army1987 comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Dorikka 16 June 2013 04:45AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (313)
Tags: open_thread

Comments (313)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 June 2013 03:16:46PM 0 points [-]

In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

ADBOC. I don't know that seeming like someone who is starving, so long as you aren't actually risking to die from starvation and your micronutrient intake stays adequate, is a bad thing, and indeed the evidence seems to suggest that it isn't.

And yeah, slowed metabolism means that if you go straight back to eating as much as you did before starting the diet, you'll gain back the weight. Which is why people are usually advised not to do that.

The researchers concluded that 70 percent of the variation in peoples’ weights may be accounted for by inheritance,

Controlling for height and sex?

Comment author: coffeespoons 18 June 2013 03:57:39PM 3 points [-]

I think the problem is that maintaining a state on semi-starvation for the rest of one's life is very unpleasant and difficult, and is achieved by very few people:

“Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one’s breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe,” Dr. Friedman wrote. “The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight.

Controlling for height and sex?

Well, the identical twin parts of the study would automatically control for height and sex :)

Comment author: [deleted] 19 June 2013 12:11:49PM 1 point [-]

Well, the identical twin parts of the study would automatically control for height and sex :)

What?

I meant, it doesn't surprise me at all that if you pick a bunch of pairs of twins, the correlation between “x's weight” and “x's twin's weight” would be very large -- but if you only picked pairs of male twins between 1.77 m and 1.80 m tall and you got the same result...

Comment author: coffeespoons 18 June 2013 04:06:46PM -1 points [-]

Link to twin study. A quick scan (I don't have time to read it in full right now, but I will later) suggests they used twins of the same sex, and they also compared BMI not weight, which controls for height.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit