On the one hand, we’ve been told with almost religious certainty by everyone from the surgeon general on down, and we have come to believe with almost religious certainty, that obesity is caused by the excessive consumption of fat, and that if we eat less fat we will lose weight and live longer.
Either Taubes is throwing out a straw man here, or his opponents are ridiculously simplistic. It’s pretty well established that some fat can be good for you, and length of life is based on a whole ton of factors.
The problem with nutritional science is that you don’t need any sort of expertise to get a platform, you just need strong opinions. See both Taubes and his opponents. Those kinds are always trying to scare you into buying their latest book by simplistically dividing food into “good” and “bad” types, and insisting you’ll die if you keep eating the bad ones. Not to mention lose weight if you eat the good ones.
Weight management boils down to simple physics, namely the First Law of thermodynamics. If you consume less energy while spending more (via exercise mainly), you’ll lose weight. One calorie is completely interchangeable with another calorie, it doesn’t matter where it came from. (The exception being that it’s easier to add muscle mass by eating proteins.)
The hard part about losing weight isn’t knowing what to eat, it’s having the willpower to eat less (or exercise more). Of course, you can’t sell a book by telling everyone “we’re fat because we have no willpower”. “We’re fat because we’ve been lied to”, however, will sell.
(EDIT: I’m going to add some clarifications on my position here because the feedback shows that I’ve made my position seem more extreme than I intended.
First, I shouldn’t have said it was simple, it’s not.
If you eat just until you’re full and you get moderate exercise but you’re still overweight, you should talk to your doctor. You may still need to change your eating or exercising habits, but you should do research first, and not make any sweeping changes all at once. And you should never have to be constantly hungry, or end up having to eat almost nothing. Both outcomes are extremely unhealthy.
Changing your habits is always difficult, and that’s where the willpower comes in. It should only be needed until you settle into your new habits, though.
I’m not trying to compare the metabolisms of separate people. Some people can eat a lot more than others and maintain a healthy weight.
I’m not trying to say you can cut food willy-nilly and still be healthy. I’m not trying to use energy balance as a curiosity stopper. I’m trying to use it to combat claims that you can eat as much “good” food as you want as long as you avoid “bad” food.)
I disagree that weight management boils down to simple physics. An active fat person can expend more energy and take in less calories than a thin person that eats a lot. And the fat one will not lose weight—the thin one will not gain.
Willpower is not the answer. You hold your breath, use your willpower to keep from breathing and in a few minutes you will lose your willpower. Use your willpower to not drink any liquid. After a couple of days your willpower will disappear and you will have a drink. Use your willpower not to eat and in a few weeks your willpower will get weak. It is a trap for the fat. They are told to use their willpower to lose weight and for a few months it may work but soon you have to eat even less to keep losing. You end up eating practically nothing. Eventually you are not fat and you eat like everyone else. The weight comes back with interest and you would have been better off if you hadn’t dieted. It is possible to lose weight but not if the only thing you can bring to it is willpower. You also need some information about what to eat and how to exercise and how slowly to take it.
I do agree with you about the money make in the nutrition/diet business.
Thanks for pointing out something else I should have clarified in my first post.
I’m not trying to compare the metabolisms of multiple people. Some people can eat a lot more than others and maintain a healthy weight.
All I’m saying is that if a single person wants to lose weight, and they reduce their caloric intake (or increase caloric expenditure) while keeping everything else the same as they were doing before, they will lose weight. And I agree that if the person returns to old habits, they will gradually return to their original weight.
You’re right in that I overstated the willpower angle. Possibly the best diet is one that’s easy to adhere to, thus reducing the necessary willpower expenditure. I wonder if that’s the real reason there’s so many different diets out there; some people find it easier to reduce carbohydrates, others fats. Which diet works best may depend on individual food preference more than biochemistry.
Caloric expenditure is not strictly a function of behavior. Holding all else constant, including amount of exercise, reducing caloric intake will also reduce expenditure. Sometimes it will reduce it by more than the reduction in intake. Sometimes it will cause the body to fail to maintain muscles properly, in which case the reduction in expenditure will persist even after returning to old habits.
The energy-balance story is not literally false, but it is so oversimplified that it’s useless; and worse, it acts as a curiosity stopper. If you are repeating it because you believe that hearing it more times will help people improve their health, then please stop, because it won’t.
Caloric expenditure is not strictly a function of behavior. Holding all else constant, including amount of exercise, reducing caloric intake will also reduce expenditure.
