Secrets of Weight Loss Revealed!

A little is easy, a lot is hard, and results may vary.

Jacob Sullum from the January 2008 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

In Kolata’s view, that point is not contradicted by the fact that some people, such as former Arkansas governor (and current GOP presidential candidate) Mike Huckabee, have gone from obese to thin and managed to stay that way. It can be done, she concedes, but it takes a strong exercise of willpower—more willpower than most people need to avoid being obese in the first place—and a lifelong struggle. The fact that people like Huckabee are famous for losing a lot of weight (more than 100 pounds in his case) and keeping it off suggests how rare that accomplishment is, as does obese people’s eagerness to undergo radical weight-reduction surgery that messes around with their stomachs and intestines. “In trying to lose weight,” Rockefeller University obesity researcher Jeffrey Friedman writes in an article Kolata quotes, “the obese are fighting a difficult battle. It is a battle against biology, a battle that only the intrepid take on and one in which only a few prevail.”

But predetermined weight ranges take us only so far. They do not explain why some people are thin for decades and obese thereafter. Nor do they account for the “obesity epidemic” of the last few decades. According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (which includes actual measurements of height and weight), the share of American adults who qualify as obese has more than doubled since the late 1970s, reaching 33 percent by 2004. The official cutoff for obesity is based on body mass index (BMI), which is weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A man who is five feet, nine inches tall—me, for example—is deemed obese at a BMI of 30, equivalent to a weight of 203 pounds.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans who are considered merely “overweight,” with BMIs from 25 to 29.9 (170 to 202 pounds for me), has increased only slightly, hovering around a third. At 175 pounds, I am “overweight” but not “obese,” with a BMI of 25.8. If I lost six pounds, as my doctor has advised me to do, I would achieve the magical BMI of 24.9, giving me a “healthy” weight. But if I fail to do so, I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad, since two-thirds of American adults weigh more than the government thinks they should.

Although almost all of the BMI shift has occurred in the “obese” category, that doesn’t mean the weight gains have been big. If I weighed 202 pounds, for example, and gained a pound, that would make me obese instead of just overweight. So small changes in weight in large numbers of people, shifting some from “healthy” to “overweight” and others from “overweight” to “obese,” would be enough to account for the BMI trends bemoaned by public health officials. In other words, the “obesity epidemic” is not necessarily inconsistent with the idea that adults tend to stay within a 20-to-30-pound weight range.

Still, the question remains: Why did so many people gain weight during the 1980s and ’90s? Since it takes longer than a couple of decades for genetic predispositions to change, Kolata suggests that early-life factors such as better nutrition, vaccination, and the availability of antibiotics somehow affected “the brain circuits that control eating” in people who came of age during the last few decades. But this hypothesis is highly speculative, with only limited animal studies to support it. For reasons that are unclear, Kolata rejects more plausible explanations, implying there’s no evidence that Americans are eating more or exercising less than we used to. But that’s not quite true.

In addition to weighing and measuring people, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey asks them what they eat. These numbers indicate that food consumption by both men and women jumped by about 200 calories a day between the late 1970s and the late ’80s to early ’90s. Self-reports on this subject may not be completely reliable, but the increase is striking, especially since it coincides with a spike in obesity.

As for calorie expenditure, a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report found that, contrary to popular belief, survey data do not indicate a decline in exercise during leisure time in the last few decades. But the report also noted that American jobs, housework, and transportation became less and less physically demanding throughout the 20th century, resulting in “a substantial decline in physical activity levels in the workplace, at home, and in travel over a long period.” Although this trend is by no means restricted to the 1980s and ’90s, it suggests that we could be burning fewer calories overall even if we are spending just as much time deliberately exercising. Modest increases in calorie consumption and/or decreases in calorie expenditure would be enough to cause the seemingly dramatic shift in weight the government has labeled an “epidemic.”

