These two people struggle with their weight...

"Ignoramus30209" wrote in message
...
... but not in the way you might expect. A post from another
newsgroup, with poster identities removed, follows. These fellows
could not gain weight despite serious efforts.

So, becoming fat is not about being simply a glutton and obesity is
not just a "moral" issue, as some see it.

I think the problem is that you have several kind of obesity, just like you
have several kind of thinness.

On one hand, you have pure biological weight. These are people who, for one
reason or another, have a normal weight (I mean, a weight that remains
stable when they are left to eat on their own) that is outside the normal
range. That's what these two thin people seem to be. Notice that if they try
to stuff themselves, they start having signs that their body (and brain) is
fighting to keep their weight at its set weight - they get nausea, they feel
disgusted by food... If they were not actively trying to gain weight, they
would just have stopped eating long ago, and would be in automatic
maintenance. As soon as they stop trying to fatten, they will snap back to
their starting weight. This means they can't even maintain, unless they are
willing to keep feeling that way their whole life. The same can be said for
biological obese. When they try to diet, their body (and brain) fights
hard - they feel weak, hungry, angry, depressed. And when they stop, they
usually regain the weight. In both cases, the diet is fighting against
powerful biological stasis, and unless it is kept for life, it will fail
with 100% certainty. And maintaining for life in both cases is certainly
going to be unpleasant.
However, these people, while not where the norm is expecting them, are
usually not too far away. They might be thin, but they're not anorexic or
starving thin; usually their thinness is not a major health issue. Likewise,
some people are just overweight or slightly obese, and will remain stable at
that obesity level for their whole life, unless they start yo-yo dieting
their way into higher obesity range.

On the other hand, you have people who have psychological or behavioural
problems. Either they started as the biological type and achieved eating
disorders through dieting or failure to cope with that specificity, or they
just achieved these problems through their personnal history. That's where
you will find anorexics and super-obesity. I don't think anyone can manage
to become a super-obese purely on his biology, though biology certainly
helps when it compounds with eating disorders.

The problem is that many overweight people have indeed a combination of both
issues. Another problem is to identify the people who are purely biological
overweight and are so within reason, because starting them on a diet is
indeed more harmful than letting them keep their current weight and trying
to prevent any complication from it (for instance by getting them to
exercise). In mixed cases, it might also be reasonnable to have them diet
only down to their biological weight, rather than trying to force them into
the norm, and often bellow (that is, the fashion norm, not the biological
one), where maintenance becomes problematic.

"Ignoramus3773" wrote in message
...
What I realized is that on this paleo diet that I am on, I am
experiencing the same sort of satiety as these two gentlemen whose
posts I reposted. If I overeat, I find food revolting and do not want
to eat at all. This used to never be the case before.

That's also what I experience, despite not being on any specific diet. I can
get away with overeating slightly (something most normal people also do),
but if I overdo, I feel positively ill. I actually can't understand anymore
how I could manage to *ingest* the amount of food I was eating a few years
ago.

Of course, unlike those two normal gentlemen, if I ate candy bars,
oatmeal and pringles, I would not be able to control how much I eat.

This might be because of reactive hypoglycemia. Or because of psychological
issue, that hard to tell. Your primal brain regulation is hooked through the
emotionnal centers of your brain, so mental processed can mess them up
badly.
The weird part is that even as a diabetic, and probably with quite some
insulin resistance left, I experience the same satiety level with carby
things, like pasta or chocolate. But it's true that my natural cultural diet
tends towards medium GI values. For instance, I mostly eat sourdough with
bread or cheese or pasta with sauce or chocolate. So I doubt I often eat a
very high GI meal on my own.
I did try eating springles on their own though, and this didn't cause any
bingeing or loss of control. But the nasty side part of their taste (the
hydrogenated fats do taste like bad fat that has overcooked) did increase
while eating them, until I really did not feel attracted to the thing
anymore. This is recorded as aliesthesia (sp?), which is the alteration of
*perceive* taste as the satiety level increases.

