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Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#21

Post by mbubb »

jankor wrote: post #5

The full study is much more interesting: "We devised a machine-learning algorithm that integrates blood parameters, dietary habits, anthropometrics, physical activity, and gut microbiota measured in this cohort and showed that it accurately predicts personalized postprandial glycemic response to real-life meals." http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(15)01481-6.pdf

Thank you for the link - the study is very interesting to read. I have been bumbling around for a while trying to see what fits for me and there have been counter-intuitive things that seem to work. This study makes me think of that. Part of diet is finding what works to keep things in balance, cravings and spikes might indicate the diet is not working.

As an example - initially starting dieting, I stayed away from fruit as a vehicle of carbs. Over the past two weeks I have allowed myself bananas, apples, melon and berries as breakfast and afternoon snack. This appears to not 'spike' me as I would have thought but gives me stability.

Night snacking is a killer for me and I have been able to get by with a cup of tea around 2200 with a single biscuit.

Its just been 2 weeks but these two little cheats actually seem to give the diet some stability - for now anyway.

This study is really useful for me.

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#22

Post by VLM »

anonyfox wrote: post #18
diskcat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's actually a pretty good idea. who wouldn't want to be born with excellent immune system, strong and tall, smart and attractive?

You need the ugly to actually realize beauty. If everyone is beautiful, the word "beautiful" wouldn't make any sense. You could argue that this would be a solution to many discrimination issues today if everyone is beautiful, strong, tall, ... . Mhh. Interesting thought.

HN is mostly young people who only associate with young people; if you can get past whatever vestigial respect for elders remains as a cultural value, most people will agree that old people are a pretty good source of ugly. Especially pre-modern medicine, ravages of outdoor labor and warfare... We arguably do live in a world where all 20 year old women are beautiful, and the 90 year old women are somewhat less so.

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#23

Post by gadders »

mattlutze wrote: post #15
gadders wrote: post #7

This happens in pigs and other livestock. Animals are specifically bred for their Feed Conversion Efficiency ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio ). I don't see why something similar couldn't happen in people as well.

Well, something similar shouldn't happen in people because eugenics is considered to not be a particularly good idea.

I'm not saying that people are being bred for a similar result, but that a variation in feed efficiency in people doesn't surprise me as a similar effect has been found in livestock.

However, I could imagine in the past feed efficiency was an evolutionary advantage.

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#24

Post by CaptainAmerica »

ksec wrote: post #10
tomp wrote: post #4

> For Leila, the results were very different. Whereas pasta was "bad" for me, it was fine for her. Yoghurt was good for me, but bad for her, and our responses to bread and butter were also complete opposites. (Note: "bad" and "good" above refers to "high-GI" and "low-GI", respectively.) Another interesting anecdotal observation from my acquaintances: our relationships with food differ significantly. While some people…

I guess the saying, everybody is different applies here. I still remember the days when I could eat 3 - 4 pound of beef, along side with mesh potato, or 12 inch Pizza, or whole bucket ( 10pcs ) KFC, per meal! And these meals would come with Coke as well. in Tea time i will eat Ice Cream, eat lots of yogurt etc. I dont do lots of sports, may be once a week maximum. Otherwise I just sit down playing World of Warcraft o…

> then I was definitely eating 4000+ calories per day and not getting Fat.

Not true at all, you weren't even counting your calories you're just throwing out a number. And if you were counting you were counting wrong. That's a huge part of people who say they can't gain or lose weight. They claim to eat these vast amount (or extremely low amount) of calories when they really have no idea. People trying to lose weight will look at a burger and say "that's about 400 calories" and someone trying to gain weight will look at the same burger and say "that's about 1500 calories", when in reality its somewhere around 900. Do that for 3-4 meals a day and boom, you've got your "I eat 4000+ calories and can't gain weight".

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#25

Post by windexh8er »

mseebach wrote: post #11
ars wrote: post #2

This is pretty astonishing research, not so much for the results, as for the methodology. Doing research on what people eat is VERY hard, it's very hard to get accurate data. Pairing people and having them eat identically is brilliant. I hope it's also scalable for longer term studies. By pairing people they are likely to give much more accurate reports about what they actually eat, and it allows direct comparisons.

It is very interesting. I wonder, however, if it's enough to isolate all relevant variables (this is peanut gallery speculation, I am not a scientist of any stripe)? The narrator explains that she is "an accident & emergency doctor [...]. Rushing around on my feet all day with strange working patterns". Never mind that the stress and adrenaline of such work must affect her body in some ways, she probably also moves q…

I've commented a bunch of time on gut microbiome before and I'll say it again here who may have not caught it. If this article is interesting check out "The Good Gut" by Justin and Erica Sonnenburg, PhD. I've been experimenting with an ad hoc restorative process through ideas in the book and reading/research around a myriad of pro/prebiotics + diet change.

For me the whole subject adds a lot of weight to the idea of "skinny fat" vs "fat". I'm glad we're in an age of companies like WellnessFX where I can objectively see the positive changes made by changes to a lifestyle... But, again, I can't stress enough how much great information and studies that have been broken down is in the book. No affiliation, but it's very powerful knowledge.

