Obesity linked to a gut bacteria

[Venardhi]

The trick is this: An average first-world person is probably burning between 1500-2000 calories a day just to keep their body functioning as they go about their day, assuming they're not entirely sedentary. If they burn an average of an extra 750 a day from activity beyond that, they can then consume that much more food without it being stored as energy. If they're using that activity to build muscle, their body will be consuming more energy at rest in addition to that extra caloric consumption from exercise.

The thing about a 400 calorie serving of fries (or an 800 calorie burger) is that if you ate a healthy alternative you are likely still consuming several hundred calories in that meal. So if I stay at home and have a turkey(150 calories) and cheese(100 calories) sandwich(200 calories from bread, 50 from mayo, etc.), a small salad (with dressing: 150 calories) and a glass of skim milk (100 calories), I'm eating say, 750 calories. If I replace that meal with the fast food equivalent, I'm nearly doubling my caloric intake from that meal to a ridiculous 1400, but that 1400 really only comes to an extra 650 calories. Now that is like an extra meal, and certainly not recommended, but going back to our original numbers, if you eat that 1400 calorie dinner, but had a 400 calorie breakfast and a 500 calorie lunch then your intake for the day is 2300, most or all of which will be burned off by simply existing if you're a fairly large person.

In short: as long as you're balanced in your approach to your overall diet, eating things like a basket of fries a couple times a week alone really wont have that much impact on your overall caloric intake and, in turn, your weight.

 

[Infern0]

For the people above arguing about exercise and french fires, sure you can eat those fries and burn off the calories (but not all the sodium from the half a pot of salt on those suckers) to negate it, but the easier option is don't eat the damn french fries, it's a nutritionally redundant food, mcdonalds is a once every 6 month deal for me, on cheat day i'll go to a real restaurant and get a properly cooked hamburger and fries, at least it's not processed garbage.

If you want to be "in shape" you are better served eating nutritionally quality foods as without adequate lean protein combined with lifting weights you will not have enough muscle on your body to be aesthetic and will become the dreaded "skinny-fat"

 

[stj]

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

You've misrepresented what I think.

Fat barely plays into it, except as an additional energy source if necessary.

This is what I've been saying! A concern for accuracy forced a concession that fat-burning could occasionally play a minor role in weight lost.

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

How embarrassing for you, since you only disagree with a caricature of my position.

I can't really improve on this comment.

Really embarrassing for you: This post is semiliterate, vacuous and petty.

This just sounds like an excuse for laziness, 791 calories is plenty to lose in an hours exercise. If you do that 5 times a week you've just wiped off two full days of calorie intake in a sensible diet.

If that's not enough to make a difference then you very possibly could be eating far too much, and not eating healthy food...This just sounds like an excuse for laziness, 791 calories is plenty to lose in an hours exercise. If you do that 5 times a week you've just wiped off two full days of calorie intake in a sensible diet.

Thank you Venardhi, thanks to your sowing confusion, we're right back to laying all of it, every ounce, to character flaws, such as laziness and lack of willpower, a la Pingfah and Deckerd. An hour of vigorous rowing on a machine is not a simple matter. That is a demanding workout. Also, lots of people don't have a rowing machine, or a boat, or a gym membership, for monetary reasons. Nor does the exercise time merely include the full hour on the rowing machine in the hypothetical example. It includes any travel time etc. too. Also, the notion that a day's increase of calories can somehow be balanced by exercise on previous or subsequent days is really peculiar.

The numbers don't add up. Exercise as a weight loss method is just impractical, requiring more than an hour's simple exercise. If anyone had troubled to look, I deliberately picked a high-value exercise. Most hour's exercise burn much less.

If they were eating sensibly, they probably wouldn't be fat in the first place, would they?

Not that simple, which is the real point to be grasped. Intense hunger is probably the number one cause of overeating, not overeating the inevitable result of moral weakness. Making up reasons to despise people doesn't really help someone in daily life.

...In short: as long as you're balanced in your approach to your overall diet, eating things like a basket of fries a couple times a week alone really wont have that much impact on your overall caloric intake and, in turn, your weight.

The wrong thinking is the insistence on exercise for weight loss, as compensation for that side of fries. Where did "basket" come from? Trying to imply gluttony without actually saying it obviously?

If you want to be "in shape" you are better served eating nutritionally quality foods as without adequate lean protein combined with lifting weights you will not have enough muscle on your body to be aesthetic and will become the dreaded "skinny-fat"

At last, a post that honestly connects exercise with esthetics!

