7 ms·

What Really Makes Us Fat?

19 points by dr_ 14y ago

Retric 14y ago
TLDR: Second law of thermodynamics still in effect. However, food is not the limiting factor in developed countries so being fat is really a question of eating behaviors and there are relationships between food types and eating behaviors in both the short and long term.
- rubashov 14y ago
  I don't know why it's out of consideration that people are just shameless slobs now and that's a major component of the obesity epidemic. Bastardy, tattoos, and dressing like a sloppy clown in public were inconceivable 40 years ago when everyone was thin. Anything goes now (no one will call your bastard a bastard), and so does being a gluttonous fat ass, really. The social consequences are minimal. I'm around a fair number of fat people and I don't need any nutritional science background to notice they eat very often and they eat a lot. I suppose there's clinical evidence that low carb diets work, but it pretty much seems to me the main factor is these people just don't care about being fat slobs.
  - Retric 14y ago
    40 years ago we did not grow enough food per person to support a fat population. So, without the 'green revolution' it would have been impossible for the 'obesity epidemic' to occur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution Also obesity has been an issue for middle aged wealthy people for at least the last few thousand years. Which suggest's people tend to eat more when they can afford to do so.
    - rubashov 14y ago
      So why do bastardy, bad taste in fashion, and obesity all track so closely? You see this all over the world. Where people are well dressed and there is little bastardy, they are thin, regardless of the affluence level.
- wdewind 14y ago
  By saying Second law of thermodynamics still in effect I assume you mean "calories in calories out" still in effect, and that's actually not what the article said at all (though the law is still in effect of course). Consuming the same number of calories with different consumptions led to different amounts of calories being burned, and different amounts of weight being gained. TLDR: what you eat matters, it's not just how much.
  - Retric 14y ago
    No, they are still saying "calories in calories out" These subjects expended, on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full weights. They where also saying that types of calories in changes calories out.
    - wdewind 14y ago
      Sorry yes you're correct, I meant they are not saying that in the colloquial way it is used, which is that it doesn't matter what you eat assuming all else is constant (activity level etc). They are saying it in the technical sense that the people did in fact burn more calories on different diets. But those calories being burned were caused by the change in diet (assuming the hypothesis is correct). That is a massive change in American nutrition theory.
reasonattlm 14y ago
Sane discussions of weight, like sane discussions of aging, are ever clouded by the large constituencies with large marketing budgets who benefit from selling you on things that are both useless and popular. e.g. you can become fit without much effort, just buy our product. You can turn back aging, just buy our product. You can eat as much of our product as you want and not get fat like those other slobs, so go ahead and fill your plate. Here's an experiment you can run on yourself. Eat the same diet as you are now, but less of it. Take up alternate day fasting, or just skip a meal every day. Be rigorous - keep track of how much your eat, and eat less than you were. Do it for a couple of months. You will, absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, lose weight, largely adipose tissue mass. Everything else is either (a) discussion of nutritional quality with regard to what you are eating, which is a rat-hole that never ends and you will never do better than a good 80/20 result no matter how much time and energy you spend on it or (b) the self-delusion of people who don't want to give up their capacious eating habits.
- rubashov 14y ago
  > Eat the same diet as you are now, but less of it Considering vitamins and minerals most people eat crap. Deficiencies are fairly rampant. The problem is that grains/beans, dairy, potato, and oils are good for energy but have very lousy nutrient profiles. People are eating an energy dense but nutrient light diet that is a vestige of times of hard manual labor.
  - wlievens 14y ago
    > that is a vestige of times of hard manual labor And a lot cheaper to produce
finin 14y ago
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt=qt0231370 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt=qt0231370 When Sleeper was released 39 years ago, I thought this was a cheap joke. But every few years I think about it when there is yet another reversal in what we think we know about nutrition.
fingerprinter 14y ago
