11 ms·

The Fat Trap: Our Bodies Are Fighting Against Us

92 points by tysone 15y ago

ellyagg 15y ago
What a fatalistic article. Before taking the tone that this article does, I would need to see hundreds of studies suggesting that reversing overweight tendencies is not possible. It may be the minority, but legions of people have reversed their weight problems, and not all required herculean efforts. It's very doubtful that once you're significantly overweight, there's no hope. While we need this research, this article spins it to make it less than helpful for a certain segment of the population. Rather than focusing on the people (most of them), who can't maintain their weight after dieting, we really need more research explaining those who can, and not simple dismissals that those rare people are machines whose lives revolve around counting calories. People can change their metabolism. For example, there is a case study documenting someone who lost almost 400 pounds over the course of just over a year, using a strict fast[1]. After 5 years, he had maintained his weight loss. Why was that? I can think of possible reasons that have not been thoroughly studied. For instance, after several days or weeks, people on strict fasts report not feeling hungry any longer. Is it possible one's metabolism/sense of hunger resets on a strict fast? Long term fasting can be dangerous, not least of which because very overweight people often have other health problems. The study cited mentions several people who died on long term fasts, particularly during refeeding. Due to the danger, and probable need for doctor supervision, safe systems of long term strict fasts haven't necessarily been fully fleshed out, although some fasting diets exist that aren't strict fasts, and I would imagine would be quite safe, like PSMF or Dukan diet. What I like about a fasting diet is that there's no room for fooling yourself. As soon as you introduce attempts to mimic yummy foods or introduce varieties of flavor and texture, you open the door to cheating and desiring things you can't have. If, on the other hand, you're consuming 600 calories of whey protein and some green powder for nutrients, there's little room for error. We know that the human metabolism isn't a simple calories in, calories out furnace. Medical research is very clear that this isn't the case. Good Calories, Bad Calories is heavily cited. One example that confounds a simple arithmetical analysis is that the body uses a lot more energy to turn protein into fat. So the body uses calories to store calories in that case. Another example is that eating carbs actually changes most people's behavior: Unless they are consciously counting, people will tend to eat more food if they are eating carbs. [1] http://pmj.bmj.com/content/49/569/203.full.pdf http://pmj.bmj.com/content/49/569/203.full.pdf
- cliptomania 15y ago
  Agreed. It's odd considering that people have no difficulty accepting that alcoholics have a permanently altered relationship with booze. Given that ex-fatties still have to eat, my idea would be to have the same meal every day, liquidized and diluted with as much water as possible, and to take no pleasure from consuming it. (Pleasure can be found elsewhere, e.g. in meaningful work.) >For instance, after several days or weeks, people on strict fasts report not feeling hungry any longer. That is true in my experience (I once fasted for 15 days). In a fast there is opportunity for renewal of brain tissue: http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909%2811%2900052-X?switch=standard http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909%2811%... Ofc, this approach won't work if the fast is too short (it takes other tissues several weeks/months to renew themselves, e.g. skin = 6 weeks). So some limited food intake is necessary. Also won't work if the subject develops, say, a cocaine or porn habit to replace food.
  - gwern 15y ago
    > It's odd considering that people have no difficulty accepting that alcoholics have a permanently altered relationship with booze. Odd, perhaps - but was that always the case? Was there no 'medicalization' of alcholism (or tobacco addiction, or eating disorders, or...) which turned it from a moral failing to a disease?
jlarocco 15y ago
I think part of the problem is dieting. 500 calories a day sounds miserable. I'd be interested to see if they get the same results for exercise. A few years ago I dropped about 100 pounds, and I've yet to put the weight back on. What did it for me was lots of biking, hiking, trail running, and skiing. At this point, I have so much fun "exercising", I don't know if I could put the weight back on if I wanted too.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  500 cal/day isn't miserable, it's insane. It's counter to well over 50 years (if not more) of medical evidence and experience with sustainable weight loss. Look up the Minnesota Starvation Experiment -- used to study the effects of long-term starvation among WWII POWs and concentration camp survivors. This involved six months of semi-starvation -- at 1500 cal/day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment Fewer than ~1200-800 cal/day is generally considered "VLCD": very low calorie dieting. If macronutrients and micronutrients aren't very carefully controlled, the body is essentially eating itself in slow motion. And odds are very good you wouldn't be able to exercise much if at all at 500 cal/day.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
cliftonk 15y ago
Carbohydrates produce insulin, insulin causes us to store fat. It's not complicated. There have been scientific studies out since the 30's entirely dismissing calorie counting as being effective. Good Calories, Bad Calories: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787 http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventi...
- kenjackson 15y ago
  It's almost like you didn't read the article. Which is too bad, because it's probably one of the best weight loss articles I've ever come across.
  - rubashov 15y ago
    I thought the article wasn't very good. It goes on at length with the only takeaway being that fat people have a very hard time maintaining weight loss and we're not sure why.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Really, that was your only takeaway? <shrug> OK. And note, your synopsis is not even correct. It's that people who have lost (a certain amount of) weight have a hard maintaining weight loss. There's data to indicate what some causes might be, but nothing conclusive yet.
  - Shorel 15y ago
    In the article they reference low fat diets and calorie counting, in every single study cited. In fact, the word carbohydrates appears only once in the whole article. In Taubes book calories from fat != calories from sugar. It's not hard to see why they reach very different conclusions.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Reread the article. Some quotes to help you process it: "There is no consistent pattern to how people in the registry lost weight — some did it on Weight Watchers, others with Jenny Craig, some by cutting carbs on the Atkins diet and a very small number lost weight through surgery." "Fat, sugar and carbohydrates in processed foods may very well be culprits in the nation’s obesity problem. But there is tremendous variation in an individual’s response." The article isn't about good vs bad calories. It's about your body's fundamental changes in response to weight loss. "For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place." Read the article. Don't skim it. Actually read it.
kenjackson 15y ago
This article seems to be to be strong justification for policies to keep people from getting overweight to begin with. I know for example, there have been battles in school districts to get rid of flavored milk and such. I really would love to see better foods in schools. It's largely a captive audience. If we could reduce the number of people who leave high school overweight, even if by just a small number, it would probably have pretty decent long-term benefits. And likewise better college programs. For example, at my college, if there was a "good health" program I could have easily signed up for, which included aerobic/weight training and meals there's a good chance I would have done it.
- bgentry 15y ago
  Exactly. Once you've become obese, you've already lost (in general). Not the most encouraging thing to say to those who are already overweight, but it's an important detail nonetheless.
  - radu_floricica 15y ago
    One you start a heavy diet, you've lost. There may be ways to lose weight that don't prompt the same response for your body. Maybe losing weight much slower? Or alternating fasts with periods of eating well? There is still much research to be done, and many ideas to be tested.
    - bgentry 15y ago
      Yep, good point. Considering how much nutritional theory has been turned upside down in the past 10 years it's difficult to know when the body of research will more accurately reflect the numerous subtleties in the ways our bodies work.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    No. It's harder. There does appear to be a "fat memory" (there's also a muscle memory -- those who've done strength training in their youth will make faster, bigger gains when resuming training later on). But, absent some underlying organic cause or insult (injury, genetic propensity, illness), the same principles that work for those who have little trouble losing weight work for those who are obese. Perhaps a little more time and effort are involved. The lesson that's been instructive to me as I travel through the decades has been to watch those who were typically thin as they hit their 30s and 40s. If they aren't practicing good nutrition and activity practices, even they tend towards girth, though it's usually a potbelly rather than an all-encompassing growth. Nobody gets a free ride on this one.
Travis 15y ago
Having just finished reading "Willpower", I wanted to comment here. The primary hypothesis of the book is that humans have a store of "willpower", which is depleted every time we exercise it (including making tough decisions) [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion]. When we avoid our favorite foods, we deplete our willpower. When that reserve is gone, it is much more difficult for us to make the "right" choice. The really interesting twist was when they presented the brain glucose study results. The authors suggest that it's glucose levels in the brain that partially determine the size of the willpower reserve. Thus, when you diet, you not only deplete your reserve by making a decision to avoid fatty foots, but you also starve your brain of the glucose it needs to replenish the ability to make tough decisions. They support it with some interesting and fairly compelling evidence. I highly recommend reading it.
- tptacek 15y ago
  This is also something dealt with pretty early in Daniel Kahneman's excellent _Thinking Fast And Slow_.
  - radu_floricica 15y ago
    "Thinking Fast and Slow" was the wider, more interesting book, but I found "Willpower" to be the practical one. Got at least a couple of potentially life changing things from it - its views on dieting, and the concept that creating a habit gives basically free willpower. But they are both excellent books, and I would be extremely happy to see them reaching as wide an audience as possible.
- Splines 15y ago
  Hence the saying, "Never shop hungry". It's a hard learned lesson, but treating future-you as someone who is lazy and weak-willed pays off.
- daenz 15y ago
