The scientific and social study of obesity has shown that it is a complex bodily disorder, the causes of which are multiple and varied, and may include genetic and epigenetic factors, diet and eating habits, socioeconomic status, and personal and social lifestyles.
Wtf?
Yes, there’s a lot involved, but excusing away obesity as genetic ignores that 99% of it is behavioural. Just look at the explosion of Type II diabetes, which is pretty much all caused by diet.
Growing up, there were exactly 2 obese kids in our school, from first grade through 12th (across all grades). Those kids had a genetic cause to their obesity.
Today we have a much higher rate - I’m not buying that genetics drastically changed over the last few decades.
The elephant in the room is a combination of bullshit from governmental agencies (the lie of the food pyramid anyone?), nonsense from the medical community (fat in our diet isn’t the driver of cardiovascular disease or obesity, it’s unstable glucose, something that’s been well known since the early 90’s), pushing a high-carb diet in the 80’s, which was a lie that ran counter to what doctors advised for diabetetics since the 1930’s!
Dude, go talk to a bariatric specialist. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
You ever even look into the advances in bariatric medicine the last decade? Ever help treat a bariatric patient? 99% behaviorial is utter bullshit, and does not match currer best information.
Genetics didn’t likely change, but epigenetics is how our systems respond to conditions in and around us. And that absolutely can and has changed in the last fifty years, and was changing before that.
How our food is process impacts the entire endocrine system, our microbiota in not only the gut, but the entire body. We’ve got massive increases in environmental contamination over the same kind of timeline, which can not only directly effect systemic function, it can change epigenetics in the womb, and the actual genes themselves.
99% behaviorial my hairy ass.
Even that part is influenced by how food is processed, since there’s enough shit in anything you grow, even when you’re growing it yourself to play a factor. Actual processed foods are literally designed to trigger our brains and kick off addictions to the added fats and sugars.
That kind of bullshit is the same kind of brainless thing that leads to people thinking vaccines cause autism. There’s a metric buttload of data pointing to both weight gain and difficulty in weight loss being heavily influenced by external factors, but you’re in here like “nuh-uh, my data set of two fat kids in school says no”
It’s both a behavioural issue and a complex bodily disorder with many external factors…
Biologically, weight is pretty much an effect of calories in and calories out. If you lock someone up and give them too little food, they’ll generally get thin. The body can’t create fat if you don’t feed it and it can’t work without burning energy. Physics.
But losing weight when you’re not locked in a cell with someone else controlling your food availability is really hard. Not eating when you’re hungry is hard. The facility of getting healthy food that makes it easier is socio-economical. etc
It’s like running a marathon is “just” about starting to run and not stopping until you reach the finish line. It’s trivial on one level, really hard on another. It’s simple physics AND a complex web of genetic factors, motivation, knowledge, upbringing, etc
So most people are technically and biologically capable of losing weight, but most people are also practically and statistically not very successful at it.
Most popular diets work under controlled conditions, for the people who adhere to them; but most popular diets also don’t work in practice, as it’s too hard for people to diet for the rest of their life.
Former fatty. It was 100% behavioral. CICO. Physics. Some people need help, no denying that. But rigorously limiting and counting my intake, and estimating my output from added activity with fitness trackers, while also altering my diet to include more volume, less caloric density to stop feeling so hungry, 100% worked. And I learned to be hungry and that the world wasn’t going to end if I was hungry for a little while until it was meal time. I had plenty of caloric surplus and my body was being a little bitch.
Anyhow, anecdata of one that supports the control what goes in your facehole camp.
You can scream until you’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t contradict massive amounts of data and research done by people that have actual training in human physiology.
You, as one person, are just one data point. And that’s not how science works. It isn’t, and never will be.
IDGAF what you believe, you can believe your farts are magic and grant wishes for all that. But it doesn’t matter when it comes to reproducible data. And it is reproducible. The research on it all has been covered in multiple ways by multiple studies.
So, yay for you! You got fat by stuffing your giant mouth in an attempt to fill the hole in your brain, and lost the weight. Congratulations. It still has nothing to do with the current state of understanding of human metabolism.
