Fat burning furnace?

On 2009-12-25, Wildbilly wrote:
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.

The situation you describe looks like it is thermodynamically
impossible: two subjects taking in exactly the same amount of energy,
expending the same amount of energy, while one accumulates an energy
store and the other one doesn't.

Should this ever be observed, there must be an explanation for the
discrepancy: some outflow of energy or material is not being properly
accounted for. For instance, the non-gaining individual has a more
energy-dense excrement. /Somehow/ he is eliminating the energy which the
gainer isn't: ****ing it out, sweating it out, ****ting it out, or
bleeding it out. Maybe he has extraordinarily energy-dense hair, nails,
or skin flakes.

Matter and energy don't just disappear into another dimension. (That is
a.s.d.low-carb physics).

Walter Bushell wrote:

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.

Thus rendering invalid any example that uses concentration camp victims.
Any plan that does not include a maintenance phase is a fad diet to me.
Calorie restriction only works when it is mild enough to only trigger
slow loss and not later trigger regain. Extremely few dieters have the
patience to deliberately target slow loss. The few that do are the few
that keep it off.

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

That's the missing piece of course. If folks could show some their
arguments would be a lot more convincing.

At one point the Atkins Center told the tale of one person who managed
to gain while keeping carb count low, and having the food checked for
hidden carbs. She stayed under 50 grams of carb daily and continued to
gradually gain in a way that could not be water gain. Eventually they
asked her to log what she ate including quantities. Turns out each
night in addition to a diet otherwise common for folks losing on low
carb she was eating a stick of butter flavored with cimminon each night
as a snack. That's about 100 grams and nearly a thousand extra calories
per day in addition. It's possible to drive weight up while on low carb
but it takes a lot.

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.

The idea is that if you eat the expected mix of foods and count carbs
and stop at your limit, you end up low enough in calories to lose
without counting calories or being hungry. The example of the stick of
buffer snack shows that idea does not always work, but it works for a
lot of folks. It also seems to fail when folks have 10-20 pounds left
to lose.

Walter Bushell wrote:
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.

Conveniently "critical" has significant overlap with optimal. When a
system has a critical range, outside of that range the parameter can be
varied with little effect and inside that range small changes in the
parameter have a large effect.

Calling it critical carb level says that. It says that below CCLL loss
rates are not well correlated with carb levels and sure enough the data
bears that out no matter the quotes from the book. It says that near
CCLL loss rates plummet with very small change in carb level and sure
enough the data bears out that loss in ketosis is faster than loss out
of ketosis and that outof ketosis loss is only weight watchers style.

CCLL is optimal for a list of reasons. No matter the claims and quotes,
the actual data says loss rates are as good at CCLL as they are lower
and in fast the frequency or stalls is lower at CCLL than lower. Above
CCLL lose rates drop dramatically. Below CCLL variety of foods
available drop and stalls grow common. But here comes the march of
folks with quotes that say otherwise ...

On Dec 24, 12:39*pm, Wildbilly wrote:
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/...study-in-compa...
ve-basal-metabolism-by-francis-g-benedict.jsp


I looked at the study you provided and here is a brief excerpt of the
main conclusions:



"The facts established in this research are very clearly enunciated.
First,
in general the larger the animal the larger the total heat
production.
Secondly, as has been known for decades, the heat production is not
constant per unit of weight, and thirdly, it is clearly demonstrated
that the heat production is not constant per unit of surface area. As
there are striking differences in the metabolism even of animals of
the
same weight, where calculations per unit of weight or per unit of
sur-
face area are entirely unnecessary, it is obvious that the concept of
heat
loss as being uniform per unit of surface area will no longer satisfy
the
demands of physiologists who seek the truth. "


There is zippo in the conclusions from that book to support your
Taubes quote that "neither calories consumed nor excercise are linked
to obesity. I couldn't even find a page that supports your claim that
one group of 175lb men was fed a diet that was 500 calories higher
than a control group and they did not gain weight, but I'm not going
to search a 200 page book to find it. If you care to provide the
page, I'm sure those of us in the thread would read it.



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.



