Billy Idol
Legend
Causes and cures for obese people *spawn
- Thread starter Billy Idol
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(((interference)))
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So wait a minute, if you stick to eating the daily calorie intake recommended for your sex, height, age and lifestyle you'll still get obese?
No, you won't, please stop kidding yourself.
Billy Idol
Legend
@Shifty: wrt thermodynamics:
You are right that a surplus of energy leads to energy storage!
But did you ever think about why some people increase their energy input so drastically? It is not a natural behavior (are wild animals fat? Are they normal because they count calories all day???)...so why the increase in energy in.
One example: in puberty, humans start to grow, humans start to eat a lot of food. Energy in, energy out. But why do kids start to eat more in puberty? Because of their hormones. Because of Biochemistry. Energy surplus is the result(!) not the cause.
There is always a cause. The energy in/energy out balance is just the result of this cause, not the answer.
You are right that a surplus of energy leads to energy storage!
But did you ever think about why some people increase their energy input so drastically? It is not a natural behavior (are wild animals fat? Are they normal because they count calories all day???)...so why the increase in energy in.
One example: in puberty, humans start to grow, humans start to eat a lot of food. Energy in, energy out. But why do kids start to eat more in puberty? Because of their hormones. Because of Biochemistry. Energy surplus is the result(!) not the cause.
There is always a cause. The energy in/energy out balance is just the result of this cause, not the answer.
Billy Idol
Legend
If you are sensitive to carbs, and if you would follow the common dietary advice and eat lots of carbs...the following will happen:
your body starts to produce insulin quite strong. This will put a high burden on your pancreas every time you eat. Eventually your pancreas will start to malfunction...called insulin resistance. Insulin also interacts/influences the hunger hormone leptin. You will eventually get leptin resistance. In this state, there is no chance you can control your body...due to the high insulin, the body cannot use its stored energy...it is literally starving and the brain will react and demand more food. It is very unlikely that you will ever keep maintaining this certain calorie intake...not a question of discipline...as the body and brain is super stressed (stress hormones also play a big role) by the actual starving of your body.
Hence, you will with such a diet automatically increase calories. If you do this wit high carb, them you have your viscous cycle!
And yes, you will get obese...due to the arguments I wrote above.
If you are not sensitive to carbs, you will likely don't have a problem at all with weight.
If those "recommended calories" happen to come mostly from refined carbohydrates (particularly fructose), then yes, you'll get obese.
yep just take a walk to most very poor countries, notice the lack or even the complete absense of fat ppl. Its not the diet (which is often pretty crap) its just that they cant afford to eat lots like we do in the west
Billy Idol
Legend
Imo, that is not a good comparison. As you said, those people are poor, they eat whatever they get, but are still starving....with no real other option. So even if their brain tells them: eat! They can't.
So no way to enter the vicious cycle, which on the other hand is simple in other parts of the world, e.g. US of A...or Mexico (where people discovered Coca Cola, and have now exploding obesity and diabetis type 2 rates).
It is imo better, to study natural folks and a) their reaction to a new 'modern' diet(i.e. increased carb intake) b) the development of the population on their traditional diet in times with lots of food and times with tiny amounts of food (hint: people don't get fat or slim...the population grows or shrinks, depending on the amount of food available...same goes for wild animal population).
Billy Idol
Legend
One important question imo: about calories in and out, about sedentary life and discipline, about recommended calorie intake being all the cause for obesity and not the specific diet.
How can obesity of new born childs (the rate is sadly also brutally increasing) be explained with sedentary life? Calories in/calories out? Babies in the body of their mothers eat to much? No discipline? Not enough exercise? Babies don't respect the law of physics?
E.g. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...revealed-doctors-treat-overweight-babies.html
If you have a theory about obesity (epidemic), make sure that you can explain this! Otherwise, maybe you might go back to the drawing board and think again?!?
How can obesity of new born childs (the rate is sadly also brutally increasing) be explained with sedentary life? Calories in/calories out? Babies in the body of their mothers eat to much? No discipline? Not enough exercise? Babies don't respect the law of physics?
E.g. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...revealed-doctors-treat-overweight-babies.html
If you have a theory about obesity (epidemic), make sure that you can explain this! Otherwise, maybe you might go back to the drawing board and think again?!?
