http://www.documentary-log.com/d208...people-not-fat/

It's a documentary that I found interesting, until I couldn't stomach it.
My Diet Buddy passed this link on to me, and it's 9 sections, all
about 9 minutes long. It says you need to download it, but I got it
to play just fine w/o downloading it.

I only know 'how it ends', because she told me. I myself couldn't watch it past the 2nd segment, as watching ppl eat like that, and all that food, turned my stomach. (maybe I should watch it again, most evenings, before supper!)

I found it interesting that in the prison study around 1965, there are actually ppl who can eat like this and NOT gain weight, even when they really really want to. (somehow that just seemed so unfair)

I watched the entire series. They ALL gained weight by the end of the experiment. But in relatively small amounts compared to the food they had been eating.

And they ALL lost the weight rapidly once they went back to their usual eating habits, without excessive exercise or any special dieting.

U really should try to endure and watch till the end....quite interesting hehe

I was referring to the prison study when I mentioned that. I thought it had been noted that not all of the inmates could gain weight, even when promised release if they would do so. Course, I could have gotten it wrong, my stomach was churning at the time!

My very best friend and I are complete opposites.

She's 5'8 and our weights have pretty much remained parallel until the last year when I packed on the pounds.

Here are our stats:

Sunny: 5'8. Weight when we met: 145 (all leg!). Present weight: 175
Me: 5'3. Weight when we met: 145. Present weight: 181

The thing is, I've been on a diet for much of the 12 years that we've known each other. She's taken a few months out of that time to push back the tide.

We've spent many hours trying to understand the differences and here are some of our observations:

- When she gets sick, she looses her appetite. I start eating like a horse, searching for energy.
- For her entire life, she's struggled to remember to eat. Until I started eating low carb, I *never* forgot a meal.
- When she's emotionally stressed, she looses her appetite. I seek out the nearest chocolate.
- She had to eat large amounts of peanut butter and milk in high school in order to get some "curves". I ballooned up to 185 in high school and had to work for two straight years to get it off.
- Both of us have struggled with chronic nausea. When that happens, she can't eat. I MUST put something on my stomach.
- Food has never been important to her. Other than peanut butter and milk (which she loves), she has no particular food that she craves. I've got a laundry list of temptation.
- Smelling food and seeing food doesn't set off a reaction unless she's gone a *very* long time without a meal and has been working hard. I get a reaction to *every* food that I smell or see. A simple commercial will set off my saliva and hunger. To her, food generally has about the same appeal as an old shoe.
- She only eats for hunger and her "STOP EATING!" signal is very strong. I eat for boredom, stress, fatigue, frustration, joy, etc. My "STOP EATING!" signal is very vague and easily overruled. More of a suggestion than an order.
- For her to feel ravenous hunger, she has to have forgotten lunch and busted her butt with very hard work before her body will give her a kick. Usually, she only eats when she gets a "vague sick" feeling that she's had to learn to interpret as a need for food. I can have just eaten a large, filling meal and I'll get a powerful urge to eat if I simply see or smell something new.


So her "eat" signal is vague and shuts off completely whenever something is "off" in her body. Her "stop eating" signal is very powerful.

My signals are completely reversed.

She's gained weight, just as I have over the years, but I've struggled to keep it off the entire time and she's pretty much just gone on with her life.

There *has* to be structural, chemical or hormonal differences in our brains, but there is a little more to that than our reactions to food.

I am *very* sensitive to carbs. If I ate what she ate, I'd be a huge. (I know. I've tried it! She eats peanut butter and milk A *lot* of peanut butter and milk. If I add 2TBSP of peanut butter a day to my diet, I'll gain weight faster than anything.)

Our brains *and* our bodies react differently to food.

They start with the argument that in times of famine, the fattest humans would survive while the leanest would die off. This logic is flawed. The fattest humans today are the slowest, weakest, sickest, stupidest, or generally least able to reproduce and care for their young. This argument is only used to support the other argument that says fat tissue is only used to provide calories in times of famine. This is also flawed. Fat tissue is used all the time as it takes in fuel during a meal and releases fuel in between meals and during sleep. We only grow fat when the balance of these two shifts toward fat accumulation.

Every time somebody says we grow fat because we eat too much food, I'm reminded that we fatten up cows by feeding them corn. If you know anything about cows, you know that corn, soy and pretty much anything but grass is not their natural food. Grass doesn't make cows fat but cows will still grow fat by eating grass but only during certain periods, i.e. they grow fat not because of the grass but because of something else. Incidentally, corn also makes us fat. Wouldn't it be logical to conclude that corn is not our natural food either? Or rather, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that anything that makes us fat is not our natural food? We don't grow fat when we eat let's say fat meat but we do grow fat when we grow pregnant or when we're being fed breast milk for example.

Ironically, the lean live longer than the fat today. Which begs the question, how can we be the descendants of the fat?

stupidest??? really??

Yes, really. But maybe you think I'm insulting people when I say that? I'm not. A priori, the brain can't function properly when it's malnourished. You think you're well nourished when what you eat makes you fat? Think again. Oh and welcome to the forum.

I watched the whole thing and the premise is overeating-causes-obesity. It tries to show that genes have some effect but only within the context of overeating. Rather, they show that those with the proper genes grow fat by overeating. To support that, they show that undereating consistently produces continuous hunger and that for somebody with the proper genes, he would have to undereat and suffer continuous hunger in order to remain lean or leaner than he is genetically programmed to be.

