The SD on fat people

Factual Questions
41

Why are people fat… gosh there are a lot of reasons.

I have a sister who actually did have a “gland” problem in high school and started packing on the pounds rather abruptly. However - and I really think this needs to be emphasized - there were other symptoms beside just weight gain. She went from 50 mile back-to-back bike rides on the weekends and lots of school and extracurricular activities to sleeping 16 hours a day, hair falling out, oily skin to skin so dry it cracked open into bloody gashes, and so forth. IF you have a medical condition that causes weight gain you’re going to have other symptoms besides weight gain. elliot with PCOS no doubt had other symptoms than weight gain as well.

Some medications can cause weight gain - someone with severe asthma, for instance, may be on oral steroids and gain weight even on a very low calorie diet. Again, they’ll show other symptoms as well - thinning skin, for instance, as well as breathing problems that may interfere with activity.

So yes, there are a number of people where a medical condition contributes to weight gain and/or obesity. These unfortunate people will have to work much, much harder than average to maintain their weight, much less lose it.

However, someone overweight who is full of boundless energy and is not exhibiting other medical symptoms is most likely simply eating more calories than he/she is burning. For a variety of reasons.

Myself - I’m 5’3" and 150 lbs (that’s a BMI of 26, I think), girl-measurements of 34-28-38. I’ve stayed between 145 and 150 lbs for the last 20+ years. I feel that a stable weight is far preferable to yo-yo’ing up and down. For better or worse, I don’t have a picture of me available to show ya’ll, but most people do not perceive me as overweight when they meet me in person, and quite a few of my fellow women (who we know are often harsh critics of their peers) have described me as “thin” or “slender”. At this point, I need to exercise a little more to improve my muscle tone (this getting older thing can be a drag at times, and the body is requiring a little more maintenance than it used to) but frankly, I’ve decided that as long as I’m 150 or under I’m just not going to worry about the matter. I feel healthy. I can climb 4 or 5 flights of stairs at a go without getting out of breath. Walk 5 miles without getting sore. Bike 10 the same. Items like cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. are all normal or better than average. I will never look like a Calista Flockhart, and I’m not going to make myself miserable trying.

It’s more than just fitting in a certain size of clothing, or a wrist measurement. You have to look at the total person. How are their heart, lungs, blood sugar, cholesterol, joints, blood pressure, etc? Are they battling a medical condition that makes it more difficult for them to exercise? I really hate one-size-fits all recommendations. People vary considerably, and what works to maximize health in one person may be unhealthy for another.

42

I’ve been on both sides of this issue. When I was a teenager, I was so thin I was embarrassed to wear short-sleeved shirts, even in summer. My arms looked like sticks. I ate whatever I wanted, tried consciously to gain weight, nothing worked. I had a terrible time getting clothes that fit, and salesladies used to tell me I’d be happy about my thin physique some day.

Later on, my MIL and her portly friends used to tease me. I could never think of the right answer.

By the time I was 30ish and had two children, I had become nice & curvy. I swam and did situps to keep my flat stomach.

Then life happened. Sedentary job. Knee injury. Neck injury. Hospitalizations. Arthritis. Try being bedridden for 6 weeks or so and then hurting every time you move after that. 'Taint easy to take a slow walk, let alone a brisk one. Weight creeps up, a pound or two at a time, and your cardio fitness declines and your muscles get weaker. Sure, it’s possible to get and exercise and diet regime to deal with all of that, but it’s not easy. Not easy at all.

Besides, your metabolism DOES change after about 40 or so. Look at top athletes who are in very good condition. Roger Clemens, for example, has a very intense workout regime, and he is continuing to perform better than many pitchers who are a whole lot younger. But compare him now to pics from 20 years ago, and he is much chunkier.

Another note on the effects of limiting calorie intake without also exercising. I have found this to be very true. Your metabolism seems to “learn” how to make do with less and less fuel. I while back I got lymphocytic colitis. I’ll spare you the details, but basically the innards kind of skip the part about absorbing fat. Sort of like being on a permanent diet of “Wow” potato chips. Boy, did I lose weight. Twenty pounds in no time, albeit at the cost of important nutrients. When I got the disorder treated, I gained it all back even faster, and kept right on going up the scale. Let it be noted that I did not alter my eating habits at all during this time. It seemed to me that my metabolism had learned that at any time fuel might just stop being available, so it had best store up as much fat as possible to hedge against a famine. Good strategy for a hunter-gatherer. Not for a sit-and-type 21st century person.

I’ve been on an exercise program for a year now. I do 3 workouts a week under the supervision of a specialist. I’ve improved my overall fitness and endurance. I’m about 5 pounds lighter. While I will grant that’s better than being 5 pounds heavier, it’s just to point out that one can work very, very hard and still remain overweight for a long time. If I can keep it up until I’m 71 years old, I will be back to my optimal weight. “Fat” chance.

