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Do you think obese/overweight people should pay more for health insurance?

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Replies

  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    edited July 2017
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Why should obese people be charged more when the reason they are obese is because of the government telling them to eat foods that make people obese and telling them those foods are healthy for them?

    Care to elaborate on what foods the government is telling people to eat that make them obese and telling the public they're healthy?

    Generally obesity is caused by consuming more calories of any type of food than the body needs.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    Rhumax67 wrote: »
    No they shouldn't pay more. Not when government policies encourage eating unhealthy foods

    What are these unhealthy foods you speak of?
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Rhumax67 wrote: »
    No they shouldn't pay more. Not when government policies encourage eating unhealthy foods

    What are these unhealthy foods you speak of?

    Well as I stated above,

    In essence, all grains, all legumes and the nightshades have lectins we cannot handle and contain lectins that promote and cause obesity in addition to many other health problems.

    Maybe Packerjohn has a somewhat different list.

    My bad, didn't see your reply at first.

    My belief and it will be backed up by most scientists is that the calories in vs calories our is the main driver in determining weight gain. Could some of the items you mention contribute, maybe, but you are looking at the nits and ignoring the elephant in the room (no pun intended), excess calories causing obesity.

    I don't have a list of any foods where their caloric content contributes more to obesity than any other item when compared to each other.

    If most scientists have neglected to account for elements such as lectins (which they have since they haven't even on the radar for most), then logically their results would be skewed.

    So you are saying the thought of a few outliers in the scientific community trump the vast majority who say calories in/out are the basis for weight gain or loss? Why aren't the majority on this program?
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    edited July 2017
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Rhumax67 wrote: »
    No they shouldn't pay more. Not when government policies encourage eating unhealthy foods

    What are these unhealthy foods you speak of?

    Well as I stated above,

    In essence, all grains, all legumes and the nightshades have lectins we cannot handle and contain lectins that promote and cause obesity in addition to many other health problems.

    Maybe Packerjohn has a somewhat different list.

    My bad, didn't see your reply at first.

    My belief and it will be backed up by most scientists is that the calories in vs calories our is the main driver in determining weight gain. Could some of the items you mention contribute, maybe, but you are looking at the nits and ignoring the elephant in the room (no pun intended), excess calories causing obesity.

    I don't have a list of any foods where their caloric content contributes more to obesity than any other item when compared to each other.

    If most scientists have neglected to account for elements such as lectins (which they have since they haven't even on the radar for most), then logically their results would be skewed.

    So you are saying the thought of a few outliers in the scientific community trump the vast majority who say calories in/out are the basis for weight gain or loss? Why aren't the majority on this program?

    I would think answer is obvious. Old paradigms tend to die hard. People resist change, even in science. It takes time for new ideas to find purchase because it requires those holding to an old paradigm to be openminded enough to aggressively challenge it. Many are not. They can be quite vested in an idea and resistant to new ones.

    Why didn't science recognize sooner tbat dat and cholesterol weren't the boogy man the were made out to be 50 years ago? Why did it take until a few years ago for Harvard to finally admit this? Was it for lack of knowledge?

    Heck no. The research had already been superabundant that disproved the lipid hypothesis of heart disease originally proposed by Ancel Keyes with his conveniently heavily biased study was wrong. Look up Dr. McCully and his research into homocysteine, performed and reported to Harvard, and published. What did Harvard do? They punished him for daring to contradict the lipid hypothesis with solid research. His research continued elsewhere and was picked up by researchers around the world. It is only now, decades later, medicine is just beginning to catch up.

    There are a lot of politics in research, and funding is tied to those politics. Old paradigms have a great deal of time, effort and money tied up in them. Entire industries spring up worth billions of dollars. Do you truly believe there would not be political and financial interests involved in trying to ignore and/or squash new evidence if it discredits the old entrenched paradigm, especially if it means loss?

    This idea of lectins and their involvement not only in weight gain but also diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, neurologic diseases, endocrine diseases, and the list goes on....imagine the impact on the corn industry, wheat industry, agriculture in general, the meat industry if people suddenly decided to stop eating grains, corn, soy, legumes and animal products from animals that were feed the same?

    Follow the money and egos.

