short@seismo.UUCP (Tom Short) (04/09/84)
I am out to lose 25 pounds by the first of July. I`ve know of two weight loss centers: `DIET CENTER' and `NUTRI-SYSTEM'. They both claim you can lose up to 25 lbs in 6 weeks. Has anyone heard of or had any experiences with one of these centers or someplace sim- ilar? If so, please let me know. I'd also appreciate any comments you may have on any aspect of weight loss, such as the pros and cons of rapid weight reduction, diet, exercise, etc. Thanks in advance. Tom Short
sebb@pyuxss.UUCP (S Badian) (04/09/84)
Rapid weight loss puts a lot of strain on your body. I wouldn't say I haven't done it (I'm planning on doing it right now), but I know it's not good for me. One problem I just read about is when you lose weight quickly you don't give your skin enough time to adjust to your new size. So you end up promoting wrinkles and baggy skin. I personally think the worst part of rapid weight loss programs is they don't last. What happens when you lose all that weight?? You have to re-educate yourself to eat normally. You're not going to be able to switch quickly to normal, non-weight-gaining eating habits right away. Part of the success of rapid weight loss programs is that they are so structured. I know the Nutri-System is very structured. They tell you exactly what and how much you can eat. This may even be true on the maintenance diet. What happens when you want to go out and eat pizza and ice cream and cheesecake and....sorry, I got carried away. It's obvious that you have to change your eating habits. Otherwise you wouldn't be going on a diet. Unless you've got a lot of willpower and determin- ation, you may find it difficult to switch gears from weight loss to weight maintenance. That's the toughest part of a diet for me. I keep on falling back on old eatings habits. When I'm thin I tell myself I'll never eat like that again. But slowly and surely I start slipping back towards my old evil fat ways. Someday I'll figure out how not to, but for now I just suffer with see-sawing weight. Hope this helps somewhat. If you have any questions about diets, go ahead and ask. I know enough about most of them. Sharon Badian
rob@lzmi.UUCP (04/15/84)
[this line available...]
I lost 57 pounds in 3 1/2 months at a "Thin Life Center" here in NJ.
(starting weight - 247, ending weight - 190, height - 6'). Their diet
is low carbohydrate, high protein, semi-fast; 9oz of protein per day,
12 oz of greens, LOTS of water, vitamin supplements ("1-A-DAY +
minerals" and potassium supplement). The diet is 'medically
supervised'. This translates into the following: an MD examines you at
the outset of the program, they take blood and do EKG recordings at
the start and every 6-8 weeks thereafter, and they montior blood
pressure 3 times per week. ALso included in the program are group
support meetings for the dieters.
After the first week of the program, the hunger pangs stopped, and the
weight started coming off. The problem here is the same as any other
diet. Profound statement follows: "Loosing wieght is EASY. Keeping it
off is HARD!"
Unless you have some other medical problems (thyroid, etc.), most
people are overweight because THEY EAT TOO MUCH! (from personal
experience...) These programs try to get the weight off and
recondition your head to eat differently by understanding WHY you eat
the way you do. Well, in my case, the diet worked, but the training
did'nt stick. In the 2 years since I lost all the pounds, I have
gained back about 25. The problem with me was that since the great
loss was SO easy, I got cocky with the feeling that I could repeat the
loss again by going back on the diet, so my old eating habits
returned. The old line about starting a diet 'tomorrow' was my
favorite, and tomorrow is now over 20 pounds ago. In the context of
the on-going discussions regarding addiction to things, I suppose I am
addicted to stuffing my stomach. (Living to eat, rather than eating to
live - a catchy phrase I picked up at the diet center.)
--
{
{ {
__________ { { { {
(_)________) ==> {{{{{{{{{ ......throwing another log on the fire....
___________ Rob Coben ...!hogpc!pegasus!lzmi!rob
O (_)_________) O AT&T IS LZ - 3B225
__|_______ _______|__
(_)|_______))______|__)
=====|===============|======
T T abc@brl-vgr.ARPA (Brint Cooper ) (04/17/84)
My wife's internest, himself a former victim of obesity, ordered her to lose a significant amount of weight and CWARNED HER to lose it SLOWLY, approximately ONE POUND PER WEEK. The idea was to learn to eat correctly first; with correct eating habits, the weight will adjust itself. It's too early to tell if it works, but the physician is a little, wiry guy with no evidence of former obesity.
