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  #16   ^
Old Mon, May-18-15, 12:21
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KDH KDH is offline
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Posts: 1,247
 
Plan: Atkins/Taubes
Stats: 270/168/160 Female 5'7"
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Location: Dallas, TX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pazia
I may not have presented the issue clearly in my original post. I wasn't thinking so much about the stereotypes but just that in my experience I've come to know (or know about) so many overweight people who also seemed highly intelligent and gifted.


Perhaps potential in most humans is limited, or has a cap of some sort? I mean, there is only so much time and energy you can devote to the things in life that you decide are important. And those that spend all of their energy developing their minds may not be as interested or inclined towards perfecting their physical being.

Naturally, I have the rare ability to maximize both!
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  #17   ^
Old Mon, May-18-15, 13:18
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deirdra deirdra is offline
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Plan: vLC/GF,CF,SF
Stats: 197/136/150 Female 66 inches
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Progress: 130%
Location: Alberta
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According to David Perlmutter in Brain Maker, research shows that, as people grow obese the part of the brain responsible for memory shrinks (as seen in MRIs and memory tests). Of course correlation is not causation, and memory is not intelligence. But both obesity and memory loss are probably related to high blood sugars and insulin resistance.
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  #18   ^
Old Mon, May-18-15, 17:42
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
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Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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It's hard to discuss the question without throwing insults or stereotypes around. So, if you'll all bear with me, Ima try my darnest best to avoid doing so while still providing some insights, I hope.

Taubes said it best: Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation. It's a disorder, not normal. The implication is that when all is normal, we're lean.

What is smarts? Well, smarts can be defined in several ways. The first one starts just with the brain. Smarts is the brain, the brain is a biological organ, it follows that it should work best when all is normal. Or, smarts is the ability to solve a problem. Or, smarts is the actual performance in theoretical tests. Or, smarts is the ability to learn new things. Or, smarts is the ability to remember stuff. Or, smarts is the ability to cut through all the BS and find the genuine honest-to-goodness facts. Or, (insert your own definition of smarts).

So, in no particular order, for example "when all is normal" applies to both smarts and obesity, whereby we should expect both best smarts and best leanness when all is in fact normal. Or, if we use the no-BS definition of smarts, most of us on this forum have developed this ability thoroughly, especially when it applies to diet/obesity/health, especially when compared to let's say Jillian Michaels for example. And if we take a quick look at who are the obesity experts we respect, almost all of them have had to face the same problem personally. They had incentive, they found a genuine solution. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. This illustrates well the problem-solving definition of smarts. However, here it's impossible to determine smarts before the problem occurs, so we can't say fat people are smarter just because they're the ones who prefer low-carb.

Then there's the idea that smarter people are more successful or leaner or better in any other endeavor we can imagine. That's not strictly true. Smarts and success don't actually track. That's because of the principle of smart enough. Here goes. If you're smart enough to do A, B, and C, and if it takes A, B, and C to make a million bucks, you'll be just as rich as the next guy who's also smart enough, or if you prefer, you must be at least as smart as the other guy who also made a million bucks that way. Being 2x or 10x smarter won't give you 2 or 10 millions bucks. But if you are smart enough to do A, B, and C, you're also probably smart enough to realize that if you did it once to get 1 million bucks, you can get 2 million bucks by doing A, B, and C again. I bet no matter how smart (or how dumb) you think you are, you understood what I just said.

This idea of smart enough comes from a guy Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Basically, success in anything doesn't track with smarts because success doesn't depend on smarts, it depends on circumstances. Specifically, opportunity and support. Conversely, lack of success depends on missed opportunities or obstacles blocking those opportunities and lack of support. Let's take my experience as an example. I had the opportunity to surf the web for information on my problem, much more information than I would have had access to without a computer, and this computer was provided to me by support from different sources. See? I didn't need to be any smarter than the next guy with a computer. I just needed to be smart enough to capitalize on this enormous access to information and the opportunity to get a computer for cheap. The threshold for smarts in this endeavor is actually pretty low.

