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Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

theatlantic.com

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Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#92
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone who's been doing keto for several years now. A: Pre-Keto, odds are you we underestimating how many calories you were eating. Unless you were tracking every single thing you ate, there is a high probability you just didn't realize how many calories you were consuming. B: It is super hard to over eat on Keto. It is possible, take lots of liquid calories in (heavy cream can do this easily!), and there are s…

Thanks for that info! Did you ever experience symptoms similar to eye fatigue? I think I might be not consuming enough sodium and/or potassium; I'm going to up my doses of both to test my theory.

Nothing about eye fatigue, but I forgot to have any potassium for a month (err, oops, I ate lots of veggies but no leafy greens!) and my BP shot up to something like 170/90. My doctor was concerned and also confused.

On the way out of her office I remembered I hadn't had any potassium for awhile, stopped by the grocery store, picked up some spinach, and a handful later (about a few minutes) the constant headache I'd had for a week straight went away.

So yeah, get your potassium in.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that info! Did you ever experience symptoms similar to eye fatigue? I think I might be not consuming enough sodium and/or potassium; I'm going to up my doses of both to test my theory.

Everyone seems to warn about sodium and potassium while on keto - magnesium too. Apparently the suggested intakes are quite high and supplementing is the only way to get there. It might have just been placebo or drinking a hot cup of broth (with potassium salt in) but it made me feel better some days. I'd also second that it's really hard to eat a massive amount of calories on keto. Water loss and perhaps some change…

Magnesium is good. Potassium, I eat leafy greens or Ostrim (http://www.protos-inc.com/), which is low fat but has no carbs and lots of potassium. They also taste good, they are one of my after gym gotos.

Gaining muscle on keto /is/ hard. You can do it (/r/ketogains can help!) but wow you have to stuff yourself, which is sort of odd for Keto!

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#94

Oh, so the laws of physics changed? Wow! No but seriously, this is a terrible article. As soon as you read »…a professor of _kinesiology_ and health science…« you know the statements are coming from people who believe in esoteric pseudoscience. If your burn more energy than you take in, you lose weight. Everything else doesn't make sense. You can get fat by eating 5000 calories worth of paprika every day. Statements…

How we measure the calorific value of food doesn't seem to give us the number of calories a body can extract from food.

There are several reasons for this. One promising area of research is gut flora. Someone could have a gut flora that makes it harder to absorb calories. Someone else could have a gut flora that makes it easier to absorb calories.

Here's one paper that links gut flora to anorexia. (Read carefully, they have human samples buried in there) http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html

> Statements like these only help people who have weight-problems to have an excuse not to do anything about it.

No. Statements like this are an effort to help fat people to lose weight by creating treatments that work rather than just yelling judgemental but useless advice at them. "Eat less food" does not work on populations. "Exercise more" does not work across populations.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#95
There's a bunch of stuff that might be going on here.

People mostly don't know what they're eating. They don't know the calorie content; they don't know the macro / micro nutrient content. They don't know how much they're eating, nor how much they should be eating. Food (and I have nothing to base this on) feels more engineered and feels like it's deceptively marketed (gummy bears being sold as "FAT FREE FOOD!" is a scumbag tactic). We're seeing similar levels of broscience ("Avoid all sugar!") as we saw in the 80s ("Avoid all fat!") and it's probably not helpful.

I'm also interested in what they corrected for. Did they correct for increased prescribing of psychiatric meds? The US has a lot of "off label" prescribing of such meds; prescribing of these meds has increased dramatically since the 1990s; many of them list increased appetite and weight gain as side effects. (And the weight gain is not just a function of increased appetite).

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How carefully were you tracking calorie intake? It's notoriously difficult and I simply don't believe you ate 1500-2000 calories at 340lbs and didn't lose weight (not that you need to convince me). In any case, congrats on the achievement!

It is very difficult to track calories if you don't eat exact portion sizes listed on boxes. I calculated what I used to eat, and what I eat now, based on things I regularly ate. I figured I'd have to be off somewhere around 1000+ calories in my calculations to have lost as much weight as I did during the start of that year. I have had this conversation with people before, and the only thing that would have probably…

Don't underestimate the psychologic effects. A few years back I lost about 20kg in six to nine months --- by eating less and better, mostly --- and plotting my weight on the graph and watching the slow but steady downward trend was always a big mood-lifter.

And feeling better leads to a positive reinforcement loop; feeling good about yourself leads you (well, it works on me, at least) to do more things that make you feel better about yourself.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#97
post #91

This study relies on the NHANES data which is self-reported: Respondents have to recall what they ate. So an alternative and more likely explanation is that people are far better at deluding themselves than they used to be.

Yes and moreover we have statements such as " it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise." and "In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans."

These conclusions from a study with 36,000 people out of some 300 million Americans?

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#98
I seem to gain weight when I eat wheat. When I eliminate wheat, my weight is stable.

I found a study about how wheat interferes with leptin (the hormone that makes us feel full): http://www.biochemj.org/content/410/3/595

I think I've read several places that the wheat we eat today is significantly different from the wheat people ate in the old days. If I remember correctly, our wheat contains much more gluten, since high-gluten wheat makes bread fluffier etc.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#99
It was bizarre that the article did not mention trends in other behaviours that effect weight, like sleep and stress level. Millenials are arguably more stressed out than people the same age a generation ago, due to increased student loan debt, unstable job market and poor job security. This constant stress of course contributes to how well your body can maintain a healthy weight. There should be a rigorous study comparing relative stress levels over generations, but it is not hard to imagine that this is broadly true.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#100
post #91

This study relies on the NHANES data which is self-reported: Respondents have to recall what they ate. So an alternative and more likely explanation is that people are far better at deluding themselves than they used to be.

I would also assume that there's less structured eating schedules in homes now than there used to be, which would make it more difficult to catalog exactly what was ingested.
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