The Fat Loss TroubleshootThis is your place to troubleshoot your fat loss problems from nutrition to training. This section is led by Leigh Peele, author of "The Fat Loss Troubleshoot," the ultimate fat loss manual. If your results have slowed or stalled this is the place to come for advice for all your fat loss needs.
Someone posted this to the WW board. Curious as to what others think. I have an opinion of course, but I'll wait to see if some of you dissuade me before I post it. LOL!
my gut is that it is over exaggerating points about leptin/T3. Not to say obese people might not have some hormonal problems but I thin the majority of people who are obese are so as a result of lifestyle factors.
I have been hypoT for many years and always reading more about thyroid issues and I know that RT3 testing is not an accepted practice (even by docs who practice more outside the box)
I agree, that it's an over-simplification of the issue. Having said that, the more I work on losing weight, the more I do think I have issues with either ghrelin or peptide YY. I primarily ate too much because I was hungry. I still am most days, most hours, I just control it better. I'll eat breakfast, I could eat an hour later. I'll eat dinner, I could also eat an hour later. Doesn't matter if it's high protein, high volume, etc.
From what I understand, overweight/obese people build up a resistance to leptin, so I'm not sure a drug treatment is the answer. My answer is to track and control what I eat. I lose weight when I do. Maybe it's something I can stop at some point, however, maybe not. I seriously can't trust my hunger signals (even when not on a deficit).
I wish he'd cited primary sources instead of the usual journalistic "a recent study..." crap. It's hard to critique w/o knowing what he's basing it on.
I vaguely recall something about leptin resistance, and I remember it being overblown (as most of these "medical" causes tend to be); I'll have to look into that to give a concrete answer.
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I guess what confuses me is that levels of overweight and obesity have grown dramatically in the past 30-40 years. If this is a genetic thing then obviously some factor was keeping it (meaning the weight aspect) in check in previous decades.
I guess I'm wondering about the correlation versus causation thing here. Does being overweight, or eating a certain type of diet tend to lead to metabolic syndrome, which then in turn makes it harder to lose weight, further increasing the metabolic disregulations? Is it a vicious cycle?
Testing: A leptin level can be ordered by your physician. If greater than 10, it demonstrates there is a degree of leptin resistance contributing to an inability to lose weight. The higher the number the more significant the leptin resistance.
Most women in the US with a body fat level around 25% probably have a leptin level higher then 10 ng/ml. Men on the other hand have much lower levels.
The leptin part reads like the author read a review article on it and has no real idea what they are talking about.
I recall reading something a while ago saying it was virtually impossible to test people for leptin. I think the complications were due to the fact that the test would cost thousands of dollars or something to that extent and/or not widely available.
The guy who wrote the article is a Naturopath. Personally, I don't put much stock in much of what they preach.
I recall reading something a while ago saying it was virtually impossible to test people for leptin. I think the complications were due to the fact that the test would cost thousands of dollars or something to that extent and/or not widely available.
It's not all that expensive to do, comparable to measuring other hormones. A couple hundred dollars for a kit to measure ~30 people.
It's probably not done regularly in a clinical setting and I'm not really sure it would ultimately be that useful for most people.
I guess what confuses me is that levels of overweight and obesity have grown dramatically in the past 30-40 years. If this is a genetic thing then obviously some factor was keeping it (meaning the weight aspect) in check in previous decades.
I guess I'm wondering about the correlation versus causation thing here. Does being overweight, or eating a certain type of diet tend to lead to metabolic syndrome, which then in turn makes it harder to lose weight, further increasing the metabolic disregulations? Is it a vicious cycle?
That's the big question isn't it? Our body chemistry hasn't suddently evolved but there have been many changes.
Lifestyle has changed for many people as the modern conviences of life have become affordable for everyone. So more people have become sedentary.
The type of food we eat has changed. Both the types of food we eat and how the food is grown/raised.
The quantity of food we eat has changed, a lot.
Anyways - my opinion is that the article is poorly written. The author says ... "all overweight individuals have metabolic and endocrinological dysfunction that is causing or contributing to their inability to lose weight."
Contributing by HOW MUCH is the big question. His statement may be true but that contribution may only be 1% of the problem and by the way what caused the problem in the first place?
That's the big question isn't it? Our body chemistry hasn't suddently evolved but there have been many changes.
...
Anyways - my opinion is that the article is poorly written. The author says ... "all overweight individuals have metabolic and endocrinological dysfunction that is causing or contributing to their inability to lose weight."
