Yeah - I tend to believe it averages out. Obesity definitely shortens lives.
This is what convinces me that the people who suggest that something in our diet throws off homeostasis - just a bit - are right. I went through the typical male scenario - +1 pound/year for 40 years. But then I dumped all that weight and am stable at my reduced weight for 4 years. Was I somehow just happening to pick the wrong foods with precisely 10 calories/day of excess and now I just happen to be able to avoid those specific 10 calories a day (or even 100 calories/day)? Certainly not consciously. There is no way in the annals of science that we can count our calories that precisely. First, we can't precisely know how many calories we need. Far too many variables of weight, activity, and metabolism. Second we can't figure out the calories in our meals to a 10 or 100 calorie/day precision - again too many variables.
The two parents working could well be the factor that meant little time to prepare proper meals. It might not be some generic "laziness".
from 2000 Now a Majority: Families With 2 Parents Who Work - The New York Times
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today/
It's true that our life expectancy has increased in spite of the huge rise in obesity since 1985.
That's what I think. Humans didn't evolve eating the same calories every day. It was more like feast and famine. Our bodies regulated our appetite, fat storage, energy production/expenditure, etc.
I think most of our life expectancy rise has been due to plummeting infant mortality (yay, vaccines and antibiotics!), I had seen some numbers saying white female(?) life expectancy had begun to decline? I heard one major factor was opioid overdose.
Thus reminds me of dueling banjos in Deliverance. There are studies all over the place, indicating whatever. They mostly reflect the bias of the study authors or sponsors. My only conclusion is that it is clearly not an easy thing to settle. For one obvious thing, results may be far different among individuals acting on their own and an organized experiment with highly motivated investigators, support groups, etc. Something that people on this board often say is that a lower carb meal plan finds them hungry less often. I would imagine that if people can be made to eat the same number of calories on all these different diets, their weight would be the same. I am not sure, but I think that most fans of low carb diets in and out of the academy likely would concede that if different groups eat carefully controlled equal calories, weight results will be basically equal. If there is a difference based on macronutrients it is more likely to be due to the diets' effects on one's ability to limit calorie intake. From the hArvard paper that you cited: Another important finding was that participants who regularly attended counseling sessions lost more weight than those who didn’t. Dieters who attended two thirds of sessions over two years lost about 22 pounds of weight as compared to the average weight loss of 9 pounds. “These findings suggest that continued contact with participants to help them achieve their goals may be more important than the macronutrient composition of their diets,” said Sacks.
), it is very easy for me to hit my lower setpoint and very difficult to go beneath that.
