Lets talk diet and obesity.

[Blake]

I'm one of those lucky "Perpetually thin" people - ah, but am I lucky? (or should I say, in what way am I lucky)

My mother has always believed in the importance of wholesome food. I was raised on porridge, wholemeal bread, lean meats, WATER, and more vegetables and fruits than you can shake a stick at. Sweets and cookies were teh evil, or at least allowed only in moderation - Mother was no diet nazi, but she was very sensible.

After eating that way all my life, I find the evil foods like white bread and stuff rather horrible to eat. I think that a body which eats good food, knows what good food is, and wont be happy when bad food is put in it (think nausea and headaches). I attempt to feed myself as every bit as wholesomely as Mother fed me, perhaps even better. I don't use an ounce of "willpower" here, I just eat what I want to, and I want to eat healthy food.

I'm going to use the word wholesome and by wholesome I mean whole - food which has not be processed to remove otherwise edible/nutritious components.

[b]Now here's the question. Truly; how usual is it for someone who eats a very wholesome diet to be overweight or obese?[b] And I mean, even without a diet or an exercise regime, just eating when hungry and not eating when not hungry (in other words, trusting the signals the body sends)? What kind of %age would it be? Surely a few unlucky people would be fubar enough in the genetics department, but I strongly doubt it could reach as high as 1 in 3 and would suspect magnitudes lower.

This is the theory I subscribe to, on processed foods = weight gain.
Processed foods by their nature have less nutrients, inevitably meaning a higher calorie : nutrient ratio.
The body craves nutrients and will demand more food until it's nutrient quota is met, eating processed foods, this means far more calories are ingested. Should the diet not even have the craved nutrients, the body may start demanding food at random hoping to get a hit on what it's missing.
Furthermore, processed foods have a higher calorie/bulk ratio (because fiber is also striped out to a degree), which means it's less filling and again, more eaten.

(I am sure of course that there are many more complicating factors, but it seems like a solid basis, but it seems good).

[Adrian Hon]

It's probably not as high as 1 in 3, but it's higher than you think. I'm not exactly slim (but not overweight either), yet I exercise for 40 minutes every day and eat pretty well. The nice thing about this is that I can outrun almost all of my thinner and healthier-looking friends, but of course, I'm still not thin.

Interesting article in the NY Mag about the efficacy of exercise (I know you're talking about diet, but stuff)...

Steve Blair, for instance, a University of South Carolina exercise scientist and a co-author of the AHA-ACSM guidelines, says he was “short, fat, and bald” when he started running in his thirties and he is short, fatter, and balder now, at age 68. In the intervening years, he estimates, he has run close to 80,000 miles and gained about 30 pounds.

When I asked Blair whether he thought he might be leaner had he run even more, he had to think about it. “I don’t see how I could have been more active,” he said. “Thirty years ago, I was running 50 miles a week. I had no time to do more. But if I could have gone out over the last couple of decades for two to three hours a day, maybe I would not have gained this weight.” And maybe he would have anyway. If we trust the AHA-ACSM report he co-authored, there is little reason to believe that the amount he runs makes any difference. Nonetheless, Blair personally believes he would be fatter still if he hadn’t been running. Why?

[Spec]

I am lucky enoguh to be ''thin''. I eat all kinds of crap and always stay the same weight.

6'5'' - 215 Lbs.

Woohoo! But I have such high colestherol its ridiculous. 6.1 to be precise...and I should be around 4.2. And the sad thing is, I rarely eat anything with colesterol. My body is like a self-producing colesterol factory.

I just hating thinking about the fact that I will eventually have to take a pill everyday for the rest of my life...Omega 3's really work. Thats what we'll see in 3 months after I take my next blood test. :crossfingers:

Spec.

[b etor]

i wish i was told all that when i was younger.

my older sister had a medical condition and one of the bad things was if she ate too much junk food she could get sick and maybe die. but the dying part was a huuuuge stretch. so from age 7 or 8 and onward she never ate candy or junk food. so she's thin. she eats a lot of carbs and raisins tho.


there was also one wife swap and one of the mother's didn't allow her family to eat cooked food and stuff, just like raw vegetables. but the replacement mother took them out and they got fried chicken, fries, and the likes. and that night they were alll sick. i felt bad for them. missing out on that yummyness

[Solver]

It's indeed a question whether "perpetually thin" is lucky.

I am thin - very - and have always been. On the upside, I know I'll never be overweight or obese. I'll be quite surprised if I even ever reach "average" weight. So I can eat whatever I want to. On the downside, it doesn't look good at all and people often think that I'm one of those types who never eat, which isn't at all true.