Contributing by HOW MUCH is the big question. His statement may be true but that contribution may only be 1% of the problem and by the way what caused the problem in the first place?
Yes, I think that's my irritation with the article. He makes it sound like it's just a genetic thing, and you're going to have to wait for some drugs to fix the bad genetic hand that you got, when really that's probably not the case, or at least not 100% the case for most people.
I've been reading some more articles (when I can find them for free, abstracts when I can't) about leptin, and it does seem that, at least in mice/rats there are changes in leptin with diet induced obesity. It seems like when they make their experimental rodent models obese by feeding them a high fat diet there are marked changes in leptin and leptin receptors. I love reading this stuff. I wish I still had access to the Children's Hospital ejournal holdings. My 'borrowed' password doesn't seem to work any more.
Yes, I think that's my irritation with the article. He makes it sound like it's just a genetic thing, and you're going to have to wait for some drugs to fix the bad genetic hand that you got, when really that's probably not the case, or at least not 100% the case for most people.
Changes in leptin are normal in obesity. It's signaled by body fat, so obviously having more fat is going to affect levels vs. lean individuals. The hypothalamus just affects all kinds of things in the body, so it filters down and causes other peripheral issues.
And that's not even accounting for the psychological effects it has, via dopamine activity.
The question you have to ask is are these causal factors or are they effects of getting fat to begin with? The human body is already primed to store food in conditions of plenty, and there are going to be genetic dispositions towards behavioral and physiological risk factors.
But to label every fat person, or even most, as having a contributing pathology? Naw. Most of it boils down to too much easy access to calories combined with not enough activity. Doesn't have to be any more complex than that.
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But to label every fat person, or even most, as having a contributing pathology? Naw. Most of it boils down to too much easy access to calories combined with not enough activity. Doesn't have to be any more complex than that.
No way, you're wrong. I figured out how to change my pathology permanently so I could drop 100+lbs of fat and keep it off. ... *sigh*.. I'm still waiting on my Nobel Prize and million bucks too.
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Mike Pipes
Massive fat loss survivor and aspiring trainer in training
I guess it's just the general overall impression. There's this at the end:
Quote:
In summary, emerging evidence demonstrates that a significant number of overweight patients have a metabolic problem rather than a problem of willpower or lifestyle. Identification and correction of these metabolic abnormalities, including leptin resistance and cellular thyroid dysfunction, can result in dramatic long term successful weight loss.
Just just went back and skimmed through it again, and I see that he did include some references to environmental effects, such as losing weight can help restore normal leptin levels, and that stress and yo-yo dieting can contribute to aberrent thyroid hormone levels.
But still, the overall tone reads to me like 'metabolic dysfunction' is something you might be born with. Like, if you are overweight maybe it's because you have metabolic dysfunction rather than the other way around.
At any rate, reading through it again I see that may have just been my first impression.
Part of the problem though is that you can't really distinguish "metabolic problems" from willpower and lifestyle. It all kinda rolls together bc of the central regulation mechanisms.
And all the while, behaviors are being modified by the same feedback. Only a conscious intervention can break the cycle, and the same issues that led to getting fat in the first can make it hard to get the fat off.
Some will be more prone to this than others, obviously, but that doesn't imply a pathology per se
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Changes in leptin are normal in obesity. It's signaled by body fat, so obviously having more fat is going to affect levels vs. lean individuals. The hypothalamus just affects all kinds of things in the body, so it filters down and causes other peripheral issues.
And that's not even accounting for the psychological effects it has, via dopamine activity.
The question you have to ask is are these causal factors or are they effects of getting fat to begin with? The human body is already primed to store food in conditions of plenty, and there are going to be genetic dispositions towards behavioral and physiological risk factors.
But to label every fat person, or even most, as having a contributing pathology? Naw. Most of it boils down to too much easy access to calories combined with not enough activity. Doesn't have to be any more complex than that.
Oh yeah, I remember a lecture one of my undergrad teachers gave about why salt, fat, and sugar taste so good (way way back in time, lol). We are definitely programmed to seek high energy density foods and store them up. Those high energy density foods are so plentiful and easy to obtain now that it's really no surprise that obesity is increasing so dramatically.
What's going to be interesting to learn (and there may be a lot of research out there that I just haven't looked for yet) is the effect that eating a high fat and sugar diet in early childhood has on all of these hormones (or even the effect of maternal diet during pregnancy).
Oh yeah, I remember a lecture one of my undergrad teachers gave about why salt, fat, and sugar taste so good (way way back in time, lol). We are definitely programmed to seek high energy density foods and store them up. Those high energy density foods are so plentiful and easy to obtain now that it's really no surprise that obesity is increasing so dramatically.
