"Today's Fact is Tomorrow's Myth."
This seems especially true for Weight-Loss Issues.

        The video below contains one expert's viewpoint (his Theories) which as of TODAY "conventional wisdom"  considers FACT.   What do I think?  His calculations seem valid as far as they go, but I believe that there is still a great deal of  undiscovered information that would challenge some of his Theories, thereby changing some of his "Facts" into "Myth".

The Calculus of Calories: Quantitative Obesity Research
                            Presented by Kevin Hall, PhD. (NIH)  March 2015


In this talk, Dr. Hall describes a mathematical approach to understanding the causes and treatment of obesity. Along the way, he debunks many weight loss myths and introduces useful tools to better understand the relationships between diet, physical activity, and body weight. 

Dr. Kevin Hall is a Senior Investigator at the NIH where he studies body weight regulation. His laboratory develops mathematical models to help design, predict, and interpret the results of clinical research studies. Dr. Hall has been the recipient of the NIH Director's Award, the NIDDK Director's Award, the Lilly Scientific Achievement Award from The Obesity Society, the Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology from the American Society of Physiology.

For the past ten years I’ve been starving my body in order to maintain my body at a normal wight, but most of my lifetime I’ve been quite fat, so I know a lot about the experience of being fat.

Guessing why fat people are fat is a cultural favorite pastime.  Fat people have to deal with people guessing why they are fat.  We are told to “eat less and exercise more” by people who can’t possible know how much we eat or how much we exercise.  We’re told that no matter what we’re doing - our bodies make it completely obvious that we must not be doing it right.  We  are not doing enough cardio, we are doing too much cardio, resistance training is a must.  We need to cut down on this food or eat more of that food or use this or that new supplement etc.

People are a lot of different sizes for a lot for different reasons. After over 50 years of intense study there is not a single intervention that has been shown to lead to long term weight loss. There is no study that shows that such weight loss would lead to greater health.    

It’s bad enough when people use their limited time on Earth to make random guesses about why fat people are fat, but it’s worse when it comes to “well-meaning”, “concerned” people who think that such “information” constitutes some kind of evidence-based health intervention, and that “evidence based health interventions” are acceptable.

First, they need to take note of the fact that the way that you can identify an evidence-based health intervention is that it is based on evidence, and has something to do with health.  It is not based on somebody’s random guess about why people’s bodies are a certain size and how that size might be manipulated.

Then they need to Butt out.  Giving unsolicited comments or advice to fat people about their bodies is Ignorant, Unkind, and Rude!

So.... potential helpful persons, repeat after me:

"Not My Body, Not My Business"

Weight control would seem to be a simple matter of calories in/calories out. Burn more calories than you consume, and your body will adapt by burning fat.

The pounds will drop away and you can buy new clothes, and stand a better shot at rewards ranging from getting promoted to getting a date. It seems an ineluctable law of physics, a Biggest Loser calculus relentlessly drummed into our brains by the American media. Hence the suspicion that dogs the obese marathon runner Mirna Valerio: If she runs so much, how can she still be fat?

“If controlling obesity were a simple matter of calories in and calories out,” says endocrinologist and researcher Dr. David Ludwig MD, PhD “I would be out of a job.”

“The calories-in/calories-out idea is ridiculously simplistic,” says Canadian obesity specialist Dr. Yoni Freedhoff MD, CCFP. “It's like a financial adviser telling an investor to buy low and sell high.”

Dr. Ludwig explains that weight loss, gain, and control are complex biological processes. “It's a combination of genetic, behavioral, environmental, and psychological factors, and varies tremendously from individual to individual,” he says. “In many ways, obesity is similar to complex diseases such as cancer.”

Dr. Steven Blair, P.E.D., the lead author of the Cooper Clinic studies who is now a professor in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, agrees. "If you fashioned a hypothetical world in which every person ran 10 miles a day and subsisted on the same daily ration of carrots, you would still have a full range of body types, from svelte to stout.”

“Imagine our bodies as cars,” Dr. Freedhoff says. “They come out of the factory with various fuel efficiencies—an SUV's is always going to be different than a sub-compact's. How you drive definitely affects mileage, but the SUV is never going to burn less fuel than the subcompact.

“Well, just like cars, our bodies are all wired with their own distinctive genetic makeups. We can modify our BMI through exercise and diet, but only to an extent. Some of us are subcompacts, others are SUVs, and one type isn't inherently ‘better’ than another. We can be healthy and happy no matter how much we weigh.”