http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/sex-only-burns-21-calories-according-university-study-224521651.html
QuoteBurning love apparently does not equate to burning fat. A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham says the average sex act burns only about 21 calories.
The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, contradicts many long-standing claims that sexual activity is a vigorous, fat-burning workout. Funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the study results found that "false and scientifically unsupported beliefs about obesity are pervasive in both scientific literature and the popular press."
Most online claims about the calorie burning potential of sexual activity are based on one-hour increments, whereas this study worked off an average time span of six minutes per sexual encounter.
The study's director, Dr. David Allison, who also serves as director of the university's Nutrition Obesity Research Center, tested a number of theories in his study, including whether physical education classes actually improved a child's health and whether skipping breakfast or snacking contributed to weight gain.
"As health professionals, we should hold ourselves to high standards so that public health statements are based on rigorous science," Allison said in a statement. "The evidence is what matters.
However, CBS News notes that some fellow experts question the motivations behind the study, noting that some of the participants received funding from sources including Coca-Cola, the McDonald's Global Advisory Council and two obesity drug manufacturers—Vivus and Arena Pharmaceuticals.
Allison responds that his team's research was motivated by a desire to counter health theories propagated as fact by self-proclaimed health experts.
"From social media outlets like Facebook, to mainstream television news to dietetics and nutrition textbooks, these myths are perpetuated, irrespective of the scientific evidence," study co-author Dr. Krista Casazza told CBS News. "As scientists, we have the responsibility to present the evidence as it exists without inflating ideas and contributing to popular misconceptions. As a registered dietitian, I feel that providing evidence-based statements about weight loss is essential."
:huh:
They're doing it wrong.
How many calories in the clitoris? Lunch time is coming up.
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 09:32:30 AM
They're doing it wrong.
:yes:
Well, maybe not wrong, but certainly not long enough. :D
Quote from: merithyn on February 01, 2013, 09:38:30 AM
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 09:32:30 AM
They're doing it wrong.
:yes:
Well, maybe not wrong, but certainly not long enough. :D
Everything isn't about your needs. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 01, 2013, 09:42:01 AM
Quote from: merithyn on February 01, 2013, 09:38:30 AM
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 09:32:30 AM
They're doing it wrong.
:yes:
Well, maybe not wrong, but certainly not long enough. :D
Everything isn't about your needs. :rolleyes:
:perv:
Max doesn't seem to mind... or have a problem with it. :whistle:
My wife was doing her seXbox exercise game yesterday. She was in the living room doing all these aerobics and jumping around and other things the game was telling her for a long time. Then at the end, it told her congrats, you burned 54 calories! I was like WTF? That's like a shot glass of Mountain Dew or a lollipop or something. I burn several hundred in the same time span when I work out.
So hey, if you're only doing aerobics or whatever, tacking on another 20 calories burned is a big deal I suppose.
Edit: So tacking on some sex at the end of her workout would have made it about 38% more effective, put in those terms. :P
If six minutes is the average that means some folks must be done in seconds. :huh:
One of the few advantages (aside from the money) of having a doctor for a spouse is I get all these journals, was reading this article on the NEJM website just yesterday and a lot of what it says confirms most of what I've found about fitness and weight loss. If you're active on the weight lifting forums (and I am), most of them spout all kinds of crazy unscientific theories about weight loss and muscle building.
Something I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false, and a few years ago a study came out saying the same thing: that it takes 60 hours of fasting to truly enter "starvation mode." There is little evidence "extreme" diets like VLCDs (physician supervised diets where you eat 3-4 prescription meal-shakes each day, totaling usually under 800 calories) put your body into "starvation mode" and make you unable to lose weight, and the whole concept defies certain basic facts about physics and human biology. The truth is, 800 calories/day on a physician supervised VLCD is one of the most effective non-surgical methods for the morbidly obese to lose weight rapidly.
I've also never believed how you lose weight affects how you keep it off. Keeping weight off is a different process than losing weight. Any path to weight loss will result in weight gain if you end your loss period with a food binge period. Is it good to get into the habit of eating balanced, complete meals and having a reasonable daily caloric intake? Absolutely, but if that habit is just part of a weight loss strategy, it's just as susceptible as anything else to being thrown out the window the moment you hit your goal weight. The only way to keep weight off is to not eat to excess again once you've lost it, if you can do that the way you get to your ideal weight isn't the most important thing in the world.
Should mention, in the NEJM this sex research is just one minor piece of the whole, the whole work was about weight loss myths. Buried in that was a study about calorie burn from various exercises and that's where the sex study came in.
I pretty much believe the 21 calorie average, even vigorous sex is probably nowhere near the target range for aerobic workout unless you're extremely unfit, and will still use less energy than moving your 150-250+ lb body while walking or jogging. Most people dramatically overestimate the caloric burn of exercises in the first place, the human body is extremely energy efficient, that's why unless you're doing extreme high energy workouts diet is about 85% of the weight loss formula.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:15:08 PM
Something I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false,
Just based on my own experience I totally agree with you.
QuoteI've also never believed how you lose weight affects how you keep it off. Keeping weight off is a different process than losing weight. Any path to weight loss will result in weight gain if you end your loss period with a food binge period. Is it good to get into the habit of eating balanced, complete meals and having a reasonable daily caloric intake? Absolutely, but if that habit is just part of a weight loss strategy, it's just as susceptible as anything else to being thrown out the window the moment you hit your goal weight. The only way to keep weight off is to not eat to excess again once you've lost it, if you can do that the way you get to your ideal weight isn't the most important thing in the world.
Agree on this as well.
Wow, just 21 calories? Why even bother?
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:17:32 PM
Should mention, in the NEJM this sex research is just one minor piece of the whole, the whole work was about weight loss myths. Buried in that was a study about calorie burn from various exercises and that's where the sex study came in.
I pretty much believe the 21 calorie average, even vigorous sex is probably nowhere near the target range for aerobic workout unless you're extremely unfit, and will still use less energy than moving your 150-250+ lb body while walking or jogging. Most people dramatically overestimate the caloric burn of exercises in the first place, the human body is extremely energy efficient, that's why unless you're doing extreme high energy workouts diet is about 85% of the weight loss formula.
Heh, agreed. I've always gotten a good laugh at the whole diet industry - my idea was to publish my own diet book.
I'd call it "Mathus's sure-fire, 100% guaranteed weight loss method ". Inside would be 200 blank pages, except the first, on which would be written: "Stop stuffing your pie-hole, fatty". :P
Actually, right now, I'm taking that advice - I gotta lose me some weight. I lost 10 pounds last month. As always, I was pretty good for a while after dieting last time, then started stuffing my pie-hole a bit too much, and gained some back.
I do work-outs but only three times a week for an hour - it's not enough to do shit, weight-loss wise.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:15:08 PM
Something I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false, and a few years ago a study came out saying the same thing: that it takes 60 hours of fasting to truly enter "starvation mode." There is little evidence "extreme" diets like VLCDs (physician supervised diets where you eat 3-4 prescription meal-shakes each day, totaling usually under 800 calories) put your body into "starvation mode" and make you unable to lose weight, and the whole concept defies certain basic facts about physics and human biology. The truth is, 800 calories/day on a physician supervised VLCD is one of the most effective non-surgical methods for the morbidly obese to lose weight rapidly.