What's going to be interesting to learn (and there may be a lot of research out there that I just haven't looked for yet) is the effect that eating a high fat and sugar diet in early childhood has on all of these hormones (or even the effect of maternal diet during pregnancy).
Look up thrifty phenotype as your search term, lots of papers to look over on it.
Yep, I had already found a bunch right after I posted although not with that term. The things I was looking at were effects of maternal diet induced obesity (in mice) on their offspring.
First, is this (metabolism, etc...) your area of study, gradstudent? Just curious.
Second, wouldn't a 'thrifty phenotype' be sort of maladaptive? Like, what would drive the evolutionary selection for this? I guess, what I'm asking is are environmental situations generally more stable or more dynamic, if that makes sense? If an organisms' metabolism and/or food seeking behavior gets set early in life it's going to be less able to adapt to changing conditions. How plastic is this uh... phenomenon/phenotype?
I study biological anthropology, broadly interested in human energetics, with a specific interest in population variation in leptin and how leptin acts as a signal between energy sufficiency and reproduction.
Thrifty phenotype is adaptive in an environment where resources are limited. The theory is that if your a fetus and your getting signals telling you that your entering an environment where resources are slim then it makes sense to develop a metabolic system that is thrifty in nature and easily accumulates fat when it is able too. This will increase survival in an environment of limited resources.
When you get that signal as a fetus and then you end up growing up into an environment of plenty then it is like a mismatch in signals and maladaptive for the actual environment your in (you end up accumulating a lot of fat and getting things like cardiovascular disease/diabetes).
As you grow up your phenotype becomes less able to adapt/less malleable, depending on the traits involved. It's most able to change while your a fetus and becomes less so during early infancy and through growth. This is true for your phenotype broadly, different traits will have different levels of flexibility and may have different times when they become relatively fixed.
Now under this theory having a "thirfty phenotype" is only bad if your in an environment of plenty. If you simulate an environment where resources are lower (through dietary limits and exercise) then you can resist some of the negative effects or they wont appear at all. The problem is that when exposed to an environment of plenty you'll always be more at risk compared to someone without a thrifty phenotype.
Now keep in mind a lot of this theory comes from animal models with some evidence supporting it from population level data. Generally the pattern that is observed is that if your were insufficient as a fetus then your develop this thirfty phenotype, but if your oversufficient you tend to develop a lot of problems too. So a common thing that you'll see is that babies with low birthweights and high birthweights tend to be at higher risk for developing something like cardiovascular disease compared to those with middle birth weights. (Birth weight is often used as a marker of fetal nutrition, which may have it's own set of problems, but is probably ok on a large population level)
For the most part I would make a guess and say that in the US we tend to have more problems with lifetime oversufficiency (even in the womb), where as in developing countries that have experienced rapid influx of westernized diet/lifestyle then thrifty phenotype is probably a bigger problem.
There is also some evidence that these effects my be inter-generational as well (your mom's fetal environment ultimately effects you as well), but a lot of that is fairly new.
Hope that answered your questions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Snarlla
Okay, but a few questions...
First, is this (metabolism, etc...) your area of study, gradstudent? Just curious.
Second, wouldn't a 'thrifty phenotype' be sort of maladaptive? Like, what would drive the evolutionary selection for this? I guess, what I'm asking is are environmental situations generally more stable or more dynamic, if that makes sense? If an organisms' metabolism and/or food seeking behavior gets set early in life it's going to be less able to adapt to changing conditions. How plastic is this uh... phenomenon/phenotype?
I'm not good at the science behind weight gain/loss, but I do know there are different kinds of fat people in this world.
You can use me as an example of someone who grew up as a normal kid, a normal teenager (actually on the skinny side,) a skinny young adult (weight 112 at age 20,) even slim after two pregnancies (down to 125, and then 130.) Here is where you see the weight gain starting, but it's still nothing drastic. It's not till later years that the weight goes up. Even then, I stayed physically active most those years and ate well. BTW, my parents were/still are health fanatics, I never ate junk of any sort growing up.
Compare that to the child that grows up fat. Junk food is the norm, tv watching, whatever it all may be. That kid grows up into the fat teen, into the fat adult, and it must be much harder for that person to lose weight.
What are the differences in all those hormones and such written about these days, what do I have that is different than someone who has always been fat? I'm hoping I have less fat cells and that I didn't grow too many new ones when I gained weight up to 182 lbs.
