161–170 of 392 posts
> Nearly 1,000 obesogens with such effects have already been identified in studies with animals or humans. They include Bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in plastics, and the phthalates, plasticizing agents used in paints, medicine and cosmetics. Others include parabens used as preservatives in food and paper products, and chemicals called organotins used as fungicides. Other obesogens include pesticides and herbic…
A very long series of essays about this: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an overview of the arguments for obesogens.
I find this to be a pretty lame analysis. > People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. This seems closely related to observations like the French Paradox — the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and butter, so w…
Is it the plastic though, or is it the sugar? Over my last few years of reading, I've convinced myself that sugar is the main culprit in massive obesity in Western countries, especially the US (i.e. high fructose corn syrup). Sugar is in everything (like plastic, I suppose). Look at the ingredients of what you buy and you'll be surprised where it turns up. Peanut butter, mayonnaise, beef jerky, even bog standard brea…
I consume multiple times more sugar than the average person, and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism. Sugar in itself isn't likely to be bad. Sugar in addition to a deranged metabolism is probably bad. Fixing the deranged metabolism, (which is likely to be caused by various environmental factors) will probably be the best solution.
The average American consumes around 125g of sugar per day [1, 2]. This is about 500 kcals. Multiple times that would mean most of your daily calories are coming from sugar, unless you are very physically active.
[1] https://www.sugar.org/diet/intake/
[2] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/45-alarming-statistics-on...
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Those diets also didn't have added sugars and salts to everything. It's serious work requiring reading all the nutrition labels to get groceries sans questionable additives in the US.
Thanks to corn subsidies, we have high fructose corn syrup in many foods you wouldn't expect to find it. Milk by-products are the same way. My wife recently developed lactose intolerance, so we've been finding milk products in tons of things you wouldn't have expected it. Instant ramen? The flavor mix includes milk solids. Cheap hot dogs? More milk solids. Flavored chips, even when not cheese flavored? They have lact…
is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a thermodynamics problem
No, that would defy the laws of thermodynamics. However, it is possible to consume more calories than you burn and lose weight, because there are complexities around how your body decides to store fat, signals to burn fat, etc.
Even if it was simply a thermodynamics problem (which I don't think it is), there are also issues with appetite. Sure, you can count calories for the rest of your life, but doing that is not only difficult to measure correctly, but very difficult to maintain if you still feel hungry all the time.
I think one of the reasons a ketogenic diet works for a lot of people is that after a period of adaptation, you stop getting hungry every 4 hours.
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I consume multiple times more sugar than the average person, and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism. Sugar in itself isn't likely to be bad. Sugar in addition to a deranged metabolism is probably bad. Fixing the deranged metabolism, (which is likely to be caused by various environmental factors) will probably be the best solution.
> I consume multiple times more sugar than the average person, and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism. The average American consumes around 125g of sugar per day [1, 2]. This is about 500 kcals. Multiple times that would mean most of your daily calories are coming from sugar, unless you are very physically active. [1] https://www.sugar.org/diet/intake/ [2] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/45-alarming-stat…
I probably reliably have 2x the average for simple sugars
is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a thermodynamics problem
Say that a body is in a caloric balance, and at the same time in a strange state in which it is storing N calories as fat, while releasing N calories from breakdown of lean tissue: a lean-to-fat conversion is going on, so to speak. That body will be losing mass, because a calorie of lean tissue represents much more mass than a calorie of fat storage.
If that same body then starts to release N + M calories from lean tissue, it will still be losing mass, while gaining fat.
The only question of how physiologically likely are these thermodynamically valid situations. We do know that people who experiment with "yo-yo dieting" can end up with worsened body compositions, but probably not due to gaining fat while dieting but rather (1) losing lean tissue while dieting, while losing some fat and (2) rebound weight gain while not dieting possibly exacerbated by a lowered metabolism due to less lean tissue.
Still, consider this thought experiment. A dieting person wears a backpack which is considered part of their body. Every day, a hundred grams of lard is added to the backpack, and this lard is counted as part of their caloric intake. The person diets and exercises in such a way that there is a caloric deficit. That person will be undeniably gaining fat in that backpack. It's thermodynamically possible for the body to be promoting fat storage in some area, regardless of what else is happening.
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> but there's nothing changing our metabolism. Why would you be so confident when we know for a fact that hormone imbalances can absolutely impact our metabolism. Including signaling to your body to produce and store more fat than it normally would. Cortisol the hormone produced in stress responses is shown to do exactly that. Using yourself as an anecdote isn't useful in anyway.
Matter isn't created out of thin air.
> If we are to believe this, it would mean that "plastic" is making our bodies so much more efficient that there's extra energy that's being stored as fat.
I think it's likely the opposite, e.g. there's something (not necessarily plastic) throwing off hormones, so the body ends up storing more of the calories as fat than it would if it was healthy. It's not at all clear (to me, at least) that a healthy human body would continue to store fat indefinitely, regardless of how many calories were being consumed.
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Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out" fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they did before. There is a vague, and I think very unhelpful, sense in society today that this is some sort of mass moral failing. In reality there are a few factors that could, alone or in combination, explain this change in average behavior. The most convincing to me: chemicals could be messing with ou…
As an anecdotal experience, I have stopped eating any kind of commercial bread many years ago, despite the fact that I like bread. The reason was that I could not become satiated when eating commercial bread, before eating huge quantities, which filled me up. It is much easier for me to not start eating something than to stop after beginning to eat, so I gave up completely on eating bread. Nevertheless, I have starte…
is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a thermodynamics problem
But if you have metabolic damage, you may have a lower metabolic rate than expected, meaning that the same 1200 calories a day that should cause you to lose a lb a week is actually just under maintenance calories.
Anecdotal, but this happened to me. I lost 100 lbs through diet and just got stuck. Couldn't lose any more to save my life. I ate 300-500 calories under my expected calorie expenditure every day.
Then, I got my metabolism tested and found that my BMR was at 300 calories a day under what it should have been, which meant that I was eating maintenance or overeating by 200 calories a day (and I was already feeling starving at that point!)
To cut another 300-500 calories out of my diet would have been untenable. I'm still trying to figure out what I can do.
Exercise more? Check. Do blood work and make sure everything is in order? Check. Vary my diet or try different diets? Check.
I think the only thing left is to try chemicals. Nothing else seems to either raise by base metabolism or decrease my intake needs.