Although I certainly would not argue with his main contention: if you expend more energy than you take in you will lose weight, I would just like to mention what happens when I diet, particularly in the winter (it is relatively easy for me to lose weight in the summer–I lost over 5 lbs in the last three months, not hardly trying). I sit in my easy chair wearing two sweaters and gloves and shivering, with no energy. The indoor temp is set around 70 degrees (but the walls are cold, leading to lots of radiative heat loss. I usually do get up to the mall every day and walk six half mile laps, which helps, but I chill down almost immediately after. And I feel miserable all the time. Is it any wonder that it is hard to keep on eating less?
As for his other points: well, I take no psycho-active drugs so I cannot comment on them. I have been taking metformin (a glycophage) for over five years to combat insulin resistance. In the first few years, this resulted in losing nearly 20lb without dieting, but this has stopped.
So yes, it is a simple matter of eating less and exercising more, but that is not so simple. And I do not believe the occasional person who claims to gain weight on 1000 calories a day. My wife knows someone who swears that is her experience.
After a lifetime of family and society freely heaping plenty of shame and disgust upon me because I’m obese, you can bet your sweet bippy I’ve been spending a lot of time and energy on trying to figure out a safe and sane way of being acceptable to all you skinny Minnies.
I’d like to let others know about a book called “Health at Every Size,” by Dr. Linda Bacon (isn’t that an awesome name for a weight researcher?!). Everyone who has tried to lose weight has encountered the plateau, or as obesity researchers call it, the “set point” (the weight your body is going to aim for, no matter how much or little you eat or exercise, within maybe 20 or 30 pounds either direction). The lower you go below that set point, the more your body perceives the loss as a famine or stress, and the higher it will create the new set point (sadly, while it seems pretty easy to raise your set point, there’s no safe method yet of lowering it that I’ve read about). Thus, the “conventional wisdom” method of dieting actually programs long-term weight-loss failure, and in fact dooms the poor schlub to even worse weight problems and health issues down the road.
Calorie restriction and increased exercise works great for that 40-60 lb. area around the set point. Push out of that, though, and you’re treading some dangerous waters, health-wise.
Being obese does not necessarily mean being unhealthy. Thanks to losing about 100 pounds over 10 months about ten years back, my set point is now firmly established at 280 pounds. However, I exercise regularly, probably eat a lot less than you do (and most of it vegetables other than corn and potatoes), and can boast of enviable blood pressure, resting heart rate, and cholesterol readings.
Cecil (and others who subscribe to the simplistic weight-loss point of view), please check out this book. She also has a website that summarizes the latest research, and might enlighten you. Meanwhile, try to ease up on the shaming and judging behaviors. They’re not helping, and they’re probably hurting, those you love who are struggling with these issues.
For years we have heard the ‘diet and exercise’ recited as applicable for everyone. There are some, I don’t know how many, who are not healthy enough for exercise. The ones I know have rheumatological problems. Their joints just will not hold up to exercise.
[I don’t have a weight problem but I cannot do any exercise that would result in any significant weight loss if I did have a weight problem. Every tendon in my body is tender. Sometimes just walking makes my joint hurt.]
Mr Seldon:
This may be too trite, and if so I’m sorry, but my suggestion for the chilling problem would not be sweaters, but a pair of longjohns. If it’s really severe, longjohns, then a sweatsuit over that, both relatively close-fitting, plus socks, archery gloves (first two fingers are removable)and a knit cap.
I seem to have poor circulation in my extremities, so whenever it gets around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, I like to don thermal undies. They help keep me from getting cramps as well as keep me warm.
Over the last 12 months, after my allergist suggested I look into gastric bypass, I have lost over 100 lbs. Having a doctor suggest gastric bypass, combined with an intense desire to reclaim control over my life(asthma and sinusitis had taken it over) finally got me to commit to losing the weight.
The thing is, I have now realized that I can’t ever eat in what would be considered a natural fashion by most people. Basically, something is awry with my appetite that will lead me to overeat if I do not carefully document what I eat. So I anticipate calorie counting to be permanent, even when I lose the last 20 to 30 pounds that I am going to lose and get to my goal weight.
(Besides that, I’m kind of interested in the idea of Calorie Restriction for health and life extension.)
P.S. If you switch to a strict vegan diet, you may get a one-time “freebie” weight loss. I did, anyway. Most of it did come back eventually, but when I first went vegan, the weight just went, magically. Now, not so much. Guess the body has to make a processing adjustment, perhaps?