  > The primary hypothesis of the book is that humans have a store of "willpower", which is depleted every time we exercise it (including making tough decisions) That's pretty interesting. I wonder if this says something about the inevitability of a level of corruption in government (government, by definition, makes tough decisions, depleting willpower, but willpower is necessary for resisting corruption).
Tichy 15y ago
In a way, isn't it a good thing if the body can get by with less calories? Personally I find it a bit frustrating that my body is so inefficient. For example, Chinese people are certainly as smart or smarter than I am, yet their bodies tend to be smaller so presumably they require less calories for maintenance. Of course the brain still craving for more is a problem, but being able to get by on less calories seems like a good thing.
ebbv 15y ago
What a crock of shit. There's always some new study that lazy people want to use to excuse being fat and lazy. I was fat for most of my adult life but when I was 30 I finally got sick of it and spent the next 18 months losing over 100 lbs to get healthy. Am I miraculously cured and could never get fat again? No. I could get fat again easily and during the holidays I put on like a few pounds due to bad habits. But I'm taking it back off. It's a constant battle, not "with my body" -- which implies that it's out of your control, like cancer -- but with the bad habits I developed during childhood and perfected during my 20's. I have to fight against them and I have to NOT be lazy, I have to exercise, in order to avoid getting fat again. There's no "magic" going on, we've understood for many decades that weight loss and gain are ALL about calories in vs. calories out, and that's true for everybody except a tiny, tiny percent who have various medical conditions. When someone loses the weight during some "trick diet" like special shakes, and then they go off the shakes and gain the weight back, that's no more surprising than if someone who is skinny suddenly starts eating 5 large pizzas a day and gains weight. Lasting weight loss requires that you change your habits and learn to eat for fuel and fight against your tendency to eat to relieve boredom, for comfort, for pleasure, etc. Articles like this which encourage people to put their hands in the air and say "It's not my fault! I can't help it!" make me sick because I think of people like my aunt who suffered for years from diabetes, going blind and eventually dying, which was NEEDLESS. If she had only been able to get help and actually lose weight and get healthy, she could have been happy, healthy and might still be with us today.
- rubashov 15y ago
  I do find it interesting that over the same period the obesity epidemic developed standards of public dress, and arguably behavior, deteriorated badly. People got fat at the same time flipflops and cheesy t-shirts became suitable public attire. Pure coincidence? Everybody wants to write about the biological science of the obesity epidemic, but it's pretty hard to argue that people nowadays are just less disciplined in various respects.
  - electromagnetic 15y ago
    > People got fat at the same time flipflops and cheesy t-shirts became suitable public attire. Pure coincidence? Yes, as before the 1950's it was common to see the working class wearing 'waist overalls' (AKA baggy jeans) and wife beaters in public. It was after the 1950's that they became a staple in teen culture and spread to the middle class as those teens matured. I don't see how there's a difference between cheesy t-shirts and wearing a wife beater (technically underwear) in public. I actually think t-shirts are more acceptable, despite wife beaters being a staple, like jeans, in the working class back before the 1900's. They became acceptable footwear in the post-war period when soldiers returned from Japan with them. Note that Japan has had sandals as a cultural staple for centuries, to the point that they invented the tabi(?) AKA toe socks to be worn with them (because, you know inventing real shoes that keep your feet warm was just an absurd notion). So despite being commonly regarded as thin compared to westerners, I suppose they've become grossly obese by their own standards since they invented the sandal. It's quite frankly absurd logic. I might as well say that Americans are fatter than Brits because it's acceptable to wear a lounge suit to formal events, whilst in the UK its less acceptable and generally only a full tux is regarded as fitting formal wear. Sorry, the reason Americans have the fattest arses in the world is because its government gives massive subsidies to corn growers. Corn incidentally is a great source of calories and low source of nutrients. This means poor people have to consume larger amounts of food to get the same nutrition. This means they tend to get obese, because despite eating copious amounts of calories, they're still malnourished. People get fat because of the abundance of cheap, low quality calories. The most likely reason why South East Asians are healthier than westerners is because their government subsidizes higher nutritional quality foods. Rice for instance is a better start than corn. Similarly subsidizing salmon and tuna as opposed to cattle farm beef is again better. I'm not saying beef is bad for you, but the shit in a McDonalds patty is, especially when you can get 1lb for like $2. The stuff you're paying $15 a lb for is likely not as bad as the vegans would want you to believe.
jbwyme 15y ago
The whole weight loss approach described in the article seems flawed to begin with. The human body is an adaptive organism and will fight any drastic changes trying to stay in balance. 500 calories a day will certainly cause the body to begin changing hormone levels. Then you come out of it after a while and start eating correctly you still have severely imbalances hormones (relative to normal levels). So now you're eating healthy but have completely screwed up the way your body handles food, essentially storing more calories than before. If you slowly shift into better habits and allow your body time to keep up you'll end up with a calorie burning machine. The main problem is people get so motivated to change they dive in head first (such as. 500 calorie per day diet), throw everything out of whack, try to maintain their losses which start coming back and end up worse than where they started.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  The human body is an adaptive organism and will fight any drastic changes trying to stay in balance. You do realize that's pure speculation on your part. It's nice to be able to just say things like, "the brain is so powerful that if you imagine eating it will be like you did". But you actually need the science and data to back it up. Furthermore, where is the line? Is 500 calories too much? What about a 50 calorie per day deficit? What about 1 calorie? Is it better to lose the calories per day, or in a single sitting? Does it matter the food composition? Does it matter if the deficit is paired with exercise? What if the deficit is purely exercise (no reduction in caloric intake)? Etc... You use the scientific method to try to understand this. Not just speculation from random Joe's on the corner, because frankly everyone and their mom has an opinion. And that's why everyone and their mom has a new diet they've just introduced.
  - mgcross 15y ago
    Pubmed has a lot of abstracts pertaining to metabolic rate: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198305 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198305 "Body weight is defended in non-obese participants during modest caloric restriction, evidenced by metabolic adaptation of RMR and reduced energy expenditure through physical activity." There are plenty of other studies that support CR as a factor in lowered RMR. I read one (can't remember where) that used non-obese women. IIRC, the women on 300kcal deficits had no change in metabolic rate, while those on 500 did.
saturdaysaint 15y ago
Other people have pointed out that the author's stated theory of calory intake isn't universally accepted, but I'd add that the author's conception of exercise is also problematic. The value of the cardio she holds up as evidence of her subjects devotion to weight loss is suspect. She mentions changes to her subjects musculature on restricted calorie/high cardio diets as an impediment to future weight loss. So why not do what's practically canon among modern athletes and bodybuilders - make healthy muscle development (or at least preservation) a primary goal of the diet/exercise regime. In other words, do the opposite of what all these beleaguered people are doing? Bodybuilders disdain cardio because it results in hormone changes that actively inhibit muscle development. Conversely, weight lifting boosts testosterone and lean body mass. The whole outlook here is so out of keeping with the wisdom of the highly fit people I know (and my own experience shedding and keeping off 50 pounds of excess weight for five years without the grueling effort she describes) makes me question her conclusions.
- aantix 15y ago
  Adding muscle is 1) extremely difficult (no, you cannot add 30 lbs of muscle in 30 days unlike the ads would make you believe) and 2) the effects are largely exaggerated. Quoting Lyle McDonald, a noted leader in fitness science and nutrition : "Some of this also comes from the still gross misconception that ‘muscle burns a ton of calories’ (a myth I took apart in Dissecting the Energy Needs of the Body – Research Review). That is, they hope to jack up metabolic rate by increasing muscle mass. Which is a futile activity because the effect is minimal (on top of the fact that the obese are already carrying extra muscle mass). A pound of muscle burns about 6 calories at rest, you have to add a ton to impact on metabolic rate (see also the next issue I discuss, low metabolic rate isn’t a problem). And that takes a lot of time, time better spent focusing on active fat loss."
  - ellyagg 15y ago
    I added 25 lbs of muscle in <month. Since high school I'd never been able able to gain much muscle. Even lifting heavily and being quite strong and eating voraciously the highest I could get to was 163 lbs at 5'11" when I was 25. Earlier this year, I heard of the Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD) diet and tried it. I went from 152 to 177 in less than a month, while doing CrossFit three days a week, and one day each a week testing my 1RM max in the squat and bench press. I've never had any appreciable bodyfat (~12%) and I did not gain any during this time. I did not use any supplements of any kind, not creatine, nor steroids, nor insulin. Edit: Incidentally, since it did indeed happen, the incredulity expressed by the down votes indicates just how proud I should be about it. ;) I never complain about down votes, but there is something mind bending about being down voted for something you know to be pure fact and to realize your down voters literally have no idea what they're talking about.
endtime 15y ago
It depresses me to see the results of people being misguided into caloric restriction. Good Calories, Bad Calories should be required reading at weight loss programs: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787 http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventi...
spodek 15y ago
I didn't see the biggest data point to me, which is that Americans have become more obese in the past several decades, far too short a time for our genetics to have changed. This data point suggests a major non-genetic component to getting obese. Processed foods, labor-saving devices, and cars have come into existence and dominated our lives. It's hard not to conclude they play a major role.
- radu_floricica 15y ago
