Hmmnn.
1 - Just to be clear: lowcarb DID work to lose weight for me. However, it had a limit (about 170#), after which it no longer had the same effect, possibly because I no longer had the same body. Seeming issues with thyroid, with literal inability to go into ketosis or crisis-reaction if my body tried, etc. kicked in. I think lowcarb is a dream come true for +/- 30# of 200# for women, and for +/- 30# of 240# for men. After that, I suspect the body has done what it can from that perspective, and other elements matter.
(Also, regardless of that, I think there is a great deal of evidence mounting that bodies see their high-weight as something to be returned to--as if all lower weights are a temporary setback--and the higher the weight, the more an issue this might be. This affects everything from brain chemicals to taste buds and is probably horribly underrated when looking at weight regain stats.)
What might be the issue at that point, and how to deal with it, I'm not yet clear on. Dr. Andro (blog at suppversity.blogspot.com) said the following, and I don't want to derail this thread with this--it could be argued elsewhere--but I put it here only to point out that this is not one individual (me) saying it, this is a pretty common experience in the field not often openly addressed in LC areas and which often leads to some flamewars:
Quote:
(After explaining why LC is a good solution for fat loss -- to a degree...) There is, I believe, a point where the pathological insulin resistance due to morbid obesity, hypertriglyceridemia and chronic inflammation turns into a “physiological” insulin resistance, which is NECESSARY for your body to survive on a no-carb diet. After all your muscles would suck away the little blood glucose you have in no time, if they were not insulin resistant. When this point of “physiological” insulin resistance is reached – the low-carb diet begins to show its nasty face. Weight loss stalls, thyroid hormone metabolism suffers, you name it…
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There may be other issues with extended VLC for some people who are not that size.
Anyway, I just don't want the fact that I did LC and lost weight but have gradually regained some and never lost all of it to reflect poorly on LC -- LC itself is a great eating plan, whether it's moderately higher-carb or zero-carb, certainly much better than most of what else is out there for human health.
I think it's simply a matter of there being only a certain degree of damage, for a certain length of time, that one can do and then expect to just 'fix it easily'. If I'd done it when I weighed 320 it likely would have worked. I didn't start until around 520 so, there are consequences, it seems.
I'm still a big fan of some 'unexplored territory' I find interesting, particularly related to gut bacteria. There isn't exactly much opportunity to experiment with this as a layman unfortunately.
2 - How on earth does obesity get compared to illegal drug use? Do we compare (lean) people who eat a lot of fast food with cocaine addicts? Does that seem reasonable? This literally equates being obese with CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. Could we at the least limit this to comparisons with smoking instead of 'drugs' which implies the illegal element?
It's bad enough obese people have to be assumed everything-else-bad, must they be criminal, too...
3 - I've been in management for over 20 years. The idea that fat people are lazy is bogus. In fact, if anything it has often been the opposite, which I think implies that there is some conscious or unconscious "compensation factor" going on with fat people in the workplace, e.g. that when they feel like being lazy (which is likely no more or less than anyone else), they have a fear triggered that they will be perceived as lazy--because by cultural bias they already are--which may modify some behavior.
There are some things fat people will simply not be able to do based on size (I cannot fit into compact cars). If my job required I park compact cars, I wouldn't be right for that job, obviously.
If my job required I meet people and my business had reason to feel that cultural prejudice against my size would screw up the result no matter how I dressed or behaved, then I could see that argument being fair too, even though this identical logic could exclude all people who were a minority race, too short, too tall, had large noses, or whatever.
But--it does, actually, happen all the time, that such things are considerations; even at the most mundane jobs, such as in my town, I can go to certain food places run by 'the owner' (vs. a corporate branch manager) and notice that nearly all the employees are pretty thin high school girls; it's the booby-blonde-alert! if you walk in, they're all just adorable. You don't see the same profile of employees at Taco Bell where some branch manager who is only there sometimes and is more conscious of HR compliance is in charge.
4 - I've seen at least one research study, likely more but eons ago, which indicated that women in management were more prone to be or become overweight, moreso than the line personnel, suggesting that stress was a big variable. So some of the logic about laziness would imply that the people most likely to be promoted (the least lazy) are in fact the most likely to become fat, which would then make them-- wait, that logic doesn't work...
PJ