I do eight hours of walking, lifting, bending–you name it. Hard, physical work on my feet, rushing, going hard. Eight hours a day. 5-6 days a week. I have to walk 1/2 a mile just to get from my car to my work area, every single day, and I’m one of those people who never gets to work early enough to avoid rushing to the time clock. So, yeah, I’m going at a good clip when I’m heading in. I don’t eat at work, because I get so overheated doing my work (I’m sweating from the second I get out of my car until I get back in it) that it makes me sick if I eat. So I wait until I’m off work to eat. So, yeah, we’re talking work that makes you gasp after five or ten minutes of effort.

Guess what? No weight loss for me. It didn’t matter if I were eating salads every day, or big macs. No weight loss. I stay at the same weight (and I’m overweight). I go up a few pounds during the PMS phase, and go right back to my regular weight when my cycle corrects.

Sorry, but assuming that people who exercise hard and “eat right” will lose weight IS anecdotal evidence. It doesn’t work that way for everyone. I wish it did. But it doesn’t.

3 pounds of fat is a size, fat cannot be converted to sugar, otherwise the body wouldn’t need sugar in the diet or wouldn’t use protein to convert to sugar at all. fat is very bulky muscles are not, 3 pounds of muscles takes up a fraction of the space of 3 pounds of fat, fat is only 10 percent water muscles are 90 percent (that is where the massive amounts of weight is lost from when in caloiric deficit (regardless of method used)

references, Exercise physilogy (red textbook about the size of a large dictionary) written by three authors can’t remember got the book out of the library, Bodyfueling by robyn landis, also Exercise physiology for sportsman or sportspeople, covert baileys fit or fat series, his exercise fit or fat books I mean there is more. also the books how to be naturally thin by eating more by jean antenello, also the book the fat instinct which is no longer at the library, that I know of I tried to find it for someone.

I mean I took a bunch of anatamy/ physiology and exercise physilogy books out of the library so as to compare and took notes out of them too, and some of what I wrote I gleaned from that. some of these books were huge textbooks used in colleges. I also gleaned from the net such as I typed exercise physiology in the search and got all kinds of things on it.

when I refer to sizes I mean inches not what the clothing industry’s way of measuring, a size is approximatly an inch if I am not mistaken,

RR

I then referenced discussion at Alas, A Blog about the much trumpeted obesity public health “crisis.” Because readers may not be familiar with the arguments against viewing obesity as a dire health problem, and because Cynthia amplifies Kendra Lee’s…

Fat acceptance isn’t defined by opposition to the lowest of the low on the fat hate side. That seems to be the standard many seek to apply as they declare themselves fat acceptance supporters. Why? Because they don’t want to treat plus-size clothing stores like crack houses? Because they offer self-serving compramises? I’ll allow that you have a right to ignore the health risks of fatness is you agree to cheer on my stomach amputation. We can all agree that discriminating against fat people is wrong, they’ll generously offer before insisting that this is the point where the discussion must end. Even still, they never hesitate to find common cause with the lowest of the low when it suits them. I used to always use Michael Fumento as a bench mark. If a person quoted Fumento, they cannot even offer a pretense of supporting fat acceptance.

And that’s all it ever seems to be. A pretense. A means to steer things back the world-wide diet support group they seem to want. You don’t believe in fat acceptance just because you “really need” to lose weight or because you “know you’ll never be thin”. Dieting doesn’t magically start to work because someone “really needs” it or because their weight loss goals are “realistic”. How realistic are any goals expected from a system with upwards of 99% failure? Why is it so threatening to have a discussion about the health of fat people that doesn’t become one about how fat people are unhealthy and need to be changed?

Fat acceptance has meant something for decades. Back when the fat underground was doing the seminal philosophical work and the movement was an off-shoot of radical feminism. It has evolved into standing up against not simply the abusive treatment of fat people but the thin justifications for that abuse. I’m tired of self-annoited fat acceptance defenders who don’t believe in any of this beyond the co-opted fat accceptance talk from the weight loss industry.

We need new approaches to treating the health of fat people. Not yet more new approaches to weight loss. Even if the latest model comes with fancy code words.

Really? Your own injection of diet speak into this discussion bugs you?

Yes, it does.

Personally, what bugs me is that dieters keep appointing themselves the guardians of fat acceptance. You know, their brand of fat acceptance. The one which promotes and/or glorifies weight loss and downplays actual fat acceptance as a “well, if that’s your thing, I guess its okay. Until you come around of course.”?

