I know this is a touchy subject - read this thread in the Pit if you don’t believe me - so please stick to facts and keep out of GD/IMHO/BBQ Pit territory.
We are regularly told that obesity is not just due to overeating, and that there are various diseases, medications and other conditions that can lead to weight gain even if people aren’t overeating.
My question is, how does this work? Surely if I burn 2000 calories a day and only consume 1800, I can’t fail to lose weight? The body can’t create fat out of thin air, so where’s it coming from?
[sub]Maybe folks have started photosynthesising [/sub]
Well some medications do alter your metabolism so that if you don’t change your eating habits accordingly you will gain weight but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking.
I had to take prednisone for a time and that made me double my weight inside of a year. Not all of the weight was fat - I was very bloated from fluid retention. When I stopped taking the medication I was back to a ‘normal’ weight in just a couple of months.
Thyroid disorders can make it very difficult for people to maintain a healthy weight. This is probably more true if the disorder is untreated or if the person is still trying to find the proper dosage/medicine to treat their problem.
Also overeating is difficult for many people to judge. Since everyone’s caloric need is different even for people of the same sex/gender/height it is possible that someone is indeed overeating and does not realize it.
Metabolism. Not everyone is blessed with a good metabolism. I’m fat. My adopted sister is thin. I never overeat, never have, and have been raised on a diet. My sister eats non-stop, including binges, with no adverse side effects. I naturally eat about 1500-2500 calories a day, more than that and I start feeling bad.
I was even hospitilized on 800 calories a day diet - with monitored exercise (to make sure I did it). I gained weight. According to the doctors, my system adjusts to dieting by going into “starvation mode”. Great for the next ice age, not so good for today’s society. The only thing that markedly improved my metabolism was amphetamines. Not so good either.
So I’m fat. I’ve tried every single diet ever published and the only one that I actually lost weight on was Atkins. But developed kidney stones because of it. I’d rather be fat.
However, the human body, mind, emotions and appetites are very complex. Also, metabolism can change, but the body’s expectations of what to eat don’t change with it.
It’s really difficult to keep the calories down to a level below one’s lazy-ass couch potato burn rate, especially in our world of plenty in the west, and in particular the US: every time I visit the US I put on about 10lbs in a week. The food is cheap, fattening, supersized, and delicious.
If one achieves this, the body goes into “help, I’m starving!” mode, and reduces its calorific requirement - thus a body at rest (DYSWIDT?) may burn 2,000 calories a day, and the person is only eating 1,900 calories, so the body panics and reduces the burn rate to 1,900. (I don’t know how it does this, but this is what I’ve read in various diet books. A lot of them are probably horseshit, but still.) So the person doesn’t lose any more than a few ounces. They feel hungry and miserable for days. They weigh themselves after 2 weeks and they’ve lost less than a pound. And they go “fuck it, can’t be bothered with this diet shit”, and eat again. Or there is a possibility that metabolism can slow and slow and slow, the less you feed it.
A lot of people are clueless about the nutritional content of the food and drinks they consume. E.g. wolfing down “low fat” products, without realising that to compensate for the lack of flavour caused by reducing the fat, the manufacturers have doubled the calorific content by filling it full of refined sugar.
A lot of people are utterly addicted to food. My particular bête noir is peanuts. If I open a packet of peanuts, I cannot stop eating them until they’re all gone. No matter how big the packet. I feel grim afterwards, but I seemingly can’t help myself. I’m lucky, in that I’m only about 15lb overweight and my vice just happens to be peanuts. But imagine if my thing was twinkies or hamburgers, or pizza or coke.
Fluid retension, though I get the feeling it’s blamed a bit more than it deserves.
So, in conclusion based on my wildly uncorroborated opinions, yes, you’re right, you have to be. But chances of success are adversely affected by a huge number of external factors.
IF you burn 2K calories a day and take in 1800 you will slowly lose weight. Variations in hydration will cause some variability but will be overcome over the long haul.
No matter how you slice it:
calories burned>calories in results in loss of body weight.
calories in>calories burned results in increase of body weight.
At 5’11" 345 I know plenty about being overweight. I have plenty of friends who are overweight as well. Short of some kind of medical mess like tanookie mentioned, they are usually either lying or don’t realize where some of their calories come from. If your base metabolism is lower then you need to adapt to your base, rather than gain weight and whine that you can’t lose.
I have had several friends who claimed to be dieting heavily but they still sucked down 3 - 46 oz sodas from the mini mart over the day. That can easily add up to 1,800 calories right there.
It is true that you absolutely cannot gain weight if you do not consume more calories than you expend. I someone gained weight on an 800 calorie diet then it was had to be water retention due to inactivity. Way too much water (peripheral edema) will make you look puffy, not really fat. Some drugs, notably steroids will cause a redistribution of fat so that it will look like you are fatter even if your weight remains the same.
