Diet wars
Of all the topics I habitually write about, the only posts that generate more flak than the ones on Israel are the ones on dieting and weight.
I’m not sure why that is. But I’ve observed a very marked tendency (and now I’m talking about people in general, not just on this blog) not only for strong disagreement on the mechanisms of overweight and the remedies that might be applied, but for highly disapproving moral judgments on overweight people.
And so I’m going to revisit part of a post I wrote last December on the subject (I also refer you to the comments on that thread, as well as the comments on this thread):
…]I]n a very narrow (pun intended) sense, fat people do take in more than they burn. But why? And how much is that? I know quite a few fat people who eat no more and are not less active than the thin people I know. I’ve lived with thin roommates who cannot put on weight no matter how much they eat, which is already quite a bit. I’ve lived with heavy roommates who eat 1200 calories a day and can barely lose weight.
Of course, there are fat people who eat a lot more than average. They’re the people you see featured on TV programs where you can watch them having twenty hamburgers at a sitting…Short of that type of true gorging situation, the subtleties of why people get fat…are not only subtle but also poorly understood (although we’re learning more all the time), complex, and powerful factors for most people in their own personal fat-thin equation.
I’ve already written about my own efforts in this direction. I’ll recap by saying I’m not fat. But, like so many women, I’d like to lose ten or fifteen pounds to look my best. But to lose that weight it takes cutting back to ridiculously low levels of food intake (and in case you’re going to suggest I go on a lo-carb or paleo or other diet of that type—I have, many times, and they don’t work for me, and I find them singularly unpleasant as well, and I’ve written about it before). I’ve also noticed that if I eat a lot I’m only about seven pounds or so heavier than if I eat very little. My range seems to be very narrow, because my body seems to defend a certain weight quite tenaciously. And that was even true when I was young. When I was a dancer, I had to keep my intake to around 1000 calories a day, day after day, despite intense exercise, to achieve anywhere near the requisite thinness.
If you want to read some interesting articles on current theories about weight gain and the “why” of it, take a look at this. Also see this:
“Like many other medical conditions, obesity is the result of an interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite and metabolism predispose to obesity under certain dietary conditions. The percentage of obesity that can be attributed to genetics varies widely, depending on the population examined, from 6% to 85%. As of 2006, more than 41 sites on the human genome have been linked to the development of obesity when a favorable environment is present….Numerous studies of laboratory rodents provide strong evidence that genetics plays an important role in obesity.”
And then there’s this.
As well as this:
“When the body needs food, rising levels of the hormone ghrelin, produced in the upper stomach and pancreas, signal the brain and trigger a desire to eat. At the end of a meal, specialized endocrine cells in the wall of the small intestine release other hormones (like cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide-1, and oxyntomodulin) that signal satiation. In obese individuals these signaling networks malfunctioned, Laferré¨re [an endocrinologist specializing in obestiy] knew, leaving them perpetually hungry.”
Perpetually hungry. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
And those are just a few random articles written for popular consumption. I could go on and on and on, and include the scientific literature as well. But I think the point is clear, which is that the “why” of obesity is not clear, for many if not most people suffering from it.
Maybe in the future, whenever I write about diet and weight, I should include a link to this post, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But I have little doubt that the disagreements will continue.
[ADDENDUM: To clarify another point, I’ll add an excerpt from a previous comment of mine:
[T]he combination of the abundance of food readily available (a long-held dream of mankind, and much preferable to intermittent involuntary starvation) combined with our modern conveniences such as cars (not having to labor so hard being another long-held dream of mankind) most definitely has contributed to the growth of overweight in this country and elsewhere. But nevertheless we are living a lot longer than we used to””in part, perhaps, because mild overweight (the more common kind) does not seem to have the deleterious effects many people think it does.]
Can we just have more dance posts? 🙂
Ben David: here you go, 91 of em.
I wonder whether whether the absence of regular mealtimes might also contribute. When Mom put dinner on the table at 5:30, people were hungry, ate what was served, and then pretty much stopped eating for the night. Now eating patterns are practically nonexistant and temptations are everywhere. Do people say, I’m hungry, or do they say, that looks good? Or maybe it’s all the fault of the microwave.
I’m not sure why that is.
Because food politics has been a huge thing for feminists… duh…
ANY social issue in which they can convince women they are nothing without feminists… and would be nothing without them… they take over, and then after so many years at sitting at the helm of it, we forget how it all came about…
a variation on the browder quote as to not knowing how we changed…
under eating disorders blamed on men…
you have bulemia, and anorexia
you also have Love the fatties movements
and, now you have page 3 girls being attacked by feminism so that the ugly feminists dont feel bad as the models are thin
ALL you have to do, is find and dip into the places where the people who discuss things have the ear of politicos (now or when they are students!)
Fat is a feminist issue: The anti-diet guide to permanent weight loss
http://www.amazon.com/Fat-feminist-issue-anti-diet-permanent/dp/0448227851
the curvy nerd asks
is dieting anti feminist?
http://thecurvynerd.com/2011/07/18/is-dieting-anti-feminist/
How I Reconciled My Diet With My Feminism
How can you be a fat-positive feminist who’s trying to losing weight?
http://www.alternet.org/story/141744/how_i_reconciled_my_diet_with_my_feminism
My attitude toward my fatness has largely been shaped by the feminist, fat-positive movement: I wasn’t going to make myself miserable trying to force my body into the mainstream image of ideal female beauty, and I was instead going to work on being as healthy as I could be
of course, after all that, you then have a crisis…
Feds Spend $1.5 Million to Study Why Lesbians Are Fat
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-spend-15-million-study-why-lesbians-are-fat
they are fat because to be thin is to be antifeminist!!!!
[edited for length]
expat: I wonder also about the common wisdom that Americans are fatter than they were when I was a child, or at least what that means and why.
Let me explain (and I haven’t had time to research the following, so if I do later on I might uncover errors I’m making)–
The average American self-reported weight has gone up somewhat. But has it gone up for the same heights and ages? And is some of the increase muscle, from weightlifting and being more athletic in general?
Plus, is it the average that’s gone up because of an increase in the number of obese people, but not for the general non-obese overweight population? To me, there do indeed seem to be more obese people now, but not necessarily more slightly overweight people.
I think there are more obese children, also.
My point is that as best I can recall of my parents and their friends when they were middle-aged, and adults in general at that time, the patterns were similar to today, except for the very obese (which now seem more numerous). Most middle-aged people were a bit hefty back then, and still are today. Most young people were slender, and still are today. The standards for overweight seemed to be less rigid, too, with more acceptance of the fact that people put on some weight as they aged—middle-age “spread.”
And middle-aged adults of that time, at least in the city, where less athletic and less muscular than they are now. It was very rare for someone of that age group to be especially fit, whereas you see it quite a bit now, although not the majority.
artfldgr: feminism certainly has taken a stand on this, but that’s not the phenomenon that I’m talking about.
