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Modern obesity: less to do with how much you eat?

G

Gonad the Barbarian

Lifer
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35315651/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition//

It's not just about calories in versus calories out.

If that were all it took to lose weight — eating a little less and exercising a little more — then weight loss would be as simple as grade-school math: Subtract Y from Z and end up with X.

But if you've ever followed a diet program and achieved less than your desired result, you probably came away feeling frustrated, depressed, and maybe a bit guilty. What did I do wrong?
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Instead of X, it's XXL.

Why?

Because there's probably more at work here than just calories in/calories out. More and more research is indicating that America's obesity crisis can't be blamed entirely on too much fast food and too little exercise. (Or on these seven habits of highly obese people.) A third factor may be in play: a class of natural and synthetic chemicals known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), or as researchers have begun to call them, obesogens.
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This is the beginning of a decent three page article on our modern diet and what may be contributing to increasing fat gain and declining health in our society.
 
I skimmed it. I'm gonna throw this out there.

My diet is far from "clean". I eat almost exclusively processed food. I don't eat anything organic. I eat burgers or something with ground beef in it probably 3-5 days a week. Even when I'm cutting weight, I still eat fast food, about once a week or so. According to all the tips in that article - I should be flooded with these "obesegens".

And yet...the simple calories in/calories out formula works for me EVERY time, practically to a T. I don't even do exact measurements anymore - rough estimations that put me within 100-200 calories of the accurate number in all likelihood - calories in/calories out still works as expected.

I'm not saying I have the best diet. I'm sure I don't get all the micro nutrients I should. I know I don't get as much fiber as I should. However, the point I'm trying to make, is this sounds like just another excuse for the average American fatty.

Eat less, you'll lose weight.
 
The NYT reported on a similar study via a much better article a couple weeks back. The mainstream media articles essentially go for shock value by making the claim that the first law of thermodynamics doesn't hold for a special class of particles that go straight to your thighs! This is essentially stating that weight gain is caused by evil wizards.

Of course the research doesn't support those claims. Thermodynamics always wins. Some papers leap to unfounded conclusions that magic is causing weight gain because they don't control their subjects well enough. Michael Pollen has a series of quotes from nutritional scientists in his book In Defense of Food stating that they have no faith in their own field because there are zero studies that properly control every relevant variable.

The NYT article I mentioned had basically the same headline as this MSNBC thing, but instead of blaming evil wizards it claimed that thermodynamics likes round numbers, so eating 2100 calories in a day instead of 2200 doesn't matter, as the universe will just round them both to 2000 before calculating the metabolic effects. The NYT article was, of course, absurdly wrong, and in that case it may have been mostly the fault of the newspaper reporter, not the scientists.

You can cheat a little bit in the accumulation = input - output equation, but only in the direction that makes you skinnier. In that case, you're using the seeming magic of bulimia nervosa or you've done something to shut down your digestive system's ability to metabolize nutrients. But I digress. This article is about evil wizards, not angsty teenagers with image problems.
 
Interesting article.

The public has been advised recently to avoid chemicals such as BPA and pesticides on produce to lower the risk of cancer and diseases, but this is the first I've heard that such chemicals can contribute to obesity.

Obviously it makes sense to choose more natural, less processed foods anyways, but there is an interesting point here with soy-fed chicken (and soy in general) contributing to excess estrogen levels and increased preponderance for obesity. I guess this is more evidence to suggest that organic produce really is worth the additional cost.

I already knew about HFCS being bad for your health so I avoid it as much as possible (it's less prevalent in foods sold in Canada anyways, IIRC).

One major oversight of this article though, is that total caloric consumption has increased a lot (30%?) over the last 30 years, and obesity rates are almost perfectly correlated. I recall SociallyChallenged posted something about that a few months ago. I'm still inclined to favour the "calories in/calories out" approach for weight control.
 
Deeko said:
I skimmed it. I'm gonna throw this out there.