Nah, I get it. Not screaming or whatever either. You are correct that human physiology is complicated. There are indeed many factors that go into nutrient absorbsion, etc. However, no one that has stopped eating for a significant amount of time stays fat. Not eating isn’t comfortable. The constant dopamine hit of always putting something into your mouth and having your taste buds light up your brain is super addicting. Feeling hunger is uncomfortable. No one denies any of this. But ultimately, it is up to you, what you choose to put into your mouth and what level of activity to perform to expend energy. If you need psychological help and coaching (think life style changes, CBT, etc), I’m 100% in support. But the responsibility for being fat is on the person for the vast majority of the cases. Modern, car-focused society is not very supportive of fitness endeavors. Weaponized food science (high calorie, low nutrient shit designed to addict you) and weaponized psychology (I bet you can sing at least three jingles for some company if you live in the US) is not supportive of healthy diets.
The research and me are both correct. You can have metabolism issues and still be responsible for your fatness. Thermodynamics ultimately decides your fatness. Without a source of surplus calories, you will lose weight, period. If you don’t, it is a measurement error or some adjustment in metabolic output estimation needs to be made. And if you’ve somehow magically measured, perfect, all of your input and output and are still not losing weight, get yourself a Nobel for perpetual motion. You just broke physics.
To be clear, i’m asking a very specific question about a very specific statement.
when you say :
So, yay for you! You got fat by stuffing your giant mouth in an attempt to fill the hole in your brain, and lost the weight. Congratulations. It still has nothing to do with the current state of understanding of human metabolism.
Are you claiming that basic CICO, which is peer reviewed science has “nothing to do with the current state of understanding of human metabolism.”
There is variability in the human metabolism, for sure, but CICO is thermodynamics. There’s not a person on the planet who can gain weight without eating.
My point is that all these factors are real, and they do tip the scale, but at the end of the day, how much you eat determines whether you gain or lose weight.
I’m not saying other factors can’t make a significant difference. (genetics and epigenetics play a role.)
I’m also not saying that it’s easy. (food, especially fast food can light up people’s brains in a way that mirrors drug addiction.)
But if you eat less while burning the same number of calories, you WILL lose weight. That’s not an opinion, it’s a law of physics.
If you want to lose 1 lb in a month, or gain 1 lb, you need to consume or burn 3,500 calories. Or 116 calories a day. Or 38 calories per meal… Easy right? … In the US, calorie estimates are allowed to be off by as much as 25%, and that’s just packaged food, forget any restaurant or line cook being exactly precise with portions… So for 2,500 average daily diet, over three meals, the margin of error is 208 calories. Your target is 38 calories. You’re trying to do something within the margin of error of all of your estimates. Calorie counting is a very difficult game to do! The deck is stacked against you. This is why it’s important to allow the homeostasis machinery in your body to handle all of this through satiation. It’s going to do the right thing if you let it
This is not in support at all. In fact, it further supports moonlight’s and others’ position. You cannot escape physics. That the numbers on the back of cereal box lie to you is not a get-out-responsibility card. You adjust your intake until you start losing. It is stupid simple. You body is a PID controller. And you need you learn how to operate it.
Does it make it more difficult to accomplish goal? Yep. Does it prevent you from actually doing it? Nah.
Former porkchop here as well. It’s all behavioral.
Yes there are external factors that can influence behavior, but at the end of the day it can’t be reduced further than that.
I am exhausted by the collective delusion and endless disavowing of any form of personal responsibility for one’s own dietary intake. Focus on the external factors, always, never look at choices because then it becomes a “they” problem not a “me” problem.
I’m sorry you guys are getting so much pushback here, lol. I was hoping Lemmy would have less… “Reddit” problems, but the number of dislikes and comments here tells me there’s still a LOT of pedantic, self-deluded, minimally educated, credential-worshiping fatties in denial within our community. It’s too bad so many give in to their emotions without practicing REAL rationality these days, it sounds like both Lemmy AND these people could really benefit from that ability.
How is a list of seven(!) different analyzed potential factors reduced by you with a “wtf” to one of those?
