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The fact that animals have experienced significant weight gain is by far the best evidence the author provides to support a factor exogenous to the calories-in-

by kauffj 12y ago

The fact that animals have experienced significant weight gain is by far the best evidence the author provides to support a factor exogenous to the calories-in-calories-out model. What are the leading explanations for this phenomenon?

michaelochurch 12y ago
I can't answer your question, because I don't know (the OP covers the leading explanations, as far as I know) but... calories-in/calories-out is technically correct, but there are some complexities. Calories in: calorie counts are guesswork. For the healthier foods, there's even more uncertainty about calories. You know exactly what you're getting with Coke, but you shouldn't be drinking much of that if you're trying to lose weight. If you eat an apple instead, you're talking about 10 to 20% variation each way in calorie count. Finally, there are individual variations based on the microbes in our gut, and how we absorb nutrients. Calories out: people vary in basal metabolic rate (BMR) and we don't always know why. Even if we could get a good idea of how many calories we were taking in each day, and we can't, most of us have no idea of what we're burning. There are ways to tip the scale (build more muscle, spend more time in cold temperatures, and, obviously, be more active) but it's impossible to know, in general, how many calories you burned in a day. Given that an error of 50 calories per day is 5 pounds gained per year, precise calorie counting isn't possible. It's largely a problem with two factors: 1. Individual metabolic variation. People with shitty metabolisms are going to get fat if they eat restaurant meals portioned for 24-year-olds. For 40-50% of the population, eating portions that the median person can is going to lead to fatness. 2. Silent failure. The body punishes calorie errors on the negative side (hunger) or even tries to adapt (low energy, starvation mode) in ways that are counterproductive in modern times. It doesn't punish, in any immediate way, positive calorie errors.
- eru 12y ago
  > Given that an error of 50 calories per day is 5 pounds gained per year, [...] As people get fatter, they need more food just to stay the same. So if I took my exact current caloric needs to stay the same weight at my level of activity, and added eg a constant 500 kCal each day, I would not in fact gain kg after kg year in year out. But rather, my weight curve would look like the charge/time curve when loading up a capacitor.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    If your calorie count remained constant (which is an assumption that I'm not sure I share) as you gained the weight, then you'd gain weight until the calorie surplus was zero. However, it's quite possible that, as you gained weight, you'd also be eating more calories, and if you kept a constant calorie error, you'd keep gaining weight. Also, metabolism slows with age. However, people are heaviest around 55, and start losing weight as appetite decreases beyond that.
    - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
      This is not how metabolism works. It's not mechanistic. Extra calories rapidly ramp up the resting metabolic rate, and deficits dramatically slow it. Minor protein or sleep deficiencies slow the metabolic rate. Endurance exercise slows the resting metabolic rate. Low calorie intake is a major risk factor for obesity.
      - michaelochurch 12y ago
        This is interesting. Thanks for the insight. So, how would you solve the obesity problem? Do you think it's about food quality rather than quantity? What exercises work and which don't? Out of curiosity, why isn't the state of medicine able to speed BMR up to the level of the 95th-percentile 17-year-old, a rate we know to be safe? It seems like getting metabolism to that level would have minimal side effects. (Obviously, metabolism can't be increased without limit, since there's a point where a person would get heatstroke.) Is it just that hard to control it like that from day to day?
        a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        You can easily take thyroid hormones and raise the metabolic rate. That is not tricky at all. Bodybuilders do it all the time to lean out. Some say a substantial fraction of the population is mildly hypothroid and meds are appropriate, cf. Broda Barnes. Ari Whitten's "Forever Fat Loss" I think covers all the causes of obesity and debunks the major myths. There is no simple solution because the totality of modern industrialized life conspires to produce obesity. Emotional stress, lack of sleep, lack of daylight exposure, micro-nutrient deficiencies, pollution exposure, and so forth all tank metabolism. The body is made for near continuous low level outdoor activity and "working out" is not a proper substitute. You're designed to burn through large amounts of calories daily doing stuff like walking 8 miles at a leisurely pace and moving things around. Whereas the stress of a daily running habit is apt to adaptively lower the resting metabolic rate to the point it's barely useful. Everybody unduly obsesses over the food aspects, but to the extent there is a particular food villain it's probably seed oils. Soy oil and canola oil suppress metabolism (directly interfere with mitochondria) and are quite new inventions, and are now consumed in huge quantities. Aside from that there is simple calorie over consumption driven by food reward. People are naturally attuned to much more monotonous and lower flavor diets than are readily available now.
- kyllo 12y ago
  Also, a calorie is not a calorie. The body spends much less time and energy digesting simple sugars and starches, compared to proteins and fats, and because carbs are digested so much more efficiently, they contribute more to weight gain. It is possible to lose weight simply by reducing carbohydrates as a percentage of diet, even if total caloric consumption remains constant. Satiety is also a major factor, probably the most underrated factor in successful weight loss. Because the body digests them more slowly, high fat and protein foods stave off hunger much longer than high carb foods do, so people naturally tend to consume fewer total calories on a low carb diet, due to reduced hunger and cravings.
  - huehue 12y ago
    This is absurd. You're overestimating and basing all your theory on the thermic effect of food while failing to understand how hormones affect our metabolism. Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient and potentially ruinous in the long term. Cronic ketogenic dieters for example have extremely slow metabolisms and present symptoms of hypothyroidism.
    - kyllo 12y ago
      You're reading too much into what I said. None of your claims actually contradict mine. This part actually supports what I said: Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient and potentially ruinous in the long term. Yes, that's exactly why low-carb diets work. They force your body to use a less efficient fuel, which is an effective way to counteract the problem of having too much fuel. And while ketogenic dieting may be "potentially" ruinous in the long term, obesity is definitely ruinous in the long term. I'm not really a pro-keto person, I think strict keto diets are too extreme for the long term. On the other hand, it's evident that a high carbohydrate diet provides energy that is excessive and unsuited for modern, sedentary lifestyles. Most of us would be a lot less overweight if we simply ate fewer carbs (like <40% of total calories)

