11 ms·

Why Are We Still So Fat?

61 points by _mhyx 8y ago

jayroh 8y ago
The answer, in a word: "Sugar". Obviously you can't take the word of one random commenter on HN. There's a lot of reporting around this in good news sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... When I say "the answer" I should, instead, state that that's a large part of the reason. It's not the SOLE reason. Of course it's more nuanced than that.
- wolco 8y ago
  It's more Grains than any type of sugar
  - ynniv 8y ago
    Humans have been eating grains for 10,000 years, and sugar for a hundred.
    - dekhn 8y ago
      humans were extracting sugar from sugarcane 8,000 years ago. It was consumed heavily in india 2000 years ago. BUt of course we've been eating free sugars in foods for as long as we've been around.
      - ynniv 8y ago
        Sugar was a rare luxury until recently. Even fruit was a luxury historically. Yes people ate sugar more than a hundred years ago, but it was a few pounds per year. Modern intake is more than fifty times as much.
    - wolco 8y ago
      Humans have been eating sugars in fruit form since day 1.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      Grains were crucial when food was scarce and preparation tedious, not so much when abundant and effortless. Both may be an issue in the modern world.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - malkia 8y ago
      Humans were working their asses from 4-5 in the morning, up to late nights, walking miles and miles, carrying heavy stuff (women with their infants strapped on their back, or in a pouch working in the field/farm). I know, because i knew such strong person that was frickin healthy even in her 90 years - one of my grand grand grand mom. Rosy cheecks, wrinkled face of a worker. Still later in her years, was no problem for her waking up and working a lot.
  - withoutclass 8y ago
    Funnily enough, sugar is typically found alongside most grain based foods. It's in breads, cupcakes, etc etc. Ruling out grains consequently get's rid of a large source of sugar. The two are pretty intertwined.
    - wolco 8y ago
      Try removing all grains but keep eating as many raisans and dates as possible. You will loss weight. The type of sugar matters more than just all sugar.
      - lbotos 8y ago
        Source? I treat all sugar the same, "to be consumed conservatively." My understanding is that the body processes pretty much all the same. Happy to read more from your sources
        wolco 8y ago
        Depending on the type of sugar different processes are involved. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructose#absorption-and-use https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructos...
      - dbcurtis 8y ago
        It all ends up as glucose. If you eat glucose, it goes straight into your blood stream as glucose. If you eat fructose, it gets converted into glucose. If you eat starches, the polymers are chopped into simple sugars of glucose and fructose, and the fructose is converted to glucose. Whether you eat glucose directly, or eat other sugars and starches, it all ends up as glucose. The only difference is the workload that you create for your liver.
        wolco 8y ago
        How it gets converted is the key not what it ends up as. One type will be easier to breakdown another more difficult. That's the key.
  - Matthias247 8y ago
    Both are carbohydrates. One might argue that grains make less fat than refined sugar. But it might also be more about the amount than about the source of things.
- corey_moncure 8y ago
  I'd add "cars" to the answer, but sugar definitely comes first.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    I hate cars as much as the next tree hugging urbanist but they are almost certainly not a major culprit here. In the US cars were almost as dominant as they are today in the 1950s-70s (for adults, kid were much more likely to walk to school then). If anything the use of car has stayed close to constant. How we spend our time when not in transit has become far more sedentary though. Instead of going out and doing things for recreation we shitpost on the internet. Instead of manually washing dishes we load the dishwasher and go watch netflix. Our jobs have also become much less physically demanding. Many jobs that would have one engaging in a moderate amount of physical activity have been automated or altered to be far less demanding though this has greatly reduced workplace injuries from repetitive strain (manhandling stuff around all day might not be good for your back but you're not gonna get fat doing it). Even someone employed as a secretary is going to do far less physical work and walking around the office than in 1970 thanks to tech.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Oh yeah, cars will make you lazy in ways I'm still surprised. It changes your notion of time and space. You can go from A to Z in 1h, something that would take a day. And the speed increase is exhilarating. It's a bad drug.
- cpymchn 8y ago
  To be more precise the answer, in a word: "Hormones". Obesity is a endocrine disorder. Sugar -- it so happens -- majorly screws up the endocrine system. Other things do too... but sugar is the biggie.
- malkia 8y ago
  Yes! In Feb I've got diagnosed with diabetes - My estimated average glucose was 269 (mg/dL), A1C was 11.0!!! (1/31/2018) Got started (myself) on diet, doctor prescribed me metmorphin and something stronger (had to stop it). Nearly 4 months ago, I'm without any medications again. Not the best results - but on 5/15/2018 I was down to 126 mg/dL (6.0), and on 8/21/2018 + 12/4/2018 - same result of 114 (5.6) - ideally I should be lower - but this is without medications! What did I changed - Went full carnivore... hah not really - but I am subscribed to various groups (still evaluating for myself) I simply cut down not only sugar, but carbs too - though I decided to eat certain fruits in small quantities - like blackberries, strawberries, tangerines (they are small, so I can control it), occasionally watermelon (who knew!). No bananas, apples, etc + I can't give up tomatoes (technically fruits), cucumber, lettuce + nuts, cheese, etc. When I got stomach flu (some mild food poisoning), went to "BRAT" diet for a day though - but just the RICE, apart from that avoiding rice, wheat, potatoes (very little, no fries at all). Beer? Beer a month, and I used to jug 10 guinesses a night (heavy \m/etal style). So it's a bit boorish, but had to do it. Lost 40-50 lbs (320 -> 270, I'm 6'4"). Waist from 42-43 -> 38, still have belly fat though. Do exercises by walking the dog a lot + Iron Mind (can squeeze 3 with right hand, 2.5 with left). Started doing pull ups, and was very excited I can do 7 - but forgot one day to properly warm up - and had to stop for 2-3 months, as I tore something, would continue after new year. Tried running, but not for me. Other than that - no longer feeling sleepy through the day, had energy, but it's a bit different - I used to be able to grab two dudes on my side and lift them - I can't do this anymore (stupid thing really). Lol - another anecdotal thing - during mosh-pits used to be more stable - hahaha (too old for this shit anyway) - now can get put down easier (weight must count for something really). So you go. SUGAR... is the drug DEA should really look into :)
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  I strongly agree with this. I cut out sugar because I was getting sinus headaches. When I cut it out (multiple times) I would go through full withdrawal (massive sinus headache, cold sweat, shakes, vomiting). There are hundreds of articles that say you cannot develop a physical dependence on sugar, but I disagree from personal experience. That said, avoiding it is tough. I understand why people would gain weight back when leaving a clinical setting. It's in everything and there is a reason it is in everything; it causes people to eat more of the things it is in. I'm lucky in a sense, I have a strong physical reaction when I eat the wrong thing and that helps me make the right choices (things that don't make me feel like hell). If other people don't have this physical dependence though, they would have no punishment for eating incorrectly. That's a much harder problem to address and I don't have the answers for it.
- untilHellbanned 8y ago
  Random commenter #2, but I'm a genetics professor at a med school FWIW. Sugar is a major factor. The genetics of obesity point to a strong link to behavior. Sugar is addictive. Alcohol and nicotine are drugs, and so is sugar. There needs to be regulations on sugar content of foods. If you say it's not possible, I point to the low-fat craze years of the 1980s-1990s, where ironically we basically proved that swapping fat with sugar made our obesity problem worse.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    With all due respect, professor, claiming that sugar is 'addictive' and that it is in fact a drug, is a bit of a stretch. I'm not nearly at the level of addiction research that you are privy too, so please excuse my ignorance of the most recent research results. However, in my lay understanding of the science of addiction, it seems that sugar is no where close to the same ball-park as nicotine or caffeine. Unless the definition of 'drug' and of 'addiction', has recently changed, of course. Still, if what you say is true, this would be a large overturn in the common, lay-person, understanding of drugs and addiction! It's implications on a dietary (and policy) level, would be fof a great boon to all of us. If you have the time, I would love to know more about this and how you formed your understanding. Thank you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction
    - untilHellbanned 8y ago
      It is a matter of definitions. Here is a review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234835/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234835/. "The FA framework for understanding obesity is the notion that highly processed 'hyperpalatable' foods have hijacked the reward centers in the brain thus impairing the decision-making process, similar to drugs of abuse." "Finally, there is strong evidence of the existence of sugar addiction, both at preclinical and clinical level. Our model has demonstrated that five out of eleven criteria for SUD are met, specifically: use of larger amounts and for longer than intended, craving, hazardous use, tolerance, and withdrawal. From an evolutionary perspective, we must consider addiction as a normal trait that permitted humans to survive primitive conditions when food was scarce. As we evolved culturally, the neural circuits involved in addictive behaviors became dysfunctional and instead of helping us survive they are in fact compromising our health."
- plausibilities 8y ago
  I cut out added sugars and dropped 80 lbs over 3 years. YMMV.
- tstrimple 8y ago
  Completely agree with this. I've struggled with my weight all my life. I was always hungry and dieting (simple calorie restriction) felt like torture and would never last. For my latest attempt, I cut out added sugar completely and switched to intermittent fasting. The first week was the hell I was used to, but after the sugar addiction waned so did my incessant appetite. I used to think about food all the time and always with an eye towards what my next meal would be. Now I feel like I can actually trust my hunger signals and as a result eating far fewer calories is easy and natural versus the constant struggle simple calorie restriction dieting was.
cm2012 8y ago
