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A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

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Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#131

Post by syamilmj »

fredophile wrote: post #124
syamilmj wrote: post #123

What about stress? Elevated cortisol level induces over-eating; moreover, increases craving for high-sugar, high-fat foods. The big change in human behavior in the last 2 decades is that now people consume more information that leads to depression, anxiety and stress.

The article also talks about changes in the weight of zoo and lab animals. Stress may be a factor in weight gain in humans but it wouldn't explain the animal data so I don't think it's the only, or primary, factor.

The article pointed out a paper on an increase of 1.4% overweight horses. It does not seem to have a meaningful relationship with the steep increase of overweight population in human (~24%).

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#132

Post by briefcomment »

jpitz wrote: post #127
briefcomment wrote: post #102

> "Something seems to have changed. But surprisingly, we don’t seem to have any idea what that thing was." We have ideas. Polyunsaturated fats (shortening, margarine, soybean oil, canola oil, even chicken fat) is a promising culprit. Consumption of those have skyrocketed in the last half of the 20th century [1]. Full study here [2]. It seems that polyunsaturated fats induce hibernation like symptoms, which could expl…

I thought polyunsaturated fats ( fish, soybean ) were fairly prevalent in Japanese diets? How does that square up with the lower prevalence of obesity there?

Eating isolated oils is decidedly different from eating whole foods, as there are compounds that counteract each other when taken as a whole. For example, fish have long chain fatty acids which counter some effects of the Omega oils.

I think it's much easier to consume large portions of soybean oil if you're using it as an all purpose oil, than if you were just eating tofu, bean curd, natto, etc.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#133

Post by BitwiseFool »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #66
MrPatan wrote: post #13

Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor. It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.

Absolutely. CICO is the kind of thing that is so obviously true that anyone claiming it isn't shouldn't be taken seriously. I wouldn't say CICO doesn't help anyone though, because there's a whole lot of people out there trying to make money by telling you you can ignore CICO with this one simple trick . CICO is a useful thing to keep telling yourself when trying to lose weight because the calories are everything and…

CICO makes sense as a rule of thumb, but the kind of calories certainly matters. I'm no dietician, but carbohydrates, sugar, and fat each react differently with the body's digestive and endocrine system. Surely that has some effect beyond mere CICO calculations. I'd love to see a study that compares change in bodyfat with 2000 calories of cake frosting vs 2000 calories of red meat.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#134

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #133
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. CICO is the kind of thing that is so obviously true that anyone claiming it isn't shouldn't be taken seriously. I wouldn't say CICO doesn't help anyone though, because there's a whole lot of people out there trying to make money by telling you you can ignore CICO with this one simple trick . CICO is a useful thing to keep telling yourself when trying to lose weight because the calories are everything and…

CICO makes sense as a rule of thumb, but the kind of calories certainly matters. I'm no dietician, but carbohydrates, sugar, and fat each react differently with the body's digestive and endocrine system. Surely that has some effect beyond mere CICO calculations. I'd love to see a study that compares change in bodyfat with 2000 calories of cake frosting vs 2000 calories of red meat.

I'm not aware of any such study, however there was this: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...

In which a man loses 27lbs on a diet of twinkies and was even healthier overall according to all metrics.

Between this and personal experience I'm prepared to say that as far as weight loss is concerned it really doesn't matter. Granted, different foods may have an effect on mood, energy level, and satiety which will all contribute to the CO part of the CICO equation, but all other variables kept constant a calorie is a calorie.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#135

Post by SavantIdiot »

> Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. ... These are all unrefined sugars, of course

Isn't it important to distinguish the type of sugar?

I thought the 5-10% increase in proportion of sucrose to fructose was sufficient enough to result in significant difference between how types of sugar impact insulin response. E.g., the shift to more easily-metabolized fructose results in even more available calories to convert to fat than the 50/50 sucrose/fructose found in fruits.

> even when statistically adjusting for variables like age, BMI, and physical activity.

I find this hard to believe, that the statistics were adjusted correctly for physical activity. You can talk about !Kung, Maasi, and Inuits all day long, but these tribes are wildly active compared to the typical desk-jockey westerner. That can't be shrugged off so easily.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#136

Post by SavantIdiot »

MrPatan wrote: post #13

Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor. It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.

