Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I don't have access to the study, but I suspect it doesn't say what The Atlantic is saying it's saying.

I lost weight: I went from 340 pounds to 214 pounds in exactly a year, and then bottomed out at 184 eventually (I've been purposely trying to gain muscle lately, which has been causing my weight to meander in the 190s since then).

My caloric intake hasn't changed in a way that can explain such a weight loss. I went from eating 1500-2000 calories a day to 1500-2000 calories a day (as in, no useful change, nothing that can explain 126 pounds in a year, disproportionately more of it towards the start than the end).

Now, what I did change was drop all grains (grains, cereals, pastas, soy, rice), drop refined sugars (I still use coconut and true raw cane sugars (Muscovado, Barbados, or Turbinado) or straight up raw honey; all very sparingly, and corn syrup is banned in my house), dropped seed oils (no more "vegetable", soy, corn, or canola oils; replaced with coconut and olive oil, or leftover bacon fat when I have it), and legumes (I'm allergic to peanuts, and don't care for beans, so the only thing I lost there is peas; soy is a legume, but I include it in with grains due to how it is typically treated culinarily, and thus already banned in my house).

So, given my experience, people are fatter because of reasons that cannot be explained by calories, such as chemicals in the things I quit eating causing unusual weight gain and halting the natural process of us burning endogenous fat. And it isn't like I'm the only person who did this, it is estimated over a million people have tried Paleo or some variant thereof and have significantly lost weight if they were overweight as long as they stuck with the lifestyle.

Side note: I went from 340 to 214 with chronically under-exercising. I still chronically under-exercise to a point, even though I now lift weights and try to go on daily walks. I still don't get the high other people seem to get from exercising. So, you can't use "increased caloric burn" as why I lost so much weight, it just wasn't there.

How carefully were you tracking calorie intake? It's notoriously difficult and I simply don't believe you ate 1500-2000 calories at 340lbs and didn't lose weight (not that you need to convince me).

In any case, congrats on the achievement!

It is very difficult to track calories if you don't eat exact portion sizes listed on boxes. I calculated what I used to eat, and what I eat now, based on things I regularly ate. I figured I'd have to be off somewhere around 1000+ calories in my calculations to have lost as much weight as I did during the start of that year.

I have had this conversation with people before, and the only thing that would have probably helped here is measuring calories being flushed down the toiled, something that is difficult, expensive, and not really worth it outside of actual scientific studies.

Also, I went from being habitually tired, not sleeping well, and also diagnosed with pre-diabetus, to being full of energy, having a much better mood, sleeping well, and having a sharper mind. Weight loss alone doesn't explain this, my change in diet alone doesn't explain this, but both together increasing and stabilizing my energy levels seems to explain this.

Don't underestimate the psychologic effects. A few years back I lost about 20kg in six to nine months --- by eating less and better, mostly --- and plotting my weight on the graph and watching the slow but steady downward trend was always a big mood-lifter.

And feeling better leads to a positive reinforcement loop; feeling good about yourself leads you (well, it works on me, at least) to do more things that make you feel better about yourself.

There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat. When their food is removed, their bodies ignore the stored fat and strictly cannibalize muscle and other tissues until the rat dies.

Being fat is much more complicated than calories in minus calories burned.

> There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat.

I bet there aren't. You'll need to cite that claim.

Eh, he might actually be right. I seem to remember seeing a study saying something like that, but I can't find it after my contractual maximum of 5 minutes of Googling.

Here you go: https://books.google.com/books?id=XPJdM9POXGAC&pg=PA366&lpg=...

> They will consume the protein in their muscles and organs rather than surrender the fat in their adipose tissue. [...] They lost 60 percent of their body fat before they died of starvation, but still had five times as much body fat as lean mice that were allowed to eat as much as they desired.

I did the same for a bit over a year (went from 460# to 360# that year), minimal activity.. since then I've hovered between #365-380 though... I haven't been as strict as that first year... A couple months ago I spent two months relatively high stress and ate a lot of fast food.. was inching towards 390 again... The past 2 weeks have been back on track (staying fairly strict in my diet) and back to 370 again.

It's purely anecdotal, but the fewer grains I eat (I do have some legumes, but try to limit them), the better I do all around. In general if I stay under an estimated glycemic load of 100/day, I loose weight with not other real changes in terms of calories or exercies.

Staying away from soda (Diet Dr Pepper) has been much harder... mostly drink water, but have a soda about every other day. I try to cook about once a week, usually soup that's easy enough to eat during the week and supplement with some meat along with fruit & nuts. It isn't easy, especially the first week... also, it's definitely more expensive avoiding heavily processed foods all around.

What you're talking about is macronutrients (amount of sugars vs. saturated fats vs. protein, etc.), and if the study is correct, it specifically claims that changes in macronutrients, even when coupled with a measure of total calories consumed and levels of exercise, fail to fully account for the observed increase in obesity rates.

I absolutely agree with the assessment of "it's things that cannot be explained with calories." In China, within the span of a generation nearsightedness went from a minor condition to one spanning the majority of the cohort. That's something brought on by industrial lifestyles, but we never want to turn to food as a culprit. Food tastes good, after all. Food is life.

But if you take the idea seriously, then the problem is - which ones? For me, I've arrived at the answer, more of less, of "dairy and poultry." The first one, specifically casein(milk) protein, gives me all sorts of small issues if I treat it as a staple - joint inflammation, hayfever, trouble concentrating, elevated heart rate, etc. It may have been responsible for my scoliosis and nearsightedness too, though I'll never know for sure. The second tends to trigger migraines. I've only ever managed to become substantially overweight by consuming a lot of dairy and sugar, and as soon as I cut those out I slimmed down again.

Fortunately I don't have to put my foot down too much to make a compromise. When I have a burger it's always the plainest burger, since all the others have cheese. Nearly any snack food manufactured to taste "addictive" will contain the odious phrase "milk protein", with the exception of some potato chip flavors. The most unavoidable one is pizza, but I can take a hit there occasionally. And I'll default to lower-GI foods like oatmeal where I get the opportunity - although I tried the "avoid grains" strategem a while ago, it was never something that resulted in a _reaction_ like milk, it was more a matter of "after having milk I wanted to eat more."

Now, if I could get my mom to actually try following this plan I would be content. But despite apparently experiencing many similar issues in a more stark, life-impacting fashion, she is far, far too stubborn to give up her 4 AM coffees with milk, her various yogurts, cheeses, etc. She will, in fact, point to the microbiome as a reason to consume those things.

Is the near-sightedness being blamed on nutrition, or lack of exposure to bright sunlight in early childhood, or both? I've seen papers that proposed both causes.

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