  The article is not about getting obese, but about the fundamental flaw of all dieting methods - being "famished" changes the body and makes it much easier to gain weight. If anything, this knowledge could put dieting itself among the risk factors for obesity.
  - berntb 15y ago
    The interesting thing to me in the article is that these metabolical changes show up at 10% weight loss. What happens if someone lose 5%, stay at that weight a year and then lose another 5%? Will the changes still occur? An important point implied in the article, is that weight lifting works. (As the GP discussed.) (Personally, I was outsourced a year ago and took the chance to remove sugar from my diet. Works well, but it might be something else in mybnew environment that makes me lose weight.)
- drcube 15y ago
  Your point is valid, but it doesn't rule out genetics. Our genes express themselves differently in different environments. So our changing environment could cause people on average to get fatter, while genes still determine who gains weight and how much.
- algoshift 15y ago
  I've been studying this peripherally for the past year or two. Nothing too scientific but, yes, methodical little experiments here and there. I might put-up a website to see if my thoughts help others. I think I would say that my first finding is perhaps an obvious one: The very first requirement for weight loss is behavior modification. Obvious from the outside. But I think the reality is that from the inside, if you will, a person can focus too much on the wrong behaviors. For example, if you need to work out for an hour a day, five days a week to loose weight the entire endeavor is destined to fail from inception. That is not a sustainable modification in behavior but for a few individuals for whom the new regime becomes a fun part of their lives. Health clubs make their money by signing-up ten times more people that will fit into their buildings and they can do this because they know that people will not stick with the program. The other finding might be that fast weight loss is another formula for failure. My opinion is that fat loss should take one to two years. Many reasons for this. Perhaps the most important of them is what I mentioned above: behavior modification. Without permanently changing the way you do things, failure is guaranteed. Slow weight loss allows you to have a long "conversation with yourself", if you will, where you explore strengths, weaknesses, desires, success, failure, ideas, methods and, in general, converge on a path that is sustainable. And that's the third idea: Converge on a long term sustainable solution. No solution is worth the effort and expense if it makes you do things that you can't reasonably do for the rest of your life. Signing-up for programs that ship you food on a weekly basis is not a way to live your life. What if you travel or don't have the money? Going to the gym 10 hours a week is ridiculous for most of us. That is not a long-term solution. Living on beans and lettuce and diet drinks is, well, not living. A long and carefully managed process of converging on a sustainable solution has major benefits that can and should last for the rest of your life. You should be able to pig out during the holidays and have that slice of cheesecake or ice-cream when you want to. However, your long-term modified behavior should kick-in with enough regularly to guide you back onto that sustainable long-term path I was talking about. I don't know what the motivation behind a lot of these studies might be. Sometimes it seems that all they are after is a pill or a new surgery they can sell you. Humans don't need any of that to maintain healthy body composition, they just need to do the right things, nature and biology will take care of the rest.
dredmorbius 15y ago
Where this article (and a great many like it) annoy the bejesus out of me is in their sole focus on diet for fat loss. Yes, diet matters. In fact, diet matters a lot. It matters in both quantity (the old "calories in/calories out"), quality (especially macronutrient breakdown and degree of processed foods), and timing (particularly of carbs in morning/post-workout feedings). But diet is not the whole story. Your body is comprised of several types of tissue. For the most part, the variable elements are adipose mass (a/k/a "fat"), skeletal muscle (those things Arnold Schwarzenneger made famous), and retained fluid (a/k/a "water weight") which is highly variable, responsive to carb loading, inflammation, and other factors, and is most of what rapid weight loss programs target -- which by analog means it's not long-lasting weight loss. You won't see appreciable changes, generally, in bone mass or organ size, absent excess skin on the morbidly obese. The body has a complex set of autoregulatory systems, which seem to go out of whack under conditions prevalent in modern industrialized societies: abundent processed high-carbohydrate diets, little activity, social stresses, environmental toxins (particularly androgenic compounds). And yes, genetic and other factors play a role. The question is, what can you do about it. The article suggests "eat less". Eating less can influence your body fat. And skeletal muscle, though not in a good way by itself (dieters lose 20-25% or more of their weight as muscle, absent countermeasures). But it's also going to kick off a bunch of adaptations which largely work against the goals of a deliberate low-calorie dieter. So, what else can you do about it? Pick up heavy shit. Lifting weights is what stimulates skeletal muscle to grow. Add 2-3 days of 30-60 minutes of resistance training to your program, and you'll retain, or add, muscle, while losing body fat. This is what programs such as "Body for Life" and others promote. It's basic stuff that strength trainers and strongmen have known about for over 100 years. Compound, freeweight, whole-body exercise: squats, deadlifts, press, bench press, chins (if you can do them), rows, pull-downs. Some core/ab stability work. Especially if you're past 30 or 40. Your body is now well into losing the muscle it had originally had, at the rate of about 1/2 pound per year. You can literally turn back years of loss in a few months of training, to great effect. Move. Intensely if possible. For someone grossly out of shape, simply walking for 20, or 15, or 10, or even 5 minutes a day is a good start. But if you can walk or jog for a good 20-40 minutes, what you want to do is up the ante with intensity, not duration, with high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Google "Tabata intervals" for a particularly engaging pasttime. No, doing the 20 minute treadmill waddle is NOT sufficient. Though if you're doing HIIT 2-3x weekly, another few sessions of longer moderate-intensity cardio will help. So, yet another article saying "low-calorie dieting alone results in temporary weight loss in subjects" is hardly surprising. What have those in the know long known? That low, and especially very-low (>1000 cal/day deficit) dieting results in a high degree of lean-tissue loss, that metabolism slows by 40% after a few weeks, and that the post-diet recovery generally results in gaining yet more fat on a muscle-deprived frame, for a worse overall health outcome. And we know this shit, well: http://alwyncosgrove.com/2010/01/hierarchy-of-fat-loss/ http://alwyncosgrove.com/2010/01/hierarchy-of-fat-loss/ http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html A great article previously posted to HN is "Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie". This NY Times piece falls well into that lie category: http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie/print/ http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness... So: - Yes, diet. Cut processed foods, get sufficient protein, minimize excess carbs, eliminate junk calories (white anything, soda, HFCS, trans-fats, sugar, fruit juice). Figure out your BMR and estimated activity level (NOT your BMI, another bullshit fitness concept that needs to be shot dead) as a ballpark sanity check for calories. - Pick up heavy shit. Specifically, a whole-body, freeweight, compound-movement strength program 2-4x weekly. If you can't use freeweights, machines are OK, but you'll do better with stuff that moves freely through space for numerous reasons. - Move. If you're not moving at all, then start with something, and increase that until you're at 20-40+ minutes daily. If you're already moving, increase intensity 2-3x weekly. If you're doing both, add some more moderate cardio, particular morning fasted activity (your body's got no option but to burn fat at this time). - Sleep, manage stress, get approriate recovery, cut out toxins in your life (chemical and social), address injuries or illnesses. Be gentle but firm with yourself. If you want more, take a look at The New Rules of Lifting, Body for Life, or Mark Rippetoe's excellent Starting Strength. In time you'll see big changes. Pretty much guaranteed. Oh: yes, it's a lifestyle thing, you see. You'll have to keep doing some of this for most of the rest of your life. Odds are you may even find you like both the activity and the results. If not, and you're honestly following the program, we can talk about what else to look at. (Edits: minor typo/style fixes)
scelerat 15y ago
Exercising seems to be discussed in this article in mostly abstract terms and that's a real shame. People need to talk more about the quality of the exercise being performed as well as the time spent doing it. "Vigorous gardening"? People don't like to talk about it or do it because changing what you normally do from day to day is hard. I know because in the past I have gone from being a maintenance runner to being a semi-competitive distance runner and understand that carving out the time and putting in the effort to make those changes was difficult mentally and socially. I saw the results not only in race times, but in the fit of my jeans, pounds on the scale and skin on my face. When I reduced my effort, weight and inches returned. Adding more prepared/restaurant food and alcohol increased the effect. Now I'm approaching middle age, have slacked off the running and am watching my belly slowly grow. I know if I want it to stop or reverse, I'm going to have to change my ways: less late night partying, more discipline and even some pain. Aggressive yard work isn't going to do it, nor is biking to work (4 miles each way, mostly flat). Merely changing your routine is hard enough. Changing it to introduce more discomfort (at least for a time, until you get used to it and your more energetic routine seems normal) is very difficult. It's difficult enough for me, a former football and track athlete who knows what to expect and has a decent tolerance for pain. It's got to be much worse for people who haven't gone through the cycles and don't know what their bodies are capable of doing and what their minds are capable of overcoming. Talking about the exercise component can often drift off into lazy-shaming or sound like macho story-telling, but every time I hear from overweight family members or read an article like this one I always wonder, are you going for a short-term dip, or are you going to change your life? Because if it's the latter, you must prepare yourself for considerable inertia, metaphorically and physically. And then push through it.
- peterwwillis 15y ago
  Group exercise programs can help motivate you to work through discomfort and stick to a regular schedule. I highly recommend looking at local gyms and independent trainers (ever see 5 people doing exercises in the park?) to find a group program that fits your schedule. The camaraderie sure helped me stick to a really grueling program and the benefits made it addictive.
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92 points by tysone 15y ago

