How do people turn fat almost overnight?

[repoman]

I hear that one of the causes may be one of the adenoviruses. I also have read a news story about a chubby mother who gave a fecal transplant to her very sick and slim daughter for the purpose of regaining good flora. The daughter put on a massive amount of fat shortly afterwards.

I saw one female singer who at 18 years of age and 148 cm packed on maybe 12 kilos in a few months.

Does anyone know much about this topic? I think that the static calories in/calories out model needs to be revised. Hormones and signaling must be affected somehow.

What can be done to reverse some this sudden onset obesity or fat deposition? Not talking about middle age spread...

 

[none]

I glanced at an article about probiotic
something to do with bacteria in the stomach which can slim you down
If you don't have the right bacteria you get obese

 

[bilby]

Lots of quality science being presented in this thread.

"I hear that..."
"I also have read a news story about..."
"I saw one female singer who..."

"I glanced at an article about..."
"something to do with..."

John 11:35

 

[Bronzeage]

Nobody ever got fat overnight, or even almost overnight. It's sort of an optical illusion. If you see someone everyday, especially if you see them naked, it takes a while to actually see a weight gain. It's usually when you notice the clothes they wore a few months ago don't fit like they used to.

The optical illusion occurs when you only see someone once in a while. Your brain has a visual image of them and when they reappear before you, the image has to be updated. It's a sharp contrast, only because it happens all in one step, not a day by day process.

The process is the same for weight loss.

 

[repoman]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fecal-transplants-may-up-risk-of-obesity-onset/

 

[beero1000]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fecal-transplants-may-up-risk-of-obesity-onset/

That article is ... not great.

From one of the papers they cite, discussing the original report:

The authors do not identify the mechanism for transmission of the obese phenotype, directly demonstrate a causal relationship, or study the patient's microbiome over time. They do identify several factors that may have contributed to weight gain after FMT in the patient. These include, but are not limited to, resolution of CDI, antibiotic use, treatment for Helicobacter pylori infection, stress related to illness, older age, and genetic factors. There is no discussion of eating patterns or changes in eating patterns in these related and presumably cohabitating individuals.

The quotes in the article itself also seem like the doctors are just trying to be polite in their dismissal:

"At this point the data on FMT is overwhelmingly positive," Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, who recently reviewed the diagnosis and treatment of C. difficile infection (CDI) in adults, told Reuters Health by email. "This procedure has been used successfully for severe and refractory cases of CDI, with few reports of adverse outcomes."

"I do not think that this case report describing weight gain after FMT should make clinicians hesitate in using the procedure to treat those patients who are experiencing the consequences of refractory CDI, which include dehydration, weight loss, repeat admissions to the hospital, electrolyte imbalances, kidney injury, sepsis and even death," she said.

"The authors seem to imply that the daughter in the case was a 'non-ideal' donor because she was overweight," Dr. Bagdasarian said. "However, I would like to point out that her BMI was 26.4 at the time of FMT, which is only slightly higher than the ideal range, and was in fact similar to the BMI of the recipient at the time of FMT. Given the logistics of finding and screening a donor prior to FMT, it may not always be practical to find a donor with an ideal BMI."

Dr. Josbert Keller, from Medisch Centrum Haaglanden, The Hague, The Netherlands, has studied and reported on both CDI and FMT. He told Reuters Health by email, "This is a case report, that does not prove any direct association between weight gain and FMT. However, all physicians treating patients with FMT should be aware that unexpected side effects can occur."

 

[EricB]

Calories in > calories out over time.

A lot of calories in > calories out over time = getting fat faster.

Is this even a question? Yes, there are conditions that may contribute, but by and large, it is that simple.

Do the math for 500 calories a day assuming roughly 3500kcal = one pound of fat. That would be one pound per week, and over six months is more than 12 kilos. And 500 calories can come in a very small package.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I've seen people go from slim to morbidly obese over several years, always because of lifestyle changes. I've also seen people go from obese to chiseled marble over several years as well.

