How do people get so fat?

It’s my understanding (and experience) that you get thin in the kitchen, and you get strong at the gym. Trying to get thin at the gym is barking up the wrong tree.

agree 100%, the gym can help, but isn’t necessary or sufficient. Diet is both necessary and sufficient.

I looked at the first dozen or so and I don’t get the point. Is it supposed to be that BMI is meaningless? Because in every case I saw, the BMI described fit the picture very well. Except for one (outdoors in the woods) where somebody’s coat was so big you really couldn’t see the body.

Which one in particular did you think best showed a disconnect between BMI and reality?

I guess it depends how much time you put in at the gym. If you’re willing to seriously work out for 3 or 4 hours per day, I’m guessing you can eat pretty much anything that you want.

Agreed. I go by how my clothes fit and how I look and feel. I couldn’t care less what I weigh.

That’s probably true, but I suspect eating right is easier for most people than finding that kind of time in the gym.

I’m pretty sure this fact is completely irrelevant for most posters in this thread.

2 cents from me? Why of course. Hmm, 1st off even if being fat is a moral failing, we have bigger fish to fry. C’mon, it’s food. Um, yum?

I lost 50+ lbs and haven’t seen it for maybe 4 years, but I didn’t eat less. I happened to move to high altitude and thought I had a hard time walking in the mountains. So I took up running to get more fit.

I was a terrible runner, but I just figured with practice I’d improve. I went from short distances to longer ones, and eventually I set a goal of running some long distance races. Because, running makes you high folks. It does for me anyway. It was long past college before I realized this.

I wasn’t trying to lose weight in the first place. I wanted to be more fit and be able to run farther. Because the farther you go, the higher you get. And oh yeah, you can walk in the mountains more easily. Plus I had an evening job and could enjoy running in the sunshine any day.

So, my case may be different. And I might not have been fat in the first place- I never thought I was and didn’t worry about that, even though I’d gained ~50 lbs over 10 years or so. I’m pretty tall and used to be more muscly. Guessing half the weight I lost was muscle- I just didn’t care.

I still do a few of these races a year, and sort of train for them year-round. I don’t have any Olympic medals- I’m lucky to come in 500th place around town. Obviously it occurred to me that I might run better if I were lighter, but I don’t consciously try to lose weight. I’m not particularly thin and want to keep it that way- I am more concerned with getting too skinny. That would seem unhealthy.

The little anecdote is only somewhat directed at Crafter Man, in that I never ate less. If anything I eat more!

Here is my take on the subject.

When I was in wrestling I had to weigh 125 to compete. Before the season started I would usually weigh around 135. Now workouts in wrestling are simply insane. Two times a day every day just a full body workout. As the season went by I lost the weight and I didn’t even have to change my eating habits at all. In fact, days when I was really tired I would even eat more. I was in the best shape of my life.

Now a year removed And without a single workout put in Iweigh 140. I have a gut where there was never one before and I eat maybe half the amount of food as I did during wrestling season. If you ask me it’s all about exercise.

You were/are running long distances at high altitudes, daily. Don’t act like this is somehow a refutation of thermodynamics or anything Crafter_Man has said.

I think the key distinction here is that diet and exercise will in the majority of cases contribute to what people weigh compared to their own personal baseline, however it doesn’t really do much to change where their baseline is. If you make the effort to lose 100 pounds to get to your baseline healthy eating and exercising weight, but you still look worse than people eating more than you, is it going to be worth it to all people?

Anecdotally, until I was in my late twenties I was horrendously skinny no matter how I ate. Then over a period of a few years suddenly I became slightly overweight with little change to my diet, in fact I probably was eating healthier than my youth. Clearly diet and exercise is not the be all and end all of body fat composition. And I suspect a lot of the people saying it’s just a behavioral issue don’t actually put much effort into their lifestyle and have more to thank from their chromosomes or other factors out of their control.

Let me see if I can’t try to sum up some of the outstanding questions here (at least, the ones I find interesting; I’d encourage both sides to consider these, otherwise it won’t be nearly as interesting):

  1. Does the “your claims are violating the laws of thermodynamics” argument brought up in posts by various “just eat less” posters hold water? If not, why not? (I don’t remember seeing this directly addressed by the opposition.)

  2. Why is the United States seemingly unique in its weight problems? Why is this point in history seemingly unique in its weight problems? Does this seeming uniqueness hurt or help the argument that “it’s not as simple as eating less and exercising more”?

  3. What percentage of overweight and obese people in this country today would benefit solely from eating less and exercising more, assuming they stuck with it? (I know the sticking with it is a - heh - sticking point, but I want to separate out the percentage that posters think can be traced to something physical.)

Ok. I agree. The point is there are 2 sides to the equation, that’s all. He said eating less was the only way.

I can accept the concept of baselines, and that for some there appears to be a point of greatly diminishing returns when approaching it. But, IMO for very few people is that baseline “pretty damn big”. And different body builds and all that jazz.

Yes, it should be worth it to them for health reasons alone. And, no they shouldnt give a rats ass what other people think.

I don’t care how fat you are. Even if you cause my medical bills to go up cause I figure your poor health is punishment enough for costing me money. If you are really happy, good for you and I really mean it.

I just dont believe **most **folks when they are doing “all the right things” and “working so hard” to loose weight and its “just not working”. True for some? Yes IMO. True for most? No IMO.

Thats why I try to not be judgemental about “fat people”. Cause at a glance I can’t tell whether you are that rare person with a real medical problem or the guy who tried Jenny Craig meals for a week once 20 years ago and gave up right then. But statistically speak, IMO, I think I know what the deal is .

