The thing that strikes me after reading this thread is that if you look at people who have had any of the weight loss surgeries... they always maintain a somewhat heavier appearance. And not just in their excess skin. Even in their faces. It's hard to put your finger on. At first I thought it was because you remember them heavier. But I've met people who I didn't know before their surgery who have that same appearance.

I'd love to hear more about this as research is done. The way it reads it almost sounds like the only way to maintain a loss successfully is to have the fat cells removed.

OM,
I'm happy you have come to terms with having obesity and the fact that you will likely never naturally be not obese. I don't know if I could make that same decision to accept my size.

If we assume adiposity 101 is correct, that means once someone has become obese/overweight rapidly (like say, because of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia caused by low fat dieting, junk food eating, binging, compulsive eating, pregnancy, etc), filled up fat cells and created lots of new ones, it means that in order to be "healthy" they will always have to be obese (or a higher weight than they used to be at the very least), since being normal weight means artifically reducing food intake/energy output so as to create a continuous state of semi-starvation.

I honestly have very little doubt I could, forever, under eat and maintain my lean weight. That's not the issue I'm concerned about. WHat I'm concerned about is that my metabolism will NEVER recover, I'll never get my period back, that I'll always wake up in the morning FREEZING and complaining about the frigid weather, meanwhile my mom looks at me like I"m crazy and tells me what a lovely 65 degree day it is... I'm afraid my nails will never grow fast and strong again, my hair won't grow back thick and fully, my upper body will always look sickly and emaciated (because the truth is, I AM emaciated even if high-fat concentrated areas "look normal" due to the high density of fat-depleted cells)... I'm afraid I'll get osteoporosis ...

You get the idea.
Granted I am a touch underweight even when compared to "normal" people but I've had some degree of these problems even when I was 140, 130, 120 pounds. Those - 140, 130 - are heavy weights for my body.

I don't doubt for a moment that it is possible to suppress obesity by under eating and over exercising. You can't fill a fat cell with air. I also don't doubt it is possible to PREVENT obesity by eating low carb from childhood (oh how I wish I could have got a hold of my parents then). It's the hyperinsulinemia that causes the over eating weight gain and fat cell creation which is responsible for most people.

I am worried that making an attempt to suppress obesity - ONCE YOU'VE HAD IT - is, internally, basically putting your body through something similar to what anorexics do. You are artificially and unhealthfully shrinking fat cells below normal size, which causes fat cells to send signals/chemicals which create a state of "starvation symptoms" that causes permanent slow downs and loss of health. This occurs even if the slim obese person's weight is only "normal" because for an obese person "normal weight" is actually "underweight" due to having so many fat cells.

This is my biggest fear/concern... I'll never be ideally healthy unless I resign to stop controlling calories/energy intake, continue to eat very low carb and control blood sugar, and just let myself gain until I naturally plateau as that is my natural weight.

I borrowed that book from the library recently. Just wanted to note ... Fletcher doesn't say that low-carb doesn't work for long term success. It's just that there were no low-carbers included in her survey(s). Participants were solicited from health clubs and organisations such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, TOPS, Overeaters Anonymous, and Nutrisystem. Her references are based on the eat less/exercise more school of thought. Insulin resistance is not addressed, nor is the role of insulin discussed in relation to hunger or metabolism.

Nonetheless, the success stories of real people who've lost a lot of weight - and kept it off - are motivating, and the book is filled with great tips for sticking with it no matter what diet you're following.


Doreen

Every symptom you've described there is also one of hypothyroid. Are you sure you're ok in that regard? Of course, dieting does things to the thyroid, but it should be restored once you stop dieting.

My first impression is that this guy, that wrote the article, that he is full of hot air. Someone please deflate him.

My five cents worth....

You know, the point about this being a compounded result, with some 'environmental' or other issue (that K Walt made), is really the gigantic key here.

Genetically we really aren't any different than we were back then.

