And in any case, exercising makes you feel good about yourself. Oddly enough, in my own experience the greatest single benefit I get from exercise is better sleep. I sleep deeper and feel much better when I wake up on days I have exercised.

Of course exercise is good for you and it should be part of a weight reduction plan. Got too keep those muscles looking good.

Boyle wrote:

Beatsong wrote:I haven't read the article yet but I don't see how it can be physically possible that levels of exercise and obesity are unrelated.

You get fat by taking in more energy than you burn. If you take in the same amount but burn more (consistently, long term) then you don't get as fat. How is this difficult?

It also tallies with my anecdotal experience of some people I've known who have lost weight PURELY by increasing their exercise regime, without changing their diet at all.

The essential idea is that some sugars, like sucrose and fructose, don't induce satiety, and as a result it's really really easy to eat too many. Throw into the that metabolic pathways that sucrose and fructose (and alcohol!) get put through and baby you've got fat going. I first heard of this idea from a video called The Bitter Truth, which is one done by a Dr Robert Lustig.

This is very strange.

What you've just said is surely true, but provides no basis whatsofuckingever for believing that "exercise has no effect on weight loss". As I said earlier, it seems to be this bizarre "fallacy of causal exclusivity" (I don't know if that's A Thing, but if it wasn't it is now, and I've just named it). "Sugar really REALLY causes weight gain, therefore lack of exercise must not".

At best, the report might be showing that a high sugar diet has such a massive effect upon weight gain that the amounts of exercise people are realistically likely to do can't counteract it. That's a perfectly reasonable claim; I don't know whether it's true, but it may well be. Again however, it doesn't for one moment indicate that exercise doesn't affect weight. All it means is that you can have contributing factors to an outcome which are outweighed by opposite and stronger contributing factors.

I wonder is obesity widespread among wild animals? And if yes/no how come is that?

No, and it's because they have more sex than we do.

Maybe because they are not idiots.

Well, many animals fatten up for winter. Woodchucks can put on 50% more weight, or more, and they look like little basketballs before hibernation. The fatter the better in their case though, they'll need every ounce. Not quite the same thing.

But there are plenty of obese domestic animals. Garfield the cat is one.

tuco wrote:Maybe because they are not idiots.

Not that they're smarter than us. It's very hard to get enough calories to survive in the wild, let alone get through mating season and grow babies/eggs. There are no cookies or donuts in the forest. The foods wild animals eat generally have few calories, are harder to get at and chew up, and digest slower.
The woodchucks don't even have much trouble finding food. But they eat mostly grass and greens. Hard and slow to digest, and few calories. They have to spend much of their time grazing. They eat as fast as they can for as long as they can just to survive. Same thing with tree squirrels. They don't eat voraciously because they're pigs. They'd starve to death if they slowed down. Suburban squirrels have it made in comparison. (though would have to fight more)

I thought exercise made you heavier because muscle is denser than fat...

Thorham wrote:

Alan B wrote:Not quite true. The energy from fats and CHO follow different pathways in the body and end up producing different effects. CHO energy having the greater effect wrt weight - apparently.

Really? Seems to me that energy that has been used can't be stored anymore regardless of the calories used to produce the energy.

A calorie is a unit of energy. So what you are saying is:

"Seems to me that energy that has been used can't be stored anymore regardless of the ENERGY used to produce the energy".
Perhaps I should have said "CHO..." not "CHO energy...".

There's an ethical question: Carbs are easy to produce. Wheat, Corn, Rice, Potatoes. Can you feed the world with mostly proteins as easily?

NineBerry wrote:There's an ethical question: Carbs are easy to produce. Wheat, Corn, Rice, Potatoes. Can you feed the world with mostly proteins as easily?

A very good question.
Meat and poultry are expensive. Fish is not problem-free (over-fishing with resultant depletion of stocks, etc.)
Most plant proteins lack one or more of the nine essential amino acids. Food combining (e.g. legumes with grains) can compensate, but in most plant foods the overall ratio of protein to carbs is quite low.
Getting a really cheap source of protein is a challenge. One solution that's already practised in many Third World countries...
Entomophagy!

Mmmm! Yummy!


Crispy or Squishy...

The challenge is not to get enough proteins for humans' basic need for protein but to get enough protein to replace a big part of the energy from carbs humans consume today.

NineBerry wrote:The challenge is not to get enough proteins for humans' basic need for protein but to get enough protein to replace a big part of the energy from carbs humans consume today.

And of course (looking at the image above), protein-rich insects are no-where near this size and quantity in cooler climes. If we began to import from tropical countries that could end up by being another factor in skewing the ecological balance.

Edit.
Perhaps the GDA (or RI) needs to be re-adjusted to increase protein & fats and reduce CHO (sugars).

Humans require carbohydrates, fats and protein. The trick is to eat the right amount of each. Anything else is a load of bull.

The inevitable outcome of shackling research to corporate capitalism. Especially when this course of action is pursued for ideological reasons, and accompanied by a hostility to any form of regulatory restraint upon piratical practices.

Boyle wrote:

Beatsong wrote:
The essential idea is that some sugars, like sucrose and fructose, don't induce satiety, and as a result it's really really easy to eat too many. Throw into the that metabolic pathways that sucrose and fructose (and alcohol!) get put through and baby you've got fat going. I first heard of this idea from a video called The Bitter Truth, which is one done by a Dr Robert Lustig.

I don't know shit about metabolism so I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of the video. It is interesting, though.

It's interesting. But even that video title is misleading to a degree. "Sucrose and fructose" are artificial sweeteners, correct? Therefore, not really 'sugar'. And it's somewhat odd, that sucrose and fructose, are only replacements for sugar, in the USA. Why only the USA? I mean, if the excuse is that it's cheaper, 'they' would have done it world wide (one can assume).

Also:

Aspartame was suddenly approved in 1981 when Donald Rumsfeld, former CEO of Searle and new member of President Ronald Reagan's transition team, appointed a new FDA commissioner. The controversy never died down. Today for example, the State of New Mexico is attempting to ban aspartame.

But hey, too much of anything will hurt you, true? But if 'they' put it in everything, then there's too much of it?

And then there's this:



Is there a conspiracy here, or just incompetence?

Jesus. Both sucrose and fructose ARE sugar, not artificial sweeteners. The same sugar you get all over the world.

Technically, sucrose (which I know as saccharose), IS the basic sugar you buy in stores, and it's a natural sugar, as it's sugarcan's richness in it that led to it being a desirable crop. Fructose is the natural surgar found in many fruits.