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I came across this video on youtube and thought I would share it- its broken into seven parts..I've linked the first four- you can go onto youtube to see the rest. It is a documentary exploring why some people gain weight while others do not ....its quite interesting.
I watched the whole thing and all I can say is that there goes the old theory of calories in, weight on. Yes these people did manage to gain weight, but none gained a significant amount and they were eating way more calories per day than your average overweight person. One guy didn't gain any fat but did gain muscle, even though he didn't exercise hardly at all.
One of the things I thought was most interesting is that they did an experiment at a preschool and fed the children a big dinner with meat and potatoes and then let them color a bit and then they brought in snack plates with dessert type stuff and let them munch or not as they preferred. Some kids pushed the plates away b/c they weren't hungry and some kids polished the cookies off and the theory is that as the toddlers did then, they will continue to do throughout life and the thin young people in the other experiment confirmed that they would have pushed the dessert away. And that's probably the biggest diff between fat people and thin people--thin people stop eating when they're not hungry. And yet there's so much more to it than that, b/c none of the thin people felt that they were using self discipline.
I have 4 girls all teenagers now. None of them are fat but the youngest one is slightly overweight and looks like it could become a problem if she does not pay attention. Watching all of them eat over the years, the youngest one has always eaten emotionally. She also finishes all the sweets when the others have pushed their plates away when they were full. She does not connect hunger with food, just emotion.
Its interesting but frustrating to watch.
man oh man some ugly experiments shown here -- Coerced prisoner experiments to make them obese, Obese beings starved for >1year or under house arrest for months on calorie restricted diets, and one involving little kids...
The main experiment was entertaining although I thought had a few flaws. I am sure the one freak case where the teen gained muscle instead of fat was probably due to him cheating and doing exercise. I think doing this experiment with all young participants doesn't really capture who is more at risk for diet induced obesity. There is also a potential problem in allowing participants to choose whatever they want to eat - there is a compound (aside from caffiene) in chocolate (which it seemed was mostly consumed by all) that may improve metabolism - not enough to prevent weight gain but slow it as compared to an equivalent calorie source.
The show was worth the time though - good stuff to think about - oh and with the toddlers -- one problem I see there is how do they determine the child is really full? There is always room for cookies!
man oh man some ugly experiments shown here -- Coerced prisoner experiments to make them obese, Obese beings starved for >1year or under house arrest for months on calorie restricted diets, and one involving little kids...
The main experiment was entertaining although I thought had a few flaws. I am sure the one freak case where the teen gained muscle instead of fat was probably due to him cheating and doing exercise. I think doing this experiment with all young participants doesn't really capture who is more at risk for diet induced obesity. There is also a potential problem in allowing participants to choose whatever they want to eat - there is a compound (aside from caffiene) in chocolate (which it seemed was mostly consumed by all) that may improve metabolism - not enough to prevent weight gain but slow it as compared to an equivalent calorie source.
The show was worth the time though - good stuff to think about - oh and with the toddlers -- one problem I see there is how do they determine the child is really full? There is always room for cookies!
Yes, the experiments were probably either flawed or there's a lot more that they're not telling us and it would be helpful to have notes or a website or something that gives more info--afterall the movie was more for entertainment purposes.
I did wonder though--were the prisoners coerced? They were offered the chance to go home sooner, but some didn't gain the weight so I wondered if the ones who didn't gain weight got to go home earlier also. A problem with that experiment is that the prisoners were all male and a helpful thing with that one is that the conditions were more controlled. Also it's true that much of the info we now have comes from experiments that were done under inhumane conditions, but I don't think that means we should toss out what we've learned from them as long as a lot of what we learned is that we shouldn't experiment under those conditions.
On the toddlers, I'm assuming that they kept on eye on things to make sure that all ate approximately the same amount of food and then they spoke with each to have each child explain that they were all full before they proceeded--I don't know that it's possible to get any more exact than that. And by your saying that there's always room for cookies--does that put you in the group that is not naturally thin? LOL. Because I've got to say that I'd have been among those who polished off the plate and I'd have been reaching for someone else's. And yes, I've pretty much always had a weight problem though what I weighed as a child and young adult would not be considered a problem today and even now I have just 30 lbs to lose, meaning it could be worse. However, I'm pretty sure I'm borderline diabetic, so this is not healthy. One of my children has more problems than I do and she has always had a bigger appetite. I used to pump my breastmilk at work and I'd always get 1-1/2 times as much with her as I got with my first child and people were telling me that I should put my infant breastfed dd on a diet!
Yes, the experiments were probably either flawed or there's a lot more that they're not telling us and it would be helpful to have notes or a website or something that gives more info--afterall the movie was more for entertainment purposes.
