Name: The secret life of fat
ISBN: 9781911274001

The secret life of fat

Blends historical perspectives with cutting-edge research to examine body fat as a critical endocrine organ that can be better understood and managed when recognized as a necessary component of human health. Biochemist Sylvia Tara explores the surprising science behind our most hated body part. Fat is an obsession, a dirty word, a subject of national handwringingand, according to biochemist Sylvia Tara, the least-understood part of our body. You may not love your fat, but your body certainly does. In fact, your body is actually endowed with many self-defense measures to hold on to fat. For example, fat can use stem cells to regenerate; increase our appetite if it feels threatened; and use bacteria, genetics, and viruses to expand itself. The secret to losing twenty pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it. Tara explains how your fat influences your appetite and willpower, how it defends itself when attacked, and why it grows back so quickly. The Secret Life of Fat brings cutting-edge research together with historical perspectives to reveal fat's true identity: an endocrine organ that, in the right amount, is critical to our health. Fat triggers puberty, enables our reproductive and immune systems, and even affects brain size. Although we spend $60 billion annually fighting fat, our efforts are often misinformed and misdirected.

What Hacker News says

dahartFeb 2022

Ah I wish we’d gotten to this earlier, you make some great interesting points we could talk about more. I think I should bite my tongue though, because my narrative isn’t helping you, and all I wanted to do was be helpful, especially for people who are where I used to be. That might not be you, I just want to say this in a way that would have convinced a younger me earlier. The only thing I’ll say here that is that fad diets are fundamentally different from setting a budget, I completely and totally agree that most fad diets are bullshit, especially the ones on Instagram. Keto has a pretty poor long term outcome rate, for example. The whole point of a diet is to avoid setting a budget, which is the main reason they have low success rates.

I like the way you put it, it’s okay that we don’t know everything, and you’ll have to try a bunch of stuff. That really is at the core of what I was trying and failing to say. :) We don’t actually know how gravity works, but we use it anyway. I made an analogy to PID controllers in another comment, maybe that’s a better way to describe calorie I/O; PID controllers know nothing about the thing they control other than it’s output, and yet they are an extremely useful tool.

My wife reminded me of a book that might interest you and might have pointers to some of the research you’re looking for. “The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You“ by Sylvia Tara.

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CosmicShadowSep 2021

"...I'm not fat, but..." "...well now I bike 100km a day and watch diet so..." "...just be outside away from tech all day..." "...but in military bootcamp I saw..." "...yeah, but the author did a strawman so..." "...actually, the technical point you made would mean this, so..." "...I didn't read his books or the papers, but everyone knows..." "...but he's got his own 'diet' so he is intrinsically lying..." "...well we've known about this for 200 years, so..."

what bullshit, even on HN. It's pretty much the norm on Obesity articles, but sadly creeps into most others as well.

If you're fat, have done a ton of research, read Taubes, tried CICO, found success, then found failure because it's miserable to do, but you "proved" it works, then tried Keto, and it worked even better, but is still also hard to do, but easier than CICO if you aren't a vegetarian, then sure, make your comments.

I sit around all day at a computer and that's not going to change. I'm not going to workout like crazy or ride a bike 100km a day. I've seen skinny people eat more than me constantly and not gain an ounce being just as inactive. It's hard to understand and easy to judge if you aren't in the situation. It's easy to preach if you are in the middle of a regimen that's giving results, regardless of the method.

It's incredibly hard to keep a lifestyle change that sucks because you are either hungry, always busy working out, being super careful and can't eat anything you like and can never go out to eat again (because going out to eat to get a salad and a plain chicken breast is not going out to eat, it's wasting your money and making you sad at the same time). Constant vigilance is wearing on people, and you know there are literally millions who eat the same as you and don't instantly gain weight, so clearly there is something off.

Articles like this are interesting because they dig into misinformation, even though things like CICO can work, if you read his book you see all the studies on why they knew it's not effective long term for like 100 years, yet it's all people still talk about.

Heaven forbid a guy who lives to study this stuff tries to find and share a solution. In his book he literally doesn't even give you the "diet" until like the last page, where in one sentence he says, you should have figured out what to do by now from reading this book; or at least that's how I remembered it.

Anyway, rant over for now. You could be fat because of a disease where a chicken scratched your ancestor and now you are 20lbs heavier for life. Check out "The Secret Life of Fat" by Sylvia Tara for more interesting info from someone who was fat and a scientist who dedicated their life to figuring out why some people get fat and some don't and why even with extreme CICO tendencies, like she followed. Some wild findings and examples.

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