I know, this is why when people stop dieting and return to their original level of consumption, they sometimes end up heavier than before, as Janet mentioned. It’s usually better to increase exercise rather than decrease calorie intake, but this thread is about diet, so I haven’t really gone into that.
Sometimes it will reduce it by more than the reduction in intake.
Not to say it can’t, but I’ve never heard of this happening. Reference, please?
Once again, it seems I’ve stated my position badly. I really shouldn’t have used the word “simple” in my opening post. Nothing in biology is simple.
I’m not trying to say you can cut food willy-nilly and still be healthy. I’m not trying to use energy balance as a curiosity stopper. I’m trying to use it to combat claims that you can eat as much “good” food as you want as long as you avoid “bad” food.
I’m trying to use it to combat claims that you can eat as much “good” food as you want as long as you avoid “bad” food.
Hang on—does “as much ‘good’ food as you want” mean “arbitrarily much food”, or does it mean “enough to sate appetite and no more”? My position is that the latter ought to be okay, and if it isn’t, it’s because something is wrong that needs to be dealt with directly, using thought and observation, not willpower.
I was using it to mean “arbitrarily much food”. My position is similar: If you eat just until you’re full and you get moderate exercise but you’re still overweight, you should talk to your doctor. You may still need to change your eating or exercising habits, but you should do research first, and not make any sweeping changes all at once.
Changing your habits is always difficult, and that’s where the willpower comes in. It should only be needed until you settle into your new habits, though. And you should never have to be constantly hungry, or end up having to eat almost nothing, as Janet said. Both outcomes are extremely unhealthy.
I think I’ll add this to my original post to clarify my position. I seem to have come across as more extreme than I intended.
Starving yourself does reduce calories burned due to spontaneous fidgety behavior (are you really relaxed and holding still while you’re at the computer?), as well as metabolic processes (even on a bodyweight-relative basis), by which I mean whatever energy is expended outside gross motion.
However, most people using this phenomena as an excuse are conveniently overestimating its magnitude (and/or underestimating their caloric intake). This helps them combat the stigma of moral weakness (often wrongly) associated with being fat.
The hard part about losing weight isn’t knowing what to eat, it’s having the willpower to eat less (or exercise more).
No, this is wrong. If you have to use willpower to suppress your appetite, then either one of your appetite-regulation mechanisms is malfunctioning, or your appetite-regulation mechanisms are working correctly but you’re deficient in a vital nutrient. Telling people to use willpower to eat less is harmful in both cases—in the former case, because it stops them for looking for the real cause of their overeating (usually sugar), and in the latter case by making them starve themselves (usually of protein).
I agree with everything you said until you mentioned that sugar is the real cause of people overeating. There are a lot of possible reasons for someone to overeat, and none of them, in my opinion, are solely dietary. The cause may be psychological—for example, a lot of people eat when they’re depressed or bored. I myself sometimes succumb to the latter. Some people hate to exercise. Willpower will help in all of those cases.
The only case I can think of where sugar might be considered the culprit is if someone drinks way too many sodas, for example. But the problem isn’t the fact that it’s sugar in the soda, it’s that the person is consuming a lot of extra calories they wouldn’t otherwise get. They’d be just as overweight as if they ate a calorically equivalent amount of potato chips. They need the willpower to stop their soda habit.
Regarding nutrient deficiencies, I’ve only been talking about calories, not other types of nutrients. I apologize for not making this clear in my first post. Obviously, if you need more vitamin C, you’re better off drinking some orange juice than a calorically equivalent amount of soda. You should always have a varied diet that contains enough essential vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
The bit about sugar being a cause for misregulation of appetite was a parenthetical remark, which the rest of the comment does not depend on. That said, I think you’re drastically underestimating the amount of harm sugar does. Blood sugar is one of the main mechanisms for regulating appetite, and drinking soda completely destroys its functionality.
Regarding nutrient deficiencies, I wasn’t just talking about micronutrients like vitamin C, but also to macronutrients. For example, if someone’s problem is that they aren’t eating any fat, then no amount of low-fat food will ever suffice to make them feel full.
It’s definitely true that some amount of dietary fat and protein should be considered nearly essential (but a typical fast food diet will far exceed all those minimums). I think the same is also true of carbs but almost nobody fails to get enough sugar.
Over the past 70 years, obesity has increased significantly, as have heart disease and several other related diseases. If someone wants to argue that obesity is caused by low willpower (as the above poster at least partially claims)
The hard part about losing weight isn’t knowing what to eat, it’s having the willpower to eat less (or exercise more). Of course, you can’t sell a book by telling everyone “we’re fat because we have no willpower”. “We’re fat because we’ve been lied to”, however, will sell.
then I want to see some explanation for why willpower has declined over that time period. If someone tells me diet changes have caused obesity and they point to diet changes over the past N years and rising obesity over the past N years, the pieces of their story fit together. So I’m asking (somewhat skeptically) what’s the mechanism for the willpower story? How does it fit the observed trend?
