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After being fat from early childhood, I lost 160 pounds by eating 900 calories a day. Eventually I got down to the weight I wanted (normal weight for my height)

by thras 17y ago

After being fat from early childhood, I lost 160 pounds by eating 900 calories a day. Eventually I got down to the weight I wanted (normal weight for my height) and was running 5 miles a day. I couldn't take the diet any more. I'm a fellow with tremendous willpower. But it was the strangest thing -- I couldn't force myself to stay on an easy 2100 calorie a day diet even though that was what I thought about every day, nearly every moment of the day. Even though I had managed 900 a day for more than a year. Anyway, while running 5 miles a day still, I immediately began gaining 15 pounds a month. Eventually I couldn't run anymore. I'm sorry, but the argument from thermodynamics is as bankrupt at explaining fat gain as it is in explaining height gain for adolescents. For height gain, the fact that energy in equals energy out is a true statement, but the explanation is growth hormone. If you calorie limit a growing child, the child will be somewhat (not very though) stunted, but will make up the energy difference through lethargy and by consuming all sorts of internal tissues. For obesity, the explanation is insulin. I cut carbohydrates almost completely from my diet in January. Otherwise I ate what I wanted when I wanted (I measure my consumption in pounds of red meat per day). I'm amazingly healthier. I've lost 50 pounds. I've gained so much muscle that I can do pull-ups. Fucking pull-ups at my weight. With low-calorie dieting, I couldn't do pull-ups until I had lost another 70 pounds past that point. I'm putting on muscle and losing fat, and I'm eating huge quantities at every meal. Plus I have a desk job and barely exercise. The argument from thermodynamics assumes that the fat tissue is a trash can and that weight homeostasis doesn't exist. It's a bankrupt theory that can't explain diseases like progressive lipodystrophy (a disease which makes people obese and emaciated at the same time). It can't explain why people who starve the calories off are not the same at the end as normal thin people and almost inevitably gain the pounds back. It can't explain why 1950s treatment to get anorexics to gain weight was through injecting them with insulin and not feeding them any more than they had been (during treatment). In summary, you're seeking a psychological explanation of a physiological problem. Kind of like the discredited quack Sigmund Freud often did, eh? A physiological explanation might lead to the suggestion that we eat the way we evolved to eat -- no refined carbohydrate.

ericb 17y ago
On the same token, do you know anyone who breathes too much air? Could the average person use willpower to cut their air intake for a year?
fatdog789 17y ago
Actually, the theory explains both: it is well-documented that starving the body induces inherent fat-retention mechanisms, in reaction to perceived famine conditions, which results in fat buildup in some parts of the body (usually the torso, the primary fat deposit region), while emaciation in other parts (usually the limbs, due to muscle loss). Once the famine conditions end, the body craves excess food in an effort to repair the damage caused during the "famine." It does not explain the 1950s treatment, but then again, in the 1950s, they did lots of crazy stuff which wouldn't make sense today, like electroshock and lobotomies.
- thras 17y ago
  You forgot progressive lipodystrophy. Also, people still take insulin today and still gain weight from it. They're called 'diabetics.' And if a person has a huge fat store (and if fat is really just an 'energy battery') why should there be any damage from starvation in the presence of proper nutrients? How does the thermodynamics theory explain weight homeostasis? The vast majority of people throughout history were able to maintain fairly constant weights throughout their lives. If it's just calories-in, calories-out, they would have to be regulating what they ate to within 10 calories a day to maintain their weight over a decade. I'm sorry, but this is silly science. You can't explain obesity by simple thermodynamics any more than you can explain growth at puberty by simple thermodynamics. Energy conservation, although true, tells you very little about self-regulating systems w.r.t. the environment.
  - Evgeny 17y ago
    "Also, people still take insulin today and still gain weight from it." I'm wondering if it is possible to inject some insulin into a person, then put him on the scales (denying him any food/drink) and observe the weight increase. Obviously that is not possible. What if we take a person, force him to do some exercise so that he loses 1kg of weight, and then provide him with food/drink that weighs 900g combined? Will this person gain weight over the initial amount? What I'm trying to say, I think, is that while the simple calorie calculations may not be able to explain everything, surely weight increase can not come "from nowhere" without the abundance of food/liquid.
nova 17y ago
Yes. The book "Good calories, bad calories" is the standard recommendation. It will however destroy your trust in the medical authorities.
dflock 17y ago
I agree with you about the refined carbohydrates but the underlying facts about the thermodynamics are also important, but in a slightly more subtle way. People almost always underestimate just how incredibly - almost unbelievably - efficient the human body is. We're used to being impressed by cars that can do 60 mpg, but the human body can easily manage 300 mpg, even for an unfit hacker like me; fitter people will be slightly more efficient, maybe up to 400 mpg (http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-illness/wellness/physical-fitness/weight-loss/diet1.htm http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-illness/wellness/phys...). What this means is that you have to run an enormous distance to burn off even a tiny amount of food - about 1 mile for every 100 calories. So you can run a mile on one banana (http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=banana http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=banana), or 1.5 average cookies (http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+cookies http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+cookies), or just over one rasher of bacon. You can run a entire marathon (26.2 miles) on 2,600 calories - or one big mac and a packet of cookies. A scary number of people in the western world eat enough to run a marathon every single day and still have enough calories left over of keep themselves ticking over (~1500 calories) - without changing their diet at all. This wouldn't be physiologically supportable for wear and tear reasons, but calorie wise a lot of us could support it. These two facts in combination: the abundance of high quality, high calorie food in the developed world, and the incredible efficiency of the human body are a virtually guaranteed recipe for obesity, whatever other factors come into play. The fact that almost all of the easily available junk calories people consume come from highly refined carbohydrates (because these are so cheap to produce), massively compounds the problem. Obviously there isn't a 1 to 1 relationship between calories in and weight gain and everyone is slightly different and most food isn't just converted into glycogen and then to fat, etc, etc... but as far as I can see, most people will not reasonably be able to burn off the calories from an average western diet, no matter how hard they try - there just isn't enough time to run that far and hold down a job. Trying to do that much exercise, on top of trying to diet and do everything else is just too much mental strain. On the whole, I think people are better off just not eating the carbohydrate in the first place - cutting it off at source is much easier than trying to get rid of it later, and only requires you to do one thing, rather than two.
- taw 17y ago
  Physical activity burns ridiculously few calories - if you eat extra 20%, you need to double amount of physical activity you have to burn it. Most people seem to think majority of calories they're eating are going into muscles. So you have to choices - eat slightly less, or exercise ridiculously more. Gym twice a week won't have any significant effect. There are many good ways to downregulate appetite. Sources: > About 70% of a human's total energy expenditure is due to the basal life processes within the organs of the body (see table). About 20% of one's energy expenditure comes from physical activity and another 10% from thermogenesis, or digestion of food (postprandial thermogenesis). [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemist...)

