While I don’t deny that most diets fail, I think that’s not quite the same as saying that obesity is incurable. Most attempts to quit smoking fail and yet a lot of people do succeed in quitting smoking.
Here’s a quote from John Walker:
Of course he is right.
I strongly suspect that of the diets which fail, a large percentage are people who (1) adopt some ridiculous fad diet which results in fast loss of water; (2) people who diet with a particular event in mind, like a wedding or a reunion; (3) people who adopt some ridiculous diet which promises to let you eat tasty food in unlimited quantities; (4) people with serious mental health problems; or (5) people who actually have some other goal than losing weight, for example recapturing their lost youth.
Of people who approach dieting in a sane, realistic, organized way, I have a feeling that the success rate is a good deal higher than 5 percent.
Read the study. Metabolic energy expenditures were measured both before and after the subjects were made to undergo weight loss. These measurements would reveal any important pre-weight loss metabolic differences between the subject groups.
Again, in the context of unlimited calories, there is no difference. A person with a genetic propensity to overeat WILL do so when given the chance, unless he/she adopts very strict monitoring habits similar to those anorexics use in order to control their (normal) appetite. He/she will simply never be able to eat “normally” and maintain a healthy weight.
Best overview I can find quickly is here: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/222S.full. Note that the best statistic is only 20% maintaining a 10% weight loss for at least 1 year (which hardly counts as long-term). By most medical standards, that is a dismal success rate. (Note that a 10% weight loss still leaves a morbidly obese person obese. It doesn’t get their BMI down to a normal range.)
Right now, once a person is significantly overweight, he/she is almost certainly likely to remain so. And we don’t know how to change that. But we can mitigate the damage if the person is motivated enough to make major changes in diet and exercise patterns and stick with them. Not many are (for reasons that Malthus so eloquently outlined in his posts).
I think many approach dieting like I approached quitting smoking the first couple of times: I wasn’t really determined to make the serious lifestyle changes necessary to quit smoking. I wanted to “quit” but still, part of me wanted to smoke. Naturally, over the long term, that part won.
I can still remember the mental state I was in: seriously, the thought of never smoking again was somewhat terrifying. Now that I’ve quit, I can think ‘what was the big deal’? But at the time, it was a really big deal. I could face not smoking for a few days, but for life? Too harsh.
Dieting is really similar in this respect: people treat it as a deprivation, something that one can grin and bear for some limited time - but the thought of eating like that for the rest of your life is, frankly, somewhat terrifying. The harsher the diet (thus the faster the weight loss) the more terrifying it is.
The upshot is that if you treat dieting as something unpleasant you have to do, but afterwards forget about, of course it isn’t going to “work”, because as soon as you go back to your old patterns, you will quickly go back to your old weight.
“Dieting” as an activity is far easier than re-arranging your whole lifestyle to not involve recreational eating, and to include only a healthy, balanced diet, that you follow the rest of your days.
The exact details of the diet, in my opinion, matter much less than the long-term lifestyle pattern-rearranging. In my opinion, the former is useless in the long term without the latter.
I think they are very interesting exceptions, and we ought to be studying them intensively. I also suspect they succeed by essentially becoming (after a fashion) anorexic, in that they adopt the same sort of psychological and behavioral habits which make it possible for a person of normal weight to deliberately starve themselves to death. They just don’t carry it as far as “true” anorexics do, because they don’t have the underlying body dysmorphic disorder that anorexics have, so they can stop short of actual starvation.
I highly doubt most of them have a normal pattern of eating (in the sense of relying only on their internal sense of hunger and fullness to regulate how much food they eat). And that matters because most folks simply aren’t going to meticulously weigh/measure all their food, or keep a detailed logbook of exactly what they eat at each meal so they can count calories (to give examples of two commonly used strategies). Most folks may do that for a while, but eventually it becomes too big a hassle and they give it up (and then the weight comes sneaking back on).
Personally, I found the single most effective strategy is to prepare my own food - particularly, to take my lunch to work, rather than always eating at the food court.
By preparing my own food, I limit what goes in. I don’t “count calories” and I don’t keep a log-book. I do weigh myself weekly, just to keep an eye on that.
There is a tremendous difference between the breast cancer caused by the presence of the hereditary BCRA1 or BCRA2 gene and the breast cancer caused by repeated exposure to radiation. One is genetic, the other is not. A woman with the BCRA gene can do nothing but remove the offending tissue prior to mutation. A woman who lacks the gene can take action to protect herself from unnecesssary exposure to radiation. Right? A tendency to medicate oneself with food may be a gene-linked tendency toward addictive behavior, but the habit to over eat may also arise from environmental influences. Do you deny that?
