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  #1   ^
Old Thu, Jan-05-17, 18:22
JLx's Avatar
JLx JLx is offline
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Plan: High protein, lower fat
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Default The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body’s Least Understood Organ

And What It Means For You by Sylvia Tara https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-...d/dp/0393244830

I haven't heard too much about this book but it sounds interesting. I've heard before that "fat is an endocrine system" but didn't really know what that means; it sounds like maybe this book explores that.

A lengthy excerpt from Wired magazine, snipped for brevity:

Quote:
The Mysterious Virus That Could Cause Obesity

RANDY IS 62 years old and stands tall at six foot one. He grew up on a farm in Glasford, Illinois, in the 1950s. Randy was raised with the strong discipline of a farming family. From the time he was five, he would get out of bed at dawn, and before breakfast he’d put on his boots and jeans to milk cows, lift hay, and clean the chicken coops. Day in and out, no matter the weather or how he felt, Randy did his physically demanding chores. Only when his work was complete would he come into the kitchen for breakfast.

Tending to the chickens was hard work—it involved getting into the pen, clearing birds out of their dirty cages, and shooing them into a holding enclosure. This process was always a little scary because the animals could be quite aggressive after being cooped up all night. On one of these occasions, when Randy was 11, a particularly large and perturbed rooster swung its claw and gave him a good spurring on his leg. Randy felt the piercing of his skin and squealed in pain. He said it felt like being gored by a thick fishhook. The rooster left a long gash, and blood streamed down Randy’s leg to his ankle. He ran back to the house to clean the wound, as chickens are filthy after a night in their cages.

Some days later, Randy noticed a change in his appetite. He was constantly hungry. He felt drawn to food and thought about it all the time. He started eating in between meals and overeating when he finally sat down to dinner. Randy had always been a skinny kid, but in the course of the next year, he gained about 10 pounds. His parents thought it might be puberty, though it seemed a little early. His pudginess was also unusual given that everyone else in the family was thin. Randy was no stranger to discipline. He forced himself to eat less, switched to lower-calorie foods and exercised more. But by the time he was a teenager, he was bouncing between 30 and 40 pounds overweight. He says, “I gained all of this weight even though these were some of my most active years on the farm.”

Randy’s family supported his efforts to control his weight. They made lower-calorie foods, gave him time to exercise, and didn’t pressure him to eat things he didn’t want. However, he continued to struggle with his weight through college. Randy kept thinking back to the moment everything changed. He had been the skinniest kid among his friends. And then he got cut by that chicken.

[snipped]

The Pounds Keep Coming

While Nikhil Dhurandhar was in India pursuing his curiosity about fat, Randy was looking for solutions of his own. After a brief stint as a teacher he moved back to the family land in 1977 because he loved farming. ...

At 40 years old and 350 pounds, Randy was in trouble. If he didn’t fix this problem soon, he would start to develop serious complications of diabetes, including cardiovascular disease and nerve damage.

[snipped]

A New Way to Manage Fat—Stop the Blame
Randy’s physician had been treating him for years and knew that his patient’s struggle was difficult and ongoing. The physician referred Randy to an endocrinologist—Richard Atkinson at the University of Wisconsin—who was having some success with difficult obesity cases. ...

Atkinson also introduced Randy to his new postdoctoral assistant, a young scientist from India, Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar. Dhurandhar examined Randy and studied his blood samples. Randy tested positive for antibodies to Ad-36, meaning he had likely been infected with the virus at some point in the past. Randy remembered being scratched by that rooster as a child, and that afterward his appetite exploded and he started gaining weight quickly. His troubles with food and rapid fat accumulation—he understood it all now. If he was like the chickens, the marmosets, the twins, and the other humans in the study, then his infection with Ad-36 was helping his body to accumulate fat. He says, “What Atkinson and Dhurandhar did for me changed my life. They made everything make sense. It was very liberating and very empowering.”

How Does a Virus Lead To Fat?

How would a virus like Ad-36 cause fat? Atkinson explains, “There are three ways that we think Ad-36 makes people fatter:

(1) It increases the uptake of glucose from the blood and converts it to fat;
(2) it increases the creation of fat molecules through fatty acid synthase, an enzyme that creates fat; and
(3) it enables the creation of more fat cells to hold all the fat by committing stem cells, which can turn into either bone or fat, into fat. So the fat cells that exist are getting bigger, and the body is creating more of them.”

The researchers acknowledge that the rooster scratch may have been the start of Randy’s infection. But they are cautious—the transmissibility of Ad-36 from chickens to humans has never directly been studied.

