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.

[jjm2111]

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

I agree there, but I think that even someone who has contributing factors can be just overweight as opposed to morbidly obese.

[bluefish]

Aruanan, would you mind commenting on why Atkins type diets are so successful in causing weight loss?

I'm not Aruanan, but I can tell you what I believe, without coming across as somebody who has bought in to the Atkins religion. I will preference with the fact that Ketogenic diets (Atkins is one) have assisted me in losing weight. A lot of it. I get in academic fights with Atkins devotees over certain issues, although Dr. Sears (The Zone) turned me onto the problem with excess carbs and Dr. Atkins took me all the way to ketogenic dieting. I have read much more on the topic since.

I have personally concluded that it is definitely a "calories in calories out" equation, but with an important distinction. Understanding what triggers the "calories in" side will help accomplish what the seemingly simpleminded people are trying to tell us. Yes, reduce "calories in" and maintain or increase "calories out" and you will gain slower, stop gaining or lose weight, depending on the actual quanitites. How we control "calories in" is a matter of what works for you and what is causing the excess consumption (assuming this is the case, which it is in 99^ of the cases).

An Atkins style diet works for me, and apparently a lot of other people. The researchers may not find why in their data and conclude that Atkins isn't superior, because they are working with controls. That is, they mix macronutrient composition in different ways and feed their subjects the same number of calories and voila, no difference. They may be correct in concluding that one diet over another is not superior. But they are looking at the wrong things.

The surperior diet is one you will adhere to. If you are less likely to cheat on Atkins, and it causes you to eat less, it is more likely to cause you to lose weight! Simple enough, but the academics often miss this point altogether because they get so caught up in the minutia that they fail to look at a simple contributinng factor to overconsumption of food: HUNGER.

There is no "metabolic advantage" as claimed by Dr. Atkins in his book. At least none has been proven. Speculation as to any that might exist can only provide for so few additional calories being burned that the "advantage," should it exist, would result in zero additional weight loss for all practical purposes.

The reason people lose weight on Ketogenic diets is three-fold: First, the food you are allowed to eat is limited (spare me the recipes cult members) and it is inconvenient to eat a lot. By default, you will eat less, if adhering to the diet, simply due to food availability, or lack thereof.

Second, protein and fat tend to be more satiating than carbohydrates. You get full faster. Granted, you may consume more calories, but you may not. Satisfaction may result in less food intake.

Third, ketogenic diets severely suppress appetite, further assuring less food consumption. This point is the most important in my particular case.

Associated with these might be the fact that on a ketogenic diet, you simply get sick of the food choices. That, combined with a suppressed appetite, results in under-consumption of food for me. When in ketosis, I personally have to be mindful to eat ENOUGH, lest I end up completely wiped out. My first time eating an exceptionally low-carb diet caused me serious problems due to lack of eating. I know better now and force myself to eat. It is almost like forcing myself to take medicine.

Prior to eating this way, I consumed huge quanitites of sugar. My father died of diabetic ketoacidosis and my overweight brother looks like a crack addict when opening a bag of candy. He literally gets a mad look in his eyes. I know what he is feeling because I used to do it with him.

Occassionally, I will fall off the wagon and consume a bunch of carbs. The cravings for more return within the hour. If I eat a lot of carbs at night, I wake up with a hangover that feels like I drank a couple of six packs the night before. There is a clear addiction. Virtual abstinence keeps my appetite under control, my head clear and my energy levels up.

Those still reading, and interested, may want to check out another interesting book: Potatos not Prozac. While I can't do the potato at nigh solution the author advocates (to cause an uptake of Tryptophan for Serotonin synthesis), her theories on sugar addiction and its relationship to alcoholism are interesting. Some may find themselves described in her book.

[A CA Guy]

"We are grateful to ExxonMobil, AT&T, Nasdaq, McDonalds, Microsoft, and General Motors Corporation for their support."

It's amazing that a internet site sponsored by McDonalds would ever come to these conclusions! LOL

This was all just a fun joke I guess. Thanks

[bluefish]

Nice job Swordmaker!

Anybody that didn't catch Swordmaker's post, go back and read it (the one to which I'm replying).

I always appreciated somebody exposing scientific sounding crap for actual crap. Too often, people thing they can put something over on us by spewing like a textbook.

