Fat burning furnace?

On Dec 22, 9:28*pm, Wildbilly wrote:


At the end of the day, of course calories consumed and lack of
excercise are linked to obesity.

Because it's obvious, right? *The trouble is obvious does not equal
true.

No. *Because there is plenty of data that shows that IF you actually
do it, it works. *

If there is plenty of data, could you give me a cite?

I gave you the concentration camp example, which is clear enough proof
for any reasonable person that your quote "obesity cannot be linked to
calories consumed , or lack of exercise. " is total nonsense. You
rejected that and would similarly reject any other data, so why waste
my time?



Absolutely in the case of calories. * There is not
an obese person on this planet that if actually consuming low enough
calories will not lose weight *

Will they have the energy to carry on normal activities, like go to work?
Under extreme dieting, energy expenditures are reduced.

Again, there was no qualification about reduced energy, or anything
else, in your quote "obesity cannot be linked to calories consumed ,
or lack of exercise. " You'd have to be living in your own little
world not to have seen plenty of obese people in your own day to day
life, who by reducing calories consumed, have lost significant
weight. Sure, when they go back to their old ways, they put weight
back on. But that doesn't mean that calories consumed and obesity
are not linked, clearly they are. Want some common examples? How
about Oprah Winfrey? Or the many seasons of NBC's "The Biggest
Loser"? On that show EVERY ONE of the obese people lost major
weight through reduced caloric intake and exercise, which couldn't
happen if there were no linkage between calories consumed, exercise
and obesity.




Maybe there is a tiny percentage, with
some genetic problem that would die instead, but clearly they are not
the core of the obese population today. * *The concentration camps are
a perfect example. * And all the dead victims I've ever seen were skin
and bones, not an obese one among them.

Concentration camps also created mental and physical damage to their
victims with starvation. Under these conditions, people sometimes lose
muscle before they lose fat.

So, what? All the pictures are of people that are just skin and
bones. Are you claiming they are still obese? Or are you claiming
that mental damage made them this way as opposed to calorie
restriction?



How about some statistics on extreme dieting and its' success rate?



The problem here is that nice little quote and your whole argument up
to now hasn't had anything to do with success rate. Success rate is
an entirely different story than claiming that there is no linkage
between calories consumed, exercise and obesity.






Or how about gastric bypass surgery? * Those folks wind up consuming
far less calories and bingo, they lose weight.

They absorb far fewer nutrients of all kinds.



The same is true of exercise and there are enough studies and the laws
of physics to back that up too.

Did you see any pictures of obese
German concentration camp victims?

That's a classic logical falacy. *They are called victims because they
are not willing. *

Of course they're not willing, but that doesn't make it a fallacy.
There were no obese concentration camp victims because they were on
extremely low calorie diets.

The "diet" that they were on was how much work can we get from them with
the least expenditure of resources. The victims weren't expected to
survive the camps.

The Taubes statement simply says
there is no link between calories consumed and obesity, which without
at least some proper context or qualification is BS..

The context, which was given, was that an obese person and a "normal"
person may eat the same number of calories with different results. You
supplied the B.S.


Go read your post again. There was no context, you just provided the
asinine Taubes quote. And even now you continue to try to justify
that it's correct by refusing to acknowledge obvious examples like
concentration camps.



Thus voluntary programs can't use the data. *But check
on the obesity rates of released concentration camp victims and see what
it says about rebound gain.

Sure, as they go back to the eating habits of the typical modern diet,
you would expect them to go back to the norm.

How about the athletes that eat
5000 calories a day, including loads of carbs, and are at normal
weight?

It says that exercise reduces insulin toxic effects. *In other words to
get to normal weight it works to drop both exercise and carb count.

Again, I'm not arguing mechanism. * Just that with enough hard
exercise people can obviously stay fit even on a high calorie diet,
showing there is a link. *

Then it shouldn't be too difficult to give a link supporting your
statement with a case study.

Oh please. Are you for real? Look at any major athletes. Take
bicycle racers or marathon runners. They easily consume 2X the
calories of the typical person and are physically fit.

How about you give US a link supporting your Taubes quote that there
is no linkage between obesity and calories consumed or exercise. YOU
made the incredible assertion. So, you should be the one to back it
up.

