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Getting close to a year ago, I talked about GOLO, a weight loss program that I heard about from an ad in a podcast I was listening to. I found it oddly satisfying, because they were trying to launder the standard science on CICO through explicit anti-CICO messaging; truly a beauty of capitalism. Their biggest tag line for what they think is going wrong with a lot of people was insulin resistance. Whelp, while I was at the gym this morning, what popped up in my podcast list? A two hour long Peter Attia podcast specifically on insulin resistance with MD/PhD Gerald Shulman, an academic researcher on the topic.
They talked about the prevalence of insulin resistance in the population. No, it is not obscure. Obesity basically causes it directly, and yeah, the population obesity numbers are high. They also talked about diabetes, both Type I and Type II, as well as some studies on healthy, lean young adults who had two parents with Type II diabetes and who displayed insulin resistance (i.e., at high risk of developing Type II diabetes). But yeah, lots of people do have insulin resistance, so things like GOLO are at least capturing a slice of reality, even though it's clear that they're not really specially targeting insulin resistant individuals. They're not testing people for insulin resistance and then tailoring their program accordingly; they're again just laundering the standard advice and giving it to all comers, whether they're actually insulin resistant or not.
They talked a lot about molecular mechanisms, evolutionary explanations, etc., in great gory detail, far more than I could do justice trying to reproduce here. I'll hopefully suffice by describing one concept; they distinguish between insulin resistance in muscle versus what happens in the liver down the chain (which can cause fatty liver disease, which is now working its way up to being one of the leading causes of death or other conditions that cause death). Apparently, many folks develop muscle insulin resistance, so glucose is not able to be deposited in muscle as glycogen, so it ends up in the liver, and all sorts of problems follow.
What can we do about this? "Exercise reverses this muscle insulin resistance ... exercise in muscle actually will prevent fatty liver and liver insulin resistance". [EDIT:
They talked about a couple different studies, butUpon further review in the comments below; I think this part was just one study. They did talk about other studies generally, but I had interpreted this section as referring to two different studies, but now I think it refers to just one] remember that population of otherwise healthy, lean, young adults with parents who have Type II diabetes? They had them do a singleboutsession of exercise (45min3 sets of 15min at 65% VO2Max), and that was sufficient to open up the necessary translocation pathway, resulting in "more glucose deposition as muscle glycogen and significant reductions in [something too technical for me to try to explain in this comment] and significant reductions in liver triglyceride."What about beyond that population, thinking about just other obese people? "What can we do about this? If we can get our patients to lose weight; this of course is the best. Diet and exercise of course is the best thing, and that's the first thing I tell my patients. We really drill into them how we can really fix everything that's wrong with them through this process. [Emphasis added; italics felt true to the audio; bold is my own focus]"
We know a lot about how this works. We know how to fix it. Exercise still is the single most effective medical intervention we know of. If exercise were a pill being prescribed, it would be hands down the most effective thing for all-cause mortality. Paired with diet, it's basically a superpower against a vast swath of modern maladies. Doctors know this, they know how it works and why, they've known this for a long time now, and they'll say it in public. Some, like this guy, will even say it so bluntly to patients. But many doctors know that patients don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear the science; they don't want to "follow the science" (i.e., actually do the thing). He also mentions that even though they try to drill this into patients, many of them still just don't do it. Patients get annoyed with doctors telling them the truth, and this results in a lot of doctors giving up and not even telling them anymore. Just avoid the topic. I had one obese friend tell me that she practically begged her doctor for advice with her weight, and he said, "You know, you're just getting older..."
You don't have to believe the GOLOs of the world. You don't have to believe the sign on the gym swearing that they'll help you lose 20lbs in 30 days. They're grifting, and they're helping to confuse many many people about how their bodies work. But the evidence is pretty solid that basically whatever the excuse is, in this case insulin resistance, the most well-documented and scientifically-supported solution is still diet and exercise.
Never underestimate the power of self-willed delusions.
My brother and I have to deal with our mother effectively killing herself by her lack of exercise. She developed a bloodclot from sitting still too much, and has refused to change her activity level, in addition to her near morbid-obesity. We have begged, pleaded, harassed, done meal prep, purchased equipment - nothing. Meal prep was a special kind of clusterfuck, as it merely resulted in her consuming the prepared meal shakes in addition to her normal food intake.
And yet, despite all this, she still claims she's more than capable of helping out outside with yard chores(she isn't). Commentary on her health and various drugs she's taking will have her brush it off, commenting on how many of her sisters were long-lived. Same with my advise that she needs better self-scheduling and to manage her food intake better(3 meals instead of 2).
