Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It - Gary Taubes

[Jkaylor]

Stating that a person can consume 'excess' calories without gaining weight is stating you can consume more calories than you burn without gaining weight. It's BS. You can only conclude he's a charlatan (likely, given some of his other 'points') or that he's a delusional buffoon (who apparently is unaware of what excess means).

"Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss."

That is the very definition of long-term weight loss. Once you stop expending more calories than you consume you will.........gasp!.....level off and/or begin to increase your weight. In fact, it would be absolutely impossible to fail to continue lose weight before you stopped expending more energy than you consume.

Let me give you a SIMPLE possible answer to your "check-mate" proposition. What if "excess" calories aren't stored as fat in a person with an optimal hormonal balance and instead SHITTED out? I know a few guys who eat total shit and are ripped. That's an anecdote, I know. But the possibility gets us out of checkmate to your argument that you're offering as concrete

 

[Stinger911]

People get fat because they intake more calories than they expend.

"Consuming excess calories does not CAUSE us to grow fatter.." That is demonstrably untrue. Actually, it's kinda the exact meaning of the word 'excess'.

The guy sounds like a crackpot. His above statement would rewrite the laws of physics.

Note the capitalization of the word "cause." Taubes's point is that growing fatter is a result of hormonal partitioning of the calories. Consuming excess calories doesn't cause one to grow fatter. It merely provides resources for the body to partition however it decides according to hormones. As he says, eating lots of food doesn't prompt a child to grow. A child is prompted to grow via the release of HGH and consuming calories provides the body with a resource to partition to growth.

He is reassigning the causal chain. People think: we get fat because we eat too much. And he is saying: we get fat because the body demands it hormonally and eating too much is merely a consequence of that.

By limiting carbohydrates, you limit the hormonal prompt (insulin) for the body to demand resources for fat cells.

 

[Jkaylor]

Note the capitalization of the word "cause." Taubes's point is that growing fatter is a result of hormonal partitioning of the calories. Consuming excess calories doesn't cause one to grow fatter. It merely provides resources for the body to partition however it decides according to hormones. As he says, eating lots of food doesn't prompt a child to grow. A child is prompted to grow via the release of HGH and consuming calories provides the body with a resource to partition to growth.

He is reassigning the causal chain. People think: we get fat because we eat too much. And he is saying: we get fat because the body demands it hormonally and eating too much is merely a consequence of that.

By limiting carbohydrates, you limit the hormonal prompt (insulin) for the body to demand resources for fat cells.

The hardest audience to convince is those who have decent reasoning skills and good vocabularies. Once they get a hold of a model that works reasonably well it's VERY difficult to get them to let go of it or any of the premises it's based on

 

[ocean size]

What if "excess" calories aren't stored as fat in a person with an optimal hormonal balance and instead SHITTED out? I know a few guys who eat total shit and are ripped.

lol

 

[Jkaylor]

lol

Yes, lol. Then prove that impossible in a paragraph or less... GO!

Spoiler

go fuck yourself cunt

 

[ocean size]

Yes, lol. Then prove that impossible in a paragraph or less... GO!

go fuck yourself cunt

lol dude if you are going to have goofy ideas with no evidence you have to own it. you can't get all pissy and self important.

 

[Seriously-Dead]

Discrediting this guys' arguments because other scientists do is an appeal to authority. He might be breaking ground into new areas of discovery that require you to rethink some huge assumptions you may have had for a long time. I didn't even watch the video, but read the OP and got the feel that this guy could be like a kind of Gabor Mate character in his field. If you don't know Gabor Mate is a MD who is one of the leading out-of-the-box thinkers and experts in depression and disease

The difference is that Gabor Mate is an MD who spends everyday working with the population he discusses, by working with the downtown eastside population of Vancouver (e.g. HIV infected drug users). Gary Taubes is a journalist who wrote a book, and doesn't actually work with the population he writes about. Nor is he a scientist, or an endocrinologist, or any kind of physiologist.

His understanding of insulin's mechanism of action is completely off. Many people, like real scientists, have written about it before. I would go into detail, but smarter and more dedicated people like Stephen Guyenet have already written many series of posts over the years about Taubes' ideas.