BTW, the source of your quote is Gary Taubes, who is a science writer
with a degree in engineering. He is not a recognized diet authority,
medical researcher, nor has he ever claimed to be. Yet you want me
to provide you with links?

On Dec 23, 10:40*pm, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
On 2009-12-24, Wildbilly wrote:

In article ,
*Kaz Kylheku wrote:

Obesity is the result of a /gross/ upside errors in the intake quantity.

Let me put it this way, on pg. 278 of "Good Calories, Bad Calories"

... we find more of the same drivel as on pages 1 through 277.

there is a reference to a study by Francis Benedict. In this study of
basal metabolism, men who weighted roughly 175 lbs consumed daily
sixteen to twenty-one hundred calories. That five hundred calorie is
approximately equivalent to a quarter pounder w/ cheese from Mc Donalds..
Those 175 pounders who ate the five hundred calories more, didn't gain
weight.

That's right; there is a range of adaptability in the metabolism.

That's precisely why I wrote that it requires a /gross/ upside error
in intake.

Five hundred calories isn't a great spread. And note that the spread
in this study is from a low 1600 to merely 2100.

The 2100 kcal/d subjects were not eating 500 calories over what they
should be, but over the subjects who were under-eating.

1600 kcal for a 175 pound male is a fairly low intake.

The point is that our bodies handle calories differently.

The study only proves that the body can adapt to a 500 calorie intake
variance.

Of course the body has to adapt to some extent, otherwise it would be
impossible for humans and animals to maintain a stable weight, without
externally-imposed calorie counting.

It appears that within a range, the body is able to ``count calories''
by itself and regulate expenditure to match intake.

The obese far, far exceed that range, by thousands of calories,
even when they think they are on a diet.

To the above, which I agree with, I would add that Wildbilly is using
as a reference what Gary Taubes gleamed from the actual study and
chose to include in his book. I'd like to see the full actual study,
or at least the reported conclusions. Then we'd at least have an idea
of how the study was conducted, for how long, what the actual results
were, etc.

I don't doubt for a minute that there are some 175lb men, under the
same physical conditions, who can eat 500 calories more every day than
other men and not put on weight. It's widely recognized that people's
metabolisms vary. I find it harder to believe that in a large group
of men taken at random, you can give some 500 calories more a day for
an extended period and not have them put on weight compared to the
control group.





An obese
person may or may not over eat, when compared with the general
population.

Nonsense. An obese person typically consumes several times the calories
taken in by even the fastest-burning thin people.


The cases where there is a true disorder of this sort (runaway fat
accumulation on a small caloric intake) are vanishingly rare. Every tub
wants to believe that he has a rare metabolic problem. *The problem is,
it's impossible for all of them to have such a disorder, at the same
time.

You'd also expect such a disorder to strike in the same way everywhere
in the world.

In America, you have people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds
becoming fat, even if they are first or second generation immigrants
from thin countries. Their own uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins,
parents, grandparents overseas are of normal weight.

Maybe it's the U.S. customs passport stamp that causes obesity, yeah!

Strictly speaking, it isn't the calories, but how the
calories are processed.

It's calories in minus calories out, except that calories out can adjust
somewhat to compensate for small variations in calories in.

In article
,
" wrote:

On Dec 23, 10:40*pm, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
On 2009-12-24, Wildbilly wrote:

In article ,
*Kaz Kylheku wrote:

Obesity is the result of a /gross/ upside errors in the intake quantity.

Let me put it this way, on pg. 278 of "Good Calories, Bad Calories"

... we find more of the same drivel as on pages 1 through 277.

there is a reference to a study by Francis Benedict. In this study of
basal metabolism, men who weighted roughly 175 lbs consumed daily
sixteen to twenty-one hundred calories. That five hundred calorie is
approximately equivalent to a quarter pounder w/ cheese from Mc Donalds.
Those 175 pounders who ate the five hundred calories more, didn't gain
weight.

That's right; there is a range of adaptability in the metabolism.

That's precisely why I wrote that it requires a /gross/ upside error
in intake.

Five hundred calories isn't a great spread. And note that the spread
in this study is from a low 1600 to merely 2100.

The 2100 kcal/d subjects were not eating 500 calories over what they
should be, but over the subjects who were under-eating.

It is a 500 calorie difference in men who weighed about 175 lbs.

1600 kcal for a 175 pound male is a fairly low intake.