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (04/18/84)
<fat fat go away, give it all to doris day> Hmm. A few comments are in order, having lost (and kept off) over 75 lbs of uncomfortable fat. The fast-loss diets such as Cambridge and the various "we cook your meals, you eat them and only them" do work but are VERY expensive with respect to the prices of real food. They are great for losing fat. Unfortunately unless you are also exercising aerobically or with weights, to keep the muscle tissue growing, you are losing THE SAME AMOUNT OF LEAN BODY MASS AS FAT! What does this mean? Well, when you burn fat, the fat cells just empty out. When you burn muscle and lean mass, the cells are consumed. The fat cells are still there, and they begin to demand to be filled. They can apparently be convinced to remain empty by exercise. No, most fat people are NOT fat because they "just eat too much" and in fact, they usually eat as much as 1000 calories a day LESS than an active, exercising thin person. Fat cells use no energy. Lean tissue uses energy. Fat people usually get fat by dieting. They strip off lots of weight (equal amounts of fat and lean mass) following which the fat cells are refilled, even by what would often seem to be good eating habits. So their bodyfat ration has changed for the worse. Add to this the fact that when they DON'T change eating habits, and go back to the normal human pattern of binge, fast, fast, then they are eating more calories than their bodies need and they grow NEW FAT CELLS. The only answer to this is to exercise. Maybe in a few more years we will find out how it is that Bears manage to only burn fat, not lean tissue, when they sleep through the winter, and we can all sleep off the pounds, but right now exercise is it. Hutch
msimpson@bbncca.ARPA (Mike Simpson) (04/18/84)
***
18 April 1984.
[re -- losing weight should be done slowly.]
That is part of why I like the Pritikin eating plan so much --
weight loss is slow, steady and gradual. More info on request.
--
-- cheers,
Mike Simpson, BBN
msimpson@bbn-unix (ARPA)
{decvax,ima,linus,wjh12}!bbncca!msimpson (Usenet)
617-497-2819 (Ma Bell)mark@gatech.UUCP (Mark Johnson) (04/26/84)
Killing all your fat cells would not be a good idea. You need them just as much as you need muscle cells or brain cells or any other kind of cells. The number of fat cells in the body is essentially constant after the age of ten or so. You get fat by making your fat cells bigger NOT by making new ones. The only real way to lose weight is to change your lifestyle. Exercise and eat the right kind of food. There are no "tricks" to losing weight.
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (04/26/84)
<If you like raisins, FAT, juicy raisins, . . .> | Isn't the obvious answer some drug, process, or technique that will | KILL these dreaded "fat cells" once and for all? If they have such | different behavior than the lean muscle/tissue cells, it shouldn't | be that hard to find some agent that acts against them alone. Sure it would. How hard is it to find an agent that acts against cancer cells alone? Besides, those agents which DO affect fat cells have significant effects on the rest of the body, especially the liver and digestive tract. One agent which DOES affect fat cells significantly is STH, human Somatotropic Hormone. STH is a powerful steroid drug, and costs a small fortune. Besides, it isn't safe to use very much, even though those bodybuilders who can get it will happily use it. STH causes several things to happen. First, it stimulates growth and reproduction of cells. The levels of STH are at their highest during puberty when the body is going through massive growth and change. It also causes fat to be mobilized from fat cells and burned as fuel, assuming the body actually needs the fuel (i.e. isn't being stuffed full of glucose-type fuels). This is why growing kids can often eat like pigs and still not get terrifically obese. The body drops levels of STH as soon as it determines that it is done growing, around the age of 22 or 23. Inactivity then, combined with the habits of eating a lot, causes FAT to accumulate, then dieting makes the situation MUCH worse. There is a method for increasing STH secretion. It works for kids who want to gain weight for athletics as well. First, a program of weight training and aerobic exercise needs to be established. Then, supplementing a sensible diet (recommended is a ratio of 2:1:3 where 2 units of protein, one of fat, and three of carbohydrate are consumed as approximately four meals in a day) supplemented with free-form amino acids in the proportions used by the body. This can get costly, by the way. Wieder sells the stuff for an outrageous price, but still cheaper than steroids. In addition, it is suggested that you take about 250 mg of a mix of Arginine, Ornithine, and possibly Tryptophane in free form just before bedtime. This provides a large amount of the aminos which the pituitary uses to construct STH, at the time when it wants to secrete the largest amounts (~2hr after going to sleep). These amino acids, in free-form, have been shown to stimulate STH production significantly. Avoid combining Lysine with them at the same time, since it works synergistically with Arginine to SUPPRESS this action. Anyway, this is all from memory, and the research into this area is still pretty recent. Exercise and a moderate diet are still the best (read, ONLY) way to get rid of fat without losing the required lean body weight at the same time. STH merely HELPS the process. | I'm surprised this hasn't been done by now. It certainly would | be a way for some researcher, lab, or company to make so much money | that they couldn't find ways to throw it away -- a real weight-loss | drug would sell unbelievably well! Hey, millions are spent every year trying to find the causes and potential cures for obesity! The problems are just not that simple. Oh. By the way, avoid the products being sold via television as "wonder amino fat loss" pills which "melt away fat while you sleep". These are Choline, which is another amino acid that does help in the metabolism of fat. However, the pills are OFTEN NOT free-form Choline and therefore it is not really available to the body in the right form. Secondly, in large amounts Choline has undesirable side effects. It can even cause toxic reactions. It mucks up the liver, I think. Hutch
kenn@sdccsu3.UUCP (David Whiteman) (04/28/84)
Can someone medical confirm or dispute this? The way I heard about fat cells was that their number never decreases. Thus if you lost a great deal of weight, you'd still have the same number of fat cells, they'd only be smaller. I never heard about the number of them becoming constant but I would doubt it.
