The Skinny on Fat (The Truth About Obesity, Part 2)

Tech Central Station ^ | July 16, 2003 | Sandy Szwarc

[Timesink]

A host of sinful foods have been demonized as the root of obesity and poor health of American adults and children. Fast food restaurants have been sued, accused of contributing to customers' obesity because their food tastes too good and they tempt us by advertising. Taxes are being proposed on foods deemed fattening or bad for us, namely, anything with meat or fat, that is fried or processed or that is sweet.

[sinkspur]

The danger from obesity comes from having a lot of food of high energy content easily available combined with little physical activity.

Translation: "high energy" foods are carbohydrates.

Reducing carbohydrates will result in weight loss.

Atkins runs counter to some of your contentions, aruanan, and there are simply too many Atkins students (like myself) who eat bacon, and cheese, and red meat, and salads, and lose weight.

I've heard every nutritionist in the world. "Low fat" diets usually equal high carbs, which is why low fat diets result in even more obesity.

[Xenalyte]

What do you mean, what are my views? I'm not a doctor. I try to watch my weight. It's not a political issue on which my views matter.

[Capriole]

I challenge anyone reading this to go four days without any food that has sugar in it. Bet you can't make it.

Betcha I can. Not a problem at all. But maybe that's why, at 5'10", I weigh 137. I lost 75 pounds after the birth of my last child so I agree (a) that it's hard, (b) that you have to combine exercise--usually twice or three times a day, not just once--with a sugar-free diet, and (c)obese people usually overestimate how much exercise they're getting. They move slowly and take their time, which means they don't burn up many calories. When fat people tell me they envy my slim figure, I ask them, "How far did you run this morning?" I have never heard one answer, "Oh, I ran 5 miles this morning before work and now I'm swimming half a mile. I'll lift some weights before bed, too." Most of them would rather try different purchased diets or sip aspartame-contaminated soft drinks (yech!) and hope that will work.

That said, I do kind of like the idea that environmental factors are partly responsible for our epidemic. It sure couldn't be naturally occurring genetic changes or the fat person's ancestors back in Thailand, Hungary, England, Iceland, or Botswana would be fat, too.

[ExSoldier]

I started Jenny Craig with my wife in May. To date, my wife has lost about 15 pounds and I have lost near THIRTY pounds. I now weight about 240...only about thirty to go. It's pretty easy on Jenny Craig...easier than anything else I have ever tried. Wife is starting to wean us off the program food which is pretty expensive. We have found MANY equivalents are available in the grocery store. We check by cutting nutrition info from Jenny Craig boxes and then comparing at the grocery. Lean Cuisine is a pretty good match. We found that the secret is in eating more frequently and in portion size.

[Capriole]

I am about 15 lbs. overweight AND I walk 1.5 miles on my treadmill each night besides walking all over the AF base at work and working in the yard on weekends.

I'm wondering if you don't have the same problem a lot of other folks do, including my own fifteen-year-old daughter. You get a lot of exercise, but it's just the kind that tires you out, not the kind that builds calorie burning muscle mass, or aerobic exercise. Instead it makes you too weary to do that extra aerobic or weight-lifting exercise.

Walking around an AF base will give you firm lower-leg muscles, but it won't make your muscles firm all over, and it isn't aerobic exercise. The same is true of working in the yard on weekends. Unless you're digging holes at high speed, you aren't burning up many calories. You may need to change the types of exercise you're getting--for instance, go for a run early in the morning, to jump-start your metabolism and suppress your appetite, then bike after work, or swim, or lift weights. Building up some muscle mass is critical.

[SamAdams76]

Walking around an AF base will give you firm lower-leg muscles, but it won't make your muscles firm all over, and it isn't aerobic exercise.

If done properly, walking is the complete exercise that will keep you fit for life. Most people view walking as "strolling around" with your hands in your pockets. It can be that, of course. But there is so much more to walking that that.

There is "brisk walking" in which one walks full-speed ahead up to a speed of 15 minutes per mile. This is the kind of walking I did for the first three months of my program. I eventually got 4 miles walked in an hour.

After brisk walking, you can then move up to "aerobic walking" which is when you put your arms at roughly 90 degree angles, allowing your legs to move much faster. (When your arms are hanging down at your sides, you are limited in how fast you can walk). I have recently started walking that way and can now do 14-minute miles. Thus, I am starting to pass slower joggers by walking! Using this gait, one can get down to 12-minute miles or even less. But it does take a lot of work.

