Who Put This There?

[Tchannie]

Actually, you still need the same amount of food as most people. People who don't eat get fat. Simple. Starvation diets do the opposite of what you want them to do; they store food as fat because your body doesn't know when its next meal will be. If you eat less than usual, your body thinks the same; that you're trying to starve it. Therefore if you eat less than usual, you will get fat, if you eat more than usual, you will get fat, and if you eat the same as usual, you shouldn't. Fact.

[Ghanima Atreides]

How about this one?

A person eating one meal a day. One. It being dinner. Not greasy burgers, not fries dripping in oil...just say, bits of chicken with vegetables and rice. A regular amount. As for the rest of the day, say a sandwich or 4 wheat crackers and an apple.

And still gaining weight without at least one hour of exercise a day, 5 days a week.

It's a real example. How much less can a person possibly eat?  

[MizzKitty]

Anyhoo... I have a blog, too. I am not particularly interested in any of you reading it, but for the sake of argument, here's me and my entire family.

all I see is:
The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
 :?

Hmmm. Never been down for me, just tried again and it's up. If you still can't load it then it must be something else causing it . :?

And yea, I removed the actual link. I already made my point, see?  

I overeat. And I'm not healthy. I love my sweets etc. Often when I eat I AM hungry BUT I am also aware that one trains how much/little one eats and of course, a salad would make me full longer... But who wants to eat nothing but lettuce? Not me It's also not fun snacking lettuce while watching a movie.

Although the image of one getting bigger and bigger and bigger is fairly amusing, I do believe that most people - unless they just eat more and more - eventually come to a stand-still.

[Granuaile]

Last year, my husband had to lose weight because of heart problems.  He was active on the job but not at home, so the cardiologist put him on a diet of five small meals a day and instructed him to take walks (because he's in his 40's, and losing weight is harder once you reach middle age).

I'm not really sure if this would help anybody, but it worked out okay for him.
 

[Pescado]

How about this one?

A person eating one meal a day. One. It being dinner.A person eating one meal a day. One. It being dinner. Not greasy burgers, not fries dripping in oil...just say, bits of chicken with vegetables and rice. A regular amount. As for the rest of the day, say a sandwich or 4 wheat crackers and an apple.
...
It's a real example. How much less can a person possibly eat?  

One meal every OTHER day, apparently. It's obvious: If you're still gaining weight, you're still running an energy surplus. Hey, fuel economy is great! You'll only have to eat every other day! Why would you complain? Food costs money!

[Granuaile]

Wouldn't that mess with someone's blood sugar, though?  

Edited:  Reworded it to make it flow better

[Hecubus]

Again, I find the concept of being fat caused by "health issues" to be ludicrous. It's simply absurd. If you eat a pound of food, you can only gain one pound, and that's assuming you burn absolutely none of it as fuel and process it with 100% efficiency. Since perfect mass conversion like so doesn't exist, and certainly not in people, it's simply an absurd idea.

You are discounting the fact that MANY biological processes go into processing that pound of food...nearly every major system is affected/involved, and any number of things can cause that pound of food to be processed in a way that adds weight to the body. Let's start with the endocrine system...thyroid issues alone can cause the metabolism to slow down, which means the energy from food doesn't get burned. Then to the pancreas, where the insulin reactors may or may not be working properly to eat up the sugars..leftovers get converted to fat. Then there are kidney and liver functions that may improperly dispose of fluids, salts, etc., causing weight gain.

And that's just for starters. I won't talk about food allergies....medication-induced problems....PCOS....digestive disorders....all of which cause weight changes.

Your argument, Pescado, ignores medical facts.

And it ignores what many of us already know: A show of hands in this very random group will produce any number of people (women in particular) who eat exactly or LESS food than is required to maintain weight AND exercise regularly ...and still gain. It's not laziness, it's not a failing of willpower, it's a failing in our bodies...one we can't figure out.


Regarding entitlement: just stop that. It's an absurd argument.

[Ghanima Atreides]

One meal every OTHER day, apparently. It's obvious: If you're still gaining weight, you're still running an energy surplus. Hey, fuel economy is great! You'll only have to eat every other day! Why would you complain? Food costs money!

Sure, if you don't mind depriving your body of all the essential nutriments it needs to function properly and lower your immune system to something practicaly inexistent. And quite plainly, go hungry as hell; because just because someone's metabolism burns fat more than the next person's it doesn't mean the body doesn't actually need the "fuel" for other processes (as Hecubus explained very well)

Tchan made a good point too - you actually gain more if you don't eat regularly, because the body hoards all food it gets. So it's much healthier to eat 3 times a day, smaller portions than one big one.

