Talk:Obesity/Archive 1

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From the article:
:The BMI was created in the 19th Century by the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet, and remained largely intact until June 1998 when the BMI was revised downward.  This had the effect of changing one's status from "ideal" weight to "overweight" in one day.
What does this mean? Does it mean that the numerical definition of the BMI was changed, or that the thresholds for "overweight" were changed? As is, this statement is vague and confusing. -- The Anome 09:04, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Clarified this claim, but I suggest any further material is referred to the BMI article itself. Adhib 11:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Some mention should be made about waist circumference, as a supplement to BMI or even a better predictor for health problems. And add more detailed info on this to BMI article ?  Mokgand 20:39, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The article mentions this, and so does the first reference. What is your point? JFW | T@lk 21:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BMI

message: User:Curious wrote:
: obesity is rare in the wild because they eat the body controlled way. the trouble with dogs and cats and horses is the diet mentality has the owners feeding the animals only a certain amount, usually located on the bag or in books, and only once a day for dogs and twice for horses.
: so when hunger strikes the dog or cat they have to wait on the owner to feed them which can be hours, so for hours the animals is hungry the body is burning up fat and muscle for fuel until food comes in. and when they do finally get to eat it is not enough to replace the muscles or to saitiate the animal.
: so what does the animal do?  Beg.  so the owner gives them the parts of the food they themselves don't want and poof a fat animal.  they are only putting on fat because they are going hungry to often or the food quality is poor and they are not given enough on a consistent basis.
: This is famine survival, we may not think of animals as enduring famines afterall they are being fed at least once a day. but it is a famine nontheless, as far as the body is concerned.
: But if the owners would give them a high quality food on a constant basis, higher meat than vegie, give them some fat several times a week they would cure their obesity.  it wouldn't happen overnight but it can be done without being cruel to the animal by making it go hungry all the time just for the sake of vanity (thinness doens't necessarily equate with good health, it just looks better) putting animals on diets or giving them less than they want is cruel.
and:
: Studies show that exercise while dieting doesn't preserve muscles.  muscles are needed for a higher metabolism.  Diets also are associated with increased mortality because of this muscle cannabalism, which the heart is a muscle and it weakens it.  Just read that in a metabolism article earlier today.
: Adipose 101 stated too that diets do not lower setpoints, and that setpoint determines the amount of fat stored.  I also learned through personal experience that the land of plenty is not the reason for obesity.  animals in the wild generally have a land of plenty and are not obese, though they do gain fat in the fall for winter survival.
: humans who live in a land of plenty do not generally take advantage of it because of the diet mentality or if they do, they eat too much junk, which to the body of a famine sensitive individual is considered a nutrtient famine.  the body doesn't know that food is plentiful if you don't eat enough of it on a consistent basis reaching satiation.
: just as much as many are overeating, they are also undereating.  Jean Antenello, RN,who runs the naturally thin clinic in saint paul minnesota, states that "the famine feast cycle" is the reason for obesity. Just as we are trying not to eat, there are times the body makes us eat until the setpoint is reached. this setpoint is raised or lowered based on how we train our bodies.
: if we eat enough and listen carefully to the body's cues and signals or relearn them if we have damaged them, we can eventually get the setpoint to lower. This is a slow process.
: How does one know if they are on the right track and eating enough?
: Basically you start to crave healthier fares, you lose interest in food over time, you have other interests that start to dominate, you find you leave food on your plate because you are satiated, you find junk food revolting most of the time and you find you don't think about food all the time if that is what you were doing before eating on the body demand basis.  You find that exercise doesn't have to be forced but you get antzy, (personal experience) you feel like a motor in your body has reved up on high idle (well it does for me anyway).
: you get hotter, you don't have cold hands or feet, your not hungry all the time anymore once your body has reached the setpoint and has plataued. you start to eat less without trying, you are not even aware of the weight loss until you try on your clothes and they feel like they have stretched and start to hang on you. you don't need willpower not to overeat at a party if you are eating enough other times.
: And when under stress you such as depression or exciting event, instead of wanting to eat then, (which is the bodies chance to do make up eating since your willpower is low) you find food revolting. And for me by getting of this famine feast cycle mentioned it eases menstral pain consideralbly, and it eases bloating too at that time this i was not expecting.
: You also heal faster too when you exercise or strain a tendon or muscle, whereas before eating the body controlled way I personally would take forever to heal a pulled muscle, sore muscle, strained back, tendon or whatever we are talking weeks not days like now. I also am building up strengh and stamina from exercise quicker with less effort then when I was still on the cycle. I don't get sick like I used to I was always getting colds in my sinus and getting chronic headaches and hurting all the time. not much of that anymore which surprised me.
: The cure for obesity is the oppisite of what we have been led to believe. eat more, keep it mostly real foods, eat junk sparingly, exercise for fun, but not weight loss and live your life, stop waiting to live, you might be dead by the time you reach your weight loss goals if you do it the conventional way.
: Bmi's are not accurate, they determine size but they dont' tell you what that size is.  muscles bone etc besides fat. We all know how excess fat is harmful to a well fed body,well so does the body of a genetically strong survival instinctual individual. the body will kick in the fat burning mode (while still preserving muscles as opposed to dieting effects of burning muscles with fat) but only after a long time when it sees thorugh experience that you will feed it what it wants as much as it wants when it wants.
: that is why the plataue of a naturally thin eater (tho still fat yet) can be long.  the body in the plataue stage is waiting for that famine (dieting efforts) to come along, if it doesn't come along within it's time frame, not ours, it will make the changes needed to get rid of excess fat that is there for surviving famines and not for good health.
: This I am experinceing and so are many others that I correspond with on the internet special message board.
This material is highly personalised, and the POVs are not well cited (Adipose 101 -- but taught by who?)
I assume that this is based on somebody's theory of obesity, and could be worked into a good article on those ideas.
I will talk to User talk:Curious (who is quite new) and see if I can get more details.
-- Toby Bartels 04:31, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural Obesity,   Famine, Overeating

message: I have reluctantly reverted a large addition by this anonymous user, rather than copyediting it. Although it generally conformed to the flow of the article, it was unwikified, written in the first person ("I think...") and full of statements which need POV-work (Weight Watchers is a 33 billion industry) and factual disentangling ("1% of all anti-obesity surgery works"). I urge the user to reintroduce his work in a way that does not make one think this is a school project copy/pasted into wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 23:20, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits by [[User:4.229.171.100]] 

message: Just to clarify why I think more attention to NPOV writing is needed in this article:
As far as I'm aware, there isn't a single study showing a obesity causes any disease (in humans, at least).  This is simply because it is virtually impossible to cure obesity (or induce it) without changing exercise patterns, diet (this is not as trivial as it might sound), and probably quite a few other things.  There are statistic correlations between obesity and adverse health effects, but those boil down to "Group A, which (in tendency) does not to get enough physical exercise, is poorer, does not to follow or ask for medical advice, and might suffer more from all sorts of mental disorders, has higher mortality than group B".  Usually, this wouldn't be too much of a problem.  For a life insurance company, obesity is a good indicator for reduced life expectancy.  However, quite a few people jump to the conclusion that if only group A people ate less, that would increase their life expectancy to that of group B people.  I consider that highly unlikely.
As for the 400,000 US deaths/year claim, could someone with access to the actual journal article fix it?  The New Scientist reporter seems confused about whether the study concerned "poor diet and physical inactivity", "overweight or obesity", or just obesity.  That a condition affecting about 30 per cent of the population would be the cause of 16.6 per cent of deaths seems rather unlikely to me.
At present, the quote seems to be at best irrelevant.  It is unclear to me why we would want to quote an article which can't decide which of three conditions, affecting anywhere between 20 and 80 per cent of the US population, to blame for 400,000 deaths per year.
Prumpf 14:13, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll chase the reference. The New Scientist is not a good source in general. It only reports what scientists have published in other journals. JFW | T@lk 15:55, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: Has anyone considered mining the information and images from ? - Ta bu shi da yu 02:04, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Completely ignores controversies and scientific explanation. Please use sparingly. Also annoyingly addresses the reader in first person. JFW | T@lk 09:58, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another source of info 