[Eli]

There are people I know who eat twice as much as I do and still remain stick thin. For me it's a battle just to stay overweight and not cross into obese territory.

[Solver]

There are people I know who eat twice as much as I do and still remain stick thin.

I guess I'm one of them

[C0ckney]

Lets talk diet and obesity

who ate all the pies?
who ate all the pies?
you fat bastard,
you fat bastard,
you ate all the pies!

[Bkeela]

I think Dr Hendrick Rensburg's theory is as good as any when it comes to this subject. In a nutshell, he believes those who remain thin no matter what have inefficient metabolisms - humming birds, and those with efficient metabolisms, polar bears, get fat easily in our food saturated society. We simply cannot fight the instinct to overeat rich food, because for most of our history, sugar and fat were scarce commodities - it would suicidal to ignore such bounties when available.

He wrote a book 'Polar Bears and Humming Birds: A Medical Guide to Weight Loss'.

[Nostromo]

When summer started, I weighted about 195 lbs (I'm 6'). I lost 15 pounds since then and I now weight 180 lbs. I got myself a nice bike and rode it a lot and explored the Montreal region. That probably helped a bit in my weight loss, but what made the real difference, IMO, was cutting down on portions. I didn't really change what I was eating. I have been eating fairly healthy food for years. I was just eating too much.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Bkeela
I think Dr Hendrick Rensburg's theory is as good as any when it comes to this subject. In a nutshell, he believes those who remain thin no matter what have inefficient metabolisms - humming birds, and those with efficient metabolisms, polar bears, get fat easily in our food saturated society. We simply cannot fight the instinct to overeat rich food, because for most of our history, sugar and fat were scarce commodities - it would suicidal to ignore such bounties when available.

He wrote a book 'Polar Bears and Humming Birds: A Medical Guide to Weight Loss'.

Interesting. So having an inefficient metabolism would then be an adaptation in Western societies?

[Jon Miller]

I am not thin.. I use to eat a lot and never get beyond a bit overweight. A few years back I started eating a bit less, dropped 10 pounds, then started drinking/etc and climbed up into the edge of obesity. There was never an extended period where I didn't exercise 1-2 times a week (not much, but something).

18 or so months ago, I didn't exercise for a couple months and started feeling real bad. So I started exercising 3+ days a week (my current goal is 6 1hr exercise times a week) and removed a lot of the fats (cheese for me) and carbs (dropped how often I had grains/etc) from my diet.

Currently I am 50 lbs lighter then I was 18 months ago, and I would be better (less fat/more muscle) but I am not as good at exercise as I should be (I always do 3 days, but I don't make the 6 days that much, and often those 3 days are only 20-30 minutes).

I love cheese, sugar, and grains... but know that I need to limit them. Currently I limit the calories, while trying to increase protein consumption and get a minimum amount of veggies/fruits per day to decrease my grain consumption.

JM

[Lorizael]

I used to have a very large appetite. I would eat all day and never gain a pound. I was always very thin. Then, about ten months ago, an unfortunate incident occurred that caused me to become even more depressed than usual and it actually affected my appetite (I was eating a lot less than I used to).

The unpleasantness lasted for about two months but my appetite never recovered. I also mysteriously gained twenty or thirty pounds somewhere between the beginning of the summer and whenever I last checked my weight.

So now I'm steady at around 175 lbs which is probably, for once, the right weight for me. I was also exercising three days a week for about an hour each day during the summer, but with the arrival of fall (and college students going back to college) best friend/exercise partner is no longer around and I've been too lazy to go myself. I should probably get back to that.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Re: Lets talk diet and obesity.

Originally posted by Blake
I'm one of those lucky "Perpetually thin" people - ah, but am I lucky? (or should I say, in what way am I lucky)

My mother has always believed in the importance of wholesome food. I was raised on porridge, wholemeal bread, lean meats, WATER, and more vegetables and fruits than you can shake a stick at. Sweets and cookies were teh evil, or at least allowed only in moderation - Mother was no diet nazi, but she was very sensible.

After eating that way all my life, I find the evil foods like white bread and stuff rather horrible to eat. I think that a body which eats good food, knows what good food is, and wont be happy when bad food is put in it (think nausea and headaches). I attempt to feed myself as every bit as wholesomely as Mother fed me, perhaps even better. I don't use an ounce of "willpower" here, I just eat what I want to, and I want to eat healthy food.

I'm going to use the word wholesome and by wholesome I mean whole - food which has not be processed to remove otherwise edible/nutritious components.