My wife is doing something like that. It's technically not a VLCD because she is eating 900 calories per day, and she is eating food not shakes (altthough everything is carefully weighed), but it certainly is effective.
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 12:51:14 PM
Wow, just 21 calories? Why even bother?
Obviously as this info gets out, there will be a lot less sexual activity.
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 01:44:24 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:15:08 PM
Something I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false, and a few years ago a study came out saying the same thing: that it takes 60 hours of fasting to truly enter "starvation mode." There is little evidence "extreme" diets like VLCDs (physician supervised diets where you eat 3-4 prescription meal-shakes each day, totaling usually under 800 calories) put your body into "starvation mode" and make you unable to lose weight, and the whole concept defies certain basic facts about physics and human biology. The truth is, 800 calories/day on a physician supervised VLCD is one of the most effective non-surgical methods for the morbidly obese to lose weight rapidly.
My wife is doing something like that. It's technically not a VLCD because she is eating 900 calories per day, and she is eating food not shakes (altthough everything is carefully weighed), but it certainly is effective.
I have heard the claim being made that some cannot lose weight easily or at all by dieting, because of their "metabolism" or some such. That claim never made any sense to me. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, seems to me that weight loss is inevitable.
It may well be true of course (and probably is) that *psychologically* dieting is impossible for some people.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 01:54:38 PM
I have heard the claim being made that some cannot lose weight easily or at all by dieting, because of their "metabolism" or some such. That claim never made any sense to me. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, seems to me that weight loss is inevitable.
It may well be true of course (and probably is) that *psychologically* dieting is impossible for some people.
When I work out I do not feel hungry so I eat less. Why that is I have no idea and it makes no sense but that is the only reason I exercise while dieting.
Vegetarians burn more calories by eating than they gain from the food.
AFAIK celery is the only food that burns more calories to eat than it provides. :nerd:
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2013, 02:02:05 PM
Vegetarians burn more calories by eating than they gain from the food.
I think I may be being a vegetarian wrong. :(
I sort of envy six minute sex act people--emphasis on sort of--but the occasional six min quickie would be a lot more convenient.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 01:54:38 PM
It may well be true of course (and probably is) that *psychologically* dieting is impossible for some people.
I agree. I think we as a society tend to discount the possibility that said people are foodaholics.
200 calories an hour is about as good as exercise bikes.
If you're having sex as a weight loss tactic, you're definitely doing it wrong.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 01:54:38 PM
I have heard the claim being made that some cannot lose weight easily or at all by dieting, because of their "metabolism" or some such. That claim never made any sense to me. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, seems to me that weight loss is inevitable.
I can sort of go along with the theory that your metabolism can adjust itself downward to some extent if you start consistently eating less. But maybe that's just because I like the idea of having a cheat day once a week to counteract that :P
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:17:32 PM
Most people dramatically overestimate the caloric burn of exercises in the first place, the human body is extremely energy efficient, that's why unless you're doing extreme high energy workouts diet is about 85% of the weight loss formula.
Yes, I'd second this. Great abs/300 pound deadlift, etc are made in the kitchen.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 01:54:38 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 01:44:24 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 01, 2013, 12:15:08 PM
Something I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false, and a few years ago a study came out saying the same thing: that it takes 60 hours of fasting to truly enter "starvation mode." There is little evidence "extreme" diets like VLCDs (physician supervised diets where you eat 3-4 prescription meal-shakes each day, totaling usually under 800 calories) put your body into "starvation mode" and make you unable to lose weight, and the whole concept defies certain basic facts about physics and human biology. The truth is, 800 calories/day on a physician supervised VLCD is one of the most effective non-surgical methods for the morbidly obese to lose weight rapidly.
My wife is doing something like that. It's technically not a VLCD because she is eating 900 calories per day, and she is eating food not shakes (altthough everything is carefully weighed), but it certainly is effective.
I have heard the claim being made that some cannot lose weight easily or at all by dieting, because of their "metabolism" or some such. That claim never made any sense to me. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, seems to me that weight loss is inevitable.
It may well be true of course (and probably is) that *psychologically* dieting is impossible for some people.
I dunno man.
Look, I've never significantly worried about my weight. I avoid junk food, watch portion size, and I've never felt the need to formally diet. I get the impression from you that you've had to diet once or twice, but that when you did the weight came off reasonably easily.
Not everybody is like that. I do believe that "metabolism" plays a big part in a person's weight.
Obviously nobody can say that it is "impossible" for them to lose weight. But it can be substantially harder in that they need to restrict their caloric intake to a much greater degree than other people would.
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 04:34:04 PM
I dunno man.
Look, I've never significantly worried about my weight. I avoid junk food, watch portion size, and I've never felt the need to formally diet. I get the impression from you that you've had to diet once or twice, but that when you did the weight came off reasonably easily.
Not everybody is like that. I do believe that "metabolism" plays a big part in a person's weight.
Obviously nobody can say that it is "impossible" for them to lose weight. But it can be substantially harder in that they need to restrict their caloric intake to a much greater degree than other people would.
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty')
exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake,
Exactamundo. Dunno how many times I've seen some "dieting" gal at work pigging out on cake or having junk food for lunch. Then she turns around and whines about how she hit a brick wall after she had initially lost 2 pounds.
It's funny how bizarre metabolism issues always afflict people with no will to lose weight.
And lo and behold ...
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-05-28/features/1991148006_1_metabolism-calories-beltsville
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
You seem to be making too many assumptions here. Calories aren't just burned by "effort", they're also burned just to sustain life functions. It's conceivable that such life functions have priorities, and that in case of calorie deficiency some life functions on the bottom of the priority list get their calorie budget reduced. You can also simply have less energy when you consume less calories, so the thing that you assume is kept constant ("effort") would in fact be very hard to keep constant.
Blueberries are 1 point per cup.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
You seem awfully sure of this.
Look, I'm not a doctor any more than you are but I think there's a very simple factor that you are missing that throws your theory into question. In agriculture it is called feed conversion ratio-- put simply it's the amount of energy in the food that is absorbed by the body. It can vary even among purebred stock on scientific diets in tightly controlled environments. Exactly how much it can vary among humans I do not know, but I wouldn't be surprised if one person's ratio could be 50% higher than another's.
:unsure:
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 05:11:25 PM
You seem to be making too many assumptions here. Calories aren't just burned by "effort", they're also burned just to sustain life functions. It's conceivable that such life functions have priorities, and that in case of calorie deficiency some life functions on the bottom of the priority list get their calorie budget reduced. You can also simply have less energy when you consume less calories, so the thing that you assume is kept constant ("effort") would in fact be very hard to keep constant.
Hence stating you measure persons of the same weight and strength.
Given that humans do not vary all that much in such essentials as what temperature they keep their bodies (if healthy), just what "life functions" is person A going to be burning up massive amounts of calories with, versus person B?
Also, see link above. When people's calorie intake is actually *observed* by third persons, somehow these magic effects disappear. Why, it's almost like some people aren't objective about the amount of food they consume! Imagine that. :hmm:
I imagine if you stop eating you will lose weight eventually.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 01, 2013, 05:18:06 PM
I imagine if you stop eating you will lose weight eventually.
katmai test this plz
Quote from: Maximus on February 01, 2013, 05:15:03 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
You seem awfully sure of this.
