Diet and exercise not enough, obesity experts say

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/diet-exercise-treatment-for-obese-patients/

I've been saying this for years!  There is something different about very obese people and it ain't just overeating!  This is a very good article explaining how it stems back to the hunter/gatherer and how our bodies hold onto fat for survival. 

Once I passed 250 pounds, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get the weight off by conventional methods. Trying to eat less and exercise (almost an impossibility at my high weight of 275 on a 5'1" frame) was like trying to swim upstream in a strong current. Just staying in place was almost impossible.

I agree that abnormal metabolism and hormonal changes that accompany super-obesity undermine any conventional method of weight loss. After a certain point, food becomes an addiction, not nutrition. Breaking out of that vicious circle requires something extraordinary, like WLS. The sleeve was that extraordinary something.

Thanks for posting the article. I'm not surprised by the info in it. Rather, it confirms what I already knew from personal experience.

psychoticparrot

I am very disappointed that the medical community has included things like alcoholism as a disease but have yet to call obesity as such as well.  Its very clearly hereditary. 

I also believe our bodies use food differently.  When I was a very little girl we would go to McDonalds.  We did not go out to eat often so this was a treat.  I would finish my cheese burger and want another!  I was not an overweight child.  My body reacts to food differently then thin people.  I have asked myself so many times, 'How does someone just eat one cookie or one slice of pie when I want more!"  So, I've decided I need to treat sugar and starches like the enemy, like a drug.  The FDA does not agree with our sort of metabolism and eating systems.  Some like to call it an eating disorder but perhaps a "metabolism difference" would be a better way of thinking about it.  Research and personal experience has taught me this is definitely true for me. 

My doctor, who is also over weight, explained it to me like that! It's all in the genes.