Increased food intake alone explains the increase in body weight in US
esciencenews.com
esciencenews.com
This is a low tech version of wireheading. You're short circuiting the built in reward mechanisms of the brain by giving it an overload of the things it considers positive. You crave fat and sugar because these things are rich in nutrients and energy. We're built for scarcity and can't cope when we have unlimited access to these things.
Try reducing your intake of junk food and after 2 months you'll find normal cravings start to return and normal foods tasting better.
The featured article examines calorie intake and not food intake. A pound of apples has a much lower calorie density than a pound of french fries. Changes in the TYPE of food consumed (i.e. increase calorie density) agree with the featured article's conclusions.
That is not true. It is "Increased CALORIE intake alone explains the increase in body weight in US"
That seems, to me, to be a far cry from "Increased food intake alone explains" I seem to be smelling a correlation/causation problem.
One of the major benefits to prepared meals (like frozen dinners) is that you can't add "just a little" more because you feel hungrier today.
HFSC - High Fructose Corn Syrup
PS: While I have never heard much mention of this, I suspect people crave food that contain nutrents they are missing. So hunger is probably a fiarly complex system that might not be all that robust to "new" food types.
This article was trying to contrast energy intake with exercise to see if the obesity seen was being caused by an increase in the amount we ate or a decrease in the amount we exercised (rather than seeing what foods might have been the culprits of the increased energy intake).
Overfeeding studies show that it's very hard to get people to gain weight on protein diets. Carbohydrate overfeeding, on the other hand, can get up to 10,000 calories a day, and people will still complain about feeling hungry.
Our ancestors had lots of dietary fat. They didn't have any simple carbohydrates at all.
811 overweight adults were randomly assigned to one of four diets: percentages of energy derived from fat, protein, and carbohydrates were 20, 15, and 65%; 20, 25, and 55%; 40, 15, and 45%; and 40, 25, and 35%.
By 2 years, weight loss remained similar in all four groups - about 7 lbs.
Among the 80% who completed the trial, the average weight loss was 4 kg; 14 to 15% of the participants had a reduction of at least 10% of their initial body weight.
Satiety, hunger, satisfaction with the diet, and attendance at group sessions were similar for all diets.
Attendance of counseling groups was strongly associated with weight loss (0.2 kg per session attended).
Bottom line: 1. It's all about eating less - eat what you like (so you can stick to it for life). As long your calories are reduced (to lose a pound of fat you need to lose 3,500 calories) and you stay within healthy nutrient ranges you will lose weight. 2. Consider participation in some sort of community (or even online groups), for support, motivation and accountability.
I became a good-looking normal weight man after having been 150 pounds overweight all of my adult life. It took about a year. But I was starving every moment of every day. I have tremendous willpower, but in the end I couldn't keep it up for the following years. Losing the weight through low-calorie starvation techniques had destroyed by muscle. My brain thought I was emaciated. I thought about food constantly while on the diet and after. Like 99% of the people who lose weight by following a low-calorie diet, I gained it back within the next couple of years.
Now, since December, I've lost 40 pounds by kicking the carbohydrates out of my diet. I eat huge quantities of fat and protein. I'll probably go home and have a whole chicken for dinner tonight -- or maybe a pound or two of pork loin. I'm less hungry now than I was.
And my muscle -- it's still there, in fact I'm getting stronger. I can't tell you how amazing it is to have my bench press and dead lift stay the same while I'm dieting. I'm losing weight more slowly than low-calorie allows, but it all seems to be fat that I'm losing instead of fat + muscle.
What explains it? The calorie theory is bankrupt. Fat accumulation is regulated by insulin which is driven by carbohydrate consumption.
Yes, you will lose body weight by eating less. By why not attack the real problem instead? Obesity is a disease of fatty accumulation caused by the hormone insulin, not a disease of willpower.
You lost weight, by removing calories from your diet.
I'm losing weight more slowly than low-calorie allows,
So you are less hungry when you don't calorie restrict as much.
PS: Doing callorie ristriction dieting without reducing nutrition is hard, however meat contains most nutrients your body needs which impacts hunger. So, comparing a study that controwls for nutrition with your perconal habits is probably a mistake.
Let me count up my "low-calorie" eating from yesterday.
1 whole chicken, baked: about 2000 calories. 1/2 pound of 83% lean ground beef, grilled, with 3oz cheese: about 800 calories Chocolate Mousse (made from 100% cacao chocolate + heavy cream + splenda): 500 or so calories, mostly from 1/2 cup of heavy cream 3 hard boiled eggs: 200 calories
Total: 3500 calories
Oh yeah, I'm living the "low-calorie" life. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
Using your body fat%, activity level, weight ect you can create a fairly accurate estimate on you're caloric needs and it's often higher than you might think.