Look, I'm not a doctor any more than you are but I think there's a very simple factor that you are missing that throws your theory into question. In agriculture it is called feed conversion ratio-- put simply it's the amount of energy in the food that is absorbed by the body. It can vary even among purebred stock on scientific diets in tightly controlled environments. Exactly how much it can vary among humans I do not know, but I wouldn't be surprised if one person's ratio could be 50% higher than another's.
I'm pretty sure of it.
I got more sure of it when I read the article I posted above, in which the exact experiment I suggested was conducted with the results I anticipated.
Here's more: http://theconversation.edu.au/mondays-medical-myth-my-slow-metabolism-makes-me-fat-4962
QuoteAnother common reason a slow metabolism is blamed for weight gain is the perception that an overweight person eats very little and still gains weight. But research shows people tend to eat more than they think and will typically report eating less food than they actually do as their weight goes up.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:17:33 PM
Hence stating you measure persons of the same weight and strength.
The point is that there may be a correlation between calorie intake and automatic calorie expenditure, and it could differ between different people. Some people may go into safe mode easily, which would be an evolutionary advantage if famines are common, and others could tap into fat reserves fairly easily.
QuoteGiven that humans do not vary all that much in such essentials as what temperature they keep their bodies (if healthy), just what "life functions" is person A going to be burning up massive amounts of calories with, versus person B?
There isn't just one temperature. There is core temperature, which is something I assume is non-negotiable, and then there is the temperature of the extremities. It's conceivable that a human body may try to save on the energy bill by constricting blood vessels in the extremities, to reduce heat loss due to warm blood flow. There are also all sorts of random movements that our body or muscles are doing, some visible and some not, and those may be reduced as the person becomes more lethargic. I don't know if brain can vary the amount of energy that it consumes, but since it consumes a lot, that may also be a source of energy savings.
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 05:30:25 PM
I don't know if brain can vary the amount of energy that it consumes, but since it consumes a lot,
LOL, Brain is fat. :nelson:
Why do these weight discussions always get retarded?
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 05:30:25 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:17:33 PM
Hence stating you measure persons of the same weight and strength.
The point is that there may be a correlation between calorie intake and automatic calorie expenditure, and it could differ between different people. Some people may go into safe mode easily, which would be an evolutionary advantage if famines are common, and others could tap into fat reserves fairly easily.
QuoteGiven that humans do not vary all that much in such essentials as what temperature they keep their bodies (if healthy), just what "life functions" is person A going to be burning up massive amounts of calories with, versus person B?
There isn't just one temperature. There is core temperature, which is something I assume is non-negotiable, and then there is the temperature of the extremities. It's conceivable that a human body may try to save on the energy bill by constricting blood vessels in the extremities, to reduce heat loss due to warm blood flow. There are also all sorts of random movements that our body or muscles are doing, some visible and some not, and those may be reduced as the person becomes more lethargic. I don't know if brain can vary the amount of energy than it consumes, but since it consumes a lot, that may also be a source of energy savings.
Right, one can assume all sorts of physiological processes - however actual experimentation appears to demonstrate this is horseshit and that most who claim they cannot (easily) lose weight by dieting are, in fact, simply not properly remembering or reporting what they eat.
From the above link:
QuoteThe calorimeter, a 9-by-10-foot metal box, with eight-foot-high ceilings, provides no room for excuses. The floor, walls and ceiling are embedded with 80,000 sensors that pick up heat -- one measure of the
energy a body expends. The box also measures oxygen input and carbon dioxide output to calculate total energy expenditure.
Once in the box, a subject lives for 24 hours in a totally controlled environment, with a constant temperature of about 72 degrees. TV is available -- but it can be viewed only through the window, so that the set won't affect the temperature.
Meals arrive through a slot in the door. Exercise on a stationary bike in the corner is carefully monitored for 20-minute periods. A bed in the corner allows for a snooze.
The controlled environment allowed the researchers to conclude that people eating the same food and getting the same exercise in the same environment seem to metabolize or "burn up" the calories at very close to the same rate.
"There is some difference among subjects, related to the variation in spontaneous movement or what we call the fidget factor," Mr. Moe said. "However, the differences are rather
small -- it's not enough to make the difference in a 1,200-calorie diet vs. an 1,800-calorie diet."
To my mind this is something one can very easily test, so there really ought not to be much doubt about it.
This is amusing:
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0002-8223(07)00023-5/abstract
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:37:03 PM
This is amusing:
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0002-8223(07)00023-5/abstract
:huh:
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:37:03 PM
This is amusing:
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0002-8223(07)00023-5/abstract
Hilarious.
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2013, 05:33:57 PM
Why do these weight discussions always get retarded?
And why do sex discussions turn into lame weight discussions?
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 05:40:58 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:37:03 PM
This is amusing:
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0002-8223(07)00023-5/abstract
:huh:
Translation: the bigger you are, the bigger you think a "typical" portion size is.
Leading to the "I eat the same portions as [skinny person], yet I'm fat and they are skinny. Must be my magic metabolism making me fat" phenom.
Quote from: garbon on February 01, 2013, 05:43:37 PM
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2013, 05:33:57 PM
Why do these weight discussions always get retarded?
And why do sex discussions turn into lame weight discussions?
This started out as a weight loss discussion. :P
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:44:02 PM
Translation: the bigger you are, the bigger you think a "typical" portion size is.
Leading to the "I eat the same portions as [skinny person], yet I'm fat and they are skinny. Must be my magic metabolism making me fat" phenom.
That's not how I read it. :huh:
QuoteThe main dependent measure was self-selected portion size representing what each participant felt was their typical portion of 15 food/beverage items.
Seems like participants were selecting
their typical portion size, not the typical portion for the population at large.
Quote from: DGuller on February 01, 2013, 05:47:53 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:44:02 PM
Translation: the bigger you are, the bigger you think a "typical" portion size is.
Leading to the "I eat the same portions as [skinny person], yet I'm fat and they are skinny. Must be my magic metabolism making me fat" phenom.
That's not how I read it. :huh:
QuoteThe main dependent measure was self-selected portion size representing what each participant felt was their typical portion of 15 food/beverage items.
Seems like participants were selecting their typical portion size, not the typical portion for the population at large.
Well, only the abstract is available without paying.
I'm going by how this professor of nutrition interprets the study:
QuoteIncreasing portion sizes may also affect what people now consider an average portion size for meals they serve at home – a phenomenon called portion distortion. The bigger a person is, the more likely they are to overestimate what a "normal" portion size is.
From: http://theconversation.edu.au/mondays-medical-myth-my-slow-metabolism-makes-me-fat-4962
So, I could take your interpretation - based on the abstract - or a professor of nutrition's interporetation - based, one assumes, on reading the study.
Not saying you are wrong necessarily, just pointing out why I read it that way.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 04:34:04 PM
I dunno man.
Look, I've never significantly worried about my weight. I avoid junk food, watch portion size, and I've never felt the need to formally diet. I get the impression from you that you've had to diet once or twice, but that when you did the weight came off reasonably easily.
Not everybody is like that. I do believe that "metabolism" plays a big part in a person's weight.
Obviously nobody can say that it is "impossible" for them to lose weight. But it can be substantially harder in that they need to restrict their caloric intake to a much greater degree than other people would.
