E.M.H. has it exactly right: Non-compliance.

But one thing they’re not is accurate.

The article came out and said “incurable”, but that’s a lousy term to use. That’s actually contradicted by one of the very links the author uses:

Wing says that she agrees that physiological changes probably do occur that make permanent weight loss difficult, but she says the larger problem is environmental, and that people struggle to keep weight off because they are surrounded by food, inundated with food messages and constantly presented with opportunities to eat. “We live in an environment with food cues all the time,” Wing says. “We’ve taught ourselves over the years that one of the ways to reward yourself is with food. It’s hard to change the environment and the behavior.”

One of the cited sources contradicts the premise. The state of being fat is not “incurable”. It’s merely very, Very, VERY difficult to fix permanently.

The ultimate problem is not that biology absolutely dictates that a person cannot do anything about being fat. It’s that dieting has n incredibly high rate of failure. Like Neo here said: Recidivism. The crux of the problem is behavioral. We’re all too undisciplined to keep up with it, and we’re all too surrounded by pressures contrary to losing weight.

This is not to diminish the problem. The issue of discipline and pressures is indeed real and immense. I myself have troubles eating properly and exercising regularly, and I have a medical reason (diabetes) to be diligent about such control. Even with the added stick of health issues, I do find it painfully hard at times to do things right.

But that said, I also recognize that the fault is a conscious, behavioral one. So it’s one ultimately in my control, even though said control is difficult in the extreme at times. It’s not a real impossibility, it’s simply a practical difficulty, albeit a large one.

So, what’s the answer? I don’t know; again, I said I myself fail frequently. My point isn’t that there’s any answer, it’s that there’s an exaggeration and a misleading argument in the article. The only real point the author made is that being fat has in the past proven to be statistically incurable. But we know the reasons why this is so, and we know that it’s not actually biologically, physiologically incurable. We know that it’s simply an extremely high rate of failure to keep with the ongoing regimen. In short, in medical terms, the high rate of failure is due to noncompliance, and that’s not the same thing as being truly “incurable”.

As you mentioned, insulin is necessary for the glucose to get into the cells and it is also necessary for fat storage. I think you would agree that while the whole metabolic process involves more than just insulin (such as the bowel enzymes), insulin is the key (dominate) hormone in both the body’s successful use of energy and (over-)storage of fat.

Type 1 diabetics clearly must control insulin intake for good health since they are deficient in insulin. But what about folks on the other end of the spectrum, who are producing too much insulin? They need to try and control how much insulin is in their body as well.

So, the idea I was aiming at is that the control point needs to be regarding the body’s production of insulin, because it is such a dominate hormone.

Since proteins and fats don’t trigger insulin production, one way to bring insulin over-production under control (and potentially regain insulin sensitivity in cells which have become insulin resistant – such as in type 2 diabetics) is to make fats and proteins a larger percentage of your diet and reduce the carbs so less insulin production is triggered. The weight loss is really just a side effect of correcting the metabolic imbalance.

Key word there: comfortably. Took her a while to get traction, but once she did, she never looked back.

Calories counts energy per gram, which proteins and fats and carbs all yield. But ingested fats and proteins have no need for insulin to supply their metabolic values. 1 calorie raises the temp of 1 gram of water 1 degree C.

The reason your son counts carbs, as I do for the same reason, is to figure (indirectly) how much insulin to take to deal with the (polymerized sugar) carbohydrate load he’s fixing to eat.

Insulin is the key that allows entry of glucose (a sugar) into cells. Without insulin, such diabetics’ organs are starving in the midst of plenty; their blood sugars are high,high. Exercise has the same “key” effect; thus insulin-dependent diabetics will become hypoglycemic, indeed dangerously so, after substantial exercise if they have not lowered their insulin intake or boosted their blood sugar first.

My experience with losing weight and keeping it off has led me to this conclusion. 1) If you do not exercise, you will not maintain the weight loss. 2) Walking 2 miles a day will maintain the weight loss. Very simple.

While I weigh more than I did 20 years ago, I weigh less than I did in high school.

It strikes me as patently ridiculous that everyone’s body responds to foods in exactly the same way, so I think the key for most people is to consider where their ancestors came from and what they thrived on, food-wise. And of course, there are plenty of people who really do have a heavier build and there isn’t much they can do about it. However, I don’t buy for a moment that that is the case for virtually everyone. I disagree strongly that weight is destiny, as the article suggests.

I know too many people who have had long-term success at losing weight and mostly keeping it off to believe that there is nothing that can be done.

The summary version is that they don’t work for me in terms of weight loss, and they also make me ill. There are a lot of people like that. I’m firmly convinced that people’s heredity and physiology are different, and although a certain percentage do well on those diets many many don’t at all.

See this for my story.