    And look at the evidence for yourself. I did.

    Although I'm a college educated individual with a fairly diverse background, I don't have enough background in nutrition to refute mainstream individuals with PhD behind their name in their field of specialization. What sort of evidence are you looking at? Something that a random individual puts out? Do you have the educational background to split the reasonable from the BS?

    Right or wrong, if most of the recognized experts in a field are directionally on the same page, I'm going with their thoughts.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    edited July 2017
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Rhumax67 wrote: »
    No they shouldn't pay more. Not when government policies encourage eating unhealthy foods

    What are these unhealthy foods you speak of?

    Well as I stated above,

    In essence, all grains, all legumes and the nightshades have lectins we cannot handle and contain lectins that promote and cause obesity in addition to many other health problems.

    Maybe Packerjohn has a somewhat different list.

    My bad, didn't see your reply at first.

    My belief and it will be backed up by most scientists is that the calories in vs calories our is the main driver in determining weight gain. Could some of the items you mention contribute, maybe, but you are looking at the nits and ignoring the elephant in the room (no pun intended), excess calories causing obesity.

    I don't have a list of any foods where their caloric content contributes more to obesity than any other item when compared to each other.

    If most scientists have neglected to account for elements such as lectins (which they have since they haven't even on the radar for most), then logically their results would be skewed.

    Make up your mind. Up above you said there's 100 year old research on the subject
    theresejesu wrote: »
    I would suggest a good resource to start with would be the book THE PLANT PARADOX by Gundry. I've looked into the research further, which started over a hundred years ago, and found it is much worse than he even desribes in his book.

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Why should obese people be charged more when the reason they are obese is because of the government telling them to eat foods that make people obese and telling them those foods are healthy for them?

    Care to elaborate on what foods the government is telling people to eat that make them obese and telling the public they're healthy?

    Generally obesity is caused by consuming more calories of any type of food than the body needs.

    I had a reply and lost it before it posted. Not sure how to stop that from happening.

    The idea that obesity is caused by consuming more calories than the body needs is a simplistic one that doesn't take into account how the body is using those calories, or the source of the calories. The truth is much, much more complex.

    For instance, such an idea ignores the roles anti-nutrients play in our health, damaging it, and being a significant cause of obesity. One class of anti-nutrients little known to the general public, but now starting to get wider exposure are lectins.

    Lectins are in most all living things. They perform different roles depending on the organism. In plants, lectins are their defenses. They are there to make predators ill. You and I are predators, but not all plant lectins will make us ill, only some of them do.

    Whether or not these lectins will affect us depends in our microbiome in our gut. There are two overall types: Tree dwellers and graizers. These two groups have microbiomes to handle the lectins in their respective diets, but are not able to handle the lectins in the other diet.

    Human beings belong to the tree dwelling group and so have a microbiome adapted to the lectins in the 2 leaf plants and their fruit. Graizers, on the othet hand, are adapted to 1 leaf plants and their fruits/seeds. It takes thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, 10's of thousands of years or more for such adaptation to take effect.

    Humans made the the transition to grains about 10,000 years ago, which is still much too recent for our microbiomes to have adapted yet. Even in Egypt, where thousands of mummies have been uncovered, they have found evidence of the ills of modern man, such as atherosclerosis.

    These lectins overwhelm our microbiome, overwhelm our gut, open the tight junctions between the cells of our intestinal lining, and get into our body and gradually wreck havoc on it. They are proteins that can mimic hormones, neurotransmitters and confuse the immune system.

    One of the worst is found in wheat bran, WGA. WGA mimics insulin among several other things, and is able to bind to insulin receptor sites on our cells, keeping insulin from doing its job, which causes our glucose and insulin levels to rise with all the attendant problems, but it also sends bad instructions to the cell, including to store fat.

    All grains, except millet, and legumes have their own version of this lectin that is so similar, the body responds to them the same way, and they are generally referred to as WGA.

    I would suggest a good resource to start with would be the book THE PLANT PARADOX by Gundry. I've looked into the research further, which started over a hundred years ago, and found it is much worse than he even desribes in his book.

    In essence, all grains, all legumes and the nightshades have lectins we cannot handle and contain lectins that promote and cause obesity in addition to many other health problems.

