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atsugnam t1_j2q6yiv wrote

Reply to comment by hippogrifffart in A study on obese patients suggests the gut microbiome affects obesity levels. Microbial diversity decreased in obese subjects, and the reduction trend was correlated with the severity of obesity. by glawgii

Most of the states of chemistry in your body are pretty tightly regulated, mostly because you die fairly quickly if they get too far off of very narrow margins. Eg electrolytes, water, temperature, acidity. It appears that our food systems aren’t so tightly controlled for most people. That at a population level this is significant and growing is indicative of influence beyond people choosing it.

Edit to add: this isn’t necessarily an unexpected thing - humans succeeded through developing a very wide dietary compatibility, meaning this variability that is good enough to reach reproduction age would appear to be the selected evolution. The problem is now we want longer healthier lives way beyond what evolution would bother with, this study seems to show that the gut biome varies predictably with obesity, says nothing of causation, but does identify potential study targets eg, does this variance then make hunger change, reinforcing obesity maintaining behaviour etc.

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Zestfullyclean87 t1_j2qvyow wrote

You don’t do that with calories because your brain doesn’t say “wait a minute, I ate too many calories. Let’s burn those calories to balance it out!”

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atsugnam t1_j2r81wh wrote

But some people stop eating at the right amount of calories for their demands. Why is that possible for some and not others.

Also there is evidence for people increasing their activity levels when they eat more calories, not going out and exercising, but their average activity level increases.

The reality is we don’t know. There are some fundamentals, but they aren’t well understood: if you had no gut biome, you would have to eat 3 times the calories you do now to maintain your current weight. The biome has a huge impact on the way and amount of calories Welch individual can extract from food, and as of now, we don’t have a realistic method to measure it, and no understanding of what a biome change makes to the calorie absorption rate of any individual.

That’s why literally any absolute statement or claim is not useful, or accurate. In either direction.

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Zestfullyclean87 t1_j2rcjg9 wrote

If you’re eating at the right calories for your body’s demands, then you are maintaining your weight

And if there’s evidence that eating more leads to an increased activity level, that does not change the fact that if they are overweight, it’s because they’re eating more calories than they should

> The reality is we don’t know.

We do know. This is science denial, what you’re doing. Not unlike claiming the earth might not be around

Edit - also you’re saying that the gut biome has a huge impact on how we burn calories, then in the same sentence you say we don’t know have reliable data on it. Those two statements are incompatible with each other. We can’t say definitively “x has an impact on y” without a reliable way of measuring it

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atsugnam t1_j2rnqlu wrote

I’m not denying science, there’s a lot to learn, but we already know that lean individuals absorb fewer calories from their intake than obese ones.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3127503/

This means an obese persons calories in ~ calories out equation is different and prejudicial to maintaining obesity.

And that’s just one scratch on the surface of an ultimately meaningless reduction of a vastly complex system, once you start to gain weight, it gets harder and harder to lose it.

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Zestfullyclean87 t1_j2rsuot wrote

But you are denying science. You’re basically saying “we don’t know, but I know.”

We know an obese person’s calories in and calories out is different to maintain their body size - that’s because it takes more energy to maintain mass, and they have a higher calorie need. What this means is that once they reduce their intake, they have an easier time losing weight.

This is not any different than what I’m saying, you’re just misinterpreting it as something else

It isn’t that lean people “absorb” fewer calories, it’s that they maintain their size on fewer calories, since they have less mass. It seems that you’re choosing to interpret this as “lean people can eat the same number of calories as obese people, they just don’t absorb it” which is not what’s happening.

If you downsized from a 4500 square foot house, to a 500 square foot apartment, your energy bill would lower. The exact same thing happens in the human body. The larger you are, the more calories you need to maintain your size, sort of like how it takes more energy to cool down a large house

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atsugnam t1_j2rymx9 wrote

You didn’t read the study I posted, or what I said.

Obese people absorb more calories from a given amount of food than a lean person given the same amount. We know this because fewer calories are excreted in their waste. So we know that obese people extract more calories from the same input calories than lean people do.

I didn’t claim I knew it, I referred to a study proving it.

But you are too fixated on your worldview to actually read and understand what the evidence shows over what you think you know. You’re falling for your own personal biases all while claiming that’s what I’m doing.

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Zestfullyclean87 t1_j2s08br wrote

No, I read what you said, but the problem is, you’re misinterpreting how calorie needs work.

It isn’t the smaller person doesn’t absorb the calories. It’s that they have a lower calorie need, to maintain their size.

If a smaller person is eating the same number of calories as an obese person (assuming that other factors such as height, sex, and age, and activity levels are the same) then you would have to explain by what mechanism the lean person isn’t storing energy.

Because energy that’s inputted, but not used, doesn’t just disappear. This is where your scientific understanding is falling short - energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. and if it’s not transferred in the body by way of activity, it has to be stored as fat. Fat is stored energy.

So no… lean people and obese people do not consume the same calorie amounts. Not unless the lean person is extremely active, but activity is a lot less relevant in determining one’s size, than caloric intake

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Zout t1_j2t398g wrote

You might have read what he said, but it seems to me you didn't process it. He literally says that obese people excrete less calories, so this is the mechanism you're asking for. Leaner people don't get all the energy out of the food and into the body.

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atsugnam t1_j2txp6d wrote

Ok, again, go and read the study.

They measured the calories dumped in the fecal waste excreted following a fixed calorie intake.

Lean people dumped more calories out per calorie in, their gut didn’t absorb as much of the intake as an obese person did. For the same given intake of calories.

This isn’t about maintaining mass, this is about physically absorbing more of the energy in a given parcel of food.

You’re so fixated on how you think the human body works you aren’t even reading what is in the study.

To couch it in your own words - it’s physics: why is it when a lean person eats a given calorie input do they excrete more calories out in there faeces than an obese person for the same input. How does a lean person get the same calorie absorption when more of the energy went into the toilet?

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