'Everything you know about obesity is wrong '

[Nearly Sane]

Interesting article


https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Were there links to the studies for these statements in the article?

For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.

I was especially concerned about Corissa Enneking's experience of shivering, exhaustion, light-headedness - she only consumed a pot of yoghurt and some crackers each day and was on her feet all day at work. The article didn't say if she was eating 800 calories per day and it did not mention that her doctor checked for any endocrinological disorders. 

This article seems to contradict the study in Oxford that states that:

a programme of weekly behavioural support and total diet replacement providing 810 kcal/day seems to be tolerable, and leads to substantially greater weight loss and greater improvements in the risk of cardiometabolic disease.

https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3760

My personal experience is that if you have a good enough reason or motivation to not eat your body adjusts, though it is tough for the first couple of days.

And not eating or even drinking water for about 19 hours a day during Ramadan did not leave me light-headed or with an eating disorder though it does reduce my body temperature and leave me feeling colder than normal. My appetite reduces and I lose weight every Ramadan because I consume less than I expend in energy. If I exercise for longer than usual even when I am not fasting, I lose body fat and my clothes feel loser.

As I could run for a couple of miles and drive and do work and buy groceries while fasting I concluded my body doesn't actually need the amount of food I consume when I am not fasting, so 800 calories a day would have been doable - if I was motivated to do it and got psychological support or some other form of distraction to stop me eating out of habit or boredom or a craving for carbs. I discovered I often eat just for something to do or to keep someone company or as a a way of soothing an emotional disturbance - so a psychological component rather than my body requiring fuel to function.

[Roses]

There seem to be a lot more people, who would be described as clinically obese here in the UK, than there were heretofore. The number of overweight children is very concerning, this is more than likely because their thumbs are getting much more exercise than the rest of their bodies!

[Rhiannon]

Why is it concerning? You can tell by looking at a child who is overweight that they are a) unhealthy and b) game too much?

[Roses]

Why is it concerning? You can tell by looking at a child who is overweight that they are a) unhealthy and b) game too much?

Being overweight is NOT to be encouraged as it can lead to poor health. Many kids these days seem to spend too much time playing computer games, unless the parents crack down on it as my grandchildren's parents do.

[Rhiannon]

Who said anything about encouraging children to be overweight? And you didn't answer my question.

[Steve H]

The popular idea that modern kids spend all their time playing computer games is not true - or at any rate, only marginally so. Studies have found that most kids still play traditional games - King of the castle, cops and robbers, split the kipper, tag, hide and seek, etc - and play computer games as well. 50 years ago, people were worried that kids spent too much time watching telly, but, on the whole, that fear proved unfounded too.