# The role of satiety in obesity **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 16, 2014, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375 "2014-12-16T08:07:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![No\_umlaut\_for\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@No\_umlaut\_for\_U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_umlaut_for_U)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/21 "2014-12-16T18:45:20Z")
As for me, I am _always_ hungry, unless I’m vomiting or sound asleep. Even then, I will wake up in the night and want food. I’m trying to eat better–the doctor suggested a sodium restriction for a couple of health issues–but the extra veggies and fruit, especially, keep me tied to the toilet. What seems to have been a little more helpful is to say, screw the fat, screw the calories, and I’m starting to lose some weight. The ravening hunger is lessening some. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/22 "2014-12-16T20:40:33Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > I lost 40 pounds in the past year on the “eat less crap” diet, which is basically what WW tries to get ppl to do. > > If you eat a diet of real food, you will be much less hungry. You don’t have to eat boring food (I rarely eat goddamn chicken breast, I got sick of them in the fat-free 90s), you just eat real food. A lean steak (not a giant one), broccoli, and baked potato or salad will fill you up and keep you full. It’s easy to cook. I make myself stews, soup, chili. No one needs to live on tuna fish, cottage cheese, and chicken breasts to lose weight. > > And no, I haven’t been hungry or had cravings. If I want something “bad”, I eat a little bit. It is possible to eat just one piece of candy, or to replace it with fruit. I’ve had the same package of cookies in the cupboard for about a month. > > YMMV, of course. People who are really craving foods should probably have bloodwork done to rule out vitamin deficiencies, as well as being screened for depression. This sounds pretty close to the Paleo approach. It seems all truly successful diets start with “eliminate the junk/processed foods.” ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/23 "2014-12-16T20:42:28Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > Can someone please explain to me this “shitty oils” concept, and provide some kind of citations? I am seeing it more and more, but almost never with any kind of attribution. Sure: [http://www.marksdailyapple.com/healthy-oils/#axzz3M5z6k4Xk](http://www.marksdailyapple.com/healthy-oils/#axzz3M5z6k4Xk) Also, it’s important not to eat rancid oils and oxidized oils, which affects a lot of fried foods in restaurants. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/24 "2014-12-16T20:57:44Z")
> [@iljitsch](#): > > I’m not a believer in paleo for several reasons: first, we don’t know how our ancestors back then ate, and it’s probably not what paleo people eat today. There’s evidence that early humans started relying on cooking a few million years ago. I think it works but not necessarily for the fancy reasons its proponents say it does. They are also insisting on those fancy reasons less and less and loosening up as well, it appears. I.e., “paleo” forms an interesting back story and inspiration, but it’s not as though the diet/lifestyle doesn’t work if that original reasoning is invalid. As I said above, I think 80-85% of the value of Paleo (in terms of diet) can be had by quitting wheat and bad oils. In any case, I do not follow it religiously by any means. > [@](#): > > Second, paleo is not a sustainable way to eat for a world with 7 billion people. Why? Because the “meat causes global warming” thing? Actually, if the diet succeeded in lowering people’s calorie intake, that would make up substantially for the additional meat eaten. Also, food waste around the world is tremendous, so if we addressed the waste issue alone, we could solve a lot of problems. > [@](#): > > But like any diet, if you restrict the types of food that can be eaten people will lose weight. That’s why I’m tying this to satiety. One big claim of paleo that I think is true is that you end up a lot less hungry and more easily satisfied. I don’t think that claim is either made or true of low-fat and other “just eat right” diets. > [@](#): > > Hm, wouldn’t it be because people don’t wait to attempt to lose weight until they’re morbidly obese? I.e., the people who are morbidly obese are the ones that can’t follow a weight loss regime successfully, the ones who can never got that big in the first place. Yes, and their biological systems may be such that nothing is going to work for them now except maybe surgery. I would hesitate to make any claims about them one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/25 "2014-12-16T20:59:54Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Yeah, me. That was easy. Cool, what did you do that worked for you? ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/26 "2014-12-16T21:24:33Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > That’s why I’m tying this to satiety. One big claim of paleo that I think is true is that you end up a lot less hungry and more easily satisfied. I don’t think that claim is either made or true of low-fat and other “just eat right” diets. It seems really, really complicated. Over the last decade, I’ve gradually cut _way_ down on sugar and carbohydrate consumption and as I’ve gotten older my appetite is less than in used to be. I swear I have read more than once (within recent years) that fat and protein sate the appetite faster than sugar and carbs, but when I went looking for cites, it’s apparently not that simple. This is the conclusion in an analysis on the [NCBI website](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53550/). > [@](#): > > In the present chapter, we tried to answer the question: Is dietary fat satiating? Within a controlled environment, yes, fats do have an effect on satiety and appear to regulate appetite through several mechanisms including the release of appetite hormones and inhibition of gastric emptying and intestinal transit. Certain types of fats are more satiating than others. However, in free-living conditions, the situation is complicated. Several genetic, psychological, and behavioral factors interact with physiological and metabolic systems on their effect on food behavior in free-living individuals. For instance, it has been found that certain individuals are genetically “immune” to the effects of a high-fat diet, suggesting that the consumption of a high-fat diet does not universally lead to weight gain. These individuals habitually consume a high-fat diet and remain lean and are therefore labeled as having “high-fat phenotypes” while others gain weight and are labeled as having “low-fat phenotypes” (Cooling and Blundell, 2001). Furthermore, in a free-living environment, the presence of highly palatable foods, a characteristic of high-fat foods, could chronically activate the hedonic system which would promote higher appetite and more energy intake (Lowe and Levine, 2005). The hedonic system is regarded as pleasure associated with eating palatable foods. In an environment with unlimited availability of highly palatable foods, there is a concern of how much the homeostatic appetite regulatory mechanisms can override the hedonic components and hyperresponsiveness to palatable foods. ---
**Author:** ![Sciency](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Sciency](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sciency)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/27 "2014-12-16T22:20:07Z")
If you take a person with no discipline, then force them into a 1-2 year program when you push them every week to diet and exercise, then of course when the program ends they will just gain all the pounds back. The real problem is their attitude. Weight management is 90% discipline. It’s just making the right decisions even when you don’t feel like it. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/28 "2014-12-16T22:30:32Z")
I also strongly believe that trying to lose weight fast is a bad idea, because that way you end up knowing how to eat too much (that’s how you gained the weight) and how to eat too little (that’s how you lost it fast), but not how to eat the right amount to maintain your goal weight. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/29 "2014-12-17T02:08:48Z")
1. That linked to Cracked article is idiotic. Or at least dang ignorant. If changes in lifestyle do not result in going from “fat to thin” then it is a failure? The losing 10 to 15 pounds and keeping it off with improved habits that they dismiss as failing is actually highly significant from a health perspective. You do not need to become “thin” to improve your health outcomes. You need to lose a modest amount of fat and maintain its loss with improved fitness and good nutrition. 2. The op contradicts itself: > [@the op](#): > > … “Eating right” doesn’t change how hungry you get. … > > … [op’s trendy diet change] This has definitely affected hunger and satiety in a positive direction. … 1. Lots of talk, here and in the scientific literature, about the role of satiety and palatability/hedonic value in fat gain and loss. (See **chiroptera** ’s link for a small taste.) No wheat is not teh evil. But highly refined carbs (low fiber, usually lots of added sugars and often added fats) are low satiety and high palatability. As has been pointed out here frequently, Big Food Inc. has invested mightily in finding those combinations of sweet fatty and salty that get people to eat more, as that sells more. Higher protein, higher fiber, low refined carbs foods tend to be high satiety and moderate palatability - high enough that eating is enjoyable but not so high as to trigger overeating. If “no wheat” or “paleo” or “gomba dah” works as a shorthand to help you choose foods that fit that … wonderful! But the parallel to religious witnessing is cogent: just because a belief system is your personal revealed truth does not mean that it is the right belief system for everyone or that other belief systems do not also work for others; witnessing is rarely useful to others. And while protein is the king of satiety some plans that are lowish protein are still high enough fiber and moderate enough palatability that they hit very good balances of satiety/palatability as well (vegan or low animal product diets centered around grains, including wheat, tubers, legumes, nuts and seeds, along with vegetables and some fruits, in various combinations). 2. Why yes, I do know quite a few people who have lost significant weight and kept it off by “eating right” and exercising moderately. Thank you for asking. No one size fits all though for “eating right.” ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/30 "2014-12-17T02:55:52Z")