After years of study, self experimentation and research into the topics (I'm an amateur powerlifter, bodybuilder as well as a general fitness freak...I also write fitness related content, books mostly) here are some quick things to help sort this out. It's all about the hormones. The single most important element to not getting fat is identifying yourself and then eating appropriately. Are you a couch potato? Then YES, you need to restrict carb content. Are you an athelete? Go ahead and eat carbs, but eat them AT THE RIGHT TIME (meaning, post workouts* mostly). And eat the right ones (high GI immediately post heavy lifting session, lower GI later in the day (generally speaking)). Protein is your friend. Make sure all meals have it. Eat lots of veggies, mostly green. Drink lots of water. Limit chemical consumption (most diet sodas spike insulin...might as well be eating a candy bar). Getting more specific is going to really depend on our goals. This is critically important. If you can state what your goal is, it is REALLY EASY to understand how to eat, workout and live to meet those goals...but if you don't know the goal, you'll flounder. For instance, to lose weight: Restrict carbs for 6.5 days in a week. Do a carb refeed on the 7th night. Eat only protein, fat and veggies (think eggs, bacon and broccoli) when you restrict the carbs. You'll lose tons of weight and retain the muscle. To put this in to high gear, do a HIIT sprint session on day 1 and 2 to completely deplete your glycogen stores. To gain weight (muscle): Before you workout, water, protein, fat and veggies. After you workout (heavy weight workout), protein, carbs and veggies. Carbs stimulate insulin, shuttling nutrients to muscles, helping them grow. There are TONS of tweaks to each of these if you are having trouble (like, for instance, add milk if you are still having trouble gaining weight or add some light cardio if you are having trouble losing weight), but the basics are the above. I love this stuff.... * btw..when I say "workout", I mean heavy weight workouts (barbell etc). There is something special about the way it stimulates your body that high rep bodyweight workouts just can't do. Bodyweight workouts have their place, but they should be used for a very specific goal...
- wdewind 14y ago
  Great post. I also am really into fitness, diet etc. One of the lowest hanging fruits I have found in most people's diet (including my own at first) is lack of proper protein intake and a completely unrealistic notion of how much protein should be in ones diet. You should be getting about 1g/lbs of body mass a day, which is nearly 2x the recommended intake by the FDA. If you eat that much protein you're going to have a really hard time feeling hungry enough to stuff your face with carbs.
EricDeb 14y ago
One thing I find a tad irritating about being male and trying to look good (as superficial as it is) is the discrepancy between gaining muscle and losing fat. It seems females only have to go one direction -> be skinny whereas for males we need to somehow add muscle (for which the general advice is eat a lot of food specifically protein) and lose fat. Those seem very contradictory in my mind though I know little about nutrition.
- rmm 14y ago
  They don't need to happen at the same time. Lose fat first, build muscle later.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  IMO, gaining muscle is much harder to do than losing fat. I would do it the way bodybuilders do it an work to gain muscle then lose fat (unless you are grossly overweight, in which case it probably makes more sense to lose the fat first). Why the difference? Well, losing fat is mostly about discipline whereas gaining muscle is about discipline and very, very hard work.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    I find it far far easier to gain (Beach) muscle than to lose fat I find doing things much easier than constantly not doing things.
dr_ 14y ago
The study cited was very short term, one month in duration. A much larger time frame is required, which may be difficult to do in a controlled setting. From the actual study report: "Although the very low-carbohydrate diet produced the greatest improvements in most metabolic syndrome components examined herein, we identified 2 potentially deleterious effects of this diet. Twenty-four hour urinary cortisol excretion, a hormonal measure of stress, was highest with the very low-carbohydrate diet. Consistent with this finding, Stimson et al31 reported increased whole-body regeneration of cortisol by 11β-HSD1 and reduced inactivation of cortisol by 5α- and 5β-reductases over 4 weeks on a very low- vs moderate-carbohydrate diet. Higher cortisol levels may promote adiposity, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease, as observed in epidemiological studies.32 - 34 In a 6-year prospective, population-based study of older adults in Italy,35 individuals in the highest vs lowest tertile of 24-hour cortisol excretion, with or without preexisting cardiovascular disease, had a 5-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. "