The point is that our bodies handle calories differently.

The study only proves that the body can adapt to a 500 calorie intake
variance.

Of course the body has to adapt to some extent, otherwise it would be
impossible for humans and animals to maintain a stable weight, without
externally-imposed calorie counting.

It appears that within a range, the body is able to ``count calories''
by itself and regulate expenditure to match intake.
The men were kept at a minimal energy expenditure, stayed at the same
weight, even though their energy consumption differed by 500 Kcal.

The obese far, far exceed that range, by thousands of calories,
even when they think they are on a diet.

I suppose it would be too much to ask, for a reference to support this
statement. Just another "too obvious to need proof", huh?


To the above, which I agree with, I would add that Wildbilly is using
as a reference what Gary Taubes gleamed from the actual study and
chose to include in his book. I'd like to see the full actual study,
or at least the reported conclusions. Then we'd at least have an idea
of how the study was conducted, for how long, what the actual results
were, etc.

You want a reference? I'm only too happy to accommodate you.
http://www.questia.com/library/book/...y-in-comparati
ve-basal-metabolism-by-francis-g-benedict.jsp

This is called "modeling" behavior.


I don't doubt for a minute that there are some 175lb men, under the
same physical conditions, who can eat 500 calories more every day than
other men and not put on weight. It's widely recognized that people's
metabolisms vary. I find it harder to believe that in a large group
of men taken at random, you can give some 500 calories more a day for
an extended period and not have them put on weight compared to the
control group.

Your beliefs aren't in question. What we are looking for are facts, not
opinions.





An obese
person may or may not over eat, when compared with the general
population.

Nonsense. An obese person typically consumes several times the calories
taken in by even the fastest-burning thin people.
Typically? So you're saying some obese people un-typically don't over
eat? It's not just calories in/energy out?
Q.E.D.
Stranger yet, most obese people belong to lower income families. Do
lower income families eat more than high income families? That would
seem to be counter intuitive. Maybe we just don't understand the cause
of the obesity epidemic. Maybe you just get your rocks off with your
disdainful chiding of overweight people, that it is all there own fault.



The cases where there is a true disorder of this sort (runaway fat
accumulation on a small caloric intake) are vanishingly rare. Every tub
wants to believe that he has a rare metabolic problem. *The problem is,
it's impossible for all of them to have such a disorder, at the same
time.
Chide, chide, chide.

You'd also expect such a disorder to strike in the same way everywhere
in the world.
So either the obese are gluttons or victims of extremely rare disorders?
Only two choices? That obesity may be connected to Metabolic Syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_syndrome
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/...ms_whatis.html
never crossed your accusatory mind?

In America, you have people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds
becoming fat, even if they are first or second generation immigrants
from thin countries. Their own uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins,
parents, grandparents overseas are of normal weight.

Maybe it's the U.S. customs passport stamp that causes obesity, yeah!
Really helpful.

Strictly speaking, it isn't the calories, but how the
calories are processed.

It's calories in minus calories out, except that calories out can adjust
somewhat to compensate for small variations in calories in.
500 Kcal, small?
--
³When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.²
-Archbishop Helder Camara

http://tinyurl.com/o63ruj
http://countercurrents.org/roberts020709.htm

In article
,
" wrote:

On Dec 20, 9:07*pm, Wildbilly wrote:
In article
,

*Ted wrote:
Why not?:O
If you google that one it has just good reviews.
I think I have to test it ,though.

As shown in Gary Taubes' book
"Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and
Health"http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400
...
62/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261360457&sr=1-1
obesity cannot be linked to calories consumed , or lack of exercise.


While I have respect for Taubes and think most of what he has to say
is correct, the above quote is the type of nonsense that the
mainstream media loves to jump on to discredit supporters of LC.
At the end of the day, of course calories consumed and lack of
excercise are linked to obesity. Did you see any pictures of obese
German concentration camp victims? How about the athletes that eat
5000 calories a day, including loads of carbs, and are at normal
weight?

Give those concentration camp followers access to food and they will
quickly regain the weight. Fasted or over fed experimental subject
return to pre experimental weight when allowed to eat.

Has anyone managed to make subjects gain massive weight on a very low
carb diet?