My diet is far from "clean". I eat almost exclusively processed food. I don't eat anything organic. I eat burgers or something with ground beef in it probably 3-5 days a week. Even when I'm cutting weight, I still eat fast food, about once a week or so. According to all the tips in that article - I should be flooded with these "obesegens".

And yet...the simple calories in/calories out formula works for me EVERY time, practically to a T. I don't even do exact measurements anymore - rough estimations that put me within 100-200 calories of the accurate number in all likelihood - calories in/calories out still works as expected.

I'm not saying I have the best diet. I'm sure I don't get all the micro nutrients I should. I know I don't get as much fiber as I should. However, the point I'm trying to make, is this sounds like just another excuse for the average American fatty.

Eat less, you'll lose weight.
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Beat me to it. This whole "obesogen" thing is sketchy to me. I'm inclined to go with the calories in/calories out approach.

Having said that, I'm sure it's probably best to go for a "cleaner" diet just to cut down on the amount of manufactured chemicals you ingest. But no matter how vigilant you are, we all eat some processed food, so we all ingest some of those chemicals, at least occasionally.
 
But if you've ever followed a diet program and achieved less than your desired result, you probably came away feeling frustrated, depressed, and maybe a bit guilty. What did I do wrong?
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I'd like to add this, from the article summary.

If this happens, well, you probably cheated or didn't do it right. You might not have realized it. Maybe you forgot to add that glass of OJ. Maybe you thought you were eating 6oz of chicken when it was actually 10oz. Maybe you didn't realize you need to add your mayo, salad dressing, or other condiments. Maybe you didn't look up how many calories were in that meal from a restaurant, so you estimated - and were likely WAY low. One way or another, most people generally ingest a lot more calories than they think they do.
 
I'm eating a steady diet of poptarts, moonpies, and maruchan noodles atm (not that I'm claiming this is healthy) with an occasional trip to a buffet and I'm 5'5 130 pounds; I do watch the total number of calories I'm taking in though. At one point I was fat (215 lbs), but I lost it while having untreated hypothyroidism (one of those things that makes you fat no matter what)...

I've yet to see someone that followed calorie in < calorie out and was fat. It's always well I eat kind of right (while cheating just a little (little and kind of right always vaguely defined)) but such and such just keeps me from losing weight!
 
darkxshade said:
The article is such BS... trying to justify with excuses. So what, only Americans have these "obesogens"?
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No, but we probably have more of them compared to our EU/CA brethren. Food Inc movie makes a great point about corn subsidy in US and how it makes junk food cheap and loaded with HFCS at the same time. Everybody always asks how we can solve obesity problem, and that's where we should start, end the stupid corn subsidy.
 
fleshconsumed said:
No, but we probably have more of them compared to our EU/CA brethren. Food Inc movie makes a great point about corn subsidy in US and how it makes junk food cheap and loaded with HFCS at the same time. Everybody always asks how we can solve obesity problem, and that's where we should start, end the stupid corn subsidy.
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Or just eat less.
 
fleshconsumed said:
No, but we probably have more of them compared to our EU/CA brethren. Food Inc movie makes a great point about corn subsidy in US and how it makes junk food cheap and loaded with HFCS at the same time. Everybody always asks how we can solve obesity problem, and that's where we should start, end the stupid corn subsidy.
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:thumbsup:

Added bonus: By ending the subsidy, you stop harming foreign corn producers (such as those in Mexico) who end up out of work and have to seek it elsewhere. This would have a measurable impact on the illegal immigration problem.
 
Yet another excuse form the "medical" community for fatties and to discount the years of pain and or eating sacrifice required many do put in and remain thin. This is to cater to the fat housewife with her water bottle I see everyday walking with her girlfriends thinking she's doing something. You can't lie to me I weighed 320. Been there done that. I have 4 million excuses logged. whoops 4 million and one now why I just can't get out there today for a high intensity workout.