Here's some more evidence for the central conceit of this article: Every legitimate long term study of major non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people. It's basically freakish when succesful in the long term. 1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453) 2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full) 3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/ https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/) 4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...) This is borne out by the above data. 5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/) Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.
- noja 8y ago
  > Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one. What about studies where someone moves from a high-obesity country to a low-obesity country? Is there such a study?
  - cm2012 8y ago
    Oo, that's really interesting. I havn't seen one if there is, but I would love to.
k__ 8y ago
Eating garbage and sitting aroind all day.
- mmsimanga 8y ago
  Reading HN. Sigh.
ryanmercer 8y ago
Because we can spend 1$ and get 400-1200 kcals out of a vending machine (that takes 10-30 seconds to consume), while we sit at a desk all day and evening, instead of having to plant/weed/harvest/process our food in a field. he says as he eats candy We have ridiculously kcal dense food immediately available while we also have, on average, extremely sedentary lives. I mean, looking at: - Starbucks menu you can get a beverage that comes in at 500 kcals without even getting fancy. - Symphony milk chocolate bar: 149 kcals/ounce. - White Castle chicken sandwich (about half the size of a deck of cards) 350 kcals - Wendy's Baconator 950 kcals - McDonald's double bacon smokehouse burger on artisan roll 1130 kcals (most of McDonald's value meals can actually easily get into the 1000+ kcal range without any special modifications) - Burger King Whopper 660 kcals - 32 ounce Coke 370 kcals - Papa Johns sausage pizza 260-410 kcals a slice (depending on the pizza size) We can get insane amounts of kcals, with relative ease, in dense little packages while being largely inactive. Edit: since this was downvoted to -2, HN is throttling my ability to reply to the individual that replied to me, in regards to 'first world countries': https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006032 https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0060... Obesity percentages: US 36.2%, NZ 30.8%, CA 29.4%, AU 29%, UK 27.8% all 'first world countries' out of the top 10 and if you look at the complete list the bulk of the 'first world' countries, where convenience foods/fast foods are readily available, are above 20% obesity.
- twblalock 8y ago
  There aren't very many people in first-world countries who need to farm anymore, and all first-world countries have desk jobs and vending machines, yet the rate of obesity varies widely between first-world countries.
  - quakeguy 8y ago
    For the US: Cars and roads and vast distances to cover and the following unusefullness to walk? What i mean is, is a grocery store within walking distance for most of the population? Edit: Not to forget all the drive-throughs born out of this misbalance.
  - squish78 8y ago
annamargot 8y ago
Counter-acting the factors that made a person fat in the first place seems very difficult. Especially when compounded by an always-aging body. Off the top of my head: - genetic pre-dispositions - Eating habits during childhood - Eating habits during early adulthood - the effects on metabolism and body chemistry of the above - Many more, I'm sure
mcfunk 8y ago
This article is disturbingly enthusiastic about bariatric surgery, an extreme procedure with limited success and serious side-effects. The long and short of it is that we understand far too little about the human body and what drives weight gain and difficulty losing. For instance, there are complex health and immune issues (e.g., mast cell disorders) that can drive weight gain and difficulty losing in spite of healthy diets and high levels of activity (and researchers think mast cell disorders alone may affect 10% or more of the population, but was named only 5 years ago and is still poorly understood. What else could be similar that we just don't understand yet?) Beyond this, what we put in our bodies (various medicines, antibiotics, ingredients in processed foods, various pesticides etc, even artificial light) may have effects on our physiology that we don't yet have a strong understanding of. Our microbiomes are still a complete mystery to us, deeply impacting how and what we absorb from our food. The same food does not impact every body in the same way, period. Bariatric surgery is a band-aid over a gaping wound. Until we understand the complexities of human physiology at a more sophisticated level than a high-schooler in physics class (calories in, calories out just doesn't cut it) -- we are going to continue seeing public health impacts in the form of fat and disease -- which may often have underlying causes that the fat is simply the most visible symptom of. Edit: Seriously guys, is there any other area of science where people are so convinced that anecdotal and small-sample (both in terms of n and longitudinality) observations are valid? There's a huge market for delusion about fat, we're fighting that as much as we're fighting to learn more about the human body.
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  My sister in law had a lap band put in a decade ago and she recently had it taken out because of complications. It would be fair to say that it was a partial success and her doctor says that her case is not unusual and that lap bands haven't been as successful as had been hoped. As for explanations of the obesity epidemic note the timing -- it really took off in the 1980s, together with the social and political changes that we call "globalization" https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0312011 https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0312011 one possibility is that it was a change in social stressors, another that it was some environmental chemical introduced around that time. (eg. neonictinoid pesticides or glyphosate)
arcadeparade 8y ago
Apparently even animals such as monkeys and rats kept in labs and fed the same calories under controlled conditions are fatter than the same animals fed the same decades ago. Xenoestrogens?
- sambroner 8y ago
  Do you have a source for that? Super interesting...
- joker3 8y ago
  It might be climate change. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-change-food-crops-nutrition https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-... details how high CO2 levels lead to food crops with more sugar and less nutrients. As a result, animals fed the same diet aren't getting the same calories as they used to.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Soil depletion and optimizing for size has also caused a drop in vitamin and mineral content https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...
- cwkoss 8y ago
  I'm also curious if there is any effect from trace amounts of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides in our water and food supply. Agriculture has experimented with many novel compounds in the past century, and I don't trust that each of these compounds was diligently studied by researchers without a conflict of interest.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  Link to this data?
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Thought there was an air conditioning hypothesis about that?
mevile 8y ago
I'm down 83 lbs from 2017 and I'm at a healthy BMI for the first time in 15 years. I know I will not gain the weight back. Why? Because I finally figured out how to manage a routine, how to exercise regularly, how to plan out what I eat, and I learned to get enough sleep. Don't want to be fat anymore? Stop eating at restaurants, cook all your own food, bring in a lunch to work, count your calories. Also exercise, lots. And get 7+ hours a sleep a night. That's it, that's all it takes.
- agentdrtran 8y ago
  oh wow massive life changes are all it takes to lose weight?
  - twodave 8y ago
    That seems fitting, doesn't it? Weight change requires weighty changes :)
- patejam 8y ago
  > count your calories That's all it really is. Everything else just makes it easier to eat few enough calories, including any crazy diets.
  - patejam 8y ago
    I'd be interested to hear from the couple people downvoting. Find a lifestyle that lets you eat few enough calories. If that's low-carb, then go for it. If that's counting calories and just eating less, go for it. When I was losing weight, I realized that certain foods made me feel more full per calorie (vegetables). Then I realized that drinking was using up a huge part of my calorie allotment. Then I realized that if I run then I can eat more. Everything was just to make it easier to eat few enough calories, and it happened to all make me healthier too. I'm not claiming its easy, but it's true.
  - qnsi 8y ago
    I can't see myself counting calories for the rest of my life
edoo 8y ago
It is pretty simple. Processed carbs that spike your glycemic index lead to a situation where your body has met its caloric needs for the day but your satiety mechanisms get wonked so you feel hungry when you should not be eating again. This is evidenced by things like white bread spiking your glycemic index higher than raw sugar. This can be solved by not eating any foods that appreciably spike your glycemic index, which basically means no processed carbs. Vegetables for example are almost entirely carbohydrates but are encased in fiber so they do not get absorbed as fast into your system. If you eat 'fast' carbs you have no choice but to starve yourself because listening to your natural instincts will automatically mean overeating.
- RPLong 8y ago
  People don't have glycemic indices. Foods have glycemic indices. In a normal person with a functional pancreas, no amount of sugar or high-glycemic foods will cause hunger. It's just not possible. This is because the body naturally releases insulin and the hunger goes away (so does the blood sugar). The reason people become insulin-resistant is because they eat too much, and put on weight. High-glycemic-index foods are implicated in weight gain because they are high-calorie foods. The added insulin means that the body is also absorbing them more readily. Insulin causes people to gain weight; in fact, one of the side-effects of insulin injections for diabetics is... weight gain! That's because insulin's sole purpose in the body is to make it absorb calories and deliver it to cells. All that is to say that you're conflating effect for cause. Weight gain causes diabetes, which causes sugar cravings. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes, and it only causes weight gain if you eat too much of it. There are whole societies on earth that eat almost nothing but high glycemic index foods: the rice farmers of Bangladesh; the mango farmers of Central America; the rural people of Morocco who mostly eat dates; and so on. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes or weight gain. Weight gain causes diabetes, which in turn causes sugar cravings.
  - edoo 8y ago
    I misspoke, replace glycemic index with insulin and I'm right. For example if you eat 200 calories of ice cream vs broccoli. The ice cream will be absorbed so fast into your system that you will get hungry again before you actually need more calories. Every insulin spike is a notch towards metabolic syndrome. It is the crazy insulin spiking that leads to diabetes.
