If Eliezer eats less calories than needed for maintenance, he’ll lose weight just like anyone else. It’d be physically impossible not to, unless he can absorb nutrition from the air somehow. Normally, eating a ketogenic diet should make it easier to eat less, so he’d need less willpower. Having to lose weight sucks for anyone (I’m trying to lose weight again myself), because there’s no way around it: you have to eat less than you burn. And I gather that Eliezer has worse problems than usual, trying to do that. I remember reading about that, and IIRC is not ‘just’ a question of willpower. Willpower won’t keep you from physically getting weak like a sick kitten, or fainting, or stuff like that. I really hope this stuff works out!
Someone really ought to figure out why it’s so easy for some people to maintain a healthy weight, and so difficult for others. My husband eats what he wants, and stays naturally slim. Why can’t I do that? I suspect that in my case, I love beer, wine etc. too much. But other people don’t drink, or hardly drink, and get even fatter than I, so that can’t be the problem for everyone.
BTW, I really wish people wouldn’t say things like “fat people should just eat less”. There’s no ‘just’ about it, it’s frigging hard! And you have to do it your whole life!
That’s another thing though—just how hard it is varies. I’ve had periods where I could lose weight/maintain a good weight without great difficulty; and in other periods, just the thought of trying to do that was too much. And I don’t really know why that is, either.
If Eliezer eats less calories than needed for maintenance, he’ll lose weight just like anyone else. It’d be physically impossible not to, unless he can absorb nutrition from the air somehow.
Or his body will just stop the maintenance and make him sick and eventually dead. Depends on how messed up it is.
I can imagine that out of billions of people, there probably are individuals whose bodies will starve before they use energy stored as fat.
But I think it’s pretty unusual. Consider that most people who fail at dieting have had some degree of success in the past. e.g. a few years back they lost 20 pounds with Weight Watchers before falling off the wagon. (In EY’s case, I believe he has posted that he did lose weight when he initially moved away from home. )
So it seems that for most people with weight problems, their bodies are working properly to the extent of burning fat for energy when confronted with an energy shortage.
Of course there are other problems which make it difficult to lose substantial weight and maintain it, but we need to be clear about what the problem is.
For a randomly chosen person, sure (as per your reply to drethelin); but assuming he hasn’t outright lied about his weight loss attempts, it’s not that unlikely that EY would be one of the exceptions. (Consider the evolutionary consequences of homosexuality—and yet gay people do exist.)
I haven’t followed EY’s attempts at weight loss, but it’s entirely normal for people entering (or trying to enter) ketosis to feel lousy for a while. Effectively you’re starving your body of glucose and until the metabolism adjusts many, probably most, will feel weak, light-headed, have headaches, suffer from low energy, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised (but I have no data) if people which glucose regulation issues, e.g. pre-diabetics, would be particularly prone to this.
I am also not sure what does “body will just stop maintenance” actually mean. Mitochondria will stop producing ATF? Protein synthesis will stop? What?
I don’t know of anyone of normal or higher weight who started to eat below maintenance level (while avoiding major nutritional deficiencies) and then just died or came close to death instead of losing weight. Do you know of any such cases?
I haven’t followed EY attempts at weight loss, but it’s entirely normal for people entering (or trying to enter) ketosis to feel lousy for a while.
True that. I wonder how long he tried to endure that state before giving up on each attempt.
I don’t know of anyone of normal or higher weight who started to eat below maintenance level (while avoiding major nutritional deficiencies) and then just died or came close to death instead of losing weight. Do you know of any such cases?
I think Nancy Lebovitz once linked to a page listing a dozen or so such cases.
There is a non-zero number of people who, if they eat less than they consume, would starve to death before reaching a normal weight. For all we know EY might be one of them.
There is a non-zero number of people who, if they eat less than they consume, would starve to death before reaching a normal weight.
Evidence, please?
The link above didn’t show people starving to death (in the causal sense). The only relevant mention that I see is for Michael Edelman about whom the text says “At about 600 lbs, he literally starved to death. (Link − 1)”, but the link is dead and I’m not quite willing to take the word of this webpage for that.
It may depend on what you mean by starve to death—from what I’ve heard, fat people who starve and die before reaching a “normal” weight die of heart damage from inadequate food.
Losing weight or being thin are not evolutionary goals. People’s bodies are full of mutations or long-term genetic factors that can kill them, and they haven’t all been evolved away. Since this is a long-term risk that hasn’t killed him for years it won’t have impacted his primary breeding and evolution may well have left it alone.
Someone really ought to figure out why it’s so easy for some people to maintain a healthy weight, and so difficult for others
I’ve given a lot of thought and research to this question over the past couple years and I’m pretty confident that John Walker’s explanation (as set forth in The Hacker’s Diet) is the primary reason. Specifically, your body has a natural feedback system—if you do not eat enough, you have the urge to eat more. If you eat too much, you have the urge to eat less. People who naturally gain weight have feedback systems which do not function properly in the modern environment. They don’t get strong enough signals to stop eating so they have a tendency to over-eat every day and they slowly gain weight.
