Nearly every research study on dietary intervention demonstrates that even the placebo groups lose weight, likely from something called the Hawthorne effect, where bringing attention to something causes it to temporarily change behavior.
This also explains why nearly every weight loss dietary intervention shows weight regain within two years. We have an internal set point that causes us to return to a perceived correct weight, based upon hormonal signaling from our fat cells. This constant hormonal signaling overwhelms any willpower that we might display in the short term.
Using our own hormonal system to our benefit, instead of fighting with it, is the only way to maintain long-term weight health.
What’s wrong with regaining weight if taking it off again is possible (the yo-yo diet effect)? Most diets succeed in the short term but fail in the long term. In fact, over 95% of patients, after a dieting cycle and then refeeding, are heavier than they started. This is called yo-yo dieting. Calorie restriction and deprivation lead to a yo-yo dieting effect, with refeeding resulting in supernormal weight gain, even without binge eating. In a rat study, repetitive dieting cycles documented that second-time weight loss velocity was 50% slower on same calories and regain was nearly 300% faster.
Under normal circumstances, fat cell size increases and decreases, but the number of cells remains static. In a dietary restriction model, after refeeding occurs with rapid regain of weight, progenitor fat cells differentiate increasing the number of adipocytes by approximately 50%. Ad libitum feeding does not reduce until the adipocyte size returns to its pre-dieting size, but now there are more adipocytes, so total mass increases, resulting in an overshooting of the pre-dieting fat mass.
Sometimes this pattern of yo-yo dieting is externally forced, such as in low-income families where food-insecurity leads to cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Those who are eating less or skipping meals to stretch food budgets may overeat when food becomes available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain, a forced type of yo-yo dieting. Paradoxically, even though the global calorie consumption is less, the patient is gaining weight.
(Bruening et al., 2012; Dammann & Smith, 2010; Olson et al., 2007).
Yo-yo dieting not only affects the total fat mass, but also affects the net muscle mass, or the fat: muscle ratio. With the initial cycle of dieting, the fat: muscle loss ratio is 70:30, but with refeeding and return of mass, the ratio of regained fat: muscle ratio is 90:10. When regain of weight occurs, it is preferentially fat, and muscle does not return. Muscle mass is one of the primary determinants of organism health and likelihood of longevity. Your muscle is your organ of longevity, and you should guard it with your life.
Seven real strategies for long-term weight loss:
- Stop eating processed foods and hyperpalatable flavorings that drive overeating. Avoid grains, vegetable oils, refined carbohydrates, and artificial sugars. Stick to things that provide real satiety, like real food.
- Use time-restricted feeding to exercise your insulin receptors and restore your leptin sensitivity. Leptin is your satiety hormone, and because people constantly eat, your brain desensitizes to it, just like the effect of chronic high insulin on the insulin receptor. Eat all of your meals in a 6 to 8 hour feeding window.
- Avoid decision fatigue and reduce novelty. If you restrict your routine meals to just a few types of foods and reserve variety for special occasions, you will naturally eat just what your body actually needs, rather than confusing your body with an unexpected feast it might gorge on.
- Avoid snacking and limit yourself to two insulin secretion events per day. Insulin causes fat storage. Insulin promotes hunger and begets more insulin. Constantly snacking desensitizes your brain to Leptin, so you don’t know when you are actually full.
- Walk for 10 minutes after every meal to use the large muscles of the thighs. This causes the rapid uptake of glucose and reduces the duration of your insulin spike.
- Assess your hunger: Is it real? Is it social? Is it habit? Is it distraction? Is it stress? Is it celebratory? Are you thirsty?
- Understand what real hunger is for real food. Pause your food consumption when you are 80% full. Practice hara hachi bu, a Confucian teaching, that instructs people to eat until they are 80 percent full. “Eat until you are eight parts (out of ten) full” or “belly 80 percent full.”
- Drink a large glass of water and see if you are still hungry in an hour. Sometimes perceived hunger will simply vanish with this tactic, giving enough time for the Leptin hormone to work.
Losing weight is easy, but keeping it off is harder. Everybody loses weight, if they are paying attention to it. However, it’s the long-term sustainable weight loss that is the key to health. You should avoid the yo-yo diet and practice seven real strategies for long-term weight loss.