csours 8y ago
Because we eat like royalty. I have access to exceedingly tasty food all the time. If you look at food we eat every day, they used to be celebration foods: Ice Cream, Tamales, Cake, etc. Additionally, if you have a sedentary job, you won't be burning off the carbs.
akurilin 8y ago
As a 100% sedentary person (I sit for maybe 14-15 hours a day) I've had pretty good results with a combination of: * 6 days of gym (4 lifting, 2 HIIT + cardio for 40 min) * 2-3 days of water fasting every week, sometimes every other week * reduced calories * cutting out most foods that have added sugar, sweeteners or refined grains in them * doing most of the cooking myself with non-processed ingredients (so vegetables and meats you could get at any market) * 8-9 hours of sleep on a fixed schedule It takes a significant amount of discipline and lifestyle changes, but it does lead to also significant results. You generally can't sit in front of a computer as much as I do and also expect to look a certain way without a fairly radical approach. 185lbs to about 160ish in ~6 months at 5'11". I have a ridiculous amount of energy and for once I feel pretty good about how clothes look on me. Ultimately you have to experiment and see what works for you, most bodies are different and will react differently in subtle ways to diet and exercise.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  Do you water fast the entire day?
  - akurilin 8y ago
    I usually go for 48-72 hour water fasts, IF has never done anything for me for some reason. Haven't tried much beyond 80 hours or so, mostly because I get bored of it. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-Alternate-Day/dp/1628600012/ https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-A... is a pretty decent resource on it.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  You aren’t 100% sedentary if you’re in the gym six days a week!
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    A friend of mine puts it this way. If you don't want to die of a heart attack, figure out how only sit, sleep, stand or eat for 23 1/2 or fewer hours a day.
t0mbstone 8y ago
There was a direct up-tick in obesity almost immediately after the government's Food Guide Pyramid was released. https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the-food-pyramid-cause-our-obesity-crisis/ https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the-food-... The Food Pyramid And The Food Industry Contributed To A Massive Increase In Sugar, Carbohydrate And Calorie Intake. Humans simply aren't supposed to eat so many carbs and so much sugar. Whenever you eat carbs and sugar, it triggers insulin production. Insulin causes your body to store fat instead of burning it as fuel. I've been doing a ton of research on this topic lately, and the /r/keto forum on reddit has proven to be a very useful resource. Another one of my favorite resources has been the Youtube channel, "What I've Learned", which does some pretty amazing breakdowns on the topic, if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/vid...
eric_b 8y ago
People are fat because they eat too much, and they have almost no incentive to stop it. Sure, they are mostly eating the wrong things too, in the wrong amounts, but the bottom line is the number of calories going in the front door. I lost 40 pounds all while drinking gallons of beer in college. I did it by eating less and moving more. It was not an optimal way to lose weight, but it was effective. These days I keep thin by eating high protein/fat, easy-to-digest carbs, and vegetables, and keeping sugar to a minimum. There's a million ways to lose weight, and some are easier than others. But I promise you, if you eat less than your body needs to survive, you will start losing weight. Today it's culturally acceptable to be fat, and there is ready access to so-so quality food in large cheap quantities. I love sugar. I have a massive sweet tooth. I have to be disciplined to stop from consuming all the candy in the world. Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess.
- untilHellbanned 8y ago
  > Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess. Empathy goes a long way. I think as a society we will get to the solution faster with the view that some people might have stronger urges to overeat then you. Congratulations you worked hard. Don't discount what others face.
  - gore90- 8y ago
    I agree. Clearly it is easier for some people than it is for others. Not always simply a case of "you lack willpower" etc.
  - eric_b 8y ago
    Please, why do you think I needed to lose 40 pounds in the first place? Not because I was the paragon of willpower I can tell you. I still go off the rails and eat an entire package of Oreos in a single sitting sometimes. It’s a constant struggle for me, but I don’t make excuses and I keep persevering. Other people can do that too.
- parthdesai 8y ago
  I have a massive sweet tooth as well. If i buy a pack of cookies, i'l finish it one sitting. What has helped is to avoid buying them outright.
osdiab 8y ago
Totally anecdotal, and I wasn't obese but only marginally overweight; but when I was in the USA, I couldn't seem to get any lighter than 165-170 pounds even when trying to diet and exercise heavily (like 3-4 times a week of strenuous exercise for 1-2 hours minimum, and keeping track of all the food I was eating); but then when I lived in Japan for a few months (probably one of the skinniest countries in the world), I didn't even try to diet and I lost 15 pounds (now I'm at 150 lbs). Lifestyle is clearly a big influence here. My understanding is that generally speaking foods are not sweetened as much there, portions are smaller, and people walk a hell of a lot more. I've also heard that the quality of ingredients in general tends to be higher across the board. The cheap food, which I ate a whole lot of, aren't even something I could consider "healthy"—lots of fried food like tempura and kara-age, along with lots of noodles—but even without restraint eating those, I still ended up losing weight without trying. Interestingly I think my diet got a lot higher in carbohydrate intake and my protein intake shrank. Probably some amount of my weight loss involved muscle loss, but my belly shrank considerably as well, so I don't think it was exclusively that. I think I just gradually got used to eating less, stimulating myself with sugar less frequently and intensely (omg, even diet soft drinks and gum are so powerfully sweet), and being more active, and now that I'm back I realize just how much of a premium I have to pay to not get huge portions of food completely saturated with fat and sugar.
momentmaker 8y ago
Mostly it comes from our diet and what we eat. We've become accustomed to eat for our senses (taste) instead of our survival (nutrition). We're addicted to the taste of 'good' food. Then you have food companies who are engineering that addictive taste for your senses. A habit develops and it's hard to shake that off.
chris_mc 8y ago
Compare the serving sizes and caloric intakes at a USA restaurant with those in Japan, for example, and you'll see why. It's not hard to figure out, we put HFCS and sugar in everything now and people eat 2x as much as they used to. I lost 30 pounds over 2 years by being hungry non-stop and walking about 3 miles per day to work, so losing weight isn't just a "pill disease" that we can solve with a pill, it requires a person to have the self-control to be hungry and exercise, and (from experience) over-eaters don't tend to have much self-control in that area. I think obesity should be treated more as a mental health issue than physical (for most people, there are exceptions), because there is no better way to lose weight than diet and exercise and doing it at a slow rate. Obesity is an example of a problem like climate change. We know how to solve it (less sugar, better food, less calories, more moving) but no one wants to take those steps. I feel like this will also fall back onto the food companies, who will probably be reviled in 50 years like the tobacco companies are today.
sfilargi 8y ago
> No one really knows why bodies have changed so much How can one claim this?
eezurr 8y ago
The body (ie the brain) is amazing at adapting to its environment. One thing to keep in mind is that as unhealthy food becomes the norm for a person, their brain sets a new baseline for how much of this food it thinks the body can handle (side effect: more sweets are needed to release pleasure in the brain). Speaking from my own experience, I eat pretty healthily, and cook most of my own meals. The few times I've had anything sweet in the last decade, I could only handle a small amount of it before my brain and stomach were telling me I've had enough. If I push myself, I began to feel ill. (Example: 4-5 Sweetish Fish is enough for me) My own defense mechanism is because of my parents. They never bought soda and sweet snacks (e.g. gushers, fruit roll ups) at the grocery store, although a handful times a year I got to go to a candy store and pick out a couple items. I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage that they will dance on for the rest of their life.
- randomFacts 8y ago
  Congratulations, it sounds like you have the satiety signal that makes you feel nauseous if you eat a little too much!
- pmarreck 8y ago
  > I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage that they will dance on for the rest of their life. While this is only anecdotal data, this is not true for me. I was a skinny kid because I never got soda, I never got ice cream truck, I never got pizza or pasta, and if I spent more than an hour on the computer (note: I'm a programmer now) my mom would yell at me to go outside and bike, or drag me to the local beach or town pool for the day. Well, all that forcing me to eat "proper" instead of teaching me to eat "proper" built up quite a bit of resentment apparently, in my freshman year I gained 20 lbs and kept going (with swings up and down) and I have not seen 185 lbs since then. I'm currently 6'3" and ~260lb @ 46 years old. Last week I worked out 4 times (all Orange Theory, which is no joke). I'm about to work out again in a few minutes. I'm trying to watch what I eat, considering going back to calorie tracking but IT IS SUCH A PAIN. The tracking is more of a pain than the eating less, lol. (I'm also ADHD, which might explain why.)
bkovacev 8y ago
It's the habits. In the 1970s - people did not have a habit of eating 3 full blown high calorie meals. They were working physically intense jobs (agriculture, mines, metallurgy etc). Nowadays the hardest thing we do is think. They'd spent more time outdoors. They'd rather do sports and spend time in nature actively resting than binge watching tv-shows and movies on the weekends. People didn't have as much food available to them as today. They also had less commodity. Why do people regain fat they lose? It's the habits. They'll get the bariatric surgery done, but will never change the habits. They'll go through the 600 calorie liquid diet and will continue to eat the same things that made them fat initially. They'll continue binge watching tv shows on the weekends, without lifting anything heavier than their spoon or the remote. They'll continue undergoing the fad diets that don't do anything but make their metabolism slower and make their bodies over compensate due to starving. People are lazy and refuse to listen to their bodies, but will gladly listen to the brainbait titles of famous ads/instagram posts. Why we're fat? We're fat because we look for immediate gratification that sugar produces rather than the gratification of being able to climb ten floors of stairs with ease. My dad recently told me that he wants to do bariatric surgery which will "jumpstart" his weight loss. He unfortunately can't walk 200 meters right now, without getting tired. Do you think something will change if he undergoes the surgery or will he continue eating the same :) ? I bet it's the latter, since he won't have an incentive to change something.
