Can someone be obese without overeating?

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by CrowZer0, May 12, 2016.

  1. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    Of course a major part of it is genetic. We needed a study for that? xD

    It would be impossible to compare the results between sample groups unless the exact same diet was used. 10,000 calories of twinkies is not 10,000 calories of a well balanced diet including fruits/veggies/lean meats.

    Anything with health and fitness I've learned tends to be a mix of nature and nurture honestly, outstanding (and extremely rare) medical conditions aside. Diet and exercise is more than about just trying to look good or whatever, it very much is a personal journey learning about yourself and how you react as you push it. There's a thousand ways to lose weight beyond simple caloric restriction, and you can manipulate your metabolism to do different things depending on what kind of exercise you're doing as well.
     
  2. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    Man, I thought I was usually the cynical one?

    I like to think of it as a major RPG game, where we are playing as ourselves. All programmed, but it's up to us how we use it. Artificial Free Will. :cool:
     
  3. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    It's not that a major part of it is genetic, it's the fact that the principle explanatory factor of the twins' and adopted children's weight was the genetics. It didn't matter what variation of environment they saw was, they were more alike because of those genetics.

    I'm looking for citations for the original study but am having difficulty getting behind a paywall. I doubt they were given substantially different foods as it was within a prison, but I do know of a study measuring the reverse - where they gave obese people 600 calories of standardized liquid food, then found that despite their weight gains, they gained the weight back when fed ad libitum. I have no doubt that there are exceptional people out there who can keep the weight off, I just think that they're having to work ten times as hard to get the same results I do. I am a golden god.

    Environmental effects are an aspect of nurture. What if similar chemicals that are responsible for weird sex ratios is also responsible for obesity? What if there are viruses and bacteria that contribute to obesity (one fascinating hypothesis is that we have not won the infectious disease war, we have simply selected for nonlethal diseases)?
     
  4. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Haha, I just think we're kind of along for the ride. Then again, I don't think anyone would be upset about the idea that free will can be based on unconscious desires, so what the hell, maybe just wrap all that up into a module we call decision making.
     
  5. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I might be too stupid to comprehend what you're trying to get across with the twin study here. What I'm seeing is "genetics are a major factor regardless of environment" which is like stating the sky is blue and humans breath air. Are you trying to make a different point?

    To the second, that type of diet is called a "fad diet." People who follow them, or certain lifestyles, go right back to where they were when they stop that diet. This isn't new information in the health and fitness community (the competent H&F community). When you change your diet, and want to be successful, you don't get on a fad. You learn about macro nutrient ratios and what you need for your lifestyle, and change your food selection to benefit you (which often involves the addition of A LOT more vegetables, less fried food, and less sugar). You end up changing your dietary habits. If it doesn't become a habit you're not going to have success. The prison study honestly just sounds like "genetics play a role." Not everybody's body is the same. Also, if you can find what prisoners were more active and who was more sedentary, that would be good information to know as well.

    Effects of nurture are an aspect of environment. We can go in circles on this all day. Let's just agree it's both ^__^
     
  6. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Both the twin and adopted children studies show that genetics are THE factor. It doesn't matter what environment you place children in, largely they remain similar to their genetics.

    Also, seriously in all seriousness, I have valued our discussions over the years. :]

    No that's not exactly it - it's that whatever weight you start at before a diet is largely what you go back to, unless you are willing to be hungry all the time and/or really hack your metabolism. Motivation can be sustained in the short term, but you can't fight your physiology long term. I think the question is here "Why are fad diets that work fad diets?" People start out wanting to become thin. The diet works, yet they go back to their usual habits. Why? What urge are they satisfying? Think about if we were talking critters here, rats, mice, chimps. Anything but people. We let things get in the way when we talk about people. The illusion of conscious will.

    See I think activity levels and exercise are a function of diet. You feel good, well fed, you exercise. You feel awful and starving you don't. We'd say the same about any animal.

    Nurture encompasses environment but also things like womb environment, food purchases, etc., etc. What's clear is that it is less deterministic for weight than is genetics.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2016
  7. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter



    People don't much understand what "hunger" is. Many people confuse hunger with thirst. Also, what you eat decides on whether or not your hunger is satisfied. Eat a large fry from McDonalds and I guarantee you'll still be hungry even though you just consumed over 1,000 kCal. Eat five bell peppers (one of my favorite snacks as of late) and see if you have room for a damn sip of water. And that's maybe, MAYBE around 400 kCal. Have a craving for carbs? Ok. Eat some whole grains and three bell peppers. Eating like that isn't "satisfying" to most people because they don't eat like that out of habit. For me it's always taken about a month to transition to crave healthier foods instead of crap foods when moving from a crap diet. It's not about motivation as much as it is about discipline, and then it just becomes the normal routine.



    I couldn't maintain my current activity levels and work pace (I work in construction) with the diet I was on four months ago, because it was crap. I very much agree with your statement here. People like to say "a calorie is a calorie" but you're not going to run a marathon off of 10,000 calories of twinkies.



