Comments | likethewatch: Genetics, weight loss, and willpower

likethewatch

Genetics, weight loss, and willpower

May 08, 2007 23:07

May 8, 2007
Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside
By GINA KOLATA

It was 1959. Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, had gotten curious about weight loss in the obese. He was about to start a simple experiment that would change forever the way scientists think about fat.( Read more... )

fat, medical, fat america

Comments 15

wundermuffin May 9 2007, 04:23:26 UTC

i couldn't read it. i was too fixated on the name stunkard. wtf? STUNKARD? what a horrible name. stunkard. it contains the word stunk AND rhymes with drunkard.

gwendally May 9 2007, 11:46:09 UTC

I only got half-way through and am so disgusted with the WRONG-NESS of their conclusions that I can't quite finish (plus I don't have time just now.)

Both my parents are obese. I lost 80 pounds four years ago and have kept it off. I don't diet, count calories, log food or obsess about food.

What they did WRONG and I did RIGHT was that I lost my weight by making permanent changes to my diet - I went from eating too much crappy food, too often for entertainment, to eating right amounts of delicious nutritious food, mostly based on what fuel my body needs. I would absolutely become fat again if I continued to eat the crappy way I used to eat.

What was hereditary wasn't obesity, it was bad eating habits I learned from my parents, who think a 2000 calorie breakfast is a reasonable choice.

likethewatch May 9 2007, 13:37:22 UTC

Having read only half the article, you proclaim that you think it's all a load of bull, but you don't say why you think the researchers are wrong, and you don't admit to the ways in which you are in the minority of people who are able to devote their lives to maintaining a lower weight. While you may not count calories, I know that as a triathlete, you get a lot more exercise than most people ( ... )

gwendally May 10 2007, 15:58:17 UTC

Okay, I finihsed the article. Let me tell you my objections specifically ( ... )

likethewatch May 10 2007, 17:35:50 UTC

Agreed, a diet change alone will not reliably take weight off or keep it off, no matter how strictly you adhere to it, because the body will just adjust to the lower amount of calories. I suspect it does this by eating lean mass. The way to take weight off and keep it off is to increase activity, which increases lean mass and conditions the cells to eat and do work ( ... )

Thread 10

krustukles May 9 2007, 13:02:16 UTC

I got stuck on the part where they found it mysterious that people went mildly psycho on a 600 calorie/day diet. So apparently the participants lost 100 lbs. Let's say given an average weight of 150 lbs they were therefore between 250 and 300 lbs to begin with. Basically that's like 2 - 2.5 x bodyweight in daily calories. Normally even with obese sedentary people you don't want to go any lower than 7 or 8. 600 calories is a recipe, if you will, for people going cuckoo.

fuzzylobsters May 9 2007, 15:02:07 UTC

I agree, big bunches, that we are attempting to act on very incomplete knowledge. And, would argue that all the studies cited above drew conclusions based on incomplete knowledge - levels of physical activity, for one. Also, the _quality_ of the food available ( ... )

fuzzylobsters May 9 2007, 15:03:52 UTC

Oops, I wasn't clear - I mean the 1959 US populace was smaller _in girth_. :)

likethewatch May 12 2007, 19:18:47 UTC

I just posted a link on wholefoods from Dr. Mercola on farm subsidies and their effect on food prices in the US that you might be interested in reading. It's such a startling reversal that poor people's food now makes you fat instead of some other, most wasted-looking kind of malnutrition, borne of good intentions: calories are good, right? That was the thinking 100 years ago. People were dying for lack of them.