Here are a few starting points:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/2016/01/always-hungry-its-probably-not-your.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/2016/01/testing-insulin-model-response-to-dr.html#more

 

[j123]

These kind of statements are exactly what I mean. You might even need to put these solid ideas on pause and entertain another basic mechanism for how fat and calories work to discover a better way.
I'm not gonna look it up for you, but Gabor Mate (MD) says smoking doesn't cause cancer on its own. "We all know smoking causes cancer" right? If you listen to his reasoning and studies it will flip the script on its head and show you even base level assumptions are off sometimes

Maybe, who knows, if things stop working, and there's no explanation to why, I might switch. But given there are alot of variables, they all must be worn out.
eg. I'm not losing weight eating at my supposed 500 caloire deficit -- so I check my activity level, if I'm less active, that means my maintenance has dropped, and my current estimate of 500 deficit has now ended up being a 0-250 cal deficit. Or my metab might be ruined from cutting too long, so my estimated TDEE is also off, etc
Once all the logical explanations have been exhausted and I have nothing left, I'll look to other different studies, until then, I'll just try to fine tune whatever I'm working with.

I've done alot of different styles of dieting, and I've found calorie and macro-counting is the best and most accurate way to track things for me. Most important is being consistent, there's no point on going on a kick ass world class diet, only to crave and binge 7-10 days later. I've done fad diets, keto, bad stupid keto (lo carb, low fat, high protein), bro dieting (talapia, asparagus, chicken breasts, etc). I have craving issues, so flexible dieting (IIFYM) has worked well, and has culled eating disorders I ended up with post-fad / low carb dieting.

I know a few guys who eat total shit and are ripped. That's an anecdote, I know.

If everything is accounted for, why not. like I mentioned above, I follow IIFYM, and compared to purists, a portion of what I eat might be considered shit, but I have firm grasp on counting, so everything goes as planned. Almost 1/2 my carbs comes from sugars, but I make sure to get all my micro nutrients in (from veggies, vitamins, etc). Of course on a cut, I can't eat too much junk as I have a lower cap on fats (50-60g on a cut, 85-100 on a bulk). Because thats really what it is, junk foods, macro-wise just contains more fat.

 

[BKMMAFAN]

He is reassigning the causal chain. People think: we get fat because we eat too much. And he is saying: we get fat because the body demands it hormonally and eating too much is merely a consequence of that.

By limiting carbohydrates, you limit the hormonal prompt (insulin) for the body to demand resources for fat cells.

You get fat because you consume more calories than you burn. Different people may burn calories at different rates, but the author in the OP is suggesting one can consume 'excess' calories (ie, more than you burn in a day) and still not put on weight. That's an incredible claim and I've not seen any evidence to support the contention.

Even more troubling is his claim that: "Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss.." That is simply untrue. One must stop expending more energy than he consumes to, indeed, stop losing weight. You cannot put back on weight or even stop losing weight by continually expending more energy than you consume (accounting for water weight, etc).

These seem more like blatant, over-the-top (patently false) marketing statements designed to woo a crowd into spending their money. That, or he's delusional.

 

[Stinger911]

You get fat because you consume more calories than you burn. Different people may burn calories at different rates, but the author in the OP is suggesting one can consume 'excess' calories (ie, more than you burn in a day) and still not put on weight. That's an incredible claim and I've not seen any evidence to support the contention.

Even more troubling is his claim that: "Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss.." That is simply untrue. One must stop expending more energy than he consumes to, indeed, stop losing weight. You cannot put back on weight or even stop losing weight by continually expending more energy than you consume (accounting for water weight, etc).

These seem more like blatant, over-the-top (patently false) marketing statements designed to woo a crowd into spending their money. That, or he's delusional.

Both of your qualms stem from point #6 which is phrased as follows:

6. Consuming excess calories does not CAUSE us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.

For long term weight loss, the author's contention is that energy deficits are compensated over time by an increase in hunger. This coincides with modern research that tells us that exercise has no extraordinary power to halt fat. https://www.theguardian.com/society...to-bad-diet-than-lack-of-exercise-say-doctors

From my anecdotal experience, this holds true. If I go lift weights at the gym I will put on muscle but I will not drop fat unless I modify my diet. If I do HIIT sprints I am voraciously hungry afterward.

Is exercise good for health, circulation, lowering inflammation, disease prevention, adding muscle? Absolutely, and the author never argues otherwise. He simply states that for the express purpose of losing fat, exercise is a poor solution compared to diet modification.

