[indiecore]

I don't care if someone is fat. What I care about is the loons saying that it's healthy and fine to be morbidly obese and they use stuff like this to back it up.

"Gut bacteria are the cause, I can do nothing"

"It's genetics"

No, it's calories in vs calories out. Maybe these bacteria make you want to eat more, maybe they somehow pull more energy out of food than normal gut flora somehow, in the end it doesn't really matter. Eat less, lose weight; eat more, gain weight; the definition of 'more' and 'less' are individual.

[AsylumWarden]

No, you are still wrong. I am morbidly obese and struggle with my weight daily. It will kill me in the end but I want to know what you would do when your metabolism is so low that your normal body temperature hangs at around 97.2F and resists being raised even by means of medications and heavy exercise. I'm sorry but when numerous doctors over 20 years all throw their hands up and say they can't help then there is nothing to be done. I admit, I could starve myself on something around 700 calories a day for the rest of my life but I would rather die; I think most would. I could hit the gym for 6 hours a day, likely with very little improvement, but I need to work to support myself and my family.

Finally, I get tired of arm chair nutritionists going off and telling people that it is all about eat less and exercise more. Obesity isn't a one solution fits all problem and it is only arrogance to think otherwise.

This article points out that there is yet another possibility to look into. Yet again, something that works against the old mantra eat less exercise more. We simply still don't know enough about the human body. There are going to be many more surprises for the obese population. In the mean time we have to combat our weight and jerks who think they know everything.

[jules]

If you sport 6 hours a day and do not eat more you are going to lose weight extremely rapidly since you will need at least 4000 kcal just for that sport (compare with a normal daily expenditure of 2500 kcal). If your body really does use significantly fewer calories for the same activity as a normal person I would be very surprised. Millions of years of evolution have already optimized our energy efficiency to the limit. You probably wouldn't survive on 700 calories per day even if you stayed in bed all day, let alone living a normal lifestyle. In fact, just maintaining body fat requires calories, so if activities are otherwise the same an obese person burns through more calories.

That isn't to say that there are no genetic differences that influence body weight, there certainly are! It's just that the mechanism isn't energy efficiency, it's genetic factors that influence how much a person eats and how active a person is.

[patrickgzill]

I am curious if you have experimented with the following:

1. increase iodine intake in some fashion

2. cut out all wheat products including whole grain

3. Atkins-style diet with restricted carbs in general

4. increased use of ginger as a spice or in tea (some believe it helps increase metabolic rate).

5. high intensity interval training (you mention exercise).

[indiecore]

Caffine, Ephedrine (it's in congestion medicine like Brokaid in the US) and Yohmbine all have complementary effects on your metabolic rate and the last two have been shown to help speed fat loss while minimizing muscle loss.

[MartinCron]

Thank you for sharing this. Hang in there. Don't let the haters get you down.

[Mz]

I lost quite a lot of weight by focusing on killing germs and altering my biochemistry. I would be happy to talk to you about it in hopes it might help you. If you wish to talk, my gmail account starts with talithamichele.

[indiecore]

If your condition is as you describe than I'm sorry for you but you're one of like 0.1% of the population (probably less). It's fine, you got dealt a shit hand but you aren't saying that being obese is a healthy lifestyle and the thing is other people are.

Everyone I've ever known or read about has gained weight by eating more and lost weight by eating less, again less and more vary from individual to individual but the fact that calories in = calories out for maintenance is a law of physics.

[neilk]

Dude, you're just embarrassing yourself. Stop.

Until you brought it up, nobody had said that this article means fat is a-okay. In fact, the article treats obesity as a disease, so it's the reverse.

If you ever find yourself getting mad at people for what they might say, you are definitely dealing with your own issues.

Doubly so if you take the time to rebut these imaginary enemies in a public forum.

[jack-r-abbit]

> but you aren't saying that being obese is a healthy lifestyle and the thing is other people are.

But this article doesn't appear to be saying that. So your attack in this thread is uncalled for. Generally, people trying to find a solution to obesity (like these people seem to be) are not in the obesity is a healthy lifestyle camp. They appear to be in the obesity is a problem we should look into camp.