And then followed by an anecdote, a correlated studies off topic to the study described and a bit of conspiracy theory (note: one of the few I even support myself, but i’s out of scope of this article!).
You’re actively harming the points you want to make by jumping onto the wrong targets.
No one gives a fuck about “the points”, when are you people going to figure that out? You are the ones harming people by trying to dismiss necessary behavioral changes and real advice because there are technically other factors that you can back up with OODLES OF PEER-REVIEWED STUDIES, HOW CAN YOU INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE LIKE THIS??? No one cares what you studied while knocking out gen ed requirements, get over yourself.
You’re not in high school debate class anymore, you’re among people seeking and sharing knowledge that can be of actual use to them. If you’re gonna pretend you’re in someone’s corner and shield them from a false sense of blame, and then REFUSE to discuss actual, meaningful solutions, you are utterly worthless in spaces like this.
That’s a lot of words to say “my beliefs trump basic science”.
Peer review reproduction is a bit of a shambles tbh, so not the silver bullet people make it out to be in some fields, agreed.
So let’s leave the science aside for now and focus on what you are proposing.
“Just eat less” is about as productive as “Just don’t be sad” or “Just stop drinking alcohol”, technically correct but woefully inadequate as a practical solution for most people.
edit: before you get even more angry i’m not saying that eating less and exercising more doesn’t work, actually read the statement.
Aside from anecdotes and “trust me bro”, what knowledge have you shared so far, what solutions ?
I’m legitimately willing to listen to something you can even halfway prove.
lol, you couldn’t make it one sentence without randomly bringing Trump into this. Are you scared RFK is gonna make you illegal? I’m not reading the rest of that, go touch grass
I think they’re just saying that they found another link to obesity causing things. On the flip side of this my family can eat literally anything we want and not a single one of us is more than 130 pounds(all somewhere between 5’7 and 6’). I mean I’ve watched my brother slam 4 eggs, two slices of cheesecake, and half a gallon of milk for breakfast. He also tried to gain weight for two months by upping his calorie intake to somewhere around 6K calories a day. He gained like a pound and dropped it cause it was expensive…
We can only gain weight by adding muscle. My other brother was in the military and heaviest he ever weighed was after training. It’s been a few decades since then and he’s right back to his earlier weight.
I’ve been told by many that oh as you age that metabolism is gonna slow and you’ll start putting on the pounds. There is some truth to that but not as extreme as others.
My 70+ year old mother is 103 pounds. She might gain a few pounds if she has 2-3 shakes in a week(this also means she’s just on a sweets binge in general). All that’s required to lose it? Not have shakes the next week. Mind you this is someone who had 4 children and left the hospital after pregnancy within a few pounds of their pre-pregnancy weight.
So genetics is absolutely a factor and I’m all for them uncovering what that link is and researching it. The more we understand things the better.
I’d like to put on some weight…even fat. Cause I’m literally low single digit fat percentage right now which isn’t healthy either. Mind you I have a desk job. Not like I’m the epitome of active people.
The elephant in the room is a combination of bullshit from governmental agencies (the lie of the food pyramid anyone?), nonsense from the medical community (fat in our diet isn’t the driver of cardiovascular disease or obesity, it’s unstable glucose, something that’s been well known since the early 90’s), pushing a high-carb diet in the 80’s, which was a lie that ran counter to what doctors advised for diabetetics since the 1930’s!
100% correct, but this also speaks to factors other then just behavioral.
Surely you could say eating carbs, avoiding fat is a behavioral choice - but really people are given so much advice even from their primary care giver, that they follow advice that puts them into a super difficult position to recover from. Even if someone follows the advice perfectly, low fat, high carb whole food diet, they could still have metabolic syndrome (which is more then just visible fat), due to the bad advice they are given.
You should see my '89 year book. Almost no one was even slightly overweight except for the biggest jocks. I see people every day that would have shocked us in the 80s and 90s.
My friend across the street is grossly obese. His best friend just calls him “chubby”, but really fat. Told him the guy would have been the fattest kid in my senior class (excepting the jocks).