Long ago someone was showing me stats... you can track, on a graph, the rise in obesity and heart disease and cancer *directly* with the rise in processed grains, and a fairly gigantic jump and continuance upward with the introduction of diet soda and fast food into the mainstream.

But it's even an issue of 'real' food. An orange 11,000 years ago was generally a fraction of the size of today and MUCH lower in sugar. The last 10,000 years has seen a massive emphasis on 'breeding' agriculture to the highest point of size and sugar possible. And the nutrients... today the 'assumed' nutrients for stuff you buy in the store is probably way, way over anything the overchemical'd produce truly have. Not to mention that 11,000 years ago, people didn't have access to massive quantities of this stuff on a daily basis year round like we have the last 50 years.

It is generally starting around the 1950's and growing--exponentially--since, that society started having real problems with all degrees of obesity.

If there were a roadway/onramp to a highway, which had some problems on occasion, back in the 1950's it would be a fairly rare but occasional issue. In 1999 when the speed was much higher, the cars were much weaker, and the volume was like 50x times over, it would be a massive problem.

I think the genetic thing is a response to carbs, which throughout time probably made very rare people 20lbs heavier and better able to withstand winter and illness. Maybe one in a thousand, who knows--and probably more had the gene, just didn't encounter sufficient carb-stress to make it a problem for them (these things seem to come in degrees, not either/or, as Woo pointed out in a previous post).

But that was when food itself was relatively normal. The last few centuries, with the gradual increase in carbs in 'real' foods, and the last few hundred years the increase in foods like potatoes in the standard diet etc., maybe the "number and degree" of people that pass some internal tolerance point and begin responding (like by IR, mild or severe), has increased. Even if increased to only 2 per 100 that would be a 20x increase over the previous time.

And then we have the last half-century, during which tons of packaged foods, semi-artificial foods, fast-foods, and sugar-laden drinks exploded onto the scene of our culture. And we're still walking in genetics that were adapted for whatever the world was 15,000 years ago. Except we're ingesting more carbs in a "normal" day of eating in our culture than they probably did in two weeks.

What's a "healthy" dinner in the "norm" of our culture? There are more carbs in a dinner with roast beef and gravy, potatoes, carrots, corn, and some bread (and cow's milk? sweetened ice tea?), -- think about how many carbs that meal has, especially when eaten in quantity. (Which is partly cultural I think, and partly a physiological response to the problems we're talking about.)

There is no way that a body that regulates insulin based on a world of 15,000 years ago is going to be indefinitely OK with the massive flood of carbs and sugars (and profoundly depleted nutrients in all veggies, fruits and meats) that are now the "norm".

And what might have been an issue inherent in plenty of genetics, but really not stressed enough to begin displaying effects but in a few, has grown over time -- and in the last 50 years, has grown by several orders of magnitude. What changed? Human genetics don't change THAT much and certainly not in 50 years! (Well. Issues like vaccinations, pesticides, herbicides, groundwater problems, and other things we ingest *might* actually be causing genetic change, mutations and problems of a sort, throughout our world. They would be small enough that we would probably not know it [like the Romans and the lead]. But that is a different and even more depressing topic LOL!)

What has changed is our food. Look at the advertising for vegetable seeds even for market (commercial) purposes in 1910. Today, those seeds still exist. Their product are generally much smaller, much less sweet, than the New Advanced Super Ultra Hybrid Sugar Corn (etc. etc.) that is grown today and sold in the supermarket. The whole issue of seeds is another issue that is so big and frankly disenheartening I won't get into it here. ;-) (Groundwater, the medical system, there are lots of such topics!)

A genetic tendency that may even have been present in nearly everybody, or in fact in everybody but to varying "degrees", would make some kind of sense. If insulin response is the thing affected and at issue, it's reasonable that this would have increased as the carb-sugar component of the human diet increased. It's just that it has increased so drastically the last 50 years.

And there may be more than one factor, of course, which could compound the problem of trying to nail down why 'some do and some don't'.

The problem seems to be that the world our bodies live in, is not the world our bodies genetically adapted to. The body is brilliant and works wonderfully -- for a world we don't know. I guess. (Like anybody REALLY knows. But I can theorize.)