You appear to be defending the CW with great fervor. I don’t know, I thought it was obvious that conventional approaches to dieting just haven’t worked very well for the average person for the last 50 years. Do we agree on that or not? > [@DSeid](#): > > 1. That linked to Cracked article is idiotic. Or at least dang ignorant. If changes in lifestyle do not result in going from “fat to thin” then it is a failure? The losing 10 to 15 pounds and keeping it off with improved habits that they dismiss as failing is actually highly significant from a health perspective. You do not need to become “thin” to improve your health outcomes. You need to lose a modest amount of fat and maintain its loss with improved fitness and good nutrition. What the article, citing studies, says seems pretty reasonable to me: **They all find the exact same thing: You can lose and keep off some minor amount, 10 or 15 pounds, for the rest of your life – it’s hard, but it can be done.** It’s saying that obese people find it almost impossible to lose, say, 50 pounds through diet and exercise and keep it off. And it’s also _really hard_ to keep off a more modest amount of weight. That jibes with what I’ve seen in the real world. It’s not saying that it’s impossible or that the 10-15 pounds don’t matter. > [@](#): > > The op contradicts itself: > > … “Eating right” doesn’t change how hungry you get. … > > … [op’s trendy diet change] This has definitely affected hunger and satiety in a positive direction. You may not have read my OP. I was defining “eating right” as the CW low-fat diet. > [@](#): > > No wheat is not teh evil. It really does seem to be. > [@](#): > > But highly refined carbs (low fiber, usually lots of added sugars and often added fats) are low satiety and high palatability. As has been pointed out here frequently, Big Food Inc. has invested mightily in finding those combinations of sweet fatty and salty that get people to eat more, as that sells more. Higher protein, higher fiber, low refined carbs foods tend to be high satiety and moderate palatability - high enough that eating is enjoyable but not so high as to trigger overeating. If “no wheat” or “paleo” or “gomba dah” works as a shorthand to help you choose foods that fit that … wonderful! I mostly agree, but this doesn’t go far enough. People end up thinking that things like wheat bread and other foods made with “healthy whole grains” are good for you. Most are not, and wheat bread certainly isn’t. So the CW, according to which you’ll be A-OK if you eat “whole grains” instead of those terrible unwhole grains, ends up not working for people. > [@](#): > > But the parallel to religious witnessing is cogent: just because a belief system is your personal revealed truth does not mean that it is the right belief system for everyone or that other belief systems do not also work for others; witnessing is rarely useful to others. Did you read my OP and various responses? I am supporting paleo and debunking it at the same time. I’m hardly a fanatic. Luckily, guys like Mark Sisson (of [marksdailyapple.com](http://marksdailyapple.com)) are not fanatics either and provide a lot of very useful information. > [@](#): > > And while protein is the king of satiety some plans that are lowish protein are still high enough fiber and moderate enough palatability that they hit very good balances of satiety/palatability as well (vegan or low animal product diets centered around grains, including wheat, tubers, legumes, nuts and seeds, along with vegetables and some fruits, in various combinations). I don’t see the point of a vegan diet except for moral reasons, which I don’t agree with anyway. > [@](#): > > 1. Why yes, I do know quite a few people who have lost significant weight and kept it off by “eating right” and exercising moderately. Thank you for asking. No one size fits all though for “eating right.” Again, “eating right” referred to the CW low-fat diet. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/31 "2014-12-17T02:59:29Z")
> [@Sciency](#): > > If you take a person with no discipline, then force them into a 1-2 year program when you push them every week to diet and exercise, then of course when the program ends they will just gain all the pounds back. The real problem is their attitude. Weight management is 90% discipline. It’s just making the right decisions even when you don’t feel like it. The problem is that, when a dietary recommendation fails to help people for decades, you can always just say, “They weren’t disciplined enough.” I think the point is to make it _less_ about iron discipline so that people can actually succeed in large numbers. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/32 "2014-12-17T05:44:28Z")
