June 12, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:I just finished Gina Kolata's "Rethinking Thin", which is pretty scathing on the subject of weight loss. She heavily endorses the theory that people have a natural set point for weight, around which they vary by no more than 10-20 pounds. Try to go beyond that, and natural defense mechanisms kick in that push you back into your range; either you lose your appetite, or you become ravenously hungry and obsessed with food.
The idea seems to be that the natural tendency of most people is to be somewhat overweight--say, 10-30 pounds over what society sees as normal. Obese people, however, have something wrong with the mechanism their body uses to perceive how fat they are, so the chemical signals to eat keep coming. Basically, any time that they are losing weight, their body thinks they are starving.
Normal people think of obese people dieting down to something near normal as being essentially the same activity as it is for them to diet off those ten unwanted pounds, when in fact they are fundamentally different. Normal people are dieting down to the bottom of their set range, where it might be a little tempting to have more dessert. Obese people, on the other hand, are dieting down to a point where their body thinks they are starving, and floods them with chemical signals to EAT! Obese people who have lost a lot of weight act like normal people do when they are severely food deprived--tellingly illustrated by an anecdote from a World War II prisoner of war, who reports that the GI's in German prison camps sat around, not talking about tail, but swapping recipes. Imagine a force powerful enough to make 19 year old males stop thinking about sex, and start thinking about ways to bring out the parsley flavour in your cheese croquettes, and you have some inkling of what the obese go through. Gastric bypass surgery somehow short-circuits this hormonal surge, though no one quite understands why.
It makes sense to me. Like almost everyone who doesn't struggle with their weight, I have been guilty of thinking that fat people simply lacked willpower. But when I actually think about, say, the roommate with the binge eating problem, it's readily apparent that there must be something else going on. I once burst in on her as she spooned out the last of a half-gallon of ice cream that had not been in our freezer just hours before. "What a pig!" is the common upper middle class reaction. But that doesn't make much sense. I don't manfully restrain my many urges to eat a half-gallon of ice cream; the very idea revolts me. I'm not sure I could force myself to do so on a bet. So I can't really credit my behaviour to my superior exhibition of the bourgeois virtues of self restraint, since I am being restrained by lack of desire, not force of will. That she did want to eat that much ice cream seems to indicate that there is something very different about her that has nothing to do with virtue.
It isn't just eating, either; fat peoples metabolisms are notably slower when they lose weight than someone who finds it easy to keep their weight at the same level. (Note to dieters, however: it apparently isn't true that dieting results in a long-term fall in your metabolism, and losing weight, not being thin, is what cures hypertension, so yo yo dieting may not be as bad as its sometimes thought).
I'm not entirely satisfied with Kolata's thesis, because she doesn't address the two biggest holes in the "genetic determinance" theory: first, why are we getting fatter so rapidly? And second, why is weight so strongly correlated with income? Some of it may be reverse correlation (people are disgusted by fat people), but not all of it, because many people don't become fat until later in life, and the relationship holds more strongly for women, whose household income is likely to be more determined by what their husband earns than what they earn. Even if we were seeing fat wives left for thinner women, alimony should be supporting them in a higher quintile.
I am still wondering about one thing: why do we hate fat people so much? Upper middle class Americans look down on fat people as both physically and morally revolting. And contrary to a lot of the things you read in the fat acceptance movement, that is a longstanding prejudice; the upper class has been dieting since at least Lord Byron. It has been a long time since western society idealised women with abundant rolls of fat. Fat people have been reviled even when there weren't very many of them; even when it was (as it was, in the 19th century) a sign of wealth.
I have an evolutionary theory, which is that we are programmed to resent those people who we think of as taking more than their fair share from the collective food supply. Gluttony offends us because it taps some primal feeling that those who eat too much are bad, not for themselves, but for society. That's not quite satisfying, because then why do Africans prefer their women so plump? But so far, it's all I've got.
Posted by Jane Galt at June 12, 2007 6:54 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>many africans may prefer plump women for the same reason many american women like rich men...prestige by association. if a woman is plump, obviously (says the unconscious) she has access to abundant resources.(and if you have her, the implication is, so will you.)
Just a theory...
many africans may prefer plump women for the same reason many american women like rich men...prestige by association. if a woman is plump, obviously (says the unconscious) she has access to abundant resources.(and if you have her, the implication is, so will you.)
Just a theory...
many africans may prefer plump women for the same reason many american women like rich men...prestige by association. if a woman is plump, obviously (says the unconscious) she has access to abundant resources.(and if you have her, the implication is, so will you.)
Just a theory...
But the set point for a person varies according to exercise for sure and probably also nutrition. So I'd say that rich people are thinner because they have more time & energy for exercise and better food (so they can get the nutrients they need with fewer calories).
Posted by: Slocum on June 12, 2007 8:04 PMI'm not entirely satisfied with Kolata's thesis, because she doesn't address the two biggest holes in the "genetic determinance" theory: first, why are we getting fatter so rapidly?
Increased availability of food strikes me as the most straightforward hypothesis. It's not so long since poverty in the United States really did mean being undernourished, and there's plenty of evidence (e.g., the studies documented in Wannsik's Mindless Eating) that immediate availability of food and things like standard portion sizes really do influence how much people eat at a given sitting. (Some people naturally eat less than others do, but both groups will eat more out of a larger container than they will out of a smaller one) Even given a tendency towards obesity, the food available in the environment will determine whether and how thoroughly it's expressed.
That maps to my anecdotal experience as well. E.g., this weekend, I was at a book fair where for some reason Ghirardelli was giving out chocolates. So, being a naturally (though not currently) obese person, I ate four of them. If no one had been handing out chocolates (or if they'd been selling chocolate for a dime apiece) I wouldn't have had that chocolate at all. If I'd been sitting in a room with a dish full of the same chocolates and nothing much else to do, I would as likely eat an arbitrary number of them unless I consciously and repeatedly restrained myself.
It seems pretty natural that as food becomes more pervasively available and portion sizes increase (not because of any dark conspiracy, but because food is cheap and large quantities feel more luxurious, so there's market pressure pushing portions upward), more of the people who tend towards obesity will actually become obese.
(I'm not sure how far I believe in there being a specific setpoint, though. My own BMI has been over ten points higher than it is now, without showing any signs that I was ceasing to continue gaining weight.)
I think her theory holds true for the majority of us who are 10-30 pounds overweight. However Americans didn't pop out of the ground. We're decendents of Europeans, Africans etc. and we show much higher levels of obesity than any of them. It's hard to believe that we have a unique, genetic need to as fat as so many of us are. If that's the case where are all the 500 pounders running around France.
Americans are fat because as the earlier commenter mentioned, it's very easy to get unhealthy, fatening food. It's also very possible to lead a life where the furthest you ever walk is from your car to your desk at the office. Lots of bad food+ no exercise= fat. I think it's that simple for the vast majority of people.
I'm not sure morality has much to do with it. AMerica is set up to give you what you want quickly and easily. If you want food and comfort, you can have them in spades- as well as your 55 waist jeans.
Posted by: Karl on June 12, 2007 8:33 PMI've never found set point to be at all satisfying. It would seem that the genetic bias would be for people to on the skinny side, as I can't imagine obese people being especially good hunter-gatherers.
I think that many of the simple carbohydrates that are abundant to us today are physically addictive, while at the same time contributing little to satiety. I forgot the source for this but I remeber reading something to the effect that very simple carbs provoke a neurological response similar to that of an addict getting their fix (I did read this on the internet so who knows though.) I can say that this is true for me personally in the sense that I get sugar cravings. So maybe the problem isnt a genetic set-point but withdrawal.
Posted by: Nick R. on June 12, 2007 8:40 PMDoes Kolata talk about exercise? I've come to the conclusion that any discussion of weight gain/loss that doesn't discuss the role of exercise is flawed.
Posted by: Avram on June 12, 2007 9:12 PMAttempt at counter-intuition: When we think about these things, we frame them the same way you have: "Why do people become obese when it's so obviously a horrible thing to happen to someone?" Just to throw this out there: maybe it's because by and large, it's not particularly horrible and people find they can live with it fairly well--to the point where it does not massively overshadow every other problem/deficiency in their lives.
Posted by: Daniel on June 12, 2007 9:18 PMI blame high fructose corn syrup and the other chemical concoctions that make up so much of our convenience food. I notice in the lunchroom that the (skinny) oriental immigrants warm up homemade noodle dishes or soup while everyone else opts for frozen dinners or take-out.
Posted by: KevinM on June 12, 2007 9:20 PMSlocum:
So I'd say that rich people are thinner because they have more time & energy for exercise and better food.
I don't know about energy, but income is positively correlated with hours worked, and negatively correlated with time spent watching television, so the idea that the poor are just too busy to exercise (and doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers aren't) strikes me as dubious.
Jane:
I actually do have to keep unhealthful foods out of my home, or only bring them home in very small quantities. I don't pine for ice cream when it's not there, but if it is, I can rationalize away the consumption of truly prodigious quantities of the stuff.
I've never really been fat, since my parents controlled my access to food when I was younger, and I do it now, but I suspect that I might be if I didn't take precautionary mesaures like keeping unhealthful foods out of my home.
Half Sigma had an interesting hypothesis regarding obesity and genetics: He thinks that genes that predispose people to obesity are becoming more common because fat people have more children.
Posted by: Brandon Berg on June 12, 2007 9:27 PMSomehow I think obesity would be far less common if all those fat families were trying to farm 40 acres without power machinery. If every obese person with a backyard were to take a shovel and pick-axe, and dig a trench ten feet long, by four feet wide, by four feet deep, fill it in, and repeat again, every daylight hour, for about two to three months, they likely would be bored as hell, but they sure as heck wouldn't be fat anymore. I doubt obesity and obesity related illnesses were prevalent among, say, the poor people who built the transcontinental railroad. Of course, there was plenty of other stuff which killed them prematurely, so I'm not recommending a repeat.
Plentiful and cheap food, dense in calories, and no need to physically move to avoid starving, is why people are so much more fat today. It just happened in the U.S. first.