On this blog and others, most of the argument is actually from men, and it’s about the cause of overweight and how best to lose weight—not about whether it’s a feminist issue, or whether women should accept their fatter bodies, or whether men or women are to blame or anything related to that. It’s about the physiology of overweight, basically, and how to best lose weight. That’s the argument I’m referring to.
My mother always blamed the advent of TV for the appearance of snacks in the evening.
And the omnipresent ads today for fast food as well as all the shows having to do with cooking and eating incredibly delicious looking food don’t help.
I wonder also about the common wisdom that Americans are fatter than they were when I was a child, or at least what that means and why.
I think part of that is due to the fact that many, if not most jobs do not have a large physical component to them any more.
Yes, there are still roofers who have to schlep a 50 lb box of shingles up on a roof, or deal with a roll of roofing, or what not. But by and large, office jobs require the ability to sit, maybe walk some stairs in a building that may also have an elevator. And that creates an impression in people’s minds.
Additionally, the body mass index (BMI) IMO is tuned such that people of normal weight are considered overweight, and people who are overweight are suddenly borderline obese. I know for my height, the upper end of the normal weight in the BMI is 170 lbs.
I’ve been that weight. I’m scrawny at that weight. And yet that’s the upper limit before you become “overweight” according to the BMI.
Luckily for us research goes on even in the times of sequester:
Feds Spend $1.5 Million to Study Why Lesbians Are Fat
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-spend-15-million-study-why-lesbians-are-fat
since the feminists are the ones that run this game, there really is no point in discussing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
anything we would say, is a nothing, as only their voices re heard… and men especially have no say in it..
now, since what they do is a formula… and i just showed you them creating medical problems, and health problems (As they did to become so strong selling cigs and alcohol to women… then turning most of them into desease bags… (more than 50%, and in my math classes i learned that is MOST))
so, if they apply the same game to everything…
they foment the ill… so they can blame who?
then, to ramp up the martyrdom syndrome…
they also make it special for women…
who ALWAYS have to work harder to do the same thing (which in a normal world would mean they are not as good!).
and so…
Women have to work HARDER than men to lose weight and get fit
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2267714/Its-harder-WOMEN-lose-weight-men.html
if this is true, why are they telling young women to get fat?
because they have to hurt people to manufacture ills… that way, they can do things like the red dress to reap money for what they did hurting women!!!!!!!
Women have to do about 20% more exercise to get the same benefits
And while exercise alone might be enough for men to lose weight, women also have to look at their diet to get the same results
Experts say body composition such as muscle mass and hormones to blame
[that last is a freaky thing to read if your not steeped in living in this crud… ie. it basically says, the fact your a woman is to blame!!! so dont be a woman! which is impossible. but the neurosis of delivering that to her, then telling her it was her mates and men of her society that did it, is a great way to power – but only if the victims are too stupid to not realize the best friends they ever have have been using them to hurt their own families so that the leaders families do well (if they have them)]
[edited for length]
“since the feminists are the ones that run this game, there really is no point in discussing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Then take heed and spotweld your keyboarding fingers to the nearest manhole cover.
I saw a documentary a long time ago about how heavy people consistently underestimate how much they are actually eating. It was backed up with actual demonstrations with plates of food. I think its weird that such an interested phenomena never gets any mention and I’ve never seen anything about it since, but it could explain a lot.
note that if i wait, the thread ends before i comment, and everyone is off to a new one…
And how much is that? I know quite a few fat people who eat no more and are not less active than the thin people I know. I’ve lived with thin roommates who cannot put on weight no matter how much they eat, which is already quite a bit. I’ve lived with heavy roommates who eat 1200 calories a day and can barely lose weight.
every stydy that has hooked up sensors to people have discovered that the thin people eat less, and move around more… and the fat people eat more and move aorund less.
all the bs around it has to do with the people unwilling to accvept the laws of physics and energy.
ie. a calorie is a unit of energy…
now, here is the funky thing they dont usually know.
when you lose weight, where do you lose it from?
the alimentary canal does not take anything FROM the body, so it cant eject material… urine does eject material, but not enough to make the weight disappear. shedding skin actually drops quite a bit, but the majority of your weight comes out through your nose… ie. carbon in a gas form, with nitrogen, and so on…
you lose your weight through the nose
they also found out fat peopel cheat more, and have less self control (which is why we dont like fat people. we dont like people who lack self control. afer all, how good you do in life is associated with how well you can control yourself)
also, some people who are overweight, eat in their sleep!!! they also tend to make poor food choices, as they eat empty calories, that then has their body craving food in hopes of getting nutrition next time
i can also show that recent studies have shown that women complain they do more work, but the studis show they are burning hundreds of calories less a day than their moms did…
[edited for length]
I also seem to remember fewer grotesquely obese people from my childhood and teens than I’ve seen around recently. I’ve also seen fewer of them overseas than in the U.S. Perhaps one reason for more of the really large people being around today is the relative decline of jobs requiring heavy physical labor that still pay a living wage. Work in the steel mill or the mine paid well, but burned a lot of calories. But many Americans still eat the same, or more, now while living a more sedentary lifestyle. Medical care has also improved for conditions that often contributed to early death, such as severe asthma. Unfortunately, one of the side effects from the meds is frequently massive weight gain.
Neo,
I remember my older family members (some of them) getting heavier as they aged, and it was just normal–certainly not a moral failure. Of course, I also remember when Junior clothing started at size 5 and women’s sizes started at 8. Middle-aged women were normal at size 12. Somehow all the attention on weight has changed our perceptions. But I still think the childhood obesity is related to the lack of regular mealtimes.
artfldgr: I’d be extremely curious to see those links on the studies with sensors. Are you not speaking of monitoring of activity levels by sensors, rather than monitoring of activity levels and eating levels by sensors?
I know that studies of fat people regularly indicate they have a lower activity level on average, but averages are not my point here, my point is about food intake and weight in the non-obese but overweight versus the thin, and especially about individual variation in all of that (and metabolism, setpoint, etc.). In other words, whatever anyone else says (including feminists) I am saying that while it certainly may indeed be true that on average thin people are more active than fat people—and in fact probably true that on average thin people eat less than fat people—it is not necessarily the case on an individual basis that thin person A eats less and is more active than overweight person B of the same height and age. In particular it is not necessarily true that for overweight person B to lose weight he or she could just eat what thin person A eats and exercise as much and would become thin, nor is his/her failure to do so a simple lack of willpower. It is also connected with at what point the body signals that person to eat because of a feeling perceived as hunger.
But as I said, I’m curious about those sensors. If you’re just talking about sensors that monitor activity level, I have little doubt that the results are that thin people are more active than fat people on average. But are you speaking of some sort of sensor that monitors how much people actually eat? Amounts eaten are usually by self-report in research, as far as I know, or by eating in totally controlled institutions (like hospitals, for instance, or people on liquid-calorie diets). Is there actually research that monitors what people eat in a more reliable way than self-reporting?
artfldgr: by the way, those differences in activity levels seem to involve rather modest activities, at least in this study. For example, thin people fidget more.