19 points by dr_ 14y ago

TLDR: Second law of thermodynamics still in effect. However, food is not the limiting factor in developed countries so being fat is really a question of eating behaviors and there are relationships between food types and eating behaviors in both the short and long term.

rubashov 14y ago
I don't know why it's out of consideration that people are just shameless slobs now and that's a major component of the obesity epidemic. Bastardy, tattoos, and dressing like a sloppy clown in public were inconceivable 40 years ago when everyone was thin. Anything goes now (no one will call your bastard a bastard), and so does being a gluttonous fat ass, really. The social consequences are minimal. I'm around a fair number of fat people and I don't need any nutritional science background to notice they eat very often and they eat a lot. I suppose there's clinical evidence that low carb diets work, but it pretty much seems to me the main factor is these people just don't care about being fat slobs.
- Retric 14y ago
  40 years ago we did not grow enough food per person to support a fat population. So, without the 'green revolution' it would have been impossible for the 'obesity epidemic' to occur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution Also obesity has been an issue for middle aged wealthy people for at least the last few thousand years. Which suggest's people tend to eat more when they can afford to do so.
  - rubashov 14y ago
    So why do bastardy, bad taste in fashion, and obesity all track so closely? You see this all over the world. Where people are well dressed and there is little bastardy, they are thin, regardless of the affluence level.
wdewind 14y ago
By saying Second law of thermodynamics still in effect I assume you mean "calories in calories out" still in effect, and that's actually not what the article said at all (though the law is still in effect of course). Consuming the same number of calories with different consumptions led to different amounts of calories being burned, and different amounts of weight being gained. TLDR: what you eat matters, it's not just how much.
- Retric 14y ago
  No, they are still saying "calories in calories out" These subjects expended, on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full weights. They where also saying that types of calories in changes calories out.
  - wdewind 14y ago
    Sorry yes you're correct, I meant they are not saying that in the colloquial way it is used, which is that it doesn't matter what you eat assuming all else is constant (activity level etc). They are saying it in the technical sense that the people did in fact burn more calories on different diets. But those calories being burned were caused by the change in diet (assuming the hypothesis is correct). That is a massive change in American nutrition theory.

reasonattlm 14y ago

Sane discussions of weight, like sane discussions of aging, are ever clouded by the large constituencies with large marketing budgets who benefit from selling you on things that are both useless and popular. e.g. you can become fit without much effort, just buy our product. You can turn back aging, just buy our product. You can eat as much of our product as you want and not get fat like those other slobs, so go ahead and fill your plate. Here's an experiment you can run on yourself. Eat the same diet as you are now, but less of it. Take up alternate day fasting, or just skip a meal every day. Be rigorous - keep track of how much your eat, and eat less than you were. Do it for a couple of months. You will, absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, lose weight, largely adipose tissue mass. Everything else is either (a) discussion of nutritional quality with regard to what you are eating, which is a rat-hole that never ends and you will never do better than a good 80/20 result no matter how much time and energy you spend on it or (b) the self-delusion of people who don't want to give up their capacious eating habits.

rubashov 14y ago
> Eat the same diet as you are now, but less of it Considering vitamins and minerals most people eat crap. Deficiencies are fairly rampant. The problem is that grains/beans, dairy, potato, and oils are good for energy but have very lousy nutrient profiles. People are eating an energy dense but nutrient light diet that is a vestige of times of hard manual labor.
- wlievens 14y ago
  > that is a vestige of times of hard manual labor And a lot cheaper to produce

finin 14y ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt=qt0231370 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt=qt0231370 When Sleeper was released 39 years ago, I thought this was a cheap joke. But every few years I think about it when there is yet another reversal in what we think we know about nutrition.