Backache
lack of sleep
tired
headache
knees hurt
no time
busy
legs hurt
I drank too much
raining
windy
too hot
too cold
lactose build up
sick..............


well you get the idea i could go on forever I'm an expert at excuses as we all are.
 
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I eat fastfood probably 5-10 times a week, easily. Yet I'm far from overweight, and can drop 10 pounds in a month while still eating that fastfood.

Fuck the excuses.
 
Depends how old you are. As you age your metabolism slows. As you age you lose muscle mass. These two thing will add fat if you don't counter them by either lowering intake or burning off 1200-1500 cal a day via exercise. But bottom line is you can't be fat if you take in less than or equal to expended. Physical impossibility. How you get there is up to you.
 
Zebo said:
Depends how old you are. As you age your metabolism slows. As you age you lose muscle mass. These two thing will add fat if you don't counter them by either lowering intake or burning off 1200-1500 cal a day via exercise. But bottom line is you can't be fat if you take in less than or equal to expended. Physical impossibility. How you get there is up to you.
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Your BMR does lower as you age, but not THAT much. I just entered my stats into a calculator for my age (25) and for 70 - it was a difference of 300 calories. And your muscle will atrophy, but you can significantly slow that atrophy by lifting, and you can even gain muscle if you weren't trained beforehand. There are 65 year old 180lb men at my gym that can deadlift over 500lbs.
 
McWatt said:
The NYT reported on a similar study via a much better article a couple weeks back. The mainstream media articles essentially go for shock value by making the claim that the first law of thermodynamics doesn't hold for a special class of particles that go straight to your thighs! This is essentially stating that weight gain is caused by evil wizards.

Of course the research doesn't support those claims. Thermodynamics always wins. Some papers leap to unfounded conclusions that magic is causing weight gain because they don't control their subjects well enough. Michael Pollen has a series of quotes from nutritional scientists in his book In Defense of Food stating that they have no faith in their own field because there are zero studies that properly control every relevant variable.

The NYT article I mentioned had basically the same headline as this MSNBC thing, but instead of blaming evil wizards it claimed that thermodynamics likes round numbers, so eating 2100 calories in a day instead of 2200 doesn't matter, as the universe will just round them both to 2000 before calculating the metabolic effects. The NYT article was, of course, absurdly wrong, and in that case it may have been mostly the fault of the newspaper reporter, not the scientists.

You can cheat a little bit in the accumulation = input - output equation, but only in the direction that makes you skinnier. In that case, you're using the seeming magic of bulimia nervosa or you've done something to shut down your digestive system's ability to metabolize nutrients. But I digress. This article is about evil wizards, not angsty teenagers with image problems.
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Excellent summation. I wish I could be more diplomatic like you but it pisses me off knowing what I put in only to have it discounted. Happens all the time in RL too. The old "thyriod" BS or Zebo you have "genetics" blah blah blah. Can't violate physical laws of universe.
 
This isn't the best written article, but the underlying ideas are actually pretty accurate. Some key things to mention:

1. The laws of thermodynamics are NOT being violated.
2. However, calories in vs. calories out is much more complicated than most people expect.

Remember, when you are tracking calories, you are just ESTIMATING. Calories in and calories out are not independent variables and they are not magically consistent values through all conditions; how many calories you absorb from a certain food or expend from a certain activity will vary depending on the person and the situation; what happens with the calories in your body - where/how they are stored, where they are mobilized from - will vary depending on the person and the situation; and not all calories are created equal - fat, protein and carbs are all handled very differently by the body. There are just SOME of the issues that make calorie tracking tricky. If anything, we should be amazed that it is still an excellent tool that does work for many people in an effort to lose or gain weight.