As for the other claim, the author says that excess calories don't CAUSE us to grow fatter. He would argue that elevated insulin is what causes us to grow fatter, and eating excess calories to provide the insulin with a resource to partition to fat is simply a consequence of that -- the same way HGH is what causes a child to grow taller and eating excess calories provides the HGH with a resource to partition to muscle, organ, and bone growth.

I believe his overarching idea is that in the absence of insulin, excess calories will be readily used for energy (and the body's metabolic expenditure increases compensatorily). You can think of calories merely as an undefined resource. Taubes is arguing that this resource is only partitioned to fat in the presence of insulin and is otherwise partitioned to fuel, at least in any significant quantities.

I don't necessarily believe in his theories 100% right now, but I think bringing them to a public forum opens them up to scrutiny, and I will sometimes argue ideas I don't believe in just to see how well they stack up. I'm reading his ebook right now which is vastly more comprehensive than his lectures, so I will update the thread if I learn more.

 

[n...not crazy]

The 1 fat lady at my gym is losing a lot of weight. She looks better every week, and she's really nice.

I was thinking that her religiously working her ass off is helping her lose all this fat mass. But I'm no scientist.

 

[Stinger911]

The 1 fat lady at my gym is losing a lot of weight. She looks better every week, and she's really nice.

I was thinking that her religiously working her ass off is helping her lose all this fat mass. But I'm no scientist.

You have no idea what her diet looks like, so to assume she is losing weight because of the gym is speculation.

 

[n...not crazy]

You have no idea what her diet looks like, so to assume she is losing weight because of the gym is speculation.

By this logic, any assertion to the cause of her weight loss is speculation. Maybe she prayed for weight loss. Maybe she increased peanut butter eating by 1.7 oz per week and drank 1 less beer a month and that changed her metabolism.

Nonetheless I am comfortable with my speculation.

 

[Stinger911]

I'm on page 63/154 now, and here is where he's going with this:

Overeating and sedentary behavior are EFFECTS of a regulatory defect that makes us both fatter and heavier.

He gives several examples of animals whose fat is regulated year-round, like squirrels who get fat in the late summer so that they can make it through the winter months. Short of putting these animals on a starvation diet, the fat is partitioned the same ways at the same times. The idea that everything else in the human body is regulated EXCEPT for bodyfat is strange. The idea that food surpluses are simply stockpiled as fat in light of what we know about fat regulation and partitioning mechanisms both in human beings and other animals is bizarre. Some animals (like whales and hippos) get really fat, but their fat storage never results in deleterious consequences like diabetes. What this points to is that fat regulation mechanisms are working well in those animals but not in humans.

I haven't gotten this far in the book yet, but judging from Taubes' lectures, the cause of this regulatory defect will invariably be the insulin elevation that accompanies carbohydrate-rich diets. The insulin will signal the body to partition calories to fat cells. The fat cells will grow more massive and thus demand either more calories from the organism, or decreased energy expenditure. The way to shrink fat cells and stop them from signalling the body for more food will be to decrease carbohydrates, thereby decreasing insulin. A high-fat, high-protein diet should in theory signal satiety sooner, at a level that is not influenced by the bloated needs of the fat cells. That is, calories will be partitioned quickly and more efficiently to muscle and organs, and once that's done, the body will cease its appetite signals. Fat from fat cells can be used as fuel readily, rather than being solely used as an idle stockpile as they are in obese and overweight people.

The subtle but important distinction Taubes seems obsessed with is this:

-the public is fixated on the idea that as energy moves into a thing, that thing becomes more massive

-just as importantly, as a thing becomes more massive, its energy requirements expand

Taubes is pointing to the idea that insulin signals fat cells to become more massive (just as HGH would signal a child's bones to become longer and denser), and overeating and energy conservation (slothful behavior) are the organism's way of ensuring the fat cells get fed.

Traditional medical establishment advice is to RESIST these signals to overeat and conserve energy by sheer willpower and to instead eat less and expend more energy.

Taubes's advice is not to resist these signals but to STOP these signals altogether by removing their source of origin (insulin).

Rather than raging against the machine in a usually futile battle, you swap out the inputs of the machine to change its demands. You remove the input that is causing a defect in fat regulation signalling.

