ExRx.net

Agreed - depends what you mean by sedentary though. Just walking a few steps when you're 500 lbs is quite a feat.

*facepalm* I don't even know what to say to that......

First unicorns are a hyperbolic example used to make a point. One that you completely missed apparently. I just posted some research. Therefore what I said was NOT an opinion. It came from the results of peer reviewed research. One of the things found in the study was that reducing calories made only a marginal difference.

I think the article is over your head if that's all you got from it. The point is, it is VERY difficult to get fat thinner by reducing calories. It has a marginal effectiveness. It is also VERY difficult to get thin people to gain fat. Just because you eat it does NOT mean your body will store it, the body may not even be able to store it.





Seriously? Well there's the problem. You don't understand what happens when you eat something.


The pirate thing was another hyperbolic example of confusing relation with causation. There is nothing that show cause and effect.

Yes I am saying people don't get fat from eating lots of food. Some might eat lots of food because of a problem with their fat cells and hormones. If they don't have that problem they would find it difficult to eat that much. They may not even be able to store it.



Now eating lots of sugar and starch can cause a problem in people who don't otherwise have a medical problem. Although they can develop a problem this way. However replacing the junk with real food is the cure, no calorie reduction required.

Usually a combination of a genetic predisposition and eating sugary/starchy foods.

However the genetic part of this is not fully understood. It is known to be there, but not much is know about what causes it. We know it is there because of heredity though.

Oh I see. I think I misunderstood what you meant by that. I thought you were saying they had to eat a lot to get that way. But if you are getting at the fact that they are driven to eat BECAUSE of all those cells, then yes that seems to be the direction the research is pointing. In fact, in rats, it has been conclusively proven. It should follow in humans, and there is TONS (pardon the pun) of anecdotal evidence, just no study yet.


As for cardiovascular problems, the relationship is only true of the sedentary.

This is kind of a reply to all your posts here, not just this one specifically.

You are forgetting the law of conservation. The body will lower metabolism and just choke down the supply of energy, forcing the person to become sedentary. The fat cells don't work right, and just won't give up enough energy to keep them going.

Now of course eating low carb will fix all that. At least for people without other medical problems. All without reducing calories. Of course with lower insulin they will not be able to eat as much and the intake will reduce as their metabolism normalizes.


But you did hit on WHY fat people usually are sedentary and have little energy. It's because they are supporting all that fat.

One problem here, is that I am summarizing a huge book, a movie, various articles and short videos and other sources as well as the hundreds of research papers they are based on.

I'm leaving out a lot of the background information, which might be confusing if you don't have some familiarity with it. But it's the best I can do, considering it's possible to write a very large book on the subject.

Check out Stu's link. That explains it a little better than I did.

Seems like everyone's pretty much in violent agreement here - and preaching to the choir.

This got me thinking though about how plentiful protein must have been historically in human diet. We can store fat/carbohydrates in fat cells for energy for later, but excess protein seems to go mostly unused as if it were not worth holding on to.

Yes, that's right, it was fairly plentiful, relatively speaking, but so was fat. Protein just can't be used much for energy. However the body can break down muscle tissue as needed. Then when the person is eating again, the muscle is restored, provided it is being used.

As a matter of fact the denatured protein from cooked meat has a lot to do with the evolution of our brains. THAT, in my opinion is why we retained our molars. Because if you don't chew much, you don't care about cooking.

Clearly I have a lot to learn. My point is that I find it very difficult to believe calories in vs out has NOTHING to do with it and the research you posted didn't tell me that was the case. Also, replacing junk food with real food is going to cause quite a major reduction in calories, unless a lot of the 'real food' is coming from grain but even at that, I would find it very hard to believe you could equal the caloric intake of a ~400lbs person with primarily meat and veg.... Would probably need to eat every hour.

Another point here is that low calorie diets DO work for a lot of people. I'm talking about things like slim fast, weight watchers, etc. Diets that I would never recommend. They work on the theory of calorie restriction and clearly, there is 'something' in that approach which works - as much as I hate to admit it. These plans normally penalise you for protein and especially fat. Infact I once calcuated my daily intake in 'points' according to the weight watchers chart and I was 5 times over the amount of points they would allow me to have, due to the amount of protein and fat I eat (you get hammered for eggs).

Just because the weight comes back on with a reduced calorie approach doesn't mean it didn't work. If you fit the lifestyle to the diet and not the diet to the lifestyle then people will always go back to their old ways. I've seen a 365lbs guy drop 100lbs in under a year on weight watchers. There's stories like that all over the place. I'm not saying that's the way to go all i'm saying is that reducing calories cleary has SOMETHING to do with it.

It's worth noting I agree with you 100% in the 'fix' (low carb/real food). However, what 400lbs person is going to have a smooth transition into a paleo-style diet? In my view you have no chance. You need to address things on a much simpler level.

I mentioned that I would be more concerned with the amount of pizzas and donuts they binge on per day and that led you to claim I don't know what happens when you eat (???). But, then you recommend a low carb approach to fix it? What's the difference? I believe the difference here is in the application. That's all i'm getting at. I would want to approach it in terms of dropping/replacing bad habbits but by the sounds of it, you think you can prescribe a paleo/PN style diet and actually believe someone that big will stick to it? I agree on the eventual solution but not the approach.