message: In December this article failed featured article nomination. There has been significant expansion (no pun), and I'd like to make it a proper featured article. Obesity is amongst one of the most commonly discussed topics, both in the public discourse and in science. Every discovery on obesity, however minor, makes the headlines. Wikipedia cannot afford to lag behind.
The article in its present form has many qualities:
* It examines the subject from several angles
* It is well sourced
* It offers critical opinions
Failings include:
* Cultural context is lacking (fat was beautiful to P.P. Rubens, and many Arab-related cultures have an obesity ideal)
* Images (there must be a public domain image of some fat people having Häagen-Dasz)
* It includes a lot of voices from "experts" but few statements from official bodies (e.g. WHO, AMA, ACP, BMA, NICE). A professorship is no guarantee of impartiality.
I'm willing to expand further on the medical side. I'd like to remove the table with the medical complications. Its matrix design suggests a system (which isn't there). Please offer your opinions on what needs to be done, and how we will go about it. JFW | T@lk 12:33, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well done on fixing the table - I ran out of time last time I tackled it. I agree that this article is fit for nomination, bar the photo problem - mice seem too peripheral to the issue to lead the article with, and there ought to be more than one image - we'll have to get inventive. Can you think of a source for diagrams that might illustrate one or more of the complications? Adhib 16:10, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: I've finally lost patience. I'm going out with my digital camera to bag me a big belly. Wish me luck. Adhib 13:53, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article 

message: Am I the only one who thinks the unit kg/m² is confusing? It looks like it's kilos per square meter of body surface or something like that. And linking m² to m² definitely seems wrong as it doesn't seem to be the area sense of the unit that's used in the Body mass index. Or am I just being totally dyscalculial?  Preisler 23:22, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it looks odd, but like with body surface area the surface is a better mathematical approximation than volume. JFW | T@lk 22:46, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it only me? 

message: I'm putting in a peer review request to improve this article for featured article status. Please contribute, all! JFW | T@lk 00:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review 

message: With apologies I've removed the NEAT paragraph. This seems to be Dr Levine's personal hobbyhorse, given the fact that he appears to be the only physiologist using the term. Thermogenesis is definitely of interest in obesity (see Flier in Harrisson's Principles of Internal Medicine, 15th ed), but is a function of metabolic rate, not of someone's weight. JFW | T@lk 20:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonexercise activity thermogenesis 

message: 'A charge of discrimination on the basis of appearance could be leveled against these depictions.' Am I the only one who thinks the quoted sentence is more some kind of social/political statement than encyclopedic material? Let the reader decide if fat is funny and if that is neccesarily a bad thing. Preisler 23:36, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I phrased that with plenty of reserve and NPOV. It is now effectively forbidden to make fun of black people, homosexuals and the disabled, and this political correctness can easily be extended to include obesity. If you want the phrasing to be even more neutral, go ahead, but it should not be removed. JFW | T@lk 02:22, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a false analogy. You can't change those things. All overweight people can lose weight discounting the few few people with some kind of illness. It's not that hard. Some degree of social stigma is what helped me lose some 20 pounds and to quit smoking. And besides, if smokers are fair game why not fat people. Quiting smoking was ten times harder than losing weight. But you're probably right that the PC mafia would think that way Preisler 20:16, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: *Sigh*. I am not advocating the "PC mafia" or any other form of censorship. It's a shame you consider this a false analogy. In my mind, stigmatisation of obesity can (and has been) called a form of discrimination. Pretend a job interview. Are the interviewers going to hire someone who's positively huge, or someone who's lean and works out every day? Just imagine. Declaration of bias: my BMI has been 25 for the last ten years. JFW | T@lk 21:48, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd sentence 

message: This article (Environmental causes of obesity) is up for merge. Who can help? JFW | T@lk 18:40, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Environmental causes of obesity]] 

message: I have left a message on this user's talk page to clarify what point he is trying to prove. JFW | T@lk 23:17, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  70.187.183.3 

message: Today is the glorious day that I removed most external links. None were particularly representative, balanced or official. I'm adding some better stuff, but let's try to stop this section from turning into an advertising/linkdirectory dumpground. JFW | T@lk 14:29, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less is more 

