Commentor Tara had the following feed-back regarding my last post:
I am confused. Your body probrably has hundreds of thousands of Calories stored as fat, so why would it keep telling you that it needs more and doesn’t have enough? Is your body broken. One would assume that if your body was in need of calories it would simply take them from its reserves. Your argument is that your body has stored tons of calories it has no intention of ever using. Why is that? A “smart” body wouldn’t expend energy hauling around the extra mass that it never intends to make use of? It would be like a car having 10 full fuel tanks but only ever using 1 and then, instead of tapping the other 9, requireing you to fill up that one tank over and over again.
Rather than leaving it to the comments section, I am giving this its own post, because this is a common question that I am sure many people (who are not vets of the fatosphere) have. Plus, I love conversation. As long as challenges, questions, etc… stay respectful and as long as I have the energy for it, I’m good with writing some Fatosphere and/or HAES 101 stuff, as the topics arise.
Tara, I will try to answer your questions.
Is my body broken? Well, that depends on how you look at it. 😉 Years of constant dieting has injured it in many ways. My body has been through so many famines (created by me) that it is trying to protect itself from future food shortages. You see, our bodies were not designed for the world many of us are used to in the US. Evolution is a very, very, very slow process. Our bodies evolved to survive an environment where food shortages were far more common. Lack of technology as a caveman, midieval person or even Victorian brit created a much more difficult life. In those environments, it was beneficial for a body to be able to hold onto fat for the sake of survival. The advances that have allowed for the food glut that most of us experience today is a very recent development in terms of evolution. Sure, I was born into a food glut. There was never a shortage in my home and I am 30-years-old. However, my grandparents and great-grandparents did experience food shortages – that is how recent they were happening in my family. However, even today there are still food shortages in some parts of the world, so that metabolisms that slow in response to famine (real or created) and hence a body that holds onto fat is still valuable for survival today.
So, is my body really broken? No. It is doing what it was designed to do – survive famine, so it socks away whatever it can, if it “thinks” there may be a famine (read: diet).
Beyond all this, scientific data backs me up. 95-99% of people who diet gain all the weight back within five years. Many (if not most) gain back more than they lost – hence the phrase I throw around a lot – dieting to obesity.
In addition, while I have been running around in a cat vetrinary emergency, FillyJonk read the study and posted some very interesting details… to fatosphere vets, it is the same old science stuff we always read that says diets don’t work. For newbies, this could be an eye-opener.
Some bits and bobs that I paricularly found interesting about this study, originally posted by FillyJonk at Shapely Prose:
– About half the study participants of the study weighed MORE at the end of the study than they did at the beginning of the study. Yes, even when it’s a scientific study, diets cause weight gain in many cases.
– “Participants in every group were on average eating FEWER calories at the two-year mark, when they were regaining, than they were at the six-month mark, when they were still losing weight.”
– Some of the participating docs were being paid consulting feels by pharma companies that sell diet drugs – hence, conflict of interest.
In other words… as I read this, the famine response kicked in and you know the rest of the story.
Yes, some people’s bodies don’t hord fuel like some other peoples’ do. The human race is diverse and perhaps that kind of metabolism will become more common, if in the future food remains plentiful. If there is some disaster or something and food is not plentiful for forever in the future, I think those folks who have metabolisms like mine will be thankful for them.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
“Your body probrably has hundreds of thousands of Calories stored as fat, so why would it keep telling you that it needs more and doesn’t have enough? Is your body broken. ”
No, it’s working fine. The body of every mammal works the same way: we feel “hungry” when the stomachs are empty, regardless of the amount of calories stored as fat. Likewise, we feel satisfied when the stomach is full, regardless of the amount of calories inside of it.
That’s because our bodies are much simpler than most of us think: reactions happen as triggers to simple events. It’s much easier for the brain to figure out an empty stomach than to calculate how much calories you have in fat.
The modern obesity problem is that our bodies evolved for 2 million years in a world with much less caloric density. Today we have more calories / volume of food, but our brains are still wired to look at the volume as a trigger of hunger/satisfaction.
You know, it’s also important to remember that calories aren’t the only things our bodies need to survive. Not by a long shot. It’s entirely possibly to suffer from (or die from, for that matter) malnutrition while still fat.
We need protein, vitamins, minerals, fats (yes, fats–fat in the body is converted to glucose when needed for energy, it can’t provide needed lipids for hair, skin, brain, etc.). None of that can be produced by burning fat for energy.
Sophismata & Elizabeth,
Thank you for joining the convo!
I like the point about the body being simpler than we may assume… that the brain will more easily interpret an empty stomach. Did you think this through yourself or read this somewhere (or some combo of both…)? I’m curious, because this is a perspective I haven’t seen before and I’m always hungry for new resources and POV’s. 🙂
Also, like Elizabeth said, fat people can be malnourished. I’ve lived it. The body does need far more than calories indeed!! Getting a certain number of calories doesn’t even begin to meet a body’s requirements and focusing merely on calories is potentially cheating the body of important nutrients.