There _is_ no single “conventional wisdom” other than that the standard American diet, full of highly refined processed crap, is highly obesiogenic, and that eating more calories than are burned will lead to weight gain. Oh okay, lots of veggies and fruits are good. “Low fat” as a single focus has not been “conventional wisdom” for quite a while now, and the unintended consequence of “low fat” of increased refined carbs is pretty well accepted by “the establishment” as more harmful than many fats are. If there is any standard conventional wisdom “eating right” plan out there right now it is some variant or another of a Mediterranean diet or a [DASH diet](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/dash) approach. If you want to beat up on “low fat” as the main nutrition focus, go ahead. You’ll find few of us establishment types disagreeing much with that. Conflating it with “conventional wisdom” or “eating right” is however either ignorance of what accepted recommendations are or intentional misrepresentation of them. _Defining_ “eating right” or “CW” as “low fat” is defining the earth as flat. Yes that statement “some minor amount” is _mighty ignorant_. Their mocking the importance of sustained loss of 5% of body weight (as the article does) only reveals their lack of knowledge. A sustained 5% body mass loss with improved nutrition and exercise has _dramatic_ impact of health outcomes. That amount of weight is not “minor” in any meaningful sense of the word. An obese person becoming “thin” OTOH (the metric they seem to care about) is a cosmetic goal of superficial (and possibly of psychological) importance only. Continuing to perpetuate that as the only goal worth reaching and not reaching it as “failure” is a major public health disservice. Happy that you have bought into the revealed truth that whole wheat is evil. I do not argue with fundamentalists and true believers of any stripe. Witness away. Yes avoiding wheat is the secret to satiety and the cure that has eluded … or been suppressed. Avoid wheat and you will be saved. Ring those doorbells! [Hello!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgfU_mZYK7E) Glad you don’t see the point of vegan. Nice that. Irrelevant too. Not the religion … I mean plan … for you. Not my nutrition approach either. But the point is that _it also works_ and _is_ the right choice for some. There are loads of people witnessing for McDougall’s starchy veganism, for example, and how much weight they have lost and kept off and how it is the true path as well. They are as right and as wrong as you are. Thing is that satiety and palatability _are_ a major focus right now. Someone who is _actually_ interested in it would do well to read the link provided by **chiroptera** , or this [other chapter](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53528/) from that book, especially section 11.4. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/33 "2014-12-17T08:10:05Z")
Wow, you seem downright angry. Are you a nutritionist or something? What makes you an “establishment type”? What’s up here? > [@DSeid](#): > > There _is_ no single “conventional wisdom” other than that the standard American diet, full of highly refined processed crap, is highly obesiogenic, and that eating more calories than are burned will lead to weight gain. Oh okay, lots of veggies and fruits are good. “Low fat” as a single focus has not been “conventional wisdom” for quite a while now, and the unintended consequence of “low fat” of increased refined carbs is pretty well accepted by “the establishment” as more harmful than many fats are. I don’t know if you’re from the US or what, but the dietary advice the government hands out via the USDA, etc., is pretty useless, and doctors are not good sources of information, either. We are just starting to hear that saturated fat might not be bad, etc. We do hear a lot that “whole grains” are really good for you–that’s been trumpeted for several years now. > [@](#): > > _Defining_ “eating right” or “CW” as “low fat” is defining the earth as flat. I addressed this in the OP, indicating that “low-fat” is no longer the one thing trumpeted. > [@](#): > > Yes that statement “some minor amount” is _mighty ignorant_. Their mocking the importance of sustained loss of 5% of body weight (as the article does) only reveals their lack of knowledge. A sustained 5% body mass loss with improved nutrition and exercise has _dramatic_ impact of health outcomes. That amount of weight is not “minor” in any meaningful sense of the word. An obese person becoming “thin” OTOH (the metric they seem to care about) is a cosmetic goal of superficial (and possibly of psychological) importance only. Continuing to perpetuate that as the only goal worth reaching and not reaching it as “failure” is a major public health disservice. I think the point the Cracked article was making is that it is very rare for someone to keep a large amount of weight off for the long-term. I think they meant that, for a very obese person, 20 pounds or so is not going to change their status as “obese.” They did not say that losing 20 pounds would have no positive health consequences. But maybe they should have been clearer and indicated that it is still useful to do so. > [@](#): > > Happy that you have bought into the revealed truth that whole wheat is evil. I do not argue with fundamentalists and true believers of any stripe. Witness away. Yes avoiding wheat is the secret to satiety and the cure