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
But it's much, much more complicated than that. Calories aren't fuel the same way that, say, gasoline is.
Different kinds of calories get converted into body energy at different rates. Lots of different factors on how body energy gets stored as fat, and when and how fat stores get converted back into energy.
Anyways - I just find it is a bit much when people who have had no significant issues with their weight try and tell people who have how easy it is to lose weight. And I say that as a skinny guy.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 05:45:09 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 01, 2013, 05:43:37 PM
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2013, 05:33:57 PM
Why do these weight discussions always get retarded?
And why do sex discussions turn into lame weight discussions?
This started out as a weight loss discussion. :P
I started the topic and I was posting about sex. :angry:
I burned 42 calories today.
Well, you linked to the abstract, so that's all I could go by. I hope you can see why I didn't see the source of your amusement.
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 05:59:54 PM
But it's much, much more complicated than that. Calories aren't fuel the same way that, say, gasoline is.
Different kinds of calories get converted into body energy at different rates. Lots of different factors on how body energy gets stored as fat, and when and how fat stores get converted back into energy.
Anyways - I just find it is a bit much when people who have had no significant issues with their weight try and tell people who have how easy it is to lose weight. And I say that as a skinny guy.
Actually, no it isn't. Or at least, in scientific studies when they have actually controlled access to food, this mysterious metabolism factor seemingly doesn't occur.
I would not say weight loss is "easy" at all. Psychologically, it can be extremely difficult, and is for many.
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
Same with dieting. It is physically "easy" - just stop stuffing one's pie-hole, you will lose weight guaranteed. But mentally, it is very tough, as one must eat something. Unlike smoking, you can't just quit eating. You have to eat just so much and not more, and for many people, this is very tough to do.
Quote from: garbon on February 01, 2013, 06:01:42 PM
I started the topic and I was posting about sex. :angry:
If you were posting about sex, maybe you shouldn't have posted in Timmay-esque fashion an article about weight loss. :P
I highlighted the relevant parts. :angry:
Also, if it was pulling a Tim, I'd never comment again after posting a news article. It is telling that he isn't high up in our list of our most prolific posters but is by far the poster who starts the most threads.
I wonder how fired up Malthus will get if we have a thread about uncircumcised fat guys.
Please, for the love of god, no more circumcision threads.
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 01, 2013, 06:03:14 PM
I burned 42 calories today.
Finally, The Answer to life, the universe and everything is a threesome. :cool:
I think the confusion about certain people having different "metabolism" is an indication that a calorie is not just a calorie is a calorie. Your "calories" will do vastly different things metabolically speaking depending on where they come from. Calories from meat, eggs and fat will impact you very much differently than calories from soda, candy, wheat and potatoes.
The problem with the standard western diet is that it is loaded with carbohydrates that just spike your insulin and hence get transported right into your fat cells. Everybody is eating shit out of box that comes with rancid estrogen-acting vegetable oils (like soy) and/or HFCS, sugar and trans fats.
90% of the obesity epidemic would be solved if people ate like this.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fperfecthealthdiet.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2009%2F03%2FFood-Plate-600dpi.jpg&hash=394f56daa7e7a8ed7eace0e3f4505d3f8300f7ab)
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2013, 05:59:54 PM
But it's much, much more complicated than that. Calories aren't fuel the same way that, say, gasoline is.
Different kinds of calories get converted into body energy at different rates. Lots of different factors on how body energy gets stored as fat, and when and how fat stores get converted back into energy.
Anyways - I just find it is a bit much when people who have had no significant issues with their weight try and tell people who have how easy it is to lose weight. And I say that as a skinny guy.
Actually, no it isn't. Or at least, in scientific studies when they have actually controlled access to food, this mysterious metabolism factor seemingly doesn't occur.
The thing is, though, if I'm reading the links you posted correctly (which I may not be, as I just skimmed them), the studies compared people who were of roughly equal size to begin with. I understand why that would be done, but I'm not sure it's appropriate--you're starting out by excluding the very people who would have differing metabolisms. It's as if you were studing the fuel economy of automobiles, and the cars you selected for your study were all 2010 model 4-door sedans with curb weights of about 2400 lbs with automatic transmissions and powered by 3.1 liter V-6 engines. You'd probably find that they all get about the same mileage, but you can't conclude from that that all automobiles will get the about the same mileage--we know that if you had included subcompacts with 1.2 liter 3-cyclinder engines, full-size pickups with 6.0 liter V-8s and sports cars with V-12s, you'd find that all automobiles, in fact, don't get about the same mileage.
Quote from: Legbiter on February 01, 2013, 06:42:39 PM
I think the confusion about certain people having different "metabolism" is an indication that a calorie is not just a calorie is a calorie. Your "calories" will do vastly different things metabolically speaking depending on where they come from. Calories from meat, eggs and fat will impact you very much differently than calories from soda, candy, wheat and potatoes.
The problem with the standard western diet is that it is loaded with carbohydrates that just spike your insulin and hence get transported right into your fat cells. Everybody is eating shit out of box that comes with rancid estrogen-acting vegetable oils (like soy) and/or HFCS, sugar and trans fats.
90% of the obesity epidemic would be solved if people ate like this.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fperfecthealthdiet.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2009%2F03%2FFood-Plate-600dpi.jpg&hash=394f56daa7e7a8ed7eace0e3f4505d3f8300f7ab)
In some way this is as much a diet fad as any other 'here to day gone tomorrow diet.
Something suggesting that the calories from wheat or many of the other grains are 'bad' is somewhat odd, when those are in part why we are here today ie those sustained much of our western European ancestors.
So I'll take that with a pinch of salt. :P
I think it comes down to how easily/quickly digestible they are as opposed to how many calories are in there. That's why wheat and sugar are "worse" than fish or nuts.
Quote from: mongers on February 01, 2013, 07:15:05 PM
In some way this is as much a diet fad as any other 'here to day gone tomorrow diet.
Something suggesting that the calories from wheat or many of the other grains are 'bad' is somewhat odd, when those are in part why we are here today ie those sustained much of our western European ancestors.
So I'll take that with a pinch of salt. :P
Nutrionally speaking, grains are pretty damn devoid of minerals and vitamins. Meat and vegetables will contain much more of what a human needs to thrive. Plus, a good grilled steak & salad will keep you full for half a day unlike, say, cheerios with skim milk. We were hunters/gatherers for much, much longer than we've been sickly agriculturalists. Yes, you can technically survive on just porridge with some herbs but you won't thrive, far from it, in fact.
Also, meat and vegetables, a fad diet? You serious? :huh:
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
I thought what made nicotine so nasty was the intense physical addiction it created that is not just psychological, but the result of real physiological processes.
I somehow knew this thread would take this direction. I just thought back to when I first got serious into weight lifting, probably 1997, and in that time I've probably studied more scientific papers, discussed the issue with people, actually followed many different techniques etc such that I'd say in the past I've spent on the conservative end 100 hours a year just studying this very topic. That's around 1,500 hours of my life I've devoted to this. I'm not a professional, but I can honestly say half the people I've ever known who have degrees in any type of athletic training or exercise physiology are easily drawn down the path of urban legend and myth.
