The Wall Street Journal reports on a study to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today (Wed, January 4, 2012):
Whether you are just starting a New Year’s diet or struggling to maintain a healthy weight, a provocative new study offers some timely guidance. It isn’t so much what you eat, the study suggests, but how much you eat that counts when it comes to accumulating body fat.
Really? It matters how much (in calories) is eaten? In other words, the obesity equation for a human body works within the parameters of the law of conservation of energy, looking something like this: Calories (i.e., energy) consumed must either be expended or expelled, or the system gains energy in the form of mass. Or, as one of the doctors in the study put it:
“The body was confronted with excess calories, but it didn’t care where they came from,” said George Bray, a researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, La., and lead author of the report. “The only thing it can do is put them into fat.”
The study was meant to debunk the cockeyed notion that weight gain is a function of which type calories are consumed. It doesn’t matter whether energy is derived from protein, fat or carbohydrates, if it is excess to the body’s needs, it will be stored as fat. Calories in must equal calories out, or weight gain obtains. Physicists could have saved medical science a lot of trouble by just explaining to the doctors and diet gurus the principle of energy conservation to which all closed systems are subject.
It should, however, be pointed out that a calorie as regards a human body might not be the same as energy within an inanimate system. A human calorie is a unit of mass/energy which a human body can capably employ. A human that consumes some non-digestible energy would quickly enough expel, rather than expend, the “calories” thus consumed, so only calories of the digestible variety are the ones that are made into fat.
Thus the timeless formula for weight loss is yet again confirmed: Eat less and exercise more. Eat whatever you like, but make sure the total of the calories from whatever source is less than the body needs to maintain equilibrium. Expending more energy, i.e., exercising more, will increase the amount that can be consumed while staying below equilibrium, but the key is to consistently keep caloric intake below what is required for equilibrium.
The reason so many people seek refuge in cockeyed dietary schemes is their desire to find a way around the pain they know they must suffer if they are to lose weight. Denying the body food is painful. Sustained movement is painful. Snacking on holiday treats all day, never even approaching the hunger threshold, is not. Neither is sitting on a couch all day. Pain avoidance is instinctively driven. Intentional pain infliction is not.
That survival now requires just the opposite of what historically obtained (the self-infliction of pain, rather than its avoidance) is a measure of the success mankind, particularly in the West, has enjoyed in bending Nature to its will. Only about 3% of the American population works at producing food for the rest of the 300 million or so of us, and those 3% produce even more food than fat Americans can consume. Agricultural products comprise far and away America’s biggest category of export goods.
A survey should be taken, asking Americans when it was they last felt a hunger pang. Americans eat because food is cheap and available, and time is allotted for eating it. Doubtless a great many of them aren’t at all hungry, but they don’t listen to their bodies; when their soul whispers in their ear that they don’t need the food, their mind returns a rationalization; “but it’s so good”, “I’ll just have a little bit”, etc.
Here’s an idea for anyone that wants to lose weight. First, simply quit eating for a few hours. Skip a meal and reacquaint yourself with hunger. While the hunger builds, do what your ancestors would, and move about as if in search for food. Take a long walk or run. Once the regular time for the next meal arrives, slowly eat a regular-sized meal, savoring each bite. Now take a week off this one-day “diet”. Go back to your slothful, gluttonous ways, but steel yourself for the next round of dieting, which will be a repeat of the first day, only extended to two days. Repeat the regimen, each week extending the diet days by one, until every day is a diet day, until every day skips a meal. Then stay that way until the weight loss goal is reached, after which, repeat the process in reverse, but with smaller portions than before the diet, and never eating without feeling hunger pangs. Keep exercising. The pleasure of eating and leisure will become so much more enjoyable once you’ve learned to inflict a measure of pain from hunger and exercise, you’ll feel alive again, or for perhaps the first time.
The ordinary cycle of life, driven by metabolic processes, is need-generated pain, action taken to meet the need in order to relieve the pain, and transitory pleasure following the cessation of pain. Constantly feeding a non-existent hunger, effectively the only path to obesity, circumscribes the ordinary pain-action-pleasure cycle of life, at least as it concerns caloric needs, replacing it with a dull numbness, reminiscent of a narcotic haze. Food has become the most abused drug in the country.
The addiction is curable, but requires the will to endure pain, and must be effected in a world that panders to pain avoidance instincts. Pain avoidance schemes–from vehicles that alleviate the need to walk to prepared foods that alleviate the need to cook to mortgage modifications that alleviate the need to keep promises–are the hallmark of the services provided by both private industry and government. It’s no wonder obesity is rampant.