that has eluded … or been suppressed. Avoid wheat and you will be saved. Ring those doorbells! Lol, you _must_ be a registered dietician or something. Only they have such violent reactions against this message, as it is indeed threatening to them. See [www.wheatbellyblog.com](http://www.wheatbellyblog.com) for some actual data backing up the claims. Mocking me as “witnessing” is totally inappropriate. I suppose holding _any_ opinion on anything is “witnessing”? It’s especially wrong-headed when I was in fact gluten-intolerant (and did not eat much wheat anyway, probably consciously understanding that), and many people have undiagnosed gluten-intolerance and celiac disease. Nice. > [@](#): > > Glad you don’t see the point of vegan. Nice that. Irrelevant too. Not the religion … I mean plan … for you. Not my nutrition approach either. But the point is that _it also works_ and _is_ the right choice for some. There are loads of people witnessing for McDougall’s starchy veganism, for example, and how much weight they have lost and kept off and how it is the true path as well. They are as right and as wrong as you are. Well, veganism really is a belief system based on moral values. I don’t agree with those moral values. It’s that simple. I don’t mock vegans, however. Veganism typically cuts out a lot of crap food, so I don’t deny that it works for some people. A lot of people fail to thrive on it, however. So when vegans say that this is the diet for everyone because it’s morally right, I don’t agree with that. > [@](#): > > Thing is that satiety and palatability _are_ a major focus right now. Someone who is _actually_ interested in it would do well to read the link provided by **chiroptera** , or this [other chapter](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53528/) from that book, especially section 11.4. I read nutrition links all the time, and I don’t appreciate your belligerent and condescending attitude. You must have some dog in this fight that you’re not disclosing. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/34 "2014-12-17T08:17:04Z")
By the way, **chiroptera** I did appreciate your opinion and the data you presented. How satiety “works” is indeed a complex issue. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/35 "2014-12-17T12:54:51Z")
“Stop eating when you’re full.” I never feel full until I’ve eaten too much. I have to make my plate and eat what’s there and whether I’m feeling full or at least satisfied or not, I have to stop when the plate is empty. I can’t rely on that full feeling. I don’t know how I got this way but it feels like I’ve always been like this. My daughters are also like this. We just never feel full until we’ve made ourselves sick. If there’s more we’ll want it. We even think about the next serving before the one we have is gone. The only time I ever had control was when I was on Atkins induction. I never really felt hungry after the first few days. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/36 "2014-12-17T13:03:05Z")
Not angry at all. Annoyed. Not a dietician but one of those doctors that does not know anything despite actually spending a fair amount of energy working to prevent obesity and its complications. You have presented an argument that goes like this: Once obese people do rarely become forever thin by anything other than surgery: dieting is a failure. (The faulty thesis of the Cracked bit.) “Conventional wisdom” equals “low fat”. (An untrue strawman.) Whatever shit doctors currently talk about and “conventional wisdom” ignores satiety as a factor. Plainly untrue. Therefore this approach that has worked for you, going wheat-free, is the key. The proof, your two year experience n of one. So again point by point: Losing 5% and keeping it off with eating right (no quotes here) and moderate exercise is no failure. It is a huge success and very achievable. The professionals who study nutrition are not talking shit even if the media does a crappy job passing along the actual science. Satiety and palatability are increasingly being studied and understood better. It is not being ignored. What foods tend to hit each most? (Protein and fiber tend to hit satiety most strongly; fats and sweets the hyperpalatability most.) How is that different based on genetics? How do the brain centers change as a result of exposures to certain foods in childhood and [even in utereo](http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/303/3/E432.long)? (High fat seems to induce lasting changes to brain structure resulting in lifelong predispositions.) How does our microbiome impact satiety and how does our diet interact with our microbiome? (Clearly it does but how it does is far from well understood.) There are lots of nutrition approaches that work well. The apparent need some have after having short term success to trumpet that they have found the secret (So simple! Stupid professionals.) answer does bug me. Sorry if that annoyance comes off as anger. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/37 "2014-12-17T16:33:27Z")