KPj

Slim fast is really a low carb diet based on flavoured protein drinks. The shakes thake the thinking out of the diet and therefore provides an automatic source of willpower. What it doesn't do is teach a person how to maintain any weight loss for the long term or how to eat healthily. T Nation's Velecoity Diet is a high tech version of this.

Weight Watcher's strength is in their peer support program. This also artificially supports the willpoer issue.

You're right that a low-carb and a low-cal diet is often the same thing. Carbs are the reason. Carbs appear to stimulate the appetite leading to a positive feedback loop resulting in over consumtion. Protein and fat satisfy better. It's possible to get by quite well on zero carb diets that contain fewer calories than Keyes famous starvation diet. This latter diet led to some very strange behavior and was obviosly no a sustainable approach. However, that dos not account for all the weight loss. A low-carb diet seems provide more energy for activities without causing hunger. I think this happens since the energy for the activities comes from burning fat stores.

Lowering calories MAY cause weight loss for a limited period of time in the significantly overweight. However the hunger will make their underlying problem worse, stimulate their appetite and it teaches them NOTHING about nutrition. All they are doing is eating less of the same crap that got them in trouble to begin with.

Now in extremely low calorie diets, it has to be also low carb by definition. So it's just an ineffective low carb diet with not enough calories to stave off hunger and metabolism issues and not enough protein to provide for healthy muscles tissue. Maybe not even enough fat to provide for all vital body functions.



Let me try to explain this. Your body is not just a box, where you put something in and you take something out. The calories don't go anywhere by magic. There has to be some sort of enzyme or hormone that makes it do whatever it normally does in your typical person. The hormone levels are regulated not only by environmental factors, but also by receptors in the brain. Let's say you have no insulin. That would make you a type 1 diabetic. So insulin stores fat and synthesizes cholesterol. That means with no insulin it is IMPOSSIBLE to store fat, no matter how much you eat. You also have all that sugar in your blood, and you are peeing it out like crazy. Your body can't get nutrients to the cells, because you have no insulin. So you're fat and muscle are being eaten up rapidly to keep you alive, you then go into diabetic ketoacidosis. You are eating and drinking like crazy, thousands of calories. Yet you waste away to NOTHING anyway. Why? Because you need a hormone to do those things. Then you are diagnosed, you get insulin injections and suddenly everything works again. So if you body was just a gas tank, put fuel in, use fuel, and nothing else; Then there would be no such thing as an endocrinologist.



Now, what if you have or don't have, or are to sensitive or not sensetive enough to insulin, glucogon, grhelin, HGH, thyroid hormones, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, etc. What if you have problems with receptors or the neurotransmitters that act on them. Maybe you have too much or too little dopamine, or seratonin, epinepherine, norepinepherine, or Something is wrong with a certain subset of your alpha receptors or beta receptors, or various peptide receptors, or thyroid or pituitary gland and on and on and on.

Like I said there are doctors who go to school for 8 plus years JUST for hormones. Some of them may even specialize in certain ones.

If all that wasn't crazy enough, we still have many genes we don't fully understand yet. It has been but 1 decade since we finished the human genome project.

I almost forgot about feedback loops. The body will try to compensate if you eat a lot, or not enough, or if you try to put on more than a certain amount of muscle, or make any changes at all.

Man, i've got some studying to do

Thanks for the info.

KPj

Its all just Calories in/out. All the other advanced stuff does is change the numbers and cause potential for storing an excess of anything you eat. For extremely obese people cutting Calories your more likely to lose fat. The fat is a strain on the body and it really wants to get get back to a normal weight. With severe Calorie cutting on a lean individual its more likely to come from muscle loss. The muscle loss in turn reduces the metabolism (Calories out) even further and can cause all sorts of health concerns and even organ failure.

Put it this way. If your hormones are out of wack and your body is only using 1000 Calories you can still get excess eating 1200 Calories. That will cause a 20lb weight gain in a year and mess up the numbers even more. Actually eating more and the "correct foods" most likely will level off or correct the hormone problems. So now your burning 1800Calories while eating 1600. At this point you lose 20lbs in a year.

I disagree that it's all caloriesi/out. This ignores autoregulation and set points that are controlled by hormones. I believe what you eat is more important than how much. Eating refined carbs will stimulate your apetitite and encourage overconsumption and also stimulate insulins which allows fat storage. Consuming more fat and protein will satisfy more and limit the insulin response. In fact, following a diet based on paleo principles along with a sensible training program will automatically cause most people to normallize to a bf% of about 10-15% for men and about 15-20% for women without "counting calories". It's only if your hormonal response is not normal or if you're trying to get to abnormally low levels (i.e. bodybuilding) that you need to resort to other methods of fat loss.

(facepalm)

You have got to be kidding me. I have already refuted everything you said. Let's try a little experiment.

Eat 1500 calories per day of nothing but donuts for a month. Then note the results. Then eat 2000 calories per day of nothing but chicken and broccoli for a month. Then note the results.