by thras 17y ago

ericb 17y ago

On the same token, do you know anyone who breathes too much air? Could the average person use willpower to cut their air intake for a year?

fatdog789 17y ago

Actually, the theory explains both: it is well-documented that starving the body induces inherent fat-retention mechanisms, in reaction to perceived famine conditions, which results in fat buildup in some parts of the body (usually the torso, the primary fat deposit region), while emaciation in other parts (usually the limbs, due to muscle loss). Once the famine conditions end, the body craves excess food in an effort to repair the damage caused during the "famine." It does not explain the 1950s treatment, but then again, in the 1950s, they did lots of crazy stuff which wouldn't make sense today, like electroshock and lobotomies.

thras 17y ago
You forgot progressive lipodystrophy. Also, people still take insulin today and still gain weight from it. They're called 'diabetics.' And if a person has a huge fat store (and if fat is really just an 'energy battery') why should there be any damage from starvation in the presence of proper nutrients? How does the thermodynamics theory explain weight homeostasis? The vast majority of people throughout history were able to maintain fairly constant weights throughout their lives. If it's just calories-in, calories-out, they would have to be regulating what they ate to within 10 calories a day to maintain their weight over a decade. I'm sorry, but this is silly science. You can't explain obesity by simple thermodynamics any more than you can explain growth at puberty by simple thermodynamics. Energy conservation, although true, tells you very little about self-regulating systems w.r.t. the environment.
- Evgeny 17y ago
  "Also, people still take insulin today and still gain weight from it." I'm wondering if it is possible to inject some insulin into a person, then put him on the scales (denying him any food/drink) and observe the weight increase. Obviously that is not possible. What if we take a person, force him to do some exercise so that he loses 1kg of weight, and then provide him with food/drink that weighs 900g combined? Will this person gain weight over the initial amount? What I'm trying to say, I think, is that while the simple calorie calculations may not be able to explain everything, surely weight increase can not come "from nowhere" without the abundance of food/liquid.

nova 17y ago

Yes. The book "Good calories, bad calories" is the standard recommendation. It will however destroy your trust in the medical authorities.

dflock 17y ago

I agree with you about the refined carbohydrates but the underlying facts about the thermodynamics are also important, but in a slightly more subtle way. People almost always underestimate just how incredibly - almost unbelievably - efficient the human body is. We're used to being impressed by cars that can do 60 mpg, but the human body can easily manage 300 mpg, even for an unfit hacker like me; fitter people will be slightly more efficient, maybe up to 400 mpg (http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-illness/wellness/physical-fitness/weight-loss/diet1.htm http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-illness/wellness/phys...). What this means is that you have to run an enormous distance to burn off even a tiny amount of food - about 1 mile for every 100 calories. So you can run a mile on one banana (http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=banana http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=banana), or 1.5 average cookies (http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+cookies http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+cookies), or just over one rasher of bacon. You can run a entire marathon (26.2 miles) on 2,600 calories - or one big mac and a packet of cookies. A scary number of people in the western world eat enough to run a marathon every single day and still have enough calories left over of keep themselves ticking over (~1500 calories) - without changing their diet at all. This wouldn't be physiologically supportable for wear and tear reasons, but calorie wise a lot of us could support it. These two facts in combination: the abundance of high quality, high calorie food in the developed world, and the incredible efficiency of the human body are a virtually guaranteed recipe for obesity, whatever other factors come into play. The fact that almost all of the easily available junk calories people consume come from highly refined carbohydrates (because these are so cheap to produce), massively compounds the problem. Obviously there isn't a 1 to 1 relationship between calories in and weight gain and everyone is slightly different and most food isn't just converted into glycogen and then to fat, etc, etc... but as far as I can see, most people will not reasonably be able to burn off the calories from an average western diet, no matter how hard they try - there just isn't enough time to run that far and hold down a job. Trying to do that much exercise, on top of trying to diet and do everything else is just too much mental strain. On the whole, I think people are better off just not eating the carbohydrate in the first place - cutting it off at source is much easier than trying to get rid of it later, and only requires you to do one thing, rather than two.

taw 17y ago
Physical activity burns ridiculously few calories - if you eat extra 20%, you need to double amount of physical activity you have to burn it. Most people seem to think majority of calories they're eating are going into muscles. So you have to choices - eat slightly less, or exercise ridiculously more. Gym twice a week won't have any significant effect. There are many good ways to downregulate appetite. Sources: > About 70% of a human's total energy expenditure is due to the basal life processes within the organs of the body (see table). About 20% of one's energy expenditure comes from physical activity and another 10% from thermogenesis, or digestion of food (postprandial thermogenesis). [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemist...)