OM

K Walt,
I think that adiposity 101 was basically trying to say this...

1) Obesity is a symptom of some kind of problem

2) The most common form of obesity - the one that makes up the bulk of the "epidemic" - is a genetic disease that manifests in response to environmental triggers. Those triggers are hyperinsulinemia from highly processed, junk food, sugar/ carbohydrate diets and to a lesser degree sedentary lifestyle (which exacerbates the situation but reallyd oesn't cause it).
The carbohydrate causes a viscious disruption in the endocrine system, which leads to elevated insulin, rapid fat building & over eating, and due to necessity of the fat building & over eating rapid creation of new white storage fat cells. This (the creation of new fat cells) is especially true if the obesity onset was extreme/rapid and during youth. In a nutshell, "true obesity" can be said to be an abnormal amount of fat cells.

3) If you have the genetic tendency to develop carbohydrate sensitivity related obesity, once that genetic tendency has been manifest, that is to say once you have been in the throes of uncontrolled hyperinsulinemia, over eating, and obesity... you are now a heavy weight naturally. Controlling hyperinsulinemia by low carb diet will only STOP the endocrine dysruption and weight gain cycle, and it will to some degree reverse it (since fat cells typically EXPAND to large size before they are newly created, it is possible to "shrink" those plump old cells down to a normal size, thus partial reduction of obesity is possible). But low carb diet can never undo obesity, once it's happened, completely because low carb diet cannot cause the body to destroy those fat cells that were created to accomodate the previous obesity-causing diet.
This would explain why almost all morbidly obese people on low carb diets naturally tend to plateau at a conventionally overweight or even obese weight, unless they make additional measures to manipulate caloric intake even on a low carb diet. By manipulating caloric intake they are artificially shrinking fat cells to a smaller size, mimicing fat cell number reduction, at the cost of greater health and well being (physically and sadly often emotionally).

Yes, I agree.
Naturally thin people don't have the genetic sensitivity/susceptability to develop the obese condition. They become full and satisfied even when eating crap that would have me shaking with hypoglycemia in hours. They "eat whatever they want" but because "whatever they want" - macdonalds, sugar, chinese you name it - doesn't cause problems in the endocrine system, "whatever they want" by happenstance means "a normal amount of food".

If I eat "whatever I want" my body goes to crap in short order, my hunger signals and satiety signals go bezerk, my capacity to use fat and sugar likewise... you get the idea.

In this sense, obesity is a genetic condition. It is one that is ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE if intervention occurs BEFORE it is onset, but once it's happened you are never naturally going to be thin. Like I said, it's likely a partial reduction of obesity is possible if one is careful to control their blood sugar and avoid hyperinsulinemic triggers - the weight gain cycle will stop, fat cells that are over plump will shrink to normal as the body uses that energy. However, the new fat cells that were created during the weight gain cycle, those need to stay adequately filled if health is to be maintained. Ergo, the reason low carb diet is usually only partially effective at reducing obesity, and to "make it to goal" we have to use conscious control of food intake.

I had always hoped the body just needed to "adapt" to the new low weight and health would recover to mirror a naturally thin person, but now I am starting to see this is probably not very likely. After restriction health will rebound somewhat and metabolism will increase but if your fat cells are shrunk below normal, you will always bee in "starvation mode" until you let go and allow your body to sit at its "natural weight" (while still eating low carb, of course, as gaining weight in response to hyperinsulinemia is not the same thing as gaining weight on low carb to fill depleted - starved - fat cells).

1) Many of those thin people were not eating the diets and living lifestyles that trigger carbohydrate sensitivity related obesity. Certainly many of them had the genetic potential for it, but they didn't have the "trigger" part. Tiny glasses of soda, small portions of food, more veggies, more fat and meat, WAY less sugars, more balanced meals, more physical work - these things kept that disease from ever manifesting.

2) Our gene pool did change. Racially we are different than we were then. The truth is, an overwhelming majority of those who develop syndrome x style obesity are not northern europeans. Certainly the tendency exists but it exists at a way higher rate in cultures that are not as adapted to a grain based diet - indigenous people to the americas, african americans, etc. The hispanic population (many of whom genetically are indigenous americans) has not only increased dramatically but also has mixed with the european population. The result of this is that the genetic tendency to syndrome x related obesity (intolerance to plant/sugar diets) has proliferated in america at the same time dietary intake of simple sugars and starches and huge portions/unbalanced meals of such (the absolute worst combination) has also increased. Result? Obesity epidemic.

Either way, once obesity has happened, its there for life. It' like this. If you used to be a heroin addict, you can stop the cycle of addiction and you can get clean... but you'll always have those scars on your arms, your neurochemical receptors will always be abnormal. So it is with obesity.

Those who had the tendency to develop it did not because diet and lifestyle never allowed it.
But once it's happened, it's happened. Partial reduction is possible if the cells are "over fat" because of weight gain spiral. Full reduction to normal weight is likely not possible.
You can raise a set point (i.e. create new fat cells). You cannot lower it.

I've wondered (hoped) this myself, but I really have no idea if it's true. The uneven look has gotten better but I've also gained a few pounds so I don't know if its the weight gain or the "redistribution of fat" that is responsible. Likely it's both.

It's said the body loses fat in a top down fashion, and therefore recent weight loss makes the face/upper body look emaciated while the lower body normal... the body then redistributes fat bottom-up to correct the problem. So eventually the goal is that the body's fat stores are evenly distributed among all fat cells.

But for massively obese people who have gotten to truly thin/normal weights, it is likely true that the problem will never be completely overcome because their fat stores are insufficient to fill all fat cells to an adequate level without gaining weight. Upper body will always look thinner, lower body (or wherever high-fat areas were) always bigger, unless they remove those extra fat cells (and thus, once those fat cells are removed, they can gain weight and have more "fat to redistribute" to the fat cells that are left, giving a more even apperance and better health). It is likely very important to get that reconstructive surgery, post obesity, and to get it when not very "emaciated" (this will allow the surgeon to remove as many fat cells as possible, giving you "more room" to fill up those fat cells that are left with fat ... the result would be a more ideal apperance with far less starvation symptoms/intake suppression). It is probably not a good idea to get the surgery at a weight that is very artificially low, because he would remove less fat than he otherwise would and thus more very atrophied fat cells would be left behind.

The body does not create new muscles in response to exercise, old muscles that are weak and atrophied are built up and strengthened. They become more fiberous and stronger. This is similar to how when you over eat, you fill up your fat cells and make them bigger.

But unlike with muscles, your body CAN create NEW fat cells to accomidate rapid growth (hyperinsulinemia triggered over eating, binge eating compulsive eating pregnancy rebound eating from starvation etc).

Your body cannot create new bones, new muscles, etc. Bones and muscles can become thicker and stronger or weak and more frail, just as fat cells can be full and plump when over eating and small and empty when under eating. Unlike muscles and bones the body CAN create new white fat cells, unfortunately, and once these are created they are there, forever.

Higher "normal weight" is a remnant of hyperinsulinemia I must wear like a scar, if I am to be normal and healthy, it seems.

I doubt as well. I was over eating, my fat cells were likely over-fat and plump. 300 was an artificially high weight caused by the weight gain cycle I was in because of carbohydrate.

But it is very likely my body wants to be "overweight" because the previous over eating (during childhood/youth mind you, when fat cells are most easily created), created lots of new fat cells.

Up until fairly recently, it was also a "fact" that neural tissue, once damaged, was gone for good with no hope of new neural tissue growth. In the past few years, data has emerged that indicates that's a gross oversimplification.

"Fat cells never go away" reeks of that same sort of oversimplification.

