Reply #223: The people who are least likely to lose weight benefit the most from exercise [View All]

[eridani]

Weight loss may be math, but it damned fucking well isn't additive math. Taking in fewer calories than you burn is a matter of non-additive math because of metabolic feedback loops. If you take in fewer calories and exercise more, that by no means implies that you then burn more calories because your metabolism quickly adjusts to use fewer calories. For some there is a sufficiently long lag in this process that weight loss occurs; for others the feedback is near instantaneous. Sure, the latter could probably lose weight with sufficient effort, that being defined as treating weight loss and maintenance as a near fulltime job and an obsession that must always come before career, family and community.

You often hear that insulin resistant people need lose "only 10%" of body weight to achieve reasonable sugar control, but it isn't true. Studies that monitor data daily rather than on a snapshot basis clearly show that controlling intake of foods with high glycemic index and regular exercise improve sugar control (and blood pressure, if high) immediately, well before any observable weight loss. If those things occur first, they can't possibly be caused by weight loss. Furthermore, there is absolutely zero correlation between the amount of weight loss and improvement of sugar control. Add to that the fact that if fat insulin resistant people lose 10% of their body weight, they are STILL FAT.Therefore, insulin resistant people lose weight with great difficulty compared to the non-insulin resistant, but nontheless benefit greatly from modest exercise and better eating habits. It is therefore counterproductive, vicious and snotty to make weight loss a success criterion.



My HMO newsletter refuses to draw logical conclusions, unfortunately. They are willing to say that most type II diabetics are overweight and that being overweight does not cause Type II diabetes. So why do they not have a DUH moment and state the obvious: the genetics behind Type II diabetes also causes weight gain in adulthood?