- randomFacts 8y ago
  People regain weight because of the hunger hormone Grehlin, which gets high and stays high after losing weight.
  - bkovacev 8y ago
    I believe you can reduce Ghrelin by fasting - I'm not near a computer to fully support this claim, but can update later with proper links to studies.
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      Would like to see this data
kzrdude 8y ago
Health shouldn't have to be hard. It's so simple yet we have a hard time reaching it in a normal life: 1. Eat real food (Cook it yourself) 2. Sleep! 3. Exercise 4. Socialise 5. Avoid stress
w323898 8y ago
I've gone from 255 (BMI 33) down to 185 (BMI 24), back to 205, had an illness and got up to 225, now back to 210. I resent the article acting like this long-term weight loss is somehow a freak occurrence. I just watch what I eat and exercise. Many people with obesity just don't like to exercise, but I love it. This is a natural advantage I have. But I also go on days when I don't feel like going, skip office snacks, and so on. It's neither magical nor impractical. Ultimately, obesity has been normalized and people don't really care. This is going to be hard to change, either hard on society in funding education and support resources, or hard on the obese in cutting them off from health care and other Draconian measures.
pkaler 8y ago
>> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. Well, actually it is that simple. The problem is: 1) sugar 2) long commutes 3) sitting all day And the solution is pretty simple, too. 1) Turn sugar down to 0 2) Do 50 burpees per day The big meta problem is that people talk about it and complain about it and hand wring about it rather than doing the simplest thing possible.
- WD-42 8y ago
  This applies to way more than just diet. As I've gotten older I've realized how many people are totally adverse to doing things that are even marginally difficult or inconvenient. Eating healthy and exercising definitely fall into that category.
WD-42 8y ago
> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. Of course pharma companies and the healthcare system don't want it to be that simple: better to sell drugs to people to fix the problem. Likewise, consumers would rather take a pill than do something difficult, like eat properly and exercise. When you consider how prevalent this kind of attitude is the obesity levels stop being a mystery.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
randomFacts 8y ago
I'm currently losing weight with a weight loss specialist. They had an intro presentation and went over some of the reasons we have such an obesity epidemic and why it's so hard to keep weight off. Some of the key points they mentioned:(I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have my notes on me.) - There is a hunger hormone called Ghrelin. The amount that your body produces is based on the highest weight attained that you kept for at least a year. When you're at that weight, your Ghrelin levels are at about the same as someone who is 150 pounds lighter that you who is also at their max weight ever attained. However, once you've lost weight your body starts producing more Ghrelin which makes you hungrier. This takes decades to reset from whatever your bodies weight target from 'highest weight held for at least a year' to your new lower weight so basically your Ghrelin levels will be higher than average for decades after losing weight(unless you gain it back). There is also another hormone that was recently discovered to has an effect on appetite but I can't remember its name and we didn't know much about it yet. - Regarding gaining weight, there are three satiety signals that are used to help you not overeat. One is a feeling of fullness that only lasts for ~15 minutes but kicks in within a bite or two of calories needed to maintain weight so if you have this signal you may only gain 3 pounds max in a year as long as you don't wait 20 minutes and then go back for seconds. The second satiety signal was loss of savor(food just stops tasting good) and lasts for a couple(~4?) hours. The last was feeling nauseous(not the same as eating so much you couldn't fit another bite and can't move, we can all get that), and was triggered by eating a couple bites past the fullness signal level(if you only have this signal you may gain ~15-20 lbs in a year if I'm remembering correctly). The problem is that most people only have one or two of these signals and many don't have any of them. If you've never had to diet to lose weight and have always had a good weight level then congratulations, you probably have at least 1 or 2 of these and maybe all three. If you've had several diets and have lost hundreds of pounds in aggregate over several diets over a decade plus then chances are you probably don't have any of the 3 signals. Everyone else probably falls in the middle where they only have 1 or maybe 2 satiety signals. - If we were able to determine what gene/set of genes or other processes determined if you had these signals and were able to give others who don't have them the ability to receive these same signals we would be able to keep new people from gaining weight. If we found a way to reset Grehlin levels for people who have lost weight(hopefully a pill, maybe through gene modification via crispr) then we'd be able to help people who have lost weight to keep it off long term. Regarding sugars, etc. yes, it makes it infinitely harder to diet when there are so many high calorie options out there, but there are deeper underlying medical reasons out there than just that. - Basically, the only people who have been able to be successful at keeping weight off long term are those who either exercise 2+ hours PER DAY(less time can help with strength, etc but not with weight loss/maintenance because you'll just be hungrier and end up eating more calories to make up for the ones you burned) or those who are perpetually on a diet for the rest of their lives and work hard to re-lose any pounds gained after a trip, etc. The good news is we're making some progress in weight loss research(but still have a long ways to go) and there are decent appetite suppressants, etc. that can help you lose weight and keep it off if you go to a Dr. that specializes in this and that this isn't an impossible to solve willpower problem, but a medical one that can be fixed. The bad news is you'll probably be on a diet for the rest of your life or until we solve the above questions on satiety signals and hunger hormones. - tldr: it's a medical problem, not a willpower problem, and won't be fully solved until we treat it like such and invest the resources into finding a cure. Until then we're just treating the symptoms.
babyslothzoo 8y ago
Let's not forget that obesity is also socially contagious, and there is tremendous social pressure to conform to obesity, which is why if you're less fat than fatter people, they will publicly shame you for your lack of comparable obesity with comments like "you need to eat a cheese burger" or 'get some meat on those bones' etc.
shahbaby 8y ago
There are so many things wrong with this article, here are some facts. 1. More insulin causes the body to store fat. Less insulin causes the body to burn fat. 2. A low-carb diet lowers insulin levels. 3. Over the last few decades they started adding sugar (carbs) into almost every food product while the US government published a food pyramid with a heavy emphasis on carbs. 4. As the article states, now we have an obesity problem which was not as severe in the last few decades.
teekert 8y ago
FWIW The few times I was in the US I noticed a couple of things different from my country: 1. We drink water/coffee/tea all day (mostly without sugar), in the US I see sodas constantly (ok, usually light). Also, US guests here always ask for the soda machine while we constantly offer black coffee and water. 2. Portions are huge! One cannot go home with even a trace of hunger. Whereas here, it's ok if it at least tasted nice. 3. Almost all food was sweet, have some Asian wok food? Extremely sweet chili sauce on top. 4. Unlimited refills of soda. It's nice but you drink a lot :) 5. 4 p.m. snack? Out come the pastries (sugar and flour glued together with butter)! Here we may have a cookie or some fruit among my colleagues at least. 6. Breakfast? We have yogurt with muesli or a sandwich (meaning we put a 2 micron thick slice of cheese on the bread) and perhaps a boiled egg. In the US: The smell of Fried potatoes fills the room! 7. Pizza: Have a good pizza here and the sauce is just tomatoes and some garlic. Have a US pizza (sure we also have them here) it's sugar and salt all the way. Better drink 5 glasses of water 1 hour after eating over 10 mg of salt or you will get a headache. 8. We usually cook ourselves, from fresh vegetables and meat or fish. In the US it's much more common to eat out. It's very unlikely to pile sugar and salt into a home cooked meal. 9. I haven't seen the situation in schools but one hears these "pizza is vegetable" stories from the US, here the kids only drink water in school (at least ours, it's not obligatory but parents provide the drinks and most of them get water) and a piece of fruit. During lunch they get about 2 slices of bread with meat or cheese or chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag). At least that was my experience. Of course, I loved the burgers and after a few days of them you start to get that real craving for them. I love burgers and I love fries.
acconrad 8y ago
> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. For the majority of people, it is that simple. That doesn't mean it's easy. To give most folks a hall pass on their poor eating habits with bariatric surgery or a special pill (which are for extreme outliers) is dishonest at best and harmful or dangerous at worst.
greenteabee 8y ago
I've had success getting in shape by tracking what I eat and following a weight training routine (PPL). Counting macros gives you a flexible diet. Buy a food scale and eat enough food to hit your macro goals to be at a daily 250-500 calorie deficit. That means you'll lose 0.5 - 1 pound per week. Once you're lean, eat at a slight surplus to gain some lean body mass. Sorry everyone, there's no magic pill that burns all of your fat. There's steroids, but you'll still have to eat enough and go to the gym. People want to get fit but don't put in the time nor effort.
gkfasdfasdf 8y ago
People in the 70s didn't all have bariatric surgery, or access to miracle drugs to control hunger hormones. Nor did we all develop some mutation that caused the current obesity epidemic. Clearly something in our environment has changed. Seems to me that it would be simpler to figure out what's changed between now and then, rather than try and invent new drugs. I.e. we need to do root cause analysis rather than flounder for workarounds. Some have suggested that the carb-heavy government food guide pyramids are to blame. That seems to be a good place to start.
Rainymood 8y ago
It takes time, delayed gratification in this era of instant gratification is tough.

