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Obesity myth

Quinlan

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Okay, I can understand that these obese people have an urge to eat and that forcing them into a diet that restricts them to a narrow caloric intake diet will cause them mental and seemingly physiological distress, but then why are Americans at large more obese than other populations? I'm thinking that low-energy diets are consumed more often in other countries by their obese people, and that they fulfill their needs to eat in an equal way, just with other diets. The other option is that America simply breeds fatties, which would have to do with societal factors.

This is intriguing. It's hard to conceptualize that obese people require a BMI level to maintain; instead I think their bodies are just used to (from genetics or what have you) requiring a certain level of food to be going into their bodies in some constant rate. This would account for the overall discrepancies in American BMIs compared to others, since their diets are more low-energy than Americans'.

The increase in obesity is not as huge as it is made out to be, in every well nourished population there will be obese people.

nhanesepidemic.jpg
<EDIT> Picture didn't work, the graph is halfway down this page: Junkfood Science: JFS special report: Obesity statisticulation — When will people get it?

The dashed lines on this graph are the population distribution in 1976. The solid line is a modern one. "The obesity epidemic" is the result of a big chunk of the "norm" creeping over an arbitrary line, these people gain a few Kgs (which gives no significant increase in health risks) and all of a sudden we're going mental about the obesity crisis. The overall distribution is pretty similar and as you can see there were a ton of "obese" people back in 1976, contrary to popular belief. Also most of the health risks of being obese come at >40, and as you can see on this graph that much of the obese lie at less than 40.

The obese are a natural part of any well nourished population and always have been.

Americans have also increased in height by an inch over the last 40 years but their isn't a "height epidemic" going on is there?
 

Feops

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Americans have also increased in height by an inch over the last 40 years but their isn't a "height epidemic" going on is there?

No, because an extra inch of height doesn't carry any negative effects, and the individual has little choice in the matter anyway. Choosing a lifestyle and diet which leads to obesity is an individual choice with health implications.

There should be social pressure to remain fit and trim. Physical ability is of great benefit through life and obesity's cost to society is massive.
 

Quinlan

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Cheers for ignoring everything I've said and completely missing the point.

If social pressure actually produced results everyone would be slim.
 

Quinlan

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Reasons why we could be bigger on average now than in the past:

Aging population- As you get older you naturally gain some weight, the few extra pounds gained by the aging babyboomers alone could probably account for a lot of the increase.

We are less sick- Generally sickness decreases weight, these days we have erradicated a huge amount of disease and illness, therefore you're usually a few pounds (at least) bigger when we're not sick.

Poor people are less likely to go without food- Efforts to improve basic needs for the very poor have improved, so they are more likely to be well fed than in the past.

Changing cultures- In the US there has been huge growth of "minority" populations, not only could the influx of genetic differences change the average weight but also generally those cultures are less concerned about a few extra pounds, so millions of people trickle to one side of an arbitrary line (your risks do not significantly increase either side of the line).

Medical/Treatments- These days we treat mental illness (depression/anxiety) with more and more drugs many of which have the side effect of increasing weight (and I would assume that anxiety and depression decreases weight). You also have massive amounts of women on the contraceptive pill, that can cause you to gain weight.

Smoking- With the widespread decrease in smoking there is an inevitable increase in weight as smoking can reduce and maintain weight loss.

Dieting- The dieting craze that has persisted since the 80s ultimately leaves people weighing more than if they had not dieted at all.

Combine all of these factors and you have a huge chunk of the few pounds needed to cross millions and millions of people from one side of that arbitrary line to the other.

I'm not asking people to accept my opinions out right, only to consider where much of the information out their regarding weight is funded from and view it with a healthy skeptcism, also be aware of how the media can bias our perception, scaremongering sells so be aware that you will hear much more about negative studies (even if their findings are weak) than you will about positive or null studies.

Examine for robustness the axioms that our beliefs about fat are based on.
 

EcK

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They're just big boned, silly.:rolleyes:
 

Haphazard

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See, the thing is is that I'm overweight. My parents are overweight, too. They have always been overweight. In the 1970s, my mother was overweight, and she's overweight now, but all of the sudden that she's overweight is a part of an obesity epidemic.

Weird.
 

Magic Poriferan

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See, the thing is is that I'm overweight. My parents are overweight, too. They have always been overweight. In the 1970s, my mother was overweight, and she's overweight now, but all of the sudden that she's overweight is a part of an obesity epidemic.

Weird.

Well, I think the statistics have been fairly clear that there are more obese people in the USA now than there were in the 1970s.
 

Haphazard

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Well, I think the statistics have been fairly clear that there are more obese people in the USA now than there were in the 1970s.

I dunno. It just seems weird that it should suddenly be my problem, because I'm a part of a long line of overweight people. How many people were overweight in the US in the 1940s?

