Medical profession waking up to the idea that telling people to ‘exercise more’ and ‘eat less’ hasn’t worked for the general population…and thinking there might be more to this whole obesity thing.
Ah yes, the medical profession finally catching up with both science and common sense 
You don’t say?
Surely it’s completely obvious that someone on a starvation diet is going to be completely unable to keep it going forever. To lose and maintain a healthy weight is a lifetime exercise, not a one-off. We’ve known for decades (1946, Minnesota Starvation Experiment) that the body switches into a starvation mode under caloric restriction. Eating less than you want to eat is horrible … and it’s completely unnecessary.
Low-carb proponents have been banging on about this since 1970, and the biochemistry behind it has been known (at least in outline) since about 1950. A lot of new research emerged in the early 2000s when people realised low-fat, high-carb diets were not just failing, but actually exacerbating the problem.
Obese simply need to stop eating the things that make them fat. The odd thing is that there are many different types of dietary regime that maintain a comfortable weight. The body seems infinitely adaptable. The only diet it can’t adapt to is Cheez-whiz and Oreos, and yet millions of people insist on eating precisely that.
It actually can. As long as your cheez-whiz and oreo diet is near your caloric balance, you won’t gain weight. You’ll be unhealthy as f%#$ and you’ll die a quick death, but you’d be a normal body weight right up to the moment your body shuts down from malnutrition…
While that might be technically true, it’s of no practical relevance. If you put a fat person in a lab and ration out his Oreos to achieve calorie balance, he’ll probably stay about the same weight. But that doesn’t happen in the real world, as evidenced by the fact that 40% of Americans are dangerously obese. Oreos are engineered to make you finish the packet. We can’t just assume that those Americans are all just weak-willed slobs, even if some of them are.
The basic issue here is that it’s hard to eat 1000 calories of bacon (you feel queasy) or 1000 calories of vegetables (you’d be full) but it’s dead easy to consume 1000 calories of sugar and flour, and still crave a little bit more.
Wouldn’t that suggest your body can’t adapt to this diet? Death is a pretty reliable indicator, surely?
It actually can. As long as your cheez-whiz and oreo diet is near your caloric balance, you won’t gain weight. You’ll be unhealthy as f%#$ and you’ll die a quick death, but you’d be a normal body weight right up to the moment your body shuts down from malnutrition…[/quote]
Like Finley said, I think it’s just impossible in the real world. A diet like that fucks with your hormones, gutt bacteria, blood sugar etc. I don’t think anyone eats their caloric balance in that crap; their body is starving for real nutrition so it keeps sending out hunger signals trying to get what it desperately needs- real, whole, natural food with all of the vitamins, minerals, protein and water therein.
Besides that, I’m pretty sure they still count calories through how much energy it takes to burn a food. This doesn’t even mimic what our body does with food. There’s a lot more to this picture than just calories.
For the US at least a major part of the obesity “puzzle” is really obvious, but perhaps only to visitors. I’m 6’5" 95kg <15%, I swim and cycle a lot and eat a lot to fuel that, but when I go to the US I can’t come close to finishing a standard portion of anything. Whether its eating out or at friend’s homes, for every course of every meal its always just an enormous quantity of food. Growing up eating these huge quantities of HFCS laden, heavily processed, food with a sedentary lifestyle would predispose anyone to obesity.
Quite. This sort of sciency reductionism really winds me up. Even today you see self-proclaimed experts wittering on about (say) the relative density of calories in fat and starch - as measured in a calorimeter - as if that is somehow relevant to human metabolism and appetites. The body is not an internal combustion engine.
As we’ve discussed topics like this in the past, you’re fully aware I wasn’t actually suggesting this as a potential diet plan or anything. It was half tongue and cheek, and half just reminding people that a “calorie” should be viewed as what it is, a measure of energy. As far as “weight gain” goes, a calorie is a calorie. As far as nutrition goes, well that’s a totally different conversation. Clearly to be healthy and nutritious you’d want the highest quality calories you can get. While 2000 calories of Cheez-whiz and oreo’s would in fact not lead to any weight gain (for an adult male anyway) it would certainly leave you looking like walking death.