And so far the only "facts" you've provided are a foolish quote from
Taubes, a science writer, with an engineering background.




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.

No, most of the rest are only consuming 2X what a normal weight
individual would, or 1.5X. Do you ever open your eyes in the real
world? I've been out to dinner with plenty of obese people and they
are consuming a far higher amount of food, high in calories, than
someone who is not obese would. Sure, as I've said from the start,
there are some people with slower metabolisms, who will have to
consume less calories to keep from getting obese. All that proves is
that there is a range of metabolisms. It in no way supports that
there is no link between calories consumed or exercise.

You need studies? Geez, just about every human I know has put on
weight by eating more. If there is no linkage, how the hell do
people put on 10 lbs during the holidays? According to you, it must
be mental or a virus or something, because there is no linkage between
weight gain and calories. And most of them have taken off 10 or 20
pounds by just eating less.



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.



I'm not chiding anyone overweight, unless perhaps if that includes
you. First, if you look at data throughout the world, most obese
people do not belong to the lowest income families. The data you are
referring to was from very devloped western countries, places like
USA, Canada, etc., where even low income families have food availabe
through food stanps, wlefare, etc. And it's fairly well documented
that low income people in these countries are consuming lots of
calories and from the worst food sources. The cheapest foods in a
western supermarket are not fish, lean meat and vegetables. They are
junk foods, highly proceesed meat products, eg SPAM, People on low
income are buying these and in many cases, still have high amounts of
calories available to support obesity.

Here's a study from Brazil, which shows a bell shaped curve of obesity
vs income.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/135/10/2496

The lowest income people have very little obesity, then it rises with
income, flattens out, then decreases again. Clearly, if you looked
at places like Africa and other third world countries, you'd find a
similar curve, because at lower incomes they do not have access to
anywhere near the calories that are availabe here in the USA.

Also note how the link is to the direct conclusions and pertinent
topic, not a general link to a book.




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.

It wasn't me who made those remarks, so once again you are confused.
But I would say that what Kaz posted is close to the truth, but you
just can't handle it. Here's a thought. If most of the dramatic
rise in obesity in the USA over the last few decades is due to a
metabolic problem, how is it that it has only now surfaced and is
increasing? Did everyone suddenly inherit the same bad gene?




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 Syndromehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_syndromehttp://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/ms/ms_whatis.html
never crossed your accusatory mind?

In the case of metabolic syndrome, it justs means that you have to
consume LESS calories to keep from becoming obese. It doesn't mean
that calories consumed are not linked to becoming obese. I have a
slower metabolism. I eat LC and manage my portion size to manage my
weight. I could easily go off LC, in which case my appetite
accelerates and I start putting on weight. That experience is
typical of just about all of us on the LC group here over the years.

I guess the other choice I could make is to listen to you that
calories consumed is not linked to obesity. In which case, I should
just eat all the food I want, because it just doesn't matter. If
what you claim is true, why do you think Dr Atkins advised people on
LC to only eat until they were no longer hungry, ie not stuff
themselves?

On Dec 25, 1:59Â*pm, Wildbilly wrote:
On Dec 25, 1:59 pm, Wildbilly wrote:
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.


Those two people would do nothing to disprove a linkage in the general
population between calories consumed and obesity. You make it sound
like the typical morbidly obese 350lb guy is just eating 2200 calories
a day. I've seen enough of them in action to know that it's more
like 2-3X or more in calories they are consuming.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation of how it can be that Tour de
France riders consume 8000+ calories a day and not get fat?


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?

Which obviously is another extraneous non-issue. If calories
consumed are not linked to obesity, Oprah restricting her calories and
losing weight would not work, regardless of the motivation.



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


You just can't seem to understand that linkage between calories,
excercise and obesity HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MOTIVATION, SUCCESS RATE,
or RESOURCES. Either when you consume less calories and excercise
more you do lose weight, in which case it's linked, or else it you
don't lose and then it's not.






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?

I'm just establishing the credentials of your source for the quote.
You have a problem with people knowing he's a science writer with a
background in engineering?




Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and Health by Gary Taubeshttp://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400...
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."

