I've been losing 2/3rds pound or 300g per day

[N00b]

Why do we even research fusion ... this is clearly the future of energy.

Let's just ignore your misanthropic, fat-shaming trolling here and pretend you asked an honest question.

Why don't loose people weight, despite the fact they take in far less calories than before.

There are mainly two reasons.

Firstly, digestion becomes a lot more efficient. People ware fixated on calories as the amount of energy that food contains, but calories are a crutch. They were originally calculated by burning food in an actual oven, nowadays they a calculated. The problem with this is it is not accurate, because we humans don't have an oven inside use. Digestion is a chemical process and it's different because of genetics, hormones and gut bacteria.

A normal, healthy person does not convert all the food they eat to energy. Their body does not need to. But if need arises, if you are starving or dieting, the digestive system can extract more energy from the food, e.g. by producing more stomach acid and slower bowel movement. But the most important thing is gut bacteria. In a pathologically obese person or someone who had a stool donation from a obese person, the bad gut bacteria will digest normally non-digestible food like fibers and the sugars and fatty acids produced by this go directly into the blood through the bowel mucosa. The less you eat the more efficient the digestive system becomes over time. And it stays that way. So less amount of food can produce more energy. That's why dieting always never works.

Secondly, if need be the body can go into energy conservation mode. To do so, it lowers the body temperature a bit and the temperature of the extremities. When you have enough bad gut bacteria, the body will now produce fat cells in the skin with the saved energy (the link is unclear here, but it is believed the bad gut bacteria can produce hormone-like substances that trigger this systems, if you have enough bad bacteria). The fat works as an insulator, so obese people don't need as much energy to maintain their body temperature as a result they don't need as much food as before. Also obese people often feel tired and energy-less so they avoid energy-intensive activities. It's a vicious circle.

 

[N00b]

That explains why theres all these obess 80+ year olds walking around and I never see any thin ones

That's because they (literally!) don't walk around. They prefer to stay in their retirement homes! Go to a retirement home and look at the people there. At lot of them are overweight at least when they are admitted. Once they pass 80 many tend to loose weight every year. I have an uncle who is 91, lives alone since his wife died this year, does almost any home chores by himself. 10 years ago he weighed about 65-70 kg on a length of about 160-165 cm. Now he is at 51 kg. I daresay we would not be alive if he hadn't been a little overweight.

BTW, I'm not promoting overweight and obesity here. What I'm saying is not all overweight and obese people are lazy bums that eat too much and have no discipline. The health benefits of normal weight may be overrated, especially when your generic predisposition favors a weight that above normal, so you feel you have to work so hard against your body to reach "normal" weight. Finally humans are so complex and we know so little yet. Don't just jump to conclusions.

 

[rcf]

There a couple of other thing to look out for when you want to loose weight or don't want to put on weight. Avoid light products. Avoid artificial sweeteners (some are proven to mess up the hormone system, also they are used to fatten piglets). Avoid convenience food with a lot of emulsifying agents (believed to mess up gut bacteria), prefer home-cooked meals, learn to cook if necessary. Avoid low-fat products (like low-fat milk, not products that have no fat in the first place). Mostly avoid soft drinks, prefer soft drinks with sugar instead of artificial sweeteners if you must. Mostly avoid fruit juice. Mostly avoid alcohol (prefer wine to beer). Actually mostly avoid any beverages with a lot of calories. Probably avoid corn syrup or high-fructose syrup. Try to eat 3 meals a day (and nothing in between). Don't eat food because you think it's 'healty', eat food that you like and that agrees with you. Make sure your diet contains enough protein and fat (I'm not getting in the good fat vs bad fat mine field here, but probably avoid trans fatty acids). Exercise 3-5 times a week for an hour (light to moderate exercise), prefer muscle training to cardio, at least 2:1. Stay active, use your bike or walk instead of using your car if you can, avoid elevators, use stairs if you can, etc. Try to have at least 6 hours of restful sleep every night.

Also, avoid monosodium glutamate (artificial flavor enhancer) as it increases insulin secretion and can lead to insulin resistance.

 

[MfA]

A normal, healthy person does not convert all the food they eat to energy. Their body does not need to. But if need arises, if you are starving or dieting, the digestive system can extract more energy from the food, e.g. by producing more stomach acid and slower bowel movement. But the most important thing is gut bacteria. In a pathologically obese person or someone who had a stool donation from a obese person, the bad gut bacteria will digest normally non-digestible food like fibers and the sugars and fatty acids produced by this go directly into the blood through the bowel mucosa. The less you eat the more efficient the digestive system becomes over time. And it stays that way. So less amount of food can produce more energy. That's why dieting always never works.

