No, people who are overweight have a metabolism disorder effecting their storage and use of energy. Because of too much insulin, energy from food eaten gets stuffed in to fat cells instead of burned, all the while your other cells are starving. This causes excess hunger despite a person being overweight...they have all the energy already, but the body can't get to it due to the hormone situation. Please pick up a copy of "Good Calories Bad Calories" if you can. It explains it all.

(Congrats on getting to where you are with Atkins!)

And Kurt, you poor thing...you are surrounded by morons!

There are a lot people with the metabolism disorder, but I can't help but think that is the minority of overweight people. If that was the case (as in your born with it) why so many of the population? Is in their genes that they will become fat and not live long? Why humans? Most animals don't over eat. Animals only eat when they are hungry. Aren't humans (which are animals) supposed to do that? Make an animal a domestic pet, and they get fat. Plus overseas, you don't see so much obesity as you see now. Maybe people should act more like wild animals. Eat only when they are hungry and move most of the time.

okay, but do I hafta pee outside too?

You might want to educate yourself by reading Protein Power Lifeplan (more accessible) or Good Calories Bad Calories (more complete) about these issues. You are repeating what is put forth by the popular press and the uninformed.

Well, I think that if you are going to model yourself after a wild animal in order to lose weight then yes, you *do* hafta pee outside to get full benefit.

When given the opportunity, most animals will overeat.

It's not even necessarily a matter of overeating for the animals either.

Consider for a minute that the standard practice to increase on-the-hoof weight for farm animals is to feed them grains. Grass fed cattle beef is naturally leaner than grain fed feed not beef. They get unlimited amounts of food when they're allowed to graze in a grassy pasture - they eat constantly. When they're on the feed lot, they're given a specific amount of grains, at specific times of day, not unlimited amounts of grain. They also don't gain muscle (meat) weight on the grains, they gain fat.

Also consider: The recent trend in very lean pork products is due to the industry reducing the percentage of grains in their diet, not due to feeding them less food.

Most pet food companies now produce a reduced calorie product for pets who have become obese. Why are the pets too fat? The industry will tell you that it's from being fed from the owners' tables, given too many pet treats - in other words, eating too much. The way they're telling pet owners to help their animals lose the excess is just like what they tell people to do to lose weight: eat less, lower fat intake, exercise more. But if you look at the ingredients in dog and cat food, they're mostly grains. Pets have been fed from their owner's tables since just about forever, but they were never overweight until people started feeding them pet foods based on grains. A feral cat or dog will not be overweight, not because they're not eating enough (although they might not be), but because they're eating their natural diet whenever possible - one that's high in meat, with little to no vegetable matter.


This metabolic problem isn't unique to a very small percentage of the human population - any time you give a human or animal a diet which is composed primarily of starches and sugars when their natural diet is meat (or in the case of cattle, grass), they're going to gain weight, unless you so limit their food intake that they barely have enough calories to survive.

Can I join the club??? I got mono in highschool...it was undiagnosed for quite some time and I ended up being sick for about a year and a half.
I weighed 165 lbs. before mono...210 lbs. after mono...and it's been uphill ever since.

I don't know if it was the disease...or because I was completely inactive for so long...

Still...it would be interesting if there was a connection between mono/epstein barr/CFS and obesity.

There are 5 children in my family. All a normal weight except my brother and myself...my mother had gestational diabetes with both of us, but not my other siblings. A connection???

I think Mono screws up a LOT. My sister was a stick figure until she had mono.
Sure, we were super tired and laid around a lot, but we didn't eat like crazy... I was barely awake!

Thanks, luckily I have lots of people around me who think what I am doing is great.

Supermodel girl may one day experience weight gain, at that point I'll give her an Atkins book..

It is possible for some people to be skinny and understand obesity. But usually it is someone who has personal experience and doesn't listen to the media spin...

Domestic pets become fat because their food promotes weight gain. They are eating the same crap most typical Americans do with the same results...and increasing rate of obesity, cancer, and heart disease. Corn, wheat and rice are not what wild dogs and cats hunt. Easily digestible carbohydrates are NOT what pets OR people evolved to eat. These new substances disrupt our hormones and ability to properly use energy. Weight gain is only one symptom of a metobolic issue and not all people who eat a lot of carbs get it. There are plenty of skinny people with cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease...all diseases that only show up in a population AFTER the introduction of foods like flour, sugar, polished rice and other highly refined, carbohydrate based foods.

With smoking, some smokers develop emphysema, some get lung cancer, and some can smoke in to their 90's without losing a single breath. The people who get the disease don't get them because they are immoral, or otherwise lack character...or even necessarily because they smoked more than the non-diseased smokers.

A combination of smoking AND your genetics determines what the final outcome will be. Same thing with carbohydrates. While not everyone who indulges in them will get sick, they still aren't good for you and by using them you are taking a big risk.



Exactly!!!

I am so glad to hear I am not the only one!

It took a while with me, but I really think it was the vegetarian diet that got to me. When I started I was the guy who everyone said would never have to worry about what I ate. 150 lbs and 6'2".

But I became interested in "Health food" as a teenager (1970). I ate all the good stuff, fruit, veggies, beans, nuts, rice, grew my own food and kept bees, made organic preserves and baked my own multigrain sprouted wheat bread. I worked at a natural foods coop and had a side business growing sprouts. I taught Yoga and took Aikido, working out as much as 18 hours a week.

And got fat. I believe that the high carb diet depressed my metabolism while causing me to crave carbs. My biggest problem was the midnight bowls of home-made granola - nearly 2000 calories of dried fruit, nuts, rolled grains and honey. It took 25 years but at a certain point I started gaining and no amount of extra workouts made even a slight dent. I started getting really tired all the time, and turned up with T2 diabetes.

Now I have to put up with skinny junk food eaters lecturing me about "a life time of poor eating choices". I could spit.

Baerdrik, you aren't the only one. I did a 5 year stint as a vegetarian. By the end of it I was up to 280 lbs.

[QUOTE=kurt]It is possible for some people to be skinny and understand obesity. But usually it is someone who has personal experience and doesn't listen to the media spin...[/QUOT

My personal experience was the Atkins diet. I followed it and lost the weight. That simple. As for media spin, I saw Dr. Atkins on TV, decided to give a try. I have kept the weight off ever since. Never regained the weight or quit and restarted again. First and only diet. I'm not the only one. My husband and sister did it too. Both maintained their weight also