Public "Integrative Personal Omics Profiles during Periods of Weight Gain and Loss", 2018, Synder et al

http://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/cell-systems/cels_393.pdf

Sorry I can not copy from the article

 

This is a cool design. It was an actual intervention. Participants (all men, who looked to be overweight at the time of recruitment, age not known) had their diets assessed, and were then instructed to eat specified additional snacks designed to cause a gradual weight increase (3.2kg over 30 days). They were told not to change their activity levels. Then, for 7 days after that, they were put on a diet designed to maintain their new (heavier) weight without adding any more. And then their calories were reduced till they returned to their initial weight, which took 6-9 weeks.

Like this:

Astoundingly, in the main cohort, everybody except one succeeded in losing the entire 3 or so kgs in the time allotted - without changing their exercise levels. Amazing, and a pretty fast weight loss imo. Why was it so easy for them when dieting is so hard normally? Cos they were men? Or getting paid lots?

The results are pretty hard to make out. For most measures, they do not appear to show average results for the group, only results for "insulin resistant" vs. "Insulin sensitive". I am wondering whether this was what they originally intended to do, or whether they got no overall differences for many of these measures between the weight gain and weight loss phases, so focussed on the differences between these two subtypes.

Of maybe particular interest to us is this:

The Figure 3 they refer to is hard to read, and not explained fully. It seems to be suggesting that some cytokines increased with weight, and others decreased, but it doesn't say which ones and it doesn't talk about pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines separately.

But based on what they claim in that quote, I suppose we should all be making the best effort we can to stop uor BMIs skyrocketing too much. But hell, who here doesn't know already that getting fat is a Bad Thing? That statement's a bit like a study demonstrating the negative effects of playing in the fast lane of a motorway (hell, I never realised that was a bad thing!). The problem for us is that weight management is much harder than for healthy people.

I suppose its of value to document the changes, especially if you're interested in things like heart disease. Its also of some use to be able to show that males (at least) are able to lose weight by dietary modification alone, without altering their activity levels.

Maybe someone better informed can shed more light on the other stuff they report?

 

I don't have expertise in this area, but my understanding is that current thinking is that exercise, while important for cardiovascular health, has little significance in weight management. Even healthy people, living a normal life, can't do the amount of exercise necessary to effect weight loss.

No doubt, weight management is more difficult for us because of the inability to buy and prepare healthy food, and we may have more difficulty with emotional eating because of the restrictions of our lives.

This understanding comes from many years of reading Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes, a blog by Arya Sharma, Professor of Medicine & Chair in Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is also the Clinical Co-Chair of the Alberta Health Services Obesity Program.

 

Of course you're right. But then nobody's weight loss recommendations include going to bed and moving as little as possible for the duration of the diet! Obviously not, because then you would have to drop your calories to absurdly low levels to effect weight loss.

Just cos you can't lose weight by activity modification alone does not mean it isn't hugely facilitatory when added to diet.

So to me, no question that immobility makes it harder. We really do have to drop our calories to absurd levels to see change.

PS. love your signature line "Humans weren't meant to hibernate!" I've always had a huge problem with that claim!

 

What a load of crap. Weight is secondary. Fix the primary culprit first.

Oh, right...

 

It's true that nobody recommends going to bed and moving as little as possible, but there's lots of evidence that the source of calories matters a whole lot more than number of calories. So deep calorie restriction isn't necessary for weight loss, provided carbohydrates are restricted to 50-100 g per day.

 

I don't get your point. What's a load of crap?

 

@Louie41, the issue of carbs vs. calories is a whole topic on its own right! Maybe that's one for the weight loss thread?

 

you're right. I am going a little off topic here.

 

Calories are not equal. The body uses different macronutrient s in different ways. Had each person been eating the same ratio of protein/ fat/ carb then this would have been more useful.

Once the regulatory mechanism is broken ( ghrelin/ leptin/ insulin), you can be malnourished and still shunt a large portion of your intake to fat storage

 

Now there is something to compare what happen in ill men when they do the same.

In my case nature did it without dieting. Mij belly went from looking like I was 9 months pregant with twins to how a belly looks after giving birth.

 

@Iansbergen, would you consider changing the thread title to match the article title:
"Integrative Personal Omics Profiles during Periods of Weight Gain and Loss".

It makes it easier for people to search for if they ever want to.

 

The senior author of this paper is Michael Synder. He's Chair of the Genetics Dept at Stanford, and an absolute guru researcher.

He is a world leader in the push to personalised medicine.

He was a post-doc under Ron Davis, and Davis has more recently recruited him to research ME.

 

Love your new avatar, @Flying Dutchman!

 

[WARNING - OT post]

Thanks Woolie,

I switched avatar from a painting of Prince Henry Frederick to a memento mori pic of my dog.

Henry was Charles II's older brother, and heir to James I & IV. He was highly capable, and promised a bright future for england. Instead, disease cut him down, young - and england suffered under the disastrously incapable Charles.

Hence, the symbolism of promising young lives cut short by illness, while ineptitude prevails.

(Coincidentally, Henry was tutored & mentored by the Earl of Mar - predecessor to our own ME advocate, the current Countess of Mar.)

But... that avatar looked pretentious.

 

Now you've explained, I have a better appreciation of the old avatar.

 

Remember that as soon as you are in positive calorie balance your liver fills up with glycogen and WATER with it to the tune of about 1Kg. As soon as you fast or go into negative calorie balance you lose this 1Kg of water. So losing the first kilogram of weight on a diet is always easy - you do not need to lose any fat at all.

I also imagine that the hypothalamus must set itself a weight target to within about 1.5Kg for most of us. So if you deliberately add on 3Kg your hypothalamus will be very obliging and not make you hungry until you are back to within about 1.5Kg of square one. Changing your hypothalamic setting to a weight 5Kg less is a whole different ball game. I suspect that this study tells us absolutely nothing about real dieting.

I am sceptical about the claim that exercise is not important. I find consistently that exercise makes a huge difference to my weight. I can easily lose 3Kg on a two week skiing holiday if I keep my food intake the same. I think the boffins forget that vigorous exercise uses a lot more calories than you see on the dial of an ergometer. After a hard day skiing there is massive muscle fibre repair to be done so new protein needs to be synthesised and old disposed of. The repair process is also associated with water retention so the weight loss tends to occur mysteriously three to four days after stopping the exercise when the excess water is excreted.

In other words I suspect having ME and not being able to exercise is likely to make weight loss much more difficult.

 

Totally. First, they assume that just because people can't lose weight through exercise alone, that exercise isn't helpful. Second, they assume that the only calories you lose through exercise are from the energy you burn from the activity itself. As you say, there seems to be pretty good evidence now that people's overall metabolic rate is raised for at least 24 hours after exercise, due to tissue repair and muscle building (more of the latter in men). Then that newly acquired muscle, if its sustained, has a permanent enhancing effect on your basal metabolic rate.

No question, losing weight is much easier if you use exercise well. I never had a problem losing a bit of weight in my exercise days, just upped the duration of my aerobic workouts to 40 mins each instead of 20 (this is supposed to be long enough to engage direct fat burning). And laid off the feedbag a bit. And I was also a skier too @Jonathan Edwards - I could eat anything while on a ski holiday, and sometimes still come back leaner.

Now I have to go on really lean rations to lose anything.

It can still be done though, and without too much misery, a few of us have had quite a bit of success: https://www.s4me.info/threads/a-thread-for-those-concerned-about-weight-gain.25/