Is obesity the symptom of an addiction?

Great Debates
41

How many calories does a person need? Here is how to tell:

First you need to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) with the following equation. Your BMR is the total number of calories your body needs if you did nothing but lie in bed all day with no activity at all.
Men:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) - (6.8 X age in years)

Women:
BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) - (4.7 X age in years)

  • Note: 1 inch = 2.54 cm and 1 kilogram = 2.2 lbs.
    Example:
    Male, 27, 180lbs, 5’11"
    66 + (13.7 x 81.81kg) + (5 x 180 cm) - (6.8 x 27 yrs) = 1903

Now to calculate in the calories you need for your activity level:

Activity Multiplier

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extremely active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job Or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)
Example:

BMR = 1903, we’ll use 1.725 for a very active individual.
1903 x 1.725 = 3282

So, in this example you need 3282 calories per day to maintain your current weight.
To lose weight the best thing to do is to adjust it slightly, perhaps 500 calories less per day. Do it too much and you can loose muscle as well as fat. Which throws off the metabolism even more.

See why eating 800 calories a day is terrible?

42

Epi:

Kindly provide a source for your “magic numbers”.

Anybody can spew out formulae, but there’s no reason to believe those formulas have any foundation in reality.

43

KellyM: I’ve seen those numbers before, so Epimetheus isn’t just talking out his ass. He’ll need to provide the specific cite, though.

This article discusses the problem of weight loss and the diet fads in some detail. It’s a bit long, but fascinating to anyone who’s interested in this sort of stuff. It also talks about recent research into the specific mechanisms of fat storage, and possible cures for the obese.

44

Actually KellyM I got this particular formula from a bodybuilding Forum.

http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7222

Hardly solid evidence, but there are countless BMR calculators out there, I am sure there is some variation but for the most part a simple google search will provide ample evidence.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=BMR+calculators

Basis in reality? Bodybuilders use it all the time, very succesfully. Every see a proffesional bodybuilder off season? They go on a bulk phase and get about 40lbs overweight and lose it in 8 weeks.

45

I’ve seen the thread keeps constantly steering away from its original purpose. I don’t dispute the validity of weight-loss theories and such and such. I am more interested in the MENTAL process by which a person ends up hurting him/herself. Doing things (whatever) that makes you sick is usually the sign of something deeper.

46

There is a difference between destructive behavior and addiction.

There is limited correlation between overeating and obesity.

There is no reason an “obese” person cannot be fit, healthy and able to do anything a thin person can do.

See my cites above.

There is also the issue that not every person who decides that dieting isn’t the answer is “hurting” themself. Yes, we all know people who have health problems. But are we sure that the overweight/obese part of their problem is the cause and not a symptom?

Is your hypothetical bedridden person overweight because of whatever drove them to the bed in the first place?

And, just FTR, I don’t know a single person so overweight/obese that they can’t move at all, and I know some very large women and men. And I don’t assume that someone using the cart in the grocery store who is overweight is using it because they can’t walk that far because of their weight. I usually assume they’re doing so because they have some other condition that requires the use of said cart.

47

In this case, common sense is WRONG. Laziness and overeating have not been proven to have a causal relationship to obesity. In fact, dieting may have more to do with obesity than overeating.

Please check my cites.

Thank you.

48

In this case, common sense is WRONG. Laziness and overeating have not been proven to have a causal relationship to obesity. In fact, dieting may have more to do with obesity than overeating.

Please check my cites.

Thank you.

49

It should not surprise anyone that I’m not going to take a bodybuilding magazine as a source of legitimate scientific data. Bodybuilders are not known for the rigor of their research methodology, and I have little reason to believe that the numbers previously offered were not merely pulled out of someone else’s ass. Considering that the formulas are dominated by weight (especially for women), I have to question whether they make any sense at all for people who are not seeking to maximize muscle mass gain (which is by no means a healthy practice, especially in women).