All ignored.
The only time, the only time when she lost weight was when her and my father were on strict dietary regime due to his health(and hers).
That's what it takes - someone riding her near 24/7 with shame in order to actually eat properly.
That isn't to say that she hasn't tried to loose weight. Sugar-free snacks, drinks, meal shakes(as mentioned) - all of them treated like magic totems and talismans and potions that if she consumes this, she'll loose weight as if by magic while not altering her diet in the slightest.
I don't know if there's an official term for this. I like to think of it as 'Magic wand' thinking. That somewhere, somehow, something is out there that fixes everything - a magic wand, a golden ticket, that one thing that does it all without them having to expend one iota of effort, one dram of pain.
Mind, there's an aspect of culture, as well. I wonder how my mother would react if America was more like Asia in this regard - that, when getting fat, would have people actually tell her she's getting fucking fat - and, when reaching out to the wider culture as a whole to affirm her delusions, would instead be met with a cacophony of 'You're fat. Loose some fucking weight, fatty.'
Still. Her latest magic potion is ozempic. So, we'll see how that goes.
As for me, well, I've already learned my lesson long ago. And I get re-affirmation of the value of consistent exercise watching my friends barely a year or two older than I am - helping them with projects, seeing their stamina flag and suffering from minor ailments and injuries that I don't have to deal with - yeah, I'll stop exercising when I'm dead, thank you very much, and I intend for that to be a very, very long day off in the future.
(Also, don't think being educated doesn't mean you're immune to self-delusion. I have a friend of mine who's a lawyer, who doesn't believe in CICO dieting. He tends to bluescreen when I tell him how much I lost just by doing that alone.)
Now, as far as dieting goes - y'know what, I've ranted enough. Needless to say, 90% of the people who've I've seen try to diet start off on the entirely wrong foot to only have it crash and burn two weeks later.
I agree that there's a lot of magic wand thinking, but as I alluded to, I think this is aided by an absolutely abhorrent culture on the topic. You have the people trying to sell you something, so they're going to promise the moon. Then, when people give up, they turn to a different magic thinking (e.g., @jeroboem's "There's something else going on, IMO") and just imagine that it must be some magic chemical or something. Even when my wife agreed that we would track our calories and see how it went, she would repeatedly have times where her weekly windowed average weight wasn't visibly going down for like a single data point (maybe even two points) and would go off on "MAYBE IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE" with no real rational explanation of why it would suddenly stop working. Just some sort of unknown magic. Spoiler: it always kept working. After enough time and then seeing the summary data over a year or two, she said, "I knew, but I didn't know know." Now she "know knows". Before, there was always a gap, a gnawing hole, where magic could constantly sneak in and make her default to thinking that it's just too weird and complicated and that there's probably "something else going on".
Perhaps ozempic will actually be a magic wand for a lot of people. It seems genuinely useful for a lot of folks. I don't think I've seen any indication that ozempic magically causes people to exercise more, though, and exercise has significant bodily benefits beyond just caloric balance.
There clearly is something else going on. People didn't just suddenly lose willpower. Nor did they suddenly lose the knowledge that diet and exercise were important. More importantly, people 50 years didn't have to try to be skinny, they just were.
No one has a compelling theory, supported by evidence, for why the obesity epidemic happened. You might not agree with SlimeMoldTimeMold, but they do a good job of explaining why all the various folk theories are wrong. If you think the problem is simple, then I'd argue you just don't understand it.
Of course this doesn't mean an individual person can't use diet and exercise to lose weight. It just means that, when measured across the population, few will be able to.
To solve the obesity crisis we have to stop trying the same failed ideas from the 1990s that only made the problem worse.
My crackpot theory: In the beginning, there was scarcity to keep people thin. Rich people tended to fat if they weren't careful. Then food got fairly cheap, but lead and cigarettes (and sometimes amphetamines) kept people's weight down. Now food is still cheap but the lead and cigarettes are gone, so... boom.
Notably, weights were rising that entire time even with lead and cigarettes. The thing is, that was a good thing for the first half of the 20th century because quite a few people were undernourished and underweight.
This is also why I find the simplest theory the best - food got cheap, people got rich, and the people that aren't rich get a bunch of money from the government to buy food. You don't need a complicated story, just a super-rich country that doesn't require much physical labor combined with the human inclination to eat a lot in times of plenty.
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