43

The overwhelming number of people are sedentary.

44

tremorviolet’s BMI calculator says this guy is overweight… it’s not really good for people who are not “average”.

45

He’s a slob. :smiley:

Macronutrient ratios are very important too. If you don’t get enough protein and keep your fat/carbs levels right, even a cal restriction plan won’t help that much.

46

Me too, and we weigh about the same. Luckily for me, i have a large frame and big square shoulders, so i don’t look "obese’, just “heavy”. :wink:

I walk a few miles every day- bacuse I like to. Any other exercise than that and i hate it.

47

So for you conservation of mass fans out there…

If matter can’t come from nowhere, that is, we’re saying the only way you can gain weight is by taking in more calories than you burn (which I’m not really disputing, but…) why is it that there are some medications that a substantial percentage of the people who take them gain weight? Where is that factoring into the equation? Are they getting more calories from the same food? Just hungrier? Retaining water?

48

Um, that conclusion was whole point of my post. Geez. :rolleyes:

BMI [only] takes into account height and weight and is a poor indicator of health.

[QUOTE=Harriet the SpryIf matter can’t come from nowhere, that is, we’re saying the only way you can gain weight is by taking in more calories than you burn (which I’m not really disputing, but…) why is it that there are some medications that a substantial percentage of the people who take them gain weight? [/QUOTE]

INAD, but I would bet that the medications alters their metabolism so they burn calories more slowly. Take thyroids medications. If you have hypothyroidism (too little of the thyroid hormones (thyroxine and triiodothyronine), you gain weight because your metabolism slows. Taking the hormones cause weight loss with no diet changes. There’s probably something similiar in other medicines that cause weight gain (not sure but I believe most of the anti-depressesnts on the market today often cause weight gain) The human body is complex and many medicines affect the body in ways we don’t understand.

49

My guess, Harriet, is that there are several things happening. The metabolism may be altered, so the body is burning fewer calories at a rest. Perhaps peristalsis of the intestines is slowed down, so the smaller intestine has a longer time to extract nutrients. Perhaps the appetite is affected, and the person simply isn’t satisfied with the amount of food they previously ate.

There’s a weight reduction surgery out there (can’t think of the name, but OpalCat had it), where in the majority of the small intestine is removed, limiting the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. In the case of one woman, the surgeons found when they removed that section that her small intestine was 1/5th longer than average - something like six or seven feet longer. So, in her case, her body had been pulling 20% more nutrients (that is, calories) out of the food she ate than other people would have gotten from the same food. A year later, she went back under the knife, because her weight loss had stalled out halfway from her expected goal. Her small intestine had regrown nearly ten feet of length, defeating the previous surgery.

The human body is a strange and wonderful thing.

50

Some people poop out more calories than others.
Or, to put it another way…
Peace,
mangeorge

51

Nobody who sees me has ever called me fat either.

Once I get back to running I’ll lose about 25 pounds in the first two-three weeks or so.

52

I recently saw a television program about several people trying various weight loss programs. When two of them reached plateaus and seemed to stall out, their weight loss organizations (in one case it was Weight Watchers) told them to increase their caloric intake. Both of them did and then began to lose weight again.

Do any of you know why increasing caloric intake temporarily is recommended sometimes for rejump-starting weight loss? It seems to contradict the calories in/ calories out theory.

I had a gastric-bypass. My stomach was made into the size of an egg and my intestines were shortened. I lost 160 pounds. Even with as little as I eat, I still tend to gain a pound a month unless I exercise.

Two illnesses (among others) affected my weight even though I did not realize that they were culprits for a long time: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and clinical depression.

There are medications now which can be used to treat compulsive eating. Topomax is one of them. It also helps with other compusive disorders such as shopping.

I am not a physician!

53

Basically, I was overweight until the age of 25. I didn’t think I ate any more than other people, thought I got exercise, blah blah blah. When I realized that I was a fat fuck, and there was a reason for it, and bullshit excuses were part of it, I drastically cut my caloric intake (I didn’t start exercising; I hate it, and noticed that in all of the 50s and 60s pictures of the “men in the grey flannel suits” era of office workers, most people seemed in decent shape, and they didn’t “hit the gym” regularly).

I realized that I was not going to run marathons to burn off the calories, so I cut down to around 1,000 or so a day. I got light headed at times, but I dropped from 310 pounds to my current weight of 175-180, which I have held for about 3 or 4 years now.