Imagine if every discussion of gay issues everywhere was quickly dominated by the viewpoints of ex-gays?

Yeah, that’s an excellent analogy in general. But in my case I’m still fat. Just because I lost a lot of body fat and feel great and have a healthy relationship now to my appetite … and seek to correct flat out misconceptions about an eating plan that I have had good experiences with … doesn’t mean that I’m not fat.

I have a friend who had bypass surgery and lost about half her weight. People still think that she is a “before” when she goes to support groups for weight loss surgery. She and I are both still fat, despite having lost a great deal of weight. And our committments to fat acceptance really have not changed. And I’m even still a dyke. ;)

Perhaps you’d like to learn more about your appestat.

I don’t know why anyone, fat, thin, or in between, would NOT want a system of their body to be functioning. I never said if your appestat was working you’d be thin, did I?

I don’t disagree with your main point and I honestly do appreciate having bullshit called on me when it’s deserved. But that doesn’t mean that I was all the way over on the Dark Side, either.

Main Entry: 1di·et
Pronunciation: ‘dI-&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English diete, from Old French, from Latin diaeta, from Greek diaita, literally, manner of living, from diaitasthai to lead one’s life
1 a : food and drink regularly provided or consumed b : habitual nourishment c : the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason
2 : something provided especially habitually

BStu, if that was directed at me, I didn’t introduce structured diets into this conversation. I don’t diet. I can’t diet, I am congenitally incapable of dieting. Even looking at diet books makes my eyes glaze over. I do like to cook, and I like understanding nutrition, and I actually have been known to sit down with cook books just to read the recipes. Everyone has to eat, and it’s possible to eat well and have a healthy diet (definition 1a) without “dieting” in the meaning of definition 1c. At a visceral level, I believe that for many Americans dieting is like religion: there is a hope that salvation will come in a box (like one hour a week of church) such that you don’t really have to change those habits that are unhealthy (or sinful) as a part of your “true” existence. It doesn’t work — not for weight loss, or for any other health related goal.

But thanks for not answering any of my questions.

Personally, what bugs me is that dieters keep appointing themselves the guardians of fat acceptance. You know, their brand of fat acceptance. The one which promotes and/or glorifies weight loss and downplays actual fat acceptance as a “well, if that’s your thing, I guess its okay. Until you come around of course.”

Imagine if every discussion of gay issues everywhere was quickly dominated by the viewpoints of ex-gays? Or if a conversation on race kept ending up being up the difficult issues facing white people? I look at this own blog to see the unified outrage when discussions of feminism get derailed. Imagine if that’s how the conversation always went. If it always got turned back around into being about men. Because that’s what fat people have to deal with. There’s always someone quick to share their weight loss success and to vigorously defend dieting. Always someone who wants to redefine fat acceptance as a diet support group. Always ready to inject diet speak and diet language. Oh its not a diet, you see. Its a “whole new way of living”. They’ll agree that dieting is very bad, but that’s no reason to oppose weight loss through restrictive eating. That’s different, you see.

It reminds me of the privatization vs. personnal accounts nonsense. Whenever people turn on diets (inevitably due to the failure of the diets), the weight loss industry comes up with a new gimmick. A new language to use now that the old one is so tied to failure. They’ve been especially brazen about co-opting the anti-dieting language of fat acceptance to use to promote their own products. You don’t like diets? Don’t worry. We have a healthy eating plan for you. Had bad experience with that phrase? Might we interest you in a lifestyle change? That hasn’t worked? Perhaps you’d like to learn more about your appestat. Heard good things about “Health at Any Size”? Well, we’re here to make “any size” the size you want to be.

Its carbon copy of their approach on the conflicting data which keeps coming out. They just ignore it and march forward. Failure isn’t an option. Fat people are flawed and must be corrected. Never mind if they aren’t actually flawed. Such facts will only get in the way. Onward Atkins Soldiers. Onward Ornish Soldiers. Onward Bypass Soldiers.

The glorification of weight loss is all around us every day. I’m not surprised that it keeps creeping in to dominate discussions on the opposing viewpoint. I’m sick of it, but I’ve long since stopped being surprised.

And yet, I’m just not surprised that a discussion about studies showing that fat is not the health risk its been made out to be had devolved into a discussion about which restrictive and punative diet works “best”?.