Posted by: Will Allen on June 12, 2007 9:45 PMI have an experiment for you to try. Buy a box of 6 Krispy Kreme plain donuts. Put them on a plate. Now eat one. It's good, huh? You can have a second if you like. Now try to not eat the whole plate. It's a lot like binge drinking... You're chasing that initial nice buzz and it jut goes downhill.
And a data point for you... I'm trying to slim up a bit. Over the past 6 weeks or so, I'm down about 8 pounds by eating mostly salad, no dessert, no junk, gym 5+ days a week. I have really gotten over the urge to eat crappy stuff. So today at lunch, I got a swiss and mushroom burger (but fruit instead of fries). I feel pretty bloated this evening, but I really crave some kind of a special treat. My body definitely knows when my mind is weak!
Posted by: Brad Hutchings on June 12, 2007 9:53 PMPhysical activity is key to maintaining a healthy weight. Any discussion about the subject of obesity that doesn't prescribe exercise as the major solution is very deficient. We are genetically predisposed to gain weight. When humans evolved malnourishment was a constant lethal threat- probably right up there with being eaten by predators and dying of infections. I seriously doubt there is any genetic predisposition to control weight gain since I doubt overeating was a threat to primitive humans.
Now, we have abundant and incredibly cheap food. We have the option of driving whereever we wish to go, and we have access to labor saving devices that take a lot of the physical activity out of our lives. In addition, we have vast amounts of nearly free entertainment options that fill our free moments. Why are Americans the most obese people on the planet? We are the most obese because we are the richest on all of these measures. How do you solve it? Short of medical intervention with a weight-loss drug or procedure, controlling our intake of food, both quantity and quality, and devoting more of our free time to exercise is the only solution.
Posted by: Yancey Ward on June 12, 2007 9:57 PMWow, you had to come up with a theory to figure out why Americans dislike fat people? such a great intellectual accomplishment don't you think?
Posted by: New West Living on June 12, 2007 10:06 PM"It would seem that the genetic bias would be for people to on the skinny side, as I can't imagine obese people being especially good hunter-gatherers." Wrong. Hunter-gatherers need their fat. In nearly all climates there is some part of the year when there is little food available, and hunter-gatherers generally have a very limited ability to store food to get them through those periods. What gets them through is the fat they accumulated when food was plentiful.
Of course, they aren't fat like a couch potato; first they get muscular, then they take on a layer of fat over that, while continuing to get plenty of exercise. And every year, they go through a period of enforced dieting that prevents the fat from just accumulating.
Not that this is a particularly healthy lifestyle, either. It amounts to annual yo-yo dieting with no particular assurance that the "diet" won't be too long and severe one year. Also, if neither that annual feast and famine cycle nor questionable food, wild animals, and lack of medical care kills grandma off before she's fifty, it's likely that her descendants will toss her out in the snow the next especially severe winter to save a little more food for themselves... (This did happen with Native Americans often enough, although it's likely that most of the old folks thus eliminated were more or less volunteers. If your grandkids grow up in your house, you will love them that much - not to mention that life in the wintertime would suck anyway if your joints were getting arthritic and your house was heated mainly by body heat.)
Posted by: markm on June 12, 2007 10:26 PMYep, being able to pack on fat in times of plenty improves the odds of survival in lean times.
Posted by: Will Allen on June 12, 2007 10:38 PMIt seems to me that everyone is making a huge leap of logic. You all seem to thing that
"Setpoint" = "Genetically determined setpoint"
which of course doesn't explain things like changes over decades and correlation with income.
How about "setpoint" = "setpoint determined by genetics AND previous diet/exercise history over your lifespan"
That way we have a setpoint, but it can vary over decades, and it can vary between generations, and it can vary between social classes, and between individuals.
This setpoint is CHANGED by years of exposure to high calorie simple carbohydrate diets or whatever. But at any given point in time, it behaves as explained in the original source.
Posted by: doctorpat on June 12, 2007 10:39 PMSeth Roberts ("The Shangri-La Diet" suggests that the set point can be manipulated by the flavor of foods we eat. Among other things, he suggests that foods with highly consistent flavor (as many prepackaged foods are designed to be) increase the set point. Alex Tabarrok has a few posts on Roberts ideas and his book over on Marginal Revolution.
Posted by: Sam on June 12, 2007 10:40 PMI'm thinkin' that there is a complex cause and effect going on, not so much with a few causes. I have known people skinny as rails until 30 or so, and then they start packing it on. They are the only person that this happened to, and then to their children, and now grandchildren. Here's the deal. They were the first gen to not be farmers working outside all day as adults, but they still ate as if they were fuelling that work. Also? What has been said about caloric density is amazingly true... meanwhile, we have to try hard NOT to be sedentary. For those of us cubefarmers, it can be quite difficult, based on the number of hours worked, and other responsibilities. If it isn't part of your life while you are younger to take time everyday to excercise, then having a family starts to preclude it. Then you get older, and packing pounds gets even easier. Finally you find that putting them on is easy, taking them off, very difficult.
For those that don't make as much money, heathier foods cost more in general, espcially versus the time involved to make the food. elemental foods can be had pretty cheaply, but then you have food prep time, and if you are working a lot, it is far easier to go with the flow, then spend an hour making dinner...
I think it is many things, coming together in the overused perfect storm cliche. The difficulty is that without a fit's all solution, it's everybody for themselves, and it's more difficult as an individual, to resist all that, even when they tell you it's bad...
The other thing I might point out from the olden days... people didn't live as long either...
so now I shall continue my dinner from tacohell... OI!
Posted by: D on June 12, 2007 10:40 PMWell, one reason for increases in numbers of fat people is that they keep moving the goalposts as to who's overweight and obese. Notice, you never see changing figures on ACTUAL WEIGHTS, over time, just increases in numbers you it's naughty to compare, because the numbers are generated different ways.
Really, the thresholds should be set AND LEFT AT the spot where most people with working setpoints will be below.
There is one very widespread reason for binge eating in people with working setpoints: exercise. It doesn't help that society likes to scare people about fat, because people doing exercise need fat, too, to recover.
I was able to cut way down on the fat part of my post-exercise binges by making a custom recovery drink with a modest amount of canola oil.
Art DeVany has a good article arguing against the notion of set points. I believe this site had an incidental link to Art DeVany's site in the past -- about the horrors of marathoning, IIRC. But the site really focuses on Art's notions of Evolutionary Fitness and is always a stimulating read.
http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/06/set_points.html
If one looks at our evolutionary past, one does not see anything like the foods (or quantities of foods) we eat or the energy expeditures (much lower on average.) Pre-history shows us we lived a hunter/gatherer lifestyle which dominates our adaptations to date and that agriculture and processed foods of the industrial age are both novel to our "design".
Foods today can be both energy dense and nutrient poor. Combine that with a comparitively lethargic and unvaried level of activity and you have a metabolic disaster. Our self-regulatory systems are simply not adapted to operate in a low energy expenditure balance. All our natural drives can work against us in the presence of insanely unnatural foods such as refined sugars, processed foods, flour, rice. It is perhaps more a miracle that anyone is *not* fat in the industrialized world.
Hmmm.
I was a fattish teenager (at least I always *felt* that way). I probably peaked at 230 in my late 20s through mid 30s.
Then I took up a little running to evade dissertation work and dropped to about 185 at 36/37. Then at 38 I picked up a partner who loved to cook and went back up to 210 for a few years. Now without him I'm creeping steadily downwards - last time I was at the doctor I was at 182. I have a hard time believing in set points, giving the length of time at my rather various plateaus.
But then there are a lot of tricky factors.
Posted by: Michael Tinkler on June 12, 2007 11:23 PMDeclining rates of smoking might contribute to increasing obesity rates. Smoking is, after all, a highly effective appetite surpressant.
Posted by: Peter on June 12, 2007 11:31 PMWhat a bunch of rubbish.
FIrst, fat is fat is fat. If someone is overwieght, it's not because fate is playing a trick on them, except in rare instances. It's because they don't exercise enough and they eat too much. The math is pretty simple.
The myth that there are different "speeds" of metabolism has been proven wrong twenty years ago.
It's amazing the lenghts people will go to justify their being fat.
Everyone loses weight when put on an appropriate diet. The trouble is that many people no longer have any physical exertions in their daily activities and thus the necessary diet is quite small.
But look at pictures of people just 40 years ago. They are for the most part much thinner than people today. The gene pool hasn't changed. It's environmental, which means people eat too much and don't exercise enough.
Posted by: Mike Rentner on June 12, 2007 11:31 PMThe economist Art De Vany (of whom I'm a big fan) has done a lot of study into weight and weight loss, and makes a good argument against the set point theory.
Posted by: Joe on June 12, 2007 11:31 PMI am still wondering about one thing: why do we hate fat people so much?
I have seen this so frequently in my life (I am obese, and thankfully work from home, so I don't have to deal with the stares, glances, and rude comments that usually happen when I am out in public). That's just how life dealt me my cards. My parents are both overweight/obese, and I inherited this. When I was a high school kid, my girlfriends were overweight as well. We had a kid, she got double-whammied with the genetic propensity to be overweight.
It's because they don't exercise enough and they eat too much. The math is pretty simple.
I call BS. Want to know why? Because my family is THE proof that genetics plays a major role.
I have four adopted children. All of them come from thin parents. They eat the same diet we eat (and they have for almost a decade). They are all thin. My biological daughter is obese. Now, since she has moved in with us, in the past six months she has lost weight, but is still obese. We exercise moderately (I'm sorry, but running for two hours a day is NOT my idea of "fun"). What is the reason behind obesity? Here are the factors...
#1. Genetics.
#2. Diet.
#3. Exercise.
The rest comes from our ability to handle obesity. Right now, I am in great health according to my family practitioner. No high blood pressure, blood sugar just fine. I know this will not stay this way, but I'm holding off the big surgery until the kids are older.
Somehow I think obesity would be far less common if all those fat families were trying to farm 40 acres without power machinery.
Oh yeah, that would definitely reduce obesity. But I don't think everyone is ready to go Amish at this point. I know I'm not.
Posted by: Brian Wohlgemuth on June 12, 2007 11:58 PMI dont know a lot of obese people that exercise daily. Which mysterious hormone is keeping them off the treadmill?