Finally, there is something called "race-walking" which is just an insane kind of walking. Here, you can walk as fast as most people run. To get to this level, you are an athlete of the highest order.

I don't think I'll ever be a race-walker but I can certainly get down to 12-minute miles in the near future by walking aerobically.

So why not just jog? Well when you jog (or run), you are putting three times your body weight on your feet everytime they touch the ground. This is a real pounding that will catch up to you sooner or later with injury. Even elite runners get injured eventually. On the other hand, walking is an exercise you can do for life with a very low risk of injury.

[Swordmaker]

Although, so far, I disagree with what I perceive as the main thrust of the articles, that obesity isn't related to eating too much of certain foods.

So you disagree with the research. What you WANT to believe is being denied by the science.

[jjm2111]

I only ask because you seem to be of the opinion that fat people can't help the fact that they're fat. I might be mistaken, but that is my impression.

[Swordmaker]

Neither glucose nor fructose is made into fat in the human body. Fat cannot be converted into glucose. The human body makes very, very little fat de novo. The way one gains fat is principally from fat in the diet that is stored in adipose tissue. If you took a sample of all the fats you ate over a year's period and compared their types and relative quantities to the fat in a tissue sample of your adipose tissue, you'd find they were almost exactly the same.

This is totally incorrect. Dr. Richard Heller and Dr. Rachael Heller state that human fat is a by-product process in which carbohydrates (including sucrose and fructose) are converted by insulin into glycogen, which is the actual fuel of the body. When too much glycogen is created by this process, it is converted to fat and stored for future use. According to these two medical professors, fat IS created from carbohydrates

Dietary fat intake does NOT seem to be related to fat production.

For more than a decade, Richard F. Heller, M.S., Ph.D., and Rachael F. Heller, M.A., M.Ph., Ph.D., each held two professorial appointments and conducted research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and in the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Dr. Richard Heller holds a third appointment as Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York. They are coauthors of the bestselling Healthy for Life and The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet, as well as The Carbohydrate Addict's Lifespan Program, The Carbohydrate Addict's Program for Success, and The Carbohydrate Addict's Gram Counter.

[Swordmaker]

Make that "...by-product of the process..."

[exDemMom]

Since sucrose, like other sugars, is converted to glucose in the body, I have a couple of questions. Do you just avoid foods containing added sucrose, or any food containing sucrose (e.g. onions)? What about foods containing other sugars (e.g. honey) or starches and glycogen that also are converted to glucose? How far do you go to avoid sugar?

[Rennes Templar]

Your Mom was right. Sugar, ie isolated sugar added to other foods and drinks, is the culprit.

[exDemMom]

...caught everyone by surprise because the dead guy was in the best of health, in his early 40s, had NO body fat, and exercised every morning before work.

Everyone needs some body fat, so that sounds like a bad problem right there. And if he was overexercising, he was likely putting quite a strain on his heart. So he couldn't have been in the BEST of health.

[Rennes Templar]

Get the book the Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wollcot. It will allow you to detrmine what foods your body does best with.

[Consort]

The Lard acts in mysterious wheys.

[FreedomPoster]

>>But we all know food is not scarce in the good ol' USA just take a trip to Chilli's and try to eat the whole plate.

There's a worthwhile point to be made here. I often consciously eat only half of what they bring me, saving the other half for a lunch or dinner later. It's easy to do with portion sizes being what they are, and economical besides.

[Rennes Templar]

"How much do I win? I have gone without sugar for over 5 years."
"You ARE taking in some sugar; you're just taking it in via foods that contain it naturally instead of via foods that have it added (or via dumping Domino Sugar packets into your tea)."


Technically correct. When I speak of avoiding sugar I am speaking of all the sugar isolates, sucrose, maltose, dextrose, fructose etc that are refined from other sources and added to foods. The sugar in an apple is far different from table sugar. It is surrounded biochemically by other factors such as vitamins and minerals that assist in its utilization. Refined sugars rush into the blood stream without any other metabolic factors and end up being stored as fat.

[Rennes Templar]

I was challenging the sugar challenged which it sounds like you aren't. So no bread, pasta, peanut butter, crackers, chips, etc for you? (all contain sugar)

[null and void]

*groan*

[Xenalyte]

Some of them can help it. Some of them have contributing factors that make it MUCH more difficult for them to lose weight than (say) I have.