For me all I need for rapid weight loss is to restrict carbs and the
diet is easy to follow. So subjectively calories don't count.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article
,
Wildbilly wrote:

Absolutely in the case of calories. There is not
an obese person on this planet that if actually consuming low enough
calories will not lose weight
Will they have the energy to carry on normal activities, like go to work?
Under extreme dieting, energy expenditures are reduced.

Yes, this is my observation too. I need to eat more, if I am going want
to be physically active or am going to be in a cold area. Yes, if you
grossly restrict calories and stand over people with guns and make them
do heavy physical labor you can reduce the weight, but the cure is worse
than the disease. Like, for example, we know that castration cures male
pattern baldness, but in spite of this few men want the cure.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article
,
" wrote:

To the above, which I agree with, I would add that Wildbilly is using
as a reference what Gary Taubes gleamed from the actual study and
chose to include in his book. I'd like to see the full actual study,
or at least the reported conclusions. Then we'd at least have an idea
of how the study was conducted, for how long, what the actual results
were, etc.

I don't doubt for a minute that there are some 175lb men, under the
same physical conditions, who can eat 500 calories more every day than
other men and not put on weight. It's widely recognized that people's
metabolisms vary. I find it harder to believe that in a large group
of men taken at random, you can give some 500 calories more a day for
an extended period and not have them put on weight compared to the
control group.

It's easy for me to believe. Cut the input and calories expended go
down. Add more calories and exercise becomes not only attractive but
unavoidable. Body temperature goes up and trying to sit produces
figiting and inablity to sit still.

It's like finance where expenditures rise to meet income. This is the
reason caloric restriction doesn't work. In a few weeks or so the body
slows down and weight loss stops

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article
,
Wildbilly wrote:

Typically? So you're saying some obese people un-typically don't over
eat? It's not just calories in/energy out?
Q.E.D.
Stranger yet, most obese people belong to lower income families. Do
lower income families eat more than high income families? That would
seem to be counter intuitive. Maybe we just don't understand the cause
of the obesity epidemic. Maybe you just get your rocks off with your
disdainful chiding of overweight people, that it is all there own fault.

The higher income people eat more meat and fat in general, whereas the
poor eat cheap carbs.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article
,
" wrote:

Answer me this. Let take two groups of similar age males.

Group A weighs 300-350 lbs and is morbidly obese
Group B weighs 150-170 lbs and is at their normal weight range

Do you not believe that group A is consuming significantly more
calories than group B?

Do you not believe that if group A, taken as a whole, were put on a
1800 calorie a day diet and they actually stuck to it, they would lose
weight?

Depending on how the groups of men were selected. :| If group B is
doing heavy physical labor they could well be eating more calories. Or
if group A is bed bound.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article ,
Doug Freyburger wrote:


When I started Atkins in 1999 I read the instructions and wondered why
he recommends increasing carb intake to CCLL as the optimal level when
it seems so obvious that if low is good lower must be better.

This is a very basic error in logic, typical of Hegelian dialectics,
which is the base assumption of our culture and it causes all sorts of
trouble. Optimal is best.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

In article
,
" wrote:

On Dec 22, 9:28*pm, Wildbilly wrote:


At the end of the day, of course calories consumed and lack of
excercise are linked to obesity.

Because it's obvious, right? *The trouble is obvious does not equal
true.

No. *Because there is plenty of data that shows that IF you actually
do it, it works. *

If there is plenty of data, could you give me a cite?

I gave you the concentration camp example, which is clear enough proof
for any reasonable person that your quote "obesity cannot be linked to
calories consumed , or lack of exercise. " is total nonsense. You
rejected that and would similarly reject any other data, so why waste
my time?

Don't do it on my account.
What I am saying, and you have such difficulty understanding, is that if
two people eat the same number of calories and one stays within the
recommended guide-lines and the other one becomes obese, while they
expend comparable calories, THEN it ain't the calories causing one of
them to gain weight.

Absolutely in the case of calories. * There is not
an obese person on this planet that if actually consuming low enough
calories will not lose weight *

Will they have the energy to carry on normal activities, like go to work?
Under extreme dieting, energy expenditures are reduced.