PS: I can burn 1k calories exercizing for one hour.
PS: I don't know if this is a good idea, but I used to peg my heart rait at 190-200BPM for 45min to an hour a day.
W = Force * Distance. When you lift weights, you're moving them 6 inches for things like the bench press, and maybe 3 feet for squats.
That simply does not compare to running for sheer calorie burn. You're running miles = 5280 feet.
Running is the best form of calorie burn, bar none. That's why it's recommended for excessively fat people, rather than weight-lifting.
When you get down to the lower body fat %'s, people suggest you switch to weightlifting only, simply because you don't need as big as a caloric deficit, and generating that big deficit when you don't have that much fat puts you in danger of losing muscle.
Also, having a heart rate of 200 BPM for an hour a day would kill you. That's the equivalent of a full, dead out sprint, for 45 minutes straight.
Still, when you reach the limts on how fast you can move the body you can still aproach the same numbers, a 100kg person running at 10Mph for 60 min can still burn around 1020 calories. But, again your force is not your weight.
However, running involves a lot of inpact strain on the body and tends to lead to long term problems.
Trust me. Look into the insulin hypothesis. The "calorie is a calorie" thinking is naive pseudo-thermodynamics. Feedback systems are a lot more complicated than that. Read the Taubes book.
"UV rays convert cholesterol into vitamin D" and "you need blood cholesterol, it's shipped to damage sites and used in repair" and "higher blood cholesterol doesn't always mean increased risk of heart attacks" and "statins reduce cholesterol but don't reduce the risk of heart attack" and "sure, your blood cholesterol is lower. You know why? Because your body is using it and no longer able to replace it"
I wonder how much medicine/biology/biochemistry background I'd need to be able to make my own reasoned decisions. Roll on (friendly) AI.
Perhaps the degree of your calorie restriction was necessary to lose the amount of weight you did in the amount of time you wanted (and that's a really impressive accomplishment regardless of what happened after), but I think many people will find that just by adjusting their portions so they're not consuming an unnecessary.
Put into the broad context of this thread, do you think that consumption of carbohydrates specifically as compared to proteins has gone up substantially in the US since 1970 and has not in other countries?
While we're throwing around anecdotal evidence, I've been on a diet of trying to maintain a 500ish calorie deficit per day since October. I do this through a combination of portion control and exercise, including weightlifting to make sure my muscle mass stays up. I am definitely stronger than I was at the start and I have lost 25 lbs (I started out 55 lbs overweight). That's much, much slower progress than you, but as long as I stagger meals properly throughout the day, I don't have any prolonged period of hunger.
Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I haven't seen any studies that support that common contention. And I have seen at least one that shows weight loss speed has no real effect on keeping the weight off later. But so few people do keep it off that it's hard to know.
Either way, good luck to you and your diet. I sincerely hope that it works out for you.
Although both plans were equal in calories, half the group followed a moderate-protein diet (40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 30% fat) while the other followed a diet based on USDA's food-guide pyramid (55% carbohydrates, 15% protein, 15% fat).
...
Although the amount of weight lost in both groups was similar, at 4 months participants in the protein group had lost 22 percent more body fat than members of the food-pyramid group. At 12 months, the moderate-protein dieters had lost 38 percent more body fat.
...
Average weight loss for the protein group was 23 percent higher than the food-pyramid group, with 31 percent of "completers" in the protein group losing more of than 10 percent of their initial body weight versus 21 percent of the food-pyramid group.
When I travel to the US, it feels like they're serving way to much food, from an urban Canadian perspective. The portions just look huge to me, but apparently this is considered normal.
When I eat with my parents-in-law (who are perfectly fit), their portions look small and unsatisfying to me. I'm about 20 pounds overweight. When I eat their portion size, I don't get hungry -- it just feels like I'm being shorted.
We need to re-calibrate.
The marginal costs to a restaurant of a small amount of additional food on your plate is minimal. The downsides aren't that great either...assuming the price to the customer of a bit of extra food is the same, the people who want extra food will be happy, and those that don't just don't have to eat it.
Now ask that same restaurant to start serving smaller portions, in comparison with their competition. They haven't really cut too much in costs, but suddenly they're the guys with wimpy portion sizes, while the restaurant next door serves up a full, satisfying meal.
I think we're just seeing the result of a market that's catering to the unfortunate preferences of us, the consumers.
This is only true at cheap restaurants. High quality food does not come in large portions. Stop going to garbage restaurants.
So it's not so much that people are physically eating more, rather that they are consuming foods that have a higher concentration of calories.