To stick with the question of are obese people smarter, we could say those who prefer low-carb must be smart enough since low-carb does indeed do what it does better than other alternatives. But then we could say the same about lean people who also prefer low-carb. But then again we could also say we prefer low-carb just cuz it tastes better so it's got nothing to do with smarts. We still don't have a clear answer to the question.

Let's go back to that "when all is normal" thing that's common to both obesity and the brain. It's not the end of it, there's more, cuz we know more. For example, we now know it's possible to be lean yet suffer from some brain disorder. If I use my paradigm, I can explain the relationship between fat tissue and the brain through hormones and cell receptors and stuff like that. It's also possible to be obese yet suffer no brain disorder at all. Since obesity is a problem that needs a solution, and since smarts depends mostly on the brain, it follows that those most likely to find that solution are those who are both obese and without brain disorders.

Then there's this thing that happens when we initially go low-carb. Well, it happened to me anyways. I got smarter. Since I'm nobody special, Ima say it must happen to everybody who goes low-carb, it's what I expect to happen. Remember I said smarts can be defined in several ways? Well, I don't mean to say I suddenly became a genuises. Instead, everything I did before, I could now do better. So, I could remember things more accurately, follow a train of thought more deeply, focus on an idea for longer, get back to the original idea that spawned the train of thought more quickly and more clearly, and so forth. Here's the kicker. I went low-carb during a period when I must have been less smart. I didn't have to be smarter, I only had to be smart enough.

And so, Ima take a position on this. Obese people must be more likely to get smarter. It's the best I can do.

Last edited by M Levac : Mon, May-18-15 at 17:59.
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  #19   ^
Old Tue, May-19-15, 14:15
pazia pazia is offline
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Very intriguing reflections on the subject. Maybe rephrase the question, are people with a predisposition to obesity smarter?

But I do think the question of any innate intelligence or ability is less interesting than how people may compensate for a metabolic disorder by working more intelligently, learning more deeply, striving to achieve or develop in other less conventional ways.
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  #20   ^
Old Tue, May-19-15, 16:05
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KDH KDH is offline
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Posts: 1,247
 
Plan: Atkins/Taubes
Stats: 270/168/160 Female 5'7"
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Progress: 93%
Location: Dallas, TX
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I have to say, obese/overweight people being smarter or more intelligent has not been an observation I have ever made.
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  #21   ^
Old Sun, Jun-21-15, 01:12
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Glendora Glendora is offline
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Plan: 30 g carbs/day
Stats: 220/180/150 Female 61 inches
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Purely anecdotal, but...I've been very, very, very thin, and I've been very, very, very fat, and I've been everything in between, and my intelligence has been the same through it all.
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  #22   ^
Old Mon, Jul-27-15, 20:13
AbuSumayah AbuSumayah is offline
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Plan: Low carb/High Fat
Stats: 80/80/80 Male 1.85 cm
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I don't know if they're smarter but aren't very smart when it comes to food choices!
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  #23   ^
Old Tue, Jul-28-15, 12:49
MickiSue MickiSue is offline
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Posts: 8,006
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 189/148.6/145 Female 5' 5"
BF:36%/28%/25%
Progress: 92%
Location: Twin Cities, MN
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It's been said that it's impossible to eat enough fat and protein to fatten, as people just can't eat that much of those two nutrients, in the absence of carbs. But one can eat thousands of calories, when carbs are a high proportion of the diet. So it would seem to be a safe bet that obese people became that way by eating a high carb diet. And a high carb diet leads to brain fog.

We are all adaptive, though, so even with the chronic brain fog, we appear to be functioning normally.

I was in an auto accident a year and a half ago. I was already grain free and fairly low carb at the time, so the brain fog of concussion was a shock to me, as well as the other issues I've dealt with since.

But once the initial, most severe symptoms eased, it wasn't till I started chowing on dried fruit last winter, that I had the same feeling of "Huh? What was I doing?"

I have always been "smart enough", no matter what I was eating. But, especially in the aftermath of a brain injury, the effects of a high (or even slightly higher) carb diet were clear in how much they exacerbated the issues I was having.
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