If calories consumed and weight are not linked, then how is it that by
a restricition in caloric intake the subjects all lost weight? And
it comes as no surprise to me that trying to lose 10% of body weight
in a MONTH on a calorie restricted diet as low as 1400 calories would
produce hunger and feeling cold.





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

A third to a half less? So these subjects were previoulsy consuming
as much as 4200 calories a day. And they were put on a diet as low
as 1400 calories and lost 10% of their body weight in a month, which
is extreme. WE also don't know from the above whether they were
obese, overweight, or normal weight. So, we're supposed to think
it's some great revelation that they felt ill and started to regain
weight above 2100 calories? The obvious other significant factor
here is that they were allowed to DECREASE their excercise and energy
expenditure.

All, in all, I'd rather look at the results of The Biggest Loser.
They were all obese and all lost large amounts of weight through
reasonable calorie restriction and lots of excercise.



‹ 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 Â*"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.

No surprise there. Go back to your old ways of eating and we all
know what happens.





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.


Once again, calories consumed was linked to weight.


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."


On a semi-starvation diet, no surprise.



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."

Which has what to do with calories and excercise being linked to
obesity?



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.

Sure more calories in, more weight gained, once again showing a
linkage.




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.

An unsupported conclusion. What makes him think it makes it 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."*

Sounds like a lot of people did lose weight, again showing there is in
fact a linkage. Also, this is anecdotal evidence of excerpts from a
study that used data from another study, etc. Who know, for example,
how closely any of them were monitored to know what they REALLY ate.

On Dec 25, 6:36*pm, Doug Freyburger wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote:
*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.

Conveniently "critical" has significant overlap with optimal. *When a
system has a critical range, outside of that range the parameter can be
varied with little effect and inside that range small changes in the
parameter have a large effect.

Calling it critical carb level says that. *It says that below CCLL loss
rates are not well correlated with carb levels and sure enough the data
bears that out no matter the quotes from the book.

BS. Now you want to play word games and redefine what Atkins said.
Atkins made it clear and now, once again, you're trying to put words
in a dead man's mouth. Atkins defined CCLL as the level of carbs
that if you go above, you don't lose weight. If you stay below it,
you lose weight. Period. He made it abundantly clear that as you
slowly add carbs each week your weight loss is LIKELY TO SLOW. The
CCLL level is not some magic point at which optimum weight loss
happens. As for data that bears it out, exactly what data are you
referring to?




*It says that near
CCLL loss rates plummet with very small change in carb level and sure
enough the data bears out that loss in ketosis is faster than loss out
of ketosis and that outof ketosis loss is only weight watchers style.

Atkins didn't say loss rates plummet. Or that they were optimal at
your CCLL. He made it very clear that as you add carbs, your weight
loss slows. At CCLL it STOPS. That is all.



CCLL is optimal for a list of reasons. *No matter the claims and quotes,
the actual data says loss rates are as good at CCLL as they are lower
and in fast the frequency or stalls is lower at CCLL than lower. *

Please provide us with a link to that data. I've provided you with
links to what Atkins actually said.



Above
CCLL lose rates drop dramatically.


Once again, here's what Atkins actually said. From DANDR 2002, page
171:

"Each week you'll go up another level, adding 5 gram increment until
eventually you'll reach a number at which you stop losing. That's how
you find your CCLL. Above it you lose no more, or you begin to gain.
Below it you continue to lose."

Note he says weight loss STOPS or reverses above CCLL, not drops.
And two, he says nothing about CCLL being an optimal carb level. In
fact, it's obvious from Atkins that if you stay at the CCLL point,
you'll be losing zero. How is that optimum?


*Below CCLL variety of foods
available drop and stalls grow common. *But here comes the march of
folks with quotes that say otherwise ...

More total BS. Let's say someone's CCLL is 50 grams. So, per
Atkins, they drop to 40 to be able to lose weight and now the variety
of foods drops and stalls become common?

Doug you really should read the book. The march of quotes that say
you don;t know what you're talking about are direct from Atkins who
defined CCLL.