61 points by _mhyx 8y ago

The answer, in a word: "Sugar". Obviously you can't take the word of one random commenter on HN. There's a lot of reporting around this in good news sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... When I say "the answer" I should, instead, state that that's a large part of the reason. It's not the SOLE reason. Of course it's more nuanced than that.

wolco 8y ago
It's more Grains than any type of sugar
- ynniv 8y ago
  Humans have been eating grains for 10,000 years, and sugar for a hundred.
  - dekhn 8y ago
    humans were extracting sugar from sugarcane 8,000 years ago. It was consumed heavily in india 2000 years ago. BUt of course we've been eating free sugars in foods for as long as we've been around.
    - ynniv 8y ago
      Sugar was a rare luxury until recently. Even fruit was a luxury historically. Yes people ate sugar more than a hundred years ago, but it was a few pounds per year. Modern intake is more than fifty times as much.
  - wolco 8y ago
    Humans have been eating sugars in fruit form since day 1.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Grains were crucial when food was scarce and preparation tedious, not so much when abundant and effortless. Both may be an issue in the modern world.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - malkia 8y ago
    Humans were working their asses from 4-5 in the morning, up to late nights, walking miles and miles, carrying heavy stuff (women with their infants strapped on their back, or in a pouch working in the field/farm). I know, because i knew such strong person that was frickin healthy even in her 90 years - one of my grand grand grand mom. Rosy cheecks, wrinkled face of a worker. Still later in her years, was no problem for her waking up and working a lot.
- withoutclass 8y ago
  Funnily enough, sugar is typically found alongside most grain based foods. It's in breads, cupcakes, etc etc. Ruling out grains consequently get's rid of a large source of sugar. The two are pretty intertwined.
  - wolco 8y ago
    Try removing all grains but keep eating as many raisans and dates as possible. You will loss weight. The type of sugar matters more than just all sugar.
    - lbotos 8y ago
      Source? I treat all sugar the same, "to be consumed conservatively." My understanding is that the body processes pretty much all the same. Happy to read more from your sources
      - wolco 8y ago
        Depending on the type of sugar different processes are involved. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructose#absorption-and-use https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructos...
    - dbcurtis 8y ago
      It all ends up as glucose. If you eat glucose, it goes straight into your blood stream as glucose. If you eat fructose, it gets converted into glucose. If you eat starches, the polymers are chopped into simple sugars of glucose and fructose, and the fructose is converted to glucose. Whether you eat glucose directly, or eat other sugars and starches, it all ends up as glucose. The only difference is the workload that you create for your liver.
      - wolco 8y ago
        How it gets converted is the key not what it ends up as. One type will be easier to breakdown another more difficult. That's the key.
- Matthias247 8y ago
  Both are carbohydrates. One might argue that grains make less fat than refined sugar. But it might also be more about the amount than about the source of things.
corey_moncure 8y ago
I'd add "cars" to the answer, but sugar definitely comes first.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  I hate cars as much as the next tree hugging urbanist but they are almost certainly not a major culprit here. In the US cars were almost as dominant as they are today in the 1950s-70s (for adults, kid were much more likely to walk to school then). If anything the use of car has stayed close to constant. How we spend our time when not in transit has become far more sedentary though. Instead of going out and doing things for recreation we shitpost on the internet. Instead of manually washing dishes we load the dishwasher and go watch netflix. Our jobs have also become much less physically demanding. Many jobs that would have one engaging in a moderate amount of physical activity have been automated or altered to be far less demanding though this has greatly reduced workplace injuries from repetitive strain (manhandling stuff around all day might not be good for your back but you're not gonna get fat doing it). Even someone employed as a secretary is going to do far less physical work and walking around the office than in 1970 thanks to tech.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Oh yeah, cars will make you lazy in ways I'm still surprised. It changes your notion of time and space. You can go from A to Z in 1h, something that would take a day. And the speed increase is exhilarating. It's a bad drug.
cpymchn 8y ago
To be more precise the answer, in a word: "Hormones". Obesity is a endocrine disorder. Sugar -- it so happens -- majorly screws up the endocrine system. Other things do too... but sugar is the biggie.
malkia 8y ago
Yes! In Feb I've got diagnosed with diabetes - My estimated average glucose was 269 (mg/dL), A1C was 11.0!!! (1/31/2018) Got started (myself) on diet, doctor prescribed me metmorphin and something stronger (had to stop it). Nearly 4 months ago, I'm without any medications again. Not the best results - but on 5/15/2018 I was down to 126 mg/dL (6.0), and on 8/21/2018 + 12/4/2018 - same result of 114 (5.6) - ideally I should be lower - but this is without medications! What did I changed - Went full carnivore... hah not really - but I am subscribed to various groups (still evaluating for myself) I simply cut down not only sugar, but carbs too - though I decided to eat certain fruits in small quantities - like blackberries, strawberries, tangerines (they are small, so I can control it), occasionally watermelon (who knew!). No bananas, apples, etc + I can't give up tomatoes (technically fruits), cucumber, lettuce + nuts, cheese, etc. When I got stomach flu (some mild food poisoning), went to "BRAT" diet for a day though - but just the RICE, apart from that avoiding rice, wheat, potatoes (very little, no fries at all). Beer? Beer a month, and I used to jug 10 guinesses a night (heavy \m/etal style). So it's a bit boorish, but had to do it. Lost 40-50 lbs (320 -> 270, I'm 6'4"). Waist from 42-43 -> 38, still have belly fat though. Do exercises by walking the dog a lot + Iron Mind (can squeeze 3 with right hand, 2.5 with left). Started doing pull ups, and was very excited I can do 7 - but forgot one day to properly warm up - and had to stop for 2-3 months, as I tore something, would continue after new year. Tried running, but not for me. Other than that - no longer feeling sleepy through the day, had energy, but it's a bit different - I used to be able to grab two dudes on my side and lift them - I can't do this anymore (stupid thing really). Lol - another anecdotal thing - during mosh-pits used to be more stable - hahaha (too old for this shit anyway) - now can get put down easier (weight must count for something really). So you go. SUGAR... is the drug DEA should really look into :)
TACIXAT 8y ago
I strongly agree with this. I cut out sugar because I was getting sinus headaches. When I cut it out (multiple times) I would go through full withdrawal (massive sinus headache, cold sweat, shakes, vomiting). There are hundreds of articles that say you cannot develop a physical dependence on sugar, but I disagree from personal experience. That said, avoiding it is tough. I understand why people would gain weight back when leaving a clinical setting. It's in everything and there is a reason it is in everything; it causes people to eat more of the things it is in. I'm lucky in a sense, I have a strong physical reaction when I eat the wrong thing and that helps me make the right choices (things that don't make me feel like hell). If other people don't have this physical dependence though, they would have no punishment for eating incorrectly. That's a much harder problem to address and I don't have the answers for it.
untilHellbanned 8y ago
Random commenter #2, but I'm a genetics professor at a med school FWIW. Sugar is a major factor. The genetics of obesity point to a strong link to behavior. Sugar is addictive. Alcohol and nicotine are drugs, and so is sugar. There needs to be regulations on sugar content of foods. If you say it's not possible, I point to the low-fat craze years of the 1980s-1990s, where ironically we basically proved that swapping fat with sugar made our obesity problem worse.
- Balgair 8y ago
  With all due respect, professor, claiming that sugar is 'addictive' and that it is in fact a drug, is a bit of a stretch. I'm not nearly at the level of addiction research that you are privy too, so please excuse my ignorance of the most recent research results. However, in my lay understanding of the science of addiction, it seems that sugar is no where close to the same ball-park as nicotine or caffeine. Unless the definition of 'drug' and of 'addiction', has recently changed, of course. Still, if what you say is true, this would be a large overturn in the common, lay-person, understanding of drugs and addiction! It's implications on a dietary (and policy) level, would be fof a great boon to all of us. If you have the time, I would love to know more about this and how you formed your understanding. Thank you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction
  - untilHellbanned 8y ago
    It is a matter of definitions. Here is a review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234835/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234835/. "The FA framework for understanding obesity is the notion that highly processed 'hyperpalatable' foods have hijacked the reward centers in the brain thus impairing the decision-making process, similar to drugs of abuse." "Finally, there is strong evidence of the existence of sugar addiction, both at preclinical and clinical level. Our model has demonstrated that five out of eleven criteria for SUD are met, specifically: use of larger amounts and for longer than intended, craving, hazardous use, tolerance, and withdrawal. From an evolutionary perspective, we must consider addiction as a normal trait that permitted humans to survive primitive conditions when food was scarce. As we evolved culturally, the neural circuits involved in addictive behaviors became dysfunctional and instead of helping us survive they are in fact compromising our health."
plausibilities 8y ago
I cut out added sugars and dropped 80 lbs over 3 years. YMMV.
tstrimple 8y ago
Completely agree with this. I've struggled with my weight all my life. I was always hungry and dieting (simple calorie restriction) felt like torture and would never last. For my latest attempt, I cut out added sugar completely and switched to intermittent fasting. The first week was the hell I was used to, but after the sugar addiction waned so did my incessant appetite. I used to think about food all the time and always with an eye towards what my next meal would be. Now I feel like I can actually trust my hunger signals and as a result eating far fewer calories is easy and natural versus the constant struggle simple calorie restriction dieting was.