Enter Brian Wansink. He’s all about little changes that add up over time. He concedes that the body resists big, sudden movements in weight. “It’s estimated that over 95 percent of all people who lose weight on a diet gain it back,” he writes. “Deprivation diets don’t work for three reasons: 1) Our body fights against them; 2) our brain fights against then; and 3) our day-to-day environment fights against them.” Wansink’s recommendations, which are derived from his research on the cues that lead people to overeat, are designed to achieve the loss of up to half a pound a week, which he says is below the threshold that would trigger a metabolic response. He urges readers to use “the mindless margin”—the 100 or 200 calories a day they would not really miss if they gave them up—to gradually move toward the bottom of their weight ranges.

Even if you have no interest in following Wansink’s advice, the book is worth reading for his breezy, entertaining accounts of Candid Camera–ready studies in which people stuff themselves with stale popcorn because it’s in a big container, keep slurping soup from a surreptitiously replenished bowl, or eat more in restaurants because of music, menu language, or the ostensible origin of a complimentary glass of cheap red wine. Wansink’s overarching point is that, when it comes to food, we’re not paying attention. “It takes up to 20 minutes for our body and brain to signal satiation,” he notes, and Americans often finish their meals in less time than that. Instead of internal signals we rely on external cues to tell us when we’re done: Is the plate clean? Is everyone else done? Is there more in the serving dish?

To counteract such cues, Wansink recommends such tactics as using smaller plates (which make portions seem larger), keeping serving dishes in the kitchen (which discourages second helpings), replacing short, wide glasses with tall, thin ones (which make drinks seem bigger), keeping food scraps and bones on your plate (which reminds you how much you’ve eaten), and dividing snacks from big packages into smaller bags or plastic containers (which discourages you from devouring the entire package). Wansink, who wants readers to know that he “enjoys both French food and French fries each week,” advocates eating more mindfully, to increase enjoyment as well as to improve nutrition. But he thinks it’s unrealistic to expect people to constantly count their calories in the face of the myriad food-related decisions they make each day. In his view it pays to plan ahead, in effect tricking yourself into eating less.

Despite their differences in tone and focus, Kolata and Wansink are equally unenthusiastic about proposals by fat warriors such as Yale obesity expert Kelly Brownell to reshape Americans by reshaping our “food environment” through propaganda, censorship, taxes, and regulation. Kolata says there’s no reason to think the government knows how to make people thinner. She notes that even well-funded, intensive efforts aimed at slimming down captive audiences of schoolchildren have produced disappointing results, making proposals such as restricting cereal commercials, banning soda machines from schools, and distributing federally funded fruit to students look even lamer.

Wansink, for his part, says labeling and education don’t make much of a difference, and “we cannot legislate or tax people into eating Brussels sprouts.” Although he has spent much of his career studying ways in which businesses encourage people to buy, he recognizes the limitations of these techniques and does not portray them as inherently sinister. “Do food companies put ingredients in their food that they know we will eat and love?” he writes. “Absolutely—they are guilty as charged. So is your grandmother.” Wansink emphasizes consumer self-help rather than protection from conniving capitalists. A chapter called “The Hidden Persuaders Around Us,” a phrase that echoes the title of the 1957 Vance Packard book that portrayed advertisers as insidious manipulators of desire, is mostly about tricks people can use to avoid eating mindlessly. Instead of remaking the world to discourage overeating, Wansink says, “we can reengineer our personal food environment to help us and our families eat better.”

Kolata and Wansink share a concern about the experiences of actual individuals, a welcome respite from the cold collectivism that characterizes most discussions of obesity. Kolata devotes much space to the struggles of particular dieters, while Wansink emphasizes that he is offering not a one-size-fits-all diet but a set of suggestions that readers who want to lose weight can use to put together plans that work best for them. Instead of asking what the government should do about our flab, these books leave us alone with our bathroom scales to weigh the question for ourselves.