[b]Now here's the question. Truly; how usual is it for someone who eats a very wholesome diet to be overweight or obese?[b] And I mean, even without a diet or an exercise regime, just eating when hungry and not eating when not hungry (in other words, trusting the signals the body sends)? What kind of %age would it be? Surely a few unlucky people would be fubar enough in the genetics department, but I strongly doubt it could reach as high as 1 in 3 and would suspect magnitudes lower.

This is the theory I subscribe to, on processed foods = weight gain.
Processed foods by their nature have less nutrients, inevitably meaning a higher calorie : nutrient ratio.
The body craves nutrients and will demand more food until it's nutrient quota is met, eating processed foods, this means far more calories are ingested. Should the diet not even have the craved nutrients, the body may start demanding food at random hoping to get a hit on what it's missing.
Furthermore, processed foods have a higher calorie/bulk ratio (because fiber is also striped out to a degree), which means it's less filling and again, more eaten.

(I am sure of course that there are many more complicating factors, but it seems like a solid basis, but it seems good).

this summer my daughter got Diabetes type 1... she is 7 years old, and well I had a nice "food" study since than.

Clearly there are no universally accepted theories but what it looks like to me is the following:

1. Obvious: less calories = less weight; more exercise = less weight

2. A bit less obvious:
good living habits, like sleeping properly, eating regularl etc added to the above help even more, + good exercise covers a lot of bad living habits (negates the effects).

and than the rest for which there are many opinions and ideas...

One point on Insulin itself, which is a "fat" storage hormone. It gets produced in relatively large quantities when you eat a lot of carbs (not protein or fat! both use different metabolic process to produce energy). Processed food generaly is a quick fix food which gets broken down into glucose (basic sugar) quickly, so insulin production risies rapidly to catch up and get blood sugars back to normal.

However that process is not perfect so after a nice sugar high, you get a slight sugar low once it is all cleaned up (in healthy individuals), and the response of your body is that you are hungry again, as the sugars that you have eaten just an hour or two ago are now nicely stored as fat (or in the process) and your blood sugar level is low again, so you get hungry again... rinse and repeat.

So you eat again and again, and get fat in the process...




Wholesome foods in this particular aspect help greatly, as the fibers and other non removed indigestible parts in the wholesome/natural food slows down this process, so the "bounce and drop" is managed by our bodies well, sugar/energy is released slowly, and you are only hungry when you are "really" hungry, that is when the energy from your last meal is used up.

I am sure there are other point where the wholesome foods help, as your idea about other nutrients missing might as well be some sort of a trigger (albeit I have not read about this one yet, and even if its there, will be surely difficult to "scientifically prove" )... but that above is one process which makes you obese.

Add to this types of food the typical car driving/office work/tv/gaming sitting and you have obesity for sure...

and that is what happened to me so I gained 20 kg (went from 68kg -88kg ) in last 7 years... pissed off about it, but will have to do someting eventually...



My daughter's diabetes type 1, they say they have no idea how you get it, but I am sure that you previous high starch diet helped greatly, at least to kill pancreas faster as once the autoimune reaction starts it is kicked off by excess inulin production (and the antibodies kill the cells producing insulin in pancreas, until you lose the ability to do so altogether)... she was never fat, or overweight, but I am still thinking that the "standard" diet helped speed up the process at least if nothing else. Now we are on carb reduced diet, and it is actually quite OK, as the sugars are well managed, at least within the official guidelines all the time (between 4.5-10mmol for europeans, or 80-180 of something for Americans)...

in any case sweet/processed foods have addictive properties as well, so once you are used to the "high" effect is is very desireable to repeat it making the problem worse, as it is than a response to stress, and other "bad" situation, just making you eat more of it to relax etc...

Now if we had that kind of food 100 year ago when most of the population was working physically for their daily bread, it would not have too much effect as what you ate you would mostly work out anyhow... but now it is an epidemic.




Furthermore on " bad" cholesterol levels, there is considerable research that even if you don't eat the "evil" fats foods but eat a lot of starchy processed foods (white bread, fries, white rice etc... ) that in the process of storing those sugars as fats, the trasfatty acids are created which than stimulate the "bad" cholesterol creation in the blood, through the interaction of excess sugars and the fats that are already in the food you eat which get than stored as well and not used up. In addition that really the balance between the "good" and "bad" cholesterol (another naming inconsistency that we need to live with) is what makes you predisposed to coronary disease etc...

those ideas are slowly becoming mainstream... surely it will take years to overcome our "starch is good" way of current eating, but if you are concerned by cholesterol levels, cut down on starchy, processed stuff, go wholesome foods, and start using olive oil in your diet as a start.

[Spec]

[SIZE=1]
Currently I am 50 lbs lighter then I was 18 months ago...
JM

Awesome man, not all people have your will. You should be proud of that.

Spec.