What a fatalistic article. Before taking the tone that this article does, I would need to see hundreds of studies suggesting that reversing overweight tendencies is not possible. It may be the minority, but legions of people have reversed their weight problems, and not all required herculean efforts. It's very doubtful that once you're significantly overweight, there's no hope. While we need this research, this article spins it to make it less than helpful for a certain segment of the population. Rather than focusing on the people (most of them), who can't maintain their weight after dieting, we really need more research explaining those who can, and not simple dismissals that those rare people are machines whose lives revolve around counting calories. People can change their metabolism. For example, there is a case study documenting someone who lost almost 400 pounds over the course of just over a year, using a strict fast[1]. After 5 years, he had maintained his weight loss. Why was that? I can think of possible reasons that have not been thoroughly studied. For instance, after several days or weeks, people on strict fasts report not feeling hungry any longer. Is it possible one's metabolism/sense of hunger resets on a strict fast? Long term fasting can be dangerous, not least of which because very overweight people often have other health problems. The study cited mentions several people who died on long term fasts, particularly during refeeding. Due to the danger, and probable need for doctor supervision, safe systems of long term strict fasts haven't necessarily been fully fleshed out, although some fasting diets exist that aren't strict fasts, and I would imagine would be quite safe, like PSMF or Dukan diet. What I like about a fasting diet is that there's no room for fooling yourself. As soon as you introduce attempts to mimic yummy foods or introduce varieties of flavor and texture, you open the door to cheating and desiring things you can't have. If, on the other hand, you're consuming 600 calories of whey protein and some green powder for nutrients, there's little room for error. We know that the human metabolism isn't a simple calories in, calories out furnace. Medical research is very clear that this isn't the case. Good Calories, Bad Calories is heavily cited. One example that confounds a simple arithmetical analysis is that the body uses a lot more energy to turn protein into fat. So the body uses calories to store calories in that case. Another example is that eating carbs actually changes most people's behavior: Unless they are consciously counting, people will tend to eat more food if they are eating carbs. [1] http://pmj.bmj.com/content/49/569/203.full.pdf http://pmj.bmj.com/content/49/569/203.full.pdf