It would actually be cool, being able to eat once a week and never gain weight, and actually remain perfectly healthy. Once a month perhaps? It's what anorexics try...but we know how they end up.

No the real viable solution for most (I say most because cases differ) is exercise to counter the slower metabolism...since the body burns fat too slowly, you gotta give it a helping hand. It sucks, but it's the truth...

[darkangel]

How about this one?

A person eating one meal a day. One. It being dinner.A person eating one meal a day. One. It being dinner. Not greasy burgers, not fries dripping in oil...just say, bits of chicken with vegetables and rice. A regular amount. As for the rest of the day, say a sandwich or 4 wheat crackers and an apple.
...
It's a real example. How much less can a person possibly eat?  

One meal every OTHER day, apparently. It's obvious: If you're still gaining weight, you're still running an energy surplus. Hey, fuel economy is great! You'll only have to eat every other day! Why would you complain? Food costs money!

Pescado I'm sorry but that's complete bullshit. You cannot just eat nothing or little just because you have a slow metabolism. The body still needs vegetables/fruit, liquids, meat/eggs/nuts/fish/milk/yogurt/cheese (the "/" stands for "or"!) and some suguar and fat (tiny amounts though).

Skipping one category will lead to malnutrition and only slow down your metabolism. That's why crashdiets suck. Your body get's used to low calorie intake, you stop losing weight and if you don't start eating normal again, you'll eventually have a stroke or something else.

The Accurate Way
There are three primary components that make up your body's energy expenditure. Adding these three components together, basal metabolic rate, energy expended during physical activity, and the thermic effect of food is the most accurate way of determining how many calories your body requires each day.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Most of the body's energy, about 60-70%, goes to supporting the ongoing metabolic work of the body's cells. This includes such activities as heart beat, respiration and maintaining body temperature. To determine your BMR:

For adult males - Multiply the body weight by 10; add double the body weight to this value.
[i.e., for a 150 lb male, 1,500 + (2 x 150)=1,800 cal/day BMR]

For adult females - Multiply body weight by 10; add the body weight to this value.
[i.e., for a 120 lb female, 1,200 + 120=1,320 cal/day BMR]

Energy Expended During Physical Activity: The second component of the equation depends upon your level of physical activity. Physical activity has a profound effect on human energy expenditure and contributes 20-30% to the body's total energy output. One of the most reliable methods in calculating calories burned during physical activity is the Metabolic Energy (MET) Method. This is the method we have used for the Fitness Partner Connection's Activity Calculator for 158 different activities.

Thermic Effect of Food: The last component to calculate has to do with your body's management of food. The increase in energy required to digest food is referred to as the thermic effect of food (TEF) and it's simple to determine:

TEF = total kcals consumed x 10%
[i.e., 2,000 kcals consumed/day x 0.10 = 200 kcals expended for TEF]

The Easy Way
If all of those calculations seem too confusing or tedious, you can roughly estimate your daily calorie requirements using this simple formula:

For sedentary people: Weight x 14 = estimated cal/day

For moderately active people: Weight x 17 = estimated cal/day

For active people: Weight x 20 = estimated cal/day

Note: Moderately Active is defined as 3-4 aerobic sessions per week. Active is defined as 5-7 aerobic sessions per week.

...that is if you want to keep your weight.  :roll:

BTW I weigh 50kg...multiplied with 14 = 700cal.
If I'd go with lbs, I'd need a daily intake of 1540cal. Which seems to me more accurate.  :lol:

[MMEStalker]

Your argument, Pescado, ignores medical facts.

And it ignores what many of us already know: A show of hands in this very random group will produce any number of people (women in particular) who eat exactly or LESS food than is required to maintain weight AND exercise regularly ...and still gain. It's not laziness, it's not a failing of willpower, it's a failing in our bodies...one we can't figure out.

