The FastDay Forum

The full Auntie Beeb (BBC) Horizon program

or "Eat double your calories, take no exercise and gain weight" Or do they?

Very interesting I was amazed that one man lived off his fat for 1 year and 2 weeks no food at all

Yep, and the lad who put the excess cals on as muscle not fat!

I watched this last night, it is quite upsetting that your body will always want to return to its assigned weight, whether that be fat or thin. It said that if youre destined to be fat and then you loose weight you will just feel hungry in a bid for your body to gain weight again. Which explains the years of dieting ive been through. I am hoping with everything crossed that this way of life may trick our bodies into believing we are not shrinking and reset ourselves somehow. Will be really interested to see what everyone thinks about this, and more interested in the really long term effects of this WOL on people like myself who are normally obese. Wouldnt it be amazing if this was the answer....

That was really interesting.
My first thought would have been that we determine the size of our appetites by how much we eat. If you tend to have weak willpower, you would eat more and my comparison, your stomach would get bigger & it would take more to fill it. Same as if you restricted your calorie intake (5:2) being perfect example) your stomach would shrink and it would take less to fill it.
However, it would seem that 4 weeks would be enough, and they consumed enough calories to make them put on weight and increase their appetites, but it didn't work that way... Hmm, very interesting.
Really interesting as well about the gentleman who put on weight but not visibly, I would think that would be down to genes...
Made me think a lot has that!
I always end up the same-ish weight when I am not watching what I eat.

[carorees]

I reviewed some scientific papers about the so called set point of weight in the nerdy stuff section if anyone is interested: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=395

Fascinating, thanks for posting! I don't believe the set point body weight part either. I was reading a NY Times article in which obesity researcher Dr. Carsten Chow says that obese individuals can lose the weight and keep it off, but it can take up to 3 years for the body to reset their equilibrium at the new weight and achieve what he calls a new "steady state," and most of us don't have the patience to see that through, and throw in the towel instead of persisting for the long term. I know I've struggled with that for sure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/scien ... .html?_r=0

I don't think any of us should lose hope about losing weight, be it a large or a small amount.

[carorees]

Three years? Interesting. There is certainly evidence that after losing weight the body is still trying to get you to put the weight back on after 1 year...people still felt hungry after a year of eating to maintain a lowered body weight. I think the 3 year thing gives us hope that if we can use fasting to maintain our new lowered body weight for 3 years we will be able to relax a little afterwards. I'm taking the long view!

I found this was interesting in the NY Times article:

The conventional wisdom of 3,500 calories less is what it takes to lose a pound of weight is wrong. The body changes as you lose. Interestingly, we also found that the fatter you get, the easier it is to gain weight. An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one.

And this:

Another finding: Huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. This is because a person’s body will respond slowly to the food intake.

This is why the variations in weight changes we see weekly should not be taken too seriously...an increase on the scales doesn't mean anything as long as we are eating less than TDEE overall.

Finally, this is very useful:

One of the things the numbers have shown us is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year.

People don’t wait long enough to see what they are going to stabilize at. So if you drop weight and return to your old eating habits, the time it takes to crawl back to your old weight is something like three years. To help people understand this better, we’ve posted an interactive version of our model at http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/ People can plug in their information and learn how much they’ll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose. It will also give them a rough sense of how much time it will take to reach the goal. Applied mathematics in action!

We have to take a really long view on this folks!

Fascinating. Also, curiouser and curiouser! The main result was proof that we are indeed all different, IF will react differently on each of us. The change in BMR was something I didn't expect.
Onward, ever onward. Mushroom and red onion omelette I think!

[carorees]

This reminded of two papers I reviewed back in January which many of you may not have spotted. They discuss the theories on the weight set point:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209643/
And
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 011.7/full

Thanks LastChance for posting this. Originally broadcast Mon 26 Jan 2009.

Some more on the adenovirus which is mentioned in the programme can be found here: http://www.microbemagazine.org/index.ph ... temid=1252. Why have we not heard more about this?

Thank you LastChance for posting this, very interesting. I too am surprised Dominic, thanks for the extra info!

[carorees]

Thanks for the info on adenovirus Dominic!

.

After infecting fat cells or preadipocytes in vitro, Adv36 increases the rate of differentiation and accumulation of lipid. Its major targets appear to be phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and Ras pathways, triggering an increase of glucose receptors in the cell membrane, thereby enabling cells to take up increased levels of glucose. Adv36 also increases production of fatty acid synthase (FAS), a key enzyme in the pathway in which glucose is converted to fatty acids. Increasing cellular glucose and FAS leads to increased fat within fat cells. Adv36 also induces peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR), leading to differentiation of adult stem cells within adipose tissue and resulting in higher numbers of fat cells.

It is interesting that fasting has been shown to affect all of these pathways.

Hi - thanks for posting. I have just watched your link and found it very interesting. I've never been overweight and my weight has only varied by around 2-4 kgs since I was a teenager. I'm now 58. A lot of people say that I am lucky and maybe I am. However, like the people in the experiment I find it very hard to eat a lot and feel full very quickly. I have been on the 5:2 diet for 8 weeks now and I am surprised that I have lost almost 3kg. I am really only doing the diet for the health benefits but am happy with some weight loss. I have found it very easy to follow but I think I will have to be careful not to lose too much. Pat