“note that if i wait, the thread ends before i comment, and everyone is off to a new one…”
Note that nobody really cares anymore.
I’m staying far away from this thread to prevent the femi-nazi hacker hordes from tracing my comments back to my laptop.
Dr. Alcabes has an article on weight here.
http://www.philipalcabes.com/tags/anti-obesity-campaign/
Obesity is one of those issues where large numbers of people ignore plain logic and the evidence of everyday experience in favor of a pleasing moralistic narrative. Most of us find it almost impossible not to eat when we’re hungry for prolonged periods, and when we’re not hungry the thought of eating isn’t usually very appealing. But we prefer to see fat people not as folks who receive different signals from their brains, but rather as folks who lack some essential quality of willpower the rest of us possess. And we want to believe this even though certain racial groups not otherwise notable for lack of self-restraint are obviously more prone to obesity than others. Heck, I can think of plenty of individual fat people who are incredibly disciplined — and plenty of thin people with seemingly no self control at all.
I’m not saying there’s no such thing as gluttony, but the conditions that create fat people are obviously complex. I keep being surprised by the eagerness of otherwise sensible people to insist that the obese have chosen their condition (with all its disadvantages) in the same way one might choose a life of crime.
Mead: very well put.
Obesity is one of those issues where large numbers of people ignore plain logic and the evidence of everyday experience in favor of a pleasing
moralisticexculpatory narrative.FIFY.
I was going to eschew further commentary, but on reading this one, I can’t help myself. It must be some hormone, or some setpoint for tolerating nonsense. Anyway, it’s not my fault. Pity me. I’m a poor helpless lamb.
… the adamantine-hard evidence for which would be …[over to you].
Which would be a great point — well, a sort of semi-valid point, anyway – if self control were a scalar instead of a tensor.
Let’s unpack this one, which is a beaut.
First, it invites us to believe that a life of crime reflects volition, and therefore on character, but that stuffing your face is just luck of the draw, kinda like hitting the inverse lottery, with no volitional aspect, much like, say, height. Is that correct? To paraphrase Descartes, “I stuff my face, therefore I am.”
Second, it implies that the obese must not have responsibility for being fat, because who would choose a condition with “all its disadvantages.” It then goes on to contrast the obese with those who “choose a life of crime,” yet a life of crime has one or two small but noticeable disadvantages, no?
People do stupid things all the time. Do they “receive different signals from their brains?” Never mind the last two elections (“my brain sent me a signal to vote for an unqualified Communist half breed, it’s not my fault”), although they constitute examples. Go to a casino, and watch people playing slot machines, learning the hard way that x^n decreases rapidly with n for values of x less than one. For that matter, how many people buy lottery tickets? Stupid? You bet (sorry). Do prostitutes “receive different signals from their brains?” How about drug addicts? Different signals again? Lifelong welfare recipients — dat ole debbil brain signal? Free will versus determinism, that hoary chestnut beloved of high school English teachers, is now no contest. Free will has been KO’ed.
‘
Fascinating. So gluttony exists? How would you define gluttony? How do you distinguish gluttons from people who they “receive different signals from their brains?” Seriously. I’m dying to know. I want an operational definition (i.e., a definition that specifies a method for making the distinction). I see a fat person waddling down the street — a glutton, or someone who they “receive different signals from their brains?” How can I/you tell?
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Occam’s Beard: The tone of your response indicates some emotional investment in this issue, so I’m not sure how fruitful it will be for me to expand on what I wrote. Besides, I’m not an expert in human appetite or metabolism. For me, the crucial facts are:
(1) Hunger can be an incredibly powerful urge (for good reason). When I’m hungry enough, I find it hard to concentrate on anything else, and my mood is thrown out of joint. I know I’m not alone in this, and I’m sure it’s possible to be much hungrier than I’ve ever been: in situations where people are actually starving, some of them take to eating things have no nutritional value, like wood or shoe leather. There are many documented cases of cannibalism, even of people eating their own children, just from sheer hunger.
(2) I don’t maintain my weight by some strenuous exercise of virtue (or even by strenuous exercise). I maintain it by doing more or less what my body wants me to do, most of the time.
Let me try another angle: some people are alcoholics. I accept that they are more tempted by alcohol than I am. I don’t think my failure to become an alcoholic is due to my laudable self-control. I think it’s because my experience of temptation is different from theirs. Why should weight/hunger be different? The problem is, most alcoholics find they have to deal with their condition by going cold turkey. I don’t know what we’re supposed to expect the obese to do.
But maybe the larger issue is that I don’t see any real payoff in a moralistic narrative relating to obesity (and probably this is where I would distinguish “obesity” from “life of crime”). You want to turn my argument around by replacing “moralistic” with “exculpatory,” but the sin is one I have trouble getting outraged about. I’m much more bothered by people who talk loudly on cell phones or leave shopping carts loose in parking lots. At the heart of it, this is what I really don’t understand: why are some people so angry at fat people? Is it really just a question of health care costs? ‘Cause that’s not the vibe I get.
Nice backhand ad hominem there, but I’ve never been overweight in my life, nor has anyone close to me been. My emotional investment is in fighting stupidity and irresponsibility, a full time job in view of the tsunami of each that has washed over our society.
Replace “hunger” with “sex” and then explain to me why it is not possible to control biological urges. If you come up with a good enough explanation I’ll run the mile down to the beach and nail some of the scantily clad beach bunnies that abound here in SoCal, something that God knows I want to do every time I’m down there.
For my part, I’m not. I hold fatties in low regard, because they obviously hold themselves in low regard, and who knows them better than they know themselves? I have to defer to their assessment of themselves.
But I’m not angry with them. I’m angry at people whining about the consequences of their own decisions, and blaming fate or hormones or the moon or whatever. They need to grow the !@#$% up, and either accept their obesity — which is a direct consequence of decisions they make daily – or do something about it. And by the latter, I mean something apart from whining about their victimhood.
In a broader context, I see this as the fundamental problem with our society: abdication of responsibility. To affirm the antecedent: if you make the decision, then you must accept the consequences (even if you don’t control and did not foresee every ramification of the original decision). (To turn it around, suppose in the course of a transaction you inadvertently bought a lottery ticket; would you refuse the money if you won? Of course not. If you accept unintended favorable consequences of your decisions, then you must also accept unintended unfavorable ones.) Conversely, to deny the consequent: if you don’t accept the consequences, then you shouldn’t get to make the decision. I feel the same resentment toward fat whiners as I do toward imprudent bankers who want bailouts. You made the decision — you take the consequences. Toward members of either group who accept the consequences of their decisions I feel no antagonism whatever. They are adults, a vanishing breed.
Occam’s Beard:
I think that—whatever the source of your emotional investment may be—it is clouding your judgment on this issue. And whether or not you say you feel anger at fat people—or, as you so nicely and no doubt unemotionally put it, “fatties”—your anger at them certainly appears to come across in your posts on the subject loud and clear.
To answer your question about resisting the sex drive versus resisting the hunger drive–although I have a deep respect for the strength of both, I think a bit of observation will tell you that the hunger drive is stronger in the short run for the individual. Of course, in the long run, we must reproduce as a species, and that gives us a strong sex drive, but in order to get that far we must live, which means we must eat regularly and in adequate quantities.
And eating must be done very often. In fact, our bodies cue us to eat every few hours, day after day, as long as we live. What’s more, if we don’t eat enough (if we are chronically underfed, which is the sensation many dieters feel in the physiological as well as the psychological sense) our bodies will constantly cue us to eat. Believe me when I say that when I eat 900 calories a day I feel chronic hunger, day after day after day, and it is most definitely physiological hunger.
Now, there are people who feel they must have sex several times a day, every day. But such people are not all that common, especially past the age of their teens or early twenties. And even for young people, over time in a relationship the sex drive will usually wane at least somewhat. It uniformly does so at least somewhat in middle aged and older people. The frequency of sex for married people, who are presumed to have ready access to an at least somewhat-willing partner, is extremely variable:
I challenge you to find a place on earth where 15 percent of people have not eaten in the last six months to a year and are still around to talk about it.
What’s more, the sexual urge waxes and wanes in the same person, and is notoriously susceptible to outside distractions and tensions—work, stress, fighting, Hunger is far more reliable.
Hunger is usually not as strong in older people, but they continue to want to eat or they will ultimately die. The same is not true of sex. Many people—not just older people—are celibate, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily.
No one, however, is telling anyone to stop having sex, unless they have taken a vow of celibacy—for example, Catholic priests. But when they do take such a vow, it is certainly possible to keep it—and although not easy, it would be a great deal easier to comply with, I assure you, than keeping a vow to never eat, or to endure chronic hunger.
Mead:
You are arguing against freewill. That is a faith-based argument. What boundaries does your faith respect?
There are certainly competing reasons for how we gain weight, but I’m not sure it starts off with a clear-cut decision to avoid self discipline. You can be in a situation where munching on some snacks is a social thing. There is probably not an immediate feedback (unless you weigh yourself every day). You may not realize a gain till you go clothes shopping and have to go up a size. But after you’ve purchased a couple of items, you have something to wear. You don’t really have to confront the gain till your next shopping trip. I think it becomes harder to reset your metabolism if your weight gains have been gradual. And then you have to consider people like Oprah. I can’t believe she spends he days in front of a TV munching chips and slurping cokes.
“I’ve never been overweight in my life, nor has anyone close to me been.”‘
So, Occam’s Beard has no personal experience whatsoever with what it’s like to try to lose weight, and yet is certain that he knows more about it than those who do. Funny how often ignorance works that way.
I didn’t think I was arguing against free will. I thought I was making the point that different people face very different conditions and pressures, and that not all choices are equally easy for everyone. That conclusion is the result of experience and observation, not faith. It seems to me much more “faith-based” to say that each of us has perfect control over all our actions.
thanks for not digging into me and pretending i am cassandra… i neither write, nor make up stuff, i just cant forget it once i read it, and i read very wide…
for neo who asked 🙂
Childhood obesity study uses wearable sensors
http://mobihealthnews.com/15103/childhood-obesity-study-uses-wearable-sensors/
Measurement of Human Daily Physical Activity
Journal: Obesity Research
Volume 11, Issue 1, pages 33—40, January 2003
and
Validation and Calibration of Physical Activity Monitors in Children
Volume 10, Issue 3, pages 150—157, March 2002
Multimodal Sensing for Pediatric Obesity
Applications
http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/urbansensing/papers/urbansense08_proceedings.pdf#page=27
In this paper, a wireless body area network comprised of heterogeneous sensors is developed for wearable health monitoring applications. The ultimate application space is in the context of pediatric obesity. The specific task examined herein is activity detection based on heart rate monitor and accelerometer data. Based on statistical analysis of experimental data for different key states (lying down, sitting, standing, walking and running), a multimodal detection strategy is proposed. The resulting detector can achieve 85-95% accuracy in state detection. It is observed that the accelerometer is more informative for the active states, while the heart rate monitor is more informative for the passive states.
[since its socially acceptable for women to lie constantly and dissimulate, research based on them tends to be more error prone… but because of pc stuff, you cant adapt to that… so the research gets screwed… (then the children and patients get screwed)]
Bodies in motion: monitoring daily activity and exercise with motion sensors in people with chronic pulmonary disease
America’s obesity epidemic: Measuring physical activity to promote an active lifestyle
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002822304009290
Assessment of physical activity in epidemiologic research: problems and prospects.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1424723/
More than 30 different methods have been used to assess physical activity. These methods can be grouped into seven major categories: calorimetry, job classification, survey procedures, physiological markers, behavioral observation, mechanical and electronic monitors, and dietary measures. No single instrument fulfills the criteria of being valid, reliable, and practical while not affecting behavior. The instruments that are very precise tend to be impractical on a population basis. Surveys are the most practical approach in large-scale studies, although little is known about their reliability and validity. Studies employing objective monitoring through heart rate, movement sensors, and doubly labeled water procedures appear promising, but are still experimental and costly. Despite the difficulty of measurement, relatively strong association has been found between physical activity and health, suggesting that, with improvements in assessment techniques, even stronger associations should be seen.
AND for fun…
Amnestic sleep-related eating disorder associated with zolpidem
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945702000072
Review of nocturnal sleep-related eating disorders
international journal of eating disorders
Volume 15, Issue 4, pages 343—356, May 1994
This review provides a historical background on sleep-related eating disorders, summarizes findings from a series of 38 adults, and presents a current classification. The “night–eating syndrome” was first reported in 1955; only nine reports on this syndrome appeared during the next 36 years, seven being single-case studies and two containing the objective monitoring of sleep, that is, polysomnography. In 1991 our sleep center reported on 19 cases, and in 1993 on 38 cases, diagnosed by polysomnography and clinical evaluations. Mean age was 39 years, mean duration of night–eating was 12 years, 66% were women, 68% had nightly binge eating, and 44% were overweight from night–eating. Sleepwalking was the predominant disorder responsible for night–eating; restless legs syndrome, obstructive sleep apnea, and various other conditions (including two cases of anorexia nervosa) were also identified. Cognitive-behavioral therapies were ineffective, but pharmacotherapy was very effective in controlling night–eating and inducing loss of excess weight, and often consisted of a dopaminergic agent taken with codeine at bedtime. Thus, sleep-related eating can be an occult but often treatable cause of obesity. Further research, utilizing polysomnography, is encouraged.
[edited for length]
I encountered this, thought you’d find it of interest, as it’s peripherally related to the diet and exercise issue —
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An academic piece, but comments on something I’ve noted — Today’s kids have lost their mobility. When I was 12 I could go 3-4 miles or so away on my bike, without much issue. Nowadays most kids don’t go around the block on their bikes. Everything is structured out the ass.