In your husband’s case, when he pigs out, he has a natural urge to eat less which results in him maintaining balance. So he can eat whatever he feels like without gaining weight.
Gut flora is not much of a hypothesis to start with—it just says “we think the composition of gut flora affects obesity but we have no clue about the mechanism”. It’s a black box with gut flora involved.
For a trivial example, we can substitute “leptin regulation” for “gut flora” and get a similar hypothesis—also black-box and also quite plausible.
Exactly what is the hypothesis that you’re testing? That gut flora affect metabolism and, as a consequence, a variety of things including weight? Sure, I agree. I suspect most everyone will agree.
But that’s a far cry from being the “best hypothesis” as to why some people easily gain weight and some do not.
There are known pathologies of gut bacteria that affect lipid metabolism. That less extreme and thus hard to detect variants exist seems a reasonable claim.
Yes, see my post above. Basically the idea is that everyone has an internal feedback system which sends a signal telling you whether or not to eat more food. Just like eyesight, for the most part this system worked reasonably well in the ancestral environment. However the system isn’t perfect, particularly when exposed to a modern diet. (By analogy, a lot of people have trouble reading without glasses.) John Walker refers to this system as a “food clock.”
If your internal food clock does not work correctly, and you don’t exercise conscious control over what you eat, then your weight will tend to drift upwards over time.
I find this hypothesis to be very plausible and consistent with the available evidence.
As far as the gut bacteria hypothesis goes, I am skeptical because if it were correct then obesity could be easily combatted with so-called “nutrtionism,” i.e. by adding or subtracting a few key components from the diet but otherwise eating ad libitum. As of yet, nobody has found a nutritionistic solution to obesity.
This is my (relatively uneducated) guess as well. I think that foods which didn’t exist in our ancestral environment plus antibiotics have done nasty things to many people’s gut microbiome and this plays a big part in the obesity epidemic.
That’s another thing though—just how hard it is varies. I’ve had periods where I could lose weight/maintain a good weight without great difficulty; and in other periods, just the thought of trying to do that was too much. And I don’t really know why that is, either.
Maybe it depends on whether you’re above or below your set point.
If Eliezer eats less calories than needed for maintenance, he’ll lose weight just like anyone else. It’d be physically impossible not to, unless he can absorb nutrition from the air somehow. Normally, eating a ketogenic diet should make it easier to eat less, so he’d need less willpower. Having to lose weight sucks for anyone (I’m trying to lose weight again myself), because there’s no way around it: you have to eat less than you burn. And I gather that Eliezer has worse problems than usual, trying to do that. I remember reading about that, and IIRC is not ‘just’ a question of willpower. Willpower won’t keep you from physically getting weak like a sick kitten, or fainting, or stuff like that. I really hope this stuff works out!
Someone really ought to figure out why it’s so easy for some people to maintain a healthy weight, and so difficult for others. My husband eats what he wants, and stays naturally slim. Why can’t I do that? I suspect that in my case, I love beer, wine etc. too much. But other people don’t drink, or hardly drink, and get even fatter than I, so that can’t be the problem for everyone.
BTW, I really wish people wouldn’t say things like “fat people should just eat less”. There’s no ‘just’ about it, it’s frigging hard! And you have to do it your whole life!
That’s another thing though—just how hard it is varies. I’ve had periods where I could lose weight/maintain a good weight without great difficulty; and in other periods, just the thought of trying to do that was too much. And I don’t really know why that is, either.
Or his body will just stop the maintenance and make him sick and eventually dead. Depends on how messed up it is.
Which would involve losing weight.
I can imagine that out of billions of people, there probably are individuals whose bodies will starve before they use energy stored as fat.
But I think it’s pretty unusual. Consider that most people who fail at dieting have had some degree of success in the past. e.g. a few years back they lost 20 pounds with Weight Watchers before falling off the wagon. (In EY’s case, I believe he has posted that he did lose weight when he initially moved away from home. )
So it seems that for most people with weight problems, their bodies are working properly to the extent of burning fat for energy when confronted with an energy shortage.
Of course there are other problems which make it difficult to lose substantial weight and maintain it, but we need to be clear about what the problem is.
That seems highly unlikely. Consider the evolutionary consequences of such a trait.
For a randomly chosen person, sure (as per your reply to drethelin); but assuming he hasn’t outright lied about his weight loss attempts, it’s not that unlikely that EY would be one of the exceptions. (Consider the evolutionary consequences of homosexuality—and yet gay people do exist.)