$0.02.

edit: "we're not in" to "we're in", whoops

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#26

Post by mistermann »

tomp wrote: post #17
ksec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the saying, everybody is different applies here. I still remember the days when I could eat 3 - 4 pound of beef, along side with mesh potato, or 12 inch Pizza, or whole bucket ( 10pcs ) KFC, per meal! And these meals would come with Coke as well. in Tea time i will eat Ice Cream, eat lots of yogurt etc. I dont do lots of sports, may be once a week maximum. Otherwise I just sit down playing World of Warcraft o…

> then I was definitely eating 4000+ calories per day and not getting Fat I'm not sure about that... allegedly, research suggests that most people have the same BMR (basal metabollic rate), and that there is nothing like "fast metabolism" (i.e. people get rougly equal amounts of energy from food). What I was referring to above, and what the article referrs to (with Glicemic Index) is purely psychological - how much f…

> I'm still pretty sure that calories-in/calories-out theory is more-or-less correct.

From where do you derive this certainty? There's plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating significant variance among individuals. Simply less efficient absorption of ingested calories would obviously make a huge difference, and I don't think there's any reason to think everyone absorbs calories with identical efficiency is there?

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#27

Post by Retric »

mistermann wrote: post #26
tomp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then I was definitely eating 4000+ calories per day and not getting Fat I'm not sure about that... allegedly, research suggests that most people have the same BMR (basal metabollic rate), and that there is nothing like "fast metabolism" (i.e. people get rougly equal amounts of energy from food). What I was referring to above, and what the article referrs to (with Glicemic Index) is purely psychological - how much f…

> I'm still pretty sure that calories-in/calories-out theory is more-or-less correct. From where do you derive this certainty? There's plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating significant variance among individuals. Simply less efficient absorption of ingested calories would obviously make a huge difference, and I don't think there's any reason to think everyone absorbs calories with identical efficiency is there?

Your gut has been optimized over billions of years of evolution to work. A much more likely difference is how jittery some people are.

Sure, if A and B sit still for 8 hours there is no difference. But, many people are constantly in motion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2163173/Toddlers-d...

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#28

Post by CuriouslyC »

tomp wrote: post #17
ksec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the saying, everybody is different applies here. I still remember the days when I could eat 3 - 4 pound of beef, along side with mesh potato, or 12 inch Pizza, or whole bucket ( 10pcs ) KFC, per meal! And these meals would come with Coke as well. in Tea time i will eat Ice Cream, eat lots of yogurt etc. I dont do lots of sports, may be once a week maximum. Otherwise I just sit down playing World of Warcraft o…

> then I was definitely eating 4000+ calories per day and not getting Fat I'm not sure about that... allegedly, research suggests that most people have the same BMR (basal metabollic rate), and that there is nothing like "fast metabolism" (i.e. people get rougly equal amounts of energy from food). What I was referring to above, and what the article referrs to (with Glicemic Index) is purely psychological - how much f…

Research has demonstrated that there is about about a 15% base difference between people with "slow" metabolisms and "fast" metabolisms. In addition, the composition of your gut microbiota significantly impact how efficient you are at extracting energy from the food you eat. To top it all off, some people notice a larger/more immediate reduction in BMR when they reduce calories than others.

At the end of the day calories in/out is still correct. It is just more complicated than how much food you eat and how much activity you engage in.

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#29

Post by douche »

arethuza wrote: post #13
ksec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the saying, everybody is different applies here. I still remember the days when I could eat 3 - 4 pound of beef, along side with mesh potato, or 12 inch Pizza, or whole bucket ( 10pcs ) KFC, per meal! And these meals would come with Coke as well. in Tea time i will eat Ice Cream, eat lots of yogurt etc. I dont do lots of sports, may be once a week maximum. Otherwise I just sit down playing World of Warcraft o…

As someone who cooks for a 17 year old who trains for and plays rugby quite seriously the sheer amount of food an active teenager can consume is quite staggering.

It's pretty nuts. I used to eat the same kinds of things I eat now, except I would eat three plates of it, instead of one. Along with around a gallon of whole milk a day...

I was just playing soccer and basketball, not trying extra hard to bulk up for football or anything.

Re: Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

#30

Post by [deleted] »

CaptainAmerica wrote: post #24
ksec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the saying, everybody is different applies here. I still remember the days when I could eat 3 - 4 pound of beef, along side with mesh potato, or 12 inch Pizza, or whole bucket ( 10pcs ) KFC, per meal! And these meals would come with Coke as well. in Tea time i will eat Ice Cream, eat lots of yogurt etc. I dont do lots of sports, may be once a week maximum. Otherwise I just sit down playing World of Warcraft o…

> then I was definitely eating 4000+ calories per day and not getting Fat. Not true at all, you weren't even counting your calories you're just throwing out a number. And if you were counting you were counting wrong. That's a huge part of people who say they can't gain or lose weight. They claim to eat these vast amount (or extremely low amount) of calories when they really have no idea. People trying to lose weight…

[deleted]
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