 

[Deckerd]

Pompousness doesn't equate being right. There are enough people here saying you're mistaken for you to at least step back and reconsider what you're saying.

 

[farmkid]

Some new research has been published that supports this notion that gut bacteria are responsible for at least some obesity. What the authors did is described in the article, but the Cliff notes version is this: In both mice and humans, there is a difference in the gut bacteria of the lean and obese. After gastric bypass surgery, the gut bacteria changes to more closely match that of lean people. To see if that is a cause or effect of weight loss, the authors did gastric bypass surgery on some obese mice and the mice lost weight as expected. Then they transferred gut bacteria from those mice to other obese mice that didn't have the surgery and they too lost weight. Their conclusion is that weight loss after gastric bypass surgery is not due solely to the anatomical changes, but are also due to physiological changes induced by a change in gut bacteria.

 

[thestrangequark]

^I just read the Science Daily article on that, very interesting!

 

[gturner]

Now we'll have to deride obese people as being big sacks of fat, lazy bacteria.

 

[farmkid]

On the contrary; one hypothesis to explain this is that the gut bacteria of obese people extract more calories from food that that of lean people. It's the lean people who have the fat, lazy bacteria.

 

[Scout101]

so, where do we get some of this sweet, sweet skinny bacteria?

 

[farmkid]

I guess from the intestines (or toilet) of a skinny person. On that thought, maybe I don't mind being fat after all.

 

[thestrangequark]

Now we'll have to deride obese people as being big sacks of fat, lazy bacteria.

We're all just sacks of bacteria, really.

 

[gturner]

This also might be a good time to ponder on something I think I mentioned before in this thread, could the obesity "epidemic" be in some way linked to our overuse of anti-biotics, creating frequent open niches in our gut flora that provide opportunities for re-colonization by the less-desirable bacteria? Basically, we did this only become a problem lately?

Another idea to consider is that these bacteria can't normally thrive because they simply run their host out of energy (as most species face pretty harsh constraints on food input because they're already living on the margins) or get their host eaten as fast as an obese gazelle in a lion cage.

If food input is constrained, it should result in a less-fit host, or perhaps less total food for the bacteria, limiting their success. Or perhaps in their normal host they serve a very useful function in helping put on winter fat for hibernation and are tuned to respond to particular types of caloric intake, and by happenstance we both picked them up and started eating in a way that somewhat matches their natural host.

There are lots of interesting evolutionary questions raised by these bugs, since it is an issue where the ecosystem in our guts interfaces with the ecosystem in the great big world of hunting and gathering.

 

[GalaxyX]

I admit I didn't read the original article. However I already know what it's going to say.

Funny because I just bought myself a Bodymedia Fit sensor, and this thing kicks ass! I know exactly how many calories I'm burning daily now.

The level of good to bad bacteria in your gut simply determines the amount of calories that the body will successfully absorb. If you want to have a healthy gut flora, the first thing you should be doing is supplementing with a good Probiotic. I like using Flora products for this.

Second thing you need to do is to take a teaspoon of Lactulose every other day or so. This actually promotes growth of good bacteria in your colon (Probiotics mostly in your small intestine)

Third thing you should do is supplement with a little bit of good quality fibre. Preferably a fibre that's a mix of different sources, like psyllium and flax seeds, etc.

As for losing weight, you simply need to eat less than you burn. With my new sensor I found that even with 40mins of cardio in the morning, a full day of walking around my office building and lifting small boxes, and a 40 min weight lifting session in the evening, I found that I'm burning 3400 calories a day roughly.

Today being a holiday for me, and pretty much sitting around all day, I still burnt 2800 calories.

Since I've been tracking my calories, you'd be surprised how quickly calories add up. Yesterday I had a breakfast sandwich that is 500 calories. For lunch I had a meal from a Greek place I know here, and that was around 1200 calories. For dinner I had 2 chicken legs with a side salad. That was around 600 calories.

Just on that I reached my calorie limit for the day if I want to burn off 2lbs a week.

Today I couldn't do it. Sitting around at home, bored, I had a piece of cheesecake that was here in the fridge (1000 calories) for breakfast. I had some mini tacos for lunch (700 calories) and I had a chicken breast for dinner with a salad (400 calories)

So I'm still around 700 calories below my baseline, but I'm really tempted to eat another piece of cheesecake lol.

I'm just saying all this because to really lose bodyfat it does take a bit of effort. It's all worth it though, and the only reason I have to lose fat in the first place is because of my injuries that benched me for 3 years.

 

[thestrangequark]

I admit I didn't read the original article. However I already know what it's going to say.
[...]

Yeeeeeeeeah...you should really read the article...