Posted by: Mark Buehner on June 13, 2007 12:08 AMFood is easier to get yet we need less energy: job categories have moved from active to sedentary (fewer farmers, laborers, more computer programmers and accountants) and each job has become more sedentary (farmer sits at a computer to plan crops and then gets on his John Deere or in his pickup rather than plowing by himself/behind horses and walking/riding around the farm and too town). Our old family recipes are designed for 4-6k calorie expenditure instead of 2000-2500.
As for set points - you can adjust your set point with some exertion but it is easier to stay within the range of the set point. Outside pressures/biases can move set point up (getting less active as you get older but consuming the same or more calories).
Gastric bands work because eating becomes exceptionally uncomfortable. If you eat too much you feel physically ill and are VERY likely to spend a serious amount of time retching. My intestines got screwed up early this spring and it gave me the effect of a gastric band (a far too tight one, but similar in concept). Anything more than 100-150ml (3-5 fluid ounces) sent me to the bathroom, and even then it felt like the worst heartburn/flu. You ALWAYS feel full/distended but you know you should eat and experience rather severe hypoglycemia. A great way to lose weight (200-400cals/day) but a horrible way to do it. Set at the right level this helps people eat only the right amounts (though you can cheat by eating/drinking very energy dense things aimed at cancer patients) and lose weight. In the case of the obese they're at VERY low risk of hypoglycemia (more the reverse) and can live off of their fat stores for a long time, do it's an excellent option that solves their physical problems and helps reinforce the psychological work they do via aversion therapy.
Posted by: hey on June 13, 2007 12:09 AMMy income versus appearance rule is that people find those who are held to be healthy and prosperous to be attractive. 400 years ago, such people were fat.
The ironic thing is that in many cultures, the well-tanned, muscular look is regarded as a mark of the lower classes, since you get that look by doing lots of manual labor in the sun. In the West, you get that look by playing lots of golf, tennis, or jogging; the vast majority of the working classes nowadays work in buildings and do jobs that aren't terribly physical.
Posted by: Foobarista on June 13, 2007 12:18 AMThere's a guy on the web named Trevor Marshall who believes vitamin D in our milk could be making us fat. Vitamin D is not a vitamin, it is a hormone which acts by binding to the vitamin D nuclear receptor. At high concentrations, it also may bind to the sterol nuclear receptor thus mimicking steroids in its effect, thus making us fat. The work this guy is doing is cutting edge and credible. This wouldn't be the first time mandated engineering of our food backfired. Google the story of folic acid and spina biffida.
Posted by: peter blogdanovich on June 13, 2007 12:25 AMA few years ago, at the age of 30, I went from being a cubicle farmer to spending eleven weeks at Army Basic Training. I went from being sedentary for 15 hours each day with 90 minutes of physical exercise, to the inverse: being physically active for 15 hours each day and sedentary for 90 minutes.
At the start of training, I was near the top of the Army designated weight range for my height, and thus made the conscious decision to eat healthy and in moderation. I think that approach lasted about about 12 days. I still ate healthy for the rest of the cycle, but each day I would add more and more and more to the plate, until I was walking to the table with mounds of food, three times per day. And yeah, by week 11, my body was sending me all sorts of signals that it was starving.
Even the heaviest of trainees lost weight. As such, I reached the inescapable conclusion that the human metabolism is like a furnace that will burn hotter and hotter, 24/7, as the person expends and requires more energy.
So we can talk about genetics and the chemical properties of certain types of food, but I agree whole-heartedly with the above comments that suggest we can't have a serious discussion about the causes of weight-gain throughout society without addressing the largely sedentary lifestyle of 20th century Americans.
As for discrimination, I make a conscious decision to refrain from over-eating, and I make the daily effort (often against my natural inclinations and desires) to make time to exercise. Neither of those are things I /have/ to do, but are personal choices. As such, yeah, I sometimes find myself looking less favorably upon the ambition of those who fail to do one or the other. It's a less than perfect view for me to take... But, then again, many (if not most) people have been guilty of looking down their noses at those who don't share their same decisions, priorities, and values at one time or another.
Posted by: Stephen on June 13, 2007 1:01 AMturn your keyboard over and bang it against the desk a few times. see how much crap comes tumbling out and then ask yourself whether it's really a mystery that Americans are so fat.
Posted by: jack on June 13, 2007 1:23 AMKarl:
We're decendents of Europeans ... etc. and we show much higher levels of obesity than any of them.
Then, I'm sure you'll have no problems bringing a link to comparably collected data vs European countries.
Allen:
Somehow I think obesity would be far less common if all those fat families were trying to farm 40 acres without power machinery.
Yep, preindustrial farmers in Russia were utterly svelte. SNICKER! BZZT!
Art De Vany's paper has problems to me. From his summary:
Dieters regain fat ... because they return to the intitial conditions of intake and expenditure they are accustomed to.
It only takes one counterexample to disprove a theory. When I exercise more, my "condions of intake" go up alot, and I don't lose weight. Nor am I alone. In addition to Stephen, there's at least one guy who's written that he loves exercise, because he can binge cake and other high-fat food. So, BZZT!!
Mike said:
But look at pictures of people just 40 years ago. They are for the most part much thinner than people today
The old pictures and movies I've seen had fatter people in them. And, my memory says people were fatter as a kid. I hope you aren't comparing the same people to each other at different ages, since we get fatter with age?
-
Almost always ignored in these discussions is the possibility that obesity might be a result of infection. There are very definite hints of this: it's been found that infecting several types of lab animals (including nonhuman primates) with adenovirus-36 makes them obese; and the presence of that virus has also been found to correlate with obesity in humans.
Infectious causation easily explains the increase in obesity: if the infections are not not found and countered, they will continue to spread unchecked. Infectious causation can even go hand in hand with genetic influences: the genes might be genes for susceptibility to infection. It also explains revulsion towards fat people: if they are carrying a communicable disease, we are better off not getting too close to them.
"Imagine a force powerful enough to make 19 year old males stop thinking about sex, and start thinking about ways to bring out the parsley flavour in your cheese croquettes, and you have some inkling of what the obese go through."
This example is a little extreme. I'm as wretchedly horny and preoccupied with sex as the next guy, but as soon as I start to get hungry, say in the late afternoon on a day where I didn't quite have enough of a lunch, I'm no longer interested in sex or basically anything but my next meal. I guess the difference between me and fat people is I don't have to eat very much before I'm satisfied and can get my mind back to other, more important things like sex.
I dunno from 'set point', but my weight has definitely varied a lot more than 10-20 pounds. A year and a half ago I hit my peak weight of 245 pounds, looked in the mirror and decided I didn't like what I saw. I did a little research and turned up the fact that 1 pound = 3500 calories. I changed my diet and started moderate exercise to the point where I was maintaining a roughly 6000-7000 calorie deficit per week, and proceeded to lose 80 pounds over the next year or so at a rate of about 1.5 pounds per week. I've kept it off without any difficulty since then.
This experience naturally makes me skeptical of claims that losing more than 20 pounds or so cannot be done with simple willpower. I did it, ergo in at least some cases it is possible. My 'set point' didn't prevent me from putting on 80 pounds after graduating from high school, nor did I feel like I was starving as I took it back off again.
Posted by: Kyle Haight on June 13, 2007 2:16 AMMark Buehner writes:
I dont know a lot of obese people that exercise daily.
I've been one in the past-- exercise has never been sufficient to be other than obese for me.
In my own case, not being obese is a matter of more or less constant attention to intake, along with the hour a day on the treadmill. I could trivially slip back over the line by simply relaxing a bit about what I eat, without altering my exercise patterns at all. (Given the general stats for long-term weight loss, being where I am at the moment is something of a triumph of hope over experience anyway.) What studies I've read indicate that as far as health is concerned, I'd be better off obese while sticking with the treadmill than at my current weight while sedentary in any case. (Though of course the social approbation goes mostly the other way.)
Stephen writes:
As for discrimination, I make a conscious decision to refrain from over-eating, and I make the daily effort (often against my natural inclinations and desires) to make time to exercise. Neither of those are things I /have/ to do, but are personal choices. As such, yeah, I sometimes find myself looking less favorably upon the ambition of those who fail to do one or the other.
Whereas I don't. I've been there and back, more than once, and I find I'm pretty much the same person whichever side of 30 my BMI happens to be. I've stayed on the preferred side of the line for a couple of years now. But I know that if I manage it for the rest of my life, I'll still have more in common with the people who want to eat that half-gallon of ice cream (whether or not they do it) than with those who can't imagine wanting to. There but for the grace of God go I. (And I've seen too many people lose dozens of pounds, only to gain them back a few years later, to think I'm out of the woods in any case. Why say anything that will come back to haunt me if/when I've fallen off the tightrope? :-) )
I am an example of the set point and starvation theories. I was anorexic and I blame that for my messed up metabolism now. Dieting as a teenage girl seems to predict serious weight gain when you are older. I gained when I was pregnant and my body keeps heading for that number, but once there, even though my eating habits don't really change, I stop gaining. Dieting is easy but it is impossible to keep it off. I have also been in the position of dieting and losing, and suddenly, no matter how much I exercise or how little I eat (down to 900 calories a day, with doctors assistance) I actually gained weight. As soon as I start eating normally (yes normally, not binging, I have never been a binge eater, though I do snack somewhat more througout the day when I am seriously stressed) my body hoards every calorie and heads for that set point.
It is a mistaken idea that stomach surgery changes your body. There are plenty of people who gain after surgery.
Exercise is not as simple as calories in-calories burned=fat. In my case muscle mass seems to be more important, which leads into the metabolism arguement and also explains the somewhat easier time men have.
I have four children and not one of them is even fat, much less obese. We really do eat fairly healthy but they also eat ice cream and donuts and chips whenever they feel like it, and sometimes in large quantities and I have never controlled their amount of food or suggested that they do. The only problem is when my oldest daughter thought she wanted to lose 5 pounds - she did, but gained back 10 and that scared her off dieting! I want them to get through the teenage years being able to listen to their bodies signals and react normally. So far, so good.
