Treat obesity as physiology, not physics

#21

I’ve not gotten out of the habit of looking at CICO as independent without hormone influences. Not seeing the forest for the trees.

I’m heading to speak with a professor in Bioenergetics next week. Curious as to hear what he says about the subject.

(Robert C) #22

Gary Taubes gave the best example I’ve heard (most convincing) in a YouTube video or some documentary.

Essentially - that one extra bite of food a day would lead to a yearly gain of something like 10 pounds and one less per day - a loss of 10 pounds (if everything was based on calories).

We can’t possibly eat so accurately as to be able to stay within a mouthful each day unless we were homeostatic beings that have hormones that change how our body works so that we get neither too fat nor too lean (which was the case for most people prior to the introduction of processed foods).

(Bob M) #23

He (Gary Taubes) has an example where he says that people who are overweight can stabilize at a certain (“high”) weight. Why? If they are overeating to get to that weight, why don’t they keep gaining weight?

And the whole CICO model does not make sense in light of his and other’s arguments. You could eat more but your body could burn more to compensate. You could eat less and your body could burn less. If you exercise, why would anyone think you wouldn’t get hungrier? I went boogie boarding on vacation, and I was freaking starving. 6 hours of boogie boarding each day for two straight days made me famished. Why wouldn’t a walk or a run or lifting do the same?

I think if exercise works for weight loss, it’s doing something with hormones and insulin and your insulin/glucose response to foods. Calories are a side effect that happen to correlate with weight loss (to the extent there is any).