Senior Editor Jacob Sullum is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Comments

Penry|12.31.07 @ 9:14AM|#

Just wondering - how can you talk about fat without mentioning Gary Taubes' recent book?

|12.31.07 @ 9:39AM|#

Ah ... another 200+ post about obesity, with the chorus of collectivists lurking here arguing that government should "Do Something for Teh Childrun" -- and the handful of libertarians saying, gee, maybe it's just barely possible that individuals, acting entirely on their own, could get a little more exercise each day, and eat a few hundred less calories each day, and be a way, way more content with their actual weight instead of what the government's Benign Push for That Gaunt Concentration Camp Healthy Look would dictate.

* Wipes off sweat from brow from narrow brush with early Godwinization. *

|12.31.07 @ 9:47AM|#

One size fits all.

Eee -qual -lize!!

|12.31.07 @ 9:55AM|#

I haven't read the books, but it seems odd to me that we all agree about diet and exercise being effective at up front weight loss but then saying that genetic factors make you fat again. Really? You keep your portions down, you exercise, and your genetics make you fat again?

Isn't the genetic component here really reflected as a disposition toward food and activity? Do we really want to call that a genetic factor?

R C Dean|12.31.07 @ 10:02AM|#

Isn't the genetic component here really reflected as a disposition toward food and activity?

It may be that genetics influences your metabolic set points. It seems to me that some people have engines that naturally idle faster, allowing them to weight less even if they eat more/exercise less than other folks.

|12.31.07 @ 10:12AM|#

RC:

That is almost certainly the case, but the point remains that there is a level of eating and exercise that is right given your metabolism. It is nothing but an act of will to get there. If you make other choices, that is entirely up to you, but I hate the message that it's out of your hands.

M|12.31.07 @ 10:33AM|#

If I lost six pounds, as my doctor has advised me to do, I would achieve the magical BMI of 24.9, giving me a "healthy" weight. But if I fail to do so, I suppose I shouldn't feel too bad, since two-thirds of American adults weigh more than the government thinks they should.

This logic escapes me. That what "the government" thinks anyone should weigh would ever enter into a discussion at a magazine called "reason"...

Drink! Eat!

Also, dieters should not turn for inspiration to Brillat-Savarin.

For encouragement in dining well, do not miss MFK Fisher's The Art of Eating. It is teh classy.

Elson Silva, PhD|12.31.07 @ 10:54AM|#

Free Fruits on Public Areas to Curb Spreading Obesity

Fruits are low in calories and highly nutritional already grown on public places at increasing ratios to face obesity trends. Tree climbing also can be a body exercise for kids harvesting fruits.

Fruits have around four times more water content than cookies and easily satisfy hunger taking less energy. Refrigerators full of fruits easily beat junkies.

In Brazil we are increasing fruit trees in the public areas changing the country to a large tropical orchard. Then, sidewalks, squares, parks, roadsides will be plenty of free fruits bearing appropriate food to fight spreading obesity. Free fruits are protected from the power of the economic system pursuing profitability.

Other countries are invited to join us on a fight against global obesity toward a Public Fructification. Brazil intends to become a developed country without common problems of a superpower.

We intend the rural area to conquer public areas making it full of fruits.
http://revver.com/watch/225528
http://revver.com/watch/529604

Even carnivores can be convinced to eat more fruits why not humans?
http://revver.com/watch/218695

dr_dog|12.31.07 @ 10:59AM|#

And when the public spaces in Brazil are full of sugar-thirsty wasps and street urchins camouflaged in fruit trees - I will only laugh.

R C Dean|12.31.07 @ 11:00AM|#

We intend the rural area to conquer public areas making it full of fruits.

There's a joke in here somewhere about San Francisco and the Central Valley, I just know there is.

Rhywun|12.31.07 @ 11:04AM|#

Fructify, biotch!

|12.31.07 @ 11:08AM|#

I welcome Brazil's new hypoglycemic overlords. Aren't the calories in fruit about 100% from sugar? I'm not sure 20 apples a day would in fact keep the doctor away.

|12.31.07 @ 11:19AM|#

Free Fruits on Public Areas to Curb Spreading Obesity

Putting Back the Cheetos™ and Kool-Aid™ and Instead Buying Fruits and Veggies.

Nah, crazy talk.