An important clarification for the people reading this thread: Taubes is NOT arguing against the law of thermodynamics. He is arguing that the law of thermodynamics is so obvious as to tell us nothing about the CAUSE of overeating and obesity. And his argument is that overeating doesn't CAUSE obesity but that obesity (the disregulation of fat cell demands) CAUSES overeating.

He is not saying that overeating and obesity don't correlate...they do. He is saying that the causation is the reverse of what people think. IE, people overeat as a consequence of their fat cells being hormonally disregulated. Their fat cells are not disregulated BECAUSE they overeat.

He is arguing that undereating and moving more doesn't solve the problem in the long term, because in the presence of insulin, the body will introduce compensatory behaviors. This is why obesity is at such an epidemic and why there are so many yo-yo dieters. The prescription for the disease isn't working. The key element here is to reduce carbohydrates and thereby reduce insulin. Then, no compensatory behaviors are needed.

BTW, to reconcile Taubes's view with the traditional bodybuilding view, most bodybuilders naturally reduce carbohydrates to lean out and switch to lower glycemic and less refined carbs. I don't think Taubes and traditional bodybuilding diet paradigms are at odds. I think lean bodybuilders unwittingly lower their insulin levels by reducing carbs and switching to ones that digest more slowly. Taubes simply isn't concerned with bodybuilding here. He's concerned with fat loss, which is why he decries its utility as a fat-burning tool. I think that for guys who want to get more muscular and lose fat, switching to a high-fat, low-carb diet is absolutely fine. In other words, you won't need to get rid of all carbs or demonize them, just eat few of them and make sure they aren't refined. I think many guys from the traditional bodybuilding sphere (Alan Aragon for instance) misinterpret Taubes. They think he is demonizing carbs and exercise when he isn't. He's simply stating that carbs increase fat gain and exercise fails to reduce fat. He's not stating that carbs are evil and useless and that nobody should ever exercise.

 

[Stinger911]

Update:

I'm on page 92/154 now and have read the bulk of the scientific and instructional portion of the book. A few conclusions:

The author is absolutely not making any irrational or unscientific claims. He fully admits that the body can only maintain function and survive if given calories and also that calories are a prerequisite for the deposition of fat. He is NOT arguing against the law of thermodynamics.

What he disputes is the idea that all calories function the same and that "excess" calories are stored into fat cells like a savings account for times of need (starvation). Instead, he argues that fat cells function more like a wallet, because fatty acids are moving into and out of fat cells all day long to either be used as energy or stored. When we need more fatty acids, we eat, which is similar to going to an ATM.

Both where calories are partitioned and whether they are stored or burned for fuel is dependent upon the biochemical interactions that result from eating specific foods. Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose in the bloodstream, which elevates insulin. Insulin's job is to lower the glucose in the bloodstream, because high blood sugar levels are toxic. To do this, insulin breaks glucose into fatty acids and deposits those fatty acids into fat cells. LPL (lipoprotein-lipase) is an enzyme that attracts fatty acids. HSL (hormone-sensitive lipase) is an enzyme that breaks down fatty acids bound up as triglycerides in fat cells into their component fatty acids and allows them to escape fat cells and be used as fuel. When elevated insulin is present, LPL is elevated on the ends of fat cells and HSL is suppressed. So insulin functions, enzymatically, to shunt calories into fat cells and prevent them from escaping!

If we forego carbohydrates and instead eat dietary fat and protein, insulin levels do not elevate, and the calories are partitioned where they are needed (muscle repair, organ maintenance, etc.). They are not hogged up by the fat cells.

Obese people eat and eat and eat because as fat cells get bigger, they require MORE calories to be maintained (the more massive something is, the more energy it requires). Many of these calories, as I said, are shunted to the fat cells, and the rest of the body is deprived since the fat cells are hogging the calories. So in order to meet those baseline requirements of the rest of the body (muscle, organs, etc) hunger increases so that food intake increases even more.

Do you see what is going on here? Insulin shunts calories by priority into fat cells. The rest of the body is like "Yo, WTF about me?" AND the fat cells become more massive. So both the rest of the body (to live) and the fat cells themselves (to become more massive) demand more calories.

If caloric intake can't be accommodated, the body becomes sedentary to compensate.

It's a viscious cycle. Basically if you eat a carb rich diet, your fat cells grow. In order to keep growing, the fat cells require you to eat more, thus increasing hunger. The only way to stop shunting a disproportionate amount of calories to fat cells is to reduce insulin levels by avoiding blood sugar spikes and thus avoiding refined and easily digestible carbohydrates.