    And these foods form the basis of the goverment recommended healthy diet.

    This doesn't make sense. My entire family eats a bunch of lectins and we're all at a healthy weight. If our "microbiome" being unable to handle them is what generates weight loss, why are there so many people who eat lectins and maintain a healthy body weight?
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    High fiber plant based diets tend to be considered good for the microbiome, even though those would seem to also have more lectins. One concern I had when experimenting with keto, in fact, was that even if you eat as many vegetables as possible, some nuts, etc., it tends to be lower fiber than how I would normally eat and a diet focused on fats and protein alone seems to be worse for the microbiome.

    I do think this is probably majoring in the minors for most, but I think that if you can consume vegetables, it's healthier to do so for the vast majority of people and that current trends to defining LCHF and keto as requiring such low carbs that it's hard to fit in vegetables (in reality you can be in ketosis while still including a decent amount of veg in the diet, as well as some excellent sources of fiber -- although I'm am sure huge providers of lectins -- like black soy beans, a recent discovery of mine.)

    On microbiome diversity (which is generally considered good):

    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/well/eat/a-gut-makeover-for-the-new-year.html?_r=0

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html
    It is still early days in this research, as Lozupone (and everyone else I interviewed) underscored; scientists can’t even yet say with confidence exactly what a “healthy” microbiome should look like. But some broad, intriguing patterns are emerging. More diversity is probably better than less, because a diverse ecosystem is generally more resilient — and diversity in the Western gut is significantly lower than in other, less-industrialized populations. The gut microbiota of people in the West looks very different from that of a variety of other geographically dispersed peoples. So, for example, the gut community of rural people in West Africa more closely resembles that of Amerindians in Venezuela than it does an American’s or a European’s.

    These rural populations not only harbor a greater diversity of microbes but also a different cast of lead characters. American and European guts contain relatively high levels of bacteroides and firmicutes and low levels of the prevotella that dominate the guts of rural Africans and Amerindians. (It is not clear whether high or low levels of any of these is good or bad.) Why are the microbes different? It could be the diet, which in both rural populations features a considerable amount of whole grains (which prevotella appear to like), plant fiber and very little meat. (Many firmicutes like amino acids, so they proliferate when the diet contains lots of protein; bacteroides metabolize carbohydrates.) As for the lower biodiversity in the West, this could be a result of our profligate use of antibiotics (in health care as well as the food system), our diet of processed food (which has generally been cleansed of all bacteria, the good and the bad), environmental toxins and generally less “microbial pressure” — i.e., exposure to bacteria — in everyday life. All of this may help explain why, though these rural populations tend to have greater exposures to infectious diseases and lower life expectancies than those in the West, they also have lower rates of chronic disorders like allergies, asthma, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    After all this good discussion on Lectins, I will go back to my earlier comment on calories in vs calories as the major impact on weight gain/loss. Maybe @theresejesu could comment on. If an individual has been eating a 3000 calorie a day diet, composed of foods with no Lectins, goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day of foods high in Lectins, (no other changes in activity, etc), will that person lose weight after 2 months?
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
    mph323 wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Why should obese people be charged more when the reason they are obese is because of the government telling them to eat foods that make people obese and telling them those foods are healthy for them?

    Care to elaborate on what foods the government is telling people to eat that make them obese and telling the public they're healthy?

    Generally obesity is caused by consuming more calories of any type of food than the body needs.

    I had a reply and lost it before it posted. Not sure how to stop that from happening.

    The idea that obesity is caused by consuming more calories than the body needs is a simplistic one that doesn't take into account how the body is using those calories, or the source of the calories. The truth is much, much more complex.

    For instance, such an idea ignores the roles anti-nutrients play in our health, damaging it, and being a significant cause of obesity. One class of anti-nutrients little known to the general public, but now starting to get wider exposure are lectins.

    Lectins are in most all living things. They perform different roles depending on the organism. In plants, lectins are their defenses. They are there to make predators ill. You and I are predators, but not all plant lectins will make us ill, only some of them do.

    Whether or not these lectins will affect us depends in our microbiome in our gut. There are two overall types: Tree dwellers and graizers. These two groups have microbiomes to handle the lectins in their respective diets, but are not able to handle the lectins in the other diet.