If my girlfriend eats a diet of 2000 to 2500 calories as generally recommended and gets a reasonable level of exercise, her weight will level out at a constant level that the medical establishment considers “seriously obese”. My diet is essentially the same as hers except I drink more soft drinks than she does, and we have largely identical activity levels. My weight is stable at a level which the medical establishment considers to be “slightly overweight”, although anyone who has ever seen me considers me skinny. The formulas offered do not explain – or account for – this variation.

50

Hmmm… according to your cites there does seem to a relationship with weight gain and food intake. Apparently there are other factors such as genetics at play, but none of them seemed to say that there was no effect of eating more.

Your earlier statement, that there was a “limited correlation” is much more defensible.

But even with that statement, then there are still people for whom eating more means gaining weight. Yes, we’ve all known the person who can eat a gallon of ice cream whenever they want without gaining weight, but these people are rare. There are also those who eat a normal diet and are still very large, but I think those people are rare too.

I would argue with the idea that the mere fact that someone is a large person is cause to assume they are a food addict, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that obesity can be a symptom of a food addiction.

51

The example I used wasn’t a hypothetical person. She is someone both my friend and I know. She had always been chubby, but after moving to the US her lifestyle had changed. She does eat a lot. She doesn’t exercise a bit, she can hardly walk in the office. She constantly takes days off for weight-related dissabilities. She has refused to change her eating habits (c’mon don’t tell me a whole pizza for lunch is healthy!) and refuse to exercise. She constantly makes excuses for her condition (even when doctors have ruled out other causes).

If I ate like her (and trust me, I could), I would probably be morbid obese by now. I found that a healthy diet and daily physical activities worked for me. A little sacrifice, a big gain. But this thread is not about what one can do to lose weight, but one did to get like that in the first place.

I agree that we can’t generalize. Obesity may be caused by a variety of conditions, but one can fairly conclude that there is a correlation between overeating+inactivity and the condition for most obese people. To be fair I would say that obesity seems to be a result of an addiction in SOME obese people.

52

Again, you’re missing my point.

It is not possible to be addicted to food.

Is it possible to eat the “wrong” foods? Sure it is. Hell, I eat dairy all the time, despite the fact that I’m lactose intolerant, which makes dairy a very wrong food for me.

Is it possible to eat too much? The jury’s still out on this one, since most of the people in the cites on the previous page had to work very hard to gain weight even with an increase in calories.

Is it possible that being on the diet cycle causes weight gain? I’d say, both from my resources and from my own experience, you bet. I know that whenever I told myself “to hell with” whatever diet I was on at the time that I always ate more than was comfortable. Having now looked at some studies of what dieting does to the body, I understand this better than I did at the time. At the time, I assumed it was some moral failing in myself. Now, I know it was my body reacting to food deprivation the same way it would have reacted to oxygen deprivation.

Similarly, whenever I go to the Renaissance Faire I always allow myself to get dehydrated (I hate portajons and will do anything to not have to use one). After Faire I’ve been known to drink water until I felt bloated and uncomfortable. I would be willing to bet that it’s the same general principle.

Also, I’d be willing to bet that her doctor hasn’t ruled out other causes for her condition. The doctor may have told her to “lose some weight, then let’s see if these conditions still exist.” Admittedly, I don’t know her specific physician, but very often this is what doctors tell larger people. I know my father was told the same thing - and the lack of treatment for his hypertension was a contributing factor in his heart attack.

The literature is full of anecdotal evidence of physicians who treat their larger patients differently than their thinner patients, and of larger people who don’t like to go to the doctor because they feel they’ll be abused, and their health problems dismissed as due to weight, if they do go. I know for years I had a doctor who told me to “get out of my office, you’re too healthy. Oh, and lose some weight” almost as though she felt she had to say something about my weight, even though it wasn’t causing me any health problems at all.

And I know there was a complete point there, but it went away.