 

[Bronzeage]

I've seen people go from slim to morbidly obese over several years, always because of lifestyle changes. I've also seen people go from obese to chiseled marble over several years as well.

In my high school days, the mid 70's, the dangers of steroids for strength training were not well known. My school's football team was put on a strength training regimen, which included anabolic steroids. They spent the summer doing heavy weight training and the results were startling. Guys I had known for many years, suddenly(it seemed quite fast) were bulked up beyond belief. Two players who were just over 6 feet tall weighed 280lbs. One player who wrestled as a 15 year old sophomore at 145lbs, was now a 17 year old senior at 220lbs.

It had it results, both good and bad. Some of the guys were a little weird. They became very aggressive, and very likely to take offense and start a fight for trivial reasons. On the other hand, they did win the state football championship that year.

A training regimen such as theirs required a lot of fuel. I imagine most of them consumed at least 4000 calories a day.

The problem came when football season was over. The training stopped, but the diet didn't. Over the summer and into our freshman college year, I watched my classmates become these strange butterball Humpty Dumpty figures. The 220lb wrestler gained another 20 pounds, or so, and most of around his waist. I remember running into him on campus after not seeing each other for about 6 months. He was sitting on a bench, sucking a cigarette. His neck spilled over his collar and his gut spilled over his belt. He looked incredibly uncomfortable. Over the next year, the pattern was pretty much the same for all of them. A few managed to avoid the balloon effect, but mostly those who went directly into college athletics.

 

[EricB]

I've seen people go from slim to morbidly obese over several years, always because of lifestyle changes. I've also seen people go from obese to chiseled marble over several years as well.

And there you go. Of course, people would rather make excuses, look for short cuts and say "I've tried everything!!!" when it takes consistent, intelligently applied effort. And, apparently, in so many cases that is far too much to expect.

 

[EricB]

I've seen people go from slim to morbidly obese over several years, always because of lifestyle changes. I've also seen people go from obese to chiseled marble over several years as well.

In my high school days, the mid 70's, the dangers of steroids for strength training were not well known. My school's football team was put on a strength training regimen, which included anabolic steroids. They spent the summer doing heavy weight training and the results were startling. Guys I had known for many years, suddenly(it seemed quite fast) were bulked up beyond belief. Two players who were just over 6 feet tall weighed 280lbs. One player who wrestled as a 15 year old sophomore at 145lbs, was now a 17 year old senior at 220lbs.

It had it results, both good and bad. Some of the guys were a little weird. They became very aggressive, and very likely to take offense and start a fight for trivial reasons. On the other hand, they did win the state football championship that year.

A training regimen such as theirs required a lot of fuel. I imagine most of them consumed at least 4000 calories a day.

The problem came when football season was over. The training stopped, but the diet didn't. Over the summer and into our freshman college year, I watched my classmates become these strange butterball Humpty Dumpty figures. The 220lb wrestler gained another 20 pounds, or so, and most of around his waist. I remember running into him on campus after not seeing each other for about 6 months. He was sitting on a bench, sucking a cigarette. His neck spilled over his collar and his gut spilled over his belt. He looked incredibly uncomfortable. Over the next year, the pattern was pretty much the same for all of them. A few managed to avoid the balloon effect, but mostly those who went directly into college athletics.

It is hard to control the appetite once you are no longer an athlete or an athlete in the off-season, steroids or no. I made that mistake once during the off-season my junior year, and it has never happened again. And when you are done being an athlete, it is important to remember that you can no longer eat like an athlete.

 

[EricK]

This is my theory:

The mistake many people make - and why they find it so easy to gain weight and so hard to lose it - is to think of food as fuel i.e. just as a source of energy. While, of course, we do ultimately get our energy from food, it is also the case that for most people, most of the time, they do not need any extra energy. Consider someone who is (at least) 10 pounds overweight (which these days is almost everybody!): they have (at least) 10 pounds of body fat over and above their optimal amount. This is 35,000 calories or so. This is about 3 weeks' worth of energy. And even if they used all that up, they would still have many days worth of body fat left. And yet everybody gets hungry if they go without food for less than a day. What is the body playing at?

