Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 376 posts

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#301

Post by chris_wot »

DanBC wrote: post #213
chris_wot wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the source now, but years ago in an agricultural class in high school I was told that studies had been done on weight recovery in cattle who had been through drought conditions and who were either malnuritied or had lost significant weight. I believe the results were that the cattle recovered and increased their weight after this occurred. Wish I could find that study! But it would be an interesting hypo…

> Wish I could find that study! But it would be an interesting hypothesis to test for: if someone reduced their calorific content too quickly then the body will attempt to compensate when normal eating resumes. Obviously it would need to use animals and a control group but it might be insightful. There's a natural experiment of sorts in re-feeding people with anorexia. Many people think this is a risky time because t…

Interesting! Evidently this is a bit of a hot topic though, I seem to have raised the ire of some, but others found my comment interesting.

Very good info, though I honestly don't think it was exactly what I was thinking of. I'll keep looking for that info...

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#302

Post by spc476 »

tzs wrote: post #265
sdoering wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. Sadly I am up about 35 pounds from when I hit bottom. Sugar-addiction, at least for me, is harder to beat then smoking. I am able to go without sugar for one to two weeks and then it hits me and I binge on chocolate again. Hope to find the strength to restart my efforts. Does any of you have helpful suggestions?

I've cut a tremendous amount of sugar by cutting way way back on Pepsi. I could not stand diet soda, so when I started aiming for under 40% calories from carbs I was trying fairly hard to make sure that I was way under 40% for most of the day, so that my evening snack could include a Pepsi. I tried adding some low sugar gelatin cup desserts to my diet to have a nice cool dessert on occasion, not expecting much since…

As a kid, my grandma wanted me to drink less soda (I spent the summers with the grandparents). So she switched me to iced tea, but had me add as much sugar as I wanted. As time went on, she had me add less and less sugar until I no longer needed to add sugar.

Today it's almost exclusively what I drink. The only times I don't is when I know the restaurant I'm in can't make drinkable iced tea to save their life (for some odd reason, it mostly seems to be Cuban or South American restaurants [1]) and I'll switch to soda.

[1] I live in South Florida. I suspect the reason is that Cuban/South American restaurants use coffee brewers to make tea, and I can't stand the taste of coffee.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#303

Post by kenjackson »

sageabilly wrote: post #90

The results of this study, while interesting, seem flawed to me because losing 200+lbs in only 8 months' time is ridiculously fast. I would be more interested in a study following people who lost weight very slowly and steadily over time, and curious about their metabolisms and recidivism rates. I've lost 100lbs over the last three years and have had zero issue (so far, not saying I won't ever) with keeping at this w…

The article did also talk about people who lost 360 calories per day by urinating it out. They also unwittingly at 200 more calories per day. This amounts to losing something like 1.5 pounds per month. But they also note that this increase in calories eaten is what causes weight gain later -- so even slow approaches hit the same problem.

And while 3 years is good -- you really should watch for over 5-10 years. I previously lost about 40 pounds, and kept it off for about 6 years. Over the course of four years after that I gained most of it back. About 8 pounds per year like clockwork. I didn't even realize it was happening until I was 18 months or so into gaining the weight back. I did nothing different the first six years versus the last four. But something happened...

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#304

Post by kenjackson »

kazinator wrote: post #131

> A study of Season 8’s contestants has yielded surprising new discoveries about the physiology of obesity No it didn't. Just another example of junk science. > Now burns 800 fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size. "Expected for a man of his size" is a fiction. What they are insinuating here is that the rapid weight loss did long term damage to his metabolism. But to confirm that, you have to…

And that may well be why he was heavy to begin with.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#305

Post by kenjackson »

pcwalton wrote: post #128
rayiner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just wondering why there seems to be more empathy towards people with eating habits problems, than when it comes to other addicts. Because 75% of the country doesn't have a moderate to severe coke addiction. "Addiction" is what we call behavior that falls outside the "normal range" on the bell curve. What the majority of people do is by definition "normal" and so when you have a problem that afflicts the majori…

> "Addiction" is what we call behavior that falls outside the "normal range" on the bell curve. I don't think the definition of addiction has to do with how many people are addicted. Seems uncontroversial to me that the majority of the population in the early part of the 20th century were addicted to tobacco smoking, for example. Google brings up this definition of addiction: "physically and mentally dependent on a p…

By that definition we are addicted to water, oxygen, and calories.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#306

Post by forgetsusername »

npsimons wrote: post #281
emodendroket wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A year is awfully short to be chiming in with advice for long-term weight loss.

