Obesity linked to a gut bacteria

[gturner]

Wouldn't a soma manufacturer just erase the history of the previous drug called soma and make up a fake one, perhaps linked to the war in East Asia? Besides, their customer base doesn't have the attention span to get to the bottom of a Wiki page.

[Deckerd]

stj wrote:

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Except....practically everyone here talking about how they lost weight is also talking about their exercise regimen. Well, the simple physics also shows that exercise has nothing to do with weight loss.

That's far too simplistic. If you do more exercise you burn more calories. That's a fact.

[GalaxyX]

Deckerd wrote:

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That's far too simplistic. If you do more exercise you burn more calories. That's a fact.

From a mathematical point of view it's simple. To lose "weight" you need to burn more calories than you eat.

From a real life point of view, the human body is an incredible machine, and it wants to stay in homeostasis. Meaning that if you take a 1 sided approach to losing weight, the body will compensate for it in the effort to stay the same.

So if you just sit there and simply eat less, the body will start to lower your metabolism to compensate for the missing calories. If you keep eating even less, the body will start to eat away at it's own proteins (muscle tissue and eventually internal organs) BEFORE it starts eating away at the fat.

This is killer, because the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is, and if you lose it, you're hurting your body's capacity to burn fat.

This is why exercise is an important part. It accelerates fat loss simply by burning calories, but at the same time forces the person to use their muscles, and switches the body into a muscle sparing mode (It figures you need the muscle because you're using it, so it is forced to start burning fat instead)

Cardio will work out your legs, but you need to work out your upper body also, and this is where weight lifting comes in.

[gturner]

Regarding the mass and energy equation, and disregarding intestinal nuclear reactions:

mass_in = mass_out + mass_stored

energy_in = energy_out + energy_stored
which is

food + water input + oxygen input = pee + poop + sweat + CO2 output + weight_gain

and

food energy value (when burned with oxygen) + work_input (massage therapist, etc) = (poop + pee) energy value + work_output + waste heat
+ stored_energy_for_zombie_attacks

I hate to ask this, but have any of the diet and nutrition experts made people poop into a calorimeter and burned it to see what the output energy was? If not, this thread has enough people for a rough stab at a study. As we cook our poos and record the results with an iPhone ap we'll write, should we post the inflow versus outflow or keep that kind of private?

[Deckerd]

GalaxyX wrote:

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So if you just sit there and simply eat less, the body will start to lower your metabolism to compensate for the missing calories. If you keep eating even less, the body will start to eat away at it's own proteins (muscle tissue and eventually internal organs) BEFORE it starts eating away at the fat.

This is killer, because the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is, and if you lose it, you're hurting your body's capacity to burn fat.

I've heard this umpteen times now from various sources. I say bullshit. If you consume fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. Metabolic changes mean that there will be times when the weight stays the same but it will start up again. Frankly the idea of someone becoming a skeletal, organless husk before their fat arse disappears is risible.

[GalaxyX]

Deckerd wrote:

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I've heard this umpteen times now from various sources. I say bullshit. If you consume fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. Metabolic changes mean that there will be times when the weight stays the same but it will start up again. Frankly the idea of someone becoming a skeletal, organless husk before their fat arse disappears is risible.

Well yes the human body can only adapt so much, and it's not like it will eat ALL your muscle tissue before it touches the fat.

If you simply eat less without any exercise, the body will lower its metabolism very low, and will definitely burn fat, but it will also burn muscle, and this in turn will require you to eat less to keep in a calorie deficit, so it becomes progressively harder and harder to lose it. Once you get to your desired weight, it becomes harder to maintain it due to your body's low metabolism.

I'm sure there's scientific evidence I could dig up, but I don't need it, because I have ample empirical evidence, not only in my own body, but in friends I see at the gym and even my own family.

Back in 2004-2005, When I was lifting heavy weights, I was burning so many calories that I was eating 2 large pizzas a day just to maintain my bodyweight. People would think I was nuts and couldn't understand why I wasn't getting fat

[RAMA]

BMR is the most important factor, the amount of calories you need while at rest. Accounting for body size, activity level and some other factors, you can calculate what you need to function, but to lose weight you need to reduce this amount by 500-700 calories, It is almost impossible not to lose weight in this manner. Its no fad, just sound weight loss. To increase body weight, you need to do the opposite.

There are plenty of online calculators to accomplish this.

[stj]

Deckerd wrote:

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That's far too simplistic. If you do more exercise you burn more calories. That's a fact.

Exercise has to do with redistributing body weight from fat to muscle, which is difficult enough. The only way that exercise commonly affects weight is by water loss from sweat. And the overwhelming majority of the posts in this thread are actually concerned with converting body fat, not reducing body weight. Muscular development requires a great deal of discipline. But it's a different kind of discipline from going hungry, which is how body weight is lost.

The problem is that only extremely large amounts of exercise or many hours of heavy physical labor to burn enough calories to make a difference. The numbers just don't add up, and the simplistic thinking is to imagine the numbers don't matter. The only practical way for the vast majority of people to make exercise burn enough calories to make a difference is to first restrict caloric intake.

The post above correctly states this in a different form. It also correctly states that the restriction should be rather small. The reason is that large caloric restrictions for more than a day or two does cause undesired effects, such as loss of muscle instead of fat. The post however doesn't state that the healthful weight loss regimen is 1.) rather slow, making the discipline much harder to maintain for no visible results, and 2.) can be accompanied by changes in the BMR. Which brings us back in one sense to the possible role of intestinal bacteria. There's also a role played by roughage but I don't know much about that.

