Starting Obese

[Raskolnikov]

Squatting does this because it is the exercise that causes the most system-wide positive adaptations. It's fuckin' magic. My assertion is the same as millions who've gotten stronger than literally the entire rest of humanity: squat properly and heavily, and drink your milk...lots of it; the rest will sort itself out.

No kidding. I'm sort of learning this lesson the hard way. I'm eating roughly in the same fashion as I did a number of years ago to go from 185 to 230. Now, after a number of weeks on SS, I've managed to make almost zero progress in terms of gaining weight (hovering right around 190, despite eating an inordinate amount of pure junk food over the last week or so) -- so I obviously need to reevaluate what I think "lots" of food is.

I have a feeling that if someone actually follows SS, getting fat is a pretty damn hard thing to do.

[stronger]

And for the record, anyone who loses a fuck-ton of weight low carbing has done so because any time you take a macronutrient out of the equation, you're losing a bunch of fucking calories from your daily intake. Low carb only works for about a couple of weeks to upregulate fat metabolism, then you start burning ketones for energy, not increased fat. You have to carb cycle to continue to get those effects.

I dunno, some of the things Gary Taubes has said seem to indicate that low carb can work indefinitely. Certainly makes sense considering the lack of many carbs in the diet for most of our evolutionary profile.

[ChrisM]

I started linear progression while obese, and I'd love to have a story full of rapidly decreasing scale numbers and rapidly increasing squat numbers to share. Unfortunatly like most people in my bodyfat category I lack the willpower to stick to a decent diet.

I've put on 12-14lbs in the past few months. So just to reiterate, fatty + loads of food = even fattyer, even with linear progression. Shocking right?

[nisora33]

I dunno, some of the things Gary Taubes has said seem to indicate that low carb can work indefinitely. Certainly makes sense considering the lack of many carbs in the diet for most of our evolutionary profile.

It does not work indefinitely. Now, carbs are not necessary in order to survive, I'll grant you that. But that's not the same thing as claiming that not eating them will confer any special metabolic advantages on you.

[nisora33]

I dunno, some of the things Gary Taubes has said seem to indicate that low carb can work indefinitely. Certainly makes sense considering the lack of many carbs in the diet for most of our evolutionary profile.

Read this regarding Taubes: http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...9&postcount=17

...and this: http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...6&postcount=19

[nisora33]

In that same thread, Lyle summarizes things regarding Taubes nicely:

Because it's wrong, that's how. Taubes started with his conclusion: fat people eat the same as lean. Then he went looking for data to support it.

We know that his conclusion is completely utterly wrong as data that he apparently was unable to find in his '5 years of research' clearly shows.

If he read as widely as he claims in researching his book, he should have come across the fact at some piont that hte obese do in fact eat more than the lean and that looking fo an explanation of his utterly incorrect conclusion was leading him down the wrong path.

Yet somehow, magically, he didn't. Either he's incompetent or a liar, take your pick.

At that point I don't really care about the rest of what he has to say.

If you can't understand what I'm saying, I can't explain it any more simply.

[Alyion]

So are we talking about people who naturally store more fat than muscle then, not really counting actually bodyweight? I suppose if thats the case I suppose it's more a case of priorites and what that person wants.

Well whatever really - Gary posed a question and it turned into a trolling attempt and pointless debate we have had before and will probably always will have.

.....i'll shut up now

[stronger]

It does not work indefinitely. Now, carbs are not necessary in order to survive, I'll grant you that. But that's not the same thing as claiming that not eating them will confer any special metabolic advantages on you.

interesting links, but yeah, I was just referring to carbs as a non-essential part in the diet. I disagree with Taubes' assessment of exercise, and find the statistics on under reporting of caloric intake highly interesting.

[nisora33]

I’m going to summarize the bulk of what I could find regarding this issue from stuff I’ve taken from Lyle’s forum. This is going to be difficult, as Lyle’s internet shorthand is difficult to sift through, and while all of the stuff that I’ve read there and brought back has--to lesser or greater extent--to do with what Gary, others and I have brought up, not all of it builds fluidly into a coherent statement. So it’s taken some finessing on my part to bring it all together, but here it goes.

Here’s a quote from Lyle that’s necessary if we’re all to be on the same page about what all of this means: “Insulin sensitivity refers to how well or poorly the body responds to the hormone insulin. Individuals who are insulin resistant tend to have higher baseline insulin levels because the body is releasing more in response to try and overcome the resistance.”