I also tend to be a bit suspicious of a huge "scientific" literature survey when it is self published on a non-scientific website. There are enough conflicting or ambiguous journal articles in print in the world that anyone can gather up a few hundred and put together a persuasive essay to "back up" almost any personal view. You can find equally good "scientific" essays discussing the "scientific truth" surrounding Bigfoot, alien abduction, get rich quick plans, or any popular conspiracy of the moment. Just because someone else believes in what they are writing, has collected numerous references sharing the same views, and has written pages and pages of text doesn't neccesarily mean their conclusions are valid or accurate.

In the long run, I think my ability to maintain a weight loss has a lot more to do with my daily behaviors and actions than it has to do with someone else's grand unifying theory of adiposity - so I'll just stick to foolishly keeping my weight off and not assume that it's a fruitless endeavor.

Lynda

At least you are not creating new fat cells anymore. Even when you "fall off the wagon" and gain 15 pounds you are just filling your existing cells. If you stick to low carb, you will not gain the weight back. I have had an under 25 BMI for over 2 years and I don't actually care if I ever reach 161.

That you are ignoring the insulin and cholesterol improvements in your body and focusing on this fat issue is very sad. You are fully aware that you have reversed your insulin-resistance problems that most certainly would have shortened your life and caused significant ill health. Implying you would be healthier being obese with full fat cells then thin with empty fat cells is absurd given all the other factors. Sure your not has healthy as never having been obese in the first place, but hey that's life.

Why do you suppose not reaching a "target" weight considered a plateau or a stall? Why is it not a new (and lower) set point, perhaps a healthy weight? Hopefully, this information will show us that being thin is not as healthy a target as we might have thought.

Okay, Woo . . . so if I understand your concerns:

- Once one has eaten one's way to obesity, you are 'obese' forever, and will never be otherwise, even if you lose 'weight'.

- Those fat cells -- those formerly plump cells -- and those new 'extra' ones created by overeating bad foods, will remain forever, calling incessantly and eternally for food.

Will this extra adipose ever resorb if kept empty? Who knows. No one has researched this as far as I know. Maybe you'll be the first case to find out.

But here's what's odd: The symptoms you report about feeling deprived and starved at a so-called normal weight — after being heavy — reminded me very much of a piece I read about research on 'normal weight' people subjected to very low calorie diets. (Actually done by Ancel Keys at Minnesota.) Once starved, they could rarely resume a normal relationship with food again. But this occurred not after obesity, but after DIETING.

Here's the link.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/113004E.html

Oh god, Ancel Keys was the guy responsible for the Mediterranian Diet myth and low-fat mania.

Hey, I've found something that is a little cheerful about the fat cell thing.

http://www.wmdt.com/diet/previous-diet.asp?id=178

I agree with Nancy -- everything Woo has said about her personal symptoms scream thyroid disorder -- especially after all I've been reading about that lately. Have you had your thyroid checked?

I first read Adiposity 101 about 6 years ago, about when I gave up dieting entirely. All in all its fairly depressing from a dieters stand point, but since I've had years to think about it, I do have some thoughts. I find the piece skewed towards a positive view of low carb. I have never investigated if this is a function of all available data, or a bias of the author.

1. While it is true you can 'prove' anything if you scout hard enough for evidence, it is my opinion that the author used quotes pulled from highly respected journals almost exclusively.

Most of the science available to the writer of Adiposity 101 was based on low fat or low calorie research. The only encouraging parts of the whole thing are those places where low carb is mentioned.

2.The National Weight Control Registry still exists. They keep track of people who have lost more than 30 lbs and kept it off for 3 or more years. According to the website they have 4500 (edited to change that number) members, which I don’t personally think is a great statistic considering they’ve been around for 12 years and I don’t know what kind of follow up they do on long term members. They have a page that lists articles based on findings from this database.

3.Thoretically, low carb diets are adequate calorie guided by natural appetite without the additional hunger response encouraged by insulin fluxuations. They are also supposed to be adequate protein, therefore muscle sparing. I know when we come here, most of us are dedicated to losing all the weight now, soonest. For many, the answer is to continually cut calories in order to continue losing. It would be very interesting to know if, after a period of loss, a stall would eventually break by changing nothing at all, but only giving the body it’s definition of ‘enough’ time to adjust to the loss. By keeping calories high, theoretically many of the rebound effects of dieting could be eliminated.