[tdfx]

"Calories in / calories out" is far from scientific. 500 calories of ice cream will not have the same effect on your body as 500 calories of lean chicken breast. It's a very rough approximation intended to get people thinking about their calorie intake and expenditures, but it's becoming very annoying to see people representing it as some kind of quantifiable scientific formula.

[king_jester]

> I don't care if someone is fat. What I care about is the loons saying that it's healthy and fine to be morbidly obese and they use stuff like this to back it up.

Being morbidly obese and healthy? Very unlikely to be true. Morbidly obese and ok with? That's 100% legit, it's your body and you are free to do as you please.

> No, it's calories in vs calories out. Maybe these bacteria make you want to eat more, maybe they somehow pull more energy out of food than normal gut flora somehow, in the end it doesn't really matter. Eat less, lose weight; eat more, gain weight; the definition of 'more' and 'less' are individual.

Except we already have strong evidence to suggest that calorie deficit diets do not have a causal relationship with weight loss and that those diets are hard to maintain over a long period of time, leading people to have yo-yo issues with their weight.

> I don't care if someone is fat.

When you call fat acceptance folks loons, I don't think you can say that with a straight face.

[sp332]

Except we already have strong evidence to suggest that calorie deficit diets do not have a causal relationship with weight loss

I don't know if you meant something else here, but of course eating less causes weight loss.

[indiecore]

There are people who don't believe that. Every time I hear about it I tell them to get to a physics lab because they are a walking Nobel Prize.

[terio]

Obviously eating less will cause weight loss. The problem is actually being able to eat less and to keep doing that for life. Maybe that is not a problem for you ... so far, but it is a real problem for many people.

This article could shed more light on the obesity problem and solutions to it. For example, it could very well be that our intestinal flora influences our own decision making. There is at least one known case of a micro-organism that does: the toxoplasma gondii.

It is also apparent that people become addict to sugar and that definitely would influence decision making.

On top of that, our behavior is in great extent influenced, if not determined, by the chemistry of our bodies. It may very well be that chemical imbalances caused by a combination of diet, intestinal flora and hormones, causes obesity.

In short, saying that it is simply a problem of calories in and calories out is a gross over-simplification of the problem. Science is way beyond that point.

[sp332]

Not to mention non-fad weight loss programs like Weight Watchers, and all the starving scrawny people in the world as evidence.

[leephillips]

"it's your body and you are free to do as you please."

When obese people fly they rarely buy two seats. They can pretend that their state of health doesn't affect the people around them, but they are deceiving themselves.

[fotbr]

I'm still technically obese, but better than I was. I'm big, but I'm not exceptionally wide. If I was an inch taller, I'd merely be "overweight". If I were 4 inches taller, I'd be pretty close to "normal" weight.

I fit in a standard airline seat without hanging over the armrest into the next seat, so why should I pay for it? So yeah, my state of health isn't particularly good right now, but it actually isn't affecting anyone I fly with.

Blanket generalizations don't do anyone any good.

[leephillips]

Allow me to disagree; the capacity to generalize is at the core of much progress in human thought.

Of course there will always be those who insist on missing the forest for a tree or two -- the forest in this case being my attempt to keep in mind a wholly unoriginal thought: we are not isolated, and the state of our bodies and minds redounds not only to ourselves.

[freshhawk]

God this calories in / calories out shit has got to die.

Stop leaving out the fucking calorie absorption efficiency factor if you don't want to sound like just as much of an idiot as the people you are complaining about.

Gasoline has a shitload of calories in it. You will definitely not get fat drinking it.

There is literally no one in the field who thinks this is true or ever did. There is certainly an argument about how widely the absorption efficiency varies from person to person, but that's not the same thing as the assertion that it is simply 100% all the time for everyone.

[busyant]

I think you're ignoring a wealth of research just because it doesn't fit with your world-view.

There is a fair amount of evidence indicating both genetic and epigenetic contributions to obesity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12574619

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Search&db=pubmed&...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=obesity%20epigenetic...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=obesity%20genetics