But those people are a minority. I don't doubt that there are many people out there who have trouble staying at a healthy weight for medical reasons, but I doubt that they make up anything like the majority of people who are overweight. I've read more than one paper on obesity in children and all of them concluded that the main reasons were overeating, poor diet and lack of exercise. This fits with what I've observed in my own life as well, all of the overweight people I know well visibly eat more/eat more crappy food/exercise less, than the people I know who are a healthy weight, and the skinny people I know eat less than the healthy people. I know that metabolism and other things affect weight gain/lose and the people I know don't fall onto an exact scale, some that might be expected to be fatter than others based on their diet and exercise habits aren't (I eat a lot more than a friend who is around the same weight and only exercise maybe a little more).  Only one of them claims another reason for her weight (birth control injection) and I believed her at first, until I saw that she ate 6 meals a day and got her boyfriend to do everything for her. Perhaps that's part of the problem in this discussion (ignoring Pescado's comments, since he's deliberately being an arsehole), people who have medical problems relating to weight themselves are probably more inclined to believe that a lot of other people do, while people who haven't met many people with actual thyroid problems or other issues assume that a significant proportion of the people who say they do are lying. I believe everyone here who says that they can't lose weight and that it's not a diet and exercise issue, but that's still a small number of people compared to the people I know who are overweight (or underweight) because of their lifestyles.

[Pescado]

Your argument, Pescado, ignores medical facts.

And your arguments ignore basic laws of physics. I dunno about you, but given how often doctors tell me things that don't work, I'm going to ignore them in favor of what the basic physical laws tell me.

And it ignores what many of us already know: A show of hands in this very random group will produce any number of people (women in particular) who eat exactly or LESS food than is required to maintain weight AND exercise regularly ...and still gain.

That is an obvious contradiction in terms. If you eat "exactly or LESS" food than is required to maintain weight, then you can't be gaining weight. Otherwise, you are eating MORE. That extra mass is not coming from nowhere.

Sure, if you don't mind depriving your body of all the essential nutriments it needs to function properly and lower your immune system to something practicaly inexistent. And quite plainly, go hungry as hell; because just because someone's metabolism burns fat more than the next person's it doesn't mean the body doesn't actually need the "fuel" for other processes

This is utter nonsense, obviously. Like the basic physical laws clearly state, if you're gaining weight, you're running a mass surplus. Basic physical facts. You can't dodge them with any amount of "medical" wrangling. And why would you be hungry if you're, in fact, gaining weight? That's clearly an equipment malfunction, just ignore it.

It would actually be cool, being able to eat once a week and never gain weight, and actually remain perfectly healthy. Once a month perhaps? It's what anorexics try...but we know how they end up.

Anorexics are running a deficit, otherwise they would not be losing weight.

No the real viable solution for most (I say most because cases differ) is exercise to counter the slower metabolism...since the body burns fat too slowly, you gotta give it a helping hand. It sucks, but it's the truth...

Or you could give it less, you know. Consider: Vehicles all have different fuel economies. Therefore, some vehicles have to be refueled every X miles or so, while others refuel less often due to improved fuel economy. If you stubbornly ignore this and insist on refuelling anyway, you will find that the tank still has fuel in it, and therefore cannot hold as much fuel. If you put too much fuel in it, it will simply spill. People with "slower" metabolisms are more like energy-efficient vehicles, and therefore, NEED LESS REFUELLING.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Most of the body's energy, about 60-70%, goes to supporting the ongoing metabolic work of the body's cells. This includes such activities as heart beat, respiration and maintaining body temperature. To determine your BMR:

I notice all of your values center around constants, a fact we know is not so. Consider, that as mentioned above, if people follow your values, they still gain weight. Clearly, since the laws of the universe have not magically changed, this is clear and empirical proof that your above numbers ARE IN ERROR, and must be revised accordingly. If you get a value of 1500, and trying this value yields a net gain anyway, it means THIS VALUE IS TOO HIGH. Simple.

[Ghanima Atreides]

rofl this is what I get for taking Pescado too seriously     :lol:

[Pescado]

rofl this is what I get for taking Pescado too seriously     :lol:

I don't see why you shouldn't. The problem is, you people keep trying to see this as a "medical" problem. I see this as an engineering problem. And I know engineering problems. As far as I'm concerned, this is a straightforward matter of fuel allocation.

[calalily]

Yes, except that the first place that loses fuel is in fact the brain.  Without daily carbohydrates (because this is the sole fuel for the brain, and even the slowest burning carb leaves the body in 8 hours) the brain starves, shuts down and starts decreasing in mass.

Not a good idea to have thin thighs if they are attached to a stupid person - otherwise one ends up with a lot more Paris Hilton than is safe.

[Hecubus]

I'm gonna bow out of this one now....I don't have the references at my fingertips to argue this one sufficiently. I know what I've experienced, what I've read, what I know to be true....but I can't seem to articulate it in a way that answers Pescado's engineering argument.

<sigh>