[Capriole]

Sam, you're right again, but it really didn't sound like what this man was doing constitutes exercise-type walking. To really derive some exercise benefit from walking you have to put some effort into it, enough so that you're breathing hard. What I like to do is to run about a block, enough to get my heart rate and respiratory rate up, then drop to a fast walk to maintain that cardiac stress for a few miles. It works great for a light aerobic workout of the kind that women need: longer and slower than the true running that a lot of men find effective.

Hiking in the mountains is also good if you do it fast enough to make you breathe hard.

[Capriole]

So no bread, pasta, peanut butter, crackers, chips, etc for you? (all contain sugar)

Ah, I didn't say that. When I was trying to lose weight, I was religious about avoiding bread, pasta, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Now I stay away from all the above-listed, but I do occasionally permit myself a piece of fruit, some dairy products (which do contain natural sugar even if theoretically "unsweetened,") and some vegetables. But the idea of eating white bread or pasta or crackers makes me sick. I'm also very abstemious about carbs at the end of the month because I find that avoiding carbs keeps me energetic and PMS-free. So, re: your challenge, going sugarless for four days is not a problem. Today it was eggs for breakfast, cheese and sausage for lunch with a little salad, and salmon with broccoli for dinner.

[Rennes Templar]

Sounds like you're doing all the right things. So whats wrong with the Land of Lincoln, my home state? And it better be good.

[King Prout]

Thanks for the ping and implicit compliment.
I will try not to unearn it.
I'm working, I'll read the article and thread in bits as I accomplish my assigned tasks.

[Rennes Templar]

See #77. You can go as far as you need to. Generally, if it comes off the tree or vine its safe. I wouldnt worry about the sugar in an onion.

[King Prout]

Only four days?
How about two weeks on a water-only diet, or does being sick nearly to death with a flu not count?
I lost 30 lbs in that two week period and the month or so recovery, and it took two years of deliberate effort to gain it back - as I stated in a post on the other thread, my metabolism is a spendthrift.
So, what did I win?

[Kevin Curry]

I tried Atkins, lost weight (I didn't need to lose a lot), started a vigorours daily exercise routine and as an unexpected bonus experienced a decrease in the number of migraine headaches by about half.

I suspect excess sugar was somehow helping to trigger severe headaches.

[Timesink]

The Lard acts in mysterious wheys.

ROFL!

[Dianna]

Those still reading, and interested, may want to check out another interesting book: Potatos not Prozac. While I can't do the potato at nigh solution the author advocates (to cause an uptake of Tryptophan for Serotonin synthesis), her theories on sugar addiction and its relationship to alcoholism are interesting. Some may find themselves described in her book.

I certainly think people ought to take responsibility for their poor health. We always have the option of choosing apples over doughnuts.

However, Dr's have not (and are not) given people a good enough understanding of nutrition. I absolutely think the low fat craze has helped people become fatter, but also, how many heavy people have been totally discouraged by that advice? Low fat tends to be heavy carb, so two hours later you feel like you're starving!

The hunger response, in addition to bad info about how to eat for weight loss, in addition to difficulty with exercise because of weight does not eradicate personal responsibility. But Dr's need to start telling their patients that they've been given terrible advice. The weight isn't ALL their fault and help people to better understand how to be healthy.

[King Prout]

Genetics and heredity are important. However...

Problems arise when one tries to realistically examine and discuss this area. Too much sensitivity about certain demographic groups and their common and decades-consistent behaviors, and the unintended consequences on these groups (and, thus, the national averages) these characteristic behaviors produce. Locking in recessive alleles for medically undesirable traits.

For those who have pointed out that it is impossible for the genome to have "evolved" (mutated) in so short a time as to produce the apparent sudden upsurge in chronic and morbid obesity rates: You are correct.