    Be careful with your words sir. "Less" gives the connotation to the ignorant that it isn't a significant factor. "Less" effective can still mean tremendously effective by most people's personal scale of measurement, but if they're looking for an excuse to not put in effort you might be giving it to them.

    Genetics mean everything. Maybe I'm different than most people but whenever I'm planning a program for weight loss, strength gain, muscle growth, or whatever, I take into account my genetics. I think because of this I often have a lot more success than most people. Genetics are generally only limiting and worth discussing in either reaching a pinnacle in health/fitness endeavors or significant health issues barring you from certain activities though (that's been my experience).

    I also enjoy our exchanges in discussion ^__^
     
  8. CrowZer0

    CrowZer0 Assume formlessness.

    I'm not denying the physiological urges to consume carbs, fats and proteins. I am denying the choices. For example having an urge for carbs doesn't have to be a Pizza, it can be plain rice, oats, boiled potatoes.

    I've gone long stints of my life on low carb, I know :)

    I used to have a huge junk food habit, pizzas, kebabs, burgers, ben n jerrys. I understand the urges, I don't have them anymore. I was never doubting the urges but the choices. If you have a sugar craving and are wanting icream, this can be satisfied with a banana/milk or yoghurt smoothie for example. The calorific and nutritional difference is huge.
     
  9. Dean Winchester

    Dean Winchester Valued Member

    The impact of dealing with a chronic illness shouldn't be ignored.

    It can turn your life upside down thus making it far easier to slip into poor eating habits.
     
  10. cloudz

    cloudz Valued Member

    I figure, if we can reflect on our actions and alter our decision making that's pretty much it right there. Our unconscious desires will out, so to speak. As long as we are conscious enough to observe, think about and alter our ways of thinking, being, feeling, behaving, acting etc.. Then we have pretty much exercised a form of free will. Taking into account of course that this does indeed actually produce changes in actions, behaviours etc.

    A fat person of 20 stone who in a relatively short space of time used their own willpower to reduce to say a healthy 12 stone has probably exercised their "free will" to a good degree.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2016
  11. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Yeah, see and my guess is that you have insanely good genetics working in your favor.

    I mean, I don't think it really matters, the fact is that it is enormously less important to the question of obesity. From the data I've seen, it seems like people who are prone to being metabolically broken and becoming obese are like that their entire lives. They will gain and lose weight differently than other people. As revealed in the Hirsch study, even if they do get back down to 120lbs, their metabolisms and appetite will be different than folks who never got obese in the first place. It's not something you can cure, only something you can manage and that we're only in the nascent stages of doing.

    Probably because you have really good genetics! Again, in studies of twins separated from birth, their weight was virtually identical. I don't think that we have as much control over our weight as we like to think and, especially in the case of metabolically broken people, have to take insane interventions to keep the weight off. I mean, bro, marines, boxing, construction. What works for you is really unlikely to work for everyone.
     
  12. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    So I wanted to talk a bit more about willpower, physiology, the reward value of food and the physiological consequences of calorie deficits.

    Have you ever realized you haven't eaten for a whole day and then you buy a slice of pizza? How did it taste? Pretty freakin' incredible I'll bet. Now imagine you've eaten seven slices and someone forces you to finish the eighth. Not so good anymore right? The reward value of food depends upon neuroendocrinology. Think about the difference between summer foods and wintry foods - the carbs of winter to combat depression, proteins in summer of BBQs. Mood, metabolism, psychology, fat deposition all kinds of human systems revolve around the neuroendocrine system.

    A 150 lb person who has never been obese will not be as tempted by the prospect of eating a full pizza as someone who is 150 lbs and has a history of obesity due to their decreased metabolism.

    Let's talk about the effects of caloric restriction: once I was living in Africa for a few months and I was scuba diving twice a day. Our diet consisted of one egg and one slice of toast at breakfast, one hot sandwich at lunch and one plate of fish, potatoes, whatever at dinner. I lost so much weight, I can't even tell you. I became irritable, forgetful, lethargic, dizzy. One dive I had a seizure underwater. I had cold intolerance to such an extent that I wore a sweater in Africa at noon. In the sun. Not kidding. My body began to digest muscles that I had long been cultivating. I fantasized daily about eating baby back ribs and bacon. For people who have been obese and are eating a diet that maintains them at a low weight, this is their experience.

    They did a study on conscientious objectors during world war 2 who volunteered to do a caloric restriction. They were given 1600 calories a day, about half of what they had been eating beforehand. They reported similar experiences to mine, but even more so. They instituted a buddy system so they could not sneak food. They became depressed. Attempted suicides and self mutilation occurred. Weird neurotic rituals with food happened. Absolutely zero sex drive and impotence were common. Because all of this stuff is related, all of these things are consequences of the neuroendocrine system.