cm2012 8y ago

Here's some more evidence for the central conceit of this article: Every legitimate long term study of major non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people. It's basically freakish when succesful in the long term. 1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453) 2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full) 3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/ https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/) 4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...) This is borne out by the above data. 5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/) Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.

noja 8y ago
> Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one. What about studies where someone moves from a high-obesity country to a low-obesity country? Is there such a study?
- cm2012 8y ago
  Oo, that's really interesting. I havn't seen one if there is, but I would love to.

k__ 8y ago

Eating garbage and sitting aroind all day.

mmsimanga 8y ago
Reading HN. Sigh.

ryanmercer 8y ago

Because we can spend 1$ and get 400-1200 kcals out of a vending machine (that takes 10-30 seconds to consume), while we sit at a desk all day and evening, instead of having to plant/weed/harvest/process our food in a field. he says as he eats candy We have ridiculously kcal dense food immediately available while we also have, on average, extremely sedentary lives. I mean, looking at: - Starbucks menu you can get a beverage that comes in at 500 kcals without even getting fancy. - Symphony milk chocolate bar: 149 kcals/ounce. - White Castle chicken sandwich (about half the size of a deck of cards) 350 kcals - Wendy's Baconator 950 kcals - McDonald's double bacon smokehouse burger on artisan roll 1130 kcals (most of McDonald's value meals can actually easily get into the 1000+ kcal range without any special modifications) - Burger King Whopper 660 kcals - 32 ounce Coke 370 kcals - Papa Johns sausage pizza 260-410 kcals a slice (depending on the pizza size) We can get insane amounts of kcals, with relative ease, in dense little packages while being largely inactive. Edit: since this was downvoted to -2, HN is throttling my ability to reply to the individual that replied to me, in regards to 'first world countries': https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006032 https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0060... Obesity percentages: US 36.2%, NZ 30.8%, CA 29.4%, AU 29%, UK 27.8% all 'first world countries' out of the top 10 and if you look at the complete list the bulk of the 'first world' countries, where convenience foods/fast foods are readily available, are above 20% obesity.

twblalock 8y ago
There aren't very many people in first-world countries who need to farm anymore, and all first-world countries have desk jobs and vending machines, yet the rate of obesity varies widely between first-world countries.
- quakeguy 8y ago
  For the US: Cars and roads and vast distances to cover and the following unusefullness to walk? What i mean is, is a grocery store within walking distance for most of the population? Edit: Not to forget all the drive-throughs born out of this misbalance.
- squish78 8y ago

annamargot 8y ago

Counter-acting the factors that made a person fat in the first place seems very difficult. Especially when compounded by an always-aging body. Off the top of my head: - genetic pre-dispositions - Eating habits during childhood - Eating habits during early adulthood - the effects on metabolism and body chemistry of the above - Many more, I'm sure

mcfunk 8y ago

This article is disturbingly enthusiastic about bariatric surgery, an extreme procedure with limited success and serious side-effects. The long and short of it is that we understand far too little about the human body and what drives weight gain and difficulty losing. For instance, there are complex health and immune issues (e.g., mast cell disorders) that can drive weight gain and difficulty losing in spite of healthy diets and high levels of activity (and researchers think mast cell disorders alone may affect 10% or more of the population, but was named only 5 years ago and is still poorly understood. What else could be similar that we just don't understand yet?) Beyond this, what we put in our bodies (various medicines, antibiotics, ingredients in processed foods, various pesticides etc, even artificial light) may have effects on our physiology that we don't yet have a strong understanding of. Our microbiomes are still a complete mystery to us, deeply impacting how and what we absorb from our food. The same food does not impact every body in the same way, period. Bariatric surgery is a band-aid over a gaping wound. Until we understand the complexities of human physiology at a more sophisticated level than a high-schooler in physics class (calories in, calories out just doesn't cut it) -- we are going to continue seeing public health impacts in the form of fat and disease -- which may often have underlying causes that the fat is simply the most visible symptom of. Edit: Seriously guys, is there any other area of science where people are so convinced that anecdotal and small-sample (both in terms of n and longitudinality) observations are valid? There's a huge market for delusion about fat, we're fighting that as much as we're fighting to learn more about the human body.

PaulHoule 8y ago
My sister in law had a lap band put in a decade ago and she recently had it taken out because of complications. It would be fair to say that it was a partial success and her doctor says that her case is not unusual and that lap bands haven't been as successful as had been hoped. As for explanations of the obesity epidemic note the timing -- it really took off in the 1980s, together with the social and political changes that we call "globalization" https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0312011 https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0312011 one possibility is that it was a change in social stressors, another that it was some environmental chemical introduced around that time. (eg. neonictinoid pesticides or glyphosate)

arcadeparade 8y ago

Apparently even animals such as monkeys and rats kept in labs and fed the same calories under controlled conditions are fatter than the same animals fed the same decades ago. Xenoestrogens?

sambroner 8y ago
Do you have a source for that? Super interesting...
joker3 8y ago
It might be climate change. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-change-food-crops-nutrition https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-... details how high CO2 levels lead to food crops with more sugar and less nutrients. As a result, animals fed the same diet aren't getting the same calories as they used to.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Soil depletion and optimizing for size has also caused a drop in vitamin and mineral content https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...
cwkoss 8y ago
I'm also curious if there is any effect from trace amounts of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides in our water and food supply. Agriculture has experimented with many novel compounds in the past century, and I don't trust that each of these compounds was diligently studied by researchers without a conflict of interest.
pmarreck 8y ago
Link to this data?
cimmanom 8y ago
Thought there was an air conditioning hypothesis about that?

mevile 8y ago

I'm down 83 lbs from 2017 and I'm at a healthy BMI for the first time in 15 years. I know I will not gain the weight back. Why? Because I finally figured out how to manage a routine, how to exercise regularly, how to plan out what I eat, and I learned to get enough sleep. Don't want to be fat anymore? Stop eating at restaurants, cook all your own food, bring in a lunch to work, count your calories. Also exercise, lots. And get 7+ hours a sleep a night. That's it, that's all it takes.

agentdrtran 8y ago
oh wow massive life changes are all it takes to lose weight?
- twodave 8y ago
  That seems fitting, doesn't it? Weight change requires weighty changes :)
patejam 8y ago
> count your calories That's all it really is. Everything else just makes it easier to eat few enough calories, including any crazy diets.
- patejam 8y ago
  I'd be interested to hear from the couple people downvoting. Find a lifestyle that lets you eat few enough calories. If that's low-carb, then go for it. If that's counting calories and just eating less, go for it. When I was losing weight, I realized that certain foods made me feel more full per calorie (vegetables). Then I realized that drinking was using up a huge part of my calorie allotment. Then I realized that if I run then I can eat more. Everything was just to make it easier to eat few enough calories, and it happened to all make me healthier too. I'm not claiming its easy, but it's true.
- qnsi 8y ago
  I can't see myself counting calories for the rest of my life

edoo 8y ago

It is pretty simple. Processed carbs that spike your glycemic index lead to a situation where your body has met its caloric needs for the day but your satiety mechanisms get wonked so you feel hungry when you should not be eating again. This is evidenced by things like white bread spiking your glycemic index higher than raw sugar. This can be solved by not eating any foods that appreciably spike your glycemic index, which basically means no processed carbs. Vegetables for example are almost entirely carbohydrates but are encased in fiber so they do not get absorbed as fast into your system. If you eat 'fast' carbs you have no choice but to starve yourself because listening to your natural instincts will automatically mean overeating.

RPLong 8y ago
People don't have glycemic indices. Foods have glycemic indices. In a normal person with a functional pancreas, no amount of sugar or high-glycemic foods will cause hunger. It's just not possible. This is because the body naturally releases insulin and the hunger goes away (so does the blood sugar). The reason people become insulin-resistant is because they eat too much, and put on weight. High-glycemic-index foods are implicated in weight gain because they are high-calorie foods. The added insulin means that the body is also absorbing them more readily. Insulin causes people to gain weight; in fact, one of the side-effects of insulin injections for diabetics is... weight gain! That's because insulin's sole purpose in the body is to make it absorb calories and deliver it to cells. All that is to say that you're conflating effect for cause. Weight gain causes diabetes, which causes sugar cravings. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes, and it only causes weight gain if you eat too much of it. There are whole societies on earth that eat almost nothing but high glycemic index foods: the rice farmers of Bangladesh; the mango farmers of Central America; the rural people of Morocco who mostly eat dates; and so on. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes or weight gain. Weight gain causes diabetes, which in turn causes sugar cravings.
- edoo 8y ago
  I misspoke, replace glycemic index with insulin and I'm right. For example if you eat 200 calories of ice cream vs broccoli. The ice cream will be absorbed so fast into your system that you will get hungry again before you actually need more calories. Every insulin spike is a notch towards metabolic syndrome. It is the crazy insulin spiking that leads to diabetes.

csours 8y ago

Because we eat like royalty. I have access to exceedingly tasty food all the time. If you look at food we eat every day, they used to be celebration foods: Ice Cream, Tamales, Cake, etc. Additionally, if you have a sedentary job, you won't be burning off the carbs.