Why do I need to lose a significant amount of weight? I blame stress (the word is abused, I agree) and how I deal with it. When my life is pleasant, weight has come off. I think that also might account for the variation in rich vs. poor, as might education level etc. For kids, a lack of purpose in life that leads to sitting around playing video games might be as much a factor as lack of exercise. Although they may be in a kind of downward spiral because one way to improve your mood is to exercise. I think the hormones associated with anxiety and stress are what pack on the fat. I also think lack of sleep and eating for energy and eating carbs to get that little seratonin rush account for some of it - but again, that is stress and anxiety related.
I also blame all the kinds of sugar in the american diet for some of the general weight gain in our society - though I try to avoid sugar as much as possible so it doesn't account for my problem. High fructose corn syrup especially, which appears to metabolize in a way that makes white sugar look like oat bran by comparison. Everything has high fructose corn syrup in it.
There was no mythical, thin, healthy past. Our life span was getting longer - they died young. People in previous times also died of heart disease and other "obesity related" diseases just like they do now. The latest research blames heart disease more on inflammation than fat and diabetes on, again sugar and white bread type diets. We are getting fatter as a society at an alarming rate but the number of calories going in is only a few hundred more per day and the last 15 years this country has been exercise and low fat and diet obsessed. It doesn't seem to be helping. Most of what I have read lateley indicates dieting is actually a source of the problem.
In my case food does appear to be my drug of choice - a somewhat benign one that makes me able to carry on with my kids regardless of my stupid jerk husband and his...oops, sorry - back to the stress thing...
Posted by: Jan on June 13, 2007 2:33 AMHowever Americans didn't pop out of the ground. We're decendents of Europeans, Africans etc. and we show much higher levels of obesity than any of them.
Not that much higher. From what I read, overall EU obesity rates are less than a decade behind us (they're about where we were circa 2000, though it varies a lot by country). The trend is running in the same direction here and in Europe-- France's obesity rate may be a third ours, but their numbers are growing 6% a year-- 17% a year among children.
I don't know what African obesity rates are like, but things like disease and famine tend to ensure that not everyone otherwise inclined to become obese gets the opportunity.)
This is a response to Mark Retner. Although, I don’t really quibble with his point, it is his tone that I have issue with. I have read blogs since 1998 and this is my first reply ever, but the topic and lack of compassion by many of the readers in the comments section was beyond ability to remain a hermit.
First of all I WAS overweight since I was 5 years old. My parents "encouraged me" to try every type of diet and looking back I believe it came down to the fact that my appearance embarrassed them. I tried, or was forced to try, every fad diet, and every sports program imaginable and it was not until High School when I would literally work out (running, lifting etc.) over 3 hours a day did I even come close to my “Ideal Weight”. I almost got tossed out of the military on my first day because I was too heavy, although I was a near state champion wrestler and an all-state football player only two weeks before.
I suffered an unending stream of humiliation upon humiliation by doctors, parents, girlfriends (yes I had them), friends, “well-wishing strangers” and anyone else that decided after taking one look at me they were entitled to make the prognosis to my face that all I needed was more exercise and willpower. You can never imagine what it feels like to be standing in line to buy a salad, having opted for no dressing vs. a low fat ranch dressing, after a long workout when another adult human being will say to her children in front of you so you can easily hear, “See? If you eat too many pop tarts you will be like him and nobody will want to sit next to you on a subway or an airplane.”
At the time I was dating a young woman who was very much into modeling and pageants. I felt so lucky to be around her, considering (to everyone else, and therefore ultimately to me as well) my disgusting appearance. At that point, I would have done anything to keep her. She offered (as an ultimatum actually) to help me. We ate exactly the same foods with the same portions measured with a kitchen scale. I exercised 2, honestly 2, more hours per day than she ever even attempted. She was 121 lbs, I was 256 lbs when we started. She finished the two months at 107 lbs.
I finished at 253.
No drinking, no secret eating.
At this point I only began to gain weight and the more I gained the harder exercise became for me. I got married (to a different, equally thin woman) who could never exercise and eat a gallon of Ice Cream every two days. As I gained more and more weight it became seemingly futile. Eating salads and rice cakes every meal and all I got for my efforts was bigger trousers and a giant helping of condescension from store clerks, moms, and (worst of all) very young children. I was almost to the point of suicide, and it wasn’t because I was trying to jog on a 400 lbs body.
Gastric Bypass surgery saved my life. I got a job, in fact the same I had previously held but had be driven out of, back for 30% more money. People treated me with more respect and with far more kindness. I can only say that since we live in a society that worships ideal female forms, I feel everyday that I was lucky to be what I was as a man. I make it my mission in life to remember that if I had to endure this as a woman . . . well I am not sure that I would have been able too.
If anything my experiences have taught me to treat everyone with respect and not condemnation or judgment. Sure some overweight people are lazy, maybe a majority . . . I wasn’t and every one of you who reads this and has ever clicked their tongues or made judgments about overweight people would do well to think about the fact that a real person with real emotions is standing there and not a clown or walking lesson in “There but for the grace . . .”
Zach Glazar
Posted by: Zach on June 13, 2007 3:49 AMThis is a response to Mark Retner. Although, I don’t really quibble with his point, it is his tone that I have issue with. I have read blogs since 1998 and this is my first reply ever, but the topic and lack of compassion by many of the readers in the comments section was beyond ability to remain a hermit.
First of all I WAS overweight since I was 5 years old. My parents "encouraged me" to try every type of diet and looking back I believe it came down to the fact that my appearance embarrassed them. I tried, or was forced to try, every fad diet, and every sports program imaginable and it was not until High School when I would literally work out (running, lifting etc.) over 3 hours a day did I even come close to my “Ideal Weight”. I almost got tossed out of the military on my first day because I was too heavy, although I was a near state champion wrestler and an all-state football player only two weeks before.
I suffered an unending stream of humiliation upon humiliation by doctors, parents, girlfriends (yes I had them), friends, “well-wishing strangers” and anyone else that decided after taking one look at me they were entitled to make the prognosis to my face that all I needed was more exercise and willpower. You can never imagine what it feels like to be standing in line to buy a salad, having opted for no dressing vs. a low fat ranch dressing, after a long workout when another adult human being will say to her children in front of you so you can easily hear, “See? If you eat too many pop tarts you will be like him and nobody will want to sit next to you on a subway or an airplane.”
At the time I was dating a young woman who was very much into modeling and pageants. I felt so lucky to be around her, considering (to everyone else, and therefore ultimately to me as well) my disgusting appearance. At that point, I would have done anything to keep her. She offered (as an ultimatum actually) to help me. We ate exactly the same foods with the same portions measured with a kitchen scale. I exercised 2, honestly 2, more hours per day than she ever even attempted. She was 121 lbs, I was 256 lbs when we started. She finished the two months at 107 lbs.
I finished at 253.
No drinking, no secret eating.
At this point I only began to gain weight and the more I gained the harder exercise became for me. I got married (to a different, equally thin woman) who could never exercise and eat a gallon of Ice Cream every two days. As I gained more and more weight it became seemingly futile. Eating salads and rice cakes every meal and all I got for my efforts was bigger trousers and a giant helping of condescension from store clerks, moms, and (worst of all) very young children. I was almost to the point of suicide, and it wasn’t because I was trying to jog on a 400 lbs body.
Gastric Bypass surgery saved my life. I got a job, in fact the same I had previously held but had be driven out of, back for 30% more money. People treated me with more respect and with far more kindness. I can only say that since we live in a society that worships ideal female forms, I feel everyday that I was lucky to be what I was as a man. I make it my mission in life to remember that if I had to endure this as a woman . . . well I am not sure that I would have been able too.
If anything my experiences have taught me to treat everyone with respect and not condemnation or judgment. Sure some overweight people are lazy, maybe a majority . . . I wasn’t and every one of you who reads this and has ever clicked their tongues or made judgments about overweight people would do well to think about the fact that a real person with real emotions is standing there and not a clown or walking lesson in “There but for the grace . . .”
Zach Glazar
Posted by: Zach on June 13, 2007 3:49 AMI'm with Mike S. here. I can exercise over an hour each day -- burning around 1000 calories -- and still gain weight if I'm not constantly focusing on watching what I'm eating. It is mind-numbingly easy to eat an entire day's allotment of calories in a half-hour if I am not paying attention.
Thinking back over my life, I wonder if one factor in the rise of obesity is simply increased access to good tasting food. Since my teenaged years, I've tended to lose weight when in the small town I grew up in, and gain it when living in cities. I think suspect a part of the reason may be the fact the food is so much better in the city. Back home I have to resist so-so fast food fries and mediocre small town Chinese food. Here in the city, I've got to resist perfectly cooked waffle fries and steak fries, awesome General Tso's and scrumptious dim sum. The level of temptation is much higher.
But I think that would work across time as well. These days good food is much more readily available than it was just forty years ago.
Posted by: Sol on June 13, 2007 6:47 AMI come from a family of five siblings. One was always slim and the other four had to start dieting during teen years to stay just a little pudgy. Today, we're all in our sixties and female, the slim one is slim, three are obese, and I'm normal and maintain a low carb diet. I decided in my late forties (after years of dieting to keep withing 20 pounds of ideal weight) that I'm addicted to sugar and flour. Once I start eating either I can't stop.
Since I eschewed both, I've had no trouble keeping my size six figure. I think that for me, those two things are poison, and that there are many people like me. Low carb is the only solution for us and one following that diet must also avoid all junk food. I know no one who avoids sugar and flour who is fat. Breakdown starts with the tube's pushing sugared cereals to kids and never stops. Get rid of sugar, flour, junkfood, and the TV and you'll be doing your kids a giant favor.
I come from a family of five siblings. One was always slim and the other four had to start dieting during teen years to stay just a little pudgy. Today, we're all in our sixties and female, the slim one is slim, three are obese, and I'm normal and maintain a low carb diet. I decided in my late forties (after years of dieting to keep withing 20 pounds of ideal weight) that I'm addicted to sugar and flour. Once I start eating either I can't stop.
Since I eschewed both, fifteen years ago, I've had no trouble keeping my size six figure. I think that for me, those two things are poison, and that there are many people like me. Low carb is the only solution for us and one following that diet must also avoid all junk food. I know no one who avoids sugar and flour who is fat. Breakdown starts with the tube's pushing sugared cereals to kids and never stops. Get rid of sugar, flour, junkfood, and the TV and you'll be doing your kids a giant favor.