I’ve been considering writing some post about the importance of eating fat. Due to years of pseudo-science brainwashing of how evil teh fatz are, I wasn’t eating enough of it apparently. Recently I have incorporated more fat into my diet and the benefits have been so beautiful. I didn’t realize how much I needed them… and I didn’t realize that even though I am border-line overweight that I can still have a nutritional fat deficit.
I think I’ll get to work on that post now that it’s fresh in my mind. Tee heee…
FYI, the person posting under the name tara has left nasty comments on a number of blogs, so while it’s a great opportunity for discussion, you may want to be on the lookout for “baiting.”
It is an interesting question, in a way, because we are taught to think of fat as “storage” rather than “permanent tissue.” As thought we are camels and our fat is our hump. (I really don’t know much about camels, though.)
Sometimes, I think that the conversations we have online are so interesting precisely because we can’t see each other — what we look like, what gender we are, our ethnicities, our histories…
I’m learning so much from your example, though, of how to be a gracious blogger!
I like to think of it as some people just have more efficient bodies that can get much more out of nutrients and calories than others.
So of course when faced with a long illness who survives better? Why the fatter person of course.
[…] as commentor Elizabeth was so kind to remind us in my last post, even fat people can be malnourished. Size doesn’t dictate malnutrition. Also, fat is an […]
“it’s also important to remember that calories aren’t the only things our bodies need to survive.”
Sure, but the first level of hunger-satiety process is not really linked to what we need to survive. It assumes every meal is 100% balanced, then our brain will trigger hormones when your stomach is empty/full regardless of your level of nutrition or your metabolism rate. That’s why there should be a difference between “feeling hungry” (the urge to eat) and actually “being hungry” (malnutrition).
Obesity is a modern problem linked to us being just too good providers. Civilization concentrated the nutritional value of food, but our brains are still back in the year 2 million B.C.
I will point out a few things to make sure this thread stays true to a FA/HAES context… cuz that’s why this blog exists. 🙂
First, the existence of an obesity “problem” or epidemic is questionable at best (see: https://angrygrayrainbows.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/when-everything-is-an-emergency). The stance on this blog is that the obesity epidemic is a ghost story. Overall in the US, most people have only gotten negligibly heavier – at the same time we have been getting TALLER. Connection there? I think yes.
Second, it is the stance on this blog (and there is much science to back this up – links are all over my posts that are even vaguely related to this topic) that diets cause obesity and overweightness when a body wasn’t born to be that way in the first place. This goes back to the original post and the famine response and how diets actually CAUSE fatness. So, perhaps if people are in fact fatter, it is because of the fixation on diets that started in my mother’s generation.
I will agree that malnutrition feels differently than hunger… as I have experienced both. However, I will say that it took me years to be able to tell the difference. This is not an uncommon experience. Learning to really hear what one’s body is saying is a long journey, but a fruitful one. The problem is, if we have been ignoring our bodies (especially our hunger and/malnutrition signals) as is prescribed by most diets, we will lost the ability to do so. Therefore, I submit that diets also cause folks to lose touch with the feeling of being hungry, being malnourished, being full and being properly nourished… and that it is not the easiest thing in the world to repair the damage after it has been done.
I think a big problem is that dieting goes against what our bodies were built for. Our bodies were made (and wisely so) to survive famine and food shortages. However, we have a culture that can’t seem to stop itself from volunteering for famines (aka – diets), which can harm the body as well as the metabolism and cause fatness of various flavors.
As FA blogs are hot-spots for unproductive arguments and flaming, I will state the following…
So far, so good… everyone is being respectful and cool headed. Bravo commentors! Keep up the good work folks! I appreciate it. 🙂
I absolutely LOVE getting comments, so keep up the cool heads, eh.
As this is just the kind of post that can attract flamers and trolls, I will be watching this thread carefully and only posting comments that are on topic and appropriate. As long as commentor Tara (or anyone else) can stay within the spirit of respectfulness, conversation and all that – she’s welcome to comment here.
I will admit whole-heartedly that this is my first blog EVER (seriously), so I’m an amateur at managing this stuff… so bear with me if I make some mistakes. Such is human learning. 🙂 So, I will say right now thank you for WRT2 for the reminder that baiting happens. It hasn’t happened to me yet on this blog… but man… it is some place I so don’t want to go. So, I will keep an eye out for it.
And this last bit deserves it’s own comment…
WRT2, you really make me smile sometimes.
Thank you for the comment about graciousness. It made me really happy, because that is definitely something that I try for. I have goosebumps!
Weirdly, I learned my blogging style from an eating disorder forum (that I had nothing to do with administratively) that I posted on for years. I learned very quickly that a positive attitude and giving folks positive feed-back for the wonderful things is a great way to help strengthen a community, a conversation and relationships… which is definitely what I want from this blog.
The challenge is keeping healthy (and necessary) boundaries, while at the same time being open-minded and fair and all that… If you know how to do all this, let me know… I’m definitely still learning and I’m sure as this blog progresses that will show. Heh.