    Human beings belong to the tree dwelling group and so have a microbiome adapted to the lectins in the 2 leaf plants and their fruit. Graizers, on the othet hand, are adapted to 1 leaf plants and their fruits/seeds. It takes thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, 10's of thousands of years or more for such adaptation to take effect.

    Humans made the the transition to grains about 10,000 years ago, which is still much too recent for our microbiomes to have adapted yet. Even in Egypt, where thousands of mummies have been uncovered, they have found evidence of the ills of modern man, such as atherosclerosis.

    These lectins overwhelm our microbiome, overwhelm our gut, open the tight junctions between the cells of our intestinal lining, and get into our body and gradually wreck havoc on it. They are proteins that can mimic hormones, neurotransmitters and confuse the immune system.

    One of the worst is found in wheat bran, WGA. WGA mimics insulin among several other things, and is able to bind to insulin receptor sites on our cells, keeping insulin from doing its job, which causes our glucose and insulin levels to rise with all the attendant problems, but it also sends bad instructions to the cell, including to store fat.

    All grains, except millet, and legumes have their own version of this lectin that is so similar, the body responds to them the same way, and they are generally referred to as WGA.

    I would suggest a good resource to start with would be the book THE PLANT PARADOX by Gundry. I've looked into the research further, which started over a hundred years ago, and found it is much worse than he even desribes in his book.

    In essence, all grains, all legumes and the nightshades have lectins we cannot handle and contain lectins that promote and cause obesity in addition to many other health problems.

    And these foods form the basis of the goverment recommended healthy diet.

    I...can't even.

    Weird isn't a strong enough word to describe the turn this thread took.

    eta: the latest turn, I mean

    Misinformation and disinformation - all too prevalent and an easy way to market your product to a population ignorant of science.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    After all this good discussion on Lectins, I will go back to my earlier comment on calories in vs calories as the major impact on weight gain/loss. Maybe @theresejesu could comment on. If an individual has been eating a 3000 calorie a day diet, composed of foods with no Lectins, goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day of foods high in Lectins, (no other changes in activity, etc), will that person lose weight after 2 months?

    From what I've learned, the amount of weight lost by the two will be different based on those parameters. There are people who easily lose weight by cutting calories. There are others who struggle and don't seem to be able to make the same gains no matter how hard they try and this discourages them.

    I don't think anyone is suggesting that calories "in" being less than calories "out" won't result in some degree of weight loss, but that's just it.

    The degree of weight lost.

    If the foods you are eating are fighting against your attempts to lose weight, you aren't going to see the same success as someone else who may be eating less of those types of foods. This is where these lectins from grains, legumes, and nightshades can play a very significant role in hindering our efforts.

    Additionally, our microbiota can play a significant role as well. An unhealthy microbiota can hinder our attempts at weight loss. In fact, in studies done a few years ago Amandine Everard at the University of Louvain in Belgium discovered something important about Akkermancia muciniplila, a bacteria that (hopefully) inhabits our microbiota (in our intestines).

    In experiments in mice, they found it interacts with genes. In mice administered Akkermancia m. they found it activated genes to induce an increase in the caoacity to burn fat. They fed the mice a diet high in calories to induce weight gain. The mice that received the Akkermancia m became half as fat as the mice who didn't receive it.

    In humans they discovered levels of Akkermancia muciniplila, are high in thin people, and low in obese people.

    Additionally, it has been discovered that people have one of 3 basic enterotypes which affect how we utilize macro nutrients and produce and support helpful bacteria such as Akkermancia m.

    As I said, it's much more complicated and intricate than just counting calories.

    I strongly recommend the documentary
    The Gut: Our Second Brain
    where such discoveries as Akkermancia are discussed - available on Amazon Prime for those who have it.

    But calories in vs calories out is still the largest determinate of weight change, correct?
  • theresejesu
    theresejesu Posts: 120 Member
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    After all this good discussion on Lectins, I will go back to my earlier comment on calories in vs calories as the major impact on weight gain/loss. Maybe @theresejesu could comment on. If an individual has been eating a 3000 calorie a day diet, composed of foods with no Lectins, goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day of foods high in Lectins, (no other changes in activity, etc), will that person lose weight after 2 months?