The simple physiology is, if the body cannot metabolize enough energy from incoming food stores, it will break down fat through a process that changes the continuous flow of free fatty acids into adipose tissue the other direction and starts drawing down the reserve. Various biological processes are at play here, when blood sugar is high fat stores will automatically accumulate and the flow of fatty acids into the adipocytes is primarily weighted towards an overall inward flow and thus accumulation of fat. When blood sugar is low this flow is reversed more or less (the reality is more complex) at the end of the day there are indeed physiological diseases or disorders that can cause wide variations in how this happens, in some people, in some circumstances. For the overwhelming majority of people, the reason they are accumulating large amounts of lipids in their adipocytes is simple persistent overeating.
Where fat accumulates has been proven to be highly influenced by hormonal imbalances and other disorders, with certain types of disorders causing the body to have a stronger proclivity to create excess visceral fat stores as opposed to a more even (based on sex) distribution of fat. But at the end of the day, no human on earth over a sustained period of time can increase their amount of total stored fat in adipocytes if they are operating at a caloric deficit. It is simply impossible, a sustained caloric deficit requires that energy is coming in from outside sources, or eventually you would suffer organ failure and eventually death in various different systems. Basically, you'd starve to death despite eating a decent amount of food and having tons of stored fat.
In my opinion there are a few common sources of grave misunderstanding about calories and fat accumulation / loss
1. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. This is both true and false, by and large nutritional calories in food are calculated in labs, in a process where they basically burn the food to see how much raw energy is in it. This method does have genuine flaws in terms of how the body actually uses this energy, I can burn a cup of gasoline and it shows a certain amount of energy in that fuel, but a human who drank the cup of gasoline would not obviously be able to use that fuel. Likewise, all meats, vegetables etc have different amounts of energy that can be achieved through burning in a lab versus breakdown in the human body. Some foods are genuinely more efficiently stored in the average human, that is true. However, people can't use this as an excuse as to why they are not losing weight in a sustained period of dieting. Simply because, any effective diet will at minimum cut intake down to 20% less than your total daily energy expenditure, and realistically unless you're a weight lifter who is super concerned about minimizing muscle loss you should probably go 30% or even more below your total daily energy expenditure. TDEE, in this case, being "calculated TDEE" which is going to not be perfectly accurate. If you're at a 30% deficit, then any variations in efficiency of the food you happen to eat, your personal energy level or etc are washed away, all this stuff about highly efficiently processed foods and people with low metabolic rates is simply never enough to overcome a deficit of 30% below a calculated expenditure.
2. People are lead to believe they should lose weight at X calories, and don't. There are several reasons this can happen. One, is the formula may be wrong for you. Two, you may be misreporting your caloric intake. Many nutrition fact box labels are not 100% accurate, and unless you weigh every piece of food you eat (I weigh my food on an expensive, highly accurate scale btw) then you're basically full of shit if you think you know how much you're eating--unless every thing you eat is prepackaged in single portion sizes. But even then, you're susceptible to inaccuracies in reporting and random variation in manufactured food.
3. People don't understand weight versus fat loss. The human body has massive variations in weight on a daily basis and typically less than 10% of that variation has anything at all to do with body fat. It's mostly water retention variability, semi-digested food weight and etc. Many people don't understand normal weight variations can make it look like you've gained a pound in two weeks when you've actually lost fat.
Common ways to throw the above myths away and successfully lose weight, as recommended by me:
1. Get a much more accurate idea how much energy your body is using. Let's use the Harris-Benedict formula. Say you're a 250 lb man, 5'10" tall. That puts you firmly in the obese BMI, and under Harris-Benedict your BMR (this is the amount of energy you'd need if you were laying in bed all day) is: 2308 for a 30 year old. Let's say you are sedentary, which gives you a multiplier of 1.2, so that suggests your daily energy expenditure is around 2770. But here's the thing, Harris-Benedict is based on good science but modern day practice misuses it. It is based on a normal human back when it was developed and does not take into account obese individuals.
But it can be fixed. The reality is, as countless scientific studies have shown, different bodies burn energy at different rates based on that body's composition. Lean body weight is pretty firmly shown to use a certain amount of energy. But fat, is almost (not entirely, but almost) just "dead weight." Generally the bigger you are, the more energy you burn. But two 5'10", 30 year old men, one 250 lbs with 140 lbs of lean body weight and the other 160 lbs with 145 lbs of lean body weight, it is highly likely the 160 lbs man will burn slightly more in a sedentary lifestyle than the 250 lbs man. This is because the best, most accurate way to get your real BMR under Harris-Benedict is to not use your current weight but your lean body weight. To do this you have to calculate your body fat percentage, which is not easy, and I suggest using calipers and not one of those scales that uses electrical induction. It's genuinely the case, a 5'10", medium framed man who is 30 years old and has always been a sedentary person will only have 140 lbs of lean body weight at 250 lbs. That means to get his real BMR and daily energy expenditure he should be using his lean weight, not his weight with all that fat. Put in 145 into the formula, and you get a BMR of 1650 and a total expenditure of 1985. All these numbers, as I mentioned, will vary a bit from person to person in "real" life, but these formulas were not done on the back of a napkin and are a strong and good guideline.
Look at the difference though, made by using lean body weight. An obese person in the above scenario, might have been dieting at 2200 calories a day, based on his misunderstanding of how much energy his 250 lb body would use. In reality, at 2200 calories a day he'd probably be gaining small amounts of weight or just breaking even (I'm assuming as a dieter he might be upping his energy level to slightly more than sedentary, so he'd probably be using more calories than the Harris-Benedict would suggest for a sedentary person.)
2. After you've calculated using the revised Harris-Benedict based on your lean body weight, go ahead and find out how much energy you really use in a day. This is done through a method the founder of AutoDesk made me aware of in the mid-90s in a book he wrote. Basically, he came up with a simple method for separating signal and noise in terms of weight. His hypothesis (and this has proven highly accurate for myself and anyone I've ever known who tries it), is that if you weigh yourself every single day, naked, in the morning (after purging if you go at that time of a day) and chart your weight for one month, you will be able to very accurately come to understand your body's energy expenditure. For this to work, you must focus very hard on accurately recording your caloric intake, that means weighing food and using accepted norms of calorie values for those foods. Everything matters, you need to know the difference between 4 oz of raw chicken and 4 oz of cooked chicken. Weigh yourself every day, each data point is worthless because it's based on water weight variation, but a month of readings will allow you to calculate a real trend. This will allow you to calculate what your weight "trend" is at the end of the month. Let's say you consume 2200 calories exactly every day for 30 days. At the end, your weight loss not as calculated by a single or weekly reading but by a trendline derived from a moving average of daily weigh-ins, is 7 pounds. That's a 24,500 deficit for the month, you consumed 66,000 calories in the month, and that means to have a 24.5k deficit your total usage in the month must be around 90,500 calories. That's 3,016 a day (my number is over 3,000 so this isn't that unrealistic, but an actual obese person needing to lose weight will probably be more in the 2300-2600 range for males, lower for females), I've never met someone who was a lifelong struggler with losing weight who wasn't at least a little surprised by the outcome of this exercise. Almost always they find their actual burn is far less than it "should" be.
For women out there, especially short ones who carry a lot of fat, you might use as little as 1400 calories in a sedentary life, and even smaller framed women with even less lean body weight could very realistically use even less. That means you might seriously need to eat only 1100-1200 calories a day to lose weight, which is below what some fitness experts who teach you to be afraid of "starvation mode" will tell you.
