Soldato
- Joined
- 30 Oct 2008
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Don't get me wrong, I loathe her, but she was right about the weight issue. For normal people, if you eat less and move more you will lose weight!
No such thing as 'fat but fit'
- Thread starter dowie
- Start date
I (having helped several obese people lose most of their weight) am pretty strongly convinced that in the vast majority of cases, the root cause is mostly psychological, in many cases there often seems to be a root cause such as abuse, childhood neglect, depression. This affects many people, some drink alcohol, others take drugs - some binge eat, but for me the root cause is almost always a psychological problem.
I think there are some good theories that show how obesity can be heavily influenced by hormones, especially with insulin and also cortisol where chronically elevated stress levels can apparently lead to weight gain, whether this is because someone who's stressed eats a lot more calories, or whether it interferes with how the body stores energy, such as Hypothalamic Obesity - where even on a severe calorie restriction, people still gain weight - but their energy usage goes completely awry.
There's also evidence that shows expectant mothers, who have type-2 diabetes can actually cause their unborn babies to also become insulin resistant - but also create more fat cells before birth, which is quite interesting.
But despite all of this, for me - it boils down to the food industry, with 65% of adults overweight or obese - there's either been a complete breakdown in the willpower of the nation, or something else is going wrong. Then look at other countries which used to be very healthy such as Italy - who are rapidly becoming very obese (in the last 10 years) they haven't all turned lazy overnight, but they have become far more exposed to the toxic western diet of processed junk food, than their historic Mediterranean diet, so for me - it's more likely the aggressive exposure to highly palatable, cheap, addictive junk food - rather than genetics, however - I would imagine that continued exposure to this toxic environment, might make genetic or hormonal issues more commonplace or exasperate them.
If science could take 10 minutes and finally confirm that junk food is causing single nucleotide polymorphisms in the FTO gene and as a result appetite suppression/acyl-ghrelin hormone production goes out of whack, we could turn it around to old levels. Not for the currently affected, but for the next generations.
I don't really think the science is the problem, if you look at WHO - when they published their guidelines for reducing sugar to less than 10% of daily intake, that advice was based on legit scientific studies, but it got suppressed multiple times, by paid-off government officials and sympathetic funding bodies - even after it was finally published, literally none of the official health bodies are changing their policies and advice to reflect it. In the United States - it seems to have become the norm to feed children high-calorie toxic food until they get ill, then the solution is to send them for bariatric surgery, rather than force the food companies targeting them, to behave.
I also think that most people don't need a scientist or a study to tell them that eating a mars bar, or a big-mac every day is bad for them. In my opinion the problem is these foods are specifically engineered to taste great, and aggressively pushed out to make money. In the final analysis, literally most of the food in your average supermarket is bad for you, resulting in chronic metabolic disease and the levels of obesity present today.
I think there has to be some form of legislation, because some of these companies are taking the **** for example, take these things, which are targeted at children;
It claims basically to be fruit, with 'no added nonsense' (no added sugar) which is true, as far as the legal standpoint goes, but look at the detail;
Per 100 grams of product, it has 275 calories and 37 grams of sugar (9 teaspoons) which is basically drinking a can of coke, (albeit, it does contain some fibre which coke doesn't, but still.....)
Take that in contrast with 100 grams of actual strawberries, which have 4 grams of sugar and 33 calories.
It's interesting how these companies go on about 'no added nonsense' 'no added sugar, etc, etc' when all they do is have a mechanical process that boils down fruit, until theres practically nothing left other than sugar, then claim it's a natural healthy product.
I'm not suggesting that eating a pack of the above will make you 40 stone, but it's the sheer availability of these types of products, all claiming to be healthy, when in reality they're providing lots of extra calories, lots of added sugar, neither of which are a good thing.
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Jun 2012
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- 9,898
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- South Wales
Can't adults be held responsible for looking at labels and making the reasonable decision? Food industry doesn't help but they legally have to display nutritional info which anyone is able to read.
I think they can, and I think it cuts both ways - we still need to eat, and I don't want to live in a world where there are no treats or deserts.
But I think legislation needs to go further, for example - most people would think this stuff is a healthy option;
If you look at the ingredients on there, in terms of calories, fat sugar - nothing really sticks out, however the further you dig - you find something called "mono diglycerides of fatty acids" (Trans fats) which are strongly linked with heart disease and banned in many countries (including the US) the food industry has become very good at hiding nasty stuff behind very nice looking packaging,
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/trans-fats.html
That predisposition is perhaps linked to your BMI and the amount of fat you are carrying. There's an informal rule of thumb that a fat free mass index (FFMI) tops out around 25 for natural bodybuilders. Some assume that anyone carrying greater lean mass than this must be on the 'roids. However the 'rule' only works for the low body fat ranges typical to bodybuilding. Those carrying a greater proportion of fat (obvious examples being Sumo wrestlers and strongmen) can build significantly more lean mass than that. However, if they reduce their overall weight, the potential for carrying lean mass also reduces in time.
So I reckon, were you to bring down your BF% your potential for carrying lean mass would also reduce (which is annoying if you're tracking your lean body mass - as it seems counter-intuitive to let it drop). If done relatively slowly I don't think you'd get ill.