If more people actually understood the concept of caloric balance, they would find it’s actually a lot easier to maintain a healthy body weight and it doesn’t require you to stop eating any of the foods you enjoy. It just means you have to moderate it to the levels that achieve a proper balance. I typically will eat at least 600 or 700 calories of pure garbage food every day. Might be a chocolate bar and a Starbucks Frappuccino, or it might be a coke and a popcorn at the movies. Whatever it is, it has to be within my caloric balance.
It’s actually very difficult to consume more than 1500 calories in a day if it’s quality food. If we’re talking lean meats, fruits, and vegetables with very little sauces, 1500 calories fills several plates. It’s not hard at all to get all the carbs, fats, protein, and fiber you need in a day from eating good foods and STILL have plenty of room left for Ice cream and cheesecake.
It might work for you, but I think that makes you pretty unusual. You’re probably burning off a lot with a hard workout. Most ordinary mortals simply can’t do it. Blame it on willpower if you like, but it is what it is.
Thing is … why on earth would you want to consume 600-odd calories of garbage? Ok, that amount is fairly trivial compared to the average Western diet, but you enjoy it because you’ve trained yourself to enjoy it, and it’s easy enough to train yourself not to. Takes a few months, tops. I occasionally eat a bit of ice-cream, but because it’s literally a once-a-month thing, I physically can’t eat more than a scoopful. Coffee with sugar in it tastes disgusting. I can look at a rack of cakes in the bakery and not think ‘omg omg I gotta have one’. I tried a Coke a couple of months ago, just because it happened to be on the table. I had half a paper cupful. Pleasant enough, but that’s all I wanted. I think if more people understood it’s not about calorie balance, but rebalancing your appetite, there would be a lot more happy people in the world, as opposed to miserable, permanently-hungry, guilt-ridden ex-fatties who are convinced they’ll never again be allowed to eat an adult-sized meal.
The junk food is still doing you harm even if you can’t see any obvious symptoms. Obesity is usually the last of a cluster of symptoms that appear: it’s your body finally giving up. One can get away with eating trash for a while (I was pretty lean in my teens and early 20’s despite eating the standard processed-carbs British diet), but as you reach your 40s and 50s you might start to notice your blood pressure, heart-disease markers, insulin response, abdominal fat etc aren’t what you’d like them to be.
Incorrect my friend, it works for everybody. All adult males can eat 1500 calories of quality food and 600 calories of junk food and be healthy. I don’t know why you are so resistant to the simplicity of a caloric balance, but eating 2100 calories a day, 2/3’s of it quality lean meats, fruits and vegetables is healthy. For me, for you, and every adult male out there. For woman, 1700 ish accomplishes the same thing. Of course if you workout or are active, you can add to that base. If you have good genetics and metabolism, you can add to that base. I personally have terrible genetics, so I do try to stick to the 2100 or so.
Good on you that you personally don’t indulge in anything unhealthy, but likely over 90% of the world does it every day so I’m not sure why you’re pretending that it’s anything but completely normal. Whether it’s like me, having a Starbucks drink every day while I work and some kind of snack at night, or like Taiwanese people having cup noodles or any of the plethora of food that has absolutely no nutritional value what so ever, as long as you keep it to a reasonable amount and get most of your calories from quality food, no harm no foul.
That’s only the case if you don’t take care of yourself, which I do so I don’t worry about it. I’m 40 and fit as could be. The human body doesn’t actually need to start wearing out so early. We have evolved to be healthy and active well into our old age.
(1) because it contradicts absolutely everything we know about how the body processes food and (2) for the last 30 years or so, a vast body of research has accumulated that refutes the idea. As HH2 posted earlier, even governments are catching on. We’ve been through all this before, but you’re just repeating something that was made up by journalists in 1950. I can’t understand why you’re so attached to that. Can you quote one study - just one - that shows calorie counting is effective (in terms of bodyweight, quality of life, and disease risk factors) for more than a year for a majority of subjects?