Nearly every research study on dietary intervention demonstrates that even the placebo groups lose weight, likely from something called the Hawthorne effect, where bringing attention to something causes it to temporarily change behavior.
This also explains why nearly every weight loss dietary intervention shows weight regain within two years. We have an internal set point that causes us to return to a perceived correct weight, based upon hormonal signaling from our fat cells. This constant hormonal signaling overwhelms any willpower that we might display in the short term.
Using our own hormonal system to our benefit, instead of fighting with it, is the only way to maintain long-term weight health.
What’s wrong with regaining weight if taking it off again is possible (the yo-yo diet effect)? Most diets succeed in the short term but fail in the long term. In fact, over 95% of patients, after a dieting cycle and then refeeding, are heavier than they started. This is called yo-yo dieting. Calorie restriction and deprivation lead to a yo-yo dieting effect, with refeeding resulting in supernormal weight gain, even without binge eating. In a rat study, repetitive dieting cycles documented that second-time weight loss velocity was 50% slower on same calories and regain was nearly 300% faster.
Under normal circumstances, fat cell size increases and decreases, but the number of cells remains static. In a dietary restriction model, after refeeding occurs with rapid regain of weight, progenitor fat cells differentiate increasing the number of adipocytes by approximately 50%. Ad libitum feeding does not reduce until the adipocyte size returns to its pre-dieting size, but now there are more adipocytes, so total mass increases, resulting in an overshooting of the pre-dieting fat mass.
Sometimes this pattern of yo-yo dieting is externally forced, such as in low-income families where food-insecurity leads to cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Those who are eating less or skipping meals to stretch food budgets may overeat when food becomes available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain, a forced type of yo-yo dieting. Paradoxically, even though the global calorie consumption is less, the patient is gaining weight.
(Bruening et al., 2012; Dammann & Smith, 2010; Olson et al., 2007).
Yo-yo dieting not only affects the total fat mass, but also affects the net muscle mass, or the fat: muscle ratio. With the initial cycle of dieting, the fat: muscle loss ratio is 70:30, but with refeeding and return of mass, the ratio of regained fat: muscle ratio is 90:10. When regain of weight occurs, it is preferentially fat, and muscle does not return. Muscle mass is one of the primary determinants of organism health and likelihood of longevity. Your muscle is your organ of longevity, and you should guard it with your life.
Seven real strategies for long-term weight loss:
- Stop eating processed foods and hyperpalatable flavorings that drive overeating. Avoid grains, vegetable oils, refined carbohydrates, and artificial sugars. Stick to things that provide real satiety, like real food.
- Use time-restricted feeding to exercise your insulin receptors and restore your leptin sensitivity. Leptin is your satiety hormone, and because people constantly eat, your brain desensitizes to it, just like the effect of chronic high insulin on the insulin receptor. Eat all of your meals in a 6 to 8 hour feeding window.
- Avoid decision fatigue and reduce novelty. If you restrict your routine meals to just a few types of foods and reserve variety for special occasions, you will naturally eat just what your body actually needs, rather than confusing your body with an unexpected feast it might gorge on.
- Avoid snacking and limit yourself to two insulin secretion events per day. Insulin causes fat storage. Insulin promotes hunger and begets more insulin. Constantly snacking desensitizes your brain to Leptin, so you don’t know when you are actually full.
- Walk for 10 minutes after every meal to use the large muscles of the thighs. This causes the rapid uptake of glucose and reduces the duration of your insulin spike.
- Assess your hunger: Is it real? Is it social? Is it habit? Is it distraction? Is it stress? Is it celebratory? Are you thirsty?
- Understand what real hunger is for real food. Pause your food consumption when you are 80% full. Practice hara hachi bu, a Confucian teaching, that instructs people to eat until they are 80 percent full. “Eat until you are eight parts (out of ten) full” or “belly 80 percent full.”
- Drink a large glass of water and see if you are still hungry in an hour. Sometimes perceived hunger will simply vanish with this tactic, giving enough time for the Leptin hormone to work.
What does weight have to do with minority population and voter suppression?