    I guess what I'm really, really, really against is judging people based on their weight. It doesn't make them slovenly or slothful, it doesn't mean they're bad people. There's something systematic and environmental going on such that people's metabolisms are messed up. They're fighting a different battle, one that slim or slim prone people might not fully understand. It seems that the case is one similar to alcoholics; you might be thin, but you're still metabolically broken and have to fight your biology every step of the way. Human beings like to believe that they are above their biology, that if faced with an impostor cuckoo we would not feed it as lesser animals like birds do. But the truth of the matter is that we have physiological responses, emotions like anger, physical changes like sexual responses, increased appetite, etc., etc. to simple things like images on a screen even though we know that they are not real. So try to talk yourself out of your physiology and you'll find that you simply cannot.
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2016
  13. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I don't think your qualm with my point isn't over my genetics, or the genetics over people who are able to gain or lose weight quickly. The issue is another factor that hasn't been discussed yet, which is lifestyle choices. Most people are NOT very active physically in developed countries. Before I started strapping a pedometer on myself to measure my physical activity by step count, I thought I was a very active person. A very active person walks about 10,000 steps per day. Guess how many I was at when I first started? Maybe 3,000!

    Exercise is actually a pretty ineffective way to lose weight and maintain weight loss. It's like Aikido to Martial Arts . . . . it's an augment, not a solution. Learning to be active and doing more during the length of a day (parking in the furthest parking spot, going for a walk before bed or after meals, getting up every 15 minutes for a short walk, etc.) is what any person who has been on a major fat loss journey, lost the weight, and maintained the weight loss will tell you. They keep the weight off because they changed how they live their life and aren't sitting around as much. If they change their diet quickly they tend to lose weight quicker, but that's hard so most people make small changes over time.

    Of course everyone is going to vary, but the variance isn't 100-200 pounds over the normal weight for your given build.
     
  14. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    When you talk yourself out of your physiology you usually end up dead. People can do it, it's just not very beneficial : P.

    I think a lot of the attitude towards fat shaming comes from the mentality it often takes people to get fit and in shape and maintain it. Few people are emotionally mature past their own nose (myself included in that before I got injured) and the "stop being fat!" attitude becomes more of a defense mechanism. That's my opinion anyways.

    Nothing you're saying is untrue, although I feel there are some missing aspects to your logic and you hold your opinion strongly. I also don't think the things you're saying are as intense as you think they are, not for the normal guy. People who actually have medical issues, or certain body types (tall/lanky or short and stout) have easily identifiable difficulties in doing certain things with their body, but in general most people are pretty close to being the same. That's why a lot of what works for Bobby in Oklahoma will work for Latoya in South Florida.
     
  15. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Right, so at that point my question becomes what are those lifestyle choices based on? It doesn't tend to matter how you raise children, they resemble their genetic relatives. So is that a case of 'your lifestyle choices are genetic' or 'your weight is genetic'? My guess is that we'd see largely similar neuroendocrinological responses...

    Right, and my point is that there may be a biological difference between those who are able to make that weight loss journey and those who cannot or fail in the process.

    And yet there's basically no variance between twins that have been separated at birth.
     
  16. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    So there are these dragonflies that are suffering a major population loss because they keep laying their eggs on glass or roadsides. It turns out that the refraction or reflection of light from ponds resembles very closely that off of roads or glass and they wind up laying their eggs there. In the past, this was a perfectly adaptive response but in an altered ecological context it's a death trap. I think that's a large part of what we're seeing, although the fact that it's occurring to lab and zoo animals make me think that it's some ecological factor - hypotheses about infectious disease makes some sense, although the endocrine disruptor theory would better account for the cross species patterns.

    No, no, I get it!

    Except that's not what we've seen in overfeeding studies - certain people are predisposed towards becoming obese and screwing up their metabolisms forever while others simply increase their metabolism and their body temperature.
     
  17. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I think you're a health and fitness nihilist 0_0
     
  18. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I think the way we're viewing this conversation is different, which is why we're not finding agreeable grounds here.

    I'm looking at the whole question as "many people will make an excuse for being overweight, and self diagnose themselves with certain ailments" (people do this a lot, not just with their weight). Because of this, I acknowledge the small subset of people who do have medical or biological issues with being heavy, but I don't believe it's as significant as the numbers would be if you included everyone who cried wolf about a condition that's probably not there for them. I'm also including the human race in general with what I'm saying.

    You seem to be pinpointing people with actual biological/medical issues and talking from their point of view about the issue revolving around obesity.

    I just don't feel like we're having the same conversation through all of this.
     
  19. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Yeah, sorry if I'm being slow, it's been a long day in the bonsai garden and I'm worried my brain is cooked.

    Except that this isn't what the studies show - they reveal that only a small percentage of people are vulnerable to this sort of weight gain. Even when people are fed 10000 calories a day for 200 days it's the people who have a genetic history of obesity that become obese. Regardless of how you are raised, you have more in common with your biological relatives' weight than you do with your adoptive parents'. Regardless of what species you look at, whether they are in the wild, the lab or a zoo, they are all exhibiting increased obesity. How does this not point towards an ecological factor? What's the relationship between people making excuses for themselves and baboons becoming obese?
     
  20. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Dude, you should read the aliens thread, I advocated for exterminating all life we come in contact with 8D

    I'm still not sure if I was joking.
     

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