This places more stress on parents, since they have greatly increased time spent “shepherding” their kids.
It also affects the health levels of the kids, as the report notes, “research conducted in the United Kingdom suggests that children use more energy when they go places on their own, and when they engage in unstructured play activities” — that is: they don’t get fat. So not only are we making kids fatter by taking away PE in school, but we’re making sure they don’t get any exercise after, either. And this is IN ADDITION to the developmental issues that “independent mobility” — that is, “unstructured play” brings to children — again, from the report below: “Research indicates that as children lose the freedom to create, explore and gain mastery over their physical and social environments, they also lose opportunities that are significant in developing healthy lifestyles, social networks and environmental competence.”
Let go of the kids, parents! They are the descendants of thousands of generations of kids who played in a mileau filled with lions, tigers, and bears. They’re more resilient than you grasp.
http://www.academia.edu/1141904/Changing_Global_Childhoods_the_impact_on_childrens_independent_mobility
n.n.: of course Mead is not arguing against free will.
Nor is anyone else. No one is saying that it is not possible to starve oneself—even to death, actually—of your own free will. A decision to eat or not eat is always a decision.
But noting the failure of so many dieters to successfully and willingly put themselves in a state of semi-starvation for life does not mean the person taking note is saying dieters lack free will. Rather, we are pointing out the enormous strength of the drive to eat and to not be hungry, and the extreme difficulty of bucking that drive when one is hungry. What’s more, a person can resist the drive 99% of the time and yet succumb only 1% of the time and still be fat, or at least overweight.
On the other hand, the motivations for losing that 10 or 20 or 30 pounds (again, we are not talking about the morbidly obese here) are: vanity, plus rather weak or nonexistent data that it would be healthier to do so (in fact, as I pointed out earlier, much of the data indicates that it’s healthier to be slightly overweight).
In the face of that equation—one of the most powerful drives in human life, versus very weak reasons to exercise the ability to constantly say “no” in the face of it—it is not surprising that most people fail to exercise the sort of constant Draconian (and essentially life-denying) free will required.
The manaical, sometimes draconian opposition to obesity seems to be linked to the collective force for health care insurance (Obamacare in particular). “Fat persons will have complications such as Type II diabetes, degenerative joint disease in weight-bearing joints, hypertension and heart disease…which will cost us skinny folks.”
I meant ‘maniacal’.
And I appreciate Neo’s reasoned positions on this issue.
I know that studies of fat people regularly indicate they have a lower activity level on average, but averages are not my point here, my point is about food intake and weight in the non-obese but overweight versus the thin, and especially about individual variation in all of that (and metabolism, setpoint, etc.). In other words, whatever anyone else says (including feminists)
wow. too much for me to copy.. it would eat up what tiny space i have given the size of my comments… ha ha
ok.. i am in agreement with you..
i know what your looking for and i know you are hoping i have an answer… i do, but most wont like it.
lets put away the politics on feminists.. as my point was look how they sow misery and reap rewards from it…
but lets just look at biology… the machine..
what your looking for is the baseline…
the fundamentals underneath everything else.
they are actually well known, but are mostly ignored
(for those political and other reasons of ignorance)
but your first place to start is NOT BIOLOGY
its physics…
the calorie is a unit of energy (i know you know, but i have to be complete to frame my knowlege). as a unit of energy its convertible to other equivalents, and of course ties you to the physics of conservation of energy
now, in the prior post i pointed out you lose your weight through your nose… and so, measuring the conversion of oxygen to CO2 is a very very good measure of exactly what your converting!
this is how they can tell you how many calories in a blink or a kiss, or an orgasm… they measure the respiratory output.
now. again, putting aside men (who are reality based and are more effective at any action in the world) and women who are fantasy based, as an inner world which the outer world is kept out allows you to “dont dream it, be it” in ways that outside that would get you killed fast.
so when you see men wanting to lose weight, thye increase activity, and decrease input… when you see women wanting to lose weight, they go through a huge amount of psychological bs that depends on which woman, their ego, and what shopping around for excuses and reasons that suit her.
the confusion makes it big money for people who now earn their own, exhibit negatives liek deserase obesity etc, and will spend on easy fantasy fixes while ignoring the real deal from physics. why? because the hardest working multitasking people are actually the laziest work avoiding calorie saving for babies side of our complimentary sexual parings.
anyway…
physics and conservation of energy says that to move a 10 lb block costs the same energy for me to move it, as it does for you to move it. (the differences are minimal and related to my height being higher, so have to live to a higher potential to carry, and so on).
Calories burned during exercise is affected by body weight, intensity of workout, conditioning level and metabolism.
the only term that people dont understand well and women can dissimulate around is METABOLISM… but thats not true.. because its metabolism that sets the limits for intensity, and all that…
to use metabolism as an excuse what people are claiming is that individual humans are so diverse in their genetics some are very efficient at converting energy, and others are not and waste more.
however… you only have to examine feces to know that those with fast metabolisms are not throwing away food out their butts, and neither are slow metabolisms. you take in everything you eat.
here is a chart of such… from the source of the quote above
http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm
note despite the hat tip to metabolism, its not included in the chart, and its not deviating any of the values for the physics.
when we talk metabolism, we are talking the mitochondria of the cell which mostly is inherited from the mother… (rare from the sperm it does happen).
as we get older, we burn them out and we have less of them
this is why the elderly move slower… (one reason anyway, another is the types of muscles they have change proportions).
so metabolism is not efficiency, its how much energy you have
a person with a slow metabolism, moves slower and uses less energy because of it… they shy away from intense work outs because of low energy reserves…
so back to the physics.
Running, 5 mph (12 minute mile)
130 lbs – 472
155 lbs – 563
180 lbs – 654
205 lbs – 745
note that if they were nice and they put 100lbs and 200lbs
you might notice that the amount of calories burned is basically the amount of energy expended to move 205 lbs or the other weights a certain distance.
Walking 4.0 mph, very brisk
130 lbs – 295
155 lbs – 352
180 lbs – 409
205 lbs – 465
how do we know how many calories?
easy… we got our basic rule by measuring respiration
which is the rate of conversion of energy into useful work (see ATP)
the difference between running and walking is that in running both feet leave the ground… but if you include TIME… you will find that they get real close to each other. *but one suffers fewer health problems and can be done into your 90s.
note that there is no quotient for metabolism to adjust those amounts.
if you take out a pen and measure how much energy it takes to move a stone 1 mile up in the air… you will find its near these amounts.
so…
once you “get” this..
you realize that the game has to do with inputs vs outputs.
every input has to be burned as an output, or its converted to denser fats instead of circulating sugars. (your body will use new food first to save energy as conversion has a cost).
the amount of calories you can take in is a function of your weight (the mass you have to move), the rate (the speed in which you move the weight), and the energy you take in
take in 2000 calories, and burn 1500, you have an excess of 500
note that on average you have to run a mile in 12 minutes to dump that.
the rest of everything on top of it has to do with how acclimated we are to a portion, how large the portion is compared to others, how large the plate is, what color the plate is, whether we are with others or not (we tend to eat meat communally, candy alone!)
women used to not drink and smoke…
but after feminism, they drank…
a shot of 100 proof vodka is 130 calories….
but we will say your 130 lbs, and i am 230…
given the weight you carry, an the calories.
you have to run twice the difference to burn the same shot!!!!
but ideology says we are equal, so women drink shot for shot.
this ranges from indiana jones movies, to studies that show wives try to keep up with their husbands.
however, when i am very active… i can burn as much as 5000 calories in a day… an amount women would find completely exhausting for more than one day.
so if you think your equal and try to be equal in everything
and you dont make allowances fo ryour size…
then your going to get real fat in a mans world
as the things men like to eat are calorically dense for the purpose of doing a lot of physical work and moving a larger body weight.
now…
you try to cure fatness in women by telling them they are not equal!!!
see the problem? you cant stop the misery sowers from planting for the future to reap wealth from that misery.
the women will not accept that they are not equal
so they will not accept that they need smaller portions, and different foods. (like more plants than men).
feminists know that a man of my size will not be capable of moving and doing much if i cant get my calories in… and vegetarian meals wont allow me to get that calories in unless i spend half the day eating.
you only have to go to our natural states which we are not allowed to know about… to realize that as wanderers the women didnt wander far… they are targets for many reasons.. from animals, to mating… so they dont walk as much as the men… they also rely on men for protection, so htey dont need as many calories.
they also have a mindset to be lazier than the men, but be able to make it seem not, so that the men dont feel cheated and stop working.
they prefer to be in social clicks and make noise
as that scares away the kinds of animals that can prey on them
they constantly want to return back to their gathering places to see if new fruit (or products) have ripened, and they feel the need to show their mates how good they were at finding things whiel he was out. they demand hypergamous outcomes, or their biology turns them from their mates… their mates want thin but healthy as that survives birth the most and does not waste his efforts and love.
now all of that and a whole lot more is not on the table any more
women live in a zoo designed by women beause they didnt like living in reality that the men created at their behest.
they dont get that if they want to commit suicide
their men WILL help them and go down to extinction with them
just as if they want babies, and houses, that will happen too.
the point is that the negations of common sense wont let us see the physics, and thats beacuse women dont want to accept reality
or rather, the fem8nsits have taught them to refuse to accept reality
they cant live in it any more.. you can see this by how things are turning out, and birth rates, desease rates, outcomes for kids, and happiness
they gave up one person tellign them what to do, that loved them. and wanted them healthy and happy, for others who told them what to do that makes them sick, unhappy and then reaps rewards from that as the competition self immolates and dies out. (which you can read in the early progressive papers)
how can you fix this and so on?
you cant.. because you cant stop the leaders from dictating a reality that sounds great, gives women advantages, and tells them they are the same as what they want to be (because they have been made to hate themselves to the point of extinction).
if women want great diet results, throw away the womens mags
and pick up a mens fitness mag… the mens mag will tell you about the real world more, as men are required by women to be effective, or not mate and die out… so men dont want to be lied to to be happy… as that makes them less competent and their mates wont love them (And will leave after 5-7 years). while the women, demand to be sheilded from reality and be told tiny lies that they want… (it was even a hit song!)
for the most part, men know better that what they eat becomes them
so men want protein drinks and will lift weights and be called idiots by the women (who then go out with them and ignore the ones that dont for the msot part), because they get no reward from a social melieu, only from results.
you have to burn what you take in…
our sizes and weights mean more difference than metabolism which is really rate of energy conversion and changes if you exercise. which is why those that train, can do more for longer… but their caloric expense during the acts is pretty much the same and mostly by weight.
you only have to look to the differences in our physical make up to know who can take in more energy, carry more, and burn it faster.
but you will only find the truth in military scales, or mens places..
and its not just our size as a woman of equal weight does not come up equal… (she also falls apart faster and easier if used like a man)
PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES
http://library.enlisted.info/field-manuals/series-2/FM21_20/APPA.PDF
since the military and STEM cant afford to be delusional, there is much less of that bs there… and few women… where its easy to be delusional and play games, women flood the market. see sociological research, womens studies, etc
ok so here is the differences we are not allowed to acknowledge
(and to use this to make sane policy is acknowledging it!!!! so policy has to ignore it too)
so… no matter what.. men can go farther or faster and not quit as fast. translate that to a work day, women get tired faster and have a harder time gettiing through a mans day… they actually dont work harder, they work less hard but its harder for them, so they THINK they work harder. but as you can see, reality shows end up having to balance things, for when they are men against women, the men usually win the longer it takes and the more resources that are used.
given the way boxing juggles weights by lb to be fair. you can see that the army manual is being PC by using the world USUALLY.. a woman will use that word to imagine she is the exception. however, no woman has passed the army obtical course… they cant do it, despits rule changes…
and here is something that is important to weight and dieting.
so, women who over eat are at a double disadvantage because they are women, which of course gives feminists a way to hurt men by equalizing!
not only is her body wrong in distribution, to be equivalent and have the same needs and requirements, but the places where she stores fat are not places that increase survivability as it does in men…
not only can we go faster, farther, and with more power
we burn less energy than she does. so when i said above she has to double the distance to do the same caloric burning, in fact she can do a bit less as she wastes more energy doing it… but not enough to bridge the expense gap
so even if the muscles and fat and bones were the same, the mens hearts and such can give their muscles more oxygen, energy and carry away more CO2 so lactic acid does not build up…
want to know where women beat men?
which may help them hide, but wont help them survive or lose weight
i will leave heat out as we are different but comparible, which makes sense i a species whosemajorityu existence was wandering around before domestication of animals and noah savig them..
the rest is about how we pretend to eliminate or ignore these differences for women so that we can pretend they are the same…
their kill ratios will not be the same
even if they were exactly morphologically the same
being women, they would be targeted more
the inane desire for women to be men, means that they are always upset at the world because they are not men… (and are not allowed to be women!!!)
this effects everythig from weight exercise, mating, births, and more..
but dont tell them…
Artfldgr: thanks for the links.
As I thought, the sensors are for activity. As I wrote above:
As far as basal metabolism goes, actually there is plenty of evidence for differences. BMR accounts for (estimated) about 60% of caloric expenditure, and varies quite a bit among people (age is especially important, because it typically drops 2% per decade in adults, but also gender, fat vs. muscle body composition, exercise level, climate, etc.). It tends to be lowered when people significantly restrict food intake, one of the things that makes dieting difficult.
This is somewhat interesting. It’s different, of course, than the very rare sleep eating disorder you posted an article about, although it’s still not very common at all. But still interesting.
by thye way…
i should have also pointed out that you DO want to know on average…
if you spend money on average less you have more money
if you spend calories on average less, you will have more than someone else who on average spends more.
so averages are exactly what your talking about. 🙂
artfldgr: please re-read what I wrote.