4. In the long term, fat cells can not be replenished in sufficient absence of insulin. That’s why low carbing must be considered a life style change rather than a diet. If you maintain a controlled carb lifestyle, then those out of work fat cells won’t be able to replenish. Adding fat requires insulin that isn’t already busy doing basic maintenance like making hormones and replenishing muscle glucose.

I agree. I find it irritating that it's my problem, but not really demoralizing. I already went through my insane battle against such ideas 15 years ago.

I don't think people (at least those I know) use genetics as an 'excuse' for their fat. Some things are simply obvious for comment (as much as that a family is inclined to diabetes or being tall, for example). Most the people I know actually do NOT think it's genetics, because if they did, they might realize that a lifetime eating plan such as lowcarb offers is going to be necessary if they don't want to end up gargantuan and diabetic.

I don't feel demoralized thinking something might be body-based, because that it is a physiological thing one needs to intelligently deal with, not only a behavioral thing--is empowering, personally. To me that makes it more like a business situation I am proactively dealing with, than a personal guilt situation of something I am failing to live up to.

The reason I think it is relevent is because in my mind, over the last 3.5 years since I encountered lowcarb and realized that yes, even MY family could lose weight on this eating plan, the logical side of me has constantly argued, "It is bull___ to think that people have to eat in some weird way in order to be normal. You ought to be able to eat normal foods and be normal! Persons A-Z eat normal foods and THEY are normal! No calorie or carb-counting avoid-xyz eating plan ought to be required. Just eat real food, in realistic proportions, and the problem should take care of itself."

As long as I railed against the injustice of HAVING to eat lowcarb in order to *stay at whatever weight I was* -- let alone lose weight! -- I didn't do it. I didn't want to believe it was necessary. I wanted to believe that eating out less often, controlling portions (which when your body demands caloric intake to match body weight, is a variable issue!), "ought" to be enough. But I can match food intake with a friend who has about the same amount of physical activity I have--yet weighs far less--and I don't lose weight. Only on lowcarb do I actually lose weight.

My theory about real food in real portions didn't work. At all. I haven't lost any weight on that theory and I continue to slowly gain it. On lowcarb, I hope to lose weight, certainly. But an equally important issue is just *not gaining any more of it*.

15,000 years ago we didn't drink cow's milk like we do now. We didn't eat processed grains then. A bowl of cereal is a carb dose they probably only saw at harvest time (shortly before the lean winter!). Not to mention the caseine.

My friend just pointed out to me that since his kid went off breast milk he's fed it formula and juices. As kids we remember drinking unbelievable quantities of apple and grape and orange juice. This stuff was not easily available, let alone in such quantity, let alone year round, 3/4 of a century ago. Yet look at the mass dose of carbs this gives children -- often in a bottle.

I don't think it's something wrong with the body. I think it's something wrong with our food. I don't think that I was born with the issue (e.g., I don't think "I was destined to be fat"), rather, I think that along the way a built-in genetic 'adaptation' to DEAL WITH way too many carbs (at once and ongoing) kicked in, due to overtaxing of the insulin system.

I wanted to deny for the last 3.5 years that it's something inherent to the body -- I've wanted to believe that all bodies are 'normal' and if I just eat less I'll surely lose weight. Being able to accept that for whatever reason, this is how many body now inherent WORKS -- but thankfully, I have the answer! -- helps me to deal with the idea of lowcarb as a lifetime way of eating rather than a diet.

I think there is one gaping science hole in this issue though. I don't think very much research has been done on whether a person, losing a great deal of fat, and maintaining a low-carb lifestyle, can "recover" some of their insulin response to some degree.

I don't know if any research at all has been done on how, specifically, to rid the body of fat cells (aside from small areas via invasive surgery). The problem is that losing weight only empties them, not removes them, and certain body-states help them multiply vastly faster. Even something that 'displaced' fat cells into one general part of the body (where then something like liposuction could be more useful) would be invaluable.