In the absence of insulin, triglycerides in fat cells can be broken down into their component fatty acids and therefore fit through the cell membrane and be used for fuel. And of course the disproportionate shunting of calories into the fat cells ceases.

I realize this is probably all very dry and boring to the sherdog crowd, but the TLDR version is that nothing this man says is crazy in the least. He makes perfect sense. Carb-rich diets = fat. All carbs aren't bad, just eat ones that are very slow to digest and lower in carb content already (like spinach and other green leafy vegetables). People don't get fat because they overeat. They overeat because they get fat and the body sends hormonal cues that increase hunger and sedentary behavior. The correlation between overeating and obesity is still there, but Taubes reverses the causality. The fat cells prompt the organism to behave as they do. Fat people don't overeat BECAUSE they are lazy and weak-willed. Fat people overeat because they are fat and their body demands they overeat hormonally. Remove insulin from the picture and these hormonal cues cease.

Just to be extra clear, overeating is a PREREQUISITE of obesity but not the CAUSE of it. The CAUSE of obesity is the hormonal DISREGULATION of fat cells and their intake of energy thanks to elevated insulin levels. When operating under normal regulation, fat cells are constantly taking in and using energy, not just taking it in and storing it. Under hormonal disregulation, fat cells constantly take in energy and store it, both expanding the fat cell's baseline requirement and also depriving the rest of the body (muscles, organ tissues) of calories.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Appreciate the summaries @Stinger911

Need more of those kinds of posts around here.

 

[Adamant]

It's an undeniable fact that eating less / healthier + more exercise = weight loss / losing fat.

 

[Darwinambrosius]

Discrediting this guys' arguments because other scientists do is an appeal to authority. He might be breaking ground into new areas of discovery that require you to rethink some huge assumptions you may have had for a long time. I didn't even watch the video, but read the OP and got the feel that this guy could be like a kind of Gabor Mate character in his field. If you don't know Gabor Mate is a MD who is one of the leading out-of-the-box thinkers and experts in depression and disease

That's not really what an appeal to authority is though.

 

[Stinger911]

Appreciate the summaries @Stinger911

Need more of those kinds of posts around here.

Thank you.

It's an undeniable fact that eating less / healthier + more exercise = weight loss / losing fat.

Wrong. Eating less (generally) and exercising more increases appetite. In the long term (6 months+), almost nobody can stick to this, and the studies prove it. Nearly everyone who loses fat from purposely inducing a caloric deficit via restricted diet (semi-starvation) and exercise puts the weight back on in the long term. It's true that eating less and exercising more DOES reduce weight, but this is in a vacuum. It doesn't account for the fact that people who expend energy while semi-starving become voraciously hungry. Just look at all the Biggest Loser contestants who lose hundreds of pounds and then put it all back on + more a year or two later. This is precisely the advice that the FDA and NIH have given us for decades and it SUCKS. Just look at all the fat hippos walking around today. If their advice worked, we wouldn't be facing a worldwide obesity epidemic.

This advice (move more, eat less) is an argument that Coca Cola uses btw. Their reasoning is that it's fine to drink a can or two of coke. Just go walk a mile or so. It allows food corporations all the leeway they want to make shit food and drinks that hormonally make people obese.

What DOES work to reduce fat is reducing carbohydrate intake. Note... reducing flat calories is INCONSEQUENTIAL. What matters is reducing carbohydrates. After doing so, hormonal hunger cues cease and energy is made available from fat cells.

Lots of diets (even low-fat ones) incidentally also reduce carbohydrates. When people make their new year's resolutions to lose fat, they don't JUST go to the gym. They go to the gym and cut out the most conspicuously unhealthy foods from their diet as well (french fries, beer, sodas, pizza) -- which all happen to be carbs.

The author's point is that the corresponding fat loss from diets and exercise regimens is almost assuredly due to the incidental reduction of carbohydrates, whether the person consciously does it or not.

 

[Jkaylor]

That's not really what an appeal to authority is though.

It's not? Also to my other point, maybe Thomas Myers and his "Anatomy Trains" is a better analogy than Gabor Mate, since I don't think Myers is a Dr but he's revolutionizing the physical health industry and his stuff is now being taught in schools. Drs and Therapists take his classes.