Long ago, I worked in a grocery store in a poor neighborhood and the eating habits on display (looking at their purchases and the size of the fruit punch section compared to the milk section) were atrocious.

It wasn't for a lack of choice in healthy foods, but a lack of desire by the customers in buying them. Oh, the Faustian choices made at the register when the total was more than they had in cash and something needed to go back. The Sunny-D and pork rinds were never the first choice.

The store had lot's and lot's o' free pamplets about healthy eating available. They were rarely needing to be refilled.

RRC|12.31.07 @ 11:22AM|#

How can this article be taken seriously? As if the laws of thermodynamics are dependent on genetics.

Eric Dondero|12.31.07 @ 11:30AM|#

Hay guyz. Speaking of fat fucks, come check out my highly masturbatory political site!

http://www.geocities.com/modern_cincinnatus

|12.31.07 @ 12:08PM|#

I lost about 50 lbs eight years ago, and have kept it off. Unfortuntately, I did it the old fashioned way.

1: Exercise. I am in the gym six days on a "normal" week, half cardio and half weight training. I try not to let it fall below four days even on vacation, holidays, or illness.

2: Better diet. 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, whole grains, oatmeal for breakfast, etc. My favorite trick is to eat vegetables while making dinner.

3: Keeping junk food out of my apartment. If it ain't there, I am not tempted.

4: Having the will-power to pass on unnecessary treats. Just because your co-worker brings donuts to the office doesn't mean you need to eat one.

There really is no secret trick. Eat less exercise more is all it boils down to.
There are days where I wonder if it is worth the sacrifice, but on the whole it is...even if it doesn't really make me live much longer.

LarryA|12.31.07 @ 12:16PM|#

Even if you have no interest in following Wansink's advice, the book is worth reading for his breezy, entertaining accounts of Candid Camera-ready studies in which people stuff themselves with stale popcorn because it's in a big container,

Dang. We got one of those huge containers of popcorn at my wife's office Christmas party. It's still on the diningroom table.

Be right back.

Fruits are low in calories and highly nutritional already grown on public places at increasing ratios to face obesity trends. Tree climbing also can be a body exercise for kids harvesting fruits. In Brazil we are increasing fruit trees in the public areas changing the country to a large tropical orchard.

If the fruit is up in trees who is more likely to eat it, the skinny kid who can climb easily, or the fat kid who can't?

Unintended consequences department.

|12.31.07 @ 12:58PM|#

If the fruit is up in trees who is more likely to eat it, the skinny kid who can climb easily, or the fat kid who can't?

I think what we have here is marvelous opportunity for skinny kid entrepreneurship.

|12.31.07 @ 1:31PM|#

See, what we really need to do is cut back on the farm subsidies and import tariffs so that healthier food is less expensive compared to the cheap, unhealthy stuff. Yes, the "obesity crisis" is the government's doing, at least in part.

R C Dean|12.31.07 @ 2:32PM|#

See, what we really need to do is cut back on the farm subsidies and import tariffs so that healthier food is less expensive compared to the cheap, unhealthy stuff.

Its already cheaper, by and large. The unhealthy stuff is processed, and you generally pay more per serving for processed meals than for meals where you buy the ingredients fresh and make it yourself.

The subsidies apply at the raw materials stage. The unhealthy stuff and the health stuff generally uses the same raw materials, except for the additives in the processed junk, which generally aren't subsidized, AFAIK.

|12.31.07 @ 2:58PM|#

BMI is calculated using the square of height. Yet mass increases by the cube of height, proportionally. Some part of the increasing BMI can be attributed to a taller population.

Edward|12.31.07 @ 4:11PM|#

FAT FUCK DIABETICS FOR RON PAUL!

^|12.31.07 @ 8:44PM|#

Is that the subjunctive?