Though Dhurandhar and Atkinson have conducted several strong studies showing the contribution of Ad-36 to fatness, skepticism remains. Atkinson says, “I remember giving a talk at a conference where I presented 15 different studies in which Ad-36 either caused or was correlated to fatness. At the end of it, a good friend said to me, ‘I just don’t believe it.’ He didn’t give a reason; he just didn’t believe it. People are really stuck on eating and exercise as the only contributors to fatness. But there is more to it.”(my emphasis)

Dhurandhar adds, “There’s a difference between science and faith. What you believe belongs in faith and not in science. In science you have to go by data. I have faced people who are skeptical, but when I ask them why, they can’t pinpoint a specific reason. Science is not about belief, it is about fact. There is a saying—‘In God we trust, all others bring data.’” https://www.wired.com/2016/12/myste...-cause-obesity/

Last edited by JLx : Thu, Jan-05-17 at 18:27.
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  #2   ^
Old Thu, Jan-05-17, 18:38
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Liz53 Liz53 is offline
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I just read reviews of this on Amazon. It sounds interesting and is currently running 4 stars (out of 5).
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  #3   ^
Old Fri, Jan-06-17, 03:58
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Default

Endocrine means it secretes a hormone, leptin in this case. Didn't read the book, can't comment. But the snippet speaks of a virus that leads to excess fat accumulation/proliferation. It's possible, but it's also possible that it does it indirectly through the action of insulin. For example, if the liver is infected, it could then interfere with insulin-degrading enzyme, which in turn will prevent insulin from being degraded, then in turn cause insulin level in the blood to rise with corresponding effect on fat tissue, namely excess fat accumulation and insulin-induced lipohypertrophy.

Fat tissue doesn't convert glucose to fat exactly, instead it converts it to glycerol, which is then bound to 3 fatty acids to make triglycerides (esterification) that can't get out of fat cells cuz now they're too big to go through the cell membrane, the whole thing driven by insulin. That's the Gary Taubes basic logic for excess fat accumulation from dietary carbohydrates. Same result, just more accurate explanation of the mechanism.

Creation of fatty acids (by fatty acid synthase) does not necessarily lead to excess fat accumulation. Fatty acids are used for other things such as hormones for example. So, it depends where this creation occurs, and if I'm not mistaken it does not take place in fat tissue. It does occur in the liver, and the gut provides a lot of it from diet alone.

Creation of more fat cells is called adipocyte proliferation and differentiation. This process is mainly controlled by insulin, i.e. insulin-induced lipohypertrophy.

Having said all the above, since it's all done by signalling, and since viruses/virii have the ability to take over DNA for replication and perhaps signalling of their own, it's possible some virus can take over that particular signalling in these several places simultaneously, but I think it's much more likely that it's all done just through the action of insulin since insulin does all the above already.

This is quite interesting to me because I've been harping on about the possibility of an as-of-yet unknown underlying problem which, for example, could be quickly exposed just by going low-carb. So, if low-carb is the only problem, we go low-carb, all should get better. But, if there is an underlying problem, such as this virus they're talking about, low-carb will expose it because there will still be a problem. Also, it's possible that it will be more easily identifiable at this point because we've removed the symptoms caused by carbs, and we're left with only the symptoms of that particular pathogen/disorder/whatever.
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  #4   ^
Old Sun, Jan-08-17, 09:49
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WereBear WereBear is online now
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It makes sense to me; fat monitors itself as a body system. Aren't we currently astonished at how much new research indicates our intestines do a LOT more for our immune system than we thought?
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  #5   ^
Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 03:47
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Demi Demi is offline
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Default Why are you fat? The new science of flab

Quote:
From The Times
London, UK
10 January, 2017

Why are you fat? The new science of flab

A Californian scientist who spent years struggling with her weight believes that everything we think we know is wrong


Sylvia Tara hasn’t eaten dinner for three and a half years. In fact, very little passes her lips after 3pm because she knows that managing her fat is far more complicated than the diet industry has led her to believe. For this reason, the Californian author of a new book about fat airily admits to being part of “the non-eating world”.

To many that will sound thoroughly miserable, but Tara says that she is happier than she has been in a long time. Having finally proved her life-long suspicion that her battle to stay slim “was unusually tough, always more work than it was for others”, she can confidently declare: “I control my fat, it doesn’t control me. I feel like I look good enough. I still love food, but I got control of my own fate. I won.”

Tara is not a Hollywood actress or a healthy-eating guru and she’s certainly not a fat fascist — although you will find plenty of those around hawking their books at this time of year. She is a biochemist in her late forties with a doctorate in computational chemistry and a desire to do for fat science what Oliver Sacks did for neuroscience. She hopes that her book, The Secret Life of Fat, will change perceptions of the least cherished — and least understood — part of our body.