    From what I've learned, the amount of weight lost by the two will be different based on those parameters. There are people who easily lose weight by cutting calories. There are others who struggle and don't seem to be able to make the same gains no matter how hard they try and this discourages them.

    I don't think anyone is suggesting that calories "in" being less than calories "out" won't result in some degree of weight loss, but that's just it.

    The degree of weight lost.

    If the foods you are eating are fighting against your attempts to lose weight, you aren't going to see the same success as someone else who may be eating less of those types of foods. This is where these lectins from grains, legumes, and nightshades can play a very significant role in hindering our efforts.

    Additionally, our microbiota can play a significant role as well. An unhealthy microbiota can hinder our attempts at weight loss. In fact, in studies done a few years ago Amandine Everard at the University of Louvain in Belgium discovered something important about Akkermancia muciniplila, a bacteria that (hopefully) inhabits our microbiota (in our intestines).

    In experiments in mice, they found it interacts with genes. In mice administered Akkermancia m. they found it activated genes to induce an increase in the caoacity to burn fat. They fed the mice a diet high in calories to induce weight gain. The mice that received the Akkermancia m became half as fat as the mice who didn't receive it.

    In humans they discovered levels of Akkermancia muciniplila, are high in thin people, and low in obese people.

    Additionally, it has been discovered that people have one of 3 basic enterotypes which affect how we utilize macro nutrients and produce and support helpful bacteria such as Akkermancia m.

    As I said, it's much more complicated and intricate than just counting calories.

    I strongly recommend the documentary
    The Gut: Our Second Brain
    where such discoveries as Akkermancia are discussed - available on Amazon Prime for those who have it.

    But calories in vs calories out is still the largest determinate of weight change, correct?

    Largest, by what margin?
  • Morgaath
    Morgaath Posts: 679 Member
    What do we use to determine if one is obese/overweight? BMI is out, as my friend who came in 2nd in a body building comp is borderline obese per BMI. If I hit the weight I'd like (175lbs), I will still be overweight by BMI, even if I am only 12% body fat.

    And hey, lets see how this works out in real life... Person is overweight, diabetic since she was a teenager, messed up knees due to high school sport accident, and a bad back (same reason), both compounded by gaining weight over the last 30 yrs.

    Now, given the price of insulin, they have hit their deductible of $5,000 before Valentine's Day, and now only have to pay 20% of each months medicine bill.

    How much more money do you think they can afford to spend each month while they try to lose weight?
  • wmd1979
    wmd1979 Posts: 469 Member
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    After all this good discussion on Lectins, I will go back to my earlier comment on calories in vs calories as the major impact on weight gain/loss. Maybe @theresejesu could comment on. If an individual has been eating a 3000 calorie a day diet, composed of foods with no Lectins, goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day of foods high in Lectins, (no other changes in activity, etc), will that person lose weight after 2 months?

    From what I've learned, the amount of weight lost by the two will be different based on those parameters. There are people who easily lose weight by cutting calories. There are others who struggle and don't seem to be able to make the same gains no matter how hard they try and this discourages them.

    I don't think anyone is suggesting that calories "in" being less than calories "out" won't result in some degree of weight loss, but that's just it.

    The degree of weight lost.

    If the foods you are eating are fighting against your attempts to lose weight, you aren't going to see the same success as someone else who may be eating less of those types of foods. This is where these lectins from grains, legumes, and nightshades can play a very significant role in hindering our efforts.

    Additionally, our microbiota can play a significant role as well. An unhealthy microbiota can hinder our attempts at weight loss. In fact, in studies done a few years ago Amandine Everard at the University of Louvain in Belgium discovered something important about Akkermancia muciniplila, a bacteria that (hopefully) inhabits our microbiota (in our intestines).

    In experiments in mice, they found it interacts with genes. In mice administered Akkermancia m. they found it activated genes to induce an increase in the caoacity to burn fat. They fed the mice a diet high in calories to induce weight gain. The mice that received the Akkermancia m became half as fat as the mice who didn't receive it.

    In humans they discovered levels of Akkermancia muciniplila, are high in thin people, and low in obese people.

