the advantage of tending to overweight

[miriam_e]

It is not a simple thing that determines whether someone is thin or overweight. I've always been very skinny and had felt the explanation was simple, but the more I learn, the more I understand how complicated it is.

Of course if you eat less you get thinner. That's inescapeable. But the same amount of food doesn't equal the same end-weight for different people.

Exercise burns off calories, but it is sometimes not obvious how subtle that can be. I read of an experiment years ago where the researchers were trying to find out whether it was true that two sets of people could eat the same thing, and one group would put weight on while the other didn't, regardless of exercise. They looked at people's metabolism as the commonly accused culprit. Surprisingly, they found that one group did put weight on, and the other group didn't, while exercise and metabolism seemed constant. At first they were at a loss to explain it, until one of the researchers noticed that the low weight group jiggled and fidgetted a lot. It seemed they were burning up more energy that way.

More recently other findings indicate that you can control for all external factors, and some people still put on weight while others don't. It turns out that some people have more efficient gut bacteria than the rest of us. If they eat the same volume as others then their more efficient bacteria convert more of the food for them and they more easily get fat. These people have a major advantage over thin people like me. Unfortunately society has turned that into a disadvantage by duping them into eating too much so their great asset becomes a health risk, shortening their lives instead of letting them live more cheaply and efficiently.

Weird huh?

I hate having to eat. I truly wish I could get away with eating just once a day instead of the twice I currently do. It would be very cool to have super-efficient gut bacteria.

Comments

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

I hate having to eat. I truly wish I could get away with eating just once a day instead of the twice I currently do. It would be very cool to have super-efficient gut bacteria.

Interesting. Do you mean you hate the necessity of having to supply your body with external sources of energy and building materials, or that you hate the act of actually eating a meal, or what?

I think it must be my tendency toward oral-fixation, but I like eating. I find the idea of not having the comfort of cooking and eating mildly horrifying myself. I physically enjoy the eating, and the sensation of a warm full tummy. I also enjoy the ritual and the social apsects of food as well. Much as I think the world collectively would be much better of if humans could photosynthesise as an abstraction, I'm a creature firmly attached to my desires and appetites as well. To lose that would be depressing for me...

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I hate having to stop what I'm doing, to make time in my day to refuel. It feels like an imposition. I have a number of favorite foods (mostly fruits) but don't like having to eat even them. I am an incredibly slow eater which only heightens my annoyance at losing all that time.

I feel the same way about sleeping, washing, shitting too. I would be delighted to be a non-corporeal being who could spend 100% of their time just thinking and learning. Though I just know it would turn around and bite me, because I'd miss not being able to taste mangos or guavas or raspberries. The irony.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Not enjoying eating would certainly explain why you're so thin. Most people enjoy eating, which is part of why it's easy to do too much of it. Another part is that as adults we lose the ability to tell whether we are full or not, even though we have it as babies.

It's perhaps not too surprising how little is said about some of the differences between people, probably because most finance goes into diets and drugs and those industries want to pretend that their product will work for everyone.

Apart from digestive differences, there are also issues such as nonshivering thermogenesis. Adults who've retained brown adipose tissue along their spines can burn energy off that way, but it's hard to find any actual studies about it.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I rarely feel hungry, but my satiety alarm rings fairly easily.

The brown fat thing is a neat point. Young animals have it to protect against cold, to generate heat. I wonder what sort of variability there is among humans in retaining it into adulthood.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm wondering. Various papers say it is (or is thought to be) insignificant in adults, but don't say whether this is universally true or just true enough for their purposes.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

And I wonder if it can be altered. I recall some work a while back done by researchers in the Antarctic, where they exposed themselves to extreme cold for short times each day (10 minutes I think). They found that after some weeks of this, their body changed in the way it dealt with cold, and they were able to be more comfortable in cold environments than their colleages. I seem to remember the effect lasting about 6 months. I always thought this sounded like a physiological change rather than a metabolic one. I wonder if the type of fat had any bearing. And I wonder how you'd find out. It's kinda impractical to cut someone open to check out their fat. Biopsies are not a great solution either, because it may change preferentially in certain places in the body. The poor subject would end up feeling like a pin-cushion.

[qu-is.livejournal.com]

Very interesting.
I've always been thin - and, despite some concerted efforts in the past to put on weight due to being teased and drawing too much attention, I am still thin. I guess for my height I just scrape into my healthy weight range - on a good day. Still, it doesn't seem to be effected by how much I eat - I love to eat, and will eat whenever I'm hungry. I can only ever eat up to a point though: when I'm full, I full. End of story.
So with that, possibly a fast metabolism? the fact that I fidget, maybe something genetic (my family are all average to thin and my paternal aunt has similar problems with me in regard to putting on weight) and my stress levels - Perhaps I am just burning more energy then I can physically consume.
I'm told I'll be able to put weight on more easily as I get older (i'm 24) and that I should just enjoy my thinness while I've got it. Which I do. I like being thin, I'd just like more control I guess.

I've lived with people who have the opposite problem and no matter what they do, how healthy they are and how much exercise they put them selves through, they are unable to drop below a certain weight. All that stress and discipline maintains their minimum weight but they are unable to change the minimum.

It would make sense to me if there were more factors involved then food and exercise/

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

My family is like yours; we are all thin. We are also fairly nervous, and many of us fidget.

I've been a bit sick for the last month (nothing serious) and because I'm tired so much I've been putting on some weight -- not burning off the same amount of energy I normally do.

[(Anonymous)]

Always comes down to energy.

Hope your feeling better soon.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks.