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Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

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

#141
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But obese people need to understand the basics first (EAT LESS!) and then they can tweak their diets to make them more comfortable with fewer calories.

I think keto diets have been in most cases successful precisely because they not rely on understanding and self control, the body simply adjusts and starts feeling full faster.

It's not "feeling full faster" per se; it's more about the fact that being in ketosis has a demonstrated natural appetite-suppressing effect.

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

#142
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. And it doesn't even make sense. Obesity is rising dramatically in developed countries. I…

> This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. A cop-out from what, exactly? Does society have a responsibility to make everyone thin? Even if you say it does, how would you propose it goes about doing that? There's no scalable, organizable effort you can take that will make fat people thin. If you say we have to throw more money at research, I say, sure, we should! Along…

Society does have a reponsibility to not provide those substances that cause serious physical harm to many people more readily and cheaply than those more suited to good life.

Yet we don't tax sugar, processed food is the cheapest and non-processed are the most expensive.

The entire food industry is designed to sell more of 'their' product, and the addictiveness is developed more than the health value. Lobbyists ensure the governments keep the status quo.

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

#143
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…

The insane amount of food i used to eat. Yes i was just throwing in numbers. The numbers i got wasn't measured then, because i didn't count at all and don't really know how much calorie was. The number i throw here is how i remember what i eat, and given the information i know now, it must be over 4000+.

I did say all the thing i posted there was for one meal. 10 Pcs of KFC Chicken, may be you should look it up? I bet it is over 3000 calories. And this was for JUST one meal! Likely Dinner, because lunch I would have rice, or Kebab with Chips. The Coke i drink. Which was 4L / Week. And Ice Cream.

Why did i remember all these so well? You may ask. Because at one point in life I was counting every penny because i spend too much on food. I was running out of money and I was desperate. I can't eat enough. I was constantly hungry. And Starving make me depress. I used to joke about How i eat all these and walked back to College in the cold weather i would burn off 1000 calories instantly.

Like some have suggested below, I guess it has to do with A) BMR, I think living in Cold weather make things a little different, and B) Not everyone absorb every Calorie they take! And that was my point. Some people simply don't absorb very well at all.

Sometime after the age of 24, something changed, I started absorbing, Within 2 years my weight went from barely 150Lb to 200Lb. It took me 2 years to slowly adjust my appetite. To eat less, and now days i am counting every calories I can to slowly shake off the weight. It is very hard, just as hard as I was trying to gain some weight many years ago.

Edit: And the 3 - 4 Pound Beef, Now i am older I know a single pieces of US prime Stripling is around 15Lb. My mum bought me over to my aunt's house and have dinner, They have half pieces of Prime Striplion left, that is about 7Lb. It was my first time ever to have US Prime beef and it taste unbelievably great! The dinner was self served and I was eating like there is no tomorrow. I had half of that pieces and was continually eating, my aunt found out and had to pull that striplion away from me to leave some for others. My mum then stare at me saying how i embarrassed her. At the time i thought I was hungry, why can't i eat more....... My mum later had to buy back a present to my Aunt as good gesture.

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

#144
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely can be the case. Absorption of calories depends on the person so the same people who eat 2k calories could get roughly 2k calories OR LESS depending on the gut bacteria and other variables. I do agree with you on people's reported caloric intake. Most people inaccurately record their eating habits. I use an app to get an idea of what my day was like.

Nutritional panel information is not an in vivo measurement. If you put 100g of broccoli in a bomb calorimeter and burn it in pure oxygen, you heat it up by 34 kilocalories. If you put it in a human digestive tract instead , the human can absorb anywhere from 0 to 34 kilocalories of food energy from it. We already have ample evidence that the food energy absorbed may be affected by the microbiome in the intestines, t…

Thanks, that pretty much sums up my suspicious that not every one absorb all they eat.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about ignoring it? It is a tangential question.

Thread title: "Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?" "I'm still pretty sure that calories-in/calories-out theory is more-or-less correct." Counting calories-in as calories absorbed is not exactly tangential, it may very well be the essence of the conversation.

It's tangential because, despite being at best an approximation, calories in is still a measure that can be used to reduce intake. It might take experimentation to find the limits for you.

It's quite simple: if you are gaining weight, eat less. The variation between calories marked and calories absorbed is not great enough to fundamentally matter.

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

#146
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. A cop-out from what, exactly? Does society have a responsibility to make everyone thin? Even if you say it does, how would you propose it goes about doing that? There's no scalable, organizable effort you can take that will make fat people thin. If you say we have to throw more money at research, I say, sure, we should! Along…

It's intriguing how morale is again on the stage; we went from "obesity is caused by lack of will" to "it's not deserving we pay for that research". Isn't that likely, though, that this research pays for itself?

How does research pay for itself? Naturally the results of the research could well be worth the time and money invested, even many times over if you're lucky, but that doesn't mean that it paid for itself. Somebody still has to pony up the dough to pay the scientists, lab assistants, equipment, time for them to figure out what they're doing, etc. None of it is free.

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

#147
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 19th century, when painkillers first started becoming available, physicians would refuse to give them to woman in childbirth, because the Bible says childbirth is supposed to be painful. Women had sinned, therefore they must suffer. This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. And it doesn't even make sense. Obesity is rising dramatically in developed countries. I…

> This is a great analogy. "It's your fault" is not a public health policy, it's a cop-out. A cop-out from what, exactly? Does society have a responsibility to make everyone thin? Even if you say it does, how would you propose it goes about doing that? There's no scalable, organizable effort you can take that will make fat people thin. If you say we have to throw more money at research, I say, sure, we should! Along…

You can surely make people fat, or lead-poisoned, or stuffed full of sugar and diabetic, or more full of meat, etc. through government decisions.

While the libertarians might have a point that most such decisions turn out to be deleterious, it's certainly not the case that policy can't make you fat, and so can presumably avoid making you fatter.

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

#148

This is interesting, but people shouldn't be misled. Counting calories _always_ works for weight loss. If you simply eat fewer calories than your body needs each day, you will lose weight. There was a very highly cited paper in the NEJM where they studied a group of people who believed they were "diet resistant" using a new technique--doubly labeled water--to determine how much they were really eating and exercising.…

You are the best kind of correct: Technically.

Confounding factors include:

- Dietary affects on metabolic rate/'calories out'

- Digestion differences on calories in

- Food/portion affects on satiety

- Food addiction

- Long term diet maintainability

We've known about calories in vs. out for years, yet our society is not seeing the results we want. The important question is: How do we control that equation?

Your conclusion is as helpful and callous as abstinence-only sex education.

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

#149

This is interesting, but people shouldn't be misled. Counting calories _always_ works for weight loss. If you simply eat fewer calories than your body needs each day, you will lose weight. There was a very highly cited paper in the NEJM where they studied a group of people who believed they were "diet resistant" using a new technique--doubly labeled water--to determine how much they were really eating and exercising.…

> In other words: "Fatties gonna fat."

You can't comment like this here.

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

#150
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least a drug addict doesn't have to take just the /right/ amount of the drug every day to stay healthy! spoken like someone with no experience with drug addiction. ever heard of a maintenance program?

That's an option, not a necessity. It also tends to involve restricted access. But with food is it impossible to go to rehab and stop eating over a period of a couple weeks. If lifelong drug maintenance programs were the only option to quit abusing, there would be a lot more relapses.

the relapse rate for methadone is around 90%, that's why I object to wording it as 'at least'
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