However, I must ask you to examine the following general "hypothetical" scenario and ask yourself what effect it *might* have on the gene pool - NOT the genome - respecting incidence and concentration of genetically heritable multi-gene-dependent unfortunate phenotypic expressions (such as asthma, predisposition for heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, glandular imbalances, *perhaps* tendencies towards obesity, and -ummm... how to put it politely?- a "spectrum of congenital and incurable permanent ineducability"):

1. A subpopulation started from a narrow founding set of genetic donors undergoes several generations of sexual promiscuity.
2. These commonplace promiscuous and ephemeral interludes produce a large percentage of illegitimate children of unknown paternity per generation, as well as decrease the length of a generatioal span from the notional 25 years to something more closely approximated by 17 years.
3. These illegitimates continue the promiscuous habits of their progenitors, leading to a significant increase in the incidence of unintentional incest by way of unknowing couplings of demi-siblings, close cousins, etc...
4. These common cases of accidental incest lead to inbreeding on a population-wide level over the course of several generations.
5. The general inbreeding leads to various "founders' syndromes" (one minor and mild example that shouldn't get me in serious trouble: cajuns) and the "locking in" of various recessive alleles as homozygous pairings.
6. These homozygous recessives lead to an increase in the incidence of particular phenotypic expressions, many of them (most of them, actually) medically undesirable.

Can you see that a process as described above, if there are indeed "fat genes", might account for a sweeping shift in the gene pool, leading to a massive shift in rates-of-incidence of obesity types in the phenotypes of a general population, without need for an impossible rate of genetic mutation?

[Thorondir]

Your body can take sugars and turn them into fat. It can take fat and turn it into sugar, but the brain does not like that as much as regular sugar. However, it is easier for your body to store fat as fat, since there is no conversion necessary. Turning sugar into fat uses up some calories in the process. I hear so many people fight and argue about which diet is best (My older brother is an atkins fanatic). My wife, who holds a Master's in Dietetics goes for the low fat thing, except with her diabetic patients. Either way, it's a lifestyle change that makes the difference, and a person has to exercise to be healthy. It doesn't mean you have to be a fanatic athlete, just get the blood pumping a few times per week. Your metabolism then adjusts to turn that fuel to good use instead of storing it for when you decide to do something.

[Thorondir]

My five children (mostly adults) and I eat tons of sugar and none of us are fat at all, because we exercise like maniacs. We don't exercize because we are health fanatics, but because we enjoy working out together or alone, for that matter. And we are not fit because of genetics. My parents and two of my sisters are fat. Whenever I slow down on my exercise routines, I begin to pork up, so I just don't do that. At 44 I can still wear a leather belt I wore when I was 16.

It's the exercise, folks. If you exercise a lot, you can go on an eat-all-you-want diet. It works for me and everyone I know, except for one of my sisters. Her thyroid is screwed up. She really has to fanatically diet and exercize to drop the flab, but she did it once and proved it beyond a doubt with her (temporary) cute little figure.

[King Prout]

I will go so far as the following:
While in Basic Training, I simultaneously lost two inches around my waist and gained about 30 lbs.
A lot of folks go nuts equating BMI-based "overweight" with actual medically hazardous obesity, totally neglecting to factor in the much greater mass per-unit-volume of lean muscle versus fat.

[King Prout]

Oh, and those maniac DI's crammed about 9000 calories down my gullet every day, because they believed that I was "too damned skinny" They were right, and it worked... Eating like a pig plus an intensive exercise regimen did exactly what they intended it to.
Conversely, their method of dealing with obese trainees involved intensive exercise and a heavily restricted diet. It never turned an obese recruit into a sleek snake like me, but it DID render them fitly "overweight" rather than obese... in the cases I observed. I do not know what their success rate was, nor how permanent the overhauls were.
That sort of strict and sudden regimen would not work with a massivly obese patient who has begun to suffer the secondary effects of chronic or morbid obesity. It'd kill them.

[Sam Cree]

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

Yeah, that's about the size of it. If the science is right, I'm saying the conclusions are wrong. Or maybe I'm understanding the article incorrectly. Although Timesink says there are 10 sections to it, so maybe I'll like some of the rest better.

Interesting about the Hellers, I'm going to check into them a little. Cool that both have the same initials.

[Sam Cree]

"Second, protein and fat tend to be more satiating than carbohydrates."

This has been my personal experience. Additionally, I am not hungry for quite a long time after eating protein and fat. When I was on a low fat diet, the opposite was true, I'd get hungry pretty quickly after meals. Not to mention feeling not so hot all the time.

Your conclusions make sense to me. Perhaps the insulin thing is part of it too. Thanks.