The point is that unless you are genuinely starving, when the body wants food, what it really wants is raw materials to repair damage cells and build muscle and so on. i.e. it wants proteins and fats, which can be used for these things, rather than carbohydrates which can only be used for immediate energy needs with any excess being stored as body fat.

This is why protein and fat fill you up for longer than an equi-calorific amount of carbohydrates - your body gets hungry again when it wants more raw materials, which obviously happens sooner if some of what you give it can't be used for rebuild and repair.

It is why strenuous exercise makes you hungrier, even if you are overweight. Your body is not trying to replace the energy you burned up - it doesn't want to be lugging around this extra fat, so it has no desire to replace it. What is happening is that firstly exercise causes extra damage to the body, so more repair is needed, and secondly the body wants to rebuild itself stronger than before which needs extra raw materials.

It explains why low carbohydrate diets work so well, and so easily - until your weight gets to the optimal level, your body is using the food you eat to make itself healthier and stronger, while burning through the excess body fat for its energy needs. And while it is doing this you never need go hungry as the hunger is just a signal that your body needs more raw materials, so as long as that is all you give it, it won't store any of it as fat.

And it explains why, if your diet was too high in carbohydrates, merely cutting back the amount of food you eat in an effort to lose weight, is almost destined to fail. You will be giving your body fewer raw materials than it wants so it will be forced to break down its own lean body tissue to repair more vital organs, which will make you weak; and you will be constantly hungry which is impossible for most people to withstand for any length of time if food is available.

 

[barbos]

I've seen people go from slim to morbidly obese over several years, always because of lifestyle changes. I've also seen people go from obese to chiseled marble over several years as well.

In my high school days, the mid 70's, the dangers of steroids for strength training were not well known. My school's football team was put on a strength training regimen, which included anabolic steroids. They spent the summer doing heavy weight training and the results were startling. Guys I had known for many years, suddenly(it seemed quite fast) were bulked up beyond belief. Two players who were just over 6 feet tall weighed 280lbs. One player who wrestled as a 15 year old sophomore at 145lbs, was now a 17 year old senior at 220lbs.

It had it results, both good and bad. Some of the guys were a little weird. They became very aggressive, and very likely to take offense and start a fight for trivial reasons. On the other hand, they did win the state football championship that year.

A training regimen such as theirs required a lot of fuel. I imagine most of them consumed at least 4000 calories a day.

The problem came when football season was over. The training stopped, but the diet didn't. Over the summer and into our freshman college year, I watched my classmates become these strange butterball Humpty Dumpty figures. The 220lb wrestler gained another 20 pounds, or so, and most of around his waist. I remember running into him on campus after not seeing each other for about 6 months. He was sitting on a bench, sucking a cigarette. His neck spilled over his collar and his gut spilled over his belt. He looked incredibly uncomfortable. Over the next year, the pattern was pretty much the same for all of them. A few managed to avoid the balloon effect, but mostly those who went directly into college athletics.

What about now, have you seen any of them recently?
How popular steroids were back then? Could it be that these 55+ and incredibly fat people be former high school athletes?
When I look at old photos from the 60s, 70, and even 80s I can't help it but notice that people were a lot slimmer back then. By the way, gaining significant muscle weight and height between 15 and 17 years of age could happen naturally, natural testosterone spike starts at that age.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

In my high school days, the mid 70's, the dangers of steroids for strength training were not well known. My school's football team was put on a strength training regimen, which included anabolic steroids. They spent the summer doing heavy weight training and the results were startling. Guys I had known for many years, suddenly(it seemed quite fast) were bulked up beyond belief. Two players who were just over 6 feet tall weighed 280lbs. One player who wrestled as a 15 year old sophomore at 145lbs, was now a 17 year old senior at 220lbs.