Most of us don’t put much thought into fat except to curse it and torture ourselves about the way it sits on us, so useless and inert. However, fat is not just revolting blubber. It’s not even just an energy store. Scientists have come to believe that fat is a critical organ. It may be as important as our colon, lungs and heart. “Fat makes hormones and releases them into our system,” Tara explains. “It is a dynamic and interactive endocrine organ that has a life-or-death influence over us.”

We meet at the immaculately clean house she shares with her husband and two daughters within a large gated community in Orange County, California. This is the setting for The Real Housewives of Orange County, the stars of which have their weight carefully monitored by its producers and are booted off if they betray a hint of muffin top. Tara makes a convincing case for taking the shame out of fat. It’s not just calories in, calories out. “Metabolism is more complicated than the simple arithmetic. We have to stop the idea that obesity is just sloth and gluttony.”

Her book is the result of five years of wading through thousands of research articles and interviewing scientists at the cutting edge of fat science. It is a fascinating, disturbing and surprisingly suspenseful read. Take the case of one little girl, Layla, who had an unstoppable urge to eat. It turned out that her fat did not release leptin, the hormone that tells the brain that we don’t need more food. This was one of the first studies to show that fat can communicate with other areas of the body.

Now we know it controls our appetite, affects our emotions, supplies energy and enables the activities of other body parts. What Hippocrates termed “moistness” in the body actually exerts a powerful influence over our brain — both its size and the way it functions — as well as our immune system, our reproductive system and our bones. And since the membrane around each body cell is made of fat and cholesterol, Tara concludes that “fat holds us together”.

Yet fat will also kill us if we let it master us. America spends more on the war on fat than on the war on terrorism — $44.7 billion was budgeted for US homeland security in 2014, but about $60 billion was spent fighting fat. In the UK treating obesity-related conditions costs more than the police or fire service, according to NHS England. And fat fights back. As Tara says, it has “an uncanny, sneaky ability to control its own fate”.

For example, fat can increase our appetite if it feels threatened. Ordinarily, leptin, known as the “satiety hormone”, is our friend in the weight battle. It tells the brain when we’re full. Yet when we shed fat, it becomes more complicated. Tara says that when people lose 10 per cent of their body weight, they also lose leptin. Less fat means less leptin so their appetites “go through the roof” and their metabolism is lower.

That a dieter will become less able to control their intake and their fat cells will become more responsive to food comes as tough news for those fighting obesity. Tara describes this problem as “a killer combination”. She explains: “A person who has lost weight has to run five miles for every four miles a person who is naturally at that weight does in order to burn as many calories. If the dieter who’s achieved a new lower weight eats and exercises like a person naturally at the same weight, the dieter will put on pounds. It’s unfair.”

Still more alarming: after you lose weight, the body makes “a co-ordinated effort” to return to its known weight. “Anyone who’s reduced weight by diet or any other means tends to regain the weight with very high accuracy,” Tara says. Fat can also use our genetics against us. Certain genes have been identified that increase appetite. Bacteria can cause fat too. Depending on your microbiome (which is the genetic material of all the microbes that live on and inside our bodies), and what it’s composed of, you might be extracting a lot more calories than someone who has a different microbiome.

Fat can use stem cells to regenerate regardless of what we eat. It can even create a blood supply to promote its growth in the way tumours do, leading some obesity researchers to consider using cancer drugs to inhibit the blood vessel formation that enables fat growth. Yet what is most shocking is that fat can be enabled by common cold viruses such as adenovirus 36, the “fat virus”. One study into “infectobesity”, which followed a sample group of 1,500 air force personnel from 1995 until 2012, suggested that the ad-36 virus was prevalent in more than 20 per cent of them. Studies have shown that this virus correlates to humans having an almost four times greater risk of being overweight.

Tara admits that she is the sort of person who gains a pound if they eat a biscuit — and has to eat much less and exercise much more than her husband, an Irish-Italian who eats whatever he wants and still fits into the jeans he wore in college. Was it because she was eastern Indian, she wondered. Did it have something to do with a thrifty genotype? Was it because she was a woman? Her mother also had the same problems with weight gain and as a result would barely eat all day.

Then Tara had two children and an extra 10lb became an extra 20lb, and her weight kept creeping up. “I was trying to get my weight down and was being told I just have to eat less carbs, more paleo, exercise more, but no matter what, I would stay heavier. I got really fed up with this.” Filled with a “vengeance and fury”, Tara realised it was time to wage a very personal war. “I decided not to go on anybody else’s diet again. I had to figure out fat for myself.”