From the New York Times article:
Either Taubes is throwing out a straw man here, or his opponents are ridiculously simplistic. It’s pretty well established that some fat can be good for you, and length of life is based on a whole ton of factors.
The problem with nutritional science is that you don’t need any sort of expertise to get a platform, you just need strong opinions. See both Taubes and his opponents. Those kinds are always trying to scare you into buying their latest book by simplistically dividing food into “good” and “bad” types, and insisting you’ll die if you keep eating the bad ones. Not to mention lose weight if you eat the good ones.
Weight management boils down to simple physics, namely the First Law of thermodynamics. If you consume less energy while spending more (via exercise mainly), you’ll lose weight. One calorie is completely interchangeable with another calorie, it doesn’t matter where it came from. (The exception being that it’s easier to add muscle mass by eating proteins.)
The hard part about losing weight isn’t knowing what to eat, it’s having the willpower to eat less (or exercise more). Of course, you can’t sell a book by telling everyone “we’re fat because we have no willpower”. “We’re fat because we’ve been lied to”, however, will sell.
(EDIT: I’m going to add some clarifications on my position here because the feedback shows that I’ve made my position seem more extreme than I intended.
First, I shouldn’t have said it was simple, it’s not.
If you eat just until you’re full and you get moderate exercise but you’re still overweight, you should talk to your doctor. You may still need to change your eating or exercising habits, but you should do research first, and not make any sweeping changes all at once. And you should never have to be constantly hungry, or end up having to eat almost nothing. Both outcomes are extremely unhealthy.
Changing your habits is always difficult, and that’s where the willpower comes in. It should only be needed until you settle into your new habits, though.
I’m not trying to compare the metabolisms of separate people. Some people can eat a lot more than others and maintain a healthy weight.
I’m not trying to say you can cut food willy-nilly and still be healthy. I’m not trying to use energy balance as a curiosity stopper. I’m trying to use it to combat claims that you can eat as much “good” food as you want as long as you avoid “bad” food.)
I disagree that weight management boils down to simple physics. An active fat person can expend more energy and take in less calories than a thin person that eats a lot. And the fat one will not lose weight—the thin one will not gain.
Willpower is not the answer. You hold your breath, use your willpower to keep from breathing and in a few minutes you will lose your willpower. Use your willpower to not drink any liquid. After a couple of days your willpower will disappear and you will have a drink. Use your willpower not to eat and in a few weeks your willpower will get weak. It is a trap for the fat. They are told to use their willpower to lose weight and for a few months it may work but soon you have to eat even less to keep losing. You end up eating practically nothing. Eventually you are not fat and you eat like everyone else. The weight comes back with interest and you would have been better off if you hadn’t dieted. It is possible to lose weight but not if the only thing you can bring to it is willpower. You also need some information about what to eat and how to exercise and how slowly to take it.
I do agree with you about the money make in the nutrition/diet business.
Thanks for pointing out something else I should have clarified in my first post.
I’m not trying to compare the metabolisms of multiple people. Some people can eat a lot more than others and maintain a healthy weight.
All I’m saying is that if a single person wants to lose weight, and they reduce their caloric intake (or increase caloric expenditure) while keeping everything else the same as they were doing before, they will lose weight. And I agree that if the person returns to old habits, they will gradually return to their original weight.
You’re right in that I overstated the willpower angle. Possibly the best diet is one that’s easy to adhere to, thus reducing the necessary willpower expenditure. I wonder if that’s the real reason there’s so many different diets out there; some people find it easier to reduce carbohydrates, others fats. Which diet works best may depend on individual food preference more than biochemistry.
Caloric expenditure is not strictly a function of behavior. Holding all else constant, including amount of exercise, reducing caloric intake will also reduce expenditure. Sometimes it will reduce it by more than the reduction in intake. Sometimes it will cause the body to fail to maintain muscles properly, in which case the reduction in expenditure will persist even after returning to old habits.
The energy-balance story is not literally false, but it is so oversimplified that it’s useless; and worse, it acts as a curiosity stopper. If you are repeating it because you believe that hearing it more times will help people improve their health, then please stop, because it won’t.
I know, this is why when people stop dieting and return to their original level of consumption, they sometimes end up heavier than before, as Janet mentioned. It’s usually better to increase exercise rather than decrease calorie intake, but this thread is about diet, so I haven’t really gone into that.