Now she is at BMI 26,
big boned, good looking, and quite happy. She lost about 2 BMI
points. My speculation is that if she tried to go down to BMI 24, she
would be a lot less happy.

BMI is a purely statistical tool anyway. For a given individual, it has no
real value anyway. My lowest BMI ever was 24, and I had my abs showing back
then, so I guess my body fat was low enough. But I *am* big boned (wrists a
bit above 8 inches) and I build muscles easily, so I guess I'm not intended
to drop bellow 24.
I doubt there is much difference in health between 24 and 26 anyway.

On the other hand, you have people who have psychological or behavioural
problems. Either they started as the biological type and achieved eating
disorders through dieting or failure to cope with that specificity, or
they
just achieved these problems through their personnal history. That's
where
you will find anorexics and super-obesity. I don't think anyone can
manage
to become a super-obese purely on his biology, though biology certainly
helps when it compounds with eating disorders.

I think that you need to have more basis in evidence, for that
statement.

Yes, this is only an intuition on my part. However, we do know that
super-obesity was a rarity in the past, while it seems to be becoming more
and more common. This new trend suggests it is not purely genetics, genetic
traits do not change in a few generations.

I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.

I'm not saying there are no biological issue. There certainly are. I mean, I
spent quite a time litterally stuffing myself but I did not become
super-obese either. My weight gain stabilized, while I kept eating quite an
enormous amount of food. On the other hand, I don't doubt that some people
might have been able to reach much higher, with the proper genetics. But
these same people in past times were stabilized at a lower weight. So it
seems genetics have to meet with an eating disorder and the proper
envirronment to lead to super-obesity. I mean, it does take a lot of energy
to push a body beyond the 500lbs mark! I doubt a single factor can explain
events like this.

"Ignoramus3773" wrote in message
...
That's also what I experience, despite not being on any specific diet. I
can
get away with overeating slightly (something most normal people also
do),
but if I overdo, I feel positively ill. I actually can't understand
anymore
how I could manage to *ingest* the amount of food I was eating a few
years
ago.

I am very happy for you!

Thanks
Though this is still an on-going process. I'm currently trying to pin-point
the precise situations where I lose control. Then, hopefully, I will find a
way to deal with them. Eating in an hostile environment, like with people I
don't like or don't feel at ease with, certainly does that. I also don't
handle losing control very well yet - everything goes well as long as I can
pick the food I like, including at restaurant, but having a meal forced on
me *sometimes* causes loss of control. Being offered food by an hostile
individual is particularly bad. So, this is an on-going process, with
some set backs from time to time.
An interresting point is that I do have a solid red line set in now. I can
overeat, but in reasonnable amounts. I would say, maybe 30% more of where I
should stop. Then, things start getting downright unpleasant and I stop.

This might be because of reactive hypoglycemia. Or because of
psychological
issue, that hard to tell. Your primal brain regulation is hooked through
the
emotionnal centers of your brain, so mental processed can mess them up
badly.

I am not sure why that happens, myself. Hypoglycemia is a possible
answer, but I can see how it would not be the right answer.

In the diet-binge cycle, eating a "forbidden" food appears to break a purely
psychological pattern, so it can certainly exist in absence of hypoglycemia.
If only because some people binge on lowish carb or lowish GI food (like
peanuts). It's also possible that it is a combination of both, where the
hypoglycemia triggers a panic reaction to having eaten something "dangerous"
and leads to a binge.

The weird part is that even as a diabetic, and probably with quite some
insulin resistance left, I experience the same satiety level with carby
things, like pasta or chocolate. But it's true that my natural cultural
diet
tends towards medium GI values. For instance, I mostly eat sourdough
with
bread or cheese or pasta with sauce or chocolate. So I doubt I often eat
a
very high GI meal on my own.

So, let's say you eat a breakfast with a modest amount of pasta and
say an egg. What happens to your blood sugar afterwards?