While her research has confirmed what she already knew — “we are not all created equal, at least not when it comes to fat” — she found the science that backed up her struggles was “astounding”. What’s so unfair is that we all process food differently, depending on our gender (women metabolise fat differently to men; even at birth, girl babies are heavier), genetics, race, age, hormones and bacteria.

We discuss the culture of fat-shaming and how it focuses on women — who are designed to carry more fat than men. “Donald Trump, whose medical records show he’s borderline obese, has openly ridiculed women for their weight,” Tara says. “What he doesn’t realise is that women’s subcutaneous fat is keeping them healthy. It’s a sign that their bodies are clearing fats from their blood and depositing them into fat tissue where they belong. This is much better than the sizeable visceral fat Trump carries that’s associated with risk for diabetes and heart disease.”

Tara has discovered that despite what government campaigns and fitness instructors will tell you, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to fat fighting. You need to learn how genetics, hormones, diet and exercise affect your body. However, certain strategies work across all body types. She sings the praises of vigorous exercise (such as the high-intensity interval training workouts she performs five days a week) and building muscle to increase metabolism. She also recommends seven hours of sleep to balance the hormones, drinking plenty of water and broths and eating more fibrous foods such as salads and prebiotics (found in bananas, artichokes and legumes).

Her regimen involves intermittent fasting — no food, or at least very little, between the hours of 3pm and 10am the next day. She’s at pains to stress that such an aggressive approach is not necessary for everyone, although because fasting triggers the release of fat-burning hormones, she believes it is one of the most powerful weight-loss weapons in her arsenal.

And however unfair it is that some are more prone to weight gain than others, she has little patience for those who give up the fight. “Life is not fair. Cancer is not fair, right? It’s a case of: what do you do now? Because once you’re heavy, your fat will fight back.” She tells me that her editor even managed to lose 15lb after reading her manuscript.

“What I would say to people is use whatever you can to win this battle. Whenever I have got angry about my weight, I really get on a mission. I know it’s not polite for women to say they are angry but, you know what, who cares? Use whatever emotion you have. If it’s determination, or the need for vengeance, or even if it is vanity, then don’t worry about thinking ‘this isn’t a positive trait’. Just use it.”

The skinny on fat

■ If you have excess weight, be prepared to work very hard. You will have to exhibit a high level of self-control by exercising more and eating less than a lot of the people around you if you want to make a permanent change.

■ Increase the diversity of the bacteria in your gut. Eat a lot of fibrous foods such leafy greens and prebiotics, which are found in bananas, artichokes and legumes. This will give your microbiome the tools it needs to fight fat cells. Cut down on fats and carbohydrates.

■ Fast intermittently. Your body needs a rest once in a while. In extreme circumstances, you might consider no food, or at least very little, between the hours of 3pm and 10am the next day.

■ Perform high-intensity interval training. The most effective way to reduce visceral fat is by taking up vigorous exercise for at least three days a week. Try four cycles of a 30-second all-out sprint followed by a 30-second low-intensity jog worked into a 20-minute run.

■ Build muscle. This increases your metabolism.

■ Do everything you can to maintain a healthy weight. Your fat will fight to retain its territory. Constant attacks on weight makes it stronger and more resilient so avoid yo-yo dieting.

■ Get no fewer than seven hours of sleep. This helps your hormones to rebalance and allows your satiety hormone, leptin, to replenish so you feel less hungry through the day.

■ Maintain your good habits for at least two years. Those who can keep the weight off for this long tend to conquer their fat.

■ Don’t feel guilty about weight gain. You can blame it on your genes, gender, age or the bacteria in your gut. However, you do need to get rid of it if you want to avoid an early death.



The Secret Life of Fat by Sylvia Tara (Blink Publishing)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/t...-flab-0f55df0q5
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  #6   ^
Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 08:48
WereBear's Avatar
WereBear WereBear is online now
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Quote:
Eat a lot of fibrous foods such leafy greens and prebiotics, which are found in bananas, artichokes and legumes. This will give your microbiome the tools it needs to fight fat cells. Cut down on fats and carbohydrates.


Doesn't this contradict itself? I am not impressed.