David Govett|12.31.07 @ 11:23PM|#

The Diagnosis Diet works every time. When a doctor tells you to lose weight or die soon, the shock will force you to change.

|12.31.07 @ 11:28PM|#

Chad is right. In one year I gradually lost 35 pounds just by taking a vigorous 30 minute walk each morning, by an occasional long bike ride, by eliminating soft drinks, and by replacing snacks like potato chips with vegetables, for example carrots. Other than that, I eat whatever I want whenever I want, just in smaller portions. I do seem to have much less interest now in eating between meals than I used to, but a nice meal every once in awhile at a top French restaurant is not off limits. I've kept the weight off for nearly three years. Losing weight gradually and faithfully did the trick for me. I'll never get down to the weight I had when I ran cross-country in college, but I do feel pretty healthy these days for my age. I am prepared to believe that my weight is more a function of genetics than life style, but there's surely no harm in giving the DNA a helping hand.

Barry Krakow MD|12.31.07 @ 11:31PM|#

It is remarkable how many books, fads, and diets attempt to produce sustainable weight loss programs without focusing much if any time on two critical factors that add fuel to this epidemic that stretches across much of western civilization.

1. Sleep Disorders, notably sleep-disordered breathing, are highly prevalent in obesity, and unquestionably serve as a barrier to effective weight loss. This role is likely to prove complex involving hormonal changes on the leptin/grhelin axis as well as subtle and not so subtle cognitive impairments that undermine the obese patient's capacity to rationally work their programs.

2. Emotional processing, that is, the ability to effectively work through a series of emotional states, is largely ignored in obesity research. Yet, in less than 30 minutes of dialogue with virtually any obese patient, we discover that the individual is clearly eating to smother unpleasant emotions instead of dealing with them directly.

Neither of these factors represent panaceas, but they are missing links routinely ignored in obesity research, and they explain in part why these program routinely fail.

Sleep on it!

M. Simon|1.1.08 @ 12:15AM|#

If the government would subsidize gastric bypass surgery we could fix this durn overweight problem.

|1.1.08 @ 2:01AM|#

No matter how much it is denied, the population IS fatter today. Grade school class photos prove it.
I suspect that if people are raised in a fattogenic way, it's going to stick with them through life - animals are adaptable like that.
One major cause is probably TV watching: not just because it increases consumption of bad food, but because it correlates with less sleep - and sleeping less changes the body's hormones in such a way as to increase weight.

|1.1.08 @ 2:09AM|#

Just wondering - how can you talk about fat without mentioning Gary Taubes' recent book?

No kidding.

Kolata doesn't exactly shine in that book either.

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

Starred Review. Taubes's eye-opening challenge to widely accepted ideas on nutrition and weight loss is as provocative as was his 2001 NewYork Times Magazine article, What if It's All a Big Fat Lie? Taubes (Bad Science), a writer for Science magazine, begins by showing how public health data has been misinterpreted to mark dietary fat and cholesterol as the primary causes of coronary heart disease. Deeper examination, he says, shows that heart disease and other diseases of civilization appear to result from increased consumption of refined carbohydrates: sugar, white flour and white rice.

From the Publisher's Weekly blurb at the link. Much more there.

Christine|1.1.08 @ 3:57PM|#

Yes, sugar and grains are responsible for a lot of the problem, as is the fact that much of the food consumed is deficient in minerals and other nutrients, keeping people hungry for more. Also people don't get enough digestive enzymes to properly make use of the nutrition in the foods they consume, leading to digestive problems such as "acid reflux". Toxins in the environment and in the foods consumed also contribute to weight gain, as the body produces fat cells to protect vital organs. The solution, missing from conventional dieting schemes, is nutritional cleansing to help the bodies natural mechanism for eliminating impurities. Isagenix is the only weight-loss/nutritional system that addresses all the relevant concerns, helping people lose even hundreds of pounds they gave up hope of being able to lose. The products are packed with nutritional enzymes and probiotics to help the digestive process work efficiently and minerals, protein and amino acids to ensure optimal nutrition. There is nothing else out there that even comes close in terms of results.
Go here now to find out what I'm talking about: http://bestwholelife.isagenix.com

daveylee|1.2.08 @ 1:35AM|#

Chad and Gobsmacker seem to have found their weight loss niche in the basic tenets of the Weight Watchers program.