3. Once you've rigorously determined your actual average daily energy usage, you need to make sure you consistently over time eat about 30% less. That 30% deficit, combined with accurate calorie reporting and the rigorous system above for determining actual is as close to a death and taxes type of certainty as you can get with weight loss, because it will account for pretty much all personal/food/etc variations and result in genuine, absolute loss of fat and weight.
Oh God...
A science smackdown. ;)
Slight problem Otto. Most people don't want to apply the mathematical rigor I did as an AD&D DM in junior high to their food intake, month in and month out.
It is much easier to just kindly suggest eating 2 large meals a day consisting of meat and veg with no snacking inbetween, with plenty of fat to accompany each meal. Fat and protein are very satiating unlike the carb-heavy wholehearthealthygrain idiocy that's current. Throw in light excercise like walking to start with, while getting your bearings and the results are often quite respectable.
Your method WILL work if strictly applied, it's unfortunatly just about as fun as plucking your nosehairs out one by one.
Usually, after football season is done, I eat less and lose a bit of weight. Then in summer I start biking and lose more. Then, when football season starts I eat a bit more and gain a bit.
Weird.
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 08:13:11 PM
Usually, after football season is done, I eat less and lose a bit of weight. Then in summer I start biking and lose more. Then, when football season starts I eat a bit more and gain a bit.
Weird.
I lose weight on the fatty meat holiday fare of my Norwegian in-laws during Christmas, gain it back with bananas and sweet potatoes once I start lifting and sprinting again with Crossfit.
Quote from: Legbiter on February 01, 2013, 08:27:04 PM
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 08:13:11 PM
Usually, after football season is done, I eat less and lose a bit of weight. Then in summer I start biking and lose more. Then, when football season starts I eat a bit more and gain a bit.
Weird.
I lose weight on the fatty meat holiday fare of my Norwegian in-laws during Christmas, gain it back with bananas and sweet potatoes once I start lifting and sprinting again with Crossfit.
I have to admit that when I eat less I consciously eat more proteins and fats, less carbs. I lost about 80 pounds by doing a modified South Beach about 7 years ago...plus I read a lot about the paleo diets (mostly from the anthropologists who talked about it).
Okay legbiter, I'll be sure to get on that "brains and seaweed" diet soon now.
I'm gonna eat an entire papa john's pizza tomorrow.
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
I believe that they have done studies that show this to be the case. It showed something to do with the efficiency of the metabolism and the ability of the body to create the right amount of insulin to break down the energy properly. The insulin was the bigger reason for why some find it easier than others to lose weight, but there were other factors at work, like thyroid activity, hormone levels, etc. Leptin resistance is, I believe, one of the big issues for the morbidly obese.
Here's that study (http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/2/295.full).
Quotehe mechanisms underlying leptin resistance in obese humans may include defective transport of leptin into the brain, and/or reduced hypothalamic leptin signaling, which is in part due to up-regulation of specific inhibitors of leptin signaling. The pathogenesis of leptin resistance is currently under intense investigation, and it is expected that elucidation of the mechanisms underlying leptin resistance may lead to the development of new therapeutic options for the treatment of obesity.
Weight-loss programs are well known to be ineffective long term, with most individuals regaining any weight lost within a short period of time, and it has been proposed that the corresponding decline in serum leptin levels due to the loss in fat mass may contribute to the inability of these subjects to maintain their weight loss. Exogenous leptin administration to replace leptin levels to preweight-loss levels prevented the regaining of weight and promoted loss of fat mass while preserving fat-free mass (11) in a small group of subjects participating in a weight loss program, but these findings have to be replicated by larger studies.
There's also the body-memory issue for those who have lost weight only to regain it later.
Here's the conclusion of that study (http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/301/3/R581.abstract):
QuoteThe preponderance of evidence would suggest that the biological response to weight loss involves comprehensive, persistent, and redundant adaptations in energy homeostasis and that these adaptations underlie the high recidivism rate in obesity therapeutics. To be successful in the long term, our strategies for preventing weight regain may need to be just as comprehensive, persistent, and redundant, as the biological adaptations they are attempting to counter.
Quote from: Legbiter on February 01, 2013, 08:11:51 PM
Slight problem Otto. Most people don't want to apply the mathematical rigor I did as an AD&D DM in junior high to their food intake, month in and month out.
It is much easier to just kindly suggest eating 2 large meals a day consisting of meat and veg with no snacking inbetween, with plenty of fat to accompany each meal. Fat and protein are very satiating unlike the carb-heavy wholehearthealthygrain idiocy that's current. Throw in light excercise like walking to start with, while getting your bearings and the results are often quite respectable.
Your method WILL work if strictly applied, it's unfortunatly just about as fun as plucking your nosehairs out one by one.
Absolutely. My suggested weight loss plan for anyone who has trouble losing weight is "try everything until something works, and keep trying." I explained the physiology of weight loss an exact, rigorous method. My method doesn't care if you're one of those people with all the combinations of bad hormonal problems that make losing weight
harder (note harder, if anyone thinks losing weight is impossible they are too stupid to live, if that were the case you'd be a perpetual motion machine.) My method is basically a counterpoint to anyone who says "nothing works" well, my method works. But to make it work you have to follow it exactly, because only by following it exactly can you really know how many calories you're consuming. Only by knowing how many calories you're consuming can you generate a first-month dataset to determine your real energy expenditure. You can have every hormonal or obesity linked gene in the species, and after one month once you
know your real energy usage numbers you consume less than that and you will lose weight. Period. End of discussion on that front.
But weight loss is more than just science, the vast majority of weight problems have absolutely nothing to do with what are frankly rare metabolic problems, but instead is just the natural result of human evolution. When you eat to excess you're engaging in normal human behavior, designed to store away energy for famine. When you have trouble losing weight, lose your will to stick with the diet, sneak a candy bar, etc that's also the result of instinct and evolution. The body does not just deploy physiological responses to what it perceives (as much as your body "perceives" things), but psychological ones.
It's hard for almost anyone to lose weight precisely because we're not designed to give up weight easily because it means we aren't getting enough food. If we aren't getting enough food, for most of human history that has meant we're in imminent danger of death. We all know we're a mixture of intellect and willpower and baser animal instincts. You may be happily married but an attractive woman is always going to catch your eye.
The real reason diets fail is almost never because someone strictly eats an appropriate amount of food and never loses weight. Diets almost always fail for these reasons:
1. "The fuck its." This is a situation where you've been on a diet for awhile, and something causes you to just say "fuck it--for today." Maybe you go to a party, so "what the hell" it's just one night of binge drinking and eating. Or maybe it's a big family dinner like Thanksgiving. The problem with the fuck its is they tend to cause you to enter a spiral. You went to a party last night where you said fuck it, so this morning you don't feel so good and you don't feel like eating that boring healthy food you've been eating for three weeks. You've already ruined your week with a binge night, so fuck it, I'll do the same today. It's fine, it's the weekend, come Monday I'll be back on the saddle. Come Monday, you eat a healthy breakfast and lunch, but then dinner time comes around, you're tired from work, you're cranky, a bit sad you blew your diet over the weekend and you think, well I've already said fuck it for two days, I'll just order a pizza tonight. Hell, in two weeks I have that big dinner I'm going to, so I'm going to have to go off my diet then anyway, I'll just forget this diet stuff until then. Once that's past, I'll get right back on the horse.
