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Hm, this also negates what I thought was Gary Taubes's most interesting point -- why is it that obese people eventually maintain their weight rather than keep g
by vilhelm_s 16y ago
Hm, this also negates what I thought was Gary Taubes's most interesting point -- why is it that obese people eventually maintain their weight rather than keep gaining. But if the maintenance need increases with body weight, there is no need to postulate any interesting regulation mechanism: just eating a constant amount of food would do it.
- mike_organon 16y agoNo, in the graph, the green line is pulling the red line up - this is exactly what Taubes says is wrong because the delta is so small. The blue line is a red herring because that's no longer the maintenance weight. Taubes is saying that kind of precision in calorie counting is absurd, so can't be the explanation for other people that have constant weight over decades. How could a person on the blue line have eaten with such a small margin of error? It's incredibly difficult to eat a constant amount. People generally eat to satiety, and that changes with weight. The hypothesis Taubes puts forward in the book is that increased weight causes one to eat more, not the other way around (which is conventional wisdom). So the question is, what caused the weight gain (fat storage)? Taubes argues in the book, it's carbs and insulin, not dietary fat.