Exercise is a boring waste of time. Being fat is better than spending hours running in circles or straining one's muscles. We accomplish much more intellectually if we don't obsess about weight. It's a great benefit not to have to worry about what one eats and about getting enough to eat. There are better, more productive things to think about. And, if being fat is so bad, why are lifespans still increasing?
As Winston Churchill, who died at the age of 85, said: "The only exercise I get is carrying the coffins at the funerals of my more energetic contemporaries."
Posted by: Robert Speirs on June 13, 2007 8:29 AMI used to believe in the set-point theory. I don’t anymore. For years in the military, I struggled to stay under the official weight limit. After I got out, I stopped worrying about my weight and just ate whatever I felt comfortable eating. I figured my weight would go up a few pounds and stabilize. It did not. I gained 60 pounds within six months, and showed no sign of slowing down. It has taken me several years of dieting, exercise, and prescription medication to lose that weight.
Posted by: Ken in sc on June 13, 2007 9:04 AMHi Megan,
The obesity/wealth link is not that hard to understand, at least on one level.
Here are foods that cause you to lose weight:
fish
meat
vegetables
fruit in moderation
Here are foods that cause you to gain weight:
pasta, potato
bread
soda pop (corn syrup)
sweats
deap fried flour (chips, etc)
Note that these catagories aren't caused by calories, they are caused by hormal changes when you eat them (insulin vs glucagon).
Note that all of the items in the top list are expensive. Note that all of the items in the bottom list are cheap. Note also that the foods in the bottom of the list are getting cheaper relative to income all the time.
I eat mostly foods in the top group. But I'm pretty wealthy (though no effort of my own), so I don't mind. Someone further down on the income ladder could afford to eat the way I do, but they would rather spend the money on other things.
James
Posted by: James on June 13, 2007 9:14 AMInteresting dicussion. Of course some people can eat more calories while remaining thin than can others. Such is the normal distribution.
And I do have a lot of sympathy for obese people who eat reasonably and exercise daily. However, they are a small minority of the obese population. I used to be one of the majority, weighing 185 pounds (at 5-feet-6) last summer. Then I started running every day (not that long even, generally half an hour weekdays, an hour weekends) and eating less crap (enriched flour and corn syrup) and now I weigh less than 150. My boyfriend (6-feet-1) has done the same, going from 235 to under 180.
Interestingly (to me at least), this experience has made me much less sympathetic to obese people. Set points and the like do exist, but they are not static. Over the last year I have noticed that I can tolerate much less sugar than I could previously. Then I could eat a giant slice of cake and want more, now if I eat more than a third of a slice it doesn't sit well in my stomach. Of course, I still enjoy sweets and eat them in moderation, but eating less of them has made them more foreign to my body (and thus made me want to eat even less of them).
Maintaining a healthy weight is harder for some people than others, no question. But a lot of people aren't even trying, and that's what I don't have a lot of sympathy for. I do think that part of the problem is that people go on a diet for a fixed time period--two weeks, a month, whatever--and then return to previous eating habits. I made permanent changes to my diet gradually, which I think is a much more effective method for weight-loss.
Posted by: Amber on June 13, 2007 9:30 AMA college roomate from Singapore said that his home country had very effective anti-smoking TV ads that featured the most ugly, from their point of view, people they could find. They visually associated smoking with obese people, usually from poor ethnic minorities.
I think that men are hard wired to respond to women who appear young, genetically healthy, and fertile. Being turned off by excess fat feels natural and biological, not cultural, to me. My mind seems to interpret sagging and loss of muscle tone associated with excess weight with the aging process.
Posted by: George B on June 13, 2007 9:32 AMIn response to why we dislike fat people, because they are different. We are hard wired to dislike those who are different because they are somehow perceived as a threat. Take the traditional overall negative view of homosexual men. Heterosexual males should be thrilled when other males declare they are homosexual because that decreases the competition for the limited supply of women. Somehow it doesn't seem to work that way. The geeks in school and the retarded kids are both at the ends of the IQ distribution and in general those in the middle of the distribution don't treat those in the tails kindly.
Every society has their own culture and those who stray to far from the norms risk alienation or worse.
Posted by: Ross on June 13, 2007 9:33 AMJames -- I see your point, but disagree about prices. If I'm remembering correctly from my last trip to the store, chips can be $4 a bag, and you could get a couple of pounds of ground beef for that price, right? Or for the price of a half-gallon of ice cream, you could get a five-pound bag of apples or oranges. Approximately, of course, but the point is that a lot of pre-packaged processed food really isn't that cheap.
Posted by: Stuart Buck on June 13, 2007 9:44 AMI used to be one of the majority, weighing 185 pounds (at 5-feet-6) last summer. Then I started running every day (not that long even, generally half an hour weekdays, an hour weekends) and eating less crap (enriched flour and corn syrup) and now I weigh less than 150. My boyfriend (6-feet-1) has done the same, going from 235 to under 180.Interestingly (to me at least), this experience has made me much less sympathetic to obese people.
I guess I don't understand this. If you'd discovered that the process was trivial, I could see being less sympathetic. But by your own account, it's an ongoing effort that claims a substantial amount of your time and attention. I spend 6% of my waking life exercising, and even more of it doing ongoing strategizing around myself over food. It doesn't strike me as particularly culpable that someone might not want to take on such a project, particularly given the lousy long-term prognosis. There's a reason that the National Weight Control Registry defines "long-term weight loss" as "maintain[ing] at least a 30 pound weight loss for one year or longer"-- a more stringent time horizon would make their sample size too small to be of use. (At this point, I'd have qualified for three years and have been down more than thrice that for two-- and even from here, if I make it to five I'm pretty sure I'll still be bucking the odds.)
I'm surprised it took so long in the thread (kiwikit on June 13, 2007 7:15 AM) for the carb-related aspect to make an appearance. I, too, am addicted to carby substance. Discovering a low-carb diet and the workings of the insulin response were key to understanding why I would overeat, even when it made me desperately unhappy to do so. If you're trying to lose weight by eating low-fat foods but you're making up for the loss of dietary fat by eating things like rice cakes (horribly high-glycemic), you're literally stimulating your hunger. Eventually I dropped 40 pounds with ease, and today I can easily distinguish real hunger from what I think of as "insulin hunger". The low-fat craze (yikes, what a mistake) and the increased use of high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners surely have helped make us fatter than we would have been if we just kept eating "real food", even in the face of increased wealth and the fading of poverty-caused malnutrition.
Posted by: Eve M. on June 13, 2007 10:33 AMI'm one of those people who can eat a pint of ice cream (or, err...more) at one sitting. But I'm not overweight (5' 6" I'm 130 pounds, thank you). I do exercise,it helps me manage my hunger. I also don't keep sweets in the house, I can hear them "calling me".
I think for a lot of the obese there are other issues. My whole family is obese and depression is a big issue. Of course, if you're so fat you can't play with you kids, are tired all the time, are prone to injury, the cure might be making time for exercise (yes they can when they want to) not popping a pill.
Posted by: Carolynn on June 13, 2007 10:43 AMI'm fat, I've dieted and gained it back twice now. I'm trying to find a maintainable lifestyle instead of extreme one way or the other.
But I also don't like fat people in general. Why?
The first reason: it's my fault, I know it is, I blame myself. But so many people I know don't take responsibility for anything in life, let alone their weight. Most fat people I know eat like crazy, so do I sometimes. People say "I've tried every diet and none work" but what they mean is "I tried for a couple months and quit".
I have lost weight, so I know how hard it is, and how you have to keep it up. The hard part is keeping it off, of transitioning from the diet to normal life. Both times I lost weight I kept the weight off for 2 years, then gained it back when I stopped trying. But I don't think there's some genetic reason, I just don't take care of myself as I should.
I think that's part of the reason people are disgusted by fat. It's often a sign of the person just not taking care of their own health. Not always, but especially lately with rising obesity: you can't say it's all genetic or the percents would stay about the same. It's our lifestyle.
Finally, this is the big one: when I lost weight the first time, every single fat friend of mine turned against me. Instead of being happy that one of us finally "made it" or was successful, they were resentful, angry, bitter. If I went out to eat with them and ordered chicken, they'd start yelling "why don't you eat what you want? What are you trying to prove?" I'd say "I am eating what I want why do you care what I eat?" But the hate and insults kept coming, so finally I just removed those negative people from my life.
One thing about people I know who complain about how society treats them: well the fact is they complain all the time. Maybe it has more to do with their personality and constant complaining than their appearance? And maybe their focus on the negative has an impact on their behavior and body?
I had so much hatred directed at me because "you're one of the skinny stuck up selfish people". I have few overweight friends anymore, because they all think they're better than skinny people, and it just bugs me. I'm overweight right now, not the biggest I've been. But I hate the fat, not the fatty. People want to say to not even hate the fat, but I think that's a bad message to send, especially in an era of epidemic obesity and rising lifestyle related illnesses like type II diabetes.
Posted by: plutosdad on June 13, 2007 11:19 AMI have a theory. There is an argument that says everything we do must pass an implicit cost/benefit analysis. If the benefit of one more piece of cake exceeds the costs you will naturally eat it. Some people are better at thinking further into the future than others, and naturally the long run costs of an additional piece are higher.
This is important because it is an indication of values. Some people value instant gratification more than delayed gratification, and vice versa. If you take the view that we enjoy those who share our values more than those who don't, this easily explains why people dislike fat people. There are few more explicit indications of personal values than our physical appearance.
This is not a justification for disliking fat people. On the contrary, I think values and ethics are almost completely out of personal control. It is not obvious to me what influences them, but certainly an individual can hardly control them.
P.S. This happens to be my argument for being kind to liberals, and even conservatives too...
Posted by: Stan on June 13, 2007 11:31 AM"why do Africans prefer their women so plump?"
If this is a reference to the stated preferences of young black American males, the desire is not for fat women, as there is no preference for a woman with a big belly and rolls of back fat. The desire is for women with abundant breasts and butt. [Cite Mix-a-Lot: "Little in the middle but she got much back."] Some excess fat will be forgiven, provided the bulk of the heft goes to the butt and/or breasts. The point of it all is sex. The emphasis on raw sexuality here is, I hazard, due to a culture of broken families and sexual promiscuity, where women are not evaluated on the whole for "bring-home-to-mom" beauty and elegance, but simply for their ability to incite lustful feelings. I don't believe that white men are less "turned on" by bountiful breasts and butts, but seek a woman who can look less lustfully bountiful, and more elegantly beautiful, as, inter alia, they would be ashamed to bring an overtly sexually-outfitted girl home to meet the parents.