The sad thing is that we could probably be having an interesting conversation if you’d address what I’m actually saying. > [@DSeid](#): > > Not angry at all. Annoyed. Not a dietician but one of those doctors that does not know anything despite actually spending a fair amount of energy working to prevent obesity and its complications. Cool. Do you feel that your average GP has the education, inclination, time, etc., to provide effective dietary advice to his or her patients? That seems in general not to be the case. > [@](#): > > You have presented an argument that goes like this: My actual argument is that satiety is key to weight loss, and the second question about any diet whose purpose is weight loss should be, “Will this actually make me feel less hungry, more full, so that I intake less calories and lose weight?” (The first question should be, “Is this safe and does it provide adequate nutrition?”). Regardless of the fact that more sophisticated doctors like yourself are out there, the info that has been presented to people since the 1970s has been focused on reducing fat, as though if people would stop gorging themselves on fatback they would start dropping pounds. As I addressed in my OP, the clarion call of low-fat, low-fat! has started to go away in recent years but it hasn’t been replaced by anything that people can easily digest (pun intended) and act on. And the low-fat message certainly hasn’t gone away completely by any means. I just translated something (several things, actually) for a Japanese appliances company that kept saying stuff like, “The worldwide trend in diet is toward lower-fat, lower-sodium cooking.” You know, sounds like 1988 or something. Well, people out there are still getting messages like that and believing that. > [@](#): > > Once obese people do rarely become forever thin by anything other than surgery: dieting is a failure. (The faulty thesis of the Cracked bit.) > > “Conventional wisdom” equals “low fat”. (An untrue strawman.) > > Whatever shit doctors currently talk about and “conventional wisdom” ignores satiety as a factor. Plainly untrue. > > Therefore this approach that has worked for you, going wheat-free, is the key. The proof, your two year experience n of one. This is a hash of what I said, of course, but here’s the thing: The low-carb and Paleo people are saying they have “body hacks” that work. That reduce hunger and cause the body to burn more fat. And those hacks _do_ work for a lot of people (as I said in the OP, I don’t think really low-carb works over the long term). Even if you think that they don’t work, you still need to sell _your_ program and make it easy to comprehend, make it sound as though it’s going to produce results so that people are motivated to try it, and then make sure it works so that people stick with it. Do you have those things in place? If so, that’s awesome. But the “best practices” from doctors like you are not currently viewed as taking the form of clear-cut, easy-to-follow rules, and are currently not seen as effective. > [@](#): > > Losing 5% and keeping it off with eating right (no quotes here) and moderate exercise is no failure. It is a huge success and very achievable. Let’s say I’m 5’11" and 250. That would be 50+ over my current weight and would make me feel quite fat. If I lost 5% = 12.5, then I would 237.5, and I would still feel fat and frustrated. Of course, if I achieved that success in a reasonable amount of time, I would think, “Hey this is a great start.” But if that was all I could ever do, then I would be extremely disappointed and dissatisfied. And even if their doc told them otherwise, 90%+ of people are not going to be satisfied with that level of weight loss. They are not going to feel they look good, and other people are not going to think they look good. That’s just reality. > [@](#): > > Satiety and palatability are increasingly being studied and understood better. It is not being ignored. What foods tend to hit each most? (Protein and fiber tend to hit satiety most strongly; fats and sweets the hyperpalatability most.) How is that different based on genetics? How do the brain centers change as a result of exposures to certain foods in childhood and [even in utereo](http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/303/3/E432.long)? (High fat seems to induce lasting changes to brain structure resulting in lifelong predispositions.) How does our microbiome impact satiety and how does our diet interact with our microbiome? (Clearly it does but how it does is far from well understood.) Yes, all this is important. I see the paleo crowd going over every type of study, even if they ultimately end up disagreeing with a lot of them. > [@](#): > > There are lots of nutrition approaches that work well. The apparent need some have after having short term success to trumpet that they have found the secret (So simple! Stupid professionals.) answer does bug me. Sorry if that annoyance comes off as anger. That ain’t me, so it makes me doubt you read the OP if you say that. Here are my doubts about paleo: 1. In the success stories, it’s not clear how much of the success is due to going low-carb, and it’s therefore not clear how much of the success is going to stick. 2. It’s not clear how much paleo can help truly obese people. 3. It’s not clear that paleo can help the average sorta chunky person drop the final 10-20 pounds. 