I lost 80 pounds NOT exercising. That doesn't impress me either...
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  #7   ^
Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 12:20
Bonnie OFS Bonnie OFS is offline
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While I'm with her on not eating after 3pm, I don't think she understands lchf or the benefits of exercise. I exercise, but it doesn't help my weight loss; what it does do is make me feel better & be able to do more. I don't need help anymore to shift bales of hay (tho they are the small bales!) & I lifted a 40 lb bag of chicken feed the other day. Two things I couldn't do a year ago.
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Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 13:22
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teaser teaser is offline
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Quote:
■ Maintain your good habits for at least two years. Those who can keep the weight off for this long tend to conquer their fat


Why two years? Why not ten? How is saying that those who keep the fat off for x number of years, tend to conquer their fat, actually saying anything? Also,


Quote:
In extreme circumstances, you might consider no food, or at least very little, between the hours of 3pm and 10am the next day.


makes having a five hour eating window sound um, extreme. Which for a lot of people, really isn't the case--it's often a lot easier than eating the same amount of food over a longer period of time.

The general approach sounds reasonable, even if we can come up with a nitpick for every point.
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Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 16:22
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bkloots bkloots is online now
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Quote:
We meet at the immaculately clean house
Well, this made me suspicious right away! Is she some sort of control freak??

Maybe.

Clearly she's figured things out for herself. I'm happy for her. Each one of us must do that, as there is no one-size-fits-all dietary prescription. None.

Maybe her new book will make her some money. More power to that.

Now back to our regularly-scheduled discussion of healthy low-carbohydrate eating and our N = 1 experiences. So many ideas to choose from!
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  #10   ^
Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 16:56
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cotonpal cotonpal is online now
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She makes it seem much too complicated. The science behind weight loss might be complicated but the practice of eating low carb to lose weight and optimize health is really quite simple. I'm really tired of all these newly minted weight loss gurus who act as if they have discovered the holy grail. Atkins had it figured out in the early 70's, at least the broad strokes. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?

Jean
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Old Tue, Jan-10-17, 17:01
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thud123 thud123 is offline
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Quote:
“What I would say to people is use whatever you can to win this battle. Whenever I have got angry about my weight, I really get on a mission. I know it’s not polite for women to say they are angry but, you know what, who cares? Use whatever emotion you have. If it’s determination, or the need for vengeance, or even if it is vanity, then don’t worry about thinking ‘this isn’t a positive trait’. Just use it.”

Interesting perspective. I'm finding my answers in surrender, acceptance and relaxing, not fighting or battling - that's too tiring. I'm old and lazy.

But a war might be what some people need to learn to be kind to their body.
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Old Wed, Jan-11-17, 06:44
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WereBear WereBear is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thud123
Interesting perspective. I'm finding my answers in surrender, acceptance and relaxing, not fighting or battling - that's too tiring. I'm old and lazy.

But a war might be what some people need to learn to be kind to their body.


I agree.

In fact, I think the whole emphasis on fighting and war is terribly misplaced. I did Constant Struggle for decades. It's exhausting. It's doomed to failure.

Simply eating right, as I do now, is so incredibly easy. I love easy. I can do easy all day.
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Old Wed, Jan-11-17, 07:01
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cotonpal cotonpal is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WereBear
I agree.

In fact, I think the whole emphasis on fighting and war is terribly misplaced. I did Constant Struggle for decades. It's exhausting. It's doomed to failure.

Simply eating right, as I do now, is so incredibly easy. I love easy. I can do easy all day.


Well said. No need for anger and struggle. It's all so simple. Just eat real low carb foods.

Jean
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Old Wed, Feb-01-17, 11:47
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bkloots bkloots is online now
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Got this book from the library. I appreciate the fact that she, as a biochemist, became interested in FAT as a result of her own struggle with weight gain. She explores a lot of science since the 1970s about what fat is and does as an active organ, not just storage. She explores other possible factors in weight/fat management: gut biome, genes, sex, hormones, etc.

In the last section So What is the Solution? she goes off the rails in her "How I Do It" chapter--but after all, that's what prompted her entire research project. If nothing else, she clearly shows that once obesity has occurred, losing weight and keeping it off is a lifelong challenge. One doesn't have to be as obsessed as she is about getting into the "skinny jeans." Self-torture is not a sustainable strategy for most of us.

It's a good fast read, for those perpetually hungry, like me, to know why fat-fighting is so hard. I feel heroic to have achieved any success at all for as long as I have.
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Old Wed, Feb-01-17, 16:28
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WereBear WereBear is online now
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Granted, I'm only picking up bits from this thread, but what it reminds me of are those books I used to read by the bucketload, the ones that would construct a boot camp for you. Endless discipline and eternal vigilance was the way to keep that figure!

It's not that I'm lacking in either: as a fat teen, I would bike for miles and miles. As a twenty-something, I would skip a lot of meals. As a thirty-something, I worked out 1 1/2 hours every day and kept myself to 25 grams of fat.

None of these things kept working. And without that kind of positive feedback, these schemes can't be kept up.
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