Some people have the mindset where they just return to intermittent fasting or a very low calorie diet every time they reach a threshold they are uncomfortable with. Deep caloric deficiency has always worked as far as I know, or can you show someone maintaining being overweight on a very low calorie diet under surveillance? (Not the same as supervision.)

It's a vicious circle.

It just depends on how low you're willing to go ... no one is maintaining weight on a 300 calorie diet, though that's enough for a bit of carbs for the brain, a healthy amount of protein, essential fatty acids and RDA of everything else (with chemically prepared food at least, not whole food).

 

[N00b]

Also, avoid monosodium glutamate (artificial flavor enhancer) as it increases insulin secretion and can lead to insulin resistance.

I have to say I am unconvinced about the insulin resistance part.

I know monosodium glutamate (MSG) has a bad reputation because it is used to induce obesity in lab rats and mice. But for that they use newborn rats and mice, use obscene doses that would equivalent 150-300 g for a 75 kg human adult daily over a human equivalent of several month and it's not given orally but injected subcutaneously (under the skin) or intraperitoneally (into the abdomen). Some studies claimed that MSG has the same effects when ingested (by rats or mice), but other researchers could not reproduce those results.

The other reason why MSG has a bad rap certainly is the china-restaurant-syndrome. But several double-blind, placebo-controlled studies showed that it probably is a myth. Here is some background on china-restaurant-syndrome.

Recent studies on humans have shown beneficial effects of oral MSG or glutamate intake on a various levels, like reduced risk for hyperglycemia and better blood glucose levels with type 2 diabetes patients.

However there are other voices that think MSG (and natural occuring glutamate) may be harmful to predisposed people.

Fun fact: The food with the highest level of glutamate (at least per kg bodyweight) you will ever digest in your life is mother's milk. Human mother's milk contains 0.22 mg glutamate per ml.

 

[N00b]

Some people have the mindset where they just return to intermittent fasting or a very low calorie diet every time they reach a threshold they are uncomfortable with. Deep caloric deficiency has always worked as far as I know, or can you show someone maintaining being overweight on a very low calorie diet under surveillance? (Not the same as supervision.)

The problem with these strategies is, they work only as long as you can maintain them. And afterwards your weight will be higher than before (the famous yo-yo effect). And your bad gut bacteria have spread. And your hormones changed, so it's harder for you to get satiated. Good job!

One aspect that I did not discuss before is when dieting that the first thing at you will loose is water, the second thing is muscle mass unless your exercise while dieting. Dieting without a exercising is really a dumb idea. Because when you loose muscle mass your basal metabolic rate sinks and your daily energy requirements sink with that, talk about diminishing returns.

It just depends on how low you're willing to go ... no one is maintaining weight on a 300 calorie diet, though that's enough for a bit of carbs for the brain, a healthy amount of protein, essential fatty acids and RDA of everything else (with chemically prepared food at least, not whole food).

300 calories that's about two large apples and 200 g of beef filet per day. Or 100 g salmon and 100 g noodles. Just try it yourself how long you can keep up a diet like that. I bet you will not last a month. You will go nuts before.

For many pathologically obese people it's even worse. That may sound paradox, because they should have enough fat to feed them, right? But they experience syndromes of extreme starvation. They panic, get desperate, depressive and even suicidal. Most will quit their diet if possible and some go on feeding frenzies afterwards. That's why crash diets went out of fashion even before the current millennium. No medical institution worth it's 5 cents does this anymore. Because it does not work.

I know a doctor who deals with patients that have undergone gastric banding. One patient told her he put's a whole cordon bleu or a cake or other things into a blender and drinks it. Not because he likes it, because he panics and thinks he is going to starve. He is ashamed he does it but he can't help himself.

 

[MfA]

No medical institution worth it's 5 cents does this anymore. Because it does not work.

By what metric? A bad success rate isn't all that relevant, the success rates are abysmal across the board. The advantage of shake based very low calorie diets is that they minimize the ability of people to lie to themselves and provide quick results, some people will benefit. For others finding some religion for a fundamental break with their old habits is useful (ie. keto or veganism). When doing anything, including following the medical consensus, is grasping at straws you might as well try all the straws and see if one works for you.

PS. or at least the straws which provide all the necessary nutrients.

 

[green.pixel]

The long term diet interrupts habits more severely.

That's why people need to be flexible and not rigid in their approach to dieting.

 

[N00b]

By what metric? A bad success rate isn't all that relevant, the success rates are abysmal across the board. The advantage of shake based very low calorie diets is that they minimize the ability of people to lie to themselves and provide quick results, some people will benefit. For others finding some religion for a fundamental break with their old habits is useful (ie. keto or veganism). When doing anything, including following the medical consensus, is grasping at straws you might as well try all the straws and see if one works for you.