There are a bunch of people on here who love to babble about staying skinny despite eating massive amounts of fast food. This is called anecdotal evidence and is meaningless. Just look around you: for every person lucky enough to stay skinny despite a crappy diet, there are many more who ended up obese. There are also many people here who seem to think that the obesity epidemic is purely the result of people being "weak willed" and allowing themselves to eat too much and exercise too little. This is a fine theory, until you look at the data: Obesity rates absolutely skyrocketed in the 80's. Do you really believe that the entire nation magically lost all will power in the 80's? It isn't like we are talking about a few fat guys here and there. We are taking about one third of an entire country suddenly getting shockingly fat in a VERY short period of time. If that isn't evidence of external factors at play, I don't know what is.

So what are these external factors? I have no idea. This article suggests a few of theories, Good Calories, Bad Calories suggests some others, and The Omnivore's Dilemma suggests some more. Chances are that something IS screwing with our hormones. No one would argue that a growing child or pregnant woman gains weight because of hormonal changes. Sure, they eat more calories than they burn, but they don't do that because of a weak will, but because of hormonal influence. And there is plenty of evidence that food (and the various chemicals now in our food) can affect our hormones. Therefore, it is only natural to assume that something in the environment is making people MUCH more susceptible to obesity. Maybe it screws up our processes of hunger management, fat storage, fat mobilization, and/or energy levels. So even though we may not be inherently any more "weak willed" than people 30 years ago, something in our diet today is making the average person fat anyway. In fact, to stay health today, you need to have a STRONGER will than the average person back in the day.
 
You go running everyday with someone like InflatableBuddha everyday I don't care what you eat you won't be fat. You could eat steaks all day and wash them down with Snikers bars and icecream. Like I said I was 320 and still eat what I want however somehow miraculously , or not, I got down to 240-245. Hormones my .... BTW - How you make a Hormone - Don't pay her.😛)
 
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brikis98 said:
There are a bunch of people on here who love to babble about staying skinny despite eating massive amounts of fast food. This is called anecdotal evidence and is meaningless.
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No, it means we know what portion control, moderation, and work are.

We can east FF whenever we want to, as long as we account for the calories in our diets and don't order a large BigMac value meal with a Coke.
 
Zebo said:
You go running everyday with someone like InflatableBuddha everyday I don't care what you eat you won't be fat. You could eat steaks all day and wash them down with Snikers bars and icecream. Like I said I was 320 and still eat what I want however somehow miraculously , or not, I got down to 240-245. Hormones my .... BTW - How you make a Hormone - Don't pay her.😛)
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I just use my 😛 actually.

Hey, I mean I do exercise a lot and I'm sure I burn a lot of calories every week, but I still pay attention to my portions. On a few occasions I've continued to eat the same amount even when going into a taper (reducing mileage before a race) and I ended up gaining a few pounds 😱. I still have to roughly match my calories to my workload.

I eat lots of calories because that's what I need to sustain my training. If I didn't train, I could cut my caloric intake by like 2/3 and still have a good body weight.
 
BlackTigers said:
No, it means we know what portion control, moderation, and work are.
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Some people here monitor portions. Some don't and stay skinny anyway. Others get fat whether they do or not.

BlackTigers said:
We can east FF whenever we want to, as long as we account for the calories in our diets and don't order a large BigMac value meal with a Coke.
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And for some people, due to genetic and environmental differences, it is quite possible that eating fast food makes it very difficult for them to eat in "moderation". Perhaps by the mechanisms mentioned in the article above, fast food screws up their hunger levels or fat storage ability - and as a result, they end up eating a lot more. Yes, their caloric intake is higher than yours - but the cause is the interaction of the food they eat and their genetics and not just sloth or a weak will.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that it's ok to just sit back and let yourself get fat. People should put more effort into their health. But let's not hide the fact that there is a lot of compelling evidence indicating that external factors in our environment are making it SIGNIFICANTLY harder to stay thin. So if you aren't lucky enough to have good genetics keeping you thin, you'll need a very strong will (and understanding of diet) to stay healthy.
 
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