You might want to check out this article at Forbes on China’s problem with obesity.
I continue to think that obesity is multi-factorial, a problem with many causes. I am skeptical of the simple thermodynamic theory of obesity (“eat less, exercise more and you’ll lose weight”). I think that some of the components are diet and exercise to be sure but I also think that stress, environment, genetics, and congenital factors play roles. I also think there’s a possibility that obesity is a symptom of a communicable disease.
“I am skeptical of the simple thermodynamic theory of obesity”
There’s a lot of evidence to support your skepticism. One study I read about had obese people lose weight. Then they took other people with comparable weights and dimensions and put them all on the same diet and exercise regimen. The result was that the formerly obese people had to either eat much less, or exercise much more to maintain the same weight compared to the group that wasn’t previously obese. If it were only about calories and out (through activity), then the weight change should have been the same with both groups.
There’s definitely a lot of evidence of the role of insulin resistance, which is throwing the recent conventional wisdom about fats and carbs on its head. I’m doing Eat Fat Get Thin (Dr Mark Hyman, a bit too much of a huckster but I think the plan is sound) plan right now- totally miserable, as is always the case when I restrict carbs, but the book has some useful tips for getting through it which have helped a bit. I’m a week in and lost 5 lbs which is a record for me and with all the fat I’m sure I’m taking in more calories than the standard weight loss diets would prescribe for my size and level of activity.
I read an article a while back about the folks on the tv program “The Biggest Loser” and the travails they faced after losing all the weight they did. IFIRC, they gained all the weight back after a period of time. What researchers found is that, agreeing with Andy, once these folks had reached their “ideal weight” for their height, their metabolisms were pitched 500-600 calories per day lower than people who never had had a weight problem. Fat, it seems, is somewhat like Sauron’s Ring: It wants to get back to where it where is originally was.
One broader aspect of the China story is that a lot of countries are starting to have weight issues, so I become pretty suspicious of explanations that are American-centric, though we are ahead on the curves.
I hit 270 (I’m 6’2″ and built like a peasant) after our first kid was born. Went on Atkins, dropped to 225 ish. Regained a bit, tried Atkins again and: no dice. Or at least fewer dice. I hate to anthropomorphize my. . . well, okay, not anthropomorphize but ascribe consciousness motives to . . . my own body, but it’s like it was saying, “Fool me once, fat boy, but I’m not falling for that again.”
With many an up and down I have managed to keep most of that 40 pounds off, generally by simple calorie counting and portion control. But when the system is designed to make gaining weight extremely easy while doing all it can to then retain that weight, we’re talking a long, twilight struggle. I’m 229 as of this morning, definitely overweight, but not 270. Good enough. I’m a writer not an athlete, Jim!
“after our first kid was born”
Ah, sympathy pregnancy.
Gut biome has been implicated in a lot of recent research. I expect that in 20 years, we will have an entirely different understanding of weight gain and loss.
Fat lot of good that does us now, though.
From a thread now in the distant past….
Michael,
I have plenty of empathy. No sector of the population with a general political worldview has a monopoly on the trait. But those who feel the need to signal their virtue, or argue motives rather than workable public policy can be counted on to invoke it.
As for your point on denying racism, that is simply your all to prevalent habit of imputing motives or beliefs to people. You make such unwarranted leaps, for reasons that escape me. I don’t know anyone who denies prior or current racism. Given that I don’t make it a habit to hang with the local KKK chapter, I literally know no one. But that’s a far different issue than the current obsession with race that has engulfed the country and made it the go-to “victim’s” excuse for all kinds of poor personal behaviors, and for the race profiteers who abound. That victims mindset makes as much sense as me making a career of going on Jerry Springer shows to “tell my story” -and yes, it was horrible – and why it”caused” me to become a thief, vagrant, murderer, or whatever other behavior I could convince someone of.
Oh, and I’m sorry to hear of your own childhood experience. Unless one actually experiences that as a child it is but an intellectual, not visceral, understanding.
I do: you. Repeatedly. Many times over many years. So often that on more than one occasion I’ve asked you just when all that racism disappeared. And you have always refused to elaborate. I’m not a Trumpie, Drew, I don’t accept ‘alternative facts.’
People make lots of excuses for lots of things but the only one that seems to bother you is race. You deny racism, you ridicule people who still point to the existence of racism, and when challenged you got nothing to either support your position or challenge mine. The transitive rule of Holocaust-denial applies here, to whit: if you deny the reality of the Holocaust, even if you assert your impartiality, you are an anti-semite.
The actual non-alternative reality is that whatever you or I carry through life we have an edge because we are white men. I don’t like it, I doubt you do either, we are both invested in our own egos, our own stories, we want to see ourselves as self-made men. And we are, to the extent anyone can call themselves ‘self-made,’ but that does not change the reality of race in this country. You and I both won, but we won in part because society has handicapped some of our competition. We won in part because the game was rigged in our favor relative to other groups.
The response to this is not to deny that others in the race were running while carrying a backpack full of bricks or to ridicule those who complain about the inequity; the moral response is to use our positions – the success we genuinely worked very hard for and are rightly proud of – to make the competition more equal. Winning a race where the other guy has been hobbled should engender in us a wish to eliminate the inequities, not to wave them away. You either want a fair competition, or you want the white man’s edge, you can’t want both. I don’t want to beat someone because they’re black or because they’re female or because they’re gay, I want to beat them because I’m better.