In article
,
" wrote:

On Dec 25, 1:59Â*pm, Wildbilly wrote:
On Dec 25, 1:59 pm, Wildbilly wrote:
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.


Those two people would do nothing to disprove a linkage in the general
population between calories consumed and obesity. You make it sound
like the typical morbidly obese 350lb guy is just eating 2200 calories
a day. I've seen enough of them in action to know that it's more
like 2-3X or more in calories they are consuming.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation of how it can be that Tour de
France riders consume 8000+ calories a day and not get fat?


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?

Which obviously is another extraneous non-issue. If calories
consumed are not linked to obesity, Oprah restricting her calories and
losing weight would not work, regardless of the motivation.



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


You just can't seem to understand that linkage between calories,
excercise and obesity HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MOTIVATION, SUCCESS RATE,
or RESOURCES. Either when you consume less calories and excercise
more you do lose weight, in which case it's linked, or else it you
don't lose and then it's not.






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?

I'm just establishing the credentials of your source for the quote.
You have a problem with people knowing he's a science writer with a
background in engineering?

On Dec. 21, you said," . . . I have respect for Taubes and think most of
what he has to say is correct . . .". Apparently, you have changed your
mind.
Calories cannot be linked to calories consumed, or lack of exercise,
BECAUSE on the same regime of calories and exercise, one person will
maintain a healthy weight and another will become obese. If it was just
calories or exercise, one would expect a one to one correspondence.
If you starve an obese person to thinness, you have a thin obese person
who is not going to be able function normally because of reduced
metabolism and an intense craving for food. It isn't a healthy condition.
Bariatric surgery may be the only option, at present, for someone who is
in a life threatening situation because of obesity, but again, you have
an obese person on a calorie reduced diet. I presume that they will have
the same energy and psychological problems of a person on an extreme
diet. You reduce one problem, and others appear. This isn't a solution.
Chiding obese people by telling them that they are lazy or gluttons
doesn't address the problem of their weight, because they may exercise
as much as most, and not eat more than most. It, however, may allow you
to allay your own insecurities by feeling superior to them, much as
racists do. At the very least, it is similar to telling a student to
"read harder", when they don't understand the text.
If being overweight isn't a life threatening situation, eating healthy,
exercising, and stretching will help maintain a healthy life style for
anyone.
In the parlance of playing cards, we all have to play the cards that we
are dealt. Don't listen to anyone who tells you don't know how to play
cards, just because you were dealt a rotten hand. It's easy to play with
a good hand.
Good luck to all of us.
I'm done here.

P.S. I strongly recommend "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

It is available in most libraries.



Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-...cience/dp/1400.
..
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."

If calories consumed and weight are not linked, then how is it that by
a restricition in caloric intake the subjects all lost weight? And
it comes as no surprise to me that trying to lose 10% of body weight
in a MONTH on a calorie restricted diet as low as 1400 calories would
produce hunger and feeling cold.





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

A third to a half less? So these subjects were previoulsy consuming
as much as 4200 calories a day. And they were put on a diet as low
as 1400 calories and lost 10% of their body weight in a month, which
is extreme. WE also don't know from the above whether they were
obese, overweight, or normal weight. So, we're supposed to think
it's some great revelation that they felt ill and started to regain
weight above 2100 calories? The obvious other significant factor
here is that they were allowed to DECREASE their excercise and energy
expenditure.

All, in all, I'd rather look at the results of The Biggest Loser.
They were all obese and all lost large amounts of weight through
reasonable calorie restriction and lots of excercise.



‹ 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 Â*"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.

No surprise there. Go back to your old ways of eating and we all
know what happens.





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.


Once again, calories consumed was linked to weight.


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."


On a semi-starvation diet, no surprise.



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."

Which has what to do with calories and excercise being linked to
obesity?



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.

Sure more calories in, more weight gained, once again showing a
linkage.




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.