Again, there was no qualification about reduced energy, or anything
else, in your quote "obesity cannot be linked to calories consumed ,
or lack of exercise. " You'd have to be living in your own little
world not to have seen plenty of obese people in your own day to day
life, who by reducing calories consumed, have lost significant
weight. Sure, when they go back to their old ways, they put weight
back on. But that doesn't mean that calories consumed and obesity
are not linked, clearly they are. Want some common examples? How
about Oprah Winfrey?
And what is her motivation, and what kind of resources does she have
available?
Or the many seasons of NBC's "The Biggest
Loser"? On that show EVERY ONE of the obese people lost major
weight through reduced caloric intake and exercise,
And what was their motivation, and what kind of resources did they have
available?
which couldn't
happen if there were no linkage between calories consumed, exercise
and obesity.




Maybe there is a tiny percentage, with
some genetic problem that would die instead, but clearly they are not
the core of the obese population today. * *The concentration camps are
a perfect example. * And all the dead victims I've ever seen were skin
and bones, not an obese one among them.

Concentration camps also created mental and physical damage to their
victims with starvation. Under these conditions, people sometimes lose
muscle before they lose fat.

So, what? All the pictures are of people that are just skin and
bones. Are you claiming they are still obese? Or are you claiming
that mental damage made them this way as opposed to calorie
restriction?



How about some statistics on extreme dieting and its' success rate?



The problem here is that nice little quote and your whole argument up
to now hasn't had anything to do with success rate. Success rate is
an entirely different story than claiming that there is no linkage
between calories consumed, exercise and obesity.






Or how about gastric bypass surgery? * Those folks wind up consuming
far less calories and bingo, they lose weight.

They absorb far fewer nutrients of all kinds.



The same is true of exercise and there are enough studies and the laws
of physics to back that up too.

Did you see any pictures of obese
German concentration camp victims?

That's a classic logical falacy. *They are called victims because they
are not willing. *

Of course they're not willing, but that doesn't make it a fallacy.
There were no obese concentration camp victims because they were on
extremely low calorie diets.

The "diet" that they were on was how much work can we get from them with
the least expenditure of resources. The victims weren't expected to
survive the camps.

The Taubes statement simply says
there is no link between calories consumed and obesity, which without
at least some proper context or qualification is BS..

The context, which was given, was that an obese person and a "normal"
person may eat the same number of calories with different results. You
supplied the B.S.


Go read your post again. There was no context, you just provided the
asinine Taubes quote. And even now you continue to try to justify
that it's correct by refusing to acknowledge obvious examples like
concentration camps.



Thus voluntary programs can't use the data. *But check
on the obesity rates of released concentration camp victims and see
what
it says about rebound gain.

Sure, as they go back to the eating habits of the typical modern diet,
you would expect them to go back to the norm.

How about the athletes that eat
5000 calories a day, including loads of carbs, and are at normal
weight?

It says that exercise reduces insulin toxic effects. *In other words to
get to normal weight it works to drop both exercise and carb count.

Again, I'm not arguing mechanism. * Just that with enough hard
exercise people can obviously stay fit even on a high calorie diet,
showing there is a link. *

Then it shouldn't be too difficult to give a link supporting your
statement with a case study.

Oh please. Are you for real? Look at any major athletes. Take
bicycle racers or marathon runners. They easily consume 2X the
calories of the typical person and are physically fit.

How about you give US a link supporting your Taubes quote that there
is no linkage between obesity and calories consumed or exercise. YOU
made the incredible assertion. So, you should be the one to back it
up.

BTW, the source of your quote is Gary Taubes, who is a science writer
with a degree in engineering. He is not a recognized diet authority,
medical researcher, nor has he ever claimed to be. Yet you want me
to provide you with links?

Since you can't attack the message, you attack the messenger?

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-...ce/dp/14000334
62/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261766861&sr=1-1

p.252
Chapter Fifteen
HUNGER
Khrushchev, too, looks like the kind of man his physicians must
continually try to diet, and historians will some day correlate these
sporadic deprivations, to which he submits "for his own good," with his
public tantrums. If there is to be a world cataclysm, it will probably
be set off by skim milk, Melba toast, and mineral oil on the salad.
A.J. Libeling, The Earl of Louisiana, 1961

In October 1917, Francis Benedict, director of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington's Nutrition Laboratory (located, as it happens, in
Boston), put twelve young men on diets of roughly fourteen hundred to
twenty-one hundred calories a day with the intention of lowering their
body weights by 10 percent in a month. Their diets would then be
adjusted as necessary to maintain their reduced weights for another two
months, while Benedict and his colleagues meticulously recorded their
psychological and physiological responses. A second squad of twelve men
was studied as a comparison and then they were put on similar
calorie-restricted diets. The results were published a year later in, a
seven-hundred-page report entitled Human Vitality and Efficiency Under
Prolonged Restricted Diet.