By the simple metric that weight loss achieved by a crash diet isn't sustainable and may introduce introduce severe health problems like diabetes, insulin resistance and other cardiovascular complications. You should not simply grasp at straws and ignore everything we have learned the last 30 years, because you may as well make things worse.
A common problem with most studies is that they run too short, < 2 years. That is for example why gastric banding and sleeve gastrectomy procedures have a lot of positive studies to them, but when you talk to people who actually work with these patients for years they tell a different story.

 

[MfA]

Non statistically related case studies, "we are not able to provide a detailed description of the consumed diets" and the last one is the same as the first one.

So yeah, lets just stick to the one conclusion based on actual studies, also from the first one. "Very-low-calorie diets are generally safe and well-tolerated."

 

[KimB]

It's obviously not optimal, but equally obviously still better than being overweight.

Nope. Definitely not.

Being overweight isn't necessarily unhealthy. Heck, the longest life expectancy by bmi is in the overweight range. And losing weight can be very unhealthy.

 

[zed]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115619/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27966405

When analyses are restricted to healthy individuals who are non-smokers and are followed up for a long time, the relative mortality risk is already increased at a BMI of 25 kg/m² and increases further with increasing BMI

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066051/

In white adults, overweight and obesity (and possibly underweight) are associated with increased all-cause mortality. All-cause mortality is generally lowest with a BMI of 20.0 to 24.9.

 

[KimB]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115619/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27966405

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066051/

Except correlation is not causation. Also, those graphs are way too steep. If they simply graphed life expectancy starting at zero on the vertical axis, the curve would be close to flat across most of the BMI range. There's also huge variance within each BMI range, which they don't represent at all. There are lots of mid-weight people who are extremely unhealthy (e.g. me), and there are lots of fat people who are very healthy (e.g. a number of my friends).

Simply moving to a different BMI level doesn't mean you end up at the average life expectancy. Usually people with very high BMI's have those high BMI's because they have other medical problems. Not always, but it's common.

Basically, losing weight (unless you are very fat) has never been proven to improve health outcomes. Better to focus on measures of health such as cholesterol levels than worry about weight if you care about health.

If you really don't like being fat, or would prefer the way you look if you lost weight, great. Go for it. But don't pretend it will make you healthier.

 

[zed]

I wish overweight BMI was the best since I fit in that category, 28-29 from memory
Picture taken today, Im nearly 50, havent done any weightlifting for years, used to be able to clean and jerk 130kg I do walk a lot ( just came back from malta for where me and my partner spent the 3 day weekend, walked >50km ), I always try to walk >50km a week.
I dont watch what I eat, I always eat as much as I want, I never restrict the amount I eat. one thing I dont do is eat much processed foods. I never drink soft drinks/sodas

 

[N00b]

Zed's graph actually comes from data found this study:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60318-4/fulltext

That is actually a good study, as far as I can tell.

But the data may no longer be relevant or at least not as it would have been 20 years ago.

If we look at the study it tells us "mean recruitment age [was] 46 [SD 11] years, median recruitment year [was] 1979".
The main cause of death for participants was vascular (46%, 30416 cases) followed by neoplastic (=cancer 34%, 22592).

Of course COD for people over BMI 30 is mostly vascular. Now here comes the catch.

At the time people were recruited into this study a lot of medication and medical procedures we now have to treat vascular diseases did not exist.
So they either got treatment for vascular problems late in their life or not at all.

In result the data might not be so applicable any more, because modern treatment for vascular problems has extended life expectancy, especially in the group of BMI > 30.

 

[MfA]

Better to focus on measures of health such as cholesterol levels than worry about weight if you care about health.

Ignoring statins they are so highly correlated it might as well be the same thing. Changing a diet with any sort of consistency is a huge intervention in people's lives, if they manage to do that they are almost certainly going to lose weight too. If not, sure there are statins ... better pray your side effects aren't too severe though, doctors underestimate their impact to a ridiculous degree IME.

 

[KimB]

Ignoring statins they are so highly correlated it might as well be the same thing.

Might as well be the same thing? You mean weight and health? Yeah, no. Complete and utter bullshit.

 

[MfA]

Cholesterol and weight.

 

[KimB]

Cholesterol and weight.

Really, now?

Then why is it that my cholesterol is high but my weight is not?

 

[MfA]

You're predisposed, your diet sucks, you're abusing steroids, you smoke, whatever. Regardless, unless you already have a six pack if you made a consistent change in your diet to lower it, you would probably lose some visceral fat still all else being equal.