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Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

nature.com

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Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#81

Post by squeedles »

dorfsmay wrote: post #76
squeedles wrote: post #58

As this article shows, there are incredibly complex feedback mechanisms around weight and metabolism, but thermodynamics are still fundamentally a thing. After he died last year, I ran across this engineering and accounting approach to weight maintenance and loss written up by John Walker (one of the Autodesk founders). It worked very well for him and changed the way I thought about weight and eating. It is interesti…

The problem with diets based only on calories is that they don't take satiety into account, nor health. Calories is what makes you gain/lose weight, it's basic physics. Satiety is what makes you want to eat more/less. Nutrients are what is making you healthy. Fiber and protein tends to make you feel full. Lack of them allow you to eat large amount of calories without feeling full. You need to keep track of micro and…

Quite so, and I think he does address that, but those are all second level factors, along with activity level, exercise, and their effect on your caloric requirements. He puts together a bunch of excel spreadsheets for tracking many factors, but I have found the simple discipline of accounting for what I eat in a little txt file on my phone sufficient to align my choices with my desired outcome.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#83

Post by _Algernon_ »

david-gpu wrote: post #68
senko wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not about the weight, it's about the exercise. You cannot outrun a fork.

Tell that to all the skinny endurance weekend warriors who fuel their exercise with huge amounts of sugary drinks and gummy bears. If you are curious, read about the function of GLUT4 in the membrane of skeletal muscles. Reality is more complex than memetic one-liners.

Obviously professional athletes or people who otherwise have an extremely active lifestile can afford to eat more.

The obese people and sedentary office workers don't and would need to train for months to be able to out-run a single piece of cake on a regular basis without injury.

The phrase is good advice for that group of people.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#84

Post by BlackFly »

beejiu wrote: post #63
skirmish wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known that if you gain muscle then lose it, it is easier to regain it than the first time (IIRC, the cells store extra nucleii?). This could be a similar effect but with fat cells.

As well as the "cell memory", the total number of fat cells you have in your body is set during adolescence, then it remains constant for the rest of your adult life. ( https://www.nature.com/articles/ncpgasthep1189 ). During adolescence, if you gain weight, you create new fat cells. During adulthood, the fat cells themselves just get larger. Arguably the best thing you can do is avoid obesity during childhood and ad…

Interested parties may want to read the original article https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06902 in place of the highlight https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpgasthep1189.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#85

Post by guerrilla »

nradov wrote: post #54
spoiler wrote: post #2

As someone who's struggled with weight loss, and have known others to struggle with it well, I think we colloquially called this "slow metabolism". It always did feel like it was easier to gain weight than lose it, especially fat weight and not muscle weight for me. I was recently sent a video about fat adaptation (basically teaching your body to be better at burning fat) by a very fit friend, but I wonder how much o…

A lot of people blame failure to lose fat on a "slow metabolism" but this is usually incorrect. Have you had an actual resting metabolic rate (RMR) test to quantity your baseline total daily energy expenditure? Fat adaptation is a real thing. Endurance athletes focused on longer events will target some of their training around that energy system. This is more complex than can really be explained in an online comment…

They didn't mean it was literally a slow metabolism. They meant that what the article is about is often refered to as a "slow metabolism". It's a misnomer since that is not the mechanism but there is definitely a phenomenon at play, which is what the article is about, the actual phenomenon rather than the bro science.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#86

Post by dorfsmay »

squeedles wrote: post #81
dorfsmay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with diets based only on calories is that they don't take satiety into account, nor health. Calories is what makes you gain/lose weight, it's basic physics. Satiety is what makes you want to eat more/less. Nutrients are what is making you healthy. Fiber and protein tends to make you feel full. Lack of them allow you to eat large amount of calories without feeling full. You need to keep track of micro and…

Quite so, and I think he does address that, but those are all second level factors, along with activity level, exercise, and their effect on your caloric requirements. He puts together a bunch of excel spreadsheets for tracking many factors, but I have found the simple discipline of accounting for what I eat in a little txt file on my phone sufficient to align my choices with my desired outcome.