If you swallow 16oz of dried corn kernels whole or 16oz of cornflour, they have the same calories but you are going to metabolize them in a very different way. I don't understand the CIN/COUT argument when different calories are metabolized differently. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how calories are approximated for foods.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#137

Post by magicalhippo »

joflicu wrote: post #76
magicalhippo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helped me a lot. It was very easy to use, and by not having any off-limits foods or similar, just a calorie target, it helped me find meals that I enjoyed while keeping me full. It also was a nice perspective to have in mind for me. Calories in, calories out means it doesn't really matter what I do today, it's what I do each day that matters.

How do you know the calories of home-cooked or restaurant meals to estimate the targets accurately?

Restaurants are usually difficult, so I treated them as an "off day", and hence would not go to them too often. One might order a salad, but who knows how much sugar, oils and whatnot they put in there.

For home-cooked I would do rough estimation based on weight and some quick web searches for calorie content of the ingredients.

After a short while I got a pretty decent hang of where the calories were, so could focus more on those. I had a small kitchen weight for the "heavy hitters", for the rest I just estimated based on listed weight and how much I used (~1/3 of package fex).

In the beginning I did weigh slices of bread and so on, and quickly built up a good overview over how many calories there were in such recurring items. Except for oils, butter and similar I wouldn't be super-accurate.

But having a fairly good idea of how many calories was in my food really helped me plan portion sizes and compositions to roughly match the deficit I wanted, as determined by a web page estimating my calorie requirement[1].

Like I said, focusing purely on calories in, calories out, rather than say "yes foods" and "no foods", made it a lot easier for me as I could eat what I wanted, just perhaps not as much.

For example, I quickly found out that my weekend favorite of steak with french fries and bearnaise was way over target. However, I found that if I ensured my steak was no more than 250g, swapped french fries for quality green peas and reduced the butter in the sauce by half, the calories were around my target value. So I could still enjoy my weekend treat.

One potential issue was to feel full while reducing portion sizes. For that I leaned on some studies I read about which seemed to suggest high protein and high fiber. So I tried to have at least 20% of my calories in proteins, and also have as much fiber as possible. My breakfast bread is 90+% whole grain, my pasta is whole grain, I swapped out iceberg lettuce for romain lettuce (which has much more fiber) etc.

Based on this I had a almost entirely linear decrease in weight over a year, without feeling like I was on a diet. In the end I lost 30kg.

[1]: https://nhi.no/skjema-og-kalkulatorer/kalkulatorer/diverse/b...

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#138

Post by code_duck »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #135

> Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. ... These are all unrefined sugars, of course Isn't it important to distinguish the type of sugar? I thought the 5-10% increase in proportion of sucrose to fructose was sufficient enough to result in significant difference between how types of sugar impact insulin response. E.g., the shift to m…

Is fructose considered easy to metabolize? It takes drastically longer to convert to glucose than other sugars, requires liver enzymes and can creates gastric upset in excess. It seems quite inefficient compared to carbohydrate sources like starch which are simply chains of glucose molecules that your body separates.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#139

Post by irthomasthomas »

andylei wrote: post #97
irthomasthomas wrote: post #62

It is not really a mystery any more. There was a heart disease epidemic in the mid 20th century (the rate doubling every decade). A scientist named Ansel Keys did an epidemiological study comparing rates of heart disease to fat intake in 6 different countries and found a strong correlation: countries that ate more fat had higher rates of heart disease. Therefore fat causes heart disease. This is the lipid hypothesis,…

the author of the post refutes the carbohydrate hypothesis here: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...

That one graph from one epidemiological study is not enough to refute 60 years of data from many clinical trials. There is probably a confounding variable.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#140

Post by handrous »

wickoff wrote: post #68
pif wrote: post #14

> Mystery 8: Diets Don’t Work As an obese person who tried several times to follow medical advise, this does not surprise me, not at all! Every diet is about calories and sport, which cannot hurt. But every diet completely misses the elephant in the room: hunger! Any medical procedure is only worth pursuing if it gives you a higher quality of life in the long term. A constant hunger cannot compensate for any weight l…

I've always been a somewhat active person (at least 10 hours spent walking/cycling every week). Did it just because I liked it, but it never helped with weight loss. Switching cardio for resistance training (5x5) helped immensely with no changes in diet. My weight has dropped slightly, but my body composition changed a lot. Cardio became much easier after building some muscle mass. There is also something addictive t…

I've found most cardio to have practically no weight-loss benefit for me, while weight lifting has way more than it should according to e.g. calorie-burn calculators or tables. All I can figure is that lifting does something to my metabolism, on the order of hours to days after, that running or cycling doesn't.

Swimming also seems very effective, though I've not checked whether that effect's outside what's expected, or just normal.

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