I did wonder though--were the prisoners coerced? They were offered the chance to go home sooner, but some didn't gain the weight so I wondered if the ones who didn't gain weight got to go home earlier also. A problem with that experiment is that the prisoners were all male and a helpful thing with that one is that the conditions were more controlled. Also it's true that much of the info we now have comes from experiments that were done under inhumane conditions, but I don't think that means we should toss out what we've learned from them as long as a lot of what we learned is that we shouldn't experiment under those conditions.
On the toddlers, I'm assuming that they kept on eye on things to make sure that all ate approximately the same amount of food and then they spoke with each to have each child explain that they were all full before they proceeded--I don't know that it's possible to get any more exact than that. And by your saying that there's always room for cookies--does that put you in the group that is not naturally thin? LOL. Because I've got to say that I'd have been among those who polished off the plate and I'd have been reaching for someone else's. And yes, I've pretty much always had a weight problem though what I weighed as a child and young adult would not be considered a problem today and even now I have just 30 lbs to lose, meaning it could be worse. However, I'm pretty sure I'm borderline diabetic, so this is not healthy. One of my children has more problems than I do and she has always had a bigger appetite. I used to pump my breastmilk at work and I'd always get 1-1/2 times as much with her as I got with my first child and people were telling me that I should put my infant breastfed dd on a diet!
In human research ethics dictates that you cannot force someone to participate in an experiment. They consider giving a reward/prize/compensation to a person in need as coercion - whether that is offering reduced sentence to a prisoner disparate to get out or money to a poor person, ect. I imagine if you ask prisoners to sign up for an experiment of miracle compound X to re-grow a chopped off limb you'd still get sign-ups to get out of jail early! The idea is the the participants must freely decide that they wish to participate. As far as using the data - that goes to the age old ethical debate of whether we can use medical data from the nazi experiments - a question for another forum
I think the child experiment is flawed. First - you can't feed them the same amount because kids eat different amounts to become full. They did ask the child if they were full - but this can have different meanings to different kids - which is more or less the question the experimenter is asking and so all they really proved was that the kids that ate the cookies just lied about being full It was a good social experiment though to show how food is forced on others either by being offered it or if everyone else at the table eats do you eat ... all the kind of office workspace stuff that leads to extra calories through cookies, donuts, cake, and more
The viewpoint of these researchers seems to be that we are all destined to have a particular weight regardless of how much we diet or exercise. I disagree with that though - I think it just seems that way because our "set weight" results from our body composition (muscle vs fat / hormone levels / muscle type composition/ and more) and it is very difficult to change this underlying composition - but I think it can be done!
Yes but the baby didn't suck the fat out of me as I'd hoped. No seriously, it's a matter of not that many calories so how can you tell if you eat more anyway? As the movie said, it's interesting that people stay within a narrow range of weights for the most part and they're trying to figure out how we do that. The fact that we do is part of the reason why it's so darn hard to lose weight--it's like trying to start a freight train cold.
I watched a show over the weekend called Freaky Eaters. It's a show about people's strange eating habits/addictions/aversions (one person might only eat potatoes, another might live off of snack cakes). A nutritionist/fitness expert and a psychologist/behaviorist are brought in to teach them what they are doing to their bodies and try to help them overhaul their diets and fitness to include more healthy foods and regular exercise.
In the episode I watched, a young woman drank 30 (non diet) cans of soda a day and appeared to eat nothing more than junk food (like snack cakes). Her daily caloric intake was well over 4000 calories and she was.....trim. Not an ounce of fat on her. Her blood work was a complete disaster but she was not overweight.
Unless she had one heck of an exercise routine going on (very doubtful), I'm not sure how she could have been burning that many calories.....
Last edited by springfieldva; 05-29-2012 at 03:43 PM..
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LOL. Because I've got to say that I'd have been among those who polished off the plate and I'd have been reaching for someone else's. And yes, I've pretty much always had a weight problem though what I weighed as a child and young adult would not be considered a problem today and even now I have just 30 lbs to lose, meaning it could be worse. However, I'm pretty sure I'm borderline diabetic, so this is not healthy. One of my children has more problems than I do and she has always had a bigger appetite. I used to pump my breastmilk at work and I'd always get 1-1/2 times as much with her as I got with my first child and people were telling me that I should put my infant breastfed dd on a diet!
No seriously, it's a matter of not that many calories so how can you tell if you eat more anyway? As the movie said, it's interesting that people stay within a narrow range of weights for the most part and they're trying to figure out how we do that. The fact that we do is part of the reason why it's so darn hard to lose weight--it's like trying to start a freight train cold.