Don’t you see any contradiction here? If it worked for everybody, then what’s up with the 90% who indulge every day in junk food, of whom 40% (in the US at least) are pre-diabetic or have dangerously high markers for heart disease? I’m not just talking about visible flab here, but all the other problems that go along with it. Governments have been banging on about calorie control forever - with no evidence for their position - and people do try to take notice. But apparently, something’s going wrong. It’s all very well for something to work in theory. It has to work in practice too, otherwise it’s useless.
I agree that if you work out and eat (mostly) normal food, a box of popcorn or a chocolate bar probably isn’t going to do you much harm. But you have to realise your fellow human beings are stuck in a completely different rut, and simply telling them to measure calories has been proven time and time again not to work for 95% of the people who try it (at least not for any length of time). People have studied it, repeatedly, and failed miserably to prove its effectiveness. You just got lucky.
Is it even possible you don’t know the answer to that question? 
Maybe because, THEY EAT TOO MANY CALORIES? Maybe because they are eating the same 600 junk calories that I eat, plus another 1000 more in sweet drinks, plus another 1000 more in extra junk food, plus another 2000 more in over sized meals, plus another 1000 more because there’s always more more more.
It couldn’t be any simpler why people are over weight. They eat too many calories
If adult males out there stuck to 2100 calories, 1500 of which are high quality lean meats, fruits and vegetables, they would be healthy. Can’t say it any simpler than that.
So, basically, your method doesn’t work for everyone then. If it did, nobody would be overweight, because “everybody knows” that you should control your calorie intake.
The question is: why, despite blanket coverage from the media and government repeating your advice ad infinitum, are they eating too many calories? Why, when scientists set up studies instructing subjects to calorie-count, does every single subject fall off the wagon after a year? Are they all just stupid and lazy? And why are you being evasive about that?
Again, we’ve been through this before, but I suggest the reason is that your method is utterly impractical. It’s just too much bother. Nobody can estimate the calories on their plate without taking everything apart, putting it on a little pair of scales, and looking up everything on the internet. After all that, your dinner’s got cold. Despite your assertion that you’re “counting calories”, you’re actually just going through a pointless ritual that produces meaningless numbers. Your weight is stable because you have an active lifestyle and your appetite - your natural controls on food intake - are basically functioning properly.
All the research suggests that, when people are given a diet regime that’s (a) tasty (b) filling and (c) easy, they’ll stick to it. That’s why the Mediterranean diet and Atkins both have about the same long-term effectiveness: neither require any brainpower, they don’t tell you that it’s OK to feel hungry (because it isn’t) and they basically just involve eliminating sweets and stodge.
People just want to shove food in their mouths. They can’t be bothered with counting stuff. Half the population probably can’t add up without a calculator anyway.
Don’t be silly… Sometimes I think you say off the wall stuff just to argue. I couldn’t have said it any clearer that IF, if if, if a person were to consume the body’s natural caloric balance which is roughly 2100 calories give or take a few hundred for an average adult male, they would be a normal weight.
If you want me to pontificate as to why 40% of the world can’t control their eating habits and they continually exceed their caloric balance, I can’t speak on that. I personally don’t find it that difficult, but apparently a massive chunk of the worlds population does.
You don’t have to count calories at all. That’s just something I personally do, but it’s not at all required. You simply have to eat as much fruits, vegetables, and lean meats as you can, and drink 2 litres of water. The rest will likely take care of itself. Do you know what 1500 calories of fruits, vegetables, and lean meats looks like? It’s a MASSIVE amount of food. After eating it, you’ll likely not have any room or desire to eat anything else.
And it’s a big IF. 
And you don’t find the question even vaguely interesting? You don’t wonder why a homeostatic mechanism that worked for a million years has suddenly stopped working? Funnily enough, the scientific world thought the question was beneath them until relatively recently. It’s only in the last 10 years or so people have been actually doing the sort of research HH2 mentioned - or, at least, getting funding for it. And they now know exactly why people can’t control their eating habits. Watching government agencies backtrack while pretending they’re not (which they have been doing for a year or two now) is pretty amusing.
