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Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

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263 points paulpauper | 3 comments | 14 Apr 25 04:47 UTC | HN request time: 1.279s | source
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spoiler ◴[17 Apr 25 06:53 UTC] No.43713850[source]▶
As someone who's struggled with weight loss, and have known others to struggle with it well, I think we colloquially called this "slow metabolism".

It always did feel like it was easier to gain weight than lose it, especially fat weight and not muscle weight for me.

I was recently sent a video about fat adaptation (basically teaching your body to be better at burning fat) by a very fit friend, but I wonder how much of that is bro science and how much of it is grounded in reality. Maybe worth looking into more deeply if it can counteract or balance out this.

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paulpauper ◴[17 Apr 25 07:39 UTC] No.43714079[source]▶
metabolism is orthogonal . It's possible to have a fast metabolism and still be obese if you're eating at a surplus. But it's also possible people with faster metabolisms may be more successful at weight loss if already obese. So a 300-lbs person who eats 10,000 calories/day to be weight stable will find it easier to lose weight compared to to a 300 lbs person who is stable at 4,000 cal/day. This can also explain how some people lose tons of weight on GLP-1 drugs, whereas others lose less. The guy eating 10,000 calories/day will lose much more weight more rapidly owning to having a much bigger metabolic furnace, as soon as he restricts eating and his body is no longer getting 10,000 calories/day. Unfortunately, there are no studies that investigate the link, if any, with metabolism and dieting success.
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sethammons ◴[17 Apr 25 08:57 UTC] No.43714447[source]▶
10k calories a day is what a black bear eats preparing for hibernation. And it is what Michael Phelps would eat daily when training in the pool for hours on end.

Obese people can remain obese eating 1000 calories a day. I recall one episode of My 600lb Life and the show's featured person that day was at 900 or 1200 calories a day and still didn't lose weight. Might have still been gaining.

It is a dynamic system. People tend to only consider the CI in CI/CO.

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ykonstant ◴[17 Apr 25 09:02 UTC] No.43714480[source]▶
>Obese people can remain obese eating 1000 calories a day. I recall one episode of My 600lb Life and the show's featured person that day was at 900 or 1200 calories a day and still didn't lose weight. Might have still been gaining.

How is that possible? There is a lower bound on calories needed (on average across say six months) to maintain life. Adding to that the calories needed to maintain the weight, I don't see how an obese person could stay alive with "CO" significantly lower than 1200 kcal.

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eftpotrm ◴[17 Apr 25 09:22 UTC] No.43714574[source]▶
And yet it happens. A doctor in my family told the story of a patient they were treating in hospital who medically needed to lose weight, and who they found unable to get any reduction until they dropped below _200_ calories a day.

Metabolism is _significantly_ more complex than CI/CO, from experience.

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1. phyalow ◴[17 Apr 25 09:30 UTC] No.43714617[source]▶
Come on, this is ridiculous.

CI/CO is a thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

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2. d4704 ◴[17 Apr 25 12:59 UTC] No.43716167[source]▶
Agreeing and I found it interesting to learn more about caloric availability to the body.

I.e. calories on the label vs what the body can actually access.

Like drinking smoothies (high availability) vs raw fruit (lower availability)

Dr. Greger (Nutrition focused) discusses some of this on calorie density and some referenced studies here if interested:

https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/how-to-lose-weight-eating-mo...

3. inglor_cz ◴[17 Apr 25 13:38 UTC] No.43716654[source]▶
I don't believe that people can gain weight while eating almost nothing, but I believe that their internal distribution of energy may be out of whack.

Proponents of naive thermodynamics model tend to assume that only "excessive" energy is stored into bodily fat, once all the other tissues have had their fair share.

That is not really true in insulin resistant people, whose storage may be excessive and leave the rest of the body unsatisfied and hungry, which drives them to eat more than a healthy person would.

To us, this looks like deliberate overeating, to them, it is a result of constant hunger caused by the fact that some part of the energy consumed is being immediately locked away in fat tissues by dysregulated metabolic processes.

Notably, it isn't easy to "correct" this situation by just eating less, because that will leave those people feeling really starved. Insulin sensitivity must be restored first, then the fat stores will give up their excess willingly and that person won't suffer.