Ironically, poor people are more likely to be fat in most countries, like China which has a huge obesity problem, because the poorer people can mostly just afford enough (too much) white rice. Which incidentally I have banned in our house in favor of brown/grey rice.
Guys, the insulin is the answer to all viewpoint was hot in the 70s 80s, we have superceded that as more developed research tools came about. Accylation stimulating protein, leptin, ghrelin, peptide yy and a metric ton of other various elements that your body can secrete make the insulin answer outdated and fundamentally flawed, it is just that people did not know about them when the original research, that people like atkins drew from, was published/conducted.
Yes, I said as much...
...and I agree that managing the diet can help, by eating hard to digest foods etc. But the excessive intake of energy is the root cause of obesity. Talk of insulin and feeling hungry and everything else are aspects of diet, but not the cause of obesity. If a person feels hungry and eats more than they need because of their diet, the issue is still too many calories (or Joules, or whatever one wants to measure actual energy obtained from food in). There may be pyschological disorders, and cultural influences, and hormonal shenanigans, but the root of the issue is eating more energy than you need. Once that's understood, people can then start looking at how to make eating less energy easier.Me said:
But that side of it is big business, and that's where the focus is and all the noise is directed. You don't have to eat complex foods to stay slim - you can eat simpler, easily digested foods, and just eat less of them! If one eats mountains and mountains of 'healthy' foods, one can still get fat.
That's an unfair generalisation. There are communities that aren't 'rich', but well fed, and high carb diets, and no-one's fat. You can't point to the rest-of-the-world with its common, natural, unscientific diets, and claim everyone there is starving so doesn't count.
Coca-cola is full of sugar. That explains their problems. If it had exactly the same calorie count provided by fats instead of sugar, they'd have the same problem. One can argue the psychology of the drink, that it's addictive and they can't help themselves, but the root problem is that the obese Mexicans are consuming more energy than they are using.
Where do you get that the modern diet == more carbs? The staple the world over for thousands of years has been flour, potato, and rice, or whatever the best-producing starch vegetable from the local environment, along with complex plant starches from legumes and nuts and everything else being gathered. Fat was rare among the common folk. It was only the rich that could afford lots of protein and fatty foods, and they got obese from overeating and often enough suffered medical conditions as a result.
For human populations to reduce, you need starvation conditions, not just a little less food. And your premise is wrong anyway. Look back at the War. Everyone was skinny then because food was in short supply. You don't see populations of fat people dwindling in numbers as food becomes scarce yet still remaining fat.
Yes they do. The babies are consuming more calories than they need to grow. That article is talking about 10 month old babies, not new borns. It even ends with doctors talking about how healthy babies at birth become obese from their diet. Which'll be their mother's milk, which might well be overloaded with fats if the mum is obese.
People consume more energy than they need. If people ate less (either less food, or less energy rich food) they wouldn't put on weight.
One can also point to athletes where carbs don't cause obesity. They have massive calorific intakes, and sports nutrition is all about carbohydrates. Why don't they get fat? Because their body is burning up those calories! In their activities and in using them to build muscle.
Billy Idol
Legend
Shifty: wrt to you athletes question: as I already told you, imo some people are sensitive to carbs, some are not. People who are sensitive will eventually get overweight imo.
What is more likely: there is a lot of athletes in young ages. But the older they get, the more competitive it is. So: will a slightly overweight person be more competitive than a slim person?
Isn't it more likely that athletes are slim, because people with overweight tendencies (e.g. Insulin sensitivity) won't ever be as successful and so you only 'see' slim athletes.
There are people who really did a lot of exercise without succeeding in losing their overweight.
Here is quite a good example: Dr Peter Attia:
http://eatingacademy.com/dr-peter-attia
Very interesting homepage with lots of information about nutritional ketosis, especially for athletes.
Please read his one Shifty, to see that your post is not correct: he did a lot of hardcore sports, but was overweight following a low fat high carb recommended diet:
http://eatingacademy.com/my-personal-nutrition-journey
(Part 1)
What is more likely: there is a lot of athletes in young ages. But the older they get, the more competitive it is. So: will a slightly overweight person be more competitive than a slim person?