I don’t know who NAAFA are, nor what their agenda is, but straight from your link comes:
So, from the top:
MYTH: "All fat people are compulsive overeaters. "
It’s their business to build strawmen on their site, so I won’t complain, but I will observe that the less hyperbolic, “Fat people tend to consume more calories than they burn” would have left them with no “myth” to debunk, hell, if they’d dropped the perjorative “compulsive” they’d still be on very shaky ground in what follows…
FACTS: The compulsive eater, whether fat or thin, is a person with an eating disorder…
No argument here, yet, but notice that the strawman “compulsive eater” has been “syllogistically” bound to “eating disorder”.
…Simply being fat does not indicate the presence of an eating disorder…
Well, this is where they start to “demolish” their strawman, it wouldn’t be true if they said “Simply being fat does not usually indicate that the person eats more calories than they burn”, or even “Simply being fat does not usually indicate that the person overeats”.
…Studies which set out to prove that fat people eat more than thin people concluded that there is no measurable difference in the food consumption of fat and thin people…
Yet they fail to provide cites, like this from the NIH?
which is precisely in keeping with the speculations of the OP. Anyway, I am happy to believe that they have many studies that show that fat people do not eat significantly more than thin people, but they will have no studies that also claim that fat people exercise just as much as thin people too.
…Compulsive dieters, who ignore their body’s hunger messages, tend to become obsessed with food, and usually overeat after a round of dieting.
I know of no reputable sources that say that dieting is an effective way to lose weight in the long run, the consensus is that lifestyle changes are required (healthier eating plus exercise). (The observant reader will notice another strawman --“dieting”, not a subject of their supposed “myth”.)
Their arguments are incoherent and manipulative, that is bad, but they are just plain wrong in their thrust, no-one is doing anyone any favours by suggesting that achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is outside the capacity of the overwhelming majority of people.
If you want an explanation of how this works mechanically, I’ll take a stab at it.
First take a good example – diabetes. A diabetic either can’t produce enough insulin, or they are insulin resistant. The function of insulin is to cause excess blood sugar to be absorbed out of the bloodstream.
A diabetic has an elevated amount of sugar in their blood at all times. Thus more sugar is available to be metabolized into fat. Normally this sugar would be stored in the muscles, or more likely the liver.
As the diabetic slowly gains weight, they begin a vicious circle. Fat is insulin resistant. The more fat a person has, the less effective the insulin released by their body will be. So the person gains even more weight.
Another good example is wheat allergy. If a person is allergic to wheat, it destroys the lining of the small intestine. This makes it difficult for the body to absorb certain nutrients.
Many people with a wheat allergy are abnormally thin. They suffer from horrible malnutrition because of the damage to their small intestine.
However, now it turns out many people with a wheat allergy are overweight. Because the body has trouble absorbing certain nutrients, they have to eat large amounts of food to get sufficient amounts of these nutrients. But while their body had trouble processing some nutrients, it’s still able to create fat.
As a final example, which may give you the answer you are looking for, anti-depressants can cause weight gain. Anti-depressants are strange and wonderful things that manipulate the brain. An anti-depressant can cause the body to produce chemicals that trigger the brain to add fat to the body.
The brain then sends out chemicals that cause more of the food eaten to be converted to fat. At the same times it lowers the metabolism. Because of the chemical signals it is getting, it sacrifices other body functions in order to store more fat.
Also, an anti-depressant may prevent the brain from releasing the chemicals necessary to convert fat into energy. No matter how little a person eats, no matter how much they exercise, the fat cannot be broken down. The fat might as well be in another room. They have no way of using it.
I wanted to add that in the wheat allergy example, the person is actually overeating. But I think it illustrates the kinds of things that can cause a person to gain weight. Even though the person is overeating, it’s because the body needs more food to get certain nutrients.
Though it’s quite true that a ‘bad’ metabolism will make it relatively easy to gain weight, it’s also true that if you are overweight, by definition, you overeat! I suppose one might quibble with the definition, but - as others here are saying - if you eat more calories than are needed to sustain your current weight with your current metabolism etc. etc. … you’ll get lardier. There’s no magic here.
This is an entirely separate issue from an individuals right to be fat, and is rather separate from fitness, too.
Part of the disagrements come from what it means to “overeat”. When we actually think we all know it means to take in more calories than a particular person burns off… but that’s not the first thought flashing through our minds - what does flash by is “that fat guy must eat twice as much food as me, and it’s probably all greasy junk food, how disgusting!”
Nobody thinks of a can of tuna, some crackers, and a salad as overeating, but for some it is. Likewise few have any negative reaction to seeing a 17 year old high school kid eat a whole pizza, take a trip to McD’s, and wash it all down with a litre of coke - as long as he’s a scrawney 120lbs.
“Overeating” has the image of gulping down very large volumes of unhealthy food attached to it. Most people wouldn’t claim they don’t take in more calories than they burn, but plenty would be opposed to admitting to overeating with the above definition attached.