cliptomania 15y ago
Agreed. It's odd considering that people have no difficulty accepting that alcoholics have a permanently altered relationship with booze. Given that ex-fatties still have to eat, my idea would be to have the same meal every day, liquidized and diluted with as much water as possible, and to take no pleasure from consuming it. (Pleasure can be found elsewhere, e.g. in meaningful work.) >For instance, after several days or weeks, people on strict fasts report not feeling hungry any longer. That is true in my experience (I once fasted for 15 days). In a fast there is opportunity for renewal of brain tissue: http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909%2811%2900052-X?switch=standard http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909%2811%... Ofc, this approach won't work if the fast is too short (it takes other tissues several weeks/months to renew themselves, e.g. skin = 6 weeks). So some limited food intake is necessary. Also won't work if the subject develops, say, a cocaine or porn habit to replace food.
- gwern 15y ago
  > It's odd considering that people have no difficulty accepting that alcoholics have a permanently altered relationship with booze. Odd, perhaps - but was that always the case? Was there no 'medicalization' of alcholism (or tobacco addiction, or eating disorders, or...) which turned it from a moral failing to a disease?

jlarocco 15y ago

I think part of the problem is dieting. 500 calories a day sounds miserable. I'd be interested to see if they get the same results for exercise. A few years ago I dropped about 100 pounds, and I've yet to put the weight back on. What did it for me was lots of biking, hiking, trail running, and skiing. At this point, I have so much fun "exercising", I don't know if I could put the weight back on if I wanted too.

dredmorbius 15y ago
500 cal/day isn't miserable, it's insane. It's counter to well over 50 years (if not more) of medical evidence and experience with sustainable weight loss. Look up the Minnesota Starvation Experiment -- used to study the effects of long-term starvation among WWII POWs and concentration camp survivors. This involved six months of semi-starvation -- at 1500 cal/day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment Fewer than ~1200-800 cal/day is generally considered "VLCD": very low calorie dieting. If macronutrients and micronutrients aren't very carefully controlled, the body is essentially eating itself in slow motion. And odds are very good you wouldn't be able to exercise much if at all at 500 cal/day.

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cliftonk 15y ago

Carbohydrates produce insulin, insulin causes us to store fat. It's not complicated. There have been scientific studies out since the 30's entirely dismissing calorie counting as being effective. Good Calories, Bad Calories: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787 http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventi...

kenjackson 15y ago
It's almost like you didn't read the article. Which is too bad, because it's probably one of the best weight loss articles I've ever come across.
- rubashov 15y ago
  I thought the article wasn't very good. It goes on at length with the only takeaway being that fat people have a very hard time maintaining weight loss and we're not sure why.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Really, that was your only takeaway? <shrug> OK. And note, your synopsis is not even correct. It's that people who have lost (a certain amount of) weight have a hard maintaining weight loss. There's data to indicate what some causes might be, but nothing conclusive yet.
- Shorel 15y ago
  In the article they reference low fat diets and calorie counting, in every single study cited. In fact, the word carbohydrates appears only once in the whole article. In Taubes book calories from fat != calories from sugar. It's not hard to see why they reach very different conclusions.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Reread the article. Some quotes to help you process it: "There is no consistent pattern to how people in the registry lost weight — some did it on Weight Watchers, others with Jenny Craig, some by cutting carbs on the Atkins diet and a very small number lost weight through surgery." "Fat, sugar and carbohydrates in processed foods may very well be culprits in the nation’s obesity problem. But there is tremendous variation in an individual’s response." The article isn't about good vs bad calories. It's about your body's fundamental changes in response to weight loss. "For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place." Read the article. Don't skim it. Actually read it.

kenjackson 15y ago

This article seems to be to be strong justification for policies to keep people from getting overweight to begin with. I know for example, there have been battles in school districts to get rid of flavored milk and such. I really would love to see better foods in schools. It's largely a captive audience. If we could reduce the number of people who leave high school overweight, even if by just a small number, it would probably have pretty decent long-term benefits. And likewise better college programs. For example, at my college, if there was a "good health" program I could have easily signed up for, which included aerobic/weight training and meals there's a good chance I would have done it.

bgentry 15y ago
Exactly. Once you've become obese, you've already lost (in general). Not the most encouraging thing to say to those who are already overweight, but it's an important detail nonetheless.
- radu_floricica 15y ago
  One you start a heavy diet, you've lost. There may be ways to lose weight that don't prompt the same response for your body. Maybe losing weight much slower? Or alternating fasts with periods of eating well? There is still much research to be done, and many ideas to be tested.
  - bgentry 15y ago
    Yep, good point. Considering how much nutritional theory has been turned upside down in the past 10 years it's difficult to know when the body of research will more accurately reflect the numerous subtleties in the ways our bodies work.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  No. It's harder. There does appear to be a "fat memory" (there's also a muscle memory -- those who've done strength training in their youth will make faster, bigger gains when resuming training later on). But, absent some underlying organic cause or insult (injury, genetic propensity, illness), the same principles that work for those who have little trouble losing weight work for those who are obese. Perhaps a little more time and effort are involved. The lesson that's been instructive to me as I travel through the decades has been to watch those who were typically thin as they hit their 30s and 40s. If they aren't practicing good nutrition and activity practices, even they tend towards girth, though it's usually a potbelly rather than an all-encompassing growth. Nobody gets a free ride on this one.