An unsupported conclusion. What makes him think it makes it 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."*

Sounds like a lot of people did lose weight, again showing there is in
fact a linkage. Also, this is anecdotal evidence of excerpts from a
study that used data from another study, etc. Who know, for example,
how closely any of them were monitored to know what they REALLY ate.
--
“When 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.�
-Archbishop Helder Camara

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

In article
,
" wrote:

Here's a study from Brazil, which shows a bell shaped curve of obesity
vs income.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/135/10/2496

The lowest income people have very little obesity, then it rises with
income, flattens out, then decreases again. Clearly, if you looked
at places like Africa and other third world countries, you'd find a
similar curve, because at lower incomes they do not have access to
anywhere near the calories that are availabe here in the USA.

Also note how the link is to the direct conclusions and pertinent
topic, not a general link to a book.

Cute.

Poverty in Brazil
The intention here is to briefly analyze quantitatively and qualitatively
the bulk of the gap distortion between rich and poor in Brazil,
comparing it with other countries. In addition to that, it is important
to see who the poor people in Brazil are and where they live.
6 Castro (1980).
7 Cardoso and Souza, p. 6.
8 Baland and Robinson, p. 665.

In 2004, 19.8 million people (11.3% of the population) were extremely
poor, living with a monthly family income per capita up to 1/4 minimum
wage, and 52.5 million (30.1% of the population) were poor, living with
a monthly family income per capita up to 1/2 of the minimum wage.9
The World Bank uses the Gini Index to measure income inequality and
compare this phenomenon with other countries, and evaluate the measures
of the average ratio between the richest 20% (quintile) of the
population and the poorest quintile, where the bigger the number the
worse is the distribution of income within the country or region. In
terms of big regions, it shows that the average ratio in South
Asia is 4. In high-income countries, as well as in East Asia, Middle
East and North Africa it is 6. In Sub-Saharan Africa it is 10, and 12 in
Latin America. In Brazil this ratiois 30, which demonstrates the
extremely bad position of the country and the bulk of
the problem not only of poverty, but of income distribution.
------

The poorest in Brazil are starving to death, damn straight they have
very little obesity, and the bulk of the population is dirt poor.
Brazil is a very extreme case of wealth distribution and doesn't prove
anything.

I can see clearly now that you are only looking for a game. **** off.
--
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 25, 1:59Â*pm, Wildbilly wrote:
On Dec 25, 1:59 pm, Wildbilly wrote:
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.


Those two people would do nothing to disprove a linkage in the general
population between calories consumed and obesity. You make it sound
like the typical morbidly obese 350lb guy is just eating 2200 calories
a day. I've seen enough of them in action to know that it's more
like 2-3X or more in calories they are consuming.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation of how it can be that Tour de
France riders consume 8000+ calories a day and not get fat?

No references, no addressing the issue of the isocaloric intake and
expenditure leading to divergent results, only your moronic harping that
if we all join concentration camps, we could all be thin. **** off.
--
“When 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.�
-Archbishop Helder Camara

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

On Dec 26, 1:14*pm, Wildbilly wrote:


On Dec. 21, you said," . . . I have respect for Taubes and think most of
what he has to say is correct . . .". Apparently, you have changed your
mind.

I based that on what I have read, which was his NY Times Magazine
article. "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" In it he made the
case that the standard dietary advice focusing on low fat over the
last few decades hasn't worked and Americans have gotten fatter. He
laid out a very LC, Atkins friendly case. IF he's now saying that
obese and morbidly obese people as a group consume the same calories
as normal weight people, then, yes, I'd say he's gone nuts. And also,
it doesn't change the fact that he's not a medical expert, biologist,
dietitian, etc. to be regarded as an unimpeachable source. He's a
science writer with an engineering background.


Calories cannot be linked to calories consumed, or lack of exercise,
BECAUSE on the same regime of calories and exercise, one person will
maintain a healthy weight and another will become obese.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of linkage. You make is
sound as though obesity is completely random and a person consuming
2200 calories a day is just as likely to weigh 300 lbs as someone
consuming 5000 calories a day. If we take a group of 5,000 obese
men aged 30-40 do you really believe they will have the same average
calorie intake as 5,000 normal weight men in the same age group?
I've seen plenty of obese people stuffing themselves during my
lifetime. I've never come across a single seriously obese person
that was eating 2000 calories a day. And if there is no linkage
between calories consumed, exercise and weight, then answer the
questions I've asked several time now. How is it that on EVERY season
of The Biggest Loser, ALL those obese people lose major weight through
calorie restriction and exercise? How is it that pro bicycle
riders on the Tour de France eat 8000+ calories a day, while remaining
trim?