My theory is this: People keep seeing people bigger than themselves and saying, “I might be fat, but at least I’m not that fat!” Rinse and repeat.
Wtf?
Yes, there’s a lot involved, but excusing away obesity as genetic ignores that 99% of it is behavioural. Just look at the explosion of Type II diabetes, which is pretty much all caused by diet.
Growing up, there were exactly 2 obese kids in our school, from first grade through 12th (across all grades). Those kids had a genetic cause to their obesity.
Today we have a much higher rate - I’m not buying that genetics drastically changed over the last few decades.
The elephant in the room is a combination of bullshit from governmental agencies (the lie of the food pyramid anyone?), nonsense from the medical community (fat in our diet isn’t the driver of cardiovascular disease or obesity, it’s unstable glucose, something that’s been well known since the early 90’s), pushing a high-carb diet in the 80’s, which was a lie that ran counter to what doctors advised for diabetetics since the 1930’s!
Dude, go talk to a bariatric specialist. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
You ever even look into the advances in bariatric medicine the last decade? Ever help treat a bariatric patient? 99% behaviorial is utter bullshit, and does not match currer best information.
Genetics didn’t likely change, but epigenetics is how our systems respond to conditions in and around us. And that absolutely can and has changed in the last fifty years, and was changing before that.
How our food is process impacts the entire endocrine system, our microbiota in not only the gut, but the entire body. We’ve got massive increases in environmental contamination over the same kind of timeline, which can not only directly effect systemic function, it can change epigenetics in the womb, and the actual genes themselves.
99% behaviorial my hairy ass.
Even that part is influenced by how food is processed, since there’s enough shit in anything you grow, even when you’re growing it yourself to play a factor. Actual processed foods are literally designed to trigger our brains and kick off addictions to the added fats and sugars.
That kind of bullshit is the same kind of brainless thing that leads to people thinking vaccines cause autism. There’s a metric buttload of data pointing to both weight gain and difficulty in weight loss being heavily influenced by external factors, but you’re in here like “nuh-uh, my data set of two fat kids in school says no”
It’s both a behavioural issue and a complex bodily disorder with many external factors…
Biologically, weight is pretty much an effect of calories in and calories out. If you lock someone up and give them too little food, they’ll generally get thin. The body can’t create fat if you don’t feed it and it can’t work without burning energy. Physics.
But losing weight when you’re not locked in a cell with someone else controlling your food availability is really hard. Not eating when you’re hungry is hard. The facility of getting healthy food that makes it easier is socio-economical. etc
It’s like running a marathon is “just” about starting to run and not stopping until you reach the finish line. It’s trivial on one level, really hard on another. It’s simple physics AND a complex web of genetic factors, motivation, knowledge, upbringing, etc
So most people are technically and biologically capable of losing weight, but most people are also practically and statistically not very successful at it.
Most popular diets work under controlled conditions, for the people who adhere to them; but most popular diets also don’t work in practice, as it’s too hard for people to diet for the rest of their life.
Behavioural ≠ easy
Former fatty. It was 100% behavioral. CICO. Physics. Some people need help, no denying that. But rigorously limiting and counting my intake, and estimating my output from added activity with fitness trackers, while also altering my diet to include more volume, less caloric density to stop feeling so hungry, 100% worked. And I learned to be hungry and that the world wasn’t going to end if I was hungry for a little while until it was meal time. I had plenty of caloric surplus and my body was being a little bitch.
Anyhow, anecdata of one that supports the control what goes in your facehole camp.
Dude, you don’t get it at all.
You can scream until you’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t contradict massive amounts of data and research done by people that have actual training in human physiology.
You, as one person, are just one data point. And that’s not how science works. It isn’t, and never will be.
IDGAF what you believe, you can believe your farts are magic and grant wishes for all that. But it doesn’t matter when it comes to reproducible data. And it is reproducible. The research on it all has been covered in multiple ways by multiple studies.
So, yay for you! You got fat by stuffing your giant mouth in an attempt to fill the hole in your brain, and lost the weight. Congratulations. It still has nothing to do with the current state of understanding of human metabolism.
