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"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 th

by 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.

radu_floricica 17y ago
> 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. This is not intellectually honest. It's not what he means, and you know it. Of course weight-gain comes from food, the problem is the relation between what you eat and what you store. If insulin or lack of can change the scales from 1:1 to 10:1, then it doesn't matter very much how much you eat any more, does it? Since you can realistically change only about 20-30% of both eaten food and burned calories. I'm not saying insulin does this (though it might very well) but for the sake of the discussion please don't fight the wrong idea.
- Evgeny 17y ago
  I know what he means, but it's just an imaginary experiment. If we can control the person 24/7, provide him with reasonable diet/exercise program, but strictly control his food/liquid intake so that his body mass decreases for a mere 50g per day. How likely would it be for the person to die from starvation while maintaining the huge percentage of body fat? I personally think it would be highly unlikely, but that's just a guess.
thras 17y ago
If the insulin affects your fat tissue to increase energy pick up by the tissue itself (which we know it does), the result will be hunger. That hunger will lead to a) increased food intake, b) lower activity levels, or c) breakdown of other tissues to feed the fat. Thermodynamics holds, but the insulin is the driver in the process. Two things I suggest you look at: Zucker rats. An obese strain of rat. You can semi-starve it from infancy and it will get just as obese. It will be smaller, but the body fat percentage will be the same. The second thing to look at are overfeeding studies. It's very hard to overfeed people with protein. The only successful studies had to be done on prisoners, and they barely gained weight. With carbohydrates, it's the opposite. People would eat 10,000 calories a day and complain of being hungry. Weight gain is easy to introduce.

by Evgeny 17y ago

radu_floricica 17y ago

> 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. This is not intellectually honest. It's not what he means, and you know it. Of course weight-gain comes from food, the problem is the relation between what you eat and what you store. If insulin or lack of can change the scales from 1:1 to 10:1, then it doesn't matter very much how much you eat any more, does it? Since you can realistically change only about 20-30% of both eaten food and burned calories. I'm not saying insulin does this (though it might very well) but for the sake of the discussion please don't fight the wrong idea.

Evgeny 17y ago
I know what he means, but it's just an imaginary experiment. If we can control the person 24/7, provide him with reasonable diet/exercise program, but strictly control his food/liquid intake so that his body mass decreases for a mere 50g per day. How likely would it be for the person to die from starvation while maintaining the huge percentage of body fat? I personally think it would be highly unlikely, but that's just a guess.

thras 17y ago

If the insulin affects your fat tissue to increase energy pick up by the tissue itself (which we know it does), the result will be hunger. That hunger will lead to a) increased food intake, b) lower activity levels, or c) breakdown of other tissues to feed the fat. Thermodynamics holds, but the insulin is the driver in the process. Two things I suggest you look at: Zucker rats. An obese strain of rat. You can semi-starve it from infancy and it will get just as obese. It will be smaller, but the body fat percentage will be the same. The second thing to look at are overfeeding studies. It's very hard to overfeed people with protein. The only successful studies had to be done on prisoners, and they barely gained weight. With carbohydrates, it's the opposite. People would eat 10,000 calories a day and complain of being hungry. Weight gain is easy to introduce.