You are doing a great disservice to those with serious weight
problems, because with justifications like the above, you are giving
them the message that they can just eat as much and whatever they
want, because those excess calories consumed have nothing to do with
obesity.




If it was just
calories or exercise, one would expect a one to one correspondence.

Again, you don't understand linkage. All it requires is a positive
statistical correlation. It does not require a one to one
correspondence. As I tried to point out to you earlier, excess
alcohol consumption is linked to liver disease, premature death,
etc. However, that does not mean that everyone that consumes alcohol
to excess will die a premature death. High blood pressure is linked
to stroke, but it doesn't mean that everyone that has high blood
pressure will have a stroke. I pointed this out to you earlier, but
obviously you still don't get it.


If you starve an obese person to thinness, you have a thin obese person
who is not going to be able function normally because of reduced
metabolism and an intense craving for food. It isn't a healthy condition.

Who says you have to starve them to thinness? How about just getting
a morbidly obese person down to being just obese? Regardless, you
acknowledge above that by cutting calories, it is possible for an
obese person to lose weight, proving calories consumed and obesity are
linked.



Bariatric surgery may be the only option, at present, for someone who is
in a life threatening situation because of obesity, but again, you have
an obese person on a calorie reduced diet. I presume that they will have
the same energy and psychological problems of a person on an extreme
diet.

You presume a lot.



You reduce one problem, and others appear. This isn't a solution.
Chiding obese people by telling them that they are lazy or gluttons
doesn't address the problem of their weight, because they may exercise
as much as most, and not eat more than most.

Yes, a few may. BUT THE VAST MAJORITY ARE NOT EXCERCISING AND ARE
EATING WAY MORE CALORIES, THAN WHAT NORMAL WEIGHT PEOPLE CONSUME.
You ignore the common cases that any reasonable person has encountered
and choose to focus on the few exceptions. Also, I'd point out that
it is YOU who has used the words glutton and lazy, not me.


It, however, may allow you
to allay your own insecurities by feeling superior to them, much as
racists do.

And now you get around to the race card. Real nice comparison. People
like you love to make up excuses for everyone and then call anyone
that points out simple reality a bigot, or racist. Someone goes out
and kills someone, well it's because he ate too many twinkies and that
made him do it. A jury actually bought that crap in San
Francisco. A 300lb guy is morbidly obese, it can't be because he's
consuming 5,000 calories a day. No, he's eating just like a slim
guy.


At the very least, it is similar to telling a student to
"read harder", when they don't understand the text.

No. It's similar to saying the student can't read because they can't
pass a reading test and actually can't read. It's a simple fact,
but you want to make it sound like a pejorative. Your solution is to
hide reality.



If being overweight isn't a life threatening situation, eating healthy,
exercising, and stretching will help maintain a healthy life style for
anyone.

We were discussing obesity, not just being overweight. And on the
planet I'm living on, obesity isn't a healthy lifestyle and it's
linked to a host of diseases and shortened lifespan.



In the parlance of playing cards, we all have to play the cards that we
are dealt.

Yes, but that doesn't mean an obese person should eat with abandon
because there is no link between calories consumed and obesity, now,
does it? I could easily be a morbidly obese person if I had your
view on life. I don't. I chose to use LC as a means to manage my
weight, rather than make lame excuses to avoid doing something about
it. And guess what, it works. With LC I eat substantially less.
If I go off it, as occurs from time to time, I start to eat more and
put weight back on. Instead of having a small steak and salad, I can
eat two Big Mac with fries. Funny how that works, eat excessively,
the weight starts to go up.




Don't listen to anyone who tells you don't know how to play
cards, just because you were dealt a rotten hand. It's easy to play with
a good hand.
Good luck to all of us.
I'm done here.

We've heard that before. Also, you might learn how to edit posts so
that you include only the relevant parts and don't re-post pages of
crap.