Obesity studies:

Big hat tip to @bikrchk for posting this in another thread here.

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Originally Posted by bikrchk

There's been a lot in the news lately about obesity being innately incurable... "The chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is one in 210 for men and one in 124 for women, increasing to one in 1,290 for men and one in 677 for women with severe obesity, the findings showed." http://omnifeed.com/article/www.busi...1900165_1.html. That is one article, but I've seen lots in the news lately in the same vein.

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Please note that this recently reported study excluded from the sample all patients who had bariatric surgery. So these stats are only about people who have lost weight solely through diet and exercise. I hope the researchers produce a separate report about bariatric patients' long-term success. That would be very interesting.

But it's bloody clear that, as a society with so many overweight and fat people (70% of all adult Americans are overweight or obese), we have got to come up with better solutions.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think we will figure this out. I hope it's sooner rather than later.

I also promise myself that I'm not going back to being obese. I will continue to beat this disease for the rest of my life.

This benefits the pharmaceutical company's and Wall Street movers and shakers. So with obesity going up, it provides the capitalist to enjoy recurring monthly dollar. Type 2 diabetes along with high blood pressure medication cost a patient $60 a month multipled by 30 million Americans alone. So obesity becomes a multi billion dollar a year business. So the dollar menu will cost you more in the long run.

Well, I'll certainly agree that the obesity market has never been bigger.

No puns intended.

Seriously, with 70% of Americans overweight or obese, that's at least 275 million people. Jeez, Louise!

I've attained normal body weight multiple times in my adult life.....however, I've always regained it all plus more.

The last time I reached a normal body weight was nearly two years ago, in October 2013, when I got down to 128 pounds. I regained the weight rapidly, and by March 2015 I was at my heaviest weight ever of 225 pounds.

I got sleeved because I was tired of being trapped in the yo-yo diet vortex of significant weight losses and dispiriting weight regains.

I will always say some of this comes back to food costs. How much is a bottle of water compared to a Big Gulp soda pop? I understand salads being priced the way they are because of the shelf life.

The best way to get people to gain weight is to put them on a diet and then take them off. There isn't a person one in these forums that hasn't yo-yo and went up from where they started.

What is the real shame is most of us are cash pay patients in this forum. If we had insurance that covered the surgery none of the people that went to Mexico would have gone. I would not have had mine done in OKC when the premier Bariatric hospital in Tulsa is in the shadow of my house.

***Obamacare rant*** don't read below if you voted for him....

Why in the hell was Bariatric surgery not required coverage in Obamacare if Moochelle really cared about fighting obesity it would have been. This would also serve to lower healthcare costs in the end. But, it wasn't about lowering costs. It was about giving hospitals more paying patients, drug companies more people to sell drugs to, and insurance companies more people to charge monthly premiums. This was about payback from Obama to those companies and to create a new crop of government dependant voters.

But we do get to cover Viagra, birth control, and a bunch of other crap that is truly elective. All while we can't keep our doctor if we liked our doctor.

Just for the record, a bottle of water costs a lot less than a Big Gulp. A case of 24 Dasani bottles of water at Walgreens costs $5.99 (is sometimes $1 or $2 less than that if you catch it on sale). At $5.99/case, that's 25 cents for a 16-ounce bottle of water.

Although this is only my opinion (based on my own past behavior), I don't think people choose fast food vs. groceries because fast food is cheaper. I think choosing fast food is more about the convenience of buying food that's already cooked. (Some people might choose the word "laziness" to describe one driver of the fast food industry.)

Then there's a terrific lack of nutritional education in this country (the US). Parents aren't just making themselves obese -- they're making their children obese with fast food, sugary drinks, etc.

Finally, if we regulate the sale of tobacco and alcohol to children, why don't we regulate the contents of fast food that's sold to children? Big discussion, I know, but it's a valid discussion topic. The effects on children who eat mostly fast food is pretty awful, in my humble opinion. It almost guarantees they will become an overweight or obese American adult.

If the choice is a single Big Gulp versus a single bottle of water the water is more...typically. If I am on the go while I choose a bottle of water, soda from the fountain is almost always cheaper. Most people don't buy a case of water when they are on the run.

i travel a lot and it makes you feel so FAT when you are sitting in europe..where they walk everywhere and look down on fast food..and in other countries where real foods are beloved ...fruits veggies all of it..we have a lot to learn in this society of ours..

I totally agree I ate more crap bc it's cheaper. I always "want" a salad or salmon, but that's $14, while chicken strips are $6. (Or a $1-2 taco bell vs $7-8 panera bread.)Cost is definitely an enemy for me.

I think it is very helpful to view obesity as a disease process. The further along it is, the more advanced it is, the harder it is.

I was stage 4 - ha. BMI of 52, spent most of my life either overweight, obese, or morbidly obese.

I have been at goal 2.5 years, but I feel it... i feel the weight wanting to come back. It is easy to get complacent but truth of the matter is that my stomach capacity is much smaller, but it is like my body has adapted. I am maintaining on a food consumption that logic tells me i should be losing weight...

So, the solution is not just "restrictive quantities for me. It is WHAT I eat, it is WHEN I eat, it is quantities and it is activity. If I think about it too hard it is a little depressing but I just take it a day at a time.

I am in the dating pool at is shocking to me how many men in their 50s have HUGE bellies - and these guys don't see themselves as overweight. Obesity is so common that a person with an extra 50# doesn't even think he is overweight.

It's true when you GOTO store it is definitely cheaper to buy frozen processed food than fruits and organic food. It's sad they want you to eat food that are healthily well than lower the costs.

I don't think the article shocks any of us that have been through these ups and downs with our weight. I, too, wish the study included bariatric patients. My sister is 5 years post op and has maintained her weight loss. She's been obese since she was 7 or 8. I'm a firm believer that this surgery works but I also know you have to continue to make good choices to prevent going back to where you were.

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Originally Posted by Ann2

Please note that this recently reported study excluded from the sample all patients who had bariatric surgery. So these stats are only about people who have lost weight solely through diet and exercise. I hope the researchers produce a separate report about bariatric patients' long-term success. That would be very interesting.

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I know this thread is older. However, it was recently resurrected from a slumber, so I will add some insightful pearls of wisdom from obesity physician Dr. Arya Sharma. He asserts that obesity is not curable and, even in those who have had weight loss surgery, weight regain always occurs when the surgical procedure is undone (such as removing a Lap Band or gastric balloon, or reversing a vertical banded gastroplasty, gastric plication or gastric bypass).

We must also admit that there's quite a bit of weight regain in the bariatric surgery community. The reality is that our biochemistries are not like those of naturally thin people. Our bodies will always be primed to regain the weight if we do not remain vigilant.

http://www.drsharma.ca/obesitywhy-is...ed-body-weight

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...even in people who undergo bariatric surgery, weight always comes back when surgery is reversed.

One of the key underlying problems is that when people lose weight, their energy expenditure does not simply fall to that of the energy expenditure of a person ‘naturally’ at that lower weight – it drops to levels far greater than expected.

Thus, a formerly-obese person burns 20% less calories than a never-obese person of that lower weight – or in other words a 200 lb person, who loses 40 lbs burns about 20% fewer calories than someone who is 160 lbs, but has never been obese. On top of this, the formerly-obese person experiences hunger, cold intolerance, and other behavioural and metabolic changes that make sustaining this lower body weight difficult.

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