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The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

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Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#221

Post by inglor_cz »

ajb wrote: post #194
tlow wrote: post #159

I'm a participant in runner groups. I was surprised to meet several exceptional runners with stories of moving from very unhealthy/overweight to their current level of marathoner+. Several of them had success not just with intermittent fasting, but prolonged fasting. Humans can run when they feel like you have no energy. It's hard to believe that this isn't a psychological and behavioral issue: >A 30 percent reductio…

With obesity there is a constant refrain that people should be able to deal with it by willpower alone. Here is an analogy to explain why this is unrealistic: A while back I had a massive immune reaction in my skin, which brought with it the constant urge to scratch. A lot of people idly comment that the solution is to just not scratch, but it turned out that I had a skin infection, and under those circumstances the…

In December, I experimented with the potato diet from Slime Mold, Time Mold, and I actually lost some weight effortlessly. Not only I was way more satiated, I also noticed that I was losing appetite for meat etc.

I am inclined to believe that the root cause for the obesity epidemic is our satiety signals being out of whack. In which case "just eat less" is about as useful piece of advice as "just breathe less". In both cases you would be struggling against enormously strong, primordial bodily mechanisms.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#222

Post by inglor_cz »

aantix wrote: post #216
refurb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet obesity rates vary from very high globally. You'd expect a virus to eventually infect everyone.

There is genetic susceptibility, as outlined in the article.

The slimmest country on Earth is probably Viet Nam.

Travelers from all around the world tend to remark that once they arrive to Viet Nam, they start losing weight effortlessly. Upon arrival to the US, the very opposite tends to happen.

Adenovirus/population genetics must be a minor influence compared to cuisine.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#223

Post by Aaargh20318 »

Snow_Falls wrote: post #204
at_compile_time wrote: post #172

I can't remember the source, but I remember hearing that the two demographics in society who average at a healthy BMI were endurance athletes and vegans. I struggled through my 20s to keep my weight under 200 lbs at 6ft tall. Then I went vegan 4 years ago, and started running during the pandemic. Nothing crazy, just 5-8 km once or twice per week when it's nice out, and lots of beans and tofu in place of meat and dair…

The correlation between vegans and health is muddied by the fact that vegans put far more thought into their diet than the average person. Its entirely possible not eating meat is orthoganal to health and its just that they actually care about what they eat. No evidence of this, but I also suspect that vegans care more about their health in other weights too (e.g. exercising, not smoking, etc). If they can keep up wi…

> The correlation between vegans and health is muddied by the fact that vegans put far more thought into their diet than the average person

It's also likely that they simply eat less because vegan food just isn't very good.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#224

Post by slothtrop »

cbsmith wrote: post #95
slothtrop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I saw. But you'll see that the Biggest Loser contestants chased weight-loss on a very aggressive timeline. They have a steep deficit, and relatively high intensity exercise regimen. Which could just further exacerbate the effects of a steep deficit. At any rate, all of them had lastingly bad metabolic adaptation, even if those who exercised more had it worse. In other studies (alluded to here as those where part…

> At any rate, all of them had lastingly bad metabolic adaptation, even if those who exercised more had it worse. Yes, but as I read it, they all lastingly changed the level of exercise they were getting, and the extent of the "bad" metabolic adaptation seemed to correlate strongly with how big of a lasting change they made in exercise. > In other studies (alluded to here as those where participants don't undergo any…

> Yes, but as I read it, they all lastingly changed the level of exercise they were getting, and the extent of the "bad" metabolic adaptation seemed to correlate strongly with how big of a lasting change they made in exercise.

This doesn't contradict me.

> I've seen several other studies that suggest the opposite: that diet is a stronger predictor than exercise of long-term weight-loss success

That is not the opposite. I am not claiming that exercise is a stronger predictor than energy balance. I am claiming that it is a strong predictor.

I am not going to dig them up. Go check google scholar and check out Layne Norton's book Fat Loss Forever.

> there are diminishing returns from having a caloric deficit

The evidence seems to suggest that it's better to lose weight slowly to mitigate metabolic adaptation. If that's what you mean, it appears to be correct.

I would reiterate that I think the impact of exercise might be different with a small/modest caloric deficit.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#225

Post by slothtrop »

arcticbull wrote: post #56
slothtrop wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing things. The real gains qua WL from exercise are what is lost from resting metabolic rate, not calories burned "during" exercise. Also: satiety, and other health benefits that have an impact. > There's no studies or evidence whatsoever that shows it has a meaningful impact on weight loss. Absolutely not true. > Weight loss comes from what you put in (or rather don't). It's energy balance. But just as…

> Absolutely not true. Please cite a study that shows that exercise results in long-term sustained, clinically meaningful (>5%) weight loss. I have looked extensively and found none. And that's not for a lack of extant studies. > It's energy balance. But just as increasing satiety helps (through food choices), exercise is a strong predictor of long-term WL success. As far as I can see, there aren't any successful lon…

> Please cite a study that shows that exercise results in long-term sustained, clinically meaningful (>5%) weight loss

Those are not the words I used. Please engage in good faith. More accurately: exercise in addition to energy balance (and with a modest caloric deficit) is a strong predictor of WL success.

Check google scholar for meta reviews, I don't have this bookmarked and I'm not doing homework for you. If you don't want to believe me then don't.