Nah, I get it. Not screaming or whatever either. You are correct that human physiology is complicated. There are indeed many factors that go into nutrient absorbsion, etc. However, no one that has stopped eating for a significant amount of time stays fat. Not eating isn’t comfortable. The constant dopamine hit of always putting something into your mouth and having your taste buds light up your brain is super addicting. Feeling hunger is uncomfortable. No one denies any of this. But ultimately, it is up to you, what you choose to put into your mouth and what level of activity to perform to expend energy. If you need psychological help and coaching (think life style changes, CBT, etc), I’m 100% in support. But the responsibility for being fat is on the person for the vast majority of the cases. Modern, car-focused society is not very supportive of fitness endeavors. Weaponized food science (high calorie, low nutrient shit designed to addict you) and weaponized psychology (I bet you can sing at least three jingles for some company if you live in the US) is not supportive of healthy diets.
The research and me are both correct. You can have metabolism issues and still be responsible for your fatness. Thermodynamics ultimately decides your fatness. Without a source of surplus calories, you will lose weight, period. If you don’t, it is a measurement error or some adjustment in metabolic output estimation needs to be made. And if you’ve somehow magically measured, perfect, all of your input and output and are still not losing weight, get yourself a Nobel for perpetual motion. You just broke physics.
brutal but accurate
To be clear, i’m asking a very specific question about a very specific statement.
when you say :
Are you claiming that basic CICO, which is peer reviewed science has “nothing to do with the current state of understanding of human metabolism.”
or was that just poor phrasing ?
There is variability in the human metabolism, for sure, but CICO is thermodynamics. There’s not a person on the planet who can gain weight without eating.
The extent to which the CI is absorbed and utilized can vary to some degree. That seems to be the point. Physics doesn’t stop at a catchy saying.
Yet another person missing the entire fucking point.
My point is that all these factors are real, and they do tip the scale, but at the end of the day, how much you eat determines whether you gain or lose weight.
I’m not saying other factors can’t make a significant difference. (genetics and epigenetics play a role.) I’m also not saying that it’s easy. (food, especially fast food can light up people’s brains in a way that mirrors drug addiction.)
But if you eat less while burning the same number of calories, you WILL lose weight. That’s not an opinion, it’s a law of physics.
I hate to agree with southsamurai, they downvote nearly every post i make, but… they have some truth here.
https://hackertalks.com/post/4875937/5471544
This is not in support at all. In fact, it further supports moonlight’s and others’ position. You cannot escape physics. That the numbers on the back of cereal box lie to you is not a get-out-responsibility card. You adjust your intake until you start losing. It is stupid simple. You body is a PID controller. And you need you learn how to operate it.
Does it make it more difficult to accomplish goal? Yep. Does it prevent you from actually doing it? Nah.
Former porkchop here as well. It’s all behavioral.
Yes there are external factors that can influence behavior, but at the end of the day it can’t be reduced further than that.
I am exhausted by the collective delusion and endless disavowing of any form of personal responsibility for one’s own dietary intake. Focus on the external factors, always, never look at choices because then it becomes a “they” problem not a “me” problem.
I’m sorry you guys are getting so much pushback here, lol. I was hoping Lemmy would have less… “Reddit” problems, but the number of dislikes and comments here tells me there’s still a LOT of pedantic, self-deluded, minimally educated, credential-worshiping fatties in denial within our community. It’s too bad so many give in to their emotions without practicing REAL rationality these days, it sounds like both Lemmy AND these people could really benefit from that ability.
Describe “real” rationality ?
I genuinely can’t infer what you mean from that statement.
🤓 nobody was talking to you, chief
You probably want to keep to DM’s if you don’t want conversation on a public message board.
Though I suppose a demonstrated lack of understanding of how public message boards work gives me my answer so, thanks.
How is a list of seven(!) different analyzed potential factors reduced by you with a “wtf” to one of those?
And then followed by an anecdote, a correlated studies off topic to the study described and a bit of conspiracy theory (note: one of the few I even support myself, but i’s out of scope of this article!).