Isn't it more likely that athletes are slim, because people with overweight tendencies (e.g. Insulin sensitivity) won't ever be as successful and so you only 'see' slim athletes.
There are people who really did a lot of exercise without succeeding in losing their overweight.
Here is quite a good example: Dr Peter Attia:
http://eatingacademy.com/dr-peter-attia
Very interesting homepage with lots of information about nutritional ketosis, especially for athletes.
Please read his one Shifty, to see that your post is not correct: he did a lot of hardcore sports, but was overweight following a low fat high carb recommended diet:
http://eatingacademy.com/my-personal-nutrition-journey
(Part 1)
I won't argue against that (although it doesn't say how much he was eating prior to getting large...). I am arguing against the original posit that carb == bad. It doesn't at least for the vast majority of people. I'd go so far to say people who cannot metabolise carbohydrates effectively are defective as it's a core component of the human (and animal, and plant) nutrition, and not that some people are 'carbohydrate lucky'.
I am also arguing that the root cause of obesity is too much food, and not the wrong type of food. The wrong type, which may change person to person for all I know, may make your management of weight harder, but gaining weight requires your body to consume more food than it needs for energy.
Maybe ketodiets are ideal in reducing weight? Sure thing. But they are not essential for normal people to live healthily and stay slim. They are not natural diets; human beings did not evolve eating massively fat-based foods! By design, we eat a mixture of foods, and not eating too much means you won't out on weight.
I am also arguing that the root cause of obesity is too much food, and not the wrong type of food. The wrong type, which may change person to person for all I know, may make your management of weight harder, but gaining weight requires your body to consume more food than it needs for energy.
Maybe ketodiets are ideal in reducing weight? Sure thing. But they are not essential for normal people to live healthily and stay slim. They are not natural diets; human beings did not evolve eating massively fat-based foods! By design, we eat a mixture of foods, and not eating too much means you won't out on weight.
Billy Idol
Legend
Again (sorry Shifty), but I really do not agree:
Carbs are not(!) a natural nutrition. Think about the origin of human race, think about the cavemen diet. Carb heavy diet may be since a few thousand years (with a real high gradient in energy ratio by carbs in the last 50years...which correlates nicely with the obesity rate by the way), but the origin is more than a million years ago...no carbs at all, except some fruits (and this before the winter kicks in with no carbs at all...maybe some nuts).
Please note, that carbs are the only nutrition which are not(!) necessary in a human diet. The body can generate this on its own using two proteins. Fat and protein on the other hand is a demand. That is also the reason why to much of protein can have the same negative effect on your insulin as carbs. So, a moderate intake of protein is recommended. But also a minimum level of protein, as it is essential for the body to function. Basically the only organ iirc that may happily be fueled with carbs is the brain, but even in the case of zero carb intake, the body will replace a carb by two proteins....so again, carbs are not an essential nutrition.
I would also go so far and say that insulin sensitivity is nothing unusual, it is quite common as you can see with the world wide obesity epidemic.
Before world war two, Austrian and German doctors cured overweight people by changing the diet to low carb. They already knew the problem. But unfortunately, after war, the american medicine didn't want to gave anything to do with those doctors (in contrast to e.g. Physics scientists).
But lucky us, today the Swedes seem to be the most advanced people around the planet. There is a really nice LCHF (low carb high fat) movement going on, which already seem to reach officials:
http://www.dietdoctor.com/
Btw, very recommended to read the information provided and typically with scientific publication backup.
Modern diets, which are loaded with industrialized foods rich in refined carbs and additives but poor in good protein, fatty acids and micronutrients, tend to promote overall hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalances that can give you obesity, metabolic syndrome and degenerative diseases. These imbalances (which also affect the thyroid) will make you lethargic, and then "conventional wisdom" will actually blame you for laziness and overeating.
Sure, it's not just insulin, but given our diabetes pandemic it's still way better than continue on the "calories in/calories out" bandwagon which sort of equates the human body to a simple calorimeter. And people who insist on low-calorie diets for weight loss usually forget that low-calorie diets are also low-nutrient diets.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Have you ever seen how lean animals in the wild are? Those did not provide anywhere near the fat amounts you promote here. Muscles also store glycogen as fuel.