They talk about calorie dense foods like chocolate but what's wrong with fat? Fat is the most calorie dense food so haven't they tried to grow fat by overeating fat? And what was their result? I"m absolutely certain that they tried and just could not make somebody fatter, at least not as fat as they were trying to make them (up to 15% heavier than baseline), by overfeeding them fat. But they couldn't report such a finding. After all, it's the fat that makes us fat doncha know.

I'm about as skinny as it gets, but that doesn't mean I'm not offended by your nonsense. Plenty of fat people are intelligent, good parents, good athletes, etc.

Furthermore, have the people on this forum who have lost massive amounts of weight magically become good parents? Were they negligent before? Correlation doesn't equal causation. Many poor people are overweight, but that doesn't mean that being overweight made them poor.

My grandmother is "fat" according to the BMI, yet she is far healthier than anyone else I know that's 92. Some fat might be protective in old age.

Just because you are skinny doesn't mean you have to be a hateful jerk.

Just because you are offended doesn't give you the right to call me a hateful jerk. But maybe since you call yourself skinny it gives you the right to call somebody else, whom you believe is skinny, a hateful jerk? You assume too much.

I'm sorry that you disagree. I don't mean to offend. I think what makes us fat also makes us stupid. But you thought I meant that fat people are stupid because they can't stop overeating, right? I don't believe overeating causes obesity. I believe it's the reverse, obesity causes people to overeat.

I also believe smart fat people exist. But I doubt they exist in greater number than smart lean people. Just like I doubt that there's more healthy fat people than healthy lean people. Or more strong fat people than strong lean people. Or more fast fat people than fast lean people. Or more fertile fat people than fertile lean people. You see where this is going. On average, fat people are worse than lean people. But not because of some flaw of character. It's because whatever makes them fat, also makes them worse everywhere else. I vote for carbs.

I don't mean to offend. I mean to explain. If it still offends, then I'm sorry but that's what I think.

By the way, the statement "the lean live longer than the fat" comes from the video, not from me. I merely repeated it to contradict what the same videos said about the fat on the subject of famine. So don't attribute it to me.

Fishercat, why aren't you challenging the rest of my statement "slowest, weakest, sickest, or generally least able to reproduce and care for their young"? Fat people are athletes only in sports where being fat is an advantage like sumo wrestling and weight lifting for example. Otherwise, every other discipline gives the leanest the advantage. As for parenting, well, I think that whatever makes the parent fat will also make the child fat and I don't think that's being a good parent, do you? It still shows, in my opinion, that we are not the descendants of fat people.

Martin, I am very fat and yet I was able to raise 2 fit athletic daughters. My oldest will be attending The University of Virginia on an academic scholarship in the fall and my youngest will be a senior in high school next year and maintains over a 4.0 GPA. She also will be a 4 year varsity starter in both basketball and softball.

Thanks. Fascinating.

The experiment was very interesting, although I question some of the scientific explanations put forward to explain the seemingly inexplicable (if you don't understand metabolism and weight regulation!) results. I wish these explanations were labeled what they are: hypotheses.

Still very interesting, and demonstrated what Taubes says and what has been repeatedly stated on this forum by many posters:

Force feed a naturally lean person and he will resist gaining weight. He will do this through anorexia (and even a gag-reflex which will prevent him from eating), a raised basal metabolic rate, and an "impulse to move" (here, fidgeting). One man even added muscle during the overfeeding experiment despite the fact that the subjects weren't allowed to exercise!

Stop the force feeding, and he will effortlessly return to his previous weight.

Another experiment, briefly mentioned, demonstrated that if you underfeed obese people, their bodies reacted as if they're starving. Just like lean people they experience hunger. Surprise! Surprise!

Good for you and your children. But I was not talking about a single individual. Exceptions exist all over and you might just be one of them and your children should consider themselves lucky to have such good parents as yourself. Do you think that most fat parents have such good kids as you do then? If we consider that more and more kids are growing fatter, then I think not.

Let's go back to the original argument that the videos tried to make. The person speaking tried to show that we are the descendants of fat people because obesity gave us an advantage during famine, i.e. it allowed us to survive longer without food than if we were leaner. However, the same video also says that fat people today live shorter on average than lean people so that refutes the original premise of a survival advantage. How can this be? Well, fat people are also sicker than lean people on average. They're also slower, weaker, least able to reproduce, etc. In fact, I don't think there's a single parameter where fat people would be better than lean people on average except those things where being fatter gives a distinct advantage but those are few indeed and they do not offer a survival advantage.

Now as for my argument that fat people are also stupider, that's a function of what makes them fat, not of some character flaw. There's a few articles posted in this forum that talk about sugar and intelligence. To summarize, sugar makes us stupid. It does so first by making our brains smaller. Then by providing less fuel to our brain. Then by affecting how our brain works in a bad way. If you've heard of ketones and a ketogenic diet and autism and other brain disorders, then you probably know about all that. Sugar also makes us fat. So it's not merely a question of association, it's a question of common cause. Anyway, no matter how we look at it, growing fatter (intentionally or not) is certainly not a sign of intelligence. Unless, of course, growing fatter gives us a distinct advantage in those athletic competitions for example. Then it's the smart thing to do. If it's unintentional, then it shows that we don't know what we're doing, not smart. If it's intentional yet doesn't give us an advantage, then it's not smart either. However, that's not what I meant when I said fat people are the stupidest. I think that when given a choice, fat people just like anybody really will choose not to be fat or rather will chose to avoid what makes them fat. We must also consider that sugar is addictive. And I haven't seen a smart addict yet, have you?

Me too. I was waiting for the "carbs make you fat so those that didn't eat so many didn't grow so fat" but it never came. It was all about calories and hedonism it seems.