People who are insulin resistant, meaning they’re bodies have to release more insulin (insulin is responsible for transporting carbs to muscle and other tissues) in order to produce the same response as in a non-resistant person. When someone like this eats a shit-ton of carbs, massive amounts of insulin are released, insulin swoops in and takes away all those carbs, and then the person in question suffers a drastic drop in blood sugar. This, for those who don’t know, is bad. Lyle states many times that someone like this would far better on a diet lower in carbs and slightly higher in fats.

Guess what population (not the only one, granted) is largely insulin resistant? You guessed it: the obese. A combination of inactivity and excess calories (protein, fat AND carbs) will eventually lead to someone’s becoming fat, and all of this together leads to insulin resistance. Again, I’ll say it again because it bears repeating, as Lyle puts it, that “Someone who is severely insulin resistant will generally do better with less carbs and more fat.” I think this at least partially addresses Gary’s original query. But in reality, any diet that puts an overweight individual in a calorie deficit will yield fat loss, assuming that he or she can just adhere to the diet. It’s just that, for the insulin resistant, a low-carb diet may help some individuals adhere to a diet better.

But this is not the same as saying what Taube’s argues, which is that all folks everywhere should eat a low-carb diet. Taubes’ argument, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, is premised on a falsity. His starting point, which is that fat people and lean people eat the same amount of food or, at the very most, fat people actually eat less, is problematic. The report that Taubes used to determine this was based on self-reported accounts of caloric intake, and self-reporting consistently yields under-reported values: the actual amount of food consumed is substantially higher than reported, in most cases. If you accept Taubes’ original false premise, then you now have to go look for why it is that the obese, who actually eat less than lean people (not true), nevertheless gain enormous amounts of weight. And you end up cherry-picking data in order to support this view.

But to get back to Gary’s question, it would appear—at least according to Lyle—that exercise does improve insulin sensitivity over time. Exercise, coupled with calorie restriction, will improve insulin sensitivity for all tissues, if engaged in long enough.

Here’s a bit more on insulin sensitivity, for those interested:

Lyle states, “Insulin resistance can occur at many different tissues and does so in a fairly standard order.” The liver is the first to become insulin resistant, and it now takes more insulin secreted by the body to turn off glucose production. The next in line to become insulin resistant is skeletal muscle, and thereafter, nutrients can’t make it into muscle to be stored as well as they used to. Writes Lyle, “At this point, nutrient partitioning tends to go way south; if muscles can't store calories and more are still coming in, where to do they go? Fat cells.” Taken to the extreme, this growth of fat will lead to the final stage of resistance, in which fat cells themselves become insulin resistant. Finally, nutrients start accumulating in the bloodstream, and this is very, very bad. Sugars, triglycerides, and cholesterol sit in the blood stream where they cause severe damage. This is what is known as “whole body insulin resistance.”

So you start dieting and exercising. What happens? This part’s for you, Gary. According to Lyle: The insulin resistance in muscle keeps it from using glucose, this spares glucose for the brain. Skeletal muscle is using tons of fatty acids for fuel and you end up with a shunting effect from fat cells to skeletal muscle. This is more pronounced if you train, which is about the only thing in our power that will really preferentially improve muscle insulin sensitivity without impacting on skeletal muscle (and even that isn't entirely true).

So take a fat beginner with whole body insulin resistance. He starts training and dieting. Voila, magic happens. His fat cells are releasing fatty acids like crazy into the bloodstream, which are being burned by the muscle (sparing glucose for the brain). With training skeletal muscle increases.

But as he gets leaner this all starts to reverse, fat cells start to become more sensitive to insulin as you get leaner, fatty acids don't get released as well, less fat is used for fuel, more muscle starts to be lost (especially without training and adequate protein).

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...&postcount=267

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...63&postcount=6

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showpost.php?p=2306postcount=17

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...0&postcount=18

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...4&postcount=57

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...91&postcount=6

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...5&postcount=17

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...0&postcount=21

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...72&postcount=8

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...4&postcount=19

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...6&postcount=21

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...0&postcount=35

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...0&postcount=59

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showp...9&postcount=63

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...-fat-loss.html

And I'm sure that if I've glossed over anything of relevance, or misinterpreted anything that Lyle has written, a certain Mr. Perryman will correct me

[Raskolnikov]

Good stuff, nisora33. Thanks for posting it. That certainly seems to explain what my friend experienced.