Travis 15y ago

Having just finished reading "Willpower", I wanted to comment here. The primary hypothesis of the book is that humans have a store of "willpower", which is depleted every time we exercise it (including making tough decisions) [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion]. When we avoid our favorite foods, we deplete our willpower. When that reserve is gone, it is much more difficult for us to make the "right" choice. The really interesting twist was when they presented the brain glucose study results. The authors suggest that it's glucose levels in the brain that partially determine the size of the willpower reserve. Thus, when you diet, you not only deplete your reserve by making a decision to avoid fatty foots, but you also starve your brain of the glucose it needs to replenish the ability to make tough decisions. They support it with some interesting and fairly compelling evidence. I highly recommend reading it.

tptacek 15y ago
This is also something dealt with pretty early in Daniel Kahneman's excellent _Thinking Fast And Slow_.
- radu_floricica 15y ago
  "Thinking Fast and Slow" was the wider, more interesting book, but I found "Willpower" to be the practical one. Got at least a couple of potentially life changing things from it - its views on dieting, and the concept that creating a habit gives basically free willpower. But they are both excellent books, and I would be extremely happy to see them reaching as wide an audience as possible.
Splines 15y ago
Hence the saying, "Never shop hungry". It's a hard learned lesson, but treating future-you as someone who is lazy and weak-willed pays off.
daenz 15y ago
> The primary hypothesis of the book is that humans have a store of "willpower", which is depleted every time we exercise it (including making tough decisions) That's pretty interesting. I wonder if this says something about the inevitability of a level of corruption in government (government, by definition, makes tough decisions, depleting willpower, but willpower is necessary for resisting corruption).

Tichy 15y ago

In a way, isn't it a good thing if the body can get by with less calories? Personally I find it a bit frustrating that my body is so inefficient. For example, Chinese people are certainly as smart or smarter than I am, yet their bodies tend to be smaller so presumably they require less calories for maintenance. Of course the brain still craving for more is a problem, but being able to get by on less calories seems like a good thing.

ebbv 15y ago

What a crock of shit. There's always some new study that lazy people want to use to excuse being fat and lazy. I was fat for most of my adult life but when I was 30 I finally got sick of it and spent the next 18 months losing over 100 lbs to get healthy. Am I miraculously cured and could never get fat again? No. I could get fat again easily and during the holidays I put on like a few pounds due to bad habits. But I'm taking it back off. It's a constant battle, not "with my body" -- which implies that it's out of your control, like cancer -- but with the bad habits I developed during childhood and perfected during my 20's. I have to fight against them and I have to NOT be lazy, I have to exercise, in order to avoid getting fat again. There's no "magic" going on, we've understood for many decades that weight loss and gain are ALL about calories in vs. calories out, and that's true for everybody except a tiny, tiny percent who have various medical conditions. When someone loses the weight during some "trick diet" like special shakes, and then they go off the shakes and gain the weight back, that's no more surprising than if someone who is skinny suddenly starts eating 5 large pizzas a day and gains weight. Lasting weight loss requires that you change your habits and learn to eat for fuel and fight against your tendency to eat to relieve boredom, for comfort, for pleasure, etc. Articles like this which encourage people to put their hands in the air and say "It's not my fault! I can't help it!" make me sick because I think of people like my aunt who suffered for years from diabetes, going blind and eventually dying, which was NEEDLESS. If she had only been able to get help and actually lose weight and get healthy, she could have been happy, healthy and might still be with us today.

rubashov 15y ago
I do find it interesting that over the same period the obesity epidemic developed standards of public dress, and arguably behavior, deteriorated badly. People got fat at the same time flipflops and cheesy t-shirts became suitable public attire. Pure coincidence? Everybody wants to write about the biological science of the obesity epidemic, but it's pretty hard to argue that people nowadays are just less disciplined in various respects.
- electromagnetic 15y ago
  > People got fat at the same time flipflops and cheesy t-shirts became suitable public attire. Pure coincidence? Yes, as before the 1950's it was common to see the working class wearing 'waist overalls' (AKA baggy jeans) and wife beaters in public. It was after the 1950's that they became a staple in teen culture and spread to the middle class as those teens matured. I don't see how there's a difference between cheesy t-shirts and wearing a wife beater (technically underwear) in public. I actually think t-shirts are more acceptable, despite wife beaters being a staple, like jeans, in the working class back before the 1900's. They became acceptable footwear in the post-war period when soldiers returned from Japan with them. Note that Japan has had sandals as a cultural staple for centuries, to the point that they invented the tabi(?) AKA toe socks to be worn with them (because, you know inventing real shoes that keep your feet warm was just an absurd notion). So despite being commonly regarded as thin compared to westerners, I suppose they've become grossly obese by their own standards since they invented the sandal. It's quite frankly absurd logic. I might as well say that Americans are fatter than Brits because it's acceptable to wear a lounge suit to formal events, whilst in the UK its less acceptable and generally only a full tux is regarded as fitting formal wear. Sorry, the reason Americans have the fattest arses in the world is because its government gives massive subsidies to corn growers. Corn incidentally is a great source of calories and low source of nutrients. This means poor people have to consume larger amounts of food to get the same nutrition. This means they tend to get obese, because despite eating copious amounts of calories, they're still malnourished. People get fat because of the abundance of cheap, low quality calories. The most likely reason why South East Asians are healthier than westerners is because their government subsidizes higher nutritional quality foods. Rice for instance is a better start than corn. Similarly subsidizing salmon and tuna as opposed to cattle farm beef is again better. I'm not saying beef is bad for you, but the shit in a McDonalds patty is, especially when you can get 1lb for like $2. The stuff you're paying $15 a lb for is likely not as bad as the vegans would want you to believe.

jbwyme 15y ago

The whole weight loss approach described in the article seems flawed to begin with. The human body is an adaptive organism and will fight any drastic changes trying to stay in balance. 500 calories a day will certainly cause the body to begin changing hormone levels. Then you come out of it after a while and start eating correctly you still have severely imbalances hormones (relative to normal levels). So now you're eating healthy but have completely screwed up the way your body handles food, essentially storing more calories than before. If you slowly shift into better habits and allow your body time to keep up you'll end up with a calorie burning machine. The main problem is people get so motivated to change they dive in head first (such as. 500 calorie per day diet), throw everything out of whack, try to maintain their losses which start coming back and end up worse than where they started.