The problem is that I don't test, so I don't have this kind of data
available. I am monitored - I had five blood exams in the past 6 months,
but I don't use a meter. This is a topic of discussion with my
nutritionnist, but she feels I don't need a meter right now, and that this
would get in the way of trying to eat as intuitively as possible. We will
consider a meter eventually later on, if I don't manage to go down into
perfect numbers. I know I have an decent level of control right now since my
last A1c was at 5.8% and going down. FBG has been between 1.01 and 1.03
every single time I had time tested, whether shortly after waking up or
after a couple of hours, and this was also the value I had during a random
late afternoon test. So, it seems I'm not getting Dawn syndrom at least.
The closest I did to what you suggest was having a test 2 hours after a
brunch at a restaurant. IIRC, this meant 1 cup of tea + sugar, 1 muffin, 1
scone, jam and butter, some salad, an a chocolate tart that tasted way too
sweet for my taste (that was around the time when I started realizing it was
possible for something to taste *too* sweet). So, that's a pretty high carb
brunch with a pretty high GI - I doubt the salad and butter did that good a
job at lowering it. Probably higher than anything I would eat at home - my
brunches usually come with salmon and smoked ham and eggs and less bread.
Anyway, around the 2 hours mark, I had a reading at 1.04 - so, a normal
fasting reading for me. I didn't feel hypoglycemic and I didn't feel like
dozing either, though I did feel a bit stuffed (social eating in a very
uptight restaurant along with people I don't really like is part of my
not-so-good control situations).
I did have plenty of hypoglycemia when I was on Prandin, and I did
experiment quite a few "reactive" hypoglycemia. But hypoglycemia makes me
feel nauseous rather than hungry. It's not pleasant, but I guess that might
explain why I seem to handle them differently than you do.
If/When I eventually get a meter, testing as you suggest is indeed part of
my plans, even if having pasta at breakfast fills weird.

What are "springles", are they potato chips?

Yes, industrial grade potato chips, with plenty of trans fat. I was
actually very disappointed with how they tasted. Maybe it's in my head, but
I can swear I feel the taste (and smell) of hydrogenated oils in stuff like
cookies or potato chips. It feels exactly like the smell you get from
over-used oil to me.

Yes, this is only an intuition on my part. However, we do know that
super-obesity was a rarity in the past, while it seems to be becoming
more
and more common. This new trend suggests it is not purely genetics,
genetic
traits do not change in a few generations.

But food does... And some people may be more susceptible to damage
from some particular newfangled food.

That's also an option. But other countries have survived on high carb foods
before. I'm thinking about potatoes in Ireland or white rice in Asia. Sure,
they were probably never available in unlimited amounts.
The problem is that all the parameters are moving at the same time : food
availability, new kinds of food, advertisement for food, society view on
obesity, the diet craze... It's pretty hard to isolate one of these as the
root of the problem.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...t_uids=7309688

``The MMPI and psychiatric consultations identify fairly high levels
of psychopathology in this group.''

That indicates that your observation that super obese people have
psychopathology, has some merit.

Yes, but it's a chicken and egg problem. Did these people become obese
because of these psychopathologies? Or did they get these pathologies
because of being obese? Given how our current society rewards obesity, I can
perfectly imagine that being a super-obese leads to some pretty traumatic
patterns - think of the constant self-loathing, the dispair at failing diet
after diet...

Another option is that maybe these obese were showing these traits *because*
the therapists were looking for them. This has been described by a few
French psychologists (and probably Americans too, but I obviously read the
later less) and coined as hyper-empathy. They have observed a fairly common
pattern among obese to adapt to what is expect of them, kind of like Woody
Allen in Zelig. So, when researchers are looking for psychopathologies, they
dutifully show the clinical signs. When psychoanalysts are looking for
problematic relationship with the mother, they find something that fits what
is expected. And so on.
This urge to please would also explain some of the overeating. They're so in
tune to the external world (externalists) that they trust outside signals
(size of the plate, what others are eating, meal time, whatever food is in
front of them...) more than their inner ones (hunger, satiety). They will
also try to please others before themselves. So, if presented with another
round of food, they will just keep eating, in order to please the host, even
if way past satiety.
In fact, they're completely open to the outside world, with little inner
self. And the binges would be a reaction to that lack of inner substance.
When all inner feelings are deaden by the outside world, they get the need
for strong internal stimuli. Eating to the point of actually feeling pain in
your stomach is one way to feel like you exist then. Being fat is another
way to exist too.