Well quite. That was my entire point. Nobody needs to know how many calories they’re eating or even what a calorie is (how many people do you think do know what a calorie is?). If you don’t eat junk food - that’s calorie-dense and compels you to eat more - your problem is solved.
So what exactly are you going on about? I said 2100 calories wouldn’t make an adult male fat, and you had quite a lot to say about that. But i’m really not hearing anything to refute that. Are you suggesting that 2100 calories a day could make a person fat?
And as far as counting calories, it’s dead simple to do, but if a person can control their food intake without doing it then that’s even better. I personally like eating certain foods that are high in calories. I have two choices: Don’t eat them, which would require a lot of discipline and lead to some unhappiness. Or, eat them in moderation and actually count how many calories it is. I have no problem eating a piece of cheese cake at Starbucks. I could do it every day if I wanted. I just personally find it useful information to know that it’s about 400 calories, so I better not eat very much junk food the rest of the day. I like pizza hut. It’s useful information to know that it’s about 450 calories per slice, so I better not have more than my daily balance for the day.
The majority of people don’t actually know how many calories are in the food they eat. You ask the average person how many calories are in their 5 piece of pizza dinner they just ate, most will say 1000, maybe 1500. You can quickly remind them, no actually it’s over 2200, and that’s if you drank water. Add the calories from your bottomless coke or sugared ice tea and it could be approaching 3000.
Knowing how many calories (approximately is fine) are in the most common foods people eat is very useful information. It doesn’t have to be an exercise in math and spreadsheet skills. It can be a good guide to curtail excessive eating.
It doesn’t matter at all how many calories are in green beans, broccoli, apples, or tilapia fillets. Eat as much of that stuff as you want. It matters VERY MUCH how many calories are in a big gulp, a movie theatre popcorn, or a fast food meal.
And since you asked, the reason programs like Weight Watchers which are based on counting calories have failed for so many decades isn’t because of the calorie counting. It’s because the food itself, no matter how meticulously calculated, no matter if it checks all the right macro and calorie boxes, is crap food that people shouldn’t be eating in the first place. Little portions of low fat, saucy, starchy, oily, sodium filled meals that although may be low in calories, don’t do anything for us.
I don’t care who you are, eating a Weight Watchers size lasagna bowl is going to leave you hungry almost immediately afterwards, and most people will either double or triple up on them, or just go raid the fridge. For me, I’d 10 to 1 rather eat a plate of fish, corn on the cob, a pile of green beans, and a heaping scoop of brown rice or mashed sweet potatoes. I’ll get far better nutritional value, the calories will be low, and I’ll be full. I’m also a reasonable cook so to me personally, it tastes pretty awesome with just simple low calorie seasoning, but to each his own I guess.
so a) Please don’t lump me in with the nutrition industry as if we have anything in common. I share none of their same beliefs on food and weight loss. That’s just a straw man and an easy one to tear down because as you said, they have failed people for the better part of 60 years and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. I totally agree with you in that respect. The lies and propaganda that is spread is staggering. Honestly, we live in a world where so called health experts will actually utter phrases like: “fruit makes you fat” :loco:
b) I’m not talking about calorie counting at all in the sense you think. I’m talking more about calorie awareness. Being aware of the general caloric balance for your body, and knowing approximately how many calories are in the main foods we eat regularly to make it easier to make better food choices. Knowing more about the caloric content can help us make better choices.
I know, I’m bored at work, whatever 
[quote=“BrentGolf”]
And as far as counting calories, it’s dead simple to do, 。。 [/quote]
It’s virtually impossible to count calorie intake accurately, and as has been said, those who rely on this method tend to ignore the fact that foods are not created equally. Also, having watched people in the past, it absolutely takes all the fun out of eating. Food and nutrition shouldn’t be reduced to ones and zeros.
The ideal diet is balanced food, a little less than you actually need and move around, excercise some … don’t become crazy about sporting. You could eat anything anyday, just not too much and not the same.
Fruit can make you fat, depending the fruit! If you eat 5 kg bananas, or buddha head fruit … you’ll get fat.
Weight watchers didn’t fail, just ask the people that bought the franchise … they’re rich beyond believe!