We are hopeful that the title of this article gets your attention, and that this might convince you to read our comments. We are not conspiracy nuts. We don’t at all belief in conspiracy theories; we leave the interpretation of facts to you.
We are presenting the facts as we see them daily, as owners of medical practices treating severely injured and disabled patients. Our viewpoint is definitely skewed because we don’t see patients that are healthy and happy; we only see patients who are suffering from significant disease and most often have been pushed aside medically, economically, and socially. In short, they are “marginalized.”
If we told you that a completely man-made and preventable plague was spreading across the United States and would affect 75% of the population within twenty years, causing countless deaths and costing over $215 billion dollars per year, you might pay attention. Like most epidemics, obesity is accelerating, and now affects 17% of all children and adolescents in the United States — triple the rate from just one generation ago. Obese children are more likely to become obese adults and carry a significantly higher negative lifetime economic and medical burden. If you are overweight or obese, there is a 90% chance you will develop type 2 diabetes; yet, if you smoke for 30-40 years, you have a 10-17% chance of developing lung cancer. Ask yourself which you are more afraid of, being overweight or smoking, and most people think smoking is more deadly. (This is not intended to suggest smoking is beneficial; it’s intended to frame the issue in context.)
Low-income families already face high levels of stress and poor mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression) due to the financial and emotional pressures of food insecurity, low-wage work, lack of access to health care, inadequate transportation, poor housing, and violence.
The federal government spends more than $20 billion a year on subsidies for farm businesses, with the majority going to the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice. This federally subsidized production reduces manufacturing costs for processed foods containing high fructose corn syrup. Simultaneously, consumer demand for processed foods containing high fructose corn syrup is stimulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which operates multiple food assistance programs. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently allows the purchase of almost any food, except alcohol, hot foods, and foods that will be eaten in the store. SNAP participants on average eat about the same number of calories per day as nonparticipants but typically consume more hyperpalatable (tasty) foods containing fructose and industrial seed oils. In fact, low-income individuals who were eligible for SNAP, but did not participate in SNAP, consumed fewer processed foods. Consumers on food stamps get about 12 percent of their daily calories from sugary drinks, compared to 6 percent for higher-income people, even as overall soda sales are declining in the U.S. SNAP households spend approximately 5% of their food assistance budget on soft drinks, and 9.3% on ‘sweetened beverages,’ which includes soft drinks, fruit juices, energy drinks, and sweetened teas. The sweetened beverage industry has lobbied aggressively to prevent SNAP from limiting soda purchases.
Some of this could be caused by lack of access to foods other than these. Low-income neighborhoods frequently lack full-service grocery stores and farmers’ markets, and many of the stores do preferentially stock heavily processed foods that are shelf-stable and less likely to spoil. Even when healthy food is available — especially fresh produce and meat — it is often of poorer quality in lower-income neighborhoods, which diminishes the appeal of these items to buyers
Low-income communities also have a greater availability of fast-food restaurants, especially near schools. These restaurants serve high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods at low prices. Low-income youth are also exposed to disproportionately more marketing and advertising for obesity-promoting products that encourage the consumption of unhealthful foods and discourage physical activity (e.g., fast food, sugary beverages, television shows, video games).
Due to safety concerns and the potential for violence, children and adults are more likely to stay indoors and engage in sedentary activities, such as watching television or playing video games, further increasing the risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes.
By 2035, less than 16 years from now, data suggests that nearly 100% of the African American female population will be overweight or obese. The real issue with this is not directly in the female population, but in their children, who are then predisposed to obesity due to a change in their genetics caused by environmental epigenetic factors. This change will cause a genetic shift for 3-5 generations. This change will shorten lives, worsen disability, reduce lifetime economic earning, reduce academic performance, and increase rates of incarceration.
Placating the masses with hyperpalatable non-nutritious subsidized food maintains generational poverty and generational obesity through changes in genetics. Poverty reduces a population’s economic participation through both disability and a shortened life span. The end result of specifically targeting low-income minority communities with processed food messaging is reduced political participation. Reduced political participation then reinforces the cycle of economic poverty. This is what weight has to do with political participation and voter suppression.