I have known people who lost a great deal of weight (70-130lbs). It is true that after losing it, there were various offbeat things about them--the way and where they stored what fat they had, the haggard look (skin not shrinking on the face can relate to that too), and the weird ability for them to seem a normal size yet give off the impression they are unhealthily starving. (I might add this normally seems much less with lowcarb weight losses than lowcal weight losses. Probably the fat affecting skin tone, etc.) But a few years later they seemed to me to have 'adjusted'. Sort of... 'normalized' you might say. Probably nothing in the raw changed, but their body fat 'distribution' seemed to even out more, they didn't have the same strained look, etc. I know that science attests they still have all those fat cells and may have to remain on the 'eating plan' that lost them their weight pretty much indefinitely to keep it off. I have no idea whether, say, their insulin resistance was improved, or anything biochemical. I only know that the impression I had of them when they finished losing their weight, was very poor compared to the impression I had of them a few years later.

So Woo, the answer is yes on the "does anybody lose the weight and keep it off" question -- sure. Hell if I hadn't seen people do it I'm not sure I'd believe losing even half my extra weight were possible. The one thing that seems to obliterate all the good of a diet is that it's temporary. All the people I know who were eating low carb for example, and went off that when they were "done" because they figured then it shouldn't matter any more, gained weight. The amount varied. But they did.

The ones who kept it off at least 'appeared' visually more healthy after time had passed. I don't think that adiposity article implies that one will be unhealthy for all eternity. I think it implies that the conditions that made a person fat do not change just because the fat cells empty; and that the eating plan that loses the person's fat probably needs to be maintained (though perhaps adjusted) indefinitely.

Which is essentially what Atkins and the others have said all along. That if a person needs lowcarb in order to lose weight, it needs to be an eating plan for life as opposed to a temporary diet--because the body is simply geared for gaining weight--and one reason might be IR (etc.) but another might be 'those empty fat cells waiting to be filled'.

Even if those empty cells do cause a cellular level of 'stress', comparatively, that's nothing next to the level of body stress being obese causes.

Woo I don't think it implies that you're never going to flesh out more equally or whatever. I think inferring that is putting a little more into the doc than is there, though I can see why the worries come up.

If the basics of the body in many other regards hold true, a lot of this is a matter of time; a matter of the entire body adapting. I think the body considers one still in the process of change, until they work on eating at a level where they stay the same weight for some time. Aside from resisting change, it's possible the body doesn't do a lot to 'adjust' until there is some sense of stability or homeostasis. (Just like you don't arrange your cupboards or furniture when you're moving in two days, because things are changing. You wait till things settle, and when they seem stable, then you can go mix it up as you desire.)

When the body is in change it is in 'survival' mode. I think when weight becomes stable and is held fairly steady over a decent period of time (whatever that is), the body may do more 'inner adaptation' to its circumstance at that point. Or not--I don't know--but that would seem consistent with how the body and the psychology both deal with other things.

OM

I agree.
I would never give up trying to be normal weight, but I like to consider all my options you know. Even though it is highly likely I will never just do "pure low carb" and not control calories (and thus, gain weight to a heavy size) I would like to know what the consequences of my decision might be.

If one has sugar issues and does juts regular straight forward low carb they WILL stop the weight gain cycle, and they may even reverse some of it. But, if adiposity 101 is on to something, it's highly unlikely for morbidly obese individuals that they can ever be "thin" while also being ideally healthy. It certainly is POSSIBLE for a morbidly obese person to be thin (hi, nice to meet you ).
Is it possible to be "naturally thin" meaning, just as healthy at a non-overweight thin size as they would be at their "natural weight" (natural weight is defined as the weight your body settles at when out of the weight-gain cycle of carbs - just where you "sit" when eating fats and proteins)? I have no idea. I certainly hope that it's possible for the body to adapt to a smaller weight, to destroy old fat cells somehow ... I must admit that logically it doesn't seem very likely.