fingerprinter 14y ago

After years of study, self experimentation and research into the topics (I'm an amateur powerlifter, bodybuilder as well as a general fitness freak...I also write fitness related content, books mostly) here are some quick things to help sort this out. It's all about the hormones. The single most important element to not getting fat is identifying yourself and then eating appropriately. Are you a couch potato? Then YES, you need to restrict carb content. Are you an athelete? Go ahead and eat carbs, but eat them AT THE RIGHT TIME (meaning, post workouts* mostly). And eat the right ones (high GI immediately post heavy lifting session, lower GI later in the day (generally speaking)). Protein is your friend. Make sure all meals have it. Eat lots of veggies, mostly green. Drink lots of water. Limit chemical consumption (most diet sodas spike insulin...might as well be eating a candy bar). Getting more specific is going to really depend on our goals. This is critically important. If you can state what your goal is, it is REALLY EASY to understand how to eat, workout and live to meet those goals...but if you don't know the goal, you'll flounder. For instance, to lose weight: Restrict carbs for 6.5 days in a week. Do a carb refeed on the 7th night. Eat only protein, fat and veggies (think eggs, bacon and broccoli) when you restrict the carbs. You'll lose tons of weight and retain the muscle. To put this in to high gear, do a HIIT sprint session on day 1 and 2 to completely deplete your glycogen stores. To gain weight (muscle): Before you workout, water, protein, fat and veggies. After you workout (heavy weight workout), protein, carbs and veggies. Carbs stimulate insulin, shuttling nutrients to muscles, helping them grow. There are TONS of tweaks to each of these if you are having trouble (like, for instance, add milk if you are still having trouble gaining weight or add some light cardio if you are having trouble losing weight), but the basics are the above. I love this stuff.... * btw..when I say "workout", I mean heavy weight workouts (barbell etc). There is something special about the way it stimulates your body that high rep bodyweight workouts just can't do. Bodyweight workouts have their place, but they should be used for a very specific goal...

wdewind 14y ago
Great post. I also am really into fitness, diet etc. One of the lowest hanging fruits I have found in most people's diet (including my own at first) is lack of proper protein intake and a completely unrealistic notion of how much protein should be in ones diet. You should be getting about 1g/lbs of body mass a day, which is nearly 2x the recommended intake by the FDA. If you eat that much protein you're going to have a really hard time feeling hungry enough to stuff your face with carbs.

EricDeb 14y ago

One thing I find a tad irritating about being male and trying to look good (as superficial as it is) is the discrepancy between gaining muscle and losing fat. It seems females only have to go one direction -> be skinny whereas for males we need to somehow add muscle (for which the general advice is eat a lot of food specifically protein) and lose fat. Those seem very contradictory in my mind though I know little about nutrition.

rmm 14y ago
They don't need to happen at the same time. Lose fat first, build muscle later.
fingerprinter 14y ago
IMO, gaining muscle is much harder to do than losing fat. I would do it the way bodybuilders do it an work to gain muscle then lose fat (unless you are grossly overweight, in which case it probably makes more sense to lose the fat first). Why the difference? Well, losing fat is mostly about discipline whereas gaining muscle is about discipline and very, very hard work.
- gte910h 14y ago
  I find it far far easier to gain (Beach) muscle than to lose fat I find doing things much easier than constantly not doing things.

dr_ 14y ago

The study cited was very short term, one month in duration. A much larger time frame is required, which may be difficult to do in a controlled setting. From the actual study report: "Although the very low-carbohydrate diet produced the greatest improvements in most metabolic syndrome components examined herein, we identified 2 potentially deleterious effects of this diet. Twenty-four hour urinary cortisol excretion, a hormonal measure of stress, was highest with the very low-carbohydrate diet. Consistent with this finding, Stimson et al31 reported increased whole-body regeneration of cortisol by 11β-HSD1 and reduced inactivation of cortisol by 5α- and 5β-reductases over 4 weeks on a very low- vs moderate-carbohydrate diet. Higher cortisol levels may promote adiposity, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease, as observed in epidemiological studies.32 - 34 In a 6-year prospective, population-based study of older adults in Italy,35 individuals in the highest vs lowest tertile of 24-hour cortisol excretion, with or without preexisting cardiovascular disease, had a 5-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. "