Not to say it can’t, but I’ve never heard of this happening. Reference, please?
Once again, it seems I’ve stated my position badly. I really shouldn’t have used the word “simple” in my opening post. Nothing in biology is simple.
I’m not trying to say you can cut food willy-nilly and still be healthy. I’m not trying to use energy balance as a curiosity stopper. I’m trying to use it to combat claims that you can eat as much “good” food as you want as long as you avoid “bad” food.
Hang on—does “as much ‘good’ food as you want” mean “arbitrarily much food”, or does it mean “enough to sate appetite and no more”? My position is that the latter ought to be okay, and if it isn’t, it’s because something is wrong that needs to be dealt with directly, using thought and observation, not willpower.
I was using it to mean “arbitrarily much food”. My position is similar: If you eat just until you’re full and you get moderate exercise but you’re still overweight, you should talk to your doctor. You may still need to change your eating or exercising habits, but you should do research first, and not make any sweeping changes all at once.
Changing your habits is always difficult, and that’s where the willpower comes in. It should only be needed until you settle into your new habits, though. And you should never have to be constantly hungry, or end up having to eat almost nothing, as Janet said. Both outcomes are extremely unhealthy.
I think I’ll add this to my original post to clarify my position. I seem to have come across as more extreme than I intended.
The last I heard, losing weight tends to increase appetite, not lower metabolism.
Starving yourself does reduce calories burned due to spontaneous fidgety behavior (are you really relaxed and holding still while you’re at the computer?), as well as metabolic processes (even on a bodyweight-relative basis), by which I mean whatever energy is expended outside gross motion.
However, most people using this phenomena as an excuse are conveniently overestimating its magnitude (and/or underestimating their caloric intake). This helps them combat the stigma of moral weakness (often wrongly) associated with being fat.
I was talking about theories that starvation lowers basal metabolism, even after food is more available.
No, this is wrong. If you have to use willpower to suppress your appetite, then either one of your appetite-regulation mechanisms is malfunctioning, or your appetite-regulation mechanisms are working correctly but you’re deficient in a vital nutrient. Telling people to use willpower to eat less is harmful in both cases—in the former case, because it stops them for looking for the real cause of their overeating (usually sugar), and in the latter case by making them starve themselves (usually of protein).
I agree with everything you said until you mentioned that sugar is the real cause of people overeating. There are a lot of possible reasons for someone to overeat, and none of them, in my opinion, are solely dietary. The cause may be psychological—for example, a lot of people eat when they’re depressed or bored. I myself sometimes succumb to the latter. Some people hate to exercise. Willpower will help in all of those cases.
The only case I can think of where sugar might be considered the culprit is if someone drinks way too many sodas, for example. But the problem isn’t the fact that it’s sugar in the soda, it’s that the person is consuming a lot of extra calories they wouldn’t otherwise get. They’d be just as overweight as if they ate a calorically equivalent amount of potato chips. They need the willpower to stop their soda habit.
Regarding nutrient deficiencies, I’ve only been talking about calories, not other types of nutrients. I apologize for not making this clear in my first post. Obviously, if you need more vitamin C, you’re better off drinking some orange juice than a calorically equivalent amount of soda. You should always have a varied diet that contains enough essential vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
The bit about sugar being a cause for misregulation of appetite was a parenthetical remark, which the rest of the comment does not depend on. That said, I think you’re drastically underestimating the amount of harm sugar does. Blood sugar is one of the main mechanisms for regulating appetite, and drinking soda completely destroys its functionality.
Regarding nutrient deficiencies, I wasn’t just talking about micronutrients like vitamin C, but also to macronutrients. For example, if someone’s problem is that they aren’t eating any fat, then no amount of low-fat food will ever suffice to make them feel full.
It’s definitely true that some amount of dietary fat and protein should be considered nearly essential (but a typical fast food diet will far exceed all those minimums). I think the same is also true of carbs but almost nobody fails to get enough sugar.
If this is the case, what mechanism explains the steady decline in willpower over the last 70 years?
What steady decline?
Over the past 70 years, obesity has increased significantly, as have heart disease and several other related diseases. If someone wants to argue that obesity is caused by low willpower (as the above poster at least partially claims)
then I want to see some explanation for why willpower has declined over that time period. If someone tells me diet changes have caused obesity and they point to diet changes over the past N years and rising obesity over the past N years, the pieces of their story fit together. So I’m asking (somewhat skeptically) what’s the mechanism for the willpower story? How does it fit the observed trend?