
What Really Makes Us Fat? - dr_
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-us-fat.html?src=rechp
======
reasonattlm
Sane discussions of weight, like sane discussions of aging, are ever clouded
by the large constituencies with large marketing budgets who benefit from
selling you on things that are both useless and popular. e.g. you can become
fit without much effort, just buy our product. You can turn back aging, just
buy our product. You can eat as much of our product as you want and not get
fat like those other slobs, so go ahead and fill your plate.

Here's an experiment you can run on yourself. Eat the same diet as you are
now, but less of it. Take up alternate day fasting, or just skip a meal every
day. Be rigorous - keep track of how much your eat, and eat less than you
were. Do it for a couple of months.

You will, absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, lose weight, largely
adipose tissue mass.

Everything else is either (a) discussion of nutritional quality with regard to
what you are eating, which is a rat-hole that never ends and you will never do
better than a good 80/20 result no matter how much time and energy you spend
on it or (b) the self-delusion of people who don't want to give up their
capacious eating habits.

~~~
rubashov
> Eat the same diet as you are now, but less of it

Considering vitamins and minerals most people eat crap. Deficiencies are
fairly rampant. The problem is that grains/beans, dairy, potato, and oils are
good for energy but have very lousy nutrient profiles. People are eating an
energy dense but nutrient light diet that is a vestige of times of hard manual
labor.

~~~
wlievens
> that is a vestige of times of hard manual labor

And a lot cheaper to produce

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fingerprinter
After years of study, self experimentation and research into the topics (I'm
an amateur powerlifter, bodybuilder as well as a general fitness freak...I
also write fitness related content, books mostly) here are some quick things
to help sort this out. It's all about the hormones.

The single most important element to not getting fat is identifying yourself
and then eating appropriately.

Are you a couch potato? Then YES, you need to restrict carb content.

Are you an athelete? Go ahead and eat carbs, but eat them AT THE RIGHT TIME
(meaning, post workouts* mostly). And eat the right ones (high GI immediately
post heavy lifting session, lower GI later in the day (generally speaking)).

Protein is your friend. Make sure all meals have it. Eat lots of veggies,
mostly green. Drink lots of water. Limit chemical consumption (most diet sodas
spike insulin...might as well be eating a candy bar).

Getting more specific is going to really depend on our goals. This is
critically important. If you can state what your goal is, it is REALLY EASY to
understand how to eat, workout and live to meet those goals...but if you don't
know the goal, you'll flounder.

For instance, to lose weight:

Restrict carbs for 6.5 days in a week. Do a carb refeed on the 7th night. Eat
only protein, fat and veggies (think eggs, bacon and broccoli) when you
restrict the carbs. You'll lose tons of weight and retain the muscle. To put
this in to high gear, do a HIIT sprint session on day 1 and 2 to completely
deplete your glycogen stores.

To gain weight (muscle):

Before you workout, water, protein, fat and veggies. After you workout (heavy
weight workout), protein, carbs and veggies. Carbs stimulate insulin,
shuttling nutrients to muscles, helping them grow.

There are TONS of tweaks to each of these if you are having trouble (like, for
instance, add milk if you are still having trouble gaining weight or add some
light cardio if you are having trouble losing weight), but the basics are the
above.

I love this stuff....

* btw..when I say "workout", I mean heavy weight workouts (barbell etc). There is something special about the way it stimulates your body that high rep bodyweight workouts just can't do. Bodyweight workouts have their place, but they should be used for a very specific goal...

~~~
dfxm12
* btw..when I say "workout", I mean heavy weight workouts (barbell etc). There is something special about the way it stimulates your body that high rep bodyweight workouts just can't do. Bodyweight workouts have their place, but they should be used for a very specific goal...*

Where do you draw the line for "high rep"? Are you talking >8? >12? >20?

I'm just thinking: is there a difference between doing 8-12 reps for 3 sets &
4-6 reps (don't know how many sets I should if I do lower reps)?

