, preferably) to teach you the techniques to do it safely so that you don't hurt your knees / back, which you can much less easily fix.

jedisct1 9y ago

How I changed my body shape in 7 months: https://00f.net/2017/03/07/weight-loss/ https://00f.net/2017/03/07/weight-loss/