I haven’t followed EY’s attempts at weight loss, but it’s entirely normal for people entering (or trying to enter) ketosis to feel lousy for a while. Effectively you’re starving your body of glucose and until the metabolism adjusts many, probably most, will feel weak, light-headed, have headaches, suffer from low energy, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised (but I have no data) if people which glucose regulation issues, e.g. pre-diabetics, would be particularly prone to this.
I am also not sure what does “body will just stop maintenance” actually mean. Mitochondria will stop producing ATF? Protein synthesis will stop? What?
I don’t know of anyone of normal or higher weight who started to eat below maintenance level (while avoiding major nutritional deficiencies) and then just died or came close to death instead of losing weight. Do you know of any such cases?
True that. I wonder how long he tried to endure that state before giving up on each attempt.
I think Nancy Lebovitz once linked to a page listing a dozen or so such cases.
She linked to http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/kjn/people/heaviest.htm
Um, that’s a horror show of very sick people. I don’t see how it’s relevant to the current discussion.
There is a non-zero number of people who, if they eat less than they consume, would starve to death before reaching a normal weight. For all we know EY might be one of them.
Evidence, please?
The link above didn’t show people starving to death (in the causal sense). The only relevant mention that I see is for Michael Edelman about whom the text says “At about 600 lbs, he literally starved to death. (Link − 1)”, but the link is dead and I’m not quite willing to take the word of this webpage for that.
It may depend on what you mean by starve to death—from what I’ve heard, fat people who starve and die before reaching a “normal” weight die of heart damage from inadequate food.
Losing weight or being thin are not evolutionary goals. People’s bodies are full of mutations or long-term genetic factors that can kill them, and they haven’t all been evolved away. Since this is a long-term risk that hasn’t killed him for years it won’t have impacted his primary breeding and evolution may well have left it alone.
Surviving through periods of low food availability (=eating less calories) is a very strong evolutionary goal.
Bodies do stop (or at least slow) maintenance under stress—this is a good short term strategy and a bad long term strategy.
Remember adaptation executors not fitness maximizers, and we’re far from the ancestral environment.
And we eat many foods that didn’t exist in our ancestral environment.
I’ve given a lot of thought and research to this question over the past couple years and I’m pretty confident that John Walker’s explanation (as set forth in The Hacker’s Diet) is the primary reason. Specifically, your body has a natural feedback system—if you do not eat enough, you have the urge to eat more. If you eat too much, you have the urge to eat less. People who naturally gain weight have feedback systems which do not function properly in the modern environment. They don’t get strong enough signals to stop eating so they have a tendency to over-eat every day and they slowly gain weight.
In your husband’s case, when he pigs out, he has a natural urge to eat less which results in him maintaining balance. So he can eat whatever he feels like without gaining weight.
LOL. The only incentive for that is a few billion dollars… Look at the size of the diet industry in the Western world.
Gut bacteria is the best hypothesis.
s/the best/currently fashionable/
Yes, I know about the fecal transplant papers.
are there others that are actually plausible?
What do you mean, plausible?
Gut flora is not much of a hypothesis to start with—it just says “we think the composition of gut flora affects obesity but we have no clue about the mechanism”. It’s a black box with gut flora involved.
For a trivial example, we can substitute “leptin regulation” for “gut flora” and get a similar hypothesis—also black-box and also quite plausible.
Fecal transplants provide a way of testing the gut flora hypothesis.
Exactly what is the hypothesis that you’re testing? That gut flora affect metabolism and, as a consequence, a variety of things including weight? Sure, I agree. I suspect most everyone will agree.
But that’s a far cry from being the “best hypothesis” as to why some people easily gain weight and some do not.
There are known pathologies of gut bacteria that affect lipid metabolism. That less extreme and thus hard to detect variants exist seems a reasonable claim.
Yes, see my post above. Basically the idea is that everyone has an internal feedback system which sends a signal telling you whether or not to eat more food. Just like eyesight, for the most part this system worked reasonably well in the ancestral environment. However the system isn’t perfect, particularly when exposed to a modern diet. (By analogy, a lot of people have trouble reading without glasses.) John Walker refers to this system as a “food clock.”
If your internal food clock does not work correctly, and you don’t exercise conscious control over what you eat, then your weight will tend to drift upwards over time.
I find this hypothesis to be very plausible and consistent with the available evidence.
As far as the gut bacteria hypothesis goes, I am skeptical because if it were correct then obesity could be easily combatted with so-called “nutrtionism,” i.e. by adding or subtracting a few key components from the diet but otherwise eating ad libitum. As of yet, nobody has found a nutritionistic solution to obesity.
This is my (relatively uneducated) guess as well. I think that foods which didn’t exist in our ancestral environment plus antibiotics have done nasty things to many people’s gut microbiome and this plays a big part in the obesity epidemic.
Maybe it depends on whether you’re above or below your set point.