I have 3 new friends I made in the past 2 years or so that have weight problems. One retirement age and two that are close. Two have been pretty darn fat most of the their lives I suspect. The third was probably a case of fraction of a pound more a month added on every month for most of his life.

Both the long term folks literally had the doctors “loose wieght or DIE soon” speach given to them. One of em actually came damn close to dieing in the hospital.

Guess what ? After a long lifetime of overeating and being fat, they are both well on their way back down to something normal. And they have told me how their lifestyles have changed and its all reasonable stuff. They didnt have to go from buffet busters to marathon freaks living on three rice cakes a day to do it either.

The third guy took his problem so seriously he finally had one of those surgeries. Not saying thats a good idea one way or another, but it does show how concerned he was about health issues and that he was going to **do something **about it.

Oh, and when I use the word fat, its not intended to be insulting or judgemental. If someone takes it that way, forgive me.

**

  1. Does the “your claims are violating the laws of thermodynamics” argument brought up in posts by various “just eat less” posters hold water? If not, why not? (I don’t remember seeing this directly addressed by the opposition.) **

Anyone who claims that eating less and exercising more doesn’t work is wrong. They never back it up with detailed data. They say they “eat less”, but don’t have concrete information about specifically how much less they ate. They say they
“exercise more”, but don’t really know how many more calories they used.
**
2) Why is the United States seemingly unique in its weight problems? Why is this point in history seemingly unique in its weight problems? Does this seeming uniqueness hurt or help the argument that “it’s not as simple as eating less and exercising more”?**

You now need to exercise self control to remain thin. Previously people worked on farms, did lots of manual labor, walked everywhere, cooked most of their own food, etc. Now we drive everywhere and eat preprepared foods. Previous lifestyles burned more calories and consumed less calories.

**
3) What percentage of overweight and obese people in this country today would benefit solely from eating less and exercising more, assuming they stuck with it? (I know the sticking with it is a - heh - sticking point, but I want to separate out the percentage that posters think can be traced to something physical.)**

100%. However, they would likely have to eat much less and exercise much more than would be comfortable. They definitely will feel the discomfort of having to deny themselves from eating all they like. They will also likely need to exercise a significant amount.

This is a good point. Just to make up an example, let’s say that you are a person that is significantly overweight and typically consumes 1000 calories per day more than you need. You decide to make a few small lifestyle changes. You start eating better and add in a little walking. You are now consuming only 500 calories per day more than you need, and burning an additional 100 per day with your walking. Net total: You’re still consuming 400 calories more per day than you need. With the result that you go around telling people that you are eating less and exercising and not losing weight, WTF?!?!

This is why I think that if you’re serious about losing weight, it’s very helpful to track your calorie intake and your calories burned by exercise, at least for a few weeks until you have a rough idea of what you’re eating and what you’re burning. Not strictly necessary of course – many have lost weight without doing this. But very helpful, IMO. Especially if you are one of the mystery people who is eating well and exercising and not losing weight.

I’m not sure what some people are thinking, but a lot of the ‘I eat less but still don’t lose weight’ folks aren’t necessarily claiming to break the laws of thermodynamics so much as coping with the bare facts of biology.

I’m Z. I used to weigh 265lbs at 6’0". For my wedding, I crash-dieted down to 225 and for a while afterwards I started putting on weight again and so I’m sitting around 245 right now.

What got me to level off was certainly “reducing calories” but it wasn’t the simple approach there. Like many others, I found that reducing calories also had the side effect of reducing my metabolism–my typical daily calorie burn with my typical exercise is 3500ish calories (I wish I was kidding)–but when I naively restricted calories down to 2500 by just eating less stuff, I was miserable all the time and I wasn’t losing much weight. I ended up doing some research and working with my doctor to figure out a diet that worked for me–and I was ravenously hungry with my “normal” diet at 2500 calories but I can get down to 1500 calories if I spend most of them on lean meats and literally pounds of low-calorie leafy greens (thank god for spinach and iceberg lettuce).

We’ll see how it goes. Depending on whether you consult the BMI charts or my doctor, I could stand to lose 60lbs or 20-25lbs respectively (I played football and still lift weights semi-seriously).

My point in posting all this was that yes, it CAN be as simple as reducing calories, but it’s often easier, more effective, and more sustainable to examine one’s personal reasons for eating (in my case, for whatever reason I don’t really feel ‘sated’ until I’m stuffed almost to the point it’s painful–hence abusing ultra-low calorie leafy greens–and my metabolism tends to like more protein than carbs) or eating too much, and reducing calories in a systematic and planned way. It does involve more of a “lifestyle change” than a “reduction in calories”, which isn’t really that simple in my opinion.

The best single dieting toolkit I can recommend consists of a scale that measurs tenths of a pound that you step on every morning between the start-the-day dump and your shower and a spreadsheet that can do moving average trend lines–at that point, you don’t even need to count calories since the scale’s averages over time will tell you exactly how over or under your daily needs you are.

It was one of those things for me when it was heartening to know I was actually able to eat 3500-4000 calories a day with my metabolism–too bad when I started I was eating closer to 5000. :smack:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1674008/authority_on_obesity_says_retrain_your_brain/index.html Kessler the former head of the FDA, during Clinton says whether deliberate or not, food in America serves a psychological purpose. The concentration of sugar, salt and fat in foods is no accident anymore . They have strong appeals to your brain’s and are difficult to resist. It is more difficult to resist the foods we manufacture nowadays. If you look about there is plenty of evidence to prove it. Can it be resisted? Sure , with varying degrees of success. Many people have great difficulty doing so. Others apparently have a weaker addiction.