Benedict hoped to establish whether humans could adjust to this lower
nutritional level and thrive. His subjects lost the expected weight, but
they complained constantly of hunger ‹"a continuous gnawing sensation in
the stomach," as described by the Carnegie report ‹ and of being cold to
the extent that several found it "almost impossible to keep warm, even
with an excessive amount of clothing." They also experienced a
30-percent decrease in metabolism. Indeed, Benedict's subjects reduced
their energy expenditure so dramatically that if they consumed more than
twenty-one hundred calories a day‹a third to a half less than they had
been eating prior to the experiment ‹ they would begin to regain the
weight they had lost. The men also experienced significant decreases in
blood pressure and pulse rate; they suffered from anemia, the inability
to concentrate, and marked weakness during physical activity. They also
experienced "a decrease in sexual interest and expression, which,
according to some of

HUNGER 253

the men, reached the point of obliteration." That these phenomena were
caused by the diet itself rather than the subsequent weight loss was
demonstrated by the experience of the second squad of men, who
manifested, according to the Carnegie report, "the whole picture .. .
with striking clearness" after only a few days of dieting.

"One general feature of the post-experimental history," the Carnegie
researchers reported, "is the excess eating immediately indulged in by
the men." Despite repeated cautions about the dangers of overindulgence
"after such a strict diet, the men " almost invariably over-ate." As the
Carnegie report put it, "the circumstances militated against" any
acquisition of "new dietetic habits." In particular, the cravings for "
sweets and accessory foods of all kinds,"‹i.e., snacks‹were now free to
be indulged, and so they were. Perhaps for this reason, Benedict's young
subjects managed to regain all the lost weight and body fat in less than
two weeks.

Within another three weeks, they had gained, on average, eight pounds
more, and came out of this exercise in calorie restriction considerably
heavier than they went in. &quotIn practically every instance the weight
prior to the beginning of the experiment was reached almost immediately
and was usually materially exceeded," Benedict and his collagues wrote.

In 1944, Ancel Keys and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota set
out to replicate Benedict's experiment, although with more restrictive
diets and for a greater duration. Their goal was to reproduce and then
study the physiological and psychological effects of starvation of the
kind that Allied troops would likely confront throughout Europe as the
continent was liberated. Thirty-two young male conscientious objectors
would serve as "guinea pigs," the phrase Keys used in this context.

These volunteers would eventually spend twenty-four weeks on a
"semi-starvation diet," followed by another twelve to twenty weeks of
rehabilitation.

The subjects consumed an average of 1,570 calories each day, split
between two meals designed to represent the daily fare of European
famine areas. "The major food items served," the researchers noted,
"were whole-wheat bread, potatoes, cereals, and considerable amounts of
turnips and cabbage. Only token amounts of meats and dairy products were
provided."* This diet provided roughly half the calories that the
subjects had been consuming to maintain their weight. It was expected to
induce an

*The diet constituted roughly 400 calories a day of protein, 270
calories of fat, and 900 calories of carbohydrates.

254 OBESITY AND THE REGULATI ON OF WEIGHT

average weight loss of 20 percent ‹ or forty pounds in a two-hundred-
pounder ‹ aided by a routine that required the subjects to walk five to
six miles each day, which would burn off another two to three hundred
calories.

Keys's conscientious objectors lost, on average, a dozen pounds of fat in
the first twelve weeks of semi-starvation, which constituted more than
half of their original fat tissue, and they lost three more pounds of
body fat by the end of twenty-four weeks. But weight loss, once again,
was not the only physiological response to the diet. Nails grew slowly,
and hair fell out. If the men cut themselves shaving, they would bleed
less than expected, and take longer to heal. Pulse rates were markedly
reduced, as was the resting or basal metabolism, which is the energy
expended by the body at rest, twelve to eighteen hours after the last
meal. Reflexes slowed, as did most
voluntary movements: &quotAs starvation progressed, fewer and fewer
things could stimulate the men to overt action. They described their
increasing weakness, loss of ambition, narrowing of interests,
depression, irritability, and loss of libido as a pattern characteristic
of' growing old.'" And, like Benedict's subjects, the young men of the
Minnesota experiment complained persistently of being cold. Keys's
conscientious objectors reduced their total energy expenditure by over
half in response to a diet that gave them only half as many calories as
they would have preferred. This was a reasonable response to calorie
deprivation, as Keys and his colleagues explained, "in the sense that a
wise man reduces his expenditure when his income is cut."