I mean, I'm not saying that it's not important to eat healthy and exercise. I agree that overall people are probably less fit than they used to be because of the change of lifestyle. But purely putting this matter on weight seems... wrong.
 

Quinlan

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This is an interesting analogy, showing that while there are definitely more obese people around than before the amount of panic and hysteria is not in proportion to the slight increase in average weight.

So let me give you an analogy... Imagine that 40 years ago the average IQ was 100 and there was a bell-shaped curve. Imagine now that our educational system improves and the bell-shaped curve shifts a little and the average IQ is now 105. With that you could imagine that the number of people who have an IQ greater than 140, so-called geniuses, might have doubled. Now is it more useful to think about how our education is doing by saying, “average IQ increased 5 points” or “number of geniuses is doubled.” I think probably both are of interest but the former seems to me more informative.


Ok. So how does that analogize to weight? Over the time period that you’ve heard that the obesity rates have quote “doubled” or gone up by 70 percent, the average weight gain is 7 to 10 pounds... think about the fact that 7 to 10 pounds is almost nothing compared to the hundreds of pounds of difference in weight that you might see in any two people walking around the street today, both of whom essentially have unlimited access to calories.

Junkfood Science: JFS special report: Obesity statisticulation — When will people get it?

People like to picture "the obesity epidemic" as most of the population suddenly going from slim to morbidly obese, when that is a lie of statistics. The increase in the obese is just already very overweight people gaining a little bit more weight and crossing an arbitrary line.

The very/morbidly obese (the headless pictures you see on TV and in newspapers) are still rare at only 2.5% of the population and much of the health problems associated with obesity come form this small group.
 

Clonester

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Just an observation as a Canadian, but a few parts of the US I've visited have some areas where a lot of people are very fat. I mean there are fat people in Ottawa, but this is far worse. And it can vary by the neighbourhood too. Another thing is the portion size. Some American restaurants have HUGE portion sizes. Which is nice on occasion or something, but on a frequent basis? It wouldn't be hard to have a day's worth of calories just in one meal with dessert & drinks.
 

Quinlan

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The fundamental premise of "the obesity crisis" and all size based discrimination and prejudice is the deeply ingrained belief that body size is the result of personal choices.

This axiom seems so intuitively true and is beaten into us every day of our lives that it is hard to consider any other alternative, it is as self evident as it comes, it's something that everyone "just knows".

But is there any scientific basis for the axiom that body size is a choice?

We owe it to ourselves both intellectually and morally to explore the alternative hypothesis fully, what we must remember is that almost all of the information we receive through the media comes from a vested interest, the sheer volume on the anti-size side of the argument is so great that we have to take it upon ourselves to explore the alternative hypothesis.

What would you say if I said that your average body weight over your lifetime was as predetermined by your genes as your height?

Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University:

The commonly held belief that obese people can simply decide to eat less and exercise more to control their weight is “at odds with substantial scientific evidence illuminating a precise and powerful biological system that maintains body weight within a relatively narrow range (10-20 pounds),”

"The heritability of obesity is equivalent to that of height and greater than that of almost every other condition that has been studied,”

In other words your body size is almost entirely based on your genes.

Equivalent to that of height? Do you know that it's a FACT that tall people are statistically happier, healthier, smarter and earn more than short people? Don't you realise that your child's failure to grow tall means they will live a life of sadness, disease, stupidity and poverty? Why aren't you pushing your kid harder to gain more height! You must be a bad parent or your child is just lazy and lacking willpower, if you really cared about their life you would insist that they gain height!

Enough facetiousness but still, the point remains that if millions and millions of people consistently tried and failed to change their eye colour or height we would be right in assuming that it's pretty much impossible and we wouldn't see it as some moral or mental failing.

But how can that be true? We all see fatties stuffing their face all the time! Surely they're overeating to get that big?

Not so:

This is just one study of a profusion of others, both clinical and epidemiological, over the past fifty years demonstrating that fat children (and adults) as a group normally eat exactly the same as thin people. Multiple researchers, using a variety of methodologies, have failed to find any meaningful or replicable differences in the caloric intake or eating patterns of the obese compared to the non-obese to explain obesity, concluded David Garner, Ph.D. and Susan Wooley, Ph.D., for example, in their review of some 500 studies on weight in Clinical Psychology Review.
and

Why you see fat people stuffing their faces is due to confirmation bias when you see a skinny person eating a cupcake your brain won't register it as a meaningful event but when you see a fat person eating a cupcake, you can't help but think "they shouldn't be eating that!" and you will remember it.

Canadian researchers looked at the diets of more than 130,000 kids in 34 countries and reported in a recent issue of Obesity Reviews that fat kids even eat the least sweets, and that kids’ body weights had nothing to do with how many fruits, vegetables or soft drinks they consumed.

Overeating is actually incredibly hard for the human body to maintain in the long term and is similar to starvation in many ways (Almost everyone's willpower will fail to maintain it for any meaningful length of time).

Ultimately I thought of this analogy; Greyhounds may be at lower risk for certain diseases than St Bernard's but that doesn't mean you should try and turn a St Bernard's into the size of a greyhound through calorie restriction and exercise, by doing so you'll cause more health problems than you'll fix. Of course St Bernards need exercise and to be at a healthy weight but that healthy size is specific to St Bernard's. (if you say a St Bernard's weight is in proportion to it's height then just replace the greyhound with an afghan hound, their "BMIs" would be very different).

It would be ludicrous to recommend a single "ideal" weight for "dog", just as it is ludicrous to recommend a single "ideal" weight for "human".
 

Haphazard

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Overeating is actually incredibly hard for the human body to maintain in the long term and is similar to starvation in many ways (Almost everyone's willpower will fail to maintain it for any meaningful length of time).

What about emotional overeating? Can this be thought of as consistent enough to cause obesity? Is it prevalent enough?
 

Haphazard

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Well, Quinlan, if you have or are at risk for certain diseases (like diabetes) 7-10 pounds can make managing it a lot easier. So it's not an insignificant amount, but it's not as much as everyone's making it out to be.

Also, consider: there's this thing called the Freshman 15, where supposedly Freshmen in college gain about fifteen pounds by suddenly engaging in a very unhealthy lifestyle -- sudden access to unlimited amounts of junkfood and caffeine, lots of stress, and very little sleep, because no one is monitoring it.

But it's only the Freshman 15, not the "I went to college and now I'm morbidly obese". Also, the fact that now people are only recording gaining on average 7-8 pounds during their Freshman year, and considering kids are going into college a bit fatter than they used to, well, wouldn't that suggest that there's some kind of cap, either behavioral or metabolic, on how fat someone is going to get?

I mean, yeah, take care of yourself, but it suggests that people who actually ARE very obese probably have other factors involved besides just a poor lifestyle.
 

Athenian200

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Also, consider: there's this thing called the Freshman 15, where supposedly Freshmen in college gain about fifteen pounds by suddenly engaging in a very unhealthy lifestyle -- sudden access to unlimited amounts of junkfood and caffeine, lots of stress, and very little sleep, because no one is monitoring it.

Wow. Most people's parents must be a lot stricter than mine. I've grown up with access to unlimited amounts of junk food and caffeine, and no requirement to sleep, but I curbed it (at least the junk food) because I realized it made me feel like crap.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that my mother and I have been living like college students for most of my life...
 

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I'm going to call bullshit/shenanigans on the article Quinland found.

If what you're asserting is true and there are no other factors taken into account, then the proportion of obese people to non-obese people in America should have stayed roughly the same over the past fifty years, but it most definitely hasn't. There's more to it than just genetics.

I would argue between different types of being overweight: natural and unnatural

Examples:
Natural - Rosie O'Donnel
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaroo.jpg

Most people would agree that Rosie O'Donnel is overweight (I don't know about obese though.) You can tell that she would normally be considered a large woman.

Unnatural - The guy on the left
obese_2.jpg

You can clearly tell that this man is much heavier than he should be due to lifestyle choices.
 

Quinlan

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What about emotional overeating? Can this be thought of as consistent enough to cause obesity? Is it prevalent enough?

I would say that if your natural metabolic range sits around "overweight" then you could push up into the obese range through emotional overeating, but to maintain that throughout your life would involve very disordered eating that should be treated in the same way as other eating disorders. What we often discount is the influence of stress on our body, we often think of stress as occuring in the mind but stress actually is very strongly related to physical illness and early death, these relationships are stronger than the relationships with obesity our income.

When we create an "obesity crisis" and generate this mass hysteria and outright obsession regarding eating and weight, we don't stop to consider what the cumulative effects of all of this social pressure might do physiologically to an obese person growing up and living in a fat-phobic and obsessive culture might be.

When we push someone harder and harder to lose weight through things like social pressure, what we are attempting to do is induce stress in that person in order to achieve a "flight or fight" response in the individual, specifically we expect that the harder we push the more stress the individual will feel and therefore the harder their "fight" response will be against their weight problem. We never stop to think what damage this extra stress alone might be causing to their bodies in the long term. Stress has been shown to cause many health problems many of which could have been mistakenly attributed to the adipose tissue itself rather than the stress induced by carrying such a stigma throughout your life.

Everyone will tell you obsession is a bad thing in the long term but we (in the west) are collective obsessed about fat.

Well, Quinlan, if you have or are at risk for certain diseases (like diabetes) 7-10 pounds can make managing it a lot easier. So it's not an insignificant amount, but it's not as much as everyone's making it out to be.