I recommend Layne Norton's book Fat Loss Forever and his yt channel, he cites studies there.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#226

Post by scaryclam »

karmarepellent wrote: post #182
at_compile_time wrote: post #172

I can't remember the source, but I remember hearing that the two demographics in society who average at a healthy BMI were endurance athletes and vegans. I struggled through my 20s to keep my weight under 200 lbs at 6ft tall. Then I went vegan 4 years ago, and started running during the pandemic. Nothing crazy, just 5-8 km once or twice per week when it's nice out, and lots of beans and tofu in place of meat and dair…

I think BMI is a little confusing when it is applied to some categories of healthy individuals like endurance athletes and others. When I ran (a lot) in my early to mid-twenties my BMI was always "underweight". Yet I have never felt better. The same probably goes for climbers. Some of the climbers I know are inredibly lean and their BMI is certainly not in the "normal weight" range. Yet they are able to push their bo…

BMI is really a tool for helping to give indications of risk factors. If you have a BMI of 15, it's likely you have risks of various diseases. It's not a slam dunk, but a risk. But if you've chatted with a health professional and you're both happy that you're outside of the risk factors, then you'd not need to worry much. Some people are fine at BMI 26 or 17, some are outside of their healthy range at 24 or 19. It's a guide, not a rule.

The people who DO fall outside of the model are not that common though, especially if you're white. And these days the model accounts for more minorities, so even though it has issues, it's still worth listening to as it can highlight potential problems before they actually become problems.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#227

Post by thaanpaa »

epups wrote: post #196
thaanpaa wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number one in a thousand is simply a ballpark figure that is frequently used in nutritional science. There are literally hundreds of papers, and not all of them are good (you should look at the parameters because many of them are quite lax), but here are a few examples easily found online. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/030646... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1098-1.…

Perhaps you should read your own sources. From the abstract of the second study: "At the 3-year follow-up, 53% of the original sample (of 621 persons) maintained losses of 5% or more and 35% losses of 10% or more.". From the third study: "When successful weight maintenance was defined as maintaining a weight loss of 5% or 10% of initial (pre-treatment) body weight, 40% were maintaining a 5% weight loss at five years…

Perhaps you didn't read what I wrote. You really need to look at the parameters (as well as the data).

A 5% weight loss for a 200-pound person equals 10 pounds. Anyone can achieve this by following a fad diet for a week or two.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#228

Post by Izkata »

ninkendo wrote: post #88
throwup238 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This approach is generally referred to the calorie-in/calorie-out (CICO) model. While true to an extent, this perspective is too simplistic, given one key fact: leptin is primarily produced in adipose tissue [1]. This fact means body fat is actually an endocrine system organ. This part I think needs more explanation. The reason calories-in/calories-out model is too simplistic (I would call it almost useless if not…

CICO doesn’t work across individuals for reason you outline (just because I lose weight with a certain level of calories, doesn’t mean you will, etc.) But for a single individual, working to establish your base metabolic rate by counting every calorie and weighing yourself regularly, you can always find a way to be successful with the CICO model. If you establish a baseline that your metabolic rate is (say) 2000 calo…

> But for a single individual, working to establish your base metabolic rate by counting every calorie and weighing yourself regularly, you can always find a way to be successful with the CICO model. If you establish a baseline that your metabolic rate is (say) 2000 calories a day, then eating 1600 calories a day will cause you to lose roughly a half-pound to a pound per week. It does not mean that every individual’s baseline metabolic rate is the same.

Anecdote: I did this over the past year and a half, weighing myself weekly and tracking all calories, including a period of weight loss and gain to get some good data points, and starting around 6-8 months in the linear regression stabilized: I found I burn on average 2200 calories per day even though I'm in my 30s and mostly sedentary. I've since found it to be pretty accurate.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#229

Post by Snow_Falls »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #223
Snow_Falls wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correlation between vegans and health is muddied by the fact that vegans put far more thought into their diet than the average person. Its entirely possible not eating meat is orthoganal to health and its just that they actually care about what they eat. No evidence of this, but I also suspect that vegans care more about their health in other weights too (e.g. exercising, not smoking, etc). If they can keep up wi…

> The correlation between vegans and health is muddied by the fact that vegans put far more thought into their diet than the average person It's also likely that they simply eat less because vegan food just isn't very good.

Chips are vegan you know. As is most sauce.

Re: The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?

#230

Post by tonyedgecombe »

paulpauper wrote: post #134
waterheater wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looked up his book "The Obesity Code"; not sure if that's the one you're thinking of. Dr. Fung says obesity is a basically a hormonal issue, not a caloric issue. He discusses a "causality test": "If we inject this hormone into people, they must gain weight". According to Dr. Fung, leptin and ghrelin don't pass this test, but insulin and cortisol do. Still, leptin and insulin appear to have a close relationship.…

Then why are so many people who are insulin resistant overweight? Yet people with type 1 diabetes tend to be thin. I don't think the connection between insulin and weight is well known, assuming one even exists. It's a basic CICO problem. Whether there is insulin resistance or sensitivity does not change this much. IF his theories actually worked, they would work on general population at fixing obesity, but there is…

>Yet people with type 1 diabetes tend to be thin.

People with type 1 diabetes need to be conscious of what they are eating in a way the rest of us don't. I'm not sure you can draw much inference from them.

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