It's all about portion reduction and activity increase folks. That's it! There are no foods that are off limits. Just eat what you want in a "reasonable" portion size (which rarely, if ever, exist at most mainstream restaurants). If your day is going to include a richer or larger meal, then make sure you get more activity that day.

Move 30 minutes a day and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to lose or maintain your weight. If 30 minutes is more than you can make time for, then do 15 minutes a couple times a day. And all it needs to be is a reasonably brisk walk, or even a round of golf (walked, of course). For those of the video game generation who seem to be the target of the governmental obesity claims, if you have a Nintendo Wii, you can find games out there that will give you a plenty good workout, and are fun as well.

Leave the frickin' books at the book store, and just eat less and move more. I started out 70 pounds over my BMI (Gov't rating can kiss my ass. There's no freakin way I'm ever going to weigh 167 lbs anymore) max in October. I've lost 30 pounds in 10 weeks since I decided I didn't want to be a fat ass anymore. And if my lazy ass can do it, then there should be hope for the rest of the world.

|1.2.08 @ 1:04PM|#

The comment about Huckabee is interesting. Recent investigations are suggesting that Huckabee actually lost his weight by gastric bypass surgery. See this link:

http://plutarch01.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/new-121007-300pm/

I.M.|1.2.08 @ 8:36PM|#

Another contributor to the recent increase in the incidence of obesity might be that people have begun to lose the powers of self-control by which they had once regulated their body weights with greater success; past generations, formed under the heel of an authoritarian culture, would naturally have been far more practiced in restraining their desires.

Is liberty a burden too heavy for the many to bear?

|1.3.08 @ 1:38PM|#

It's interesting watching movies from the 80s or earlier and noting how skinny everyone looked. Coulda been the clothing fashions too.

Matthew Gillum|1.4.08 @ 8:00PM|#

Ms. Kolata needs to review her thermodynamics. While it's reasonable to say that there may be substantial inter-individual differences in appetite, even the individuals most susceptible to obesity based on their genotypes cannot stay fat without excessive caloric intake relative to their metabolic rate. A person who stays chunky without food would be a perpetual motion machine, which the physicists tell me are impossible.

EinRand|1.4.08 @ 9:11PM|#

For me - it was a lack of adequate vitamin D3.
4k I.U. D3 vs. RDA of 400.

205.4 lbs to 179.2 in 63 days
1200 to 1600 calories per day and weightlifting

http://www.vitamindcouncil.com/
http://www.vitamindsociety.org/

A number of researchers at these sites make a rationally scientific argument for the connection between a lack of Cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) and a number of disease states. They are not selling anything. A 100 count bottle of 2k I.U. D3 costs only $7., and data are linked to published peer reviewed studies.

Average intake from summer sun exposure in twenty minutes is 10k to 50k before caucasion skin begins to tan.
Obesity is only one of a number of reasons to investigate this topic, cancer and depression being for me two of the most important ones.

I'm not suggesting it's the magic bullet, only that calorie resticiton and exercise are exponentially easier in the presence of adequate nutrition.

David Haskell|1.5.08 @ 4:14PM|#

Why no mention of the US Govt's annual multi-billion dollar spend-up supporting corporate farms growing anything BUT fruits and vegetables? Sorry -- I agree that government may not have the tools (smarts?) to solve the obesity problem but WE the PEOPLE need to make sure our government stops contributing to the problem. Let's face it, if the billion dollar farm subsidies were given to local communities to set-up community gardens to provide people with the wherewithal to grow their own; would we still have this obesity epidemic? No. If we stopped fast food junk-pushers from saturating our children's minds with fat and TV commercials would it be different. So enough of this "it all about genetics" non-sense.......

|10.10.09 @ 9:37AM|#

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Weight Loss Blog|10.12.09 @ 5:50PM|#

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Suan - A Slimmer U|10.17.09 @ 10:44PM|#

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Chris|10.25.09 @ 5:58AM|#

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