As a practicing Endocrinologist I will go out on a limb and say excess carbohydrates are the problem leading to obesity. Sugar (or sucrose) is a particular problem as it will stimulate insulin release from the pancreas. Insulin promotes storage of glucose and I am convinced, the growth of fat cells. I have seen patients lose a tremendous amount of weight (34 lbs over 7 months) and lower blood glucose and their amount of diabetes medication simply through cutting out sugar and flour. They also reduced their overall carbohydrate intake. I presented the data at our annual Endocrinology conference recently. <a href="https://endo.confex.com/endo/2013endo/webprogram/Paper9044.html" rel="nofollow">https://endo.confex.com/endo/2013endo/webprogram/Paper9044.h...</a>
Interesting. My anecdote comes from a slightly different angle. I've always been in very good shape, lots of weightlifting and cardio my whole life, and been a very healthy eater. But, the "spare-tire" was always there, even with muscles bulging underneath.<p>Just for kicks I decided to try Steve Gibson's recommendation to remove sugar and starch from the diet. (<a href="https://www.grc.com/health/lowcarb.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.grc.com/health/lowcarb.htm</a>)<p>No knee-jerk here please, this isn't one of those butter-bacon-cheeseburger things. Nope, I eat tons of fresh veggies, lean meats, all smothered in olive-oil, nuts/flax, etc. I do actually allow myself some treats on the weekends for sustainability.<p>Still, one month later, for the first time in 20 years I no longer have a spare-tire. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it. As long as you fill yourself with sugar/starch you prevent the body from being able to go into fat-burning mode. Eat too much (as is common) and you go into fat-storage mode.<p>Bread may have built civilization, but now it builds waistlines.
Interesting read; I've encountered many of the problems signaled out here.<p>I'm overweight, and I've changed my life and my diet to try and fix it. When I took note of where I was, I was drinking between 4 and 8 mountain dews a day. I ate candy in prodigious amounts, and constantly ate until I was full.<p>Since then, I altered my diet and eating habits to where I drink no pop, and rarely have any kind of sugary treat. I eat only until I'm satiated, and in usually get out to exercise daily.<p>The end result? I'm the same weight as I was before. My weight has not changed in over 9 years now.<p>I sure I could go on a starvation diet (< 1,000 calories a day) and exercise for hours on end - it's worked to a limited degree in the past - but that's not willpower, that's torturing myself. The last time I tried, I was constantly tired and sickly, and after coming down with a nasty bout of the flu and recovering from it, all of my progress had been lost.<p>I've come to terms with my weight. I'm eating healthy, I'm exercising regularly, and I'm thinking of getting into a gym and working on my strength a bit more. I have accepted that getting to a "normal" weight again is not within my reach, unless something outside of my control changes.<p>[EDIT] Before critiquing my story with the usual tropes of "you're still eating too much and exercising too little", please read the entire article and realize that it may not be the perfect answer you think it is.
My friends, I have discovered a miracle cure for weight gain. It's simple, painless, and you don't have to cut out whole food groups. Best of all, I'll tell you what it is - here and now - at no charge! Here it is...<p>A SMALL PLATE.<p>That simple. Go out and buy a really individual side-plate, and make that what you always eat off. If you need seconds, OK - but after a few days you'll find that you can actually get by quite happily with one helping.<p>I'm sure we do eat too much sugar (way too much), but we eat too much <i>everything</i>. I started putting on weight when I was 40, and this is the thing that stopped it. It would be fascinating to measure our grandparent's plates, and what size meals they consumed. Despite a more active lifestyle, I bet they ate far less.
I saw on the news today that 70% of the US is a size 14 or larger now. Shocking. In addition to the need for sugar and starch reduction, a lot of grocery foods are not as natural as we think they are. Having lived in European and Asian countries I can say that the people there are less calorie conscious and sometimes eat more than Americans do but their food options and ingredients seem more wholesome and less processed than in North America. Is it worthwhile to investigate who controls the health standards in manufacturing of food?
The article points to by-products of industrialization (namely industrial chemicals and artificial lighting) as potential culprits in the case of rising obesity, but the distribution of obesity doesn't match level of industrialization across countries. Obesity is seemingly focused in North America plus other anglophone countries, while mostly absent in other highly industrialized countries like Japan and Norway. Red herring, perhaps?
People that lack analytical thinking are doomed. They are preyed on from every angle by unscrupulous companies peddling their processed garbage. No sandwich without mayo, no salad without dressing, no food marketed to children without loads of sugar and artificial ingredients. Entire aisles of frozen fatty foods, entire aisles of soda and chips. Shelves and shelves of sugar-laced yogurt. The key lies in the individual's hands, but governments must step in and put an end to the criminal businesses that peddle their poison to a largely ignorant population.
The mechanics of weight gain and loss are fascinating. Every time I read an article like this it makes me appreciate the complexity of the human body even more.<p>That said, the issue as a whole is not rocket science, and should not be treated as such. While it is very interesting to examine and discuss how the human body treats various types of calories, at the end of the day the closed system that is the human body is still governed by calories in minus calories out. It is <i>impossible</i> for someone to continue to gain weight if they are eating less calories than they are consuming. Literally. Impossible.<p>The problem is one of human psychology, both at the calorie consumption side and calorie burning side.<p>On the consumption side, there are two main causes. First, for overweight and obese people, the act of putting food in their mouths and drinking high-calorie drinks has become so second nature that their minds simply stop registering it after a while. This is why in scientific studies and surveys that examine the topic, overweight and obese participants massively under-report what they ate throughout the study while those who have trouble putting on weight (the so-called "hardgainers") over-report it. The mind underplays the importance of events and situations it is familiar with (such as eating) and vice versa.<p>The second reason is that even when people do pay attention to how much they are eating and count the calories <i>at that moment</i>, they are terrible at estimating their daily or weekly intake. They try to do "mental accounting," the most common example being "I ate a salad at lunch today, so it's OK for me to order some fries at dinner." For obvious reasons, this approach fails hard.<p>There's also the calorie burning side. Just like most people are terrible at estimating how much they are eating, they are also terrible at estimating how much they are burning. For example, walking counts as exercise for a surprisingly large number of people, yet walking for an hour straight at moderate pace burns only about as many calories as in a slice of bread. And yet the mental accounting comes into play afterward during dinner and they justify their bad habits by telling themselves they exercised that day.<p>There are other issues, such as the way food companies manufacture their products in very specific ways so as to maximize their consumption, or the way they market to children. But in my opinion these are at the periphery. Ultimately the matter is about the individual. It's about how much they individual eats. Not what they <i>say</i> they eat, but what they actually eat.
The preponderance of evidence is that net caloric balance predicts weight.<p><a href="http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.html" rel="nofollow">http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.htm...</a><p>Given the choice between "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history" and "record-keeping errors", I know which horse Occam is telling me to bet on. And it's not that HFCS has more Higgs bosons.
"Dear obese PhD applicants: if you don’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth."<p>ha, what a jerk.