I do want to clarify that I don’t give a rat’s ass if people lose weight or not, and that my feeling great began before I lost an ounce. I agree it’s not surprising and definitely worth being conscious of, that this happened, and now that you mention it, it bugs me too.

I think there are health benefits to changing the way we eat. In my case, one of those benefits was suddenly having a functioning appestat, and a side effect of THAT was losing body fat.

I know lots of healthy, fit fat people and I am still one of them. I reject the “fat is bad” message whether it’s the fat on my thighs or the fat I eat. But I do think that having a functioning appestat is a good thing.

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater — a gap of 2.8 m…

When I went on Atkins two years ago, I suddenly (in one day) had this huge stabilization of my blood sugar and got a very welcome burst of energy. I feel so much clearer and healthier and more vibrant, and as a result of this I have dropped 127 pounds. I’ve also seen a lifetime of chronic stress diarrhea vanish, and the only time I have any sort of food cravings is the day or two around my period. It’s transformed my life and definitely improved my health.

I never say everyone should eat the way I eat or will benefit from the things that help me, because everyone is an individual and we all have different needs and wants. But by the same token, you can’t make blanket statements about things that DON’T work or WON’T help, because they might work for someone, or help them.

I find Atkins appealing because I’m never hungry and I get to eat things that I enjoy and believe are healthy, so it’s really easy for me. If someone still felt hungry or didn’t believe in this way of eating (for instance, I don’t believe dietary fat is harmful but many people do), they wouldn’t have the same experience with Atkins that I have had. I’m not on a “diet” and I don’t intend to “go off my diet,” I’ve just figured out how to eat to make myself feel wonderful. And I’ve never tasted ANYTHING so good as to make me want to give this feeling up.

I heard this a lot when I got sober, too, that “giving up” alcohol doesn’t work blah blah blah, but in August I’ll have been sober for 23 years. So I think I know what it means to make a permanent life change, and to understand that “giving something up” doesn’t have to be a sacrifice at all.

I would hate, though, to give up my health, well-being, and happiness, so that’s why I’ll stay sober and on Atkins.

Way back in 1965 a study was done comparing fasting (the most extreme form of energy restriction!) with a high fat, low carb diet. The fasting group lost an average of 21 pounds, of which more than 60 percent was muscle. The low carb/high fat group lost 14.6 pounds on average, of which only .04 pounds was muscle mass. (Benoit, F.L., Martin, R.L., Watten, R.H., “Changes in Body Composition During Weight Reduction in Obesity: Balance Studies Comparing Effects of Fasting and a Ketogenic Diet,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 63(4), 1965, pages 604-612.)

Similar results were obtained in a 1971 study, in which three groups of young men were randomly assigned to carb intake levels of 104 grams, 60 grams, and 30 grams. While all three groups lost weight, the weight loss by the group eating the least amount of carbohydrate was only 5 percent muscle and was 95 percent fat, while the higher carb groups lost 25 percent and 15 percent muscle mass, respectively. (Young, C.M., Scanlan, S.S., Im, H.S., et al., “Effect on Body Composition and Other Parameters in Obese Young Men of Carbohydrate Level of Reduction Diet,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 24, 1971, pages 290-296.)

You go on to say:

that is why atkins type dies causes such weight loss, muscles are burned to make sugar, when that runs out then fat is burned inefficiently. so alot of muscle weight and water weight loss is why atkins works, but temporarily. you loss poundage wise at first, but not in the size department.

Since about 30 percent of our dietary protein and as much as 10 percent of dietary fat are converted to glucose, and we do still consume some dietary carbohydrate, this is just not true. I’ve been steadily losing on Atkins for the last two years, for a total of 127 pounds so far. And I’ve lost 7 sizes. My waist has gone from 56 inches to 38.5 inches. My HIPS are now smaller than my waist used to be! And you think I haven’t lost FAT?

3 pounds of fat loss by the way = a size. so if you lose 50 pounds but only lose 4 or 5 sizes you have lost only 15 pounds of fat the rest is muscles and water loss.

Plus sizes are 20 pounds a size, so if a woman is already in plus sizes, they don’t change at each 3 pound mark. They change at the 20 lb interval. Although not all comapanies are that consistent with their sizing, at least in plus sizes. Still, comparing apples to apples, I’ve gone from a size 34 to a size 20 in one company that I buy clothing from on a regular basis.