Do you have a cite for the success rate of medically approved diet and exercise regimens used by motivated patients? No quackery, no fad diets, no fasting, no phentermine or other questionable drugs. I’d like to see some stats for the success/failure rates for sensible weight loss plans. No self-reporting, but controlled studies on medically supervised weight loss and fitness regimens. No reports skewed by the use of silly, expensive, severely restrictive or unproven fads please.
Hey, why don’t you read it and extrapolate the data for me about this random digit dialing survey from a *self-selected population * who self-report their current weight and their maximum weight with no control group, no consistency in the amount of food, type of food eaten and/or avoided. Also, I noted that there was no admission of who or how many times each self-reporting participant attempted fad diets, crash diets, fasting, or any over the country pseudo-cures for weight loss.
I can’t make heads or tails of this craziness, but I’ll take a shot. That no one can consume 53 slices of bacon is due to sensory-specific satiety. It doesn’t have to do with being filling. The blooming onion has different tastes and textures, so it’s not subject to sensory-specific satiety as quickly as bacon is.
Malthus, I’m enjoying your posts. Our philosophies on how we have to eat are very similar.
That was in response to the ridiculous claim that chronic overeaters “never feel full” and the claim that substitutions weren’t feasible. Apparently one can reach satiety with less than 53 slices of bacon. I’m sure someone will be along soon to explain the necessity of the bucket of soda and why water simply cannot be substituted for Mountain Dew.
The idea that normal weight people eat as they like until they are full (or that such behavior is “eating normally”) is just plain not true, and it’s increasingly obnoxious that people keep repeating the lie that normal weight people do nothing special to maintain their weight. Normal-weight people do keep conscious track of what they are eating and adjust their behavior. They do make a concentrated effort to avoid foods that trigger over-consumption. They do spend time hungry and craving more food. These are normal states of being.
Fittingly, I just got told by my doctor today that I need to slow down my weight gain. I’m pregnant, and I’ve gained a fair amount more weight than is recommended. It’s not rocket science why. My physical activity has understandably been reduced, but more importantly, as soon as I got the positive pregnancy test, I took it as license to start having a mid-morning and afternoon snack at work, consuming soda (I need to stay hydrated, right?), giving in to fast-food cravings, putting sweetened creamer in my decaf and eating seconds at dinner. I figured that I’m normally pretty healthy, and it’d be okay for me to loosen up a bit. I’m not at all surprised that I’m about 15 lbs above where I should be, and it’s definitely not all baby weight.
So what did I do? Well, the milky coffee and vending machine snacks are gone, I’ll go back to soup instead of sandwiches at lunch, and swap out water for soda. And I’ve recommitted to my daily walking goals. It sucks- I had fun loosening up on my normally pretty healthy eating habits. But it’s better to reign it in now than have to lose it after the baby.
Curious. Why would you think it would be correct to use a verb describing an activity to replace a noun describing a condition?
Obesityn.: an abnormal accumulation of body fat, usually 20% or more over an individual’s ideal body weight.The condition of being obese; increased body weight caused by excessive accumulation of fat.
Chronic overeating:
chron·ic (krnk)
adj.
Of long duration; continuing: chronic money problems.
Lasting for a long period of time or marked by frequent recurrence, as certain diseases: chronic colitis.
Subject to a habit or pattern of behavior for a long time: a chronic liar.
o·ver·eat (vr-t)
To eat to excess
Oh wait! Wait! I know! It’s because you want to make sure that the obese are properly shamed and judged!
You know, that’s actually an awesome idea…think about it: we can make ignorant presumptions about everyone we see based on their appearance and then slap a label on them matching those ignorant presumptions… that will be so cool! It will bring light, joy, understanding… people will get along better, be healthier, more generous and loving… Gosh, I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before, it’s so clearly a sure-fire way to improve the human condition. Thank you, wise friend Troppus!
You can scoff all you want, but scoffing doesn’t change the facts of the matter. It is well known that the satiety response in chronic overeaters is greatlydiminished in comparison to that experienced by normal eaters. I am not sure why I am even bothering finding references for you at this point. Perhaps someone else will find them informative.
Your repeated contention that obese people must be constantly downing soda and bacon grease is, of course, brain-bendingly, ball-twistingly dumb. But again, by now I suppose I’m the fool for expecting any better from you.