ix21@sdccs6.UUCP (David Whiteman) (04/28/84)
There is an imposter, sdccsu3!kenn who posted an article under my name. He is not me. I have been trying to find information about fat cells, but it is difficult. To say that starting at age 10 the number of fat cells remain fixed does not seem logical. Suppose an adult gains a massive amount of weight; the fat cells cannot all just grow to store the fat -- there is a maximum fat cell size. When I get something official I'll post it. By the way there is an accepted surgical method for removing fat; it is not used because 99.9% of the time the patients regain the weight.
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (04/30/84)
[fat fibers, fat fat fibers, carpets from k*del] Rich at sequent pointed up one of the solutions I have heard bandied about with regards to killing fat cells: engineered virus: | One technique might very well show up in the next few decades to cure the | cancer problem, although I'll be disgusted if it's also use for fat. | The method would be to redesign a *virus* to specificly attack cells that | exhibit chemical characteristics of cancer [or fat] cells. Since | viruses are already target-sensitive, the "aiming" should be feasible. | Techniques are also being discovered by which a manufactured strain | can be safeguarded against viable mutations, which might allow them to | attack non-cancer cells. No real redesign would be necessary on the viral | process itself, since viruses are already quite adept at killing cells. | The knowledge needed would be in the area of targeting (understanding | how viruses select penetration sites), immunity (you don't want the bodies | immunological defenses fighting the medicine, so the virus must be | "invisible") and immutability (prevent the tool from going astray.) I hope nobody is ever stupid enough to do this. Fat cells are very useful and necessary things. Nerves are generally cushioned by fat cells, and there are some suspicions that destruction of fat cells around nerves leads to things like dystrophy and palsy. They keep skin elastic and protect underlying tissues. Further, if you were to destroy a lot of fat cells without at the same time removing the stored fat, you are going to cause an immediate life-threatening state, as fatty acids crowd into the blood beyond the body's ability to cope. I can just see the new plague of the year 2010: the dreaded and horrid wasting disease which causes victims to turn to puddles of cholesterol. Fortunately, fat cells might not be vulnerable to normal viral action. As I understand it (someone please correct me if I am wrong) fat cells lose their nuclei fairly soon after their formation, and are simply cellular membrane storage engines. New fat cells are formed by specialization of undifferentiated cells whenever most of the current cells are full. This gives rise to the problems of dramatic obesity: such a person has many many more fat cells trying to be filled to their comfort point, and fat cells take a long time to wear out. Hutch <looking for the day when hibernation is a viable fat loss method>
hutch@shark.UUCP (05/02/84)
<bah day ah'm Mr Nacherl, Healthy as Ah can be, But at Naht Ahm a Junkfood Junkie, Oh Lard have Pitty on Me!> | I had heard too that the number of fats cells remains constant after | some time like puberty. That doesn't seem so hard to believe, the | number of nerve cells remains constant too. | -- | Phil Ngai Sorry, haven't seen 4605@amd70 for some reason, so cannot comment on it, but the info I got was from a doctor, on the Cable Health Channel. If it is indeed true that the number of fat cells is constant, then please explain how extreme obesity cases in adults can come about. There is a maximum size which a fat cell will reach. That would imply that there is a maximum obesity which a person can reach, after puberty or whatever, and THAT can be empirically disproven! The notion that the number of nerve cells is constant is hogwash. There are no (or very few) new nerve cells generated after some age (it may be around puberty, it may be around 4 or 5 years; I have seen contradictory info), and especially in the case of alchohol users, NERVE CELLS DIE! Therefore the number of nerve cells decreases. Hutch <picky, picky>
richard@sequent.UUCP (05/03/84)