4. It’s not clear which of the tenets of paleo deliver the most benefits, and we are actually seeing proponents dial back some of the dogma. E.g., maybe legumes aren’t that bad, maybe white rice isn’t that bad, etc. I think a lot of the really picky stuff delivers very little benefit. I’m not a wheat-free fundamentalist, either. I think if someone is thin and not gluten-intolerant, then quitting wheat probably isn’t going to provide a big benefit, if any. But a lot of people are experiencing huge benefits, so it’s not going to go away. I think doctors, dieticians, and other would-be nutrition authority figures (I say “would-be” because that authority has to be accepted by the masses; it doesn’t come free) really hate that people are taking matters into their own hands and going on blogs and so on for advice. But you guys don’t have a plug-and-play program for the masses right now, and people are frustrated and looking for answers. You can get annoyed at paleo and wheat-free, but they are delivering some pretty big results to people right now. Getting annoyed at people like me who are _not_ dogmatic and who are experiencing some benefits certainly isn’t going to help your cause. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/38 "2014-12-17T16:57:09Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Let’s say I’m 5’11" and 250. That would be 50+ over my current weight and would make me feel quite fat. If I lost 5% = 12.5, then I would 237.5, and I would still feel fat and frustrated. Of course, if I achieved that success in a reasonable amount of time, I would think, “Hey this is a great start.” But if that was all I could ever do, then I would be extremely disappointed and dissatisfied. And even if their doc told them otherwise, 90%+ of people are not going to be satisfied with that level of weight loss. They are not going to feel they look good, and other people are not going to think they look good. That’s just reality. It seems like there are a lot of assumptions and/or generalizations in this paragraph. Losing 5% of your body weight isn’t insignificant, and the health benefits aren’t just tied to body weight. It appears that you’re dismissing anything that doesn’t achieve a particular goal, and that may not be practical or achievable for many people. I took a pretty simple approach to weight loss - education, exercise, small sustainable lifestyle changes. This approach works for some subset of the population. I believe it can work for many/most people but there are many approaches that will also work. I’m not sure where your impression about doctors and nutritional specialists comes from but it hasn’t been my experience. IMO you’re setting up an adversarial environment where it doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/39 "2014-12-17T17:25:38Z")
About the 5%: I believe my highest BMI was 55. I’m not sure because for the first 7 weeks when I started losing weight, my scale said “err”. So after losing 5% my BMI would have been 52. Purely from a weight/size/perception perspective, that’s a meaningless difference. However, at this point, about a month and a half in, after cycling 20 km every day and eating much less, I was already much fitter and I slept better. I believe the reason why losing 5% already provides big health benefits is because now your liver and muscles have some unused glycogen storage capacity that can absorb glucose spikes so you don’t end up increasing your visceral fat every time you have a non-tiny meal. Now that my BMI is around 35 I don’t feel all that different: I was already pretty fit 18 months ago and I’m still way too heavy. But pretty much everyone tells me I look so different. And it’s true: I look “normal” now. So whether that 5% is a good result depends on whether you’re going for health or looks. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375/40 "2014-12-17T23:19:20Z")
Wow! So many divergent views. I will describe what worked for me. Around the year 2000, my blood sugar was rising and my doctor the zone diet. Let me first say it is not a fad diet. It is balanced diet concentrating on portion control. I didn’t count calories just ate less. I lost 30 lb over a couple years then put 10. I was still following the zone for meals but noshing too much and the wrong things. Although I was never into the fast food thing. Even my noshes were things like almonds and raisins (a tasty combination). Then my blood sugar redlined and my doctor prescribed metformin. One of its side effects is weight loss! Because it lowers both blood sugar and blood insulin. So without any change in my diet, I lost 20 lb over several years. If you are keeping track, I am 40lb below my highest weight. Then I started to think. Eating is addictive, but you cannot go cold turkey on it as you can other addictions. But noshing is addictive too and you can go cold turkey on it. And I did. Over three years, I lost another 40 lb, a bit more actually. I started controlled noshing at that point (my doctor didn’t want me to continue losing–at my age, a few extra lb seems to increase life span) and am now about 5lb above my minimum. So I am going to try to control it a bit more. But the portion control continues unchanged. One more point. A bit of extra fat seems to help control my appetite. YMMV. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-satiety-in-obesity/707375.md?page=3)