I do realize that Atkins isn’t for everyone and I hope that I have made that plain in this and other places I write about weight loss and body image issues. BUT… I do take exception to things being presented as absolute fact that are as likely to be opinion or even myth. And the idea that all we lose on Atkins is water and muscle is not supported by the evidence and is, quite simply, not correct.

I really love this way of eating, not because it’s let me lose weight, but because it’s restored my natural appestat.. the very thing you are talking about in your post. It turned off the crazy blood sugar highs and lows and has allowed me, in my mid-40s and after a lifetime of obesity, to self-regulate my appetite and weight without hunger or struggle. I’d hate to see someone else who is like me fail to give Atkins a try because of this type of misinformation.

3 pounds of fat loss by the way = a size. so if you lose 50 pounds but only lose 4 or 5 sizes you have lost only 15 pounds of fat the rest is muscles and water loss.

we burn muscles for fuel only when we are in a caloiric deficit. protein is for body restoration not fuel, remember that we only burn protein for fuel when in a caloiric deficit and the body needs to make up the difference.

if we have enough sugar stored when we exercise then we spare muscles. this principle is why many body builders will get up in the middle of the night and eat a meal because at night when you run out of glycogen (sugar) your body turns to muscles for fuel, to make sugar, since fat cannot be converted to sugar, to keep from losing the muscles that they are building up.

we store enough glycogen for about a 12 hour fast that is it. if you sleep for 12 hours you have used it up. by the way you can burn up your supply of glycogen in muscles and liver in only a 18 minute out of oxygen running. but that same sugar can be stretched out for 18 miles when you are in oxygen because the body then burns fat. you don’t have to train your body to burn fat, you have to train it to deliver oxygen better at higher speeds so the body can keep using fat for fuel.

thus increating aerobic capacity. anyway I had an interesting conversation with my thin doctor who is in her 40 or 50’s. she was helping me with my very high bp and I had to go several times to find the right drug combo (despite efforts at elimninating salt and exercise) and we were making progress getting my bp down to stage 2 the stage one, and I made a comment “do you think my pressure will go down more if I lost about 60 pounds” do you know what her answer was? considering that you have it it since 10 years old, which I have, probably would not do anything for it.

I was shocked, you hear so much from the media who get their info from the medical associations to lose weight to bring pressure down. anyway another thing about scare tactics they are the precise reason obesity is on the rise.

if people are scared to eat then end up not eating enough but after a while their hunger is saved up, Yes the body saves up hunger to hit you when it can override that fear, to a certain point depending on their body their bodies envoke binging behavior which leads to overweight which causes more fear (since eating to much causes weight gain then the logical thing is try not to eat too much) which causes more undereating which leads to eventual more overeating which causes the weight gain which perpetuates the fear and you have a vicious cycle which leads to permenanet obesity or very overweight status.

see the point? fear is actually causeing obesity not curing it. it is causing people to enter self famine states and what is the body’ s response to famines? not only slowing down of metabolism and burning up muscles (since muscles are metabolic active and require alot of energy to maintain) and it is used also to make sugar to burn fat more effeciently, you have chemicals that the body releases to cause cravings of high fat sugar laden food and lots of it so it can replace the fat it lost during the famine.

these chemicals are likened to taking drugs, when you get certain drugs at a certain dosage (depending on your body) you will act in ways you are not aware of or can’t control.

I was thinking like amphetamines where you act out many times unaware of what you are doing and you can’t control the shakes and tremors and panic attacks etc or people who think they can fly jump off buildings . or if you take a strong sedative even if you don’t want to sleep you end up doing it regardless, you have no control there (except not to take the drugs unless someone forces it on you)

so why do we think that our body’s chemicals cannot do the same thing, over power us and get us to do things (that really are to our benefit so we don’t diet ourselves unknowingly to death) such as freak out when you get too much adrenalin when something scares you like walking in a dark alley by yourself and you hear every little creak or tap noise that may sound like a food step, your heart starts to race your mind is in over drive , you really cannot control it once it is in full swing.

or get us to overeat to restore fat stores (because our diet caused us to lose 60 pounds even tho the nutritionists say it is a healthy 1500 caloire diet,and we are in danger of losing too much more muscles and organ tissue) by getting you to binge even if you don’t want to? why do we equate failure to lose weight and keep it off with lack of moral character when it is all chemical or biological?