My point is about average intake vs. calorie expenditure for an individual, of course. My point is not about averages for the overweight as a group versus averages for the thin as a group, as I explained above. In those groups, the thin group tends to be more physically active on average, as I said.
I will have to cut short your very long comment, but since I haven’t read it yet (and don’t have time to read it now) I’ll leave it up there till I do get around to it.
Thanks vanderluen for letting us know ur a nobody and what u want….
Us somebodies are asking and answering questions
(sotto voce) Nevertheless, it does move.
I wonder if the overheated disdain so many people seem to feel about “fatties” comes from survival instincts rooted in the days when food was scarce. Maybe on some primal level, overweight people are hated because they seem to be hogging (so to speak) too many resources and — having “stuffed their faces” with food that others might need — are seen as keeping resources away from those who don’t have protection against famine stored on their persons. That’s not a logical thought process in these modern days of over-abundance — but if this thread proves anything, it’s that logic can be hard to find in discussions of the reasons for overweight.
Occam’s Beard: ah yes, you are the persecuted Galileo, up against the non-scientific crazies here.
You have yet to respond to any of the facts I’ve presented, by the way. But I’m finished spending time on this subject with you; you are not engaging in rational argument.
By the way, re Galileo, please see my article on the subject:
Mrs Whatsit: somewhere I read that the judgments/hatred/moralism against fat people is one of the last vestiges of Puritanism.
yeah. go ahead cut it.. the connectedness has me relating too many things at once… (if you could see what i think you would realize thats small)
anyway…
your reference to basal metabolism can be explained easily by physics.. as i am pointing out (beyond that it has to do with lots of things like vision illusions, real hunger vs fake hunger, ego, social cues, desire to change others minds, laziness, etc)
[for meade i should point out that the record for not eating is over a year… go ahead, take a look… you can go without food for months… so the hunger most complain about is not the real hunger voice… its the ID..]
back to basal.
i read the paper and its wrong…
its not written by a person with physics knowledge
(dr david and i discuss this alot and you have been privy to some of it)
keep digging and you will find that the first thing on the list is never explained. what does FASTER metabolism MEAN? energy is energy, and so you can only use it more efficiently or less efficiently. if you used it less efficiently, you wold be less fat as it would take more energy to do the same.
IF you dig down the the chemistry that makes up the idea of metabolism (i said look at ATP), your not going to find a collection of 20 different types in humans that make up a efficiency of conversion landscape. are you?
what you have are a few cycles that depend on oxygen and sugars and so on.
C6H12O6 (s) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l) + heat ΔG = -2880 kJ per mole of C6H12O6
we ALL get he same energy conversion amount. its chemistry and physics. what is different is how many of these converters we have… if we exercise more often (even fidget) we have more, and we find work easier, and so do more. when we don’t exercise, the body pares down these things to save energy in divisions (as noted cell division is expensive), and copies.
so the more you have the more energy you can convert per unit time… you dont get more energy, you dont get less, you get rate change.
now that rate is then mediated by other rates…
look at the formula.. oxygen is key. so a higher respitory rate and oxygen presence will effect converstion rate.
do you think having twice as many cells that need more oxygen might diminish the amount of oxygen per unit use and so change the rate of using energy?
i tried to give you the STARTING point
once you start from that and know its all the same as its physics… then the rest is all thats built on top of it.
so.. now… if a fat person is using more oxygen, but cant breath more in… then what happens to converstion rate over time? its less. and when oxygen is not used, what is the method of creating energy? the ANEROBIC method…
so what you get is a person whose method of making energy is clipped by the lack of logistical supply. they tire out faster because of more lactic acid. also, they produce more lactic acid because they move more weight… they cant breath as much, as the fat clips breathing. so they are tired. the tired signal then sends a message to get more energy… the ONLY way the body can respond is to eat more…
for those who want to negate my facts by experience as they tried occam…
when i was 19, i was 6’3″ and 120 lbs..
when i was 30, i was 6’3″ and 280 lbs..
now i am 6’3″ and 225 lbs..
i can put it on and take it off…
because i ignore the first hungry voice…
you cant starve in a week… let alone a day
Longest Without Food in the World
it would take over two weeks for the average person to starve… and for the obese, it can take a whole lot longer. [the longest periods on record was during experiments by nazis on fat people in camps]
so the faster metabolism in genetics is bs… its never quantified, its always up top, and its the excuse you can use to defer everything else.
but lets move to the rest fast if i can.
gender… all the things as far as larger size, so moving it around would require more energy for that alone… then more work, and so on… go ask some lady friends and they wont point to the different mechanical and other make ups of men and women, they will just be non specific (Then say men are lucky)
the overweight line is basically telling you what i just said above, but its a fact that floats, not a summary term for an index of knowledge about how the machine works!!! if you know the stuff i brought up, then the line gender embodies a whole lot of physics and chemistry… if you dont, then its political.
body surface area has to do with size… but its also a proportion.. it just repeats taht if your fat you have more cells and so have a higher base of energy you need to maintain things at the same point… however, if you dont maintain things at the same point, the fatter person can do without for a lot longer than the thin… so they dont mention the maintain things at the same point quotient, do they?
body fat percentage is next.
all they are doing is breaking out the physiological differences between men and women, and not telling you!!!!!!!!!!!!! ie. every point is the point that comes from the differences… but they make them seem equal by not pointing out that women have more or less, and so on. even womens hip sizes relative to men changes the mechanical efficiency.
and NONE of this has anything yet to do with the illusions of vision, and mind that are even on top of all this physics.
the only point that they bring up that i dont is your metabolic rate… and the hormone… however they dont tell you how its expressed!!! ie. if you were a quadrapelegic and you had high metabolic rate, how would it show? higher body temperature, which is the quitient higher up that they dont tell you how or why it varies.
so your document at the link is great propaganda, but its missing the understanding behind it for you to make sense of it… and even if you had some of that understanding, the physics then would generally be missing from our educations
the questions below are even funnier if you know the game they are playing. the game is, make men and women equal when they arent by not pointing out why the differences cluster and so change outcomes unequally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did you know… That two people can have the same height and weight, but very different percentages of body fat?
why yes… because a WOMAN has a different percentage than a man, and both are people
so to a receptive female, its read that we have different biologists and all of us (my wife says that all the time..to which i point out modern medicine would not work if that was true… but she is picking up on the word game without unraveling it)
the variance of fat between two women of the same size and MORPHOLOGY (remember the ectomorphs etc?) will have near the same amount of fat….
so the point is to equalize people. which then fouls up understanding as the critical information is not there unless you learned it, as i did, from other places and can construct the cogent whole from the small hints.
others just fill in the blanks with rumor and so on. just as i complain about.