Posted by: ss on June 13, 2007 11:34 AMI think that's part of the reason people are disgusted by fat. It's often a sign of the person just not taking care of their own health.
I think that's a rationalization, not a reason. Lots of people are irresponsible in a variety of ways. Lots of people engage in dangerous or unhealthy lifestyles. But for most unhealthy lifestyles you don't see the same pervasive contempt. If anything, risk-taking of other sorts is often considered attractive (especially in young men). Nor is that limited to risks that are actually useful, like military service. How many people impress their peers, or try to, with some completely nonproductive-but-enjoyable risk like rock-climbing, or riding a motorcycle? If someone breaks his leg skiing, is the general reaction you observe "Serves him right for doing something so dangerous to his health"?
There's some of that contempt for smoking, now, but that's quite new and still has to compete with the long-standing perception of smoking as cool. There's no underlying cool associated with being fat. And alcohol abuse has, if anything, less of a stigma than it used to ("alcoholic" versus "wino"/"drunk"/"alky").
Which is worse for a celebrity's career: taking up rock climbing, flying small planes, drug addiction, reckless driving, or gaining fifteen pounds? Which, on average, will kill them first?
I have the same questions as you do, Jane: How come all of a sudden, in the past 30 years, has this become such an epidemic? Genetic code takes tens of thousands of years to manifest! I think it's more likely that people pick up unhealthy attitudes and habits about their bodies and food from their families or whatever environment they are in than there being an actual genetic predisposition towards obesity in such a large percentage of the population. Plus, if you're not living under a rock then you're inundated with messages about what to eat, what not to eat, what combination to eat it in, what's going to give you a heart attack this week, what you need to eat to "melt" fat away, etc. etc. It's dizzying, and we've lost touch with the fact that as a society we're simply eating more than we used to. Period. There's only one freaking equation to keep in mind when dealing with weight: Calories in vs. calories out.
I've been struggling with my weight probably my entire life. Although I've spent my life within the "normal" range (read: slightly overweight but never obese) I have engaged in the behaviours you describe Jane - bingeing, being obsessed with food, etc. etc. I'm no stranger to the awful mess of having an unhealthy relationship with food. I suppose I could have easily blamed it on hormones or my genes, but I'll contend that would be a copout, and IS a copout with 99% of the people who claim those excuses.
About six weeks ago I stumbled upon the author Susanna Wermuth and her book "I've tried it all! Now what?" and her website www.dietdropouts.com. I can't tell you how much of a difference it's made in my eating habits -- and more importantly, my THINKING about food and what it means to take care of myself in a way that allows me to enjoy my life. Not to mention I've gone down a pant size already while truly enjoying food again.
I highly recommend checking out her book or her website if you're sick of the deprivation mentality that comes with diets on one end of the spectrum and pointless academic pontification that seems to point to the idea that "if you're fat, you're stuck with it" on the other end. In other words, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Posted by: jgerleman on June 13, 2007 11:55 AMThe theory is fine, but it doesn't change the fact that obesity is a result of lack of willpower. People with a higher 'setpoint' will need to work harder to maintain the same weight as those with a lower one, but the same is true for so many other human attributes. Those with greater innate athletic ability will be better at sports with less effort, those who are more intelligent will breeze through school. Extroverts will make friends more easily.
But unlike these other traits, change in body weight is dictated by physics. People with lower metabolism will harder time, but if you take in less than you burn, you will lose weight. It is thermodynamically impossible to do otherwise.
Posted by: altoids on June 13, 2007 11:55 AM"Exercise is a boring waste of time. Being fat is better than spending hours running in circles or straining one's muscles. We accomplish much more intellectually if we don't obsess about weight."
Hmm.
"In a sense which his tutors couldn't quite define, much to their annoyance, Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of
the world.
Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour."
...
"People who didn't apply themselves to the facts in hand might have thought that Victor Tugelbend would be fat and unhealthy. In fact, he was
undoubtedly the most athletically-inclined student in the University. Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab."
-- Terry Pratchett ("Moving Pictures")
"Imagine a force powerful enough to make 19 year old males stop thinking about sex, and start thinking about ways to bring out the parsley flavour in your cheese croquettes, and you have some inkling of what the obese go through."
I don't agree with this. In general, obese people are not gourmands, obsessed with good food, seeking out the best dining everywhere they go and eating to excess because they love it so much. They don't seem to get a lot of pleasure from eating. They just do it. They are almost as oblivious to the quality of the food they eat as they are to their own physical discomfort from being too fat. That is what makes serious obesity so sad, and fuels the contempt some people have for the morbidly obese.
If there were any data on the quality and cost of the foods obese people eat, I bet it would show that most of it is very low cost and bad quality (like fast food, packaged snack foods, etc...)
Many people on diets simply do NOT eat ENOUGH. They starve themselves and the natural response of our body is to slow our metabolism because it thinks we are starving. Weightloss is 85% diet and 15% exercise.
That doesnt mean there are other medical considerations that may cause someone to gain weight that cannot easily be lost. But the real cut and dry solution to weight gain is scientific fact. You cannot turn nothing into something. If you eat more calories than you expend you will gain weight. If you eat less calories than you expend you will lose weight. You may lose or gain fat or muscle. But this fact is very consistent. It is not readily possible to build muscle with very little extra caloric intake. Just as it is not readily possible to build fat with no extra calories.
The best thing is determine how many calories you need to maintain your weight and then lower your intake by 1000 calories. You should see weight loss even without exercise. What exercise does is triggers your body to use fat for energy instead of muscle because your body realizes it needs the muscle to accomplish the physical activities you are doing. Otherwise your body will burn muscle. Muscle is easier for the body to metabolize into fuel than it is for fat to be turned into fuel.
Posted by: Scott on June 13, 2007 12:17 PM"If you'd discovered that the process was trivial, I could see being less sympathetic. But by your own account, it's an ongoing effort that claims a substantial amount of your time and attention. I spend 6% of my waking life exercising, and even more of it doing ongoing strategizing around myself over food. It doesn't strike me as particularly culpable that someone might not want to take on such a project, particularly given the lousy long-term prognosis."
I suppose my answer is that I do think the effort is trivial given the long-term benefits (and that I don't think the long-term prognosis is bad for people who make a long-term commitment). The time I spend managing my diet and exercising, while significant, pales in comparison to a) the years of life I'll gain (barring a car wreck, etc.) and b) the time (and money) I would spend managing diabetes (which runs in my family anyway and was a primary motivator) or heart problems. Those very long-term concerns aside, the effort/time are worth it for how much better I feel (physically mainly but also mentally) now.
And in response to some later suggestions, I do have the same attitude toward people who smoke, abuse alcohol, drive recklessly, etc. I think the hypothesis that we are reacting negatively to "people who eschew long-term benefits for short-term satisfaction?" is a good one.
Posted by: Amber on June 13, 2007 12:32 PMI've always been obese, since I was eight or nine. I lost 60 pounds over the last eight months, but it was extremely difficult. I have to exercise all the time--I run twenty miles a week and lift weights six days a week and I play some sports as well.
The problem has always been that I can, and will, eat enormous quantities of food at a sitting, despite not actually feeling hungry. I have ways of dealing with that now--for example, if you drink a pint of whipping cram you are going to be sick at the thought of food for hours, and since I know that if I eat within several hours of running I'll throw up, there are a lot of hours in the day where I just can't eat.
But it is very difficult to keep up. Everyone knows people who stay thin with no effort at all.
It's not fair, but life isn't. If I have to work that much harder, it's worth it to me.
Posted by: Gabriel Hanna on June 13, 2007 1:12 PMA couple of points:
1) The medical definition of obesity is a body fat percentage of at least 25% for men, and 30% for women. So by that definition, Karen Carpenter, and other extreme anorexics were/are obese. That's because severe calorie restriction causes a major loss of muscle mass. The body, knowing that fat is much more valuable energy store, tries very hard to keep from burning it. Thus severe anorexics are not "skin and bones", but skin, fat, and bones. Such a fact is usually horrifying for anorexics to learn.
2) Every body is different. Some people gain weight easily, some lose it easily, some maintain easily. Some accumulate it in a few places, some distribute it more evenly. The plethora of generalities and absolutes issued about this topic is the cause of the frustrations of many people searching for a solution that works for them.
Posted by: Christina on June 13, 2007 1:13 PMI suppose my answer is that I do think the effort is trivial given the long-term benefits
I don't think cost-benefit analysis affects absolute effort. (If you offered me a billion dollars to stay awake for a week straight, I might well do it-- or try to; my capacity for all-nighters isn't what it was when I was twenty. But it wouldn't reduce the amount of effort involved.) If something is difficult, it's difficult, whether it's worth doing or not.
(and that I don't think the long-term prognosis is bad for people who make a long-term commitment).
Is this falsifiable? That is, is there any way of distinguishing people who make a long-term commitment from those who don't, other than by identifying those who fail as not having made a long-term commitment? (Which would make it a lot like the ointment that protects you from bullets if you have faith in it. If someone is shot, obviously his faith wasn't strong enough. :-) )
Are there studies available of people who can be prospectively identified as having made a long-term commitment, whose outcomes we can then look at?
Posted by: Mike S. on June 13, 2007 1:43 PMThere may or may not be a setpoint, but I do believe that there ARE factors that predispose some people to weigh more than others, and for some people to have a harder time losing weight. Normal-weight people just don't (won't) believe that fat people are anything other than lazy pigs, and I think that bias extends to researchers. I plan to donate my body to science after death for obesity research - I've been trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for 3 years. I'm eating 1400 calories a day of vegetables, fruit, and lean protein. I never - NEVER - eat junk food. I lift weights 3 times a week, I walk 5 times a week, I do intervals and calisthenics. Everything I'm doing should cause me to lose a couple pounds a week, and it doesn't happen. I am absolutely certain that there are obesity factors our current science has no knowledge of, and in the future people will look back on what we do for weight loss the way we look back on drilling the skull to let out demons.