    Additionally, it has been discovered that people have one of 3 basic enterotypes which affect how we utilize macro nutrients and produce and support helpful bacteria such as Akkermancia m.

    As I said, it's much more complicated and intricate than just counting calories.

    I strongly recommend the documentary
    The Gut: Our Second Brain
    where such discoveries as Akkermancia are discussed - available on Amazon Prime for those who have it.

    But calories in vs calories out is still the largest determinate of weight change, correct?

    Largest, by what margin?

    Margin is meaningless when determining largest. Largest means greater than any other and something can be the largest by a gigantic margin, or a slim margin. Basically it is a yes or no question. You seem to want to refute CICO by talking about all sorts of other crazy stuff instead of providing cold hard facts.
  • theresejesu
    theresejesu Posts: 120 Member
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    After all this good discussion on Lectins, I will go back to my earlier comment on calories in vs calories as the major impact on weight gain/loss. Maybe @theresejesu could comment on. If an individual has been eating a 3000 calorie a day diet, composed of foods with no Lectins, goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day of foods high in Lectins, (no other changes in activity, etc), will that person lose weight after 2 months?

    From what I've learned, the amount of weight lost by the two will be different based on those parameters. There are people who easily lose weight by cutting calories. There are others who struggle and don't seem to be able to make the same gains no matter how hard they try and this discourages them.

    I don't think anyone is suggesting that calories "in" being less than calories "out" won't result in some degree of weight loss, but that's just it.

    The degree of weight lost.

    If the foods you are eating are fighting against your attempts to lose weight, you aren't going to see the same success as someone else who may be eating less of those types of foods. This is where these lectins from grains, legumes, and nightshades can play a very significant role in hindering our efforts.

    Additionally, our microbiota can play a significant role as well. An unhealthy microbiota can hinder our attempts at weight loss. In fact, in studies done a few years ago Amandine Everard at the University of Louvain in Belgium discovered something important about Akkermancia muciniplila, a bacteria that (hopefully) inhabits our microbiota (in our intestines).

    In experiments in mice, they found it interacts with genes. In mice administered Akkermancia m. they found it activated genes to induce an increase in the caoacity to burn fat. They fed the mice a diet high in calories to induce weight gain. The mice that received the Akkermancia m became half as fat as the mice who didn't receive it.

    In humans they discovered levels of Akkermancia muciniplila, are high in thin people, and low in obese people.

    Additionally, it has been discovered that people have one of 3 basic enterotypes which affect how we utilize macro nutrients and produce and support helpful bacteria such as Akkermancia m.

    As I said, it's much more complicated and intricate than just counting calories.

    I strongly recommend the documentary
    The Gut: Our Second Brain
    where such discoveries as Akkermancia are discussed - available on Amazon Prime for those who have it.

    But calories in vs calories out is still the largest determinate of weight change, correct?

    Largest, by what margin?

    Margin is meaningless when determining largest. Largest means greater than any other and something can be the largest by a gigantic margin, or a slim margin. Basically it is a yes or no question. You seem to want to refute CICO by talking about all sorts of other crazy stuff instead of providing cold hard facts.

    Then without quantifying it, it really doesn't mean a whole lot. It could be largest by 0,01%. That would have no significance at all;, so using the word "largest" without being able to quantify it makes it a useless statement. ;)
  • VeronicaA76
    VeronicaA76 Posts: 1,116 Member
    No. Too big a can of worms. One of the biggest problems is if it goes by weight or BMI then anyone who is athletic would often fall into the overweight or even obese category, when they are clearly not. Now going by body fat would be better, but two people at 30% bodyfat could also be in drastically different shape, even just where the fat is carried makes a big difference. Also, this doesn't include skinny-fat (people that are only "normal" weight through starvation, but eat crap food and do not exercise).

    My former (left my career to pursue my graduate degree) figured out that free gym memberships cost less than lost time due to weight related illnesses. They would also hand out "prizes" for anyone that completes at least a 5k (walk, run, doesn't matter). I got a free gym bag and a travel coffee mug when I did the Insane Inflatable 5k, a co-worker got a CharGrill grill after completing a marathon, another one got movie tickets and a cooler for competing in a fitness competition. This makes more sense.

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