kenjackson 15y ago
The human body is an adaptive organism and will fight any drastic changes trying to stay in balance. You do realize that's pure speculation on your part. It's nice to be able to just say things like, "the brain is so powerful that if you imagine eating it will be like you did". But you actually need the science and data to back it up. Furthermore, where is the line? Is 500 calories too much? What about a 50 calorie per day deficit? What about 1 calorie? Is it better to lose the calories per day, or in a single sitting? Does it matter the food composition? Does it matter if the deficit is paired with exercise? What if the deficit is purely exercise (no reduction in caloric intake)? Etc... You use the scientific method to try to understand this. Not just speculation from random Joe's on the corner, because frankly everyone and their mom has an opinion. And that's why everyone and their mom has a new diet they've just introduced.
- mgcross 15y ago
  Pubmed has a lot of abstracts pertaining to metabolic rate: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198305 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198305 "Body weight is defended in non-obese participants during modest caloric restriction, evidenced by metabolic adaptation of RMR and reduced energy expenditure through physical activity." There are plenty of other studies that support CR as a factor in lowered RMR. I read one (can't remember where) that used non-obese women. IIRC, the women on 300kcal deficits had no change in metabolic rate, while those on 500 did.

saturdaysaint 15y ago

Other people have pointed out that the author's stated theory of calory intake isn't universally accepted, but I'd add that the author's conception of exercise is also problematic. The value of the cardio she holds up as evidence of her subjects devotion to weight loss is suspect. She mentions changes to her subjects musculature on restricted calorie/high cardio diets as an impediment to future weight loss. So why not do what's practically canon among modern athletes and bodybuilders - make healthy muscle development (or at least preservation) a primary goal of the diet/exercise regime. In other words, do the opposite of what all these beleaguered people are doing? Bodybuilders disdain cardio because it results in hormone changes that actively inhibit muscle development. Conversely, weight lifting boosts testosterone and lean body mass. The whole outlook here is so out of keeping with the wisdom of the highly fit people I know (and my own experience shedding and keeping off 50 pounds of excess weight for five years without the grueling effort she describes) makes me question her conclusions.

aantix 15y ago
Adding muscle is 1) extremely difficult (no, you cannot add 30 lbs of muscle in 30 days unlike the ads would make you believe) and 2) the effects are largely exaggerated. Quoting Lyle McDonald, a noted leader in fitness science and nutrition : "Some of this also comes from the still gross misconception that ‘muscle burns a ton of calories’ (a myth I took apart in Dissecting the Energy Needs of the Body – Research Review). That is, they hope to jack up metabolic rate by increasing muscle mass. Which is a futile activity because the effect is minimal (on top of the fact that the obese are already carrying extra muscle mass). A pound of muscle burns about 6 calories at rest, you have to add a ton to impact on metabolic rate (see also the next issue I discuss, low metabolic rate isn’t a problem). And that takes a lot of time, time better spent focusing on active fat loss."
- ellyagg 15y ago
  I added 25 lbs of muscle in <month. Since high school I'd never been able able to gain much muscle. Even lifting heavily and being quite strong and eating voraciously the highest I could get to was 163 lbs at 5'11" when I was 25. Earlier this year, I heard of the Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD) diet and tried it. I went from 152 to 177 in less than a month, while doing CrossFit three days a week, and one day each a week testing my 1RM max in the squat and bench press. I've never had any appreciable bodyfat (~12%) and I did not gain any during this time. I did not use any supplements of any kind, not creatine, nor steroids, nor insulin. Edit: Incidentally, since it did indeed happen, the incredulity expressed by the down votes indicates just how proud I should be about it. ;) I never complain about down votes, but there is something mind bending about being down voted for something you know to be pure fact and to realize your down voters literally have no idea what they're talking about.

endtime 15y ago

It depresses me to see the results of people being misguided into caloric restriction. Good Calories, Bad Calories should be required reading at weight loss programs: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787 http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventi...

spodek 15y ago

I didn't see the biggest data point to me, which is that Americans have become more obese in the past several decades, far too short a time for our genetics to have changed. This data point suggests a major non-genetic component to getting obese. Processed foods, labor-saving devices, and cars have come into existence and dominated our lives. It's hard not to conclude they play a major role.

radu_floricica 15y ago
The article is not about getting obese, but about the fundamental flaw of all dieting methods - being "famished" changes the body and makes it much easier to gain weight. If anything, this knowledge could put dieting itself among the risk factors for obesity.
- berntb 15y ago
  The interesting thing to me in the article is that these metabolical changes show up at 10% weight loss. What happens if someone lose 5%, stay at that weight a year and then lose another 5%? Will the changes still occur? An important point implied in the article, is that weight lifting works. (As the GP discussed.) (Personally, I was outsourced a year ago and took the chance to remove sugar from my diet. Works well, but it might be something else in mybnew environment that makes me lose weight.)
drcube 15y ago
Your point is valid, but it doesn't rule out genetics. Our genes express themselves differently in different environments. So our changing environment could cause people on average to get fatter, while genes still determine who gains weight and how much.
algoshift 15y ago
I've been studying this peripherally for the past year or two. Nothing too scientific but, yes, methodical little experiments here and there. I might put-up a website to see if my thoughts help others. I think I would say that my first finding is perhaps an obvious one: The very first requirement for weight loss is behavior modification. Obvious from the outside. But I think the reality is that from the inside, if you will, a person can focus too much on the wrong behaviors. For example, if you need to work out for an hour a day, five days a week to loose weight the entire endeavor is destined to fail from inception. That is not a sustainable modification in behavior but for a few individuals for whom the new regime becomes a fun part of their lives. Health clubs make their money by signing-up ten times more people that will fit into their buildings and they can do this because they know that people will not stick with the program. The other finding might be that fast weight loss is another formula for failure. My opinion is that fat loss should take one to two years. Many reasons for this. Perhaps the most important of them is what I mentioned above: behavior modification. Without permanently changing the way you do things, failure is guaranteed. Slow weight loss allows you to have a long "conversation with yourself", if you will, where you explore strengths, weaknesses, desires, success, failure, ideas, methods and, in general, converge on a path that is sustainable. And that's the third idea: Converge on a long term sustainable solution. No solution is worth the effort and expense if it makes you do things that you can't reasonably do for the rest of your life. Signing-up for programs that ship you food on a weekly basis is not a way to live your life. What if you travel or don't have the money? Going to the gym 10 hours a week is ridiculous for most of us. That is not a long-term solution. Living on beans and lettuce and diet drinks is, well, not living. A long and carefully managed process of converging on a sustainable solution has major benefits that can and should last for the rest of your life. You should be able to pig out during the holidays and have that slice of cheesecake or ice-cream when you want to. However, your long-term modified behavior should kick-in with enough regularly to guide you back onto that sustainable long-term path I was talking about. I don't know what the motivation behind a lot of these studies might be. Sometimes it seems that all they are after is a pill or a new surgery they can sell you. Humans don't need any of that to maintain healthy body composition, they just need to do the right things, nature and biology will take care of the rest.