~~~
FelixP
It makes a huge difference. Here is a great article that covers a lot of the
basics in a very accessible / narrative way:

[http://archive.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-
fit...](http://archive.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-
lie)

Basically:

\- Low Reps / Set = Strength / Power

\- Med Reps / Set = Mass

\- High Reps / Set = Endurance / "tone"

See these two charts for a little more detail:

\- <http://i.imgur.com/vZ7pU.jpg>

\- <http://i.imgur.com/4NVGh.jpg>

FTA:

"...it all starts with understanding the four basic muscular aptitudes:
strength, power, muscle mass, and muscular endurance. Strength means how much
you can lift once, and it’s the backbone of every sport on Earth, from the
crouch-holding power of a skier to the one-finger pull-up of a climber. Power
is a more slippery term that means “speed strength,” or how much you can lift
very, very quickly, and it gives you the explosive paddling speed to catch a
big wave or the pedaling burst to fire your mountain bike up a grade. Muscle
mass can be a liability in sports like climbing, where it’s all about
strength-to-weight ratio, but mass helps enormously with games like rugby and
football, and it can support strength and power — not to mention make you look
better in a T-shirt. Muscular endurance means how many times you can lift a
given weight in a row without stopping, and it’s the essence of running,
swimming, and even a kayaker’s long-haul paddling. As for your training
sessions themselves, the number one thing to remember is that each of the
Fundamental Four responds to a different number of repetitions per set. Lift a
weight so heavy you can lift it only once, you’re building strength (and,
oddly, not much mass); lift a weight you can move six to 12 times, you’re
building mass (and, oddly, a little less pure strength); ease up to a weight
you can lift 50 times, and you’re working muscular endurance (which is great
for endurance sports but tends to undermine the first three, shrinking your
strength, power, and muscle size)."

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dr_
The study cited was very short term, one month in duration. A much larger time
frame is required, which may be difficult to do in a controlled setting. From
the actual study report: "Although the very low-carbohydrate diet produced the
greatest improvements in most metabolic syndrome components examined herein,
we identified 2 potentially deleterious effects of this diet. Twenty-four hour
urinary cortisol excretion, a hormonal measure of stress, was highest with the
very low-carbohydrate diet. Consistent with this finding, Stimson et al31
reported increased whole-body regeneration of cortisol by 11β-HSD1 and reduced
inactivation of cortisol by 5α- and 5β-reductases over 4 weeks on a very low-
vs moderate-carbohydrate diet. Higher cortisol levels may promote adiposity,
insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease, as observed in epidemiological
studies.32 - 34 In a 6-year prospective, population-based study of older
adults in Italy,35 individuals in the highest vs lowest tertile of 24-hour
cortisol excretion, with or without preexisting cardiovascular disease, had a
5-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. "

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EricDeb
One thing I find a tad irritating about being male and trying to look good (as
superficial as it is) is the discrepancy between gaining muscle and losing
fat.

It seems females only have to go one direction -> be skinny whereas for males
we need to somehow add muscle (for which the general advice is eat a lot of
food specifically protein) and lose fat. Those seem very contradictory in my
mind though I know little about nutrition.

~~~
fingerprinter
IMO, gaining muscle is much harder to do than losing fat. I would do it the
way bodybuilders do it an work to gain muscle then lose fat (unless you are
grossly overweight, in which case it probably makes more sense to lose the fat
first).

Why the difference? Well, losing fat is mostly about discipline whereas
gaining muscle is about discipline and very, very hard work.

~~~
gte910h
I find it far far easier to gain (Beach) muscle than to lose fat

I find doing things much easier than constantly not doing things.

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finin
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt=qt0231370> When Sleeper was
released 39 years ago, I thought this was a cheap joke. But every few years I
think about it when there is yet another reversal in what we think we know
about nutrition.

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Retric
TLDR: Second law of thermodynamics still in effect. However, food is not the
limiting factor in developed countries so being fat is really a question of
eating behaviors and there are relationships between food types and eating
behaviors in both the short and long term.

~~~
wdewind
By saying Second law of thermodynamics still in effect I assume you mean
"calories in calories out" still in effect, and that's actually not what the
article said at all (though the law is still in effect of course).

Consuming the same number of calories with different consumptions led to
different amounts of calories being burned, and different amounts of weight
being gained.

TLDR: what you eat matters, it's _not_ just how much.

~~~
Retric
No, they are still saying "calories in calories out" _These subjects expended,
on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full
weights._ They where also saying that types of calories in changes calories
out.

~~~
wdewind
Sorry yes you're correct, I meant they are not saying that in the colloquial
way it is used, which is that it doesn't matter what you eat assuming all else
is constant (activity level etc).

They are saying it in the technical sense that the people did in fact burn
more calories on different diets. But those calories being burned were caused
by the change in diet (assuming the hypothesis is correct). That is a massive
change in American nutrition theory.