Posted by: Millie on June 13, 2007 3:21 PMNo, it's absolutely not falsifiable--just what makes sense given my experience (people start a diet with the intention of only staying on it a few weeks), which is of course highly biased and very plausibly unrepresentative.
Posted by: Amber on June 13, 2007 3:24 PMI've never lost weight by exercising. Never. On the contrary, when I was younger I used to gain weight from exercise. Muscle is heavier than fat though.
I went to USMC boot camp in 1982 at 5-8 and 128 lbs, came out of boot 11 weeks later at 156 lbs. Almost 30 pounds in 77 days.
Now, at 48 years, I weigh right at 190. That's somewhere north of 25 pounds heavy for me - 165 would sure be nice. I started dieting and daily walks of 3 miles last July when I had a health issue and the doc said I needed to lose the fat.
Its been hell. I walk 3 miles daily with my dog, I only miss a day for weather or illness. I cut off all fast food, put a lot more veggies and fruit in the diet, tried eating more smaller meals, etcetera. I'm more limited in what I can do nowadays, I can't run anymore for example (bad knees) and extreme dieting isn't a good idea for me. Any meal that is satisfying leaves the bitter aftertaste of a nasty morning weigh-in.
And the pity of it all is I'm finally a decent cook, but can't eat what I want (I know, wah wah wah).
The weight simply doesn't come off. Of course, I'm not grossly obese, so it isn't life or death for me. But I do have a lot more sympathy for fat folks than I did a year ago.
Posted by: DaveW on June 13, 2007 3:56 PMI have yet to see a single comment that actually hits upon the truth here. Some of you have come close (James and his list of foods that help you lose weight and foods that make you gain weight due to insulin vs. glucagon is right on...but not is still only part of the story), but none have found out the real answer to obesity and weight gain:
Obese - or even slightly overweight - people are nutritionally deficient: there bodies are starving for FAT.
The greatest fraud this society has ever seen is the commercial/corporate/government complex that has instilled the notion that eating all fat's are bad for you and cause you to be overweight.
Take a look in your average grocery store USA. Try and count the number of products that advertise "Low-fat" or "Non-fat." You won't even make out of the first aisle before you realize just about everything we buy to eat is "low-fat" or "non-fat." Yet we have more obesity per capita than at anytime in our history. How is this so?
Do any of you actually believe that obese people are purposely avoiding all this low-fat and non-fat foods? You almost CAN'T when you buy all your groceries from our typical, modern grocery store.
The fact is, we NEED fat - especially saturated fats. In short, the fat found in dairy and meat is the primary mechanism for our body to process protein and burn our own fat.
Go on a low fat/no fat diet, and see just how hungry you are all the time. See how often you gorge yourself on foods that are "low-fat" and "non-fat." There's a very real reason why you can eat a whole box of non-fat cookies...because without any fat, our body is still hungry - no matter how much of the highly processed vegetable oil laden, simple carb/sugared "health food" you eat, your body is still craving the nutrients and vitamins found only in the fats of whole food.
But the highly processed vegetable oil industry (Mazola, Wesson, et al) began their campaign to demonize the traditional diets that contained the vital, life sustaining and nutritionally rich saturated fats that nourished generations of people the world over.
There's a reason the Atkins Diet became so popular and actually had a large amount of success. When you abstain from carbohydrates and eat only the proteins - you invariably get more fat in your food. You feel full quickly and will stop overeating because your body sends the signal that it is nutritionally satisfied as soon as you eat enough fat in your food.
Eat non-fat/low-fat food - which often contains highly processed vegetable oils, simple carbs and sugars - and you will overeat and your body will produce insulin to deal with the excess blood sugar levels, putting you into fat storage mode.
In short: Cook with Grade A butter - alot of it. Virgin/COLD pressed oils like Olive oil and Macadamia Nut Oil. Cook with Virgin tropical oils - like coconut and plam oil. Avoid "lean" cuts of meat. Eat the fat. You will get full fast and will stop overeating. Eat lots of meats with the fat.
Eat lots of fresh fish/fresh seafood either raw or cooked in butter/Virgin Olive Oil. NOT DEEP FRIED in vegetable oil.
Drink Whole milk. Avoid lowfat/nonfat/skim milk. Eat Cultured cheese (not made from pastuerized milk)
Eat lots of vegetables either raw or slightly cooked. Eat your salads with Olive Oil/vinegar dressing.
Avoid all manufactured foods that contain ANY highly processed vegetable oils like Canola, Safflower, Corn, Soybean or Cottonseed oils; the high fructose corn syrups and other refined sugars and the MSG/artificial colors and flavors, and anything containing SOY.
Avoid carbs like bread, rice and pasta. Even cut out complex carbs for at least two weeks, than eventually add them back in moderate amounts of whole wheat grains, whole grain pasta, brown rice.
Even the most obese person will lose weight on that diet...and you won't walk around feeling hungry all the time either, because your body will be nutritionally satisfied. Throw in some strength resistance training/weight lifting, and the weight WILL come off even quicker. I've seen it happen over and over again.
Think I'm full of it?
Do your research here, and learn the truth:
The Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions
I am Hawaiian - and our traditional diets were full of saturated fats from fish, pork, chicken and dog, oils, meat and vegetables, very few fruits and NO simple carbs. It is only when our peoples began to eat the Western diet of processed foods, simple carbs, refined sugars, and nonfat/lowfat foods that obesity, heart disease and other maladies of Western nutritional deficiency became epidemic. The story is the same the world over. Where indigenous peoples that ate wholesome, natural foods; health and vitality are the norm. Introduce Western commercialized and processed "food" and you get a whole host of maladies that were not seen previously in the populations of healthy native peoples.
Posted by: Kawika Kalaluhi on June 13, 2007 4:18 PMThe body is way more complicated than most people think. Genetics, raw caloric intake, physical activity, exercise, mental condition, and nutritional chemistry mix together in such a complicated fashion that it really isn't easy to know what to do to lose, maintain or even gain weight. That' right _gain_ weight! Check bodybuilding forums and you'll find men desperate to _gain_ weight (they are called hard gainers).
But while it is complicated to get the "perfect" (fitness model) body composition, I don't think it is really that hard to sort out how to not be obese. Up activity, eat somewhat less, eat a bit better will do it for most people. If it doesn't then in most cases they really aren't doing one or more of the three steps.
Extreme dieting won't work for most (messes up body chemistry). Extreme exercise won't work for most either (hard to self-motivate over the long term to do it and you have to eat bigger/better to fuel it).
As to "should" we discriminate against fat people. Most stereotypes are earned. It isn't a matter of "should", but that it may be inescapable. Sorry. Generalizations, stereotyping, and other "blink" first impressions serve a purpose in the world we live in. I can't even say I wish it were otherwise. The same innate behavior that makes me stereotype men with pony tails as "possibly quite liberal", apparently kicks in when I see an obese person. I know it sounds wrong coming from a 6' lean muscular man. But there you have it... the world as it works, not as we would have it.
To those trying to lose weight... my best wishes.
Posted by: Ken on June 13, 2007 4:31 PMIt seems to me someone touched above on one major reason for the seemingly irrational resentment of fat people: serious obesity is a disease marker, since the condition is one of the symptoms of insulin resistance/type II diabetes. People tend to be repelled by disease at a gut level, even if their heads tell them that compassion is a more reasonable response.
(The popular myth about obesity - that it somehow causes type II rather than being a cause - also feeds into the more intellectualized hatred of fat people: "They're making themselves sick! They're increasing my health insurance bills!" This even though the mechanisms by which insulin resistance causes obesity are pretty well understood. I've noticed that science writing on this topic tends to fuzz the issue with such phrases as "obesity is causally related to diabetes".)
Another reason is that people overgeneralize their own experience with mild overweight, even though that's not really comparable to obesity. Take Joe Blow, age 30, who has gotten out of the habit of running every other day and gotten into the habit of grabbing a candy bar in the afternoon, and is noticing he's getting a little plump around the middle and his wind is bad. Joe takes corrective measures: he goes for a walk every day at lunch and stops eating candy bars, and within a few months he's lost maybe 10% of his body weight, going from 170 to 153 and losing the incipient spare tire. Fine. Joe has a normal metabolism and it's easy for him to get to a normal weight.
Now take John Doe, age 30, weight 300. John has also recently noticed his pants don't fit well and he gets out of breath when climbing stairs, and realized similarly he's gotten into bad habits. He walks every day, skips the afternoon candy bar, and sees similar results: he loses 10%, going down to 270.
But John's still visibly obese. John will get approximately bupkis in the way of positive reinforcement for his attention to health; he'll still get the cruel comments, his doctor will still do the ritual humiliation doctors do to the obese, and so on. Joe doesn't have any sympathy because Joe overgeneralizes thus: "I stopped exercising and ate a candy bar a day and went up to 170. This guy weighs a hundred pounds more, so he must be a complete couch potato and he must eat DOZENS of candy bars a day! What a lazy glutton! If he did what I do, he'd weigh what I do!"
When looking at a comparison like this, it's easy to see that Joe's overgeneralizing and reaching a fallacious conclusion. Both men have done the same corrective measures and have had similar results. (Interestingly, I've seen studies that indicate losing 10% of body weight gives you pretty much the same health benefit regardless of where you end up.) But people don't see that. Instead, they extrapolate to figure out how they - the person with a normal metabolism - would have to eat to end up obese, and project that onto the obese person (who may well eat less than they do). It's an understandable fallacy, I suppose, but that doesn't make it right.
Posted by: jaed on June 13, 2007 5:53 PM"People tend to be repelled by disease at a gut level, even if their heads tell them that compassion is a more reasonable response."
Many of our concepts of beauty have to do with indicators of good health. And we don't prefer it only when we're looking for a mate to carry our genes into the future. When we meet a new person who might become our friend in the future, it's only natural to prefer to start with someone healthy. A healthy person is less likely to need our help in the future and more likely to be available to help us when we need it, so the cost/benefit analysis of a new friend would tend to favor those that look healthy (holding everything else constant).
I'm not endorsing this. And once the bond is formed, such superficial factors are less important. But I think it explains why we tend to care about whether strangers, even children, are ugly or attractive.