I understand that research on weight loss strategies is pretty weak, which may explain in part why Cecil didn’t cover it in this missive. With one exception: drinking a glass of water before each meal apparently does help one lose weight, though nobody claims that it’s a cure. The Economist reported on the study by Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech last month: “After three months the group that drank water before meals had lost about 7kg (15½lb) each, whereas those in the thirsty group lost only 5kg.” Even better, followup studies a year later show the effects to be long-lasting. **
I exercise every week and I drink a lot of water. Motivating myself to do the latter is pretty easy: heck I’d find it tougher to stop guzzling water. I guess I’m lucky: I find the idea of routinely drinking a can of soda with the equivalent of 9-10 teaspoons of sugar to be appalling. http://www.sugarstacks.com/
** ETA: Woops, it turns out that the study has been presented in conference but has not yet undergone peer review. Weight Loss & Diet Plans - Find healthy diet plans and helpful weight loss tools
Well, for one thing there are only 800 words for Cecil to write in, so unfortunately it is a frequent comment that his column does not cover a related aspect of any given topic. It’s possible if Cecil receives mail from folks asking about weight loss strategies which actually do work, Ed can talk him into doing a follow-up on this column.
Cecil does a disservice in this very superficial answer. He is either ignorant of, of chooses to ignore, the medical consensus that a the adipose tissue is an endocrine organ and that predisposition to obesity has significant genetic contribution in a gene-environment interaction and how more than just in-out is involved. Anyone interested in a more comprehensive answer should see this WebMD article.
A detailed review can be found here. Somewhere between 30-70% of the risk for obesity is genetic predisposition.
For most obesity is the result of having a genotype that puts them at some degree of predisposition, that may have been functional in our evolutionary past, and living in an obesogenic environment.
Once an individual is obese the endocrine system works hard to maintain the state and metabolism slows down as weight is lost. An obese individual who has lost weight usually gains weight back partly for that reason. I reviewed the science behind this in a past thread (with cites) here.
None of this is intended to make excuses for the obese to not try. It is however important to understand that it is not quite as simple of a circumstance as Cec makes it out to be. It is also important for the obese to have realistic goals, as the WebMD article continued:
One observation on set point. I have a friend who, for most of her life, weighed 100 lb. She used to be a dancer with the Canadian National Ballet. A great many of her contemporaries blew up like balloons after they stopped. Not her. Whatever she ate (and I saw her eat well), she stayed at 100lb. Then after a bout of food poisoning she lost 7 lb and, try as she might, she could not regain them. More recently she has had some mysterious illness (they are still trying to diagnose it) and has lost another 13 lb. She is now down to 80 lb and cannot gain. It seems to me there really is something to that set point theory. Her doctor now feels that any further weight loss would be dangerous. She suffers from high blood pressure that cannot be well controlled, no matter what meds she uses. She is in her early 70s.
Yeah, that’s somebody who isn’t very good at counting the calories. It’s fairly common. People eat a lot more than they think they do. I’ve known people who manage to eat entire meals without noticing - and swear blind that they didn’t.
And I’m glad he did, too. I’ve been shouted down on this message board when I dared - yes, dared - to suggest that one reason overweight people were overweight it because the average person can estimate or even count calories about as well as a dog.
I saw a person eat an entire Bloomin’ Onion by themselves once, and then picked my jaw up off the floor when they claimed it was only “200 calories” or so.
No doubt the average person is poor at estimating calories, but how does that fact cause overweight people to be overweight and lean people to be lean?
Is it your position that overweight people are overweight because they are poorer at calorie counting, or to phrase it differently, that lean people more consistently count calories and do it more accurately than average? Or what?
Yes people are terrible at consciously counting calories. But this is universal, both among the fat and the lean.
At the same time, it’s known that a small amount of over- or undereating leads to large weight changes over time.
If humans had strong conscious control over what they ate, then they would consistently fail to hit the target of 2,000 exactly. Therefore, we’d expect people’s weight to fluctuate wildly over weeks and months, as they make huge conscious misestimates. This does not in fact happen. So, if you believe that people generally maintain a stable weight range (whether skinny or fat, with no wild zooming in between), then you must believe that people have relatively little leeway to consciously control their appetite above and beyond signals of hunger and satiety. Hormonal regulation dominates.
Whatever you think of Gary Taubes’ conclusions, he’s right about one thing - popular reasoning about diet sucks, and research in this area stinks far worse than normal medical research.
A predisposition, if it exists, means that one should be very careful to avoid starting down the slope of getting obese in the first place. As YOU posted above:
Now any scientist knows that a predisposition is by no means a certainty, and depending upon the situation, it’s highly arguable if it’s even a “likely.” But let’s assume it’s a “likely.”
