Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

What a stupid statement. It is analogous to this:

"Why is this building crowded?"

Your answer: "It's due to too many people inside. Simple as that."

Real answer: There is a popular band inside, which has caused more people to walk into the building in a given 3 hour period than leave it.

The "too many calories" people (you are one of them)all think that the effect of a bad diet (which is often bad caloric partitioning in the body, causing plummeting energy levels as fat cells steal nutrients from the rest of the body, causing a fat person to feel tired and hungry) is also the root cause.

Do kids grow because they eat more? No. They eat more because they are in a growth spurt. Obesity works the same way. A bad diet wreaks havoc on the endocrine system, mainly with insulin levels, causing excessive fat accumulation due to calories being partitioned to fat cells at the expense of the rest of the body. If a person with this kind of caloric partitioning doesn't eat excessive amounts of calories, they will feel tired. If they continue to eat the wrong kinds of foods (foods which continue the bad endocrine reaction) they will continue getting fatter in a feedback loop.

But hey, with advice like yours, you should really go and help others. Go to an insomnia board, and when someone complains of being tired, just say "Insomnia is because you don't get enough sleep. Simple as that."

What a dumb ass.

wake up on the wrong side of the bed? relax.

yea, there may be reasons why they eat too many calories (they eat the wrong foods so eating less leaves them tired), but they gain weight because they are eating too many calories. it truly is that simple, however as i think you pointed out, truly fixing the issue is going to be more work than simply saying "eat less" and requires a lot of (re)education

What evidence do you have that too many calories dont result in weight gain?

I bet you that if eat 5000 calories of "healthy" food and your daily requirement is 3000 you will gain weight, and if you eat 2000 calories of "bad" food you will lose weight.

"What evidence do you have that too many calories dont result in weight gain?"

You should read the parent again, more carefully. The point is not that that is not a true statement, the point is that is a vacuous statement, and therefore, the wrong question. It is not controversial that things that cause weight gain cause you to gain weight, but it's not a useful statement for either science or engineering, and we have collectively wasted an awful lot of time and research while laboring under the delusion that this was some sort of actual explanation, rather than a mere restatement of the problem.

Thank you. How the above comment poster somehow read that I don't think excess calorie consumption is part of the chain of weight gain is beyond me.

As you can see from the number of comments on this subject there is a lot of confusion subject. We make things difficult by talking about bad foods, partitioning, healthy food, etc. People get fat from eating more calories than they burn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com