53

I’m reasonably convinced that the “diet cycle” increases your set point with each iteration. I know people who’ve done the diet thing, lost weight, then gained it back and a bit more, lost it back, gained it back and a bit more, and so on. They end up weighing more, in the long run, than they did before they started the cycle. The ultimate cause of their weight gain appears to have been their effort to lose weight; if they had merely continued to eat a diet that left them with a steady weight, they’d weigh less now than if they have never tried to lose weight.

People who have constant weight gain do need to reduce their food intake, but reducing your food intake in order to lose weight to me strikes me as dangerous, especially if doing so takes your daily food intake much below 2000 calories a day (and definitely below 1000 calories a day).

54

There are plenty of eating disorders out there some of them involve overeating
Is that disorder an addiction? Maybe, maybe not. I think it is easy to draw similarities between the behavior patterns associated with it and other addictions though.

What jury is that?! Let’s take a look at your cites.

This does show a link between genetics and weight gain, BUT everyone mentioned in this quote still gained weight.

OK so they only had a 10% weight gain. BUT they still gained weight. I don’t know about anyone else but a 10% weight gain is about 20lbs for me something I would consider very significant.

First of all these are lean prisoners, people that are already presumably eating a normal diet without getting even chubby. Not everyone met their goal, BUT people DID gain weight. And since people lost the weight when they stopped eating as much we see an even stronger correlation between eating a lot and gaining weight.

Your taking a very strong stance that contradicts most doctors and commonsense. You need to have some really strong evidence to correlate.

55

I’m sorry **Sister Coyote ** but your perspective seems a bit skewed as I feel you are saying that many times there is no correlation between food intake and obesity and that the health risks associated with obesity are minimal if not non-existant…

If that’s not what you’re saying, I apologize…but you seem TOO defensive.

From my handy dandy Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary: Obesity is an:

It would seem you have a point re not having control over weight…and it goes on to mention that some medical professionals refuse to treat or care for obese individuals becuase of the stigmatat. But the entry goes on to say…

[Quote]
ETIOLOGY: Obesity is the result of ** an imbalance between food eaten and energy expended but the underlying causes are often quite complex and difficult to diagnose and treat **

So, too much food intake in comparison to energy expended is the cause…but it may not be just overeating that causes obesity. However, eating too much and not burning the calories off CAN easily be a cause.

I found this in a legal article about the ADA and obesity

However, compulsive overeating (Binge Eating Disorder) is an official eating disorder in the DSM-IV as part of the “not otherwise specified” category, but research is being done as far as making B.E.D. it’s own category. So, it would seem that food itself is not addicting, but one can be addicted to eating…

At this point, obesity is NOT considered a disability by the ADA–supporting the argument (right or wrong) that it is self induced…

It’s a muddled issue, but arguing that obese=healthy is going overboard in MO.

56

I have not said there is no correlation. What I have said is that the correlation is limited and poorly understood, just as your quotes state.

What I am arguing is that assuming that an obese person overeats is not safe.

What I am arguing is that the causes of obesity are not determined, so making a blanket statement such as “all obese/overweight people are just lazy” or “all obese/overweight people eat too much” or “obesity/overweight is a sign of emotional problems/food addiction” are not accurate.

What I am also arguing is that there are several other possible reasons for the perceived health detriments of obesity that include but are not limited to:

*Dieting, which can cause health problems
*The reluctance of many overweight people to see a doctor because they’ve learned to expect no help or abuse from physicians
*I’m sure Opal can probably think of something else
*The reluctance of doctors to treat problems “until the patient loses weight”, which can lead to a simple problem going untreated and becoming unnecessarily more severe
*Stress caused by attitudes about anyone who’s larger than a size 10 or so.

I am “obese” by the standards you quoted. My resting heart rate is good, my blood pressure on the low side of normal and since I stopped dieting I haven’t had any health issues except the occasional head cold (and ear infections, but somehow I don’t think we can blame those on my weight). My cholesterol is moderately high, but I’m working to correct that.

“Curing” Overweight/obese is not a simple matter of having the willpower to starve oneself until the weight approaches a societally “acceptable” level.