[Pingfah]

stj wrote:

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Exercise has to do with redistributing body weight from fat to muscle, which is difficult enough. The only way that exercise commonly affects weight is by water loss from sweat. And the overwhelming majority of the posts in this thread are actually concerned with converting body fat, not reducing body weight.

I was under the impression that burning fat (turning it into energy) and building muscle are two separate things.

Certainly all the rowing and walking I do has never helped me build muscle (it did help me lose weight though, not that I had a great deal to lose), building muscle didn't happen until I started to lift weights, and increase the amount of weight I was lifting incrementally, and I didn't need any fat to convert to achieve that.

[Venardhi]

Pingfah wrote:

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I was under the impression that burning fat (turning it into energy) and building muscle are two separate things.

That would be the correct impression.

[Deckerd]

Yeah I'm calling stj's post mostly non-factual.

[Robert Maxwell]

Deckerd wrote:

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Yeah I'm calling stj's post mostly non-factual.

It certainly skips a few steps in the process.

I'd actually never heard before that exercise doesn't burn fat. I would assume that if you either keep your caloric intake the same or reduce it, but add exercise, you are burning more calories than you did before. Worst case (if you still have a caloric surplus), you are converting less of it into fat. Best case, you are burning fat because you have a caloric deficit. Exercise damages the muscle fibers, and protein intake repairs them and builds more.

Am I wrong or isn't that basically the process?

[Unicron]

Sometimes I wish I could throw fireballs in RL. Seems like an easy way to manage calorie burning.

[stj]

If intestinal bacteia play a role in obesity, shouldn't different kinds of bacteria play a role in nmalnutrition? I should think so. Thus, this article is interesting: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...nutrition.html

Pingfah wrote:

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I was under the impression that burning fat (turning it into energy) and building muscle are two separate things.

The energy for exercise has to come from somewhere. If you've restricted your caloric intake, some of the fat will be used (though as far as I know to replace the calories from the carbohydrates, which are more quickly used.) But that is the only connection. Without caloric restriction, exercise doesn't burn enough fat to cause weight loss. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

Certainly all the rowing and walking I do has never helped me build muscle (it did help me lose weight though, not that I had a great deal to lose), building muscle didn't happen until I started to lift weights, and increase the amount of weight I was lifting incrementally, and I didn't need any fat to convert to achieve that.

No, you also needed protein to build muscle. You probably increased your caloric intake to do this. This site, http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htmur, estimates that a 205 lb. person vigously rowing an exercise machine will burn 791 calories. Per hour. This site, http://www.fitwatch.com/phpscripts/v...egetable%20oil, estimates that a large french fries is 578 calories.

An hour of vigorous rowing 3/4ths undone by one fast food side? This numerical disparity between calories burned by exercise and intake is why exercise plays no important role in losing weight. It's diet. Exercise (and protein) plays a role in building muscle. The people who connect exercise and weight loss (the majority of the posters if you look back) are the ones connecting the two. In your personal anecdote, I'd say either you spend hours exercising or your diet was already restricted to barely enough calories to maintain your weight. Long hours of exercise do wear on the joints.

Venardhi wrote:

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That would be the correct impression.

In addition to the role that fat provides in powering the muscular activity in the first place, there is another connection, which is the tendency for people who have gained weight under a muscular building regimen, to have their weight remain in the form of fat when they end close adherence to their program. Fortunately this is not universal.

Deckerd wrote:

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Yeah I'm calling stj's post mostly non-factual.

Since you apparently don't understand the point about the numbers not adding up, your opinion just comes off as innumerate.

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I'd actually never heard before that exercise doesn't burn fat.

You haven't now either. I wrote:

The problem is that only extremely large amounts of exercise or many hours of heavy physical labor to burn enough calories to make a difference. The numbers just don't add up, and the simplistic thinking is to imagine the numbers don't matter. The only practical way for the vast majority of people to make exercise burn enough calories to make a difference is to first restrict caloric intake.

To finish up:

I would assume that if you either keep your caloric intake the same or reduce it, but add exercise, you are burning more calories than you did before. Worst case (if you still have a caloric surplus), you are converting less of it into fat. Best case, you are burning fat because you have a caloric deficit. Exercise damages the muscle fibers, and protein intake repairs them and builds more.

Am I wrong or isn't that basically the process?

Of course that's basically the process. (I'm not going to quibble about any difference between damage and stress, or the role of steroids.) Again, the thing is, the numbers don't add up. Exercise just doesn't burn enough calories to play a significant role. Except for water weight loss, which can be quite encouraging in successfully restricting diet.

Come to think of it, exercise time isn't spent eating, so there's that aspect too. But that's not what anyone has been talking about either.

[Venardhi]

Under your theory, people without fat on them cannot gain muscle. There is some truth to that, but not in the way you think.

Building muscle requires 3 things: Stress damage on muscle tissue, adequate energy source/nutritional intake for rebuilding said muscle and the correct hormones/genetics/body-composition to encourage it.

Fat barely plays into it, except as an additional energy source if necessary. Body builders generally gain fat and muscle at the same time, then lose the fat afterwards because most people's bodies resist adding muscle when that extra energy source isn't available.

Losing fat generally also generally means losing muscle mass unless you had comparatively little to begin with.

You don't have reality on your side in this.