It had it results, both good and bad. Some of the guys were a little weird. They became very aggressive, and very likely to take offense and start a fight for trivial reasons. On the other hand, they did win the state football championship that year.

A training regimen such as theirs required a lot of fuel. I imagine most of them consumed at least 4000 calories a day.

The problem came when football season was over. The training stopped, but the diet didn't. Over the summer and into our freshman college year, I watched my classmates become these strange butterball Humpty Dumpty figures. The 220lb wrestler gained another 20 pounds, or so, and most of around his waist. I remember running into him on campus after not seeing each other for about 6 months. He was sitting on a bench, sucking a cigarette. His neck spilled over his collar and his gut spilled over his belt. He looked incredibly uncomfortable. Over the next year, the pattern was pretty much the same for all of them. A few managed to avoid the balloon effect, but mostly those who went directly into college athletics.

What about now, have you seen any of them recently?
How popular steroids were back then? Could it be that these 55+ and incredibly fat people be former high school athletes?
When I look at old photos from the 60s, 70, and even 80s I can't help it but notice that people were a lot slimmer back then. By the way, gaining significant muscle weight and height between 15 and 17 years of age could happen naturally, natural testosterone spike starts at that age.

It's pretty easy to add muscle in your teens, no juicing needed. Much harder to do as you age, however.

I also knew the type guys Bronzeage mentions. They change incredibly over several months, but pay for it later.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Calories in > calories out over time.

A lot of calories in > calories out over time = getting fat faster.

Is this even a question? Yes, there are conditions that may contribute, but by and large, it is that simple.

Do the math for 500 calories a day assuming roughly 3500kcal = one pound of fat. That would be one pound per week, and over six months is more than 12 kilos. And 500 calories can come in a very small package.

I must disagree. It's calories absorbed, not calories in. Gut microbes have the ability to change the absorption rate. I think we are only scratching the surface on understanding of gut flora.

 

[gmbteach]

I am going to be honest here, I put on about 6 kg in about 7 weeks during our recent celebrations and I know why!

I ate too much - SIMPLES.. My intake far exceeded my outgoings. I let go. I forgot, or rather chose to ignore, all the lessons I had learned. Oh I did try - I ate less for breakfast when we were having a light day, but usually, the eggs benedict, or full English breakfast, complete with toast and fruit, was too tempting to ignore.

It wasn't 'over night' but it was a rapid increase.

Now I need to lose it again.

My thinking is that while it may appear to be 'over night' it has, in reality, taken a few weeks to occur.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I am going to be honest here, I put on about 6 kg in about 7 weeks during our recent celebrations and I know why!

I ate too much - SIMPLES.. My intake far exceeded my outgoings. I let go. I forgot, or rather chose to ignore, all the lessons I had learned. Oh I did try - I ate less for breakfast when we were having a light day, but usually, the eggs benedict, or full English breakfast, complete with toast and fruit, was too tempting to ignore.

It wasn't 'over night' but it was a rapid increase.

Now I need to lose it again.

My thinking is that while it may appear to be 'over night' it has, in reality, taken a few weeks to occur.

I do that too. I can very easily add 5 to 10 lbs of additional weight over a week if I eat like a drunk. It's easy. Just throw self control to the wind and eat what tastes good.

Lucky for me it is almost as easy to lose it again, except over the winter when activity levels drop but the presence of food is still a temptation.

I'm one of those that is always hungry, always ready to eat, it's like an addiction. So when I head out the door to work I've emptied my wallet and taken little food, just so I can't overeat or eat junk. Right now I weigh in at 180 lbs. In a month I'd easily be over 200 if I just ate what and when I felt.

 

[EricK]

I am going to be honest here, I put on about 6 kg in about 7 weeks during our recent celebrations and I know why!

I ate too much - SIMPLES.. My intake far exceeded my outgoings. I let go. I forgot, or rather chose to ignore, all the lessons I had learned. Oh I did try - I ate less for breakfast when we were having a light day, but usually, the eggs benedict, or full English breakfast, complete with toast and fruit, was too tempting to ignore.