Neither am I particularly defensive about this - sorry if I’m coming across that way (seriously). I’ve just reached a point in my life where I’ve realized that what works for “everyone else” doesn’t work for me. And, as I do more research on the subject, I’m discovering that very often it doesn’t work for “everyone else” either. Something like 95-99% of everyone who loses weight on a diet has regained the weight after five years, usually coming to rest at a higher weight than before they’d dieted.

57

Coolness ** Miss Coyote ** the whole metabolism thing just floors me anyway…I eat like a piglet and have just now started to see any kinds of ramifications (28 yrs old) but friends who eat relatively healthy have to count every calorie–just isn’t fair.

And 800 calories a day (routinely) is NOT advisable to lose weight–most medical advice I’ve read including the aforementioned Taber’s do not recommend going under 1200 without strict medical supervision–no matter HOW BIG YOU ARE.

I do have to mention that Taber’s does mention that the obesity stigamata (you could lose weight if you wanted to) does play a factor in not getting employment…but

I know I’m going to get in trouble for this, but if I had 3 potential employees–everything on paper (and immediately observabe) being equal, and one was an obese potentail employee who ate a huge, unhealthy, bingey-type lunch, one skinny employee who ate little to nothing at lunch and an average Joe eating an average lunch, I’d pick Mr. average as it would appear that employee 1 and 2 had some type of food issue and, in my opinion, these issues may carry over into other aspects (people who are addicted to food can have addictive personalities (trust me I am one) and someone who may be anorexic, too skinny, food=bad may have image issues that would carry over. But if the obese employee ate a normal average lunch like average Joe, he’d be more or less equal to Joe. Although, i admit, I might wonder about his self control–then slap myself for it…

58

Christ, let’s just chalk up all of those mistakes in grammar to low blood sugar and let’s watch BBJ pack-up and call it a day :frowning:

59

Just FEveryonesI, I’m leaving for Reno in about half an hour, and won’t be near a computer until next Monday some time.

With any luck I’ll remember this thread is here. :wink:

60

Hmm. I guess it depends on the definition of addiction. For a lot more information and stories by sufferers which describe the feelings and experience of feeling compelled to eat, I recommend www.somethingfishy.org . Many of the stories could have been written by me, and I know that there has to be truth to the idea of food addiction if so many of us have suffered the same way.

Overeaters Anonymous oa.org uses the following questionnaire as indicator of a possible compulsion to overeat/food addiction:

Now, I have struggled with the idea of food addiction for a while, thinking as others have above that everytone needs food, so how is it an addiction?, or that it’s an excuse for not having enough will power, etc. But I know that my behavior in relation to food was out of the range of normal behavior and yet I couldn’t stop. I said “today is the last day of eating like this” every day for years. As was mentioned above, I would eat enormous amounts of food, enjoying very little of it and losing the time in front of the plate. I would decline invitations out to be alone with food I couldn’t pig down in front of others. I alienated friends in order to be alone with something that was always there for me. Yes, over time I became obese and went through all the emotional baggage that comes with that.

When I talked to a friend who is an alcoholic, the stories were eerily similar. We both couldn’t understand how anyone could walk away having only drunk/eaten half of of their drink/food. At gatherings in the past I would calculate how many people were there and the average amount people would eat (to project how much would be left for me to polish off); he says he would do the analogous thing with kegs. There is a problem when all you think about all day is your next fix.

Admitting you have a food addiction doesn’t mean you get to use that as an excuse. It means that you need to work on the addiction, though, rather than working on a diet. OA recommends a food plan as a way to take the decision away from yourself in order to avoid getting high off trigger foods or binges, but it is not a weight loss plan. Weight loss may result as the symptoms of the addiction decrease, but the goal is not weight loss.

Obesity may be a symptom of food addiction, but not all fat people are food addicts and not all food addicts are fat. Making a judgment as to someone’s character based on their size is unacceptable. And finally, addicts are extremely good at hiding their issue in that one substance and being very effective and even perfectionistic otherwise, so work habits may not be impacted at all.