Interesting discussion on Obesity

Found here [read the article talking about some recent happenings from war to destruction of United States infrastructure}

 Beryl of Oyl

February 17, 2023 at 10:58 am #

Really helpful advice, to someone suffering from a metabolic disorder that science hasn’t gotten around to addressing because for one thing, it interfered with the politicized dietary advice they have been pushing for decades.

People did not just up and decide to start stuffing themselves silly to the point where they were morbidly obese.

People tell me it is a simple matter of calories consumed versus calories expended.

Okay, since a calorie is a thermal unit, here’s an analogy from my own home.

A few years back, I quit getting heat from my radiators. I had electricity, I had the gas turned on, I had plenty of hot water, but the boiler wasn’t doing its job.

As it turned out, there was a faulty thermocouple.

So, “calories” in, but nothing expended.

What is the faulty “thermocouple” in these peoples’ metabolisms?

Do not forget, back in the 1980s bariatric ‘science’ was telling people that it made a difference what ‘kind’ of calorie you ate.

Yes, they were really saying that.

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Rowdypiglet

February 17, 2023 at 12:06 pm #

Beryl, the fact that “experts” have completely contradicted their previous advice every few years for the last thirty years or so tells me that they have no idea and are just making it up.

A few of my own observations:

– My niece, a 90 pound woman, has always eaten twice the amount of anyone else in our family. When we’d all finished at the dinner table, she’d eat everything that was left. A while back, I bumped into her at a mini mall, where she was walking along with a large ice cream cone in one hand. She eats all day, mostly high calorie food.

– I, on the other hand, kept my weight at 115 pounds for years by eating nothing but lunch – a large salad, with sliced hard boiled eggs and cut up grilled chicken. I was hungry all the time, and my stomach growled so loudly that I disturbed my co-workers. Eventually I gave up and let my weight rise to 135, but have to watch every bite to keep it there.

– Some people seem to have a (low) set point that they remain at no matter what they eat.

– Other people have a set point too, but it’s too high. You can get below that set point by starving yourself but your body makes a concerted effort to get back up to it once again – which is why I have to starve for a week to get rid of the 7 pounds I put on if I eat out once at the local diner.

I don’t think we understand metabolism at all. I suspect that all the junk we put into food plays a role, and it’s hard to avoid because it’s at every level of production.

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Beryl of Oyl

February 17, 2023 at 2:26 pm #

I suspect that there is some idea what is causing the sharp increase in the number of people with faulty metabolisms, and they don’t want to go there.

I suspect that is true of the sharp increase of people with autism too.

If you go to a hospital, even with “cadillac” insurance, they will offer you treatment for the things they know how to treat, and blame you for presenting with something they don’t understand.

I suspect that there is something wrong with the food as well, and no it isn’t sugar. When they start blaming sugar and then name foods that do not contain sugar, such as soda, that tells me that they are trying to cover something up.

For the record, I am overweight, but nowhere near obese. I have watched too many people battle obesity and fail, to believe anymore that it’s as simple as cutting out snacks and smaller portions.

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tahoe1780

February 17, 2023 at 12:17 pm #

Dr. Michael Eades (Protein Power) has a free weekly letter called The Arrow. This week’s discusses the two competing theories of weight gain. Excellent.

From the article: “on a gram/Calorie basis, carbohydrates are more than twice as heavy as fat. In other words, you can get over twice as many Calories from a given weight of fat than you can from the same weight of carbs.

In other words, you can eat less (mass) while keeping the caloric intake the same. So you don’t have to starve.

Which is one of the reasons low-carb diets work so well.”

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Beryl of Oyl

February 17, 2023 at 3:02 pm #

It’s probably the reason some of the refugees showing up here after World War II managed to be fat, when they really didn’t have enough food and had to scrounge for whatever they could get.

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mrs_saj

February 17, 2023 at 9:46 pm #

One thing that has surprised me in some of the current literature is that it is possible to be obese and malnourished at the same time. Today it is largely found in poor people.

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These commenters are right, there's something wrong with the metabolism of fat people. I watched more of the Japanese family videos, and the amount of food this family eats is far more than my own household. She does some light walking and the kids move around when they play but they eat desserts and fried foods on the regular but paired with a lot of variety of fruits and vegetables and they aren't fat. The food does appear to be better quality but with the amount of sugar, meat and more, their daily intake compared to their weight is mind-blowing. Her easy and happy relationship with food is to be envied. They are a wealthy family from what I can tell but I am not sure if they are wealthy to an average Japanese person or just to a poor American like me. 

This of course makes them able afford all the food they want with ease. This thin family sat around a table, all scarfing down snacks on one vacation. Japanese food looks of far higher quality. They do have some snack foods like potato chips and oddly a far wider variety of ice cream and of course noodles, but there were more vegetables to buy from pumpkins, yams to ones I didn't even recognize like perilla leaves. The housewife in the videos sits down to coffee and a rich dessert during the afternoon, maybe she just does this for the videos, but it's a lot of desserts and desserts after dinner are common too. I had strange thoughts thinking about someone able to sit down and eat a sweet without worries and guilt. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, I can take or leave it but it was strange to think the only sweets I have had this entire month was a macademia nut picked out of a cookie and an eagerly anticipated Clio Yogurt Bar [9 grams of sugar] I bought at this local specialty yuppie grocery that carries the vegan seitan patties I like made out of parsnips, coffee, and gluten. 

I wrote on a comment on another post here today, about noticing since I moved to this wealthier community and used to be around richer people prior to Covid, that I noticed for many of the thin rich people it wasn't scarcity making them thin but abundance. They had endless variety of foods in their homes, they did eat some sweets including pies and cakes, and stews. They weren't starving themselves to be thin in other words. This doesn't mean I think thin people are pigging out all day, obviously many are busy, some miss meals, but just it seems to be easier to be thin, if you live in abundance rather than scarcity. 

American food has problems, probably destruction of the biome is part of the problem for many fat Americans. Chemical food in other words doesn't help human health. Part of the comment about food scarcity was my thinking back to my time in Chicago and how I got fatter and fatter when there was not enough money for regular food.

 I fear severe diets and food insecurity bringing weight gain back. One reason I stopped running after the diets is because all they did was sink my metabolism and give me unbearable hunger.  This is one reason the traditional answers are failing, telling people to stop eating, isn't going to fix obesity. The poor food quality and chemical food is making for so called "faulty metabolisms". One commenter wrote too, that the fat acceptance movement was created for denial as to what was happening to people's health and with the sharp increases in obesity. I agree with that and used to write articles wondering why there was the messaging that ignored the real reasons why everyone was getting so much fatter. It's far more than overeating causing the problem. 

My weight remains stable for now --509 was last weigh-in, but these are all things I think about.  All these years I believe they have failed to deal with obesity in any honest way. There are some who get snippets of the truth, but I guess it's like Covid, do they really want to cure it or just profit of it without any real solutions that end the pain and suffering? I think people are catching on too, that something is really wrong out there.