On the one hand, I have some sympathy for fat people. Just like I have sympathy for people of below average intelligence. However, just as society says to people of below average intelligence, “Hey, you might just have to work a little harder to keep up with the bright kids,” so we should say to the fat people, “Hey, you might have to eat a little less than that guy over there to maintain the same weight.”

As a friend told me in college, “Yeah, it sucks to have a slow metabolism. It also sucks to have to study longer than the bright kid to get a good grade, but if you have to do it, you do it and shut up about it.”

As for my theory on exercise, I mentioned a bit above. People 40 or 50 years ago, to my knowledge, did not “work-out” 5 times a week, or jog 5 miles a day. They: a) didn’t consume 1500 calories a sitting at McDonalds; b) as a corrolary to a, they ate healthy meals at home for breakfast and dinner, and took a lighter lunch with them to work rather than eating out; and c) actually walked places and didn’t hop into the SUV to roll 3 blocks to the shopping mall, where they did not proceed to buy a Dr. Pepper and Cinnabun for a “treat”.

54

Hypothyroidism (from which I suffer) causes more issues than just weight gain, but most of my symptoms you can’t see. It also went untreated for years.

I have a moderate tremor in my right hand. This you can see… but would you ever guess that it’s caused by a thyroid problem?

I have a very difficult time regulating my own body temperature. I can fluctuate from very hot to very cold (think flu chills) in minutes. You can’t see that.

My hair went from kinky curly to straight in a few days. Also thyroid.

I went on birth control. The weight piled on.

I was thin in high school due to a period of working, school, extracurriculars and not eating. I lost thirty pounds (it’s easy to do when you live on one soda a day) and got down to 150 (I’m 5’9’) I was sickly thin. I also can’t touch my fingers around my wrist. I’m a big person. I have very large thigh muscles and upper arms. My arms are very long (I can’t wear women’s long sleeved shirts because they stop two or three inches above my wrists.) Weight Watchers told me to get down to 135. I wouldn’t be able to function.

I’m also fatter because I eat and don’t exercise. I’m not trying to get out of anything… I’m lazy, I don’t exercise. But I’m never going to be ‘normal’ weight according to any chart. I joke that my skeleton weighs a 140 pounds.

Exactly. But remember that you can’t always see an underlying medical condition (like your sister’s problems).

55

My experience has been quite different - I’ve been amazed at how little calories a “maintenance” diet can be.

Due to me having serious problems with my diabetes I’ve been tracking every single calorie consumed for more than 3 weeks. Even 3-calorie Tic-Tacs have been put into my spreadsheet. And my average, over three weeks, has been less than 6000 calories a week. Or 857 calories a day. Actually, I’ve been at about 800 a day, but I round up on a lot of things.

I’m highly sedentary and do no exercise other than walking from my car to my office. I have plenty of energy to work and no fatigue (except from lack of sleep, as I’m down to about 4 hours a night). And I’ve also not lost a pound from 128 since…end of October. I’ve been trying to get back down to 118 but I don’t think it’s going to be possible whilst keeping my insulin and blood sugar balanced. I seem to keep going ketoacidotic as I get below 124. And that’s not good.

What does this show? People are very different, and you can get by on a stunningly low level of calories. Of course people keep telling me how dangerous it sounds, and how I am eating too little, etc. However, thanks to me having to take 3-4 shots and 5-8 glucose tests a day, I imagine my knowledge of what exactly is going on with my energy intake is somewhat greater than most.

The scary thing is, I’ve been tracking “hunger” calories versus “ate because blood sugar demanded it so I wouldn’t die” calories. On average, my “hunger” calories are only about 500 a day. I only eat more than that to maintain safe glucose levels.

I still am amazed at the typical “office diet” of 3000 calories of doughnuts and non-diet pop that people seem to have half the days of the week, and yet they don’t seem to gain large amounts of weight. And that’s just what I witness people eating in front of me - they also often have a 1000 calorie lunch, and breakfast and dinner of unknown quantities. The human body must be seriously capable of adjusting metabolism to different caloric levels. :confused:

56

Um, yeah - we know. I was backing that point up with a picture example; other people are allowed to agree with and add to that point ya know; you don’t own it.

Geez :rolleyes: yourself.

57

You can’t get around the laws of thermodynamics. But, your body has a rather spectacular ability to alter its metabolism in relation to your caloric intake. Eat too little, and your metabolism becomes depressed until you eat more.

58

Oops, sorry about that. I guess I misinterpreted your post instead of vice versa. :o

59

No problem :slight_smile:

60

there are NO medical reasons to be overweight. instead there is every medical reason NOT TO BE.

that is not to say that some people dont have a harder time losing weight than others.

some people dont have to do jack shit to stay in shape, others, like me, have to change their entire way of life but in the end the result is the same.