dredmorbius 15y ago

Where this article (and a great many like it) annoy the bejesus out of me is in their sole focus on diet for fat loss. Yes, diet matters. In fact, diet matters a lot. It matters in both quantity (the old "calories in/calories out"), quality (especially macronutrient breakdown and degree of processed foods), and timing (particularly of carbs in morning/post-workout feedings). But diet is not the whole story. Your body is comprised of several types of tissue. For the most part, the variable elements are adipose mass (a/k/a "fat"), skeletal muscle (those things Arnold Schwarzenneger made famous), and retained fluid (a/k/a "water weight") which is highly variable, responsive to carb loading, inflammation, and other factors, and is most of what rapid weight loss programs target -- which by analog means it's not long-lasting weight loss. You won't see appreciable changes, generally, in bone mass or organ size, absent excess skin on the morbidly obese. The body has a complex set of autoregulatory systems, which seem to go out of whack under conditions prevalent in modern industrialized societies: abundent processed high-carbohydrate diets, little activity, social stresses, environmental toxins (particularly androgenic compounds). And yes, genetic and other factors play a role. The question is, what can you do about it. The article suggests "eat less". Eating less can influence your body fat. And skeletal muscle, though not in a good way by itself (dieters lose 20-25% or more of their weight as muscle, absent countermeasures). But it's also going to kick off a bunch of adaptations which largely work against the goals of a deliberate low-calorie dieter. So, what else can you do about it? Pick up heavy shit. Lifting weights is what stimulates skeletal muscle to grow. Add 2-3 days of 30-60 minutes of resistance training to your program, and you'll retain, or add, muscle, while losing body fat. This is what programs such as "Body for Life" and others promote. It's basic stuff that strength trainers and strongmen have known about for over 100 years. Compound, freeweight, whole-body exercise: squats, deadlifts, press, bench press, chins (if you can do them), rows, pull-downs. Some core/ab stability work. Especially if you're past 30 or 40. Your body is now well into losing the muscle it had originally had, at the rate of about 1/2 pound per year. You can literally turn back years of loss in a few months of training, to great effect. Move. Intensely if possible. For someone grossly out of shape, simply walking for 20, or 15, or 10, or even 5 minutes a day is a good start. But if you can walk or jog for a good 20-40 minutes, what you want to do is up the ante with intensity, not duration, with high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Google "Tabata intervals" for a particularly engaging pasttime. No, doing the 20 minute treadmill waddle is NOT sufficient. Though if you're doing HIIT 2-3x weekly, another few sessions of longer moderate-intensity cardio will help. So, yet another article saying "low-calorie dieting alone results in temporary weight loss in subjects" is hardly surprising. What have those in the know long known? That low, and especially very-low (>1000 cal/day deficit) dieting results in a high degree of lean-tissue loss, that metabolism slows by 40% after a few weeks, and that the post-diet recovery generally results in gaining yet more fat on a muscle-deprived frame, for a worse overall health outcome. And we know this shit, well: http://alwyncosgrove.com/2010/01/hierarchy-of-fat-loss/ http://alwyncosgrove.com/2010/01/hierarchy-of-fat-loss/ http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html A great article previously posted to HN is "Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie". This NY Times piece falls well into that lie category: http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie/print/ http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness... So: - Yes, diet. Cut processed foods, get sufficient protein, minimize excess carbs, eliminate junk calories (white anything, soda, HFCS, trans-fats, sugar, fruit juice). Figure out your BMR and estimated activity level (NOT your BMI, another bullshit fitness concept that needs to be shot dead) as a ballpark sanity check for calories. - Pick up heavy shit. Specifically, a whole-body, freeweight, compound-movement strength program 2-4x weekly. If you can't use freeweights, machines are OK, but you'll do better with stuff that moves freely through space for numerous reasons. - Move. If you're not moving at all, then start with something, and increase that until you're at 20-40+ minutes daily. If you're already moving, increase intensity 2-3x weekly. If you're doing both, add some more moderate cardio, particular morning fasted activity (your body's got no option but to burn fat at this time). - Sleep, manage stress, get approriate recovery, cut out toxins in your life (chemical and social), address injuries or illnesses. Be gentle but firm with yourself. If you want more, take a look at The New Rules of Lifting, Body for Life, or Mark Rippetoe's excellent Starting Strength. In time you'll see big changes. Pretty much guaranteed. Oh: yes, it's a lifestyle thing, you see. You'll have to keep doing some of this for most of the rest of your life. Odds are you may even find you like both the activity and the results. If not, and you're honestly following the program, we can talk about what else to look at. (Edits: minor typo/style fixes)

scelerat 15y ago

Exercising seems to be discussed in this article in mostly abstract terms and that's a real shame. People need to talk more about the quality of the exercise being performed as well as the time spent doing it. "Vigorous gardening"? People don't like to talk about it or do it because changing what you normally do from day to day is hard. I know because in the past I have gone from being a maintenance runner to being a semi-competitive distance runner and understand that carving out the time and putting in the effort to make those changes was difficult mentally and socially. I saw the results not only in race times, but in the fit of my jeans, pounds on the scale and skin on my face. When I reduced my effort, weight and inches returned. Adding more prepared/restaurant food and alcohol increased the effect. Now I'm approaching middle age, have slacked off the running and am watching my belly slowly grow. I know if I want it to stop or reverse, I'm going to have to change my ways: less late night partying, more discipline and even some pain. Aggressive yard work isn't going to do it, nor is biking to work (4 miles each way, mostly flat). Merely changing your routine is hard enough. Changing it to introduce more discomfort (at least for a time, until you get used to it and your more energetic routine seems normal) is very difficult. It's difficult enough for me, a former football and track athlete who knows what to expect and has a decent tolerance for pain. It's got to be much worse for people who haven't gone through the cycles and don't know what their bodies are capable of doing and what their minds are capable of overcoming. Talking about the exercise component can often drift off into lazy-shaming or sound like macho story-telling, but every time I hear from overweight family members or read an article like this one I always wonder, are you going for a short-term dip, or are you going to change your life? Because if it's the latter, you must prepare yourself for considerable inertia, metaphorically and physically. And then push through it.

peterwwillis 15y ago
Group exercise programs can help motivate you to work through discomfort and stick to a regular schedule. I highly recommend looking at local gyms and independent trainers (ever see 5 people doing exercises in the park?) to find a group program that fits your schedule. The camaraderie sure helped me stick to a really grueling program and the benefits made it addictive.

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