>> Isn't the obvious answer some drug, process, or technique that will >> KILL these dreaded "fat cells" once and for all? ... As far as I know, no drug has been isolated that has high toxicity for a particular type of cell, while low or none for others. If someone were to discover such a technique/drug, they would be better aiming it at cancer cells. The world needs a "once and for all" cancer cure much more than a weight loss treatment. People without physiological imbalances should really be able to trim themselves down; "magic" treatments won't cure the bad habits that caused the fat in the first place. [As an aside, I'm amazed at the people, male and female, that insist they need to lose more weight when they're already too thin. Most of these people *really* need to eat more and excercise *alot* more, to put on non-fat mass - personal opinion of course.] One technique might very well show up in the next few decades to cure the cancer problem, although I'll be disgusted if it's also use for fat. The method would be to redesign a *virus* to specificly attack cells that exhibit chemical characteristics of cancer [or fat] cells. Since viruses are already target-sensitive, the "aiming" should be feasible. Techniques are also being discovered by which a manufactured strain can be safeguarded against viable mutations, which might allow them to attack non-cancer cells. No real redesign would be necessary on the viral process itself, since viruses are already quite adept at killing cells. The knowledge needed would be in the area of targeting (understanding how viruses select penetration sites), immunity (you don't want the bodies immunological defenses fighting the medicine, so the virus must be "invisible") and immutability (prevent the tool from going astray.) Of course, to get all this, we need a good deal of basic and applied research. But [assuming the we don't kill ourselves first] it will eventually happen. ___________________________________________________________________________ The preceding should not to be construed as the statement or opinion of the employers or associates of the author. It is solely the belief... from the confused and bleeding fingertips of ...!sequent!richard
rene@nlm-mcs.ARPA (Rene Steiner) (05/03/84)
I took a weight-reduction/nutrition course, and some facts I recall: 1) After a certain age, the number of fat cells remains contant (they just get bigger) UNLESS you reach about 170% of your desired weight. 2) The only way to (semi)permanently lower the amount stored per fat cell is exercise. It seems your body has a "set-point" of how much fat it likes. Exercise lowers this - otherwise, your body thinks you're starving, you get hungry, go off diets, etc. 3) (seen on a NOVA show on obesity) There are two types of fat: white fat and brown fat. Brown fat BURNS energy. Skinny people have hot spots (literally, shown on a thermogram) where they have brown fat. Fat people have very small, reduced hot spots. The scientists interviewed were testing themselves (!) with some substance which, when injected, increased brown fat activity. It apparently worked with genetically fat mice (really impressively fat mice!). This was a year or two ago - I'd like to see a followup. 4) It is certainly not all physical. Psychological reasons for overeating and remaining overweight are often as hard (or harder) to conquer as purely physical and chemical reasons. - rene p.s. I just joined Weight Watchers, and I lost 2 pounds last week. We'll see how it works out (can I find the time and energy to cook? Can I avoid mashed potatoes, chocolate-chip cookies ... uh, oh, now I'm hungry!). If anyone is interested, the new Weight Watchers' Cookbook seems to have a lot of low-calorie but tasty-sounding meals. Anyone interested in a few recipes? Or should I ask net.food?
phil@amd70.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (05/08/84)
I had heard too that the number of fats cells remains constant after
some time like puberty. That doesn't seem so hard to believe, the
number of nerve cells remains constant too.
--
Phil Ngai (408) 988-7777 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!philseb@mtgzz.UUCP (s.e.badian) (12/31/85)
For those of you interested in some research on weight loss see Smithsonian, January 1986. The article doesn't offer any solutions (sorry gang!) but it does discuss some interesting research in the area. And unfortunately, not all the news is good. For instance, research has shown that each time your weight yoyos it gets more difficult for you to lose the weight the next time. From personal experience I've found this to be true, and I've only lost more than 10 pounds 4 times in the last 8 years (and each time I never lost more than 20 pounds). Our bodies have a terrible knack for returning to same the weight every time. Sharon Badian ihnp4!mtgzz!seb
tino@hou2f.UUCP (A.TINO) (01/14/86)
>uses about 100 Calories per waking hour. Stair-climbing uses about 10 Calories >a floor. And at a walking pace, 10 flights can be walked leisurely in a minute. Lots of luck! Your idea is a good one, but your "leisurely" pace would leave many people gasping.