My mom brought an article to my attention today. I'm not sure where she found it but she was telling me about how the controlled temperatures we live with today can make us stay larger. The reasoning was that because the body never needs to adjust to any big temperature changes our metabolism slows down. It makes perfect sense to me. I can tell that my body works harder when it's cold, and it definitely feels different when it's too hot. What does everyone else think about this subject?
Well I occasionally do Bikram Yoga (yoga in a really hot room) and when I was researching it, I found a lot of articles on how you actually burn more calorie when you exercise in hot temp rather than in cold, because your body is working really hard to cool itself down and stop you from dying from overheating (which kind of sounds alarming... ). But it makes sense. I guess the same if you are in cold temp as body is working to keep your temp up so that you don't die from hypothermia.
Well I occasionally do Bikram Yoga (yoga in a really hot room) and when I was researching it, I found a lot of articles on how you actually burn more calorie when you exercise in hot temp rather than in cold, because your body is working really hard to cool itself down and stop you from dying from overheating (which kind of sounds alarming... ). But it makes sense. I guess the same if you are in cold temp as body is working to keep your temp up so that you don't die from hypothermia.
Works well for yoga, please don't apply it to cardio! We had some real geniuses who liked to work out in the sauna when I was a lifegaurd. Apparently heat exhaustion is for p***ies.
I've tried the sauna but it's never worked out well for me. I feel suffocated in those things... I've always been on the colder side. Even when I was really young I've always had a hard time keeping myself warm... I love hot tubs though. ^_^
Maintaining body temp does burn calories (whether it's cooling off or keeping warm), but I'm not sure that it "keeps" anyone larger. It just means our calorie needs are different when we don't have to work as hard to maintain body temperature.
It's just one of the many, many ways it takes fewer calories to survive in the modern world than it did in the past.
Just staying alive is a lot of work if you have to do it all yourself. We just have far more ways to reduce our calorie expenditures, and have far more opportunities to increase our calorie intake.
In a "natural world" it makes sense to be hungry all of the time and eat whenever food is available (because in a natural world, overpopulation occurs before widespread obesity), and it makes sense to expend as little energy as possible.
So our bodies are built to tell us "eat and rest at every opportunity," because that's what kept us alive.
I agree with that. It's in the same category as seasonal eating. We used to eat by what was available to us by season. Now we eat whatever we feel like whenever we feel like without effort. We used to be lean just by finding our food but now we have to work out because we eat. Have you ever seen Over the Hedge? The raccoon says "Humans don't eat to live, they live to eat." But sadly it seems more like we are living to eat and killing ourselves in the process...
I think the "live to eat" thing is misleading though. I think animals also "live to eat," it's the way they survive. They don't choose to stop eating because it's what's good for them. For many animals, most of the day is spent searching for food - either gathering it, or hunting it down." They're just as food obsessed - if not more so than humans, but the difference is they have to be, and we don't. But you can't tell our genes what our mind knows. Weight loss is about finding ways to develop unnatural habits. It's a matter of outsmarting our genetic predispositions.
When Koko the signing gorilla has been asked what she likes to do best, she signs about food. Similar questions to other signing or symbol using apes yields similar responses. It's always about food. And I think if a lot of animals could speak, it's what they also would say. Food is great, and most animals think so. For most animals, eating is always very close to the number 1 priority, up there with all of the other death and extinction-avoiding drives like avoiding being eaten, and passing on genes to the next generation.
Some scientists say the passing on the genes is the top priority of all species - but you can't do that if you don't eat or avoid being eaten. Now you can't eat if you don't avoid being eaten, but you can't avoid being eaten if you don't eat - so there's an argument for all of those being in the top three, and which of those three may vary from species to species or even from individual to individual or even moment to moment.
Too much food to go around is never a long-lasting problem in the wild, because nature takes care of it. When food supplies are overly abundent, breeding and overpopulation quickly take care of that "too much food" problem. Population numbers increase until there isn't enough food for everyone, and some of them start dying.