Anyway, that's one of the theories floating around. It does explain some
things, and it hits the mark on some of the things I have felt. But it's not
satisfying on other points. The more I look at different theories, the more
I feel like many can co-exist. That they are just different angles at
considering an incredibly complex matter.

Ignoramus3773 wrote:
I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.


Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

Ignoramus3773 wrote:
I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.


Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

Archon wrote:
Ignoramus3773 wrote:

I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.



Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

Also, there is the fact that people have gotten heavier in the past
thirty years and genetics don't change that quickly. Of course, as a
follower of the paleo diet, Ig knows this.

--
jmk in NC

Archon wrote:
Ignoramus3773 wrote:

I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.



Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

Also, there is the fact that people have gotten heavier in the past
thirty years and genetics don't change that quickly. Of course, as a
follower of the paleo diet, Ig knows this.

--
jmk in NC

"Archon" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus3773 wrote:
I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.

Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

But the number of super-obeses is also very small compared to the whole
population of overweight or "reasonnably" obese people. There might be a
serious overlap between these 2% and the super-obese population.
Also, when the studies say "genetics can only account for 2% of fat people",
do it mean that it is the *only* factor in only 2% of obesity, or main
factor, or that it is not involved *at all* in 98% of the cases? The idea we
were discussing is that genetics might act as an enabler, allowing the
regular overeating to scale into super-obesity rather than remaining just
obese. And that, without proper genetics, the overeater would tend to stall
in the higher stage of obesity instead of moving upward into super-obesity.
That is, does the (calories in - calories out = stored fat) equation scale
into infinity for everyone (or, lets say 1300lbs, which IIRC is the current
record), or does it break once you have lots of stored fat, unless you have
the proper genetics.

"Archon" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus3773 wrote:
I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.

Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

But the number of super-obeses is also very small compared to the whole
population of overweight or "reasonnably" obese people. There might be a
serious overlap between these 2% and the super-obese population.
Also, when the studies say "genetics can only account for 2% of fat people",
do it mean that it is the *only* factor in only 2% of obesity, or main
factor, or that it is not involved *at all* in 98% of the cases? The idea we
were discussing is that genetics might act as an enabler, allowing the
regular overeating to scale into super-obesity rather than remaining just
obese. And that, without proper genetics, the overeater would tend to stall
in the higher stage of obesity instead of moving upward into super-obesity.
That is, does the (calories in - calories out = stored fat) equation scale
into infinity for everyone (or, lets say 1300lbs, which IIRC is the current
record), or does it break once you have lots of stored fat, unless you have
the proper genetics.

"Archon" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus3773 wrote:
I would be surprised if major biological issues (that we know or do
not know) were not the main cause of extreme obesity. I am interested
to see actual evidence, as opposed to our speculation.

Last I read a real research experiment on this, they concluded that the
genetics can only account for 2% of fat people.

But the number of super-obeses is also very small compared to the whole
population of overweight or "reasonnably" obese people. There might be a
serious overlap between these 2% and the super-obese population.
Also, when the studies say "genetics can only account for 2% of fat people",
do it mean that it is the *only* factor in only 2% of obesity, or main
factor, or that it is not involved *at all* in 98% of the cases? The idea we
were discussing is that genetics might act as an enabler, allowing the
regular overeating to scale into super-obesity rather than remaining just
obese. And that, without proper genetics, the overeater would tend to stall
in the higher stage of obesity instead of moving upward into super-obesity.
That is, does the (calories in - calories out = stored fat) equation scale
into infinity for everyone (or, lets say 1300lbs, which IIRC is the current
record), or does it break once you have lots of stored fat, unless you have
the proper genetics.