People can spend their entire lives on a diet and gain weight the whole time because of this.
Solution: Fuck its are mostly a result of stress from being on a diet, desire for comfort foods, and a spontaneous decision to leave the diet that is followed by continually making those same decisions. One of the best ways to avoid this is to have
pre-planned cheat meals, where you get to eat some unhealthy comfort food. Pre-planned cheat meals won't make you feel guilty the next morning, instead it'll feel like an earned reward. They'll keep stress lower because you know they're coming, and they refresh your willpower. Unplanned deviations cause downward spirals, a properly followed schedule of pre-planned cheat meals can help you avoid this trap.
2. Excessive snacking. In the grand scheme of things, an occasional little unhealthy snack is a good thing. But some people take it to excess, instead of a handful of M&Ms they take one here and there over the day until they've downed one of those big economy size bags in a day sitting at their desk at work, in addition to all the other food they eat for the day. Basically you get it in your mind if you follow your diet most days, but just occasionally pepper it with a random unplanned snack, you'll be okay. But what happens is these random snacks happen more than you realize, multiple times a week. And they aren't small, they might be hundreds of calories, thousands in a month. Enough to totally derail a diet.
Solution: By far this is best resolved by keeping a food log / journal / diary (using Calorie Count, MyFitnessPal, Sparkpeople, Excel Spreadsheet etc), as it keeps you mindful of what you're doing and helps you avoid the illusion that these snacks are so little as to be unimportant.
3. Runaway bingeing. This is what happens if you have a binge eating problem. People who have binge problems, combine the stress and willpower requirements of a diet, and they're set up for a hard, hard fall. These people even do the right thing, they plan cheat meals to take off the stress. But their brain starts firing off chemicals like an alcoholic the moment that fatty lasagna or pizza is going into their mouth for their cheat meal. What was supposed to be a single unhealthy meal turns into 2-3 days of calories in a single afternoon, Ben & Jerry's ice cream pints disappearing, whole bags of chips, a sleeve of oreos etc. Binge eaters have a lot of behavioral similarities to alcoholics, and their binge on a "cheat meal" day can undue weeks of dieting. Sometimes they will diet successfully for many months, and at the end, destroy it all in a few weeks of persistent binge eating.
FWIW, I've never been really fat because of my extreme lifting routine, but I've probably lost more weight than anyone on this forum because part of building muscle involves bulking up sometimes, and you have to cut at times to get some excess fat off. There's been times I've gotten a bit heavier in a bulk than I wanted, and it's because I definitely have some of the tendencies of a binge eater. I have serious weaknesses for cheap junk food, I can easily down a full bag of chips, a large pizza is no challenge for me, half a gallon of ice cream etc. I know this about myself, and thus anytime I eat food like that I take specific actions to make sure it doesn't happen. Make sure you eat ice cream out of a bowl, not the container. The moment you finish run water over spoon/bowl so you have to dry it off etc to get more. Pour some chips into a bowl, put the rest somewhere not easily reachable so it's an annoyance to get them. When I overeat this stuff, it's almost like the part of me that controls food intake is turned off. It's not a pleasure response so much as it's just...a continuous desire to keep eating, and I don't get full at all. The only way to break this sort of thing is to recognize when it is happening and have things set up so you can turn it off.
QuoteSomething I often like to bring up is this "starvation mode" that a lot of diet experts talk about. Starvation mode is basically when you're starving, you enter a "low energy state" where your body uses less energy. Diet advisers always say you have to avoid this, because it lowers metabolism and makes it very hard to lose weight. I've always found that to be false, and a few years ago a study came out saying the same thing: that it takes 60 hours of fasting to truly enter "starvation mode." There is little evidence "extreme" diets like VLCDs (physician supervised diets where you eat 3-4 prescription meal-shakes each day, totaling usually under 800 calories) put your body into "starvation mode" and make you unable to lose weight, and the whole concept defies certain basic facts about physics and human biology. The truth is, 800 calories/day on a physician supervised VLCD is one of the most effective non-surgical methods for the morbidly obese to lose weight rapidly.
That's starvation mode though. Your metabolism does alter to smaller degrees based on how much you eat right?
Most I've read on healthy eating seems to suggest a few lean days and one normal eating/perhaps even slightly excessive eating day to keep your metabolism used to such stuff.
This is wrong?
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 09:32:30 AM
They're doing it wrong.
:yes:
I certainly feel pretty well....errr......buggered doesn't work here....nor does fucked.....knackered after the act.
Quote from: mongers on February 01, 2013, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 01, 2013, 06:03:14 PM
I burned 42 calories today.
Finally, The Answer to life, the universe and everything is a threesome. :cool:
All twelve minutes of it.
Ide gains weight as he's made food integral to his sex.
Quote from: Warspite on February 01, 2013, 07:46:25 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
I thought what made nicotine so nasty was the intense physical addiction it created that is not just psychological, but the result of real physiological processes.
You thought wrong. The purely phyisical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are mild and disappear completely after a couple of weeks or so if one goes cold turkey. What makes smoking so hard to shake is the psychological aspects of addiction.
http://www.quitsmokingstartnow.com/ArticleSideEffectsOfQuitingSmoking.asp
This is why so many people cycle through quitting and going back to smoking.
Quote from: merithyn on February 01, 2013, 09:31:00 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 04:59:14 PM
I simply don't believe it.
Look, food is like fuel. You need to burn a certain amount of it to do X effort, assume X is the amount they do every day. Assuming two people are the same size and strength they will, in all likelihood, use much the same fuel to do X amount of effort. It is not the case that person A is substantially more efficient than person B, can do X effort for less.
That being the case, if you reduce fuel intake (that is, food) to persons A and B below the amount they need to burn to do X effort, while not reducing the amount of effort they do each day, both persons will need to burn the same amount; they can't get it from food, so they must get it from somewhere - and that somewhere is going to be the fat that they have stored. So they will lose weight.
I find it much, much easier to believe that some people are simply "misremembering" the amount they are restricting their caloric intake, than to believe in some suspension of the laws of physics that allows one person to do X amount of effort for substantially less "fuel" than another.
However, seems an easy thing to scientifically test. All you'd have to do is get one of these magic people and monitor them day and night for food intake. See if you calorie-restrict person A (who claims this 'difficulty') exactly the same as person B (who is the same size and strength, diets and loses weight no prob), have them do the same daily routine, and see if, indeed, person A can't lose weight.
I believe that they have done studies that show this to be the case. It showed something to do with the efficiency of the metabolism and the ability of the body to create the right amount of insulin to break down the energy properly. The insulin was the bigger reason for why some find it easier than others to lose weight, but there were other factors at work, like thyroid activity, hormone levels, etc. Leptin resistance is, I believe, one of the big issues for the morbidly obese.
Here's that study (http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/2/295.full).
Quotehe mechanisms underlying leptin resistance in obese humans may include defective transport of leptin into the brain, and/or reduced hypothalamic leptin signaling, which is in part due to up-regulation of specific inhibitors of leptin signaling. The pathogenesis of leptin resistance is currently under intense investigation, and it is expected that elucidation of the mechanisms underlying leptin resistance may lead to the development of new therapeutic options for the treatment of obesity.