akurilin 8y ago

As a 100% sedentary person (I sit for maybe 14-15 hours a day) I've had pretty good results with a combination of: * 6 days of gym (4 lifting, 2 HIIT + cardio for 40 min) * 2-3 days of water fasting every week, sometimes every other week * reduced calories * cutting out most foods that have added sugar, sweeteners or refined grains in them * doing most of the cooking myself with non-processed ingredients (so vegetables and meats you could get at any market) * 8-9 hours of sleep on a fixed schedule It takes a significant amount of discipline and lifestyle changes, but it does lead to also significant results. You generally can't sit in front of a computer as much as I do and also expect to look a certain way without a fairly radical approach. 185lbs to about 160ish in ~6 months at 5'11". I have a ridiculous amount of energy and for once I feel pretty good about how clothes look on me. Ultimately you have to experiment and see what works for you, most bodies are different and will react differently in subtle ways to diet and exercise.

nickthemagicman 8y ago
Do you water fast the entire day?
- akurilin 8y ago
  I usually go for 48-72 hour water fasts, IF has never done anything for me for some reason. Haven't tried much beyond 80 hours or so, mostly because I get bored of it. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-Alternate-Day/dp/1628600012/ https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-A... is a pretty decent resource on it.
chrisseaton 8y ago
You aren’t 100% sedentary if you’re in the gym six days a week!
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  A friend of mine puts it this way. If you don't want to die of a heart attack, figure out how only sit, sleep, stand or eat for 23 1/2 or fewer hours a day.

t0mbstone 8y ago

There was a direct up-tick in obesity almost immediately after the government's Food Guide Pyramid was released. https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the-food-pyramid-cause-our-obesity-crisis/ https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the-food-... The Food Pyramid And The Food Industry Contributed To A Massive Increase In Sugar, Carbohydrate And Calorie Intake. Humans simply aren't supposed to eat so many carbs and so much sugar. Whenever you eat carbs and sugar, it triggers insulin production. Insulin causes your body to store fat instead of burning it as fuel. I've been doing a ton of research on this topic lately, and the /r/keto forum on reddit has proven to be a very useful resource. Another one of my favorite resources has been the Youtube channel, "What I've Learned", which does some pretty amazing breakdowns on the topic, if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/vid...

eric_b 8y ago

People are fat because they eat too much, and they have almost no incentive to stop it. Sure, they are mostly eating the wrong things too, in the wrong amounts, but the bottom line is the number of calories going in the front door. I lost 40 pounds all while drinking gallons of beer in college. I did it by eating less and moving more. It was not an optimal way to lose weight, but it was effective. These days I keep thin by eating high protein/fat, easy-to-digest carbs, and vegetables, and keeping sugar to a minimum. There's a million ways to lose weight, and some are easier than others. But I promise you, if you eat less than your body needs to survive, you will start losing weight. Today it's culturally acceptable to be fat, and there is ready access to so-so quality food in large cheap quantities. I love sugar. I have a massive sweet tooth. I have to be disciplined to stop from consuming all the candy in the world. Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess.

untilHellbanned 8y ago
> Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess. Empathy goes a long way. I think as a society we will get to the solution faster with the view that some people might have stronger urges to overeat then you. Congratulations you worked hard. Don't discount what others face.
- gore90- 8y ago
  I agree. Clearly it is easier for some people than it is for others. Not always simply a case of "you lack willpower" etc.
- eric_b 8y ago
  Please, why do you think I needed to lose 40 pounds in the first place? Not because I was the paragon of willpower I can tell you. I still go off the rails and eat an entire package of Oreos in a single sitting sometimes. It’s a constant struggle for me, but I don’t make excuses and I keep persevering. Other people can do that too.
parthdesai 8y ago
I have a massive sweet tooth as well. If i buy a pack of cookies, i'l finish it one sitting. What has helped is to avoid buying them outright.

osdiab 8y ago

Totally anecdotal, and I wasn't obese but only marginally overweight; but when I was in the USA, I couldn't seem to get any lighter than 165-170 pounds even when trying to diet and exercise heavily (like 3-4 times a week of strenuous exercise for 1-2 hours minimum, and keeping track of all the food I was eating); but then when I lived in Japan for a few months (probably one of the skinniest countries in the world), I didn't even try to diet and I lost 15 pounds (now I'm at 150 lbs). Lifestyle is clearly a big influence here. My understanding is that generally speaking foods are not sweetened as much there, portions are smaller, and people walk a hell of a lot more. I've also heard that the quality of ingredients in general tends to be higher across the board. The cheap food, which I ate a whole lot of, aren't even something I could consider "healthy"—lots of fried food like tempura and kara-age, along with lots of noodles—but even without restraint eating those, I still ended up losing weight without trying. Interestingly I think my diet got a lot higher in carbohydrate intake and my protein intake shrank. Probably some amount of my weight loss involved muscle loss, but my belly shrank considerably as well, so I don't think it was exclusively that. I think I just gradually got used to eating less, stimulating myself with sugar less frequently and intensely (omg, even diet soft drinks and gum are so powerfully sweet), and being more active, and now that I'm back I realize just how much of a premium I have to pay to not get huge portions of food completely saturated with fat and sugar.

momentmaker 8y ago

Mostly it comes from our diet and what we eat. We've become accustomed to eat for our senses (taste) instead of our survival (nutrition). We're addicted to the taste of 'good' food. Then you have food companies who are engineering that addictive taste for your senses. A habit develops and it's hard to shake that off.

chris_mc 8y ago

Compare the serving sizes and caloric intakes at a USA restaurant with those in Japan, for example, and you'll see why. It's not hard to figure out, we put HFCS and sugar in everything now and people eat 2x as much as they used to. I lost 30 pounds over 2 years by being hungry non-stop and walking about 3 miles per day to work, so losing weight isn't just a "pill disease" that we can solve with a pill, it requires a person to have the self-control to be hungry and exercise, and (from experience) over-eaters don't tend to have much self-control in that area. I think obesity should be treated more as a mental health issue than physical (for most people, there are exceptions), because there is no better way to lose weight than diet and exercise and doing it at a slow rate. Obesity is an example of a problem like climate change. We know how to solve it (less sugar, better food, less calories, more moving) but no one wants to take those steps. I feel like this will also fall back onto the food companies, who will probably be reviled in 50 years like the tobacco companies are today.

sfilargi 8y ago

> No one really knows why bodies have changed so much How can one claim this?

eezurr 8y ago

The body (ie the brain) is amazing at adapting to its environment. One thing to keep in mind is that as unhealthy food becomes the norm for a person, their brain sets a new baseline for how much of this food it thinks the body can handle (side effect: more sweets are needed to release pleasure in the brain). Speaking from my own experience, I eat pretty healthily, and cook most of my own meals. The few times I've had anything sweet in the last decade, I could only handle a small amount of it before my brain and stomach were telling me I've had enough. If I push myself, I began to feel ill. (Example: 4-5 Sweetish Fish is enough for me) My own defense mechanism is because of my parents. They never bought soda and sweet snacks (e.g. gushers, fruit roll ups) at the grocery store, although a handful times a year I got to go to a candy store and pick out a couple items. I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage that they will dance on for the rest of their life.

randomFacts 8y ago
Congratulations, it sounds like you have the satiety signal that makes you feel nauseous if you eat a little too much!
pmarreck 8y ago
> I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage that they will dance on for the rest of their life. While this is only anecdotal data, this is not true for me. I was a skinny kid because I never got soda, I never got ice cream truck, I never got pizza or pasta, and if I spent more than an hour on the computer (note: I'm a programmer now) my mom would yell at me to go outside and bike, or drag me to the local beach or town pool for the day. Well, all that forcing me to eat "proper" instead of teaching me to eat "proper" built up quite a bit of resentment apparently, in my freshman year I gained 20 lbs and kept going (with swings up and down) and I have not seen 185 lbs since then. I'm currently 6'3" and ~260lb @ 46 years old. Last week I worked out 4 times (all Orange Theory, which is no joke). I'm about to work out again in a few minutes. I'm trying to watch what I eat, considering going back to calorie tracking but IT IS SUCH A PAIN. The tracking is more of a pain than the eating less, lol. (I'm also ADHD, which might explain why.)

bkovacev 8y ago

It's the habits. In the 1970s - people did not have a habit of eating 3 full blown high calorie meals. They were working physically intense jobs (agriculture, mines, metallurgy etc). Nowadays the hardest thing we do is think. They'd spent more time outdoors. They'd rather do sports and spend time in nature actively resting than binge watching tv-shows and movies on the weekends. People didn't have as much food available to them as today. They also had less commodity. Why do people regain fat they lose? It's the habits. They'll get the bariatric surgery done, but will never change the habits. They'll go through the 600 calorie liquid diet and will continue to eat the same things that made them fat initially. They'll continue binge watching tv shows on the weekends, without lifting anything heavier than their spoon or the remote. They'll continue undergoing the fad diets that don't do anything but make their metabolism slower and make their bodies over compensate due to starving. People are lazy and refuse to listen to their bodies, but will gladly listen to the brainbait titles of famous ads/instagram posts. Why we're fat? We're fat because we look for immediate gratification that sugar produces rather than the gratification of being able to climb ten floors of stairs with ease. My dad recently told me that he wants to do bariatric surgery which will "jumpstart" his weight loss. He unfortunately can't walk 200 meters right now, without getting tired. Do you think something will change if he undergoes the surgery or will he continue eating the same :) ? I bet it's the latter, since he won't have an incentive to change something.