by kauffj 12y ago

michaelochurch 12y ago

I can't answer your question, because I don't know (the OP covers the leading explanations, as far as I know) but... calories-in/calories-out is technically correct, but there are some complexities. Calories in: calorie counts are guesswork. For the healthier foods, there's even more uncertainty about calories. You know exactly what you're getting with Coke, but you shouldn't be drinking much of that if you're trying to lose weight. If you eat an apple instead, you're talking about 10 to 20% variation each way in calorie count. Finally, there are individual variations based on the microbes in our gut, and how we absorb nutrients. Calories out: people vary in basal metabolic rate (BMR) and we don't always know why. Even if we could get a good idea of how many calories we were taking in each day, and we can't, most of us have no idea of what we're burning. There are ways to tip the scale (build more muscle, spend more time in cold temperatures, and, obviously, be more active) but it's impossible to know, in general, how many calories you burned in a day. Given that an error of 50 calories per day is 5 pounds gained per year, precise calorie counting isn't possible. It's largely a problem with two factors: 1. Individual metabolic variation. People with shitty metabolisms are going to get fat if they eat restaurant meals portioned for 24-year-olds. For 40-50% of the population, eating portions that the median person can is going to lead to fatness. 2. Silent failure. The body punishes calorie errors on the negative side (hunger) or even tries to adapt (low energy, starvation mode) in ways that are counterproductive in modern times. It doesn't punish, in any immediate way, positive calorie errors.