It wasn't 'over night' but it was a rapid increase.

Now I need to lose it again.

My thinking is that while it may appear to be 'over night' it has, in reality, taken a few weeks to occur.

I do that too. I can very easily add 5 to 10 lbs of additional weight over a week if I eat like a drunk. It's easy. Just throw self control to the wind and eat what tastes good.

Lucky for me it is almost as easy to lose it again, except over the winter when activity levels drop but the presence of food is still a temptation.

I'm one of those that is always hungry, always ready to eat, it's like an addiction. So when I head out the door to work I've emptied my wallet and taken little food, just so I can't overeat or eat junk. Right now I weigh in at 180 lbs. In a month I'd easily be over 200 if I just ate what and when I felt.

I used to eat whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted and I got about 20 or 30 lbs overweight. Now I still eat whenever I want, and I still eat as much as I want, I just limit myself as to the types of foods I eat, and this allows me to maintain a stable, healthy weight, without any calorie counting and irrespective of how much exercise I do (if I exercise a lot I get hungrier, and so eat more - but it doesn't change my weight).

It seems wrong to not eat when you are hungry, as hunger is a signal that your body requires something. But as I explained in my previous post, it is almost certainly not the case that your body requires much energy (especially if you are overweight, i.e. carrying excess stored energy). And since carbohydrates can only be used by the body as energy, it seems likely that your body is not asking for them. So I don't eat them.

 

[EricK]

This guy's videos explains a lot:
eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHaCKudtVi0

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I do that too. I can very easily add 5 to 10 lbs of additional weight over a week if I eat like a drunk. It's easy. Just throw self control to the wind and eat what tastes good.

Lucky for me it is almost as easy to lose it again, except over the winter when activity levels drop but the presence of food is still a temptation.

I'm one of those that is always hungry, always ready to eat, it's like an addiction. So when I head out the door to work I've emptied my wallet and taken little food, just so I can't overeat or eat junk. Right now I weigh in at 180 lbs. In a month I'd easily be over 200 if I just ate what and when I felt.

I used to eat whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted and I got about 20 or 30 lbs overweight. Now I still eat whenever I want, and I still eat as much as I want, I just limit myself as to the types of foods I eat, and this allows me to maintain a stable, healthy weight, without any calorie counting and irrespective of how much exercise I do (if I exercise a lot I get hungrier, and so eat more - but it doesn't change my weight).

It seems wrong to not eat when you are hungry, as hunger is a signal that your body requires something. But as I explained in my previous post, it is almost certainly not the case that your body requires much energy (especially if you are overweight, i.e. carrying excess stored energy). And since carbohydrates can only be used by the body as energy, it seems likely that your body is not asking for them. So I don't eat them.

Maybe it's stress. Who knows, but I've always been a big eater and always hungry, perhaps because I'm much more physical than the average my-ager, but it's something I have found I have to consciously address.

The video was good, learned some endocrinology, and of course, no one should be eating the processed foods and refined carbs. No one should be drinking sodas.

Personally, if I eat more meat and fat my BP will rise along with my weight, but I still eat meat a few times a month. I do eat mainly carbs but they are whole carbs. I've never heard the expression "whole carbs" but it should be part of our dietary lexicon, and I rarely eat processed meats like lunchmeat, primarily because I have to control histamine levels. So to each his own, whatever works.

My last blood work had my triglyceride level undetectable, so I must be doing something right. Actually I enjoy the challenge to eat well and be fit in a world where that is way down on the priority list. My ancestors just ate what was there. I'm not so lucky but no complaints. Health is a personal responsibility, and am thinking of trying a bit of self-hypnosis over the winter, which is a time when weight easily accumulates.

Your advice is good, backed up by science. More people should heed such advice, but I think most people just eat what is there and don't have the knowledge to make the healthiest choices. In any case, it is what it is.