Dr. Atkins placed the blame on refined sugar (which is present in many of our foods, even when we don’t suspect it is there) and white flour. He traced the explosion of overweight people to the addition of a bunch of useless carbohydrates to our diet. He suggests that getting rid of “bad” carbs such as in white flour and sugar, and getting our carbs instead from fiber and foods that have a relatively lower percentage of carbs, will allow people to lose weight. It has worked for a lot of people. The thing is, that it must be a life-long change. You can’t go back to eating the amount of carbohydrates that made you fat in the first place. Dr. Atkins’s plan is to keep eating a healthy diet even after you’ve lost the weight you want to lose.
In his opinion, a “healthy diet” includes animals, plants, and some dairy products, but limits the amount of sugar and refined white flour.
Does it work? I’ll let you know. I’ve “stalled” on the diet after losing only 10 pounds in two weeks. I’m driving my co-workers crazy. “I can’t eat that.” “Oh, a little white rice isn’t going to hurt!” “Can’t. I’m too fat.” “You’re not fat! Stop saying that!” Ha! They haven’t seen me naked! (Nor will they.)
Interesting question. Speaking purely from personal experience here: I’ve got Crohns Disease and when I am unwell can eat what I want and not put on weight because it all comes right out again about an hour later. This has led me to develop very poor eating habits, especially because the more severe stomach cramps are caused by high fiber foods (veggies, fruit etc) so I avoid them.
The doctors put me on high dose steriods when I am sick and as mentioned one of the side effects of prednisone is an increase in weight. So I work hard to monitor what I eat but I ALWAYS put on weight when on prednisone. I find that I have a great interest in all things food whilst on steriods, I buy more cook books, spend more time cooking crazy complex meals and of course eat more. Heck I even stop and read the menu’s of all the restaurants I walk past. It is very hard to resist food when you can’t stop thinking about it. So in my case yes I do over-eating and that is why I put on the weight but I notice a change in my thought patterns whenever I’m on the steriods. I just don’t have the will power to resist, although I am getting better (after 9 years).
Modern nutritionists don’t talk too much about weight gain/loss. Rather, they break it up into fat gain/loss and lean mass (i.e., everything other than fat) gain/loss.
The best research indicates that there are factors above and beyond total caloric intake that affect changes in fat and lean mass. Take a moment to read this article (part 2) for some of the factors.
Thanks for all the informative answers, folks, and for avoiding unpleasantness. A couple of comments:
As you probably guessed from the OP, I’m not fat, in fact at 5’ 10" and 145-150lb I’m probably verging on underweight. I’d like to bulk up a bit, but it just doesn’t happen - I think I must have a small stomach and I hate the uncomfortable full feeling I get when I try to eat more. I’m 26 now, is it likely that my metabolism will slow down significantly as I get older? I wouldn’t say I get a huge amount of exercise now, although I am fairly active.
Following on from lesa’s comments, I know from experience that diabetes doesn’t necessarily lead to obesity. My girlfriend has been diabetic since the age of seven, and while she may be half a stone heavier than she’d like she certainly isn’t fat, despite probably eating at least 50% more than I do!
Anyway, it seems to be as I guessed - when people say that obese people don’t overeat, they mean that they don’t overeat compared to other people. The trick lies in knowing how many calories your body needs. Is there any easy way of finding out how many calories you burn?
Prednisone can do some wonderful things medically but from experience it makes you look and feel like garbage. I was depressed, irritated, bloated and generally miserable each time I had to take it.
It is fear of Prednisone that helps keep me on good behavior when I get to feeling like disobeying the doctors.
Your metabolism will almost certainly slow down as you get older. It may be a few more years before it becomes significant enough for you to notice. I’m 5’6" and in my 20’s, the heaviest I ever weighed was about 160 and that was doing lots of exercise and eating whole pizzas for lunch and 3 Big Macs with fries and coke for dinner and what not. My bodyfat was always low, in the 6-11% range. After I quit exercising, I dropped to about 150, without changing my eating habits.
Now at 35, I’m holding steady at 160 without any effort. I still eat what I want but I’m not happy with the way I look so I’m trying to begin an exercise regimen again.
I’ve been doing Atkins, and the most amazing thing is that you really stop getting hungry after a few days. Once your body gets used to not having blood sugar spikes and lows, everything is more steady.
Excercise is also CRITICAL for healthy, steady fatloss. (I won’t say weight - because you can even gain weight on a good diet and exercise plan as light fat converts to heavier muscle). Of course critically obese people find it very difficult to exercise.
Basically: in MOST cases, obesity is a reversible disability. And because - unlike non-reversible disabilities, such as blindness or paraplegia - it is something that people are likely to die from if they become morbidly obese, sites like NAAFA are not helpful. Yes, of course there should be tolerance and no vilification of obese/fat people. But we shouldn’t be treating obesity as something here to stay and here to get used to, we should be fighting it as much as possible, to save lives. Which is more IMHO I guess - sorry!
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