You’re actively harming the points you want to make by jumping onto the wrong targets.
No one gives a fuck about “the points”, when are you people going to figure that out? You are the ones harming people by trying to dismiss necessary behavioral changes and real advice because there are technically other factors that you can back up with OODLES OF PEER-REVIEWED STUDIES, HOW CAN YOU INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE LIKE THIS??? No one cares what you studied while knocking out gen ed requirements, get over yourself.
You’re not in high school debate class anymore, you’re among people seeking and sharing knowledge that can be of actual use to them. If you’re gonna pretend you’re in someone’s corner and shield them from a false sense of blame, and then REFUSE to discuss actual, meaningful solutions, you are utterly worthless in spaces like this.
That’s a lot of words to say “my beliefs trump basic science”.
Peer review reproduction is a bit of a shambles tbh, so not the silver bullet people make it out to be in some fields, agreed.
So let’s leave the science aside for now and focus on what you are proposing.
“Just eat less” is about as productive as “Just don’t be sad” or “Just stop drinking alcohol”, technically correct but woefully inadequate as a practical solution for most people.
edit: before you get even more angry i’m not saying that eating less and exercising more doesn’t work, actually read the statement.
Aside from anecdotes and “trust me bro”, what knowledge have you shared so far, what solutions ?
I’m legitimately willing to listen to something you can even halfway prove.
lol, you couldn’t make it one sentence without randomly bringing Trump into this. Are you scared RFK is gonna make you illegal? I’m not reading the rest of that, go touch grass
Wait, seriously…no…that can’t possibly be true…
You do understand that the word trump exists outside of the name… Right?
Oh my, im glad you didn’t read the rest of it, so many complicated words.
Good luck, you are absolutely going to need it
I think they’re just saying that they found another link to obesity causing things. On the flip side of this my family can eat literally anything we want and not a single one of us is more than 130 pounds(all somewhere between 5’7 and 6’). I mean I’ve watched my brother slam 4 eggs, two slices of cheesecake, and half a gallon of milk for breakfast. He also tried to gain weight for two months by upping his calorie intake to somewhere around 6K calories a day. He gained like a pound and dropped it cause it was expensive…
We can only gain weight by adding muscle. My other brother was in the military and heaviest he ever weighed was after training. It’s been a few decades since then and he’s right back to his earlier weight.
I’ve been told by many that oh as you age that metabolism is gonna slow and you’ll start putting on the pounds. There is some truth to that but not as extreme as others.
My 70+ year old mother is 103 pounds. She might gain a few pounds if she has 2-3 shakes in a week(this also means she’s just on a sweets binge in general). All that’s required to lose it? Not have shakes the next week. Mind you this is someone who had 4 children and left the hospital after pregnancy within a few pounds of their pre-pregnancy weight.
So genetics is absolutely a factor and I’m all for them uncovering what that link is and researching it. The more we understand things the better.
I’d like to put on some weight…even fat. Cause I’m literally low single digit fat percentage right now which isn’t healthy either. Mind you I have a desk job. Not like I’m the epitome of active people.
There’s body type/genetics too; in both, muscle and fat gain.
100% correct, but this also speaks to factors other then just behavioral.
Surely you could say eating carbs, avoiding fat is a behavioral choice - but really people are given so much advice even from their primary care giver, that they follow advice that puts them into a super difficult position to recover from. Even if someone follows the advice perfectly, low fat, high carb whole food diet, they could still have metabolic syndrome (which is more then just visible fat), due to the bad advice they are given.
More like: epi/genetics is, if you gain fat/muscle easily. Socioeconomics is, if you gain fat/muscle.
You should see my '89 year book. Almost no one was even slightly overweight except for the biggest jocks. I see people every day that would have shocked us in the 80s and 90s.
My friend across the street is grossly obese. His best friend just calls him “chubby”, but really fat. Told him the guy would have been the fattest kid in my senior class (excepting the jocks).
My theory is this: People keep seeing people bigger than themselves and saying, “I might be fat, but at least I’m not that fat!” Rinse and repeat.
Here’s a study that seems to support your theory a bit: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5885842/