Appropriate weight loss is perfectly fine, their are times when it has benefits but long-term weight loss and maintenance (well outside of your natural metabolic range) and the inevitable weight gain that comes with it over a lifetime for most people is much more damaging to their health than having never lost it at all.

Also, consider: there's this thing called the Freshman 15, where supposedly Freshmen in college gain about fifteen pounds by suddenly engaging in a very unhealthy lifestyle -- sudden access to unlimited amounts of junkfood and caffeine, lots of stress, and very little sleep, because no one is monitoring it.

But it's only the Freshman 15, not the "I went to college and now I'm morbidly obese". Also, the fact that now people are only recording gaining on average 7-8 pounds during their Freshman year, and considering kids are going into college a bit fatter than they used to, well, wouldn't that suggest that there's some kind of cap, either behavioral or metabolic, on how fat someone is going to get?

I think there is a (long term) cap, most people losing weight find that it starts off fairly easy but eventually you hit a wall that you have to fight harder and harder to progress past, the same goes the other way, if you are naturally skinny and try desperately to gain weight, you will to a certain extent but then you will hit the same kind of wall where you have to push harder and harder to gain more than that. I think our natural weight lies somewhere between those two points.

I mean, yeah, take care of yourself, but it suggests that people who actually ARE very obese probably have other factors involved besides just a poor lifestyle.

In some ways our lifestyle is unhealthy compared to 50 years ago but there are a lot of benefits that come from that lifestyle also and we are living longer than ever (even Americans the poster nation for the obesity epidemic sit at the very top of life expectancy once you account for non-health issues like car accidents and shootings etc.).

Ultimately you don't have to be skinny to starve, an obese person on a starvation diet will exhibit the same psychological and physiological issues that all starving people experience.
 

wolfy

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Quin, are you saying that certain people have a predisposition to weight gain and naturally carry more weight so shouldn't be negatively judged by society.
Or are you saying that the body will not adapt to exercise and diet? That people have no control over their body composition?
 

Quinlan

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I'm going to call bullshit/shenanigans on the article Quinland found.

Which article specifically? I have linked a lot.

If what you're asserting is true and there are no other factors taken into account, then the proportion of obese people to non-obese people in America should have stayed roughly the same over the past fifty years, but it most definitely hasn't. There's more to it than just genetics.

Actually proportionally we are very much similar to 50 years ago, there has been an increase of average weights right across the board, the population is as normally distributed as it's ever been (as you would expect with genetic differences such as height). Of course there is more to it than genetics:

-Aging population
-Better nourishment
-Less disease
-Improved treatments for the very skinny and very fat

I would argue between different types of being overweight: natural and unnatural

BMI, the very root of the obesity epidemic does not account for this.

Examples:
Natural - Rosie O'Donnel
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaroo.jpg

Most people would agree that Rosie O'Donnel is overweight (I don't know about obese though.) You can tell that she would normally be considered a large woman.

Rosie O'Donnel is very much obese, she has the "disease" of obesity as her BMI would be greater than 30.

Unnatural - The guy on the left
obese_2.jpg

You can clearly tell that this man is much heavier than he should be due to lifestyle choices.

This kind of guy would be considered morbidly (very/super) obese, statistically they are still very rare (2.5%). Most of the "epidemic" comes from (aside from the arbitrary changes to it's definition) millions and millions of people who are quite a bit smaller than Rosie gaining a few pounds and crossing an arbitrary line.

Statistically most "obese" people look more like Rosie (or smaller than her) than the second guy.

I wouldn't consider myself huge but at the start of the year I was a few Kgs away from being "obese", I'm now half way through the overweight range, so technically fat.

Instead of focusing on the tails of the normal distribution (where most health problems come from) we are obsessing over a chunk of people pretty damn close to the middle.
 

Quinlan

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Quin, are you saying that certain people have a predisposition to weight gain and naturally carry more weight so shouldn't be negatively judged by society.

Yes.

Or are you saying that the body will not adapt to exercise and diet?

I'm saying that all most all measures of health will respond positively to exercise and (a not too restrictive) diet except for BMI in the long term (but that's ok because BMI is a poor measurement of health anyway).

That people have no control over their body composition?

I think people can probably replace much fat with muscle but they are still likely to be of a heavier build and therefore considered obese.
 

Haphazard

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Quin, are you saying that certain people have a predisposition to weight gain and naturally carry more weight so shouldn't be negatively judged by society.
Or are you saying that the body will not adapt to exercise and diet? That people have no control over their body composition?

I think what Quinlan is saying is that the body's composition can be controlled but only to a certain extent, and that the amount of control one has is less than the media wants you to believe, so if you cannot change your body composition to their stringent standards and it would probably be unhealthy for you to do so you should not be negatively judged by society.
 
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