More than fifty pages of the two-volume final report by Keys and his col-
leagues, The Biology of Human Starvation, document the "behavior and
complaints" induced by the constant and ravenous hunger that obsessed
the subjects. Food quickly became the subject of conversations and day-
dreams. The men compulsively collected recipes and studied cookbooks.
They chewed gum and drank coffee and water to excess; they watered
down their soups to make them last. The anticipation of being fed made
the hunger worse. The subjects came to dread waiting in line for their
meals and threw tantrums when the cafeteria staff seemed slow. Two
months into the semi-starvation period, a buddy system was initiated,
because the subjects could no longer be trusted to leave the laboratory
without breaking their diets.

Eventually, five of the subjects succumbed to what Keys and his col-
leagues called "character neurosis," to be distinguished from the "semi-
starvation neurosis" that all the subjects experienced; in two cases, it
"bordered on a psychosis." One subject failed to lose weight at the
expected rate, and by week three was suspected of cheating on the diet.

In week eight, he binged on sundaes, milk shakes, and penny candies,
broke down "weeping, [with] talk of suicide and threats of violence,"
and was committed to the psychiatric ward at the University Hospital.
Another subject lasted until week seven, when "he suffered a sudden
'complete loss of willpower' and ate several cookies, a bag of popcorn,
and two overripe bananas before he could 'regain control' of himself." A
third subject took to chewing forty packs of gum a day. Since his weight
failed to drop significantly "in spite of drastic cuts in. his diet," he
was dropped from the study. For months afterward, "his neurotic
manifestations continued in full force." A fifth subject also failed to
lose weight, was suspected of cheating, and was dropped from the study.
With the relaxation of dietary restriction, Keys avoided the dietary
overindulgence problem that had beset Benedict's subjects by restricting
the rehabilitation diets to less than three thousand calories. Hunger
remained unappeased, however. For many of the subjects, the depression
deepened during this rehabilitation period. It was in the very first
week of rehabilitation, for instance, that yet another subject cracked ‹
his "personality deterioration culminated in two attempts at
self-mutilation."

Even during the last weeks of the Minnesota experiment, when the
subjects were finally allowed to eat to their hearts' content, they
remained perversely unsatisfied. Their food intake rose to "the
prodigious level of 8,000 calories a day." But many subjects insisted
that they were still hungry, "though incapable of ingesting more food."
And, once again, the men regained weight and body fat with remarkable
rapidity. By the end of the rehabilitation period, the subjects had
added an average often pounds of fat to their pre-experiment levels.
They weighed 5 percent more than they had when they arrived in
Minneapolis the year before; they had 50 percent more body fat.

These two experiments were the most meticulous ever performed on the
effects on body and mind of long-term low-calorie diets and weight
reduction. The subjects were selected to represent a range of
physiological types from lean to overweight (albeit all young, male, and
Caucasian). They were also chosen for a certain strength of character,
suggesting they could be trusted to follow the diets and remain
dedicated to the scientific goals at hand.

The diets may seem severe in the retelling, but, in fact, fourteen to
sixteen hundred calories a day for weight loss could be considered
generous compared with the eight-to-twelve-hundred-calorie diets that
are now commonly prescribed, what the 1998 Handbook of Obesity refers to
as "conventional

256
OBESITY AND THE REGULATION OF WEIGHT

reducing diets." Nonetheless, such diets were traditionally known as
semi-starvation diets, a term that has fallen out of use, perhaps
because it implies an unnatural and uncomfortable condition that few
individuals could be expected to endure for long.

In both experiments, even after the subjects lost weight and were merely
trying to maintain that loss, they were still required to eat
considerably fewer calories than they would have preferred, and were
still beset by what Keys and his colleagues had called the "persistent
clamor of hunger." Of equal importance, simply restraining their
appetites, independent of weight loss, resulted in a dramatic reduction
in energy expenditure. This could be reversed by adding calories back
into the diet, but then any weight or fat lost returned as well. One
lesson learned was that, for the weight reduction to be permanent, some
degree of semi-starvation has to be permanent. These experiments
indicated that would never be easy.