Your own cite above further states that Americans have a higher level of obesity than western and eastern Europeans, which for the most part are our genetic twins. It and many, many other easy to find stats also show that obesity levels are increasing in both America and Europe, of course leading one to question how that happens in the first place. Since it’s silly and ignorant to assume like some that genetics are somehow magically changing over the last 50-75 years, even with a genetic predisposition at play, behavior has to be a primary variable.
Genetic predisposition means some will gain weight faster and be much, much more tasked to try to keep steady, or lose weight.
So obviously part of avoiding being obese in the first place, and minimizing the damage from one’s genes, and helping to plan the best, workable strategy for weight loss, or as a fallback weight maintenance, is learning to count calories properly.
Furthermore, the 70-30% who have no genetic factors at play (your cite, again) really can only benefit from being smarter about what they eat.
My co-worker would have been horrified and not eaten that Bloomin’ Onion if they knew it contained more calories than I eat in a typical 24-hour period. Who sits down to eat a 1,500 calorie appetizer, knowing such? How could that possibly be defended by anyone?
If genetic predisposition is a significant factor, then planning around that is key to avoiding getting stuck at the higher weight in the first place.
And no, it’s not universal among the fat and the lean. Three studies which say so:
Lichtman S.W. et al. “Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.” New England Journal of Medicine 327 (1992): 1893-1898.
Livingstone, M.B. et al. “Markers of the validity of reported energy intake.” Journal of Nutrition 133 (2003): 895-920.
Subar, A.F. et al. “Using intake biomarkers to evaluate the extent of dietary misreporting in a large sample of adults: the OPEN study.” American Journal of Epidemiology 158 (2003): 1-13.
There are also studies which claim “fat and lean” are equally bad, such as:
Wansink, Brian and Chandon, Pierre. “Meal Size, Not Body Size, Explains Errors in Estimating the Calorie Content of Meals” Annals of Internal Medicine 145.5 (2006): 326-333.
The point being, you can’t make the statement that folks are equally bad because it’s not proven one way or the other, and there seem to be more papers and more research showing obese individuals have much more problem than normal-weight individuals.
Although I did not address it in my post, your sentence above is, I hope unconsciously, misleading. The rephrasing in the second part is not an accurate rephrasing of the first part, and they actually address two different subjects.
In short, an overweight person can be worse at calorie counting than a thin person, and yet not have that be the primary cause of their obesity. As I’ve explained and posted 3 cites supporting and 1 cite against.
Absolutely agreed that the best strategy is to prevent obesity on the first place. Absolutely disagreed that counting calories is an effective means of doing so.
Obesity most commonly begins in childhood. A frequent presentation is the early adiposity rebound. Parents counting and controlling calories of their preschoolers intake is an ineffective tool to prevent that, so ineffective that it is actually counterproductive. Instead the following control of their environment is what the evidence suggests:
I’d add in, on the basis of personal opinion and experience and limited data, slowing down eating and learning to identify satiety early, and avoiding using food as a power issue in a household (be an authoritative rather than authoritarian parent).
Note that what is not there is explicitly counting the calories.
Generally only dieting adolescents count calories. How do these calorie counting kids turn out?
You are right that our genes haven’t changed and that the European gene pool is not that much different than the American one. But children and young adults of the 50’s and 60’s were not counting calories more often than children and young adults are now (if anything the opposite is true). And Europeans do not count calories more often or more accurately than do Americans either. The environment has changed and interacts with those so predisposed. Parents can control their children’s environment locally, can teach their children how to control their own food environment, and we can work together to do it more societally (schools, etc.).
…and furthermore Cecil pointed out, “Today, one U.S. adult in three is obese, more than double the rate in 1980”. So an undue focus on genetics seems problematic. But you seem to get this:
Maybe. Have the thin gotten fatter since 1980? Or have only the obese become morbidly obese (say). If everybody has gained 20 lbs since 1980 (controlling for age and the like) then focusing on the genetic predispositions of 30% or whatever of the population is misguided.
Maybe. But lots has changed in the environment other than upbringing. Everybody eats out more, right? And it’s my perception that most processed food has a similar share of fat/sugar calories (though sometimes they will shift the ratio towards one or the other and call it “Healthy”).
Anyway I reiterate: I understand that weight-loss research is pretty flimsy. Weight Watchers for example makes a big deal about counting calories. But the evidence of their effectiveness is lacking: “Cheryl Gibson, from the University of Kansas School of Medicine, and colleagues found that over 90% of diet studies did not adequately and comprehensively describe their subjects, making them almost impossible to interpret accurately.” Scientific Evidence For Diets: Don't Believe Everything You Read -- ScienceDaily Not that I’m picking on one diet plan or the other: I’m just saying that the science is weak.