Did you know… That as we age, we tend to gain fat around our organs (“visceral fat”) that can’t be detected by measuring “skin folds” or even with a scale?
whoopie…we also loose mitochondria so its a wash… but thats why body max index is supposed to be done in water dunk tank.. not a caliper…
but the point is lost… as nothing else on the paper makes that hanging fact mean anything in terms of the paper. so you can construct what truth you want out of it and make it personal for you.
Did you know… That chances are that if you are losing weight, you will lose muscle as well as fat?
chance has nothing to do with it!!!!!!!!!! you dont accidently choose between starvation as a means to reach a goal temporariliy (which doesnt work), or lift weights to burn more, but not starve (which also doesnt work)
what works?
changing your lifestyle so that how you live and your biology matches… (now hows that for saying… dont be pc, and do the opposite of what they advise as far as diet. construct your live around your health)
the rest of the paper is work but useless..
so its nice you get a labor theory of value from effort
but you don’t get much as they are avoiding being in trouble for telling us the key differences which women cant change EVER.
so from a sociological view its great… it will make the target audience miserable… which will ahve them begging to the state to do something..
but from a health perspective… its not enough operable knowlege to work if you dont know the rest. its just hanging incomplete facts avoiding the key details that you need to apply them.
saying persons does not help a man or woman tune the information to their mechanical physical differences.
all the points they measure are fungible.
BMI changes based on what you do.
so a measure of it can tell you a bit about your curreent calorie level at base. but not really. because we dont actually lay in bed with pins on our noses measuring CO2 outputs… (but we can do that know with an oxygen sensor which people can wear relating average level of oxygen present to the rate of other things).
later when you lose weight, water, or change behavior, the machine adapts. so that is another thing we have not touched on. the adapting machine.
but physiologically its easy to work out whats going on, and why. but its a lot of details.
but if you knew logistics and that, you can break it down, and treat the body like a factory warehouse.
you can meaure it scurrent state and know X fat burns less calories, and X muscle more, and you have a storage of this, and that.
this is why jenny craig works..
and the card programs work.
they just give you an idiots way to track INPUT
and they distribute the input across time so that your not hungry. eventually you ACCLIMATE and can lose weight.
EVERYONE who checks into a hospital to diet loses weight. their metabolism difference magically disappears when they no longer can eat and not remember it.
by the way. too much fat, and it denies your brain as much functional oxygen, and so you think less than you do when think and healthy with capacity.. your brain uses as much as 20% of your energy…
your brain was not made to record the world as it is
its meant to perceive the world as it isnt so that you behave a certain way… ergo illusions of perception, quantity, and more.
for instance.. we are amazed that colors have an effect… men in red rooms are stronger than men in pink rooms… why?
well women love pink, and pink is also the color of their sex organs (Even in people of color), and pink gets dark and changes in older people…
so they become weaker because pink means they are with weaker women… so why are they stronger in red? red as a maximum would be during a kill, or fighting., either way, you better turn on the gas, either not to bleed, or to get more share of whats bleeding.
we have overcomplicated a simple thing…
the only reason that humans do that is that we are not willing to deal with the simple thing as it is…
if we did that, then we are back in the old world were fat is bad, except as a sign of wealth (Which thin is now a sign), and the reasons behind it are correct.
now.. all this would be enough but on top of it is that we have different drives, proportions to those drives, and sensitivities… which all move around…
that laast part is where we pay the piper or pretend not to and suffer not khnowing why
you want the extra pleasure of too much food?
then you deal with the extra negative of the consequences in weight, or the extra misery of doing without for a comparable time, or the extra pleasure of working harder..
guess which one men choose and guess which ones women choose and tend to try to skirt the bill?
note that this equality thing also doesnt let you say what i just said, so that you cant skew treatments to help the persons in a way that fits them. its a onesize all singel solution po mo socialist world now.
your either the mean average or your going to be bread out of existence due to the inability to adapt to a homogenous mean that is imposed by homogenous rules that pretend you get colors by mising all of them and making mud
I wonder if the overheated disdain so many people seem to feel about “fatties” comes from survival instincts rooted in the days when food was scarce
yes… in a social species eating more of your fare share murders others in the group. this is why marx called them FAT cats…
but note the person with the condition that gets away with it, has a survival advantage in certain conditions, which are not so uncommon.
this is so deep in us, that disparate impact arguments were used to acclimate the germans to putting jews in ovens as they were 14% of the population but controlled 40% of the businesses and banks.
note that the same technique was used to manipualate races and women… by pointing out that men are 50% of the population and have most of the bet jobs. and so on.
we are willing to murder cheaters..
as cheaters, by their actions, are willing to murder us
so all you need to turn women away from their own men and exterminate them… is to convince the women that they are cheated at every level!!!!!!!!!!!
then they will be more concerned with fairness unto death than actually living… as they woudl rather die fighting than live in peace.
Why has the US debt ballooned? Outgo > income.
Why has someone’s weight ballooned? Ah, that’s very complicated, but involves hormones and setpoints and such.
neo said, “BMR accounts for (estimated) about 60% of caloric expenditure, and varies quite a bit among people (age is especially important, because it typically drops 2% per decade in adults, but also gender, fat vs. muscle body composition, exercise level, climate, etc.). It tends to be lowered when people significantly restrict food intake, one of the things that makes dieting difficult.”
Yes, BMR is one of the main determinates of a person’s tendency to be fat or lean. The article you linked to mentioned sex, body type, temperature regime, GENETICS, dieting, age, etc.
I have several anecdotal stories about this. I served with a Marine while instructing at Whiting Field, near Pensacola. He ate high calorie foods constantly and yet he was emaciated. I could have gained 5 pounds a month on what he ate. I consider this anecdotal evidence of a genetic high metabolism. I’ll bet most people have known someone like this.
At one point in my Navy career my squadron rotated between Alameda, California and Cubi Point in the Philippines every six months. I have before and after pictures of our group departing for the PI. and returning. Leaving Alameda we would be a bit overweight and very pale. Six months in tropical heat and we were thinner and tan. Just like we’d been to a spa. The effects of climate variations on BMR.
My own experience in bodybuilding. I had my BMR checked so I could intelligently control my calories. A month period of steady lower calorie eating led to a decrease in my BMR as my body sensed starvation conditions. This can easily be remedied by cycling from below weight maintenance calorie meals to meals that are above weight maintenance calories. The body senses that all is well with the harvest and maintains a normal BMR. This technique resolves the dreaded dieter’s plateau.
Exercise can help with weight loss and maintenance, but it takes a lot of regular exercise to burn 300 extra calories per day. A donut a day can negate that.
If you are one of those genetically programmed with a slow BMR, then you will have a difficult time maintaining weight while eating in the present food environment, which includes so many things laced with salt and sugar to improve taste and the prevalence of high glycemic index foods. For someone who maintains weight at 1200 calories per day, it is easy to get heavy and even obese. Whether it is a matter of not recognizing the facts of how much each individual’s BMR matters to their weight, or just lack of willpower, is, IMO, one of the questions that society needs to come to grips with