Civilization has removed many of the checks and balances of the natural world. We get fat only because civilization allows us to. If we had to live without all modern conveniences, we wouldn't be fat either (there'd be other trade-offs, but obesity wouldn't be one of them).
Kaplods, when did "civilization" begin in this way of looking at it?
Jay
That depends on who you ask. Some argue that it began with widespread use of fire and cooking, others say when huntering/gathering was replaced with agriculture, and others say with the reduced cost of sugar and white flour during the Middle Ages, and others say with the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century. Others say the Information Age - with the increase in desk jobs and fast food or the changes in the school system (eliminating P.E. and serving processed foods in the school cafeterias). Some say it's been the low-fat movement.
Personally, I think it's a trend that has been going on for thousands of years, but that was fairly slowly moving until the last couple hundred years. No matter when you believe it started, it's pretty obvious that it's snowballing.
Today, even the poorest people in the USA, live a lifestyle that Henry the Eighth may have envied (in terms of less physical work, temperature controlled shelter, freedom from disease, and the availability of higher calorie foods).
The diseases that were a result of "affluenza" in and prior to the middle ages (obesity, high blood pressure, gout, diabetes), are now chronic among the USA's impoverished. Our "wealth" is killing us (and saving us too, the solution is going to be in finding and addressing which is which and making the necessary changes).
I think the "live to eat" thing is misleading though. I think animals also "live to eat," it's the way they survive. They don't choose to stop eating because it's what's good for them. For many animals, most of the day is spent searching for food - either gathering it, or hunting it down." They're just as food obsessed - if not more so than humans, but the difference is they have to be, and we don't. But you can't tell our genes what our mind knows. Weight loss is about finding ways to develop unnatural habits. It's a matter of outsmarting our genetic predispositions.
When Koko the signing gorilla has been asked what she likes to do best, she signs about food. Similar questions to other signing or symbol using apes yields similar responses. It's always about food. And I think if a lot of animals could speak, it's what they also would say. Food is great, and most animals think so. For most animals, eating is always very close to the number 1 priority, up there with all of the other death and extinction-avoiding drives like avoiding being eaten, and passing on genes to the next generation.
Some scientists say the passing on the genes is the top priority of all species - but you can't do that if you don't eat or avoid being eaten. Now you can't eat if you don't avoid being eaten, but you can't avoid being eaten if you don't eat - so there's an argument for all of those being in the top three, and which of those three may vary from species to species or even from individual to individual or even moment to moment.
Too much food to go around is never a long-lasting problem in the wild, because nature takes care of it. When food supplies are overly abundent, breeding and overpopulation quickly take care of that "too much food" problem. Population numbers increase until there isn't enough food for everyone, and some of them start dying.
Civilization has removed many of the checks and balances of the natural world. We get fat only because civilization allows us to. If we had to live without all modern conveniences, we wouldn't be fat either (there'd be other trade-offs, but obesity wouldn't be one of them).
I understand where you are coming from but it still seems off to me. We choose to do this to ourselves, and we do it to our domestic pets. Just because eating is a basic instinct doesn't mean that every creature is it living to eat. Just because an animal likes food doesn't mean they are living to eat, it could just mean that in order to live they need to eat. Why would we need to eat if there wasn't food we enjoyed eating? We would all be starving because we would hate eating. And there are physical effects of not eating so it IS always on the mind. I don't think it's fair to use "eating is a number one priority" in the sense of it being a fact of survival. Hunger is just as natural as eating to live. It's every creatures priority to eat, yet we seem to be the number one species that sits on our butt and does it. I honestly think most humans do live to eat, and if animals were in our position they'd probably be doing the same thing. But that doesn't change the fact that we put ourselves in this position.
P.S. We can't trick our genes into what our minds know but if our minds know these things than we can make that change ourselves. We control our bodies with our mind regardless of what our genes are.
Last edited by Initiative; 01-04-2011 at 06:47 PM.
Temperature and Weight?
). But it makes sense. I guess the same if you are in cold temp as body is working to keep your temp up so that you don't die from hypothermia.