In general you guys just don't seem to get that the problems with obesity and metabolic conditions isn't due to carbs or modern food guide lines, but the lack of people actually following them. You don't seem to get that there is all changing difference if you eat a 2000-2500Kcal diet with say 40/30/30 macro balance compared to eating 5500Kcal with just junk food. glucose is an energy source used by every living organism on this planet, or at least pretty close. It is not the problem, we are well adapted to handle it in moderate proportions. You do not posses 100% accurate information on what the prehistoric man ate, but their eating habits probably varied quite a bit based on their location and in many locations carbs were plentiful and again the ability of storing fat from eaten food was and still is a good thing. You guys are just little bit out of touch with reality, when you see this as only a problem.
Billy Idol
Legend
You cannot compare the diet of an animal to the diet of an human.
Animals in the wild eat the food they are designed to it. Their natural food. Whatever it is, no carb or high in carb...it is the right food for them. But has nothing to do with the human diet.
Humans are not designed with something 40/30/30 in mind. That is why this diet recommendation is plain wrong with obvious devastating results in the last decades. It makes people sick. From daily 2500 calories, you roughly recommend 800 calories from carbs. This is equal to 200g carbs a day (4 calories per 1g carb). This is way way to much, and people with tendencies will never get/stay lean with this diet...and especially not healthy.
In conclusion Dr Evil, I also don't agree with you...you are believing an old and wrong paradigm. But you will see that low carb high fat diet will get accepted more and more and will be common in a few years with people laughing about the dietary advice given today.
Animals in the wild eat the food they are designed to it. Their natural food. Whatever it is, no carb or high in carb...it is the right food for them. But has nothing to do with the human diet.
Humans are not designed with something 40/30/30 in mind. That is why this diet recommendation is plain wrong with obvious devastating results in the last decades. It makes people sick. From daily 2500 calories, you roughly recommend 800 calories from carbs. This is equal to 200g carbs a day (4 calories per 1g carb). This is way way to much, and people with tendencies will never get/stay lean with this diet...and especially not healthy.
In conclusion Dr Evil, I also don't agree with you...you are believing an old and wrong paradigm. But you will see that low carb high fat diet will get accepted more and more and will be common in a few years with people laughing about the dietary advice given today.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I wasn't comparing the diets. I meant animals as a food source for humans. You seem to indicate that humans have been designed to eat diets very high in fat and that we should eat our calories between 50-70% from fat. Where did this fat came from in paleo era? The animals in the wild carry little fat. They are lean. Animals started to become fattier when we domesticated them. There might have been some populations that had access to high fat content, but it certainly wasn't the norm.
If by designed we are talking about the environmental conditions in which humans lived in the past and some tribes still do, then humans were designed to eat in moderation, in balance with the environment. They took what they needed. They didn't make wall paintings about gorging huge amounts of energy without getting fat. They ate moderate calories from varied sources. They weren't faced with the type of excess we have today. Getting food required work instead of walking 100m to a supermarket.
The Asian nations (huge amount of people) in general have been very healthy and their intake of carbs has been about 60-75%, throwing a huge wrench to your belief. You are just blind or ignorant in seeing the difference between the food guidelines and what people actually eat in the world, even though it's been pointed to you multiple times. The guides don't recommend Coca Cola, pizza and candy or over consumption of empty calories in general. You have no valid reasons lumping all non low carb diets together, but it suits your stance, so you do it. You have chosen to listen only very limited angle of information.
I have to wonder whether you have even read what the dietary advices say or just attack them by default? Also you aren't exactly bringing news here. Low carb diets have been known and speculated for a very long time and has been all the rage in the recent years. I actually have good experiences with low carb diets and I'm certainly not a stranger to them, perhaps you missed my old thread about low carb and paleo stuff from two years ago. http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=60061
I have checked that "side" and spent long periods in ketosis and living a low carb lifestyle.
I know low carb works well and I still think there is some good stuff in that thread and I still prefer eating other carbs than wheat, but some of my opinions have evolved since then. Eating low carb eliminates lot's of junk foods and helps conveniently keep the calories lower, but it's not really such a miracle you think it is.