If I gave you a strong dose of speed every day for a week, and you lost your appetite and couldn’t eat very much and you lost weight could you take credit for that? no the drugs made you do it. so why do we say when a person doesn’t lose weight it is their fault? it is all chemical, remember the time when they said to a depressed person you could snap out of it if you wanted to, but now they know better it is chemical.

now they know it has nothing to do with character but it was a chemical imbalance (in most cases).then they came up with antidepressants, of course they have their drawbacks and sometimes they don’t address the real causes but doctors are human not God

I could slip a appetite inducing drug in your milk or coffee without you knowing it and you would eat and eat and wonder what in the heck is going on here why can’t I stop eating (you could if you had moral character or self control) but I tell you it was the drug that made you do it, then you would stop blaming yourself it was chemical.

our bodies chemicals are no different they just aren’t taken in the form of a pill but manufactured by our bodies when the body deems it a necessaity for survival. thus we have many chemicals in our bodies that stir us to overeat and store fat, and we have chemicals in our bodies that do the reverse decrease fat stores and decrease appeitite. the question is how do we triggor the body’s response for fat burning and muscle sparing chemicals.

we have to change our food enviroment from one of scarcity to one of abundance, it doesn’t matter if the food is there in abundance if you don’t eat enoug of it the body doesn’t know that.

we have to take away it’s reason for fat storage (famines) and we have to like one poster said be patient, we didn’t get overfat overnight. we have to take the time to nourish our bodies, listen to it’s hunger cues, we have to trust our bodies again, but that takes a long time, in fact for the obese may be years. we have to show love to our bodies and stop this condemining. when it comes to our basic needs we have to be an animal.

animals don’t count caloires or watch the clock they don’t worry about nutrition they eat what their bodies tell them what sounds good to them in the amounts until food no longer appeals, they are body controlled eaters, no fear of food or fatness there. obesity in the wild is rare and it has nothing to do with there not being enough to eat but rather because there is enough to eat and then some.

we burn protein only when in a caloiric deficit (or when diseased). never just because the body has extra to burn, it eliminate via kidneys excess protein it cannot store protein. AS for the cdc and all the others they are just as misled as everyone else when it comes to weight issues. it has been so muddied most cannot tell a myth from the truth.

RR by the way interval means recovery/exertion, for example you can run for a minute walk for a minute if that is all you can do before getting to out of breath, it means getting the heart rate up to maximum or close to it for a short period before going back down, this build aerobic capacity, as it forces the body to recover under stress.

Thanks for the clarification and response. I agree with you on the “suffer” part. People, especially the media, throw these kinds of words about far too casually. Suffer, though, also means to experience or undergo. I’m not trying to belittle your remark (which I agree with) but sometimes we assume words are used to mean one thing when they have another meaning to the speaker. I could go on for hours about meaning and interpretation, but I’ll spare everyone.

As for blaming people for the disease, I am shocked you have experienced this in South Texas. If there is any place in the world that should understand that Type II Diabetes is a disease with a STRONG genetic component (which no one can do a thing about) it should be South Texas. Sorry to hear that this has happened to you and that it is still going on (in that region). Clearly more education is needed.

I’m not advocating for dilution of the truth. There a many environmental controls available for preventing type 2 diabetes. And the public should know what those controls are and how to manage them so that each person is empowered to maintain his or her own health. But I wish people would understand that sometimes the disease happens anyway. There are things beyond are control (heredity being #1) that would have contributed greatly to the diagnosis. This was what happened in my case.

My point in the original post had nothing to do with any of the above, however. It had to do with “suffering.” To label a person with diabetes a “sufferer” takes away our empowerment to live normal lives (which we can). It implies being incapable, or being disadvantages, even being punished.

Many people with diabetes have to also deal with the rampant misinformation about their disease which seems to contribute to this “sufferer” lable. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the disease, however because there are more environmental controls available for prevention (as opposed to Type 1 diabetes which is an autoimmune disordered and unpreventable) and since Type 2 is linked to fatness (which has been asserted that society viewa as a moral flaw), people with this type are very often blamed for developing it. This fosters shame and embarrassment for the patient. But to blame someone for their disease is cruel and unjustified in almost every circumstance. So pulling away from the “sufferer” mentality allows for patients to assert control over the disease, face it in truth and honesty, and move foward in managing it effectively.