Exercise and activity are contributing to calories (calories out). These days there are apps that make it easy to track calories, macro and nutrients.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#87

Post by guerrilla »

nom wrote: post #67
eftpotrm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it happens. A doctor in my family told the story of a patient they were treating in hospital who medically needed to lose weight, and who they found unable to get any reduction until they dropped below _200_ calories a day. Metabolism is _significantly_ more complex than CI/CO, from experience.

What is more likely: - a physics-breaking thermodynamic anomaly - a food addicted person is lying about their consumption 200 kcal a day.. yeah sure. A human body needs more than that just to breathe and pump blood. Even comatose a skinny person needs 5 times as much. Overweight people have a significantly higher metabolic base rate. Just breathing can easily be 1000kcal a day if your lungs have to move 30 kilos of u…

It's insane how arrogant people can be about this. You have not accounted for all of the variables and that is blatantly obvious. The phenomenon is well known and there are multi-variable equations for it, many different models. One popular model is that NEET can decrease below the caloric deficit, meaning you still gain weight by becoming subconsciously lazier despite everything feeling equally difficult subjectively. There are several other more advanced models adding other variables, some depending on insulin sensitivity, for example. Anyway, no physics is broken, laymen are just naive to the complexity abd adaptability of biology.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#88

Post by nikanj »

spoiler wrote: post #2

As someone who's struggled with weight loss, and have known others to struggle with it well, I think we colloquially called this "slow metabolism". It always did feel like it was easier to gain weight than lose it, especially fat weight and not muscle weight for me. I was recently sent a video about fat adaptation (basically teaching your body to be better at burning fat) by a very fit friend, but I wonder how much o…

If there really was a gene that allowed you to survive on substantially less food than your peers, pretty much all humans would have said gene. The history of humanity is rife with famine, and that gene would be a game-changer for survival

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#89

Post by ngd »

nradov wrote: post #54
spoiler wrote: post #2

As someone who's struggled with weight loss, and have known others to struggle with it well, I think we colloquially called this "slow metabolism". It always did feel like it was easier to gain weight than lose it, especially fat weight and not muscle weight for me. I was recently sent a video about fat adaptation (basically teaching your body to be better at burning fat) by a very fit friend, but I wonder how much o…

A lot of people blame failure to lose fat on a "slow metabolism" but this is usually incorrect. Have you had an actual resting metabolic rate (RMR) test to quantity your baseline total daily energy expenditure? Fat adaptation is a real thing. Endurance athletes focused on longer events will target some of their training around that energy system. This is more complex than can really be explained in an online comment…

There is also a conflation of a slowing metabolism and low energy availability, which can reduce the amount of energy expended during the day (because you feel tired and do less). It can be quite subtle but when I've done some extended periods in a calorie deficit I start to notice subtle things, like a propensity to sit a bit longer, or to reduce my overall body movements. My resting metabolism is the same (I've had it measured a few times) but my body looks for ways to expend less energy.

Re: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

#90

Post by nikanj »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #44
sethammons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k calories a day is what a black bear eats preparing for hibernation. And it is what Michael Phelps would eat daily when training in the pool for hours on end. Obese people can remain obese eating 1000 calories a day. I recall one episode of My 600lb Life and the show's featured person that day was at 900 or 1200 calories a day and still didn't lose weight. Might have still been gaining. It is a dynamic system. Peo…

I'm sure an obese person claiming to eat 1000kcal per day can still gain weight but that is largely due to selfreported calorie estimates being a bad measure. Put that person in a chamber where calorie intake is controlled and I'd bet the effect disappears.

Ate only 1000kcal in food. Added in 1400kcal in sugary drinks and 2000kcal in small bites of this and that (that don't need to be counted, because it's just one spoonful of peanut butter!)
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