On obesity and shades of gray.... versus black and white "religious" thinking [View All]

[nadinbrzezinski]

Well I know this always leads to flame wars, so lets make this clear. This is not the intent of this post, but I know I should know better. And before this is over, there will be plenty of flames and quasi flames, Like global weather change this is controversial, partly because of American's scientific ignorance.

So first things first, for the shut your mouth up and exercise mouth crowd.

Yes, I have adopted a fad diet... which is as old as humanity. It is called eat when you are hungry, and don't when you are not. If that is a fad diet, guilty as charged. Oh never mind that fad diet is also recommended by people who should know better that have initials after their names such as RD, MPH, and others. I guess they don't know either and Ian McKenna just made the whole concept easier to understand for the masses.

I am also on the overweight category and you know what? I am fine with that... and so is my doctor... and in the course of this post you will learn why we are peachy keen.

Now that this is out of the way...

If ten years ago I met any of you and you told me... it is really simple.. .shut your mouth and do exercise and it is all about calories... I would have whole heartedly agreed with you. After all that is common sense knowledge. And this is where obesity experts, again people with MDs, PhDs, and MPHs behind their names were as well ten years ago. Yes, it was thought to be that simple. Oh and for younger adults, with absolutely no other medical conditions that may explain weight gain... yeah that works m'kay. But for some reason looking at WHY diets fail means we are looking for excuses. Never mind some of us are asking WHY? But that is a bad thing.

Still I had questions about this being this simple for years, and it had to do with who or what I met as I grew up. By the way, before you accuse parents of bad eating habits, our food offering when growing up was fruit, vegies, some meat, beans, tortillas and potatoes. Things like cake, ice-cream, cookies et al were things offered to us ONLY as treats for oh Birthdays, and sodas were only available when we had guests for dinner. In fact, when compared to kids in this country we ate pretty healthy...

Yet one of my mom's friends she was grossly overweight... as in obese... so was her daughter, and one of her two sons and her husband... yes their food habits at times left a lot to be desired, but no matter what... daughter finally lost after getting a band... and their thin son had an easy time eating the same things and not gaining. So that was always puzzling to me. And this is well before the age of fast food in Mexico... I realized years later that not only was I looking at an expression of the fat gene in a human cohort, but also the psychology behind it. Could this woman and her husband benefit from Brookhaven? Yes, but like many of these people there is more going on with their bodies... And the discovery of that fat gene and all the other discoveries on serotonin values in the brains of the obese when they eat... tells me that shut your mouth off and exercise is too simplistic. And again those people with Phd, MD, MpH and other silly initials have come to the same conclusions, and it is not that simple.

Then I had a personal experience that forever changed my view of this popular pearl of wisdom and sent me on a quest to find as much as I could about this. As I have posted before I gained 50 pounds in three months when eating 1000 calories \ day. No the doctor did not believe me either until she saw the food diaries. That and as I said, the human studies, stage three did not have weigh gain as a side effect. Lucky me, I got it... and like me many other patients... now it is a very well known side effect of Avandia. I also have this lovely lower function thyroid.. and it does run in families... them genes. So losing weight without meds is impossible and we are just learning that perhaps doing Zynthroid is not enough... T3 and all that jazz... so another thing that told me... it is not black and white. Oh and after talking with a few experts both my doc and me concluded that my set point most likely moved up, and insulin resistance will make breaking through the plateau very hard... Oh I know, do more exercise and shut your mouth... will not work. I already exercise and I am eating what the doctor recommends, abut 1300 Kcals a day... so no, I will not follow the advise of religious fanatics online, m'kay? Good.

Now some of us have told you guys what is the emerging research into things like oh pesticides and how they react with the human body and hormonal levels... I know that it is easy to go, but the laws of thermodynamics... and of course you are correct except that the human animal is not a calorimeter and the different elements in this machine are so different from individual to individual that just shutting mouth off and getting on the exercise machine are not enough any more to explain why diets fail for 95% of individuals who go on a "diet." And I don't care if that diet is the latest fad, one supervised by doctors, or making changes slowly... though the latter has the best chances of success and yes studies have been done.... for those of you who claim otherwise... look into any dietetics journal. medical journal et al. Their rates of success rise slightly... but failure rates are still spectacularly high...

There is more... many of you refuse to read the science. Nor do you know cornerstone ongoing NIH funded, multigenerational studies, like Framingham... No that is not a diet... it is a study. Try to learn the difference m'kay?

Now I will say it... for some of you this is so threatening that my god, this is like dealing with global weather change deniers! It's been this way for ever and we humans could not have any effect on our bodies through the chemicals of the green revolution. I mean organophosphates do not concentrate across the ecosystem and they do not and cannot be affecting us... :sarcams: Yes, you strike me as global weather deniers. period.

There is more. Being able to look at the obese and say they NEED to shut up their mouths, and exercise and if they fail... well that is a moral statement, and a statement of belief. Now I do not expect every body to read the Journal of Endocrinology regularly, but whether you believe this or not, obesity is at a crisis point and research is pointing to multiple causes for this. And we are also finding out that yes, there is a fat gene... and yes in an age of plenty it is highly maladaptive... we are also finding about all them hormonal changes and I could go on.

But you know what was the most important lesson?

I will never again point to an obese person and say... well if he\ she shut his \ her mouth off and got on the elliptical... and you know why? I am sure people did when I got to my highest, and there was NOTHING I could do about it... and eating less was even less feasible... that was the lesson. While I am sure some folks are in the category. I simply don't know if they are obese because they eat a normal caloric load and their body is doing things that they have no control off... such as a dead thyroid, or medications. I simply do not know.

Now I know some folks here do that. And you know what? I do wish you a walk on my shoes... the humble and crow pies would be just peachy for you... Unfortunately this is the only way some people learn...

Sad.