eru 12y ago
> Given that an error of 50 calories per day is 5 pounds gained per year, [...] As people get fatter, they need more food just to stay the same. So if I took my exact current caloric needs to stay the same weight at my level of activity, and added eg a constant 500 kCal each day, I would not in fact gain kg after kg year in year out. But rather, my weight curve would look like the charge/time curve when loading up a capacitor.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  If your calorie count remained constant (which is an assumption that I'm not sure I share) as you gained the weight, then you'd gain weight until the calorie surplus was zero. However, it's quite possible that, as you gained weight, you'd also be eating more calories, and if you kept a constant calorie error, you'd keep gaining weight. Also, metabolism slows with age. However, people are heaviest around 55, and start losing weight as appetite decreases beyond that.
  - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
    This is not how metabolism works. It's not mechanistic. Extra calories rapidly ramp up the resting metabolic rate, and deficits dramatically slow it. Minor protein or sleep deficiencies slow the metabolic rate. Endurance exercise slows the resting metabolic rate. Low calorie intake is a major risk factor for obesity.
    - michaelochurch 12y ago
      This is interesting. Thanks for the insight. So, how would you solve the obesity problem? Do you think it's about food quality rather than quantity? What exercises work and which don't? Out of curiosity, why isn't the state of medicine able to speed BMR up to the level of the 95th-percentile 17-year-old, a rate we know to be safe? It seems like getting metabolism to that level would have minimal side effects. (Obviously, metabolism can't be increased without limit, since there's a point where a person would get heatstroke.) Is it just that hard to control it like that from day to day?
      - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        You can easily take thyroid hormones and raise the metabolic rate. That is not tricky at all. Bodybuilders do it all the time to lean out. Some say a substantial fraction of the population is mildly hypothroid and meds are appropriate, cf. Broda Barnes. Ari Whitten's "Forever Fat Loss" I think covers all the causes of obesity and debunks the major myths. There is no simple solution because the totality of modern industrialized life conspires to produce obesity. Emotional stress, lack of sleep, lack of daylight exposure, micro-nutrient deficiencies, pollution exposure, and so forth all tank metabolism. The body is made for near continuous low level outdoor activity and "working out" is not a proper substitute. You're designed to burn through large amounts of calories daily doing stuff like walking 8 miles at a leisurely pace and moving things around. Whereas the stress of a daily running habit is apt to adaptively lower the resting metabolic rate to the point it's barely useful. Everybody unduly obsesses over the food aspects, but to the extent there is a particular food villain it's probably seed oils. Soy oil and canola oil suppress metabolism (directly interfere with mitochondria) and are quite new inventions, and are now consumed in huge quantities. Aside from that there is simple calorie over consumption driven by food reward. People are naturally attuned to much more monotonous and lower flavor diets than are readily available now.
kyllo 12y ago
Also, a calorie is not a calorie. The body spends much less time and energy digesting simple sugars and starches, compared to proteins and fats, and because carbs are digested so much more efficiently, they contribute more to weight gain. It is possible to lose weight simply by reducing carbohydrates as a percentage of diet, even if total caloric consumption remains constant. Satiety is also a major factor, probably the most underrated factor in successful weight loss. Because the body digests them more slowly, high fat and protein foods stave off hunger much longer than high carb foods do, so people naturally tend to consume fewer total calories on a low carb diet, due to reduced hunger and cravings.
- huehue 12y ago
  This is absurd. You're overestimating and basing all your theory on the thermic effect of food while failing to understand how hormones affect our metabolism. Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient and potentially ruinous in the long term. Cronic ketogenic dieters for example have extremely slow metabolisms and present symptoms of hypothyroidism.
  - kyllo 12y ago
    You're reading too much into what I said. None of your claims actually contradict mine. This part actually supports what I said: Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient and potentially ruinous in the long term. Yes, that's exactly why low-carb diets work. They force your body to use a less efficient fuel, which is an effective way to counteract the problem of having too much fuel. And while ketogenic dieting may be "potentially" ruinous in the long term, obesity is definitely ruinous in the long term. I'm not really a pro-keto person, I think strict keto diets are too extreme for the long term. On the other hand, it's evident that a high carbohydrate diet provides energy that is excessive and unsuited for modern, sedentary lifestyles. Most of us would be a lot less overweight if we simply ate fewer carbs (like <40% of total calories)