Live data from Hacker News

Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

colorado.edu

61–70 of 151 posts

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#61

For those struggling, controlling your diet is the single most effective thing you can do to make progress on obesity. Much easier to say no to a 300 cal donut than to run 30 minutes. Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat. Maybe we need a “just say no” to junk food campaign like we had in the 90s. Lean meat, tofu, tempeh, seitan, veggies, low calorie sauces, limited fruits, protein smoothi…

Studies don't really support that. They show that rapid weight loss is more effective, but slightly worse for body composition. And slower weight loss is of course the opposite.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702468/

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#62
post #54

For those struggling, controlling your diet is the single most effective thing you can do to make progress on obesity. Much easier to say no to a 300 cal donut than to run 30 minutes. Cutting out the daily donut for two weeks is about a pound of fat. Maybe we need a “just say no” to junk food campaign like we had in the 90s. Lean meat, tofu, tempeh, seitan, veggies, low calorie sauces, limited fruits, protein smoothi…

True, but don't feel like you have to run for 30 minutes. Walking for that long will go a long way for a lot of folks. Really, walking should probably be looked at far more closely for many folks.

Walking for 30 minutes will go a long way to promote general health, but it's not a lot of calories burned.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#63
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me with eliminating carbs; combining keto + IF is pretty effective and I've lost about half of the weight from ATH to where I want to be through it. IF is nice because it provides an "all or nothing, but not forever" restriction, and keto is a reasonable framework for food selectivity. Keeping enough protein for not losing muscle and overall ideal; I wish I'd done this when I was 16 and not when I was in my…

I’m in my 50s and I will tell you that your metabolism changes. I was on strict low-carb and I hit a wall in terms of weight that I couldn’t get past. When I did low carb in my 30s I easily lost about 40 lbs but this time around I maxed out at 20 lb weight loss and couldn’t push it further.

Have you tried cutting out PUFAs as well? Check out the Croissant Diet: https://fireinabottle.net/introducing-the-croissant-diet/

No guarantee that it'll work (I haven't tried myself) but seems like a thing that could help you.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on seeing what is in most shopping carts, most people are not even trying to control weight. Starving one’s self is not necessary. Not buying ice cream, cookies, chips, added sugar foods, and beer is necessary. Do not eat out, and do not let unhealthy foods into the house. And do not shop while hungry. The root cause is all that unhealthy stuff gives everyone a dopamine hit they want. Living in an environment t…

> Not buying ice cream, cookies, chips, added sugar foods, and beer is necessary. Do not eat out, and do not let unhealthy foods into the house. And do not shop while hungry. I've done all that and more for 10 years and still gained 100lbs. Exercise didn't help, just made it worse. Yes, I've gained 20-30lbs (not muscle, I wish!) in a few months by exercising more. I've failed to lose fat doing 10 months of 4x per wee…

I lost 150 pounds in 1.5 years doing literally nothing different but eating less, and kept it off for the next 15 (present)

You own failings are due to you lying to yourself about how much you eat.

Humans are not able to break the laws of thermodynamics. If you consume less than you burn, you will lose weight no matter what.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#65

> Masters pointed out that a lifetime carrying excess weight can lead to illnesses that, paradoxically, lead to rapid weight loss. If BMI data is captured during this time, it can skew study results. “I would argue that we have been artificially inflating the mortality risk in the low-BMI category by including those who had been high BMI and had just lost weight recently,” he said. It's like the teetotaling bias — a…

> He discovered that a full 20% of the sample characterized as “healthy” weight had been in the overweight or obese category in the decade prior. When set apart, this group had a substantially worse health profile than those in the category whose weight had been stable.

There are a few odd things about this approach.

First, 20% of people in a healthy weight being previously overweight/obese? This seems high? Could there be reporting bias or other things here? I'm still trying to understand the full study, but it is odd that more people lost weight than gained weight, according to the numbers I'm seeing in it. Although that may be partially explained by the fact that it was limited to people 45 - 85 years old.

Second, the methodology of taking anyone who was previously overweight/obese and is now healthy (weight-wise) into their own group and then attributing increases in mortality purely to weight seem suspect? There are a lot of things that can cause you to lose weight and lead to increased mortality that aren't related to weight, and those would be captured in here.

The conclusions definitely make sense and "feel" right, at least directionally, I'm just a little confused about some of the methodology to get there.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#66
post #9

Man, food is so addictive and not like you can just stop eating it like you can quit drinking booze or quit smoking!

Yeah for sure. I kicked a 3 cig a day habit overnight. I was still eating junk food even into into a diet. Never really stopped, but I lost a lot of weight through aggressive portion control.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but don't feel like you have to run for 30 minutes. Walking for that long will go a long way for a lot of folks. Really, walking should probably be looked at far more closely for many folks.

Walking for 30 minutes will go a long way to promote general health, but it's not a lot of calories burned.

In my experiments wearing a glucose monitor, even 5 minutes of walking has a massive effect on blood sugar. Might not make you slim, but might prevent your diabetes if you're borderline.

I counted the steps. Under 600 steps. Not even around the block, and a ~20mg/dL reduction in blood glucose.

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come that you think this?

Ozempic and Wegovy. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/opinion/ozempic-weight-lo... https://archive.is/rnTGB https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/30/1152039...

Those are outliers.

For the rest of us there's discipline and sheer willpower, as well as smart energy management.

Train too hard? My appetite goes nuts. Train not enough? The weight loss is muscle. It kind of never stops.

(Speaking as someone fast approaching the big five oh, on the very upper end of the normal BMI and not enough muscle to sugar coat all the excess gut fat which somehow disappears when clothed thanks to an above average height yet is still very much a risk factor.)

Re: Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed

#70
post #40

Making GLP-1 agonists and related drugs (ozempic, mounjaro) cheaply/widely available seems like it would be excellent public policy.

It seems that they also make you lose tons of lean mass. Normal diets you lose 25% of the lost weight in lean, these seem more like 40%. https://peterattiamd.com/the-downside-of-glp-1-receptor-agon...

“Lean mass loss was 2.6% versus 10.9%. Those on tirzepatide had about a threefold greater reduction in fat mass than lean mass, resulting in an overall improvement in body composition. Fat mass as a proportion of overall body mass decreased from 46.8% to 44.7% with placebo, compared with 46.2% to 38.5% with tirzepatide. Similarly, lean mass as a proportion of body mass increased from 50.7% to 52.4% with placebo, compared with 51.0% to 58.1% with tirzepatide. Fat-to-lean mass ratio improved more with tirzepatide than placebo, with greater improvements observed in patients who lost more body weight.”

https://www.practiceupdate.com/content/easd-2022-substantial....

Post reply on HN