At least now, with medical science confirming the law of energy conservation, we know what causes it.
The Curmudgeon's Attic 
The human body is an OPEN SYSTEM , you idiot. In science, BOTH theroies and laws could be shown to be wrong at some time if there are data to suggest it.
Nature does NOT obey ANYTHING. That is nOT how it works. Much remians ot be learned about energy and matter. We have reason to suspect the first law MANY ONLY APPLY under very specific circumstances and not others. it is even possible it might be discarded eventually.
With the disoveries of DARK MATTER and DARK ENEREGY- this will help our understanding of physics.
YOu do not even understand what a law is. It is NOT immutable you tool. The job of physicists is to show the results in which our udnerstanding of of physics is WRONG. From there , the newer “more correct” or “less wrong ” theories develop.
There is NO HEIRARCHY WHATSOEVER between theories and laws, you ass.
Obesity is a BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF FAT CELL FAILURE AND DISREGULATION.
Mice can become obese WITHOUT consuming more claories.
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/11/fitzgerald/
The caloric hypothesis is dead in the world of science. Up yours. Learn how science works. NONE of my physicist friends thinkl much of you diet guru shysters. YOu MISUSE physics and taske it out of context.
So, I suppose that it matters not at all what one eats, nor how much energy one expends in exercise, as to what one’s weight will ultimately be? Because obesity is a biological problem of fat cell failure and disregulation? Why weren’t there more obese people in Nazi concentration camps? Sure, they were being fed less than enough to keep them alive according to the ordinary tenets of medical science, and yes, physics, but that shouldn’t matter according to your hypothesis. Why do people die of starvation if they don’t eat? Isn’t there at least a little connection between the amount of calories one consumes and their weight?
What’s with the ad hominen attacks? I’ll refrain from returning them in kind. But I stand by my assessment of what causes obesity. It is simply a matter of energy/matter in exceeding energy/matter out. And yes, in so far as any system can be considered closed, the human body is a closed system, except that it obviously receives inputs and outputs, else there would also be no way to measure its mass.
I admit to ignorance about the death of the caloric hypothesis in science. I understand that physicists have tangled their minds into a Gordian knot trying to explain how Einstein’s Relativity really does explain the universe, settling on imagining Dark Matter and Energy, which by definition are undetectable, when so much of it can’t be made to fit the hypothesis.
But the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t really contemplate Dark Matter and Energy. It doesn’t seem applicable here, except perhaps to explain how people can get fat without eating. Is that what you’d like to claim, that Dark Matter and Energy are propelling people to obesity in record numbers today, though presumably it has been around for as long as the universe has existed? Or maybe Dark Matter and Energy, like the notion that people can get fat without consuming more energy than is expelled, are just figments of the human imagination, vast rationalization schemes so that the universe, and our bodies, will look the way we expect it, and they, should.
Read the mouse study.Both controsl and treatment ATE THE EXACT SAME NUMBER OF CALORIES, YET the mice that ate at unnatural times BECAME OBESE.
There are NUMEROUS studies that CONTRADICT the caloric hypothesis. The human body is an OPEN SYSTEM.
You have no idea what obesity is. Watch Dr. Jeffrey Friedman’s lectures.
I simply insulted you ( and well deserved insults) . It was NOT “ad hominem” I explained HOW and WHY you were wrong.
You use that word wrongly too. LEARN WHAT IT IS http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html
Obesityhas NOTHING to do with willpower. BIOLOGY is how and why 98% of all people REGAIN.The BODY controls weight INVOLUNTARILY through extremely complex neural circuitry. The BODY controls energy balance, you fool.
A weight reduced 300 pounder going to 180 NOW has a drop in metabolsim of AT LEAST 25%. He cannot eat normally. Obese subjects ATE LESS than thin controls in Dr Liebel;’s study, YET CONTINUED TO GAIN..
THE BODY HAS ALL SORTS OF TRICKS. You do not understand that obesityis a CHRONIC DISEASE STATE. Look up Dr Arya Sharma. You are grossly uneducated on this topic.
The heritability of obesity is EQUAL to that of height.
ad hominen: adj. Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason. (The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition).
calling me an “idiot”, a “tool” and an “ass” is, I suppose, in your vernacular, appealing to logic or reason, and is not personal. I would hate to suffer what you consider actually is an ad hominen attack.
I don’t dispute that losing weight is hard–that the body compensates for fewer calories by decreasing its metabolism. I would be quite surprised if it were otherwise. Hence the importance of increased exercise in any weight loss regimen, and the need to continually decrease the level of caloric intake as the weight declines.
But the mouse study did not try to claim that the mice gained weight even when controlling for metabolism (i.e., energy expenditure). In fact, it seems to say that differences in the times for taking meals can lead to weight gain because of the difference it causes in the way energy thereby gained is expended, i.e., it causes a decrease in overall metabolism. Which supports my basic premise–energy in must be less than or equal to energy expelled or there will be energy accumulated. And this is true no matter the genetic background of the individual.
Instead of attacking me, why not lay out your theory? Can people who consume fewer calories than they expend still gain weight? Can people lose weight while consuming more calories than are expelled? If that is what you propose, I would be curious to know how it is you arrive at that conclusion.
By my snarky post proclaiming that doctors have rediscovered the second law of thermodynamics, I certainly didn’t mean to make myself out to be a diet guru or expert, so if there is a way to lose weight that seems to violate the second law, by all means, let’s hear it.
Exercise and diet do NOT solve obesity. There is no current cure and probably will not be for as long as a liftime or more. There are MANY active obese people I see everyday.
Once again, ALL PHYSICISTS KNOW THAT THE HUMAN BODY IS AN O – P – E – N system. It is an OPEN SYSTEM.
They ALL acknowledge that obesity is a BIOLOGICAL problem. Physicists do NOT address obesity.
Obesity is hellishly complex. EDUCATE YOURSELF. We do not understand it well. The unknowns could fill vast oceans . THE CAUSE of obesity isnot well understood.
We do know that at least 15 5 of it is entirely due to MUTATIONS in one of four identifiable genes.
EVERYTHING in science is TENTATIVE.In science, laws CAN be shown to be wrong.There is NOHEIRARCHY WHATSOEVER between a theory and a law.
Your obesity views are not supportd by science. HOWEVER, at least EINSTEIN’S Theory opf General Relativity is WELL SUPPORTED. Energy is NOT conserved in our expanding universe by the way. And energy is NOT conserved in General Relativity either.Dr. Sean Carrol- a REAL physicist
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/
EINSTEIN HAS A TON OF SUPPORT.
Blow it out your buttocks and stop blaming the obese. There is nO scientific support for your stance at all. In fact, it has been DISCREDITED:
URGELT understands physics.
EDUCATE YOURSELF. International samples of Monozygotic twin reared apart studies- HUNDREDS systematically compared. LIFESTYLE MADE NO DIFFERENCE. THEY RESEMBLED THEIR TWIN FOR BODY WEIGHT.
YOU are the misinformed person. Obesity is NOT a choice, you schmuck.
And lastly, STOP MISUSING AND WRONGLY INVOKING the first law in an OPEN SYSTEM in an attempt to oversimplify and EXTREMELY COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON CALLED OBESITY.
Quit railing about obesity please (I never said it was a matter of willpower, or that it wasn’t a complex phenomenon, by the way) and tell me–if some environmental calamity destroyed the food supply such that everyone had to survive on, say 1500 calories per day or less, would there still be obese people? If an obese person didn’t eat at all, would they stay obese?
YES. There STILL would be obese people. People like Manuel Uribe would die first of malnutrition before they even became 250 pounds, let alone normal weight.
Bariatric surgery patients, while they lose weight, REMAIN obese still. Less so, but still obese. The playing field is not level for everybody. There STILL would be obese poeple in society. In fact there is A TON of obesity in poor areas as Gary Taubes points out.
Obesity is associated MOST STRONGLY with MALNUTRITION AND POVERTY rather than abundance.
Also exercise is great for HEALTH. EVERYBODY should be doing movement. But , STUDIES show it is next to USELESS for weight loss- even in normal people. Exercise is not for weight loss.
Your INTAKE has a greater impact by far. Dr. Sharma has many links about this. The obese are already exercising even when they are juts living their daily life by dragging around that massive weight.
Okay, no argument about exercise. As you say, it is great for health, but is next to impossible to use as a sole means of losing weight.
I don’t doubt that obesity would be more prevalent in impoverished areas. Nutrition is hard to come by with poverty, but calories are relatively easier to obtain, so people would need to eat more just to get the nutrition they need.
And I should also say that I think we’ve been mainly talking about two different things–I’ve been talking about otherwise normal people managing their weight, and you have been talking about obese people, which I accept is a different thing entirely. I accept that obesity can (isn’t always, but can) be the result of disease mechanisms that prevent treatment in the normal eat less/exercise more regimen. And I admit to having next to no expertise in that area. But I also know a great many people aren’t so afflicted, but just need to move about more while eating less to keep from tipping the scale too drastically.
I’ve enjoyed dialogue and appreciate the information you provided.
Regards