randomFacts 8y ago
People regain weight because of the hunger hormone Grehlin, which gets high and stays high after losing weight.
- bkovacev 8y ago
  I believe you can reduce Ghrelin by fasting - I'm not near a computer to fully support this claim, but can update later with proper links to studies.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    Would like to see this data

kzrdude 8y ago

Health shouldn't have to be hard. It's so simple yet we have a hard time reaching it in a normal life: 1. Eat real food (Cook it yourself) 2. Sleep! 3. Exercise 4. Socialise 5. Avoid stress

w323898 8y ago

I've gone from 255 (BMI 33) down to 185 (BMI 24), back to 205, had an illness and got up to 225, now back to 210. I resent the article acting like this long-term weight loss is somehow a freak occurrence. I just watch what I eat and exercise. Many people with obesity just don't like to exercise, but I love it. This is a natural advantage I have. But I also go on days when I don't feel like going, skip office snacks, and so on. It's neither magical nor impractical. Ultimately, obesity has been normalized and people don't really care. This is going to be hard to change, either hard on society in funding education and support resources, or hard on the obese in cutting them off from health care and other Draconian measures.

pkaler 8y ago

>> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. Well, actually it is that simple. The problem is: 1) sugar 2) long commutes 3) sitting all day And the solution is pretty simple, too. 1) Turn sugar down to 0 2) Do 50 burpees per day The big meta problem is that people talk about it and complain about it and hand wring about it rather than doing the simplest thing possible.

WD-42 8y ago
This applies to way more than just diet. As I've gotten older I've realized how many people are totally adverse to doing things that are even marginally difficult or inconvenient. Eating healthy and exercising definitely fall into that category.

WD-42 8y ago

> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. Of course pharma companies and the healthcare system don't want it to be that simple: better to sell drugs to people to fix the problem. Likewise, consumers would rather take a pill than do something difficult, like eat properly and exercise. When you consider how prevalent this kind of attitude is the obesity levels stop being a mystery.

deleted 8y ago

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randomFacts 8y ago

I'm currently losing weight with a weight loss specialist. They had an intro presentation and went over some of the reasons we have such an obesity epidemic and why it's so hard to keep weight off. Some of the key points they mentioned:(I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have my notes on me.) - There is a hunger hormone called Ghrelin. The amount that your body produces is based on the highest weight attained that you kept for at least a year. When you're at that weight, your Ghrelin levels are at about the same as someone who is 150 pounds lighter that you who is also at their max weight ever attained. However, once you've lost weight your body starts producing more Ghrelin which makes you hungrier. This takes decades to reset from whatever your bodies weight target from 'highest weight held for at least a year' to your new lower weight so basically your Ghrelin levels will be higher than average for decades after losing weight(unless you gain it back). There is also another hormone that was recently discovered to has an effect on appetite but I can't remember its name and we didn't know much about it yet. - Regarding gaining weight, there are three satiety signals that are used to help you not overeat. One is a feeling of fullness that only lasts for ~15 minutes but kicks in within a bite or two of calories needed to maintain weight so if you have this signal you may only gain 3 pounds max in a year as long as you don't wait 20 minutes and then go back for seconds. The second satiety signal was loss of savor(food just stops tasting good) and lasts for a couple(~4?) hours. The last was feeling nauseous(not the same as eating so much you couldn't fit another bite and can't move, we can all get that), and was triggered by eating a couple bites past the fullness signal level(if you only have this signal you may gain ~15-20 lbs in a year if I'm remembering correctly). The problem is that most people only have one or two of these signals and many don't have any of them. If you've never had to diet to lose weight and have always had a good weight level then congratulations, you probably have at least 1 or 2 of these and maybe all three. If you've had several diets and have lost hundreds of pounds in aggregate over several diets over a decade plus then chances are you probably don't have any of the 3 signals. Everyone else probably falls in the middle where they only have 1 or maybe 2 satiety signals. - If we were able to determine what gene/set of genes or other processes determined if you had these signals and were able to give others who don't have them the ability to receive these same signals we would be able to keep new people from gaining weight. If we found a way to reset Grehlin levels for people who have lost weight(hopefully a pill, maybe through gene modification via crispr) then we'd be able to help people who have lost weight to keep it off long term. Regarding sugars, etc. yes, it makes it infinitely harder to diet when there are so many high calorie options out there, but there are deeper underlying medical reasons out there than just that. - Basically, the only people who have been able to be successful at keeping weight off long term are those who either exercise 2+ hours PER DAY(less time can help with strength, etc but not with weight loss/maintenance because you'll just be hungrier and end up eating more calories to make up for the ones you burned) or those who are perpetually on a diet for the rest of their lives and work hard to re-lose any pounds gained after a trip, etc. The good news is we're making some progress in weight loss research(but still have a long ways to go) and there are decent appetite suppressants, etc. that can help you lose weight and keep it off if you go to a Dr. that specializes in this and that this isn't an impossible to solve willpower problem, but a medical one that can be fixed. The bad news is you'll probably be on a diet for the rest of your life or until we solve the above questions on satiety signals and hunger hormones. - tldr: it's a medical problem, not a willpower problem, and won't be fully solved until we treat it like such and invest the resources into finding a cure. Until then we're just treating the symptoms.

babyslothzoo 8y ago

Let's not forget that obesity is also socially contagious, and there is tremendous social pressure to conform to obesity, which is why if you're less fat than fatter people, they will publicly shame you for your lack of comparable obesity with comments like "you need to eat a cheese burger" or 'get some meat on those bones' etc.

shahbaby 8y ago

There are so many things wrong with this article, here are some facts. 1. More insulin causes the body to store fat. Less insulin causes the body to burn fat. 2. A low-carb diet lowers insulin levels. 3. Over the last few decades they started adding sugar (carbs) into almost every food product while the US government published a food pyramid with a heavy emphasis on carbs. 4. As the article states, now we have an obesity problem which was not as severe in the last few decades.

teekert 8y ago

FWIW The few times I was in the US I noticed a couple of things different from my country: 1. We drink water/coffee/tea all day (mostly without sugar), in the US I see sodas constantly (ok, usually light). Also, US guests here always ask for the soda machine while we constantly offer black coffee and water. 2. Portions are huge! One cannot go home with even a trace of hunger. Whereas here, it's ok if it at least tasted nice. 3. Almost all food was sweet, have some Asian wok food? Extremely sweet chili sauce on top. 4. Unlimited refills of soda. It's nice but you drink a lot :) 5. 4 p.m. snack? Out come the pastries (sugar and flour glued together with butter)! Here we may have a cookie or some fruit among my colleagues at least. 6. Breakfast? We have yogurt with muesli or a sandwich (meaning we put a 2 micron thick slice of cheese on the bread) and perhaps a boiled egg. In the US: The smell of Fried potatoes fills the room! 7. Pizza: Have a good pizza here and the sauce is just tomatoes and some garlic. Have a US pizza (sure we also have them here) it's sugar and salt all the way. Better drink 5 glasses of water 1 hour after eating over 10 mg of salt or you will get a headache. 8. We usually cook ourselves, from fresh vegetables and meat or fish. In the US it's much more common to eat out. It's very unlikely to pile sugar and salt into a home cooked meal. 9. I haven't seen the situation in schools but one hears these "pizza is vegetable" stories from the US, here the kids only drink water in school (at least ours, it's not obligatory but parents provide the drinks and most of them get water) and a piece of fruit. During lunch they get about 2 slices of bread with meat or cheese or chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag). At least that was my experience. Of course, I loved the burgers and after a few days of them you start to get that real craving for them. I love burgers and I love fries.

acconrad 8y ago

> “This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple,” Dr. Hall said. For the majority of people, it is that simple. That doesn't mean it's easy. To give most folks a hall pass on their poor eating habits with bariatric surgery or a special pill (which are for extreme outliers) is dishonest at best and harmful or dangerous at worst.

greenteabee 8y ago

I've had success getting in shape by tracking what I eat and following a weight training routine (PPL). Counting macros gives you a flexible diet. Buy a food scale and eat enough food to hit your macro goals to be at a daily 250-500 calorie deficit. That means you'll lose 0.5 - 1 pound per week. Once you're lean, eat at a slight surplus to gain some lean body mass. Sorry everyone, there's no magic pill that burns all of your fat. There's steroids, but you'll still have to eat enough and go to the gym. People want to get fit but don't put in the time nor effort.

gkfasdfasdf 8y ago

People in the 70s didn't all have bariatric surgery, or access to miracle drugs to control hunger hormones. Nor did we all develop some mutation that caused the current obesity epidemic. Clearly something in our environment has changed. Seems to me that it would be simpler to figure out what's changed between now and then, rather than try and invent new drugs. I.e. we need to do root cause analysis rather than flounder for workarounds. Some have suggested that the carb-heavy government food guide pyramids are to blame. That seems to be a good place to start.

Rainymood 8y ago

It takes time, delayed gratification in this era of instant gratification is tough.