Obese patients also get hungry on semi-starvation diets. If they have to
restrict their calories to lose weight, then by definition they are
forcing themselves to eat less than they would otherwise prefer. Their
hunger is not being satisfied. As with lean subjects, their energy
expenditure on a semi-starvation diet also "diminishes proportionately
much more than the weight," as the Pittsburgh clinician Frank Evans
reported in 1929 of his obese subjects. This same observation was
reported in 1969 by George Bray, who was then at the Tufts University
School of Medicine in Boston, and who entitled his article, for just
this reason, "The Myth of Diet in the Management of Obesity." "There is
no investigator who has looked for this effect and failed to find it,"
the British obesity researcher John Garrow wrote in 1978.

The latest reiteration of these experiments, using obese subjects, was
conducted by Jules Hirsch at Rockefeller University, and the results
were published in The, New England journal of Medicine in 1995. Calorie
restriction in Hirsch's experiment resulted in disproportionate
reductions in energy expenditure and metabolic activity. Increasing
calorie consumption resulted in disproportionate increases in metabolic
activity.

Hirsch and his colleagues interpreted their observations to mean that
the human body seems surprisingly intent on maintaining its weight‹
resisting both weight gain and weight loss ‹ so that the obese remain
obese and the lean remain lean. As Hirsch explained it, the obese
individual appears to be somehow metabolically normal in the obese
state, just as Keys's and Benedict's young men were metabolically normal
in their lean or overweight states before their semi-starvation diets.
Once Hirsch's obese subjects took to restricting their calories,
however, they experienced what he called "all the physiological and
psychological concomitants of starvation."

A semi-starvation diet induces precisely that‹semi-starvation‹whether
the subject is obese or lean. "Of all the damn unsuccessful treatments,"
Hirsch later said, "the treatment of weight reduction by diet for obese
people just doesn't seem to work."

Over the course of a century, a paradox has emerged. Obesity, it has
been said, is caused, with rare exceptions, by an inability to eat in
moderation combined with a sedentary lifestyle. Those of us who gain
excessive weight consume more calories than we expend, creating a
positive caloric balance or a positive energy balance, and the
difference accumulates as excessive pounds of flesh. But if this
reconciles with the equally "indisputable" notion that "eating fewer
calories while increasing physical activity are the keys to controlling
body weight," as the 2005 USDA Dietary Guidelines/or Americans suggest,
then the problems of obesity and the obesity epidemic should be easy to
solve. Those few individuals for whom obesity is a preferred condition,
such as sumo wrestlers, would remain obese through their voluntary
program of overeating, and the rest would create a negative energy
balance, lose the excess weight, and return to leanness. The catch, as
Hirsch pointed out, is that this doesn't happen.

The documented failure of semi-starvation diets for the obese dates back
at least half a century. It begins with Albert Stunkard's analysis of
the relevant research in the mid-1950s, motivated by his desire to
resolve what he called the "paradox" between his own failure to reduce
obese patients successfully by diet at New York Hospital and "the
widespread assumption that such treatment was easy and effective."
Stunkard managed to locate eight reports in the literature that allowed
for an accurate assessment of whether semi-starvation diets worked. In
1959, he reported that the existing evidence confirmed his own failures:
semi-starvation diets were "remarkably ineffective" as a treatment for
obesity. Only 25 percent of the subjects discussed in these articles had
lost as much as twenty pounds on their semi-starvation diets, "a small
weight loss for the grossly overweight persons who are the subjects of
these reports." Only 5 percent successfully lost forty pounds. As for
Stunkard's own experience with a hundred obese patients, all prescribed
"balanced" diets of eight to fifteen hundred calories a day, "only 12%
were able to lose 20 Ib., and only i patient lost 40 Ib. ... Two years
after the end of treatment only two patients had maintained their weight
loss."*

* Though Stunkard's analysis has widely been perceived as a condemnation
of all methods of dietary treatment of obesity, the studies he reviewed
included only semi-starvation, calorie-restricted diets.
--
³When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.²
-Archbishop Helder Camara

http://tinyurl.com/o63ruj
http://countercurrents.org/roberts020709.htm