I also know what my body looks like slim (heck, I have the photos) but the fat person doesn't have a clue, they have no idea how low they can even go. That's something I've noticed when in Weight Watchers, people who've always been fat have much higher goals as they can't ever remember weighing 130lbs, for instance, and their goal will be 160.
What I've never comprehended is what allows someone to eat and eat and eat and eat. I've had my binges, I could eat half a package of Nutter Butters if I had some, but others have a hole in their stomachs and something is definitely messed up there. Some signal isn't working right, the signal to tell a person to stop. An adult "might" be able to tell them self to stop, but a child is different.
Sorry for the rambles from the person who doesn't understand all this, just wondering about it all.
Thanks Grad. That's a lot of good information. I appreciate you taking the time to type it out. So, it seems that there's not an opposite of the thrifty phenotype, where exposure to overabundance before birth would lead to protection or a modified phenotype that would be better able to cope with overabundance later in life? Or if there is, it's not enough to cope with the extreme overabundace that we have here in the US?
I was reading another paper this morning that was describing some different models of food intake programming. I guess some of them take into account that a certain amount of buffering goes on during fetal development, where the fetus is protected to some extent from the environmental cues by the mother, placenta, etc... I wonder if that could contribute to obesity in any way. Like, are fetuses buffered enough so that they can't really develop the opposite of a thrifty phenotype? Probably it has more to do with the fact that overabundance was such a rare occurance during human evolution though.
Annette- I was a skinny kid too, athough we didn't really eat 'healthy'. We ate out a lot less when I was a kid than people seem to these days, but what we ate at home often included something fried.
I didn't start to get fat until after high school. Then it was a steady progression upwards. My husband was overweight too, and I think when two overweight people get married it becomes sort of a snowball effect. LOL!
Kids worry me these days, they really do. When I see 3 yo kids coming out of the convenince store with a 32 oz icee it makes me all judgmental inside. I know that's bad to be all self righteous and all, but who in their right mind thinks a 3 yo needs 32 oz of sugar water? Stuff like that. If it wasn't messing with their hunger signals/metabolism it would be shocking.
Thanks Grad. That's a lot of good information. I appreciate you taking the time to type it out. So, it seems that there's not an opposite of the thrifty phenotype, where exposure to overabundance before birth would lead to protection or a modified phenotype that would be better able to cope with overabundance later in life? Or if there is, it's not enough to cope with the extreme overabundace that we have here in the US?
I was reading another paper this morning that was describing some different models of food intake programming. I guess some of them take into account that a certain amount of buffering goes on during fetal development, where the fetus is protected to some extent from the environmental cues by the mother, placenta, etc... I wonder if that could contribute to obesity in any way. Like, are fetuses buffered enough so that they can't really develop the opposite of a thrifty phenotype? Probably it has more to do with the fact that overabundance was such a rare occurance during human evolution though.
I would say, at least from a theoretical thrifty phenotype perspective, those who would be expected to have the most resistance to developing metabolic related problems later in life would be those who got just the right amount of nutrition to meet their needs during fetal environment and early life, not too much and not too little. But I don't think anything is really going to predispose people to being truly un-thrifty. As you said overabundance probably wasn't much of a problem, so our systems aren't really designed to prevent the problems associated with it per se, because it just wasn't a strong selective challenge. Being a little too thrifty is probably a safer bet then not being thrifty enough as well. In addition, I think humans as a whole are a metabolically thrifty species because of the unique energy costs of our brains, compared to other apes we just have higher amounts of fat and less muscle.
Now I'm sure there are a select number of people who are very un-thrifty, they probably have very high neat (do things like fidget a lot) and just don't have very big appetites. What I'd like to see is more studies focusing on that select group of people and why they are the way they are. I'm not familiar with that literature or even if such studies exist, but maybe someone else is and can chime in.
In addition, I think humans as a whole are a metabolically thrifty species because of the unique energy costs of our brains, compared to other apes we just have higher amounts of fat and less muscle.
Oh yeah, good point!
Quote:
Now I'm sure there are a select number of people who are very un-thrifty, they probably have very high neat (do things like fidget a lot) and just don't have very big appetites. What I'd like to see is more studies focusing on that select group of people and why they are the way they are. I'm not familiar with that literature or even if such studies exist, but maybe someone else is and can chime in.
I _think_ I read something about this somewhere, but I'm not sure if it was a popular sciency type blurb, or something real. If I happen to remember I'll post it. It may have just been something about measuring the calories that fidgety people burn compared to less fidgety ones.
What do you think of this article?
... *sigh*.. I'm still waiting on my Nobel Prize and million bucks too.
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