I agree that obese (not just somewhat overweight, but truly obese) people are likely to have health problems (or perhaps serious emotional problems in some cases) that led to their obesity. Part of the reason for our feelings of revulsion is to prevent us from forming a new alliance with a person that might be too "costly". Otherwise, why would we care so much? Why would so many people feel obligated to let the obese know about their contempt?
Posted by: Ann on June 13, 2007 7:19 PMBut while it is complicated to get the "perfect" (fitness model) body composition, I don't think it is really that hard to sort out how to not be obese. Up activity, eat somewhat less, eat a bit better will do it for most people. If it doesn't then in most cases they really aren't doing one or more of the three steps....
As to "should" we discriminate against fat people. Most stereotypes are earned. It isn't a matter of "should", but that it may be inescapable. Sorry. Generalizations, stereotyping, and other "blink" first impressions serve a purpose in the world we live in. I can't even say I wish it were otherwise. The same innate behavior that makes me stereotype men with pony tails as "possibly quite liberal", apparently kicks in when I see an obese person.
I'm trying to decide if this is a fair rephrasing:
1) expecting people to make substantial dietary and activity changes is reasonable; failure to do so justly leads to condemnation.
2) expecting people to second-guess their snap judgments, or the way they express them, is too difficult and unreasonable; failure to do so is simply the way the world works.
If it is, why is the second situation less a matter of exercising willpower than the first?
I am so thin I am not even on the body mass index, but I'd like to address some of the comments about feeling unsympathetic toward fat people, first. Why is it that we are willing to consider a set point for body weight, but unwilling to consider a set point for willpower? Most people seriously overestimate the amount of intellectual bootstrapping our species is capable of. Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) was right on when he remarked, of sympathizing with the overweight, "If I liked eating and disliked exercise as much as that guy, I'd be just as fat." I think genetic factors play a strong role as well (my diet is almost parodically bad; I didn't eat a salad until my sophomore year in college, but I've always been outlandishly thin), but everyone should keep in mind that people who are overweight may not be able to help not helping themselves.
I think genetic factors play a strong role as well (my diet is almost parodically bad; I didn't eat a salad until my sophomore year in college, but I've always been outlandishly thin)...
Milk for free: you may be "outlandishly thin" but if your diet really is as bad as you suggest, you may well have plenty of nasty and dangerous deep fat surrounding your organs. Plenty of skinny people do. In general we obsess too much about body mass, and too little about body composition. Ideally, you want plenty of lean muscle and only moderate amounts of fat. If you've got plenty of the former, you're in essence metabolically "young". In many respects aging is synonymous with losing lean body mass.
Posted by: anon on June 13, 2007 10:46 PMI can say without qualification that "listen to your body" is terrible advice, as my body sends my brain a constant drumbeat craving for chocolate chip cookies. Sorry, pal, you're gettin' Cheerios. Live with it.
"I don't believe that white men are less 'turned on' by bountiful breasts and butts ..."
Yoga.
I can say without qualification that "listen to your body" is terrible advice, as my body sends my brain a constant drumbeat craving for chocolate chip cookies.
What you said. My body knows exactly what it wants: to weigh (at least) a hundred pounds more than it does. :-) (If I do have a setpoint, I just hope I never find out where it actually is.)
"It's hard to believe that we have a unique, genetic need to as fat as so many of us are."
" Lots of bad food+ no exercise= fat. "
Genes can seem inoperative until stimulated. Tadpoles are the most famous example. If one is killed, it releases a chemical that alters the development of the rest of the nearby tadpoles, making them quicker. It is not a stretch to imagine that something similar is possible in humans. There may be changes that are activated in the body due to the environment (abundance of food, lack of need to exert effort). Those changes could occur in early childhood, or even in the womb.
The ability to aquire and store large supplies of fat is a great survival mechanism for many species. The ability to grow lean and athletic is also useful. The flexibility to be geared to one extreme or the other to a variable extent depending on early life experiences could easily be useful enough to be genetically selected.
Posted by: Njorl on June 14, 2007 9:17 AMA good site debunking many of the scientific claims about obesity:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com
Check out this post where she discusses studies that indicate that overweight people (and even obese people) are LESS likely to die of heart disease than normal weight people:
http://junkfoodscience.blogstpot.com/2006/11/obesity-paradox-1.html
My fil was a cardiologist of some reknown, and he always said that studies show that heart disease and high cholesterol are almost entirely genetic and cannot be controlled in any significant way by diet. I think that there are many reasons why people want to believe the illusion that they can control life, including their weight and future illnesses. It gives us hope that bad things won't happen to us, and it gives us the opportunity to morally blame others when they do not have the good luck (genetic or otherwise) that we do. Nevertheless, it is often an illusion.
BTW, an interesting fact I learned from her site is that American are eating SIGNIFICANTLY more fruits and vegetables than we used to in the recent past. Frankly, our diets are getting better, we are living longer, and we are healthier as we age. Why do we feel so guilty all the time--and look at food as toxic?
Posted by: Lisa on June 14, 2007 9:28 AMI'm unconvinced by set point, but I do think that many people of normal weight underestimate the effects of variations in energy levels. I have a friend who is driven to exercise; if he sits still for any period of time, his leg begins twitching compulsively. I, by contrast, am naturally a bit of a slug. I exercise, but it takes a force of will to get myself moving that my buddy doesn't face. He probably also burns more calories daily twitching than I do in my jogs.
Posted by: CyndiF on June 14, 2007 12:01 PMCan't imagine who's still reading this deep in the comments, but re: obese people exercising--being obese is itself a deterrent to exercise. If you're 175 pounds, and you run a mile, you're carrying 175 pounds for a mile. If you're 350 pounds, and you run a mile, you're carrying 350 pounds for a mile. That's like a 175-pounder running a mile while carrying a 175-pound pack.
Posted by: John Bragg on June 14, 2007 12:30 PMKen said:
"As to "should" we discriminate against fat people. Most stereotypes are earned. It isn't a matter of "should", but that it may be inescapable. Sorry. Generalizations, stereotyping, and other "blink" first impressions serve a purpose in the world we live in. I can't even say I wish it were otherwise."
So there was no grounds for complaint about white southerner's generalization,s stereotyping, and other "blink" first impressions against blacks back in the '60s and before?
Posted by: Tom on June 14, 2007 5:49 PMSo look at insulin resistance & metabolic syndrome, coupled with bad knees and a desk job that severely reduces the chances for regular exercise. Add aging and especially STRESS. Not a pretty picture.
I've always had to struggle to keep my weight down, but I didn't start really gaining weight until I turned 48. It's been a slow creep since then, but with some success when I was on Adkins, but that shot my cholesterol and triglycerides through the roof--can you say 270 even when taking Lipitor? My cholesterol and triglyciderides have decreased a LOT (160) now that I understand I have insulin resistance and have to eat some carbs (at least 15 g.) every 2-3 hours.
But I am now in the "obese" category even if not in the "severely obese" category. Gain only 5 pounds a year for 15 years and it adds up. I've learned to live with it, but am considering lap band surgery.
Posted by: Rex on June 15, 2007 7:29 PMAt age 54, I have grown to resent discrimination against fat people. It is bigotry just like other forms of bigotry. Just because Person X doesn't feel like having sex with Person Z does not excuse treating them like crud.
However, regardless of genetic and environmental factors, we have to live with our bodies. I gave up most pasta and added some protein shakes and have dropped 128 pounds in 11 months - and hope to have successful gastric bypass surgery soon because I do NOT want to yo-yo for the Nth time.
It is true that the "exercise" part is somewhat dubious. A 200 lb person can exercise to try to get down to 150 lbs - maybe I can get to that point. People who are 300 or 400 lbs are not going to be running marathons. One needs to eat less FIRST until ones legs and weight load can support additional physical stresses.
Posted by: Honorary Lt Gov of OHIO on June 17, 2007 1:44 PMAnyone hear of Occam's Razor?
Diet and Exercise are so simple and obvious, yet we still have fantasies about set points and genetic factors.
Eat less and go for a walk!!
I think that weight loss is mostly psychological. People eat because they derive pleasure from it. So people eat too much because:
1. they are unhappy or stressed, and hope to counterbalance it with pleasure from eating, or
2. they don't derive enough pleasure from eating.
So if you want to lose weight, first focus on making yourself happier. That might involve relationships, exercise, sleep, job, or any number of other factors. And don't overlook the possibility of continuous low-level pain of the sort that a chiropractor or massage therapist can help with.
Second, focus on the food you eat. Perhaps Americans are getting fatter because their food is getting blander (and sweeter). Fifty years ago most people still ate food that was bought fresh and cooked just before eating. It was phenomenally labor-intensive---that's most of why the affluent had domestic servants---but it sure tasted good.
Now most people eat preprocessed food that doesn't taste nearly as good, so they take in more calories with less flavor. If you improve the quality of what you eat, you'll get more pleasure per calorie.
I lost 10 pounds in the last 6 weeks with the simplest diet ever: Every time I put food or drink into my mouth, I close my eyes until I swallow. That forces me to pay attention to what I'm eating, so that I really taste it and enjoy it. Now I'm full faster, and meals are far more pleasant.
Posted by: Ben Bateman on June 18, 2007 7:24 PMOne point you ask about the author's not addressing the point of why American's are getting fatter now, and not as much, in general, as before. The easy answer (easy>not good) is that more TV or playstation time, not enough movin' around. Perhaps somewhat, but not as to the epidemic that we are seeing.
My thought is that there is a food industry out there that is using incredible amounts of chemicals and additives, everything to plump up the cows and chickens, to change the look, make it store longer, etc. I believe this is having a devastating effect on the 'normal' American mechanism of food processing within our bodies. There are chemicals of which we haven't the foggiest idea of how it affects us. Right now, I'd say it makes the populace pretty chunky.
Take a look at what China does to the foods. They add really strange things, and they are very involved in our food chain. Even in Latin America the Chinese companies are in control of a fairly high percentage of processing and origination companies. That is a little disconcerting.
Tall and thin, are you? Well, Ms. Blogger, there will come a time, methinks, that there will be a pudginess that asserts itself and you'll not like what you're seeing. I hope its not true, but its likely.