> A year is awfully short to be chiming in with advice for long-term weight loss. How about nine years? 2007-03-28: 192lb; 2016-04-30: 153lb. I hit 160lb in late September of 2007 and haven't been above it since, typically fluctuating these days between 150-155lb. I did it by simply eating less and paying more attention to hunger signals. If you want to be sure you're not overeating, track calories in and your weight…

Tracking calories would blow most people's minds about the quanta of food they're eating. I've been tracking for a while, and sometimes I'm still surprised.

Scale and app. It's never been easier.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#307

Post by kenjackson »

bb85 wrote: post #8

I wonder why, when we talk about obesity, there is this tendency to use language that removes responsibility from the person, or at least move it from their mind to their "body", as if they were different entities. I think obese people fit the definition of addicts. Most of the time, other addictions are fought by pushing awareness on the person, forcing them to recognize they have a problem and that they need to cha…

I think a big difference with obesity is that the obese may not exhibit any external behavioral difference. That is an obese person may eat the same amount of food (and same foods) as a non-obese person.

Being obese is probably more like not being good at math, than a heroine addiction. People who aren't good at math could probably use more work at math. Yet, just because they read the same books as Terrence Tao -- don't expect the same result.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#308

Post by xriddle »

revelation wrote: post #289
sz4kerto wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would keto be a bad idea? Genuine question. A friend of mine just run a 54k mountain track (2600m elevation) after 7 months keto. I have barely eaten carbs for 2 weeks now, and just cycled 120 km two days ago.

The short summary is that aerobic exercise performance in humans is limited by the maximal rate of oxygen uptake or VO2max. Oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen per unit of "energy" produced than glycolysis; they are simply less bang for buck (or oxygen). Hence chronically depleted (particularly muscle) glycogen stores are a great recipe for bad exercise performances as you force the body into deriving more…

Do you have a scientific source for these claims? Dr. Peter Attia's personal research seems to claim otherwise.

http://eatingacademy.com/how-a-low-carb-diet-affected-my-ath...

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#309

Post by xriddle »

revelation wrote: post #289
sz4kerto wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would keto be a bad idea? Genuine question. A friend of mine just run a 54k mountain track (2600m elevation) after 7 months keto. I have barely eaten carbs for 2 weeks now, and just cycled 120 km two days ago.

The short summary is that aerobic exercise performance in humans is limited by the maximal rate of oxygen uptake or VO2max. Oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen per unit of "energy" produced than glycolysis; they are simply less bang for buck (or oxygen). Hence chronically depleted (particularly muscle) glycogen stores are a great recipe for bad exercise performances as you force the body into deriving more…

Do you have a scientific source for these claims? Dr. Peter Attia's personal research seems to claim otherwise.

http://eatingacademy.com/how-a-low-carb-diet-affected-my-ath...

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#310

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #136
pcwalton wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Addiction" is what we call behavior that falls outside the "normal range" on the bell curve. I don't think the definition of addiction has to do with how many people are addicted. Seems uncontroversial to me that the majority of the population in the early part of the 20th century were addicted to tobacco smoking, for example. Google brings up this definition of addiction: "physically and mentally dependent on a p…

That may be factually true. But only now that everyone has stopped smoking do we actually talk about "smoking addiction." Back when everyone did it, it wasn't treated as an addiction with us blaming individual smokers for smoking. It was treated as a public health problem, and ultimately the blame was laid at the feet of the tobacco industry.

> But only now that everyone has stopped smoking do we actually talk about "smoking addiction."

Er, no, we started talking about nicotine addiction long before that.

> Back when everyone did it, it wasn't treated as an addiction with us blaming individual smokers for smoking.

Actually, treating it as an addiction has been exactly the opposite of "blaming individual smokers for smoking" -- while certainly the fact that it has become rarer has coincided with an increase in stigmatization (there's a two-way causal relationship there, in a positive feedback loop), that's separate entirely from treating it as an addiction (that's treating it as something people don't like around them.)

Treating it as an addiction is providing medical and counseling support for people to deal with the addiction, and placing blame on the tobacco companies for deceptively and knowingly marketing an addictive substance for many years.

> It was treated as a public health problem, and ultimately the blame was laid at the feet of the tobacco industry.

You seem to use "as an addiction" and "as a public health problem" as if they were opposites, which is odd, because actual addiction is (and is treated as) a fairly significant public health problems.

Post reply on HN