Weight-loss programs are well known to be ineffective long term, with most individuals regaining any weight lost within a short period of time, and it has been proposed that the corresponding decline in serum leptin levels due to the loss in fat mass may contribute to the inability of these subjects to maintain their weight loss. Exogenous leptin administration to replace leptin levels to preweight-loss levels prevented the regaining of weight and promoted loss of fat mass while preserving fat-free mass (11) in a small group of subjects participating in a weight loss program, but these findings have to be replicated by larger studies.
There's also the body-memory issue for those who have lost weight only to regain it later.
Here's the conclusion of that study (http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/301/3/R581.abstract):
QuoteThe preponderance of evidence would suggest that the biological response to weight loss involves comprehensive, persistent, and redundant adaptations in energy homeostasis and that these adaptations underlie the high recidivism rate in obesity therapeutics. To be successful in the long term, our strategies for preventing weight regain may need to be just as comprehensive, persistent, and redundant, as the biological adaptations they are attempting to counter.
Your studies are looking at a different factor - the role of various substances in triggering feeling of satiety or the reverese; in short, that the body responds to certain stimuli by making one hungry and eat more; and that these processes explain why people who diet to lose weight have to keep control of their diet or they will regain all they lost.
It isn't saying that if one were locked away and forced to eat less, one would not lose weight. For one, that would rather defy the laws of physics.
QuoteIn the early 1950s, it was first postulated that food intake is closely linked to the amount of stored energy (fat mass) in the body. During the 1970s and 80s, gut peptide cholecystokinin, bombesin, gastrin-releasing peptide, neuromedin B (1) and glucagon (2) were identified as "immediate" satiety signals released from the gastrointestinal tract in response to the presence of food. During the 1990s, leptin was recognized as a longer-term adiposity signal, secreted in proportion to body fat stores. Moreover, in addition to modulating immediate peripheral satiety signals, insulin and leptin were shown to directly target the central nervous system and inhibit food intake (3). The currently accepted model of energy homeostasis proposes that peripheral signals become integrated with other regulators of food intake, such as the presence of food, habits or social behavior. Similarly, meal termination may be governed by extrinsic factors and intrinsic factors, the latter including signals generated in the organism in response to the consumption of food.
Quote from: Malthus on February 04, 2013, 10:01:30 AM
Quote from: Warspite on February 01, 2013, 07:46:25 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
I thought what made nicotine so nasty was the intense physical addiction it created that is not just psychological, but the result of real physiological processes.
You thought wrong. The purely phyisical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are mild and disappear completely after a couple of weeks or so if one goes cold turkey. What makes smoking so hard to shake is the psychological aspects of addiction.
http://www.quitsmokingstartnow.com/ArticleSideEffectsOfQuitingSmoking.asp
This is why so many people cycle through quitting and going back to smoking.
I think it's social aspects and rituals have also played a part in the 'addiction'
Quote from: PDH on February 01, 2013, 09:02:51 PM
I have to admit that when I eat less I consciously eat more proteins and fats, less carbs. I lost about 80 pounds by doing a modified South Beach about 7 years ago...plus I read a lot about the paleo diets (mostly from the anthropologists who talked about it).
Wow, 80 pounds? That's great. You'd have to chop me in half to lose that much.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on February 04, 2013, 12:25:31 PM
Wow, 80 pounds? That's great. You'd have to chop me in half to lose that much.
In my late 30s I weighed in at close to 330lbs. That 80 was just the first 2 years, then I stayed put for a while. Now I am around 220.
Quote from: Malthus on February 04, 2013, 10:01:30 AM
Quote from: Warspite on February 01, 2013, 07:46:25 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
I thought what made nicotine so nasty was the intense physical addiction it created that is not just psychological, but the result of real physiological processes.
You thought wrong. The purely phyisical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are mild and disappear completely after a couple of weeks or so if one goes cold turkey. What makes smoking so hard to shake is the psychological aspects of addiction.
http://www.quitsmokingstartnow.com/ArticleSideEffectsOfQuitingSmoking.asp
This is why so many people cycle through quitting and going back to smoking.
This link suggests more long lasting and deeper effects:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/addictions/nicotine.shtml
Quote from: mongers on February 04, 2013, 10:39:22 AM
I think it's social aspects and rituals have also played a part in the 'addiction'
Indeed; one has to change one's way of life not to include "smoke breaks" or smoking while drinking with your smoking buddies. Not easy to do.
I'm classifying all that under "psychological" addiction.
Quote from: Warspite on February 04, 2013, 01:13:33 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 04, 2013, 10:01:30 AM
Quote from: Warspite on February 01, 2013, 07:46:25 PM
Quote from: Malthus on February 01, 2013, 06:08:10 PM
Take smoking for example - quitting smoking is extremely "easy" physically - you just stop doing it. No-one claims that some mysterious physiological force over which they have no control *makes* them smoke. But of course, actually quitting isn't easy at all.
I thought what made nicotine so nasty was the intense physical addiction it created that is not just psychological, but the result of real physiological processes.
You thought wrong. The purely phyisical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are mild and disappear completely after a couple of weeks or so if one goes cold turkey. What makes smoking so hard to shake is the psychological aspects of addiction.
http://www.quitsmokingstartnow.com/ArticleSideEffectsOfQuitingSmoking.asp
This is why so many people cycle through quitting and going back to smoking.
This link suggests more long lasting and deeper effects:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/addictions/nicotine.shtml
To the extent that it is claiming physical withdrawal symptoms last mnore than a couple of weeks, it is wrong.
Check other sources. Nearly all of them say otherwise. The real problem with cigarettes is not physical withdrawal, but psychological dependancy (which is extremely severe and hard to shake).
QuoteNicotine use can have many different effects on body functions, both positive and negative. Nicotine acts as both a stimulant and depressant on your body. The use of nicotine:
•Decreases the appetite (for this reason, the fear of weight gain affects some people's willingness to stop smoking).
•Boosts mood and may even relieve minor depression. Many people will feel a sense of well-being.
•Raises the blood level of blood sugar (glucose) and increases insulin production.
•Increases bowel activity, saliva, and phlegm.
•Increases heart rate by around 10 to 20 beats per minute.
•Increases blood pressure by 5 to 10 mmHg (because it tightens the blood vessels).
•May cause sweating, nausea, and diarrhea.
•Stimulates memory and alertness. People who use tobacco often depend on it to help them accomplish certain tasks and perform well.
Symptoms of nicotine withdrawal generally start within 2 - 3 hours after the last tobacco use, and will peak about 2 - 3 days later. Symptoms may be severe, depending on how long you smoked and how many cigarettes you smoked each day. Common symptoms include:
•An intense craving for nicotine
•Anxiety, tension, restlessness, frustration, or impatience
•Difficulty concentrating
•Drowsiness or trouble sleeping, as well as bad dreams and nightmares
•Headaches
•Increased appetite and weight gain
•Irritability or depression
QuoteNicotine withdrawal is short-lived and symptoms pass in time, usually in less than a week. Withdrawal is the most uncomfortable part of quitting, but the real challenge is beating long-term cravings and staying away from tobacco.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000953.htm