message: It's Sunday, and all bored teenagers go online to vandalise Wikipedia. After six different vandal edits, I thought it would be better to  the article until they're back in school/at work. JFW | T@lk 20:33, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: In the article weight cycling as a consequence of dieting or exercising hard, then given up, is mentioned. It seems appropriate in this context to add something along these lines: 
One solution might be to incorporate regular exercise into daily life, as The  World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends : 
"engaging in daily moderate physical activity for at least 30 minutes".  A little more is better but all regular exercise will help in mitigating the effects of obesity. Cycling advocates make a strong point that cycling or walking to and/or from work or school (or part of the way) can be the perfect daily exercise that integrates into daily life for very many. 
References :
*  Lawlor DA et al(2003):The challenges of evaluating environmental interventions to increase population levels of physical activity: the case of the UK National Cycle Network
* WHO webpage "Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health " with links to documents 
*  A little is good, more is better. Hinted at integrating moderate exercise into daily life 
The following paragraph probaly needs rewriting or moving : 
Cycling for transport is an untapped potential in most countries. It can scarcely become a 100% universal mode of transport, but in several Cities like Copenhagen, Denmark and Groningen, Netherlands, it supasses a 30% modal share. People who cycle or walk are in high probability more likely to keep it up than people who visit health studios (Lawlor, DA,  2003 ). Other benefits claimed are: Fresh air, improved local and global environment, increased self confidence and personal indepenece, low rates of serious injury per hour and  money saved. In many places improved provisions for pedestrians and cyclists would boost these healthy and natural forms of exercise, and could do their part in combatting obesity, while delivering positive side-effects.
:I couldn't agree with you more. Could you link to the WHO recommendation? I doubt specific forms of exercise should be mentioned here, unless there is strong evidence that they are effective in obesity. JFW | T@lk 17:32, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Are the references included above usable, or something in the right direction ?  Mokgand 20:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regular exercise should be mentioned. 

message: The follow was deleted from "causal factors". I think it's interesting, and would be good to give the following a proper treatment: i.e. mention the following hypothesis or arguments against it. The reason for its deletion was:
:rv toxin stuff - this is not the mainstream explanation (you may put this in an "alternative medicine" section) - also removed "overall poor quality of diet" (?which standard)
Deleted section follows my sig.
—Pengo 16:23, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Pengo. The reason for the deletion is that there are no arguments for it. This vestige of knowledge is filled exclusively by "expert opinion" from the multiple chemical sensitivity and "the corporate world is poisoning us" lobby. Unless some firm study results can be cited, this is original research with no merits whatsoever. JFW | T@lk 16:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toxins and low quality diet as contributing factors. 

message: Is there really no Wikipedian who is happy to take a photo of his beer belly, or several chubby folks having a McDonald's? The two mice at the top are essentially a laboratory experiment, and have very little to do with the epidemiological and human factor of obesity. JFW | T@lk 00:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest you eat up on the issue then get snapping. --zippedmartin 00:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  IMAGE!!! 

message: Dixon JB, Dixon ME, O'Brien PE. Depression in association with severe obesity: changes with weight loss. Arch Intern Med 2003 Sep 22;163(17):2058-65. .
Is this notable enough? It was not a very large study. JFW | T@lk 12:20, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference for consideration 

message: gave no reason for protection. There has not been any recent vandalism. I have unprotected now. JFW | T@lk 11:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: The article is not neutral, hence the NPOV tag. --The Bad Tax Man 11:09, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Give reason, please, or I'll remove the tag. --Zootm 11:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Please explain, or I'll remove the tag. --Zootm 11:24, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm removing the tag since you haven't actually mentioned which content is NPOV. If you add it back, please post examples or an explanation here. Saying "it's NPOV because it's biased" is void of meaning. --Zootm 11:58, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Check his contributions list - it's a serial troll/vandal account (which I've now blocked).  This isn't the first time the same person has used this tactic (earlier today, and a couple of times before this) - he just puts NPOV tags on a bunch of articles without explanation.  His knowledge of wikipedia shows he's an old hand at this kind of nonsense. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 12:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Noted. Cheers for clarification/blocking. --Zootm 12:27, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality 

message: I just reverted an edit by User:Floating Voter.  FV made this article a circular redirect between Obese and Obesity - but the fact that s/he initially made it redirect to Girls Aloud clearly indicates the intention was vandalism.  Time to protect again? I urge the next admin to see this to block the user after taking one glance at this obvious sockpuppet contribution list ~ 85.210.18.139 20:17, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, sorry forgot to log in. I claim the above edit ~ Veledan • Talk + new 20:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Curps has permanently blocked him. I'm sure he'll be back - if so, revert on sight, and report at Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress#Manchester_.2F_obesity_.2F_Girls_Aloud_vandal. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 20:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More vandalism