While this does appear to be an important piece in the puzzle of how to lose weight, I can’t help but feel that researchers have yet more to discover. You said yourself that you accidentally lost weight while using your treadmill. Strictly speaking, is that even possible given Lieberman’s thesis? More generally, I expect we all have experience of losing weight through exercise only to find our bodies suddenly adapting and hitting plateaus.
I haven’t a real argument, but I find it strange that evolution decided that extra calories are for either getting fat or for killing us, while fat exists exclusively to save us from famine. Our simian ancestors don’t seem to get the same deal, which is also strange. But please correct me if I’m mistaken.
In any case, I very much appreciate your articles on health and exercise!
> While this does appear to be an important piece in the puzzle of how to lose weight, I can’t help but feel that researchers have yet more to discover.
Oh, 100%. Like most biology, we're a giant pile of feedback loops and homeostatic mechanisms all piled on top of each other, from the cellular level to the organism level. One thing we know for sure is that "it's complicated."
On weight loss being possible in the Lieberman / Pontzer regimes - it definitely is, and indeed, many people can lose weight (even accidentally) in the short term. But then those feedback loops rear their heads and in the long term is when things get difficult. Because in the long term, all the different homeostatic layers get to say their piece, so to speak - your base appetite PLUS individual variation in stress PLUS individual variations in cravings PLUS the ability to crank down fidgeting or base activity PLUS the ability to push you towards "just not feeling it today" in terms of making it to the gym, etc.
And that's why in the long term, people hit plateaus, people regain the weight they've lost, etc. Your body has 12 different ways to tackle the problem and bring you back to the homeostatic state it thinks you should be in, and to fight back against all of them requires constant vigilance AND enduring change in habits.
> I haven’t a real argument, but I find it strange that evolution decided that extra calories are for either getting fat or for killing us, while fat exists exclusively to save us from famine. Our simian ancestors don’t seem to get the same deal, which is also strange. But please correct me if I’m mistaken.
No, you're right, great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans) don't get fat in zoos, even with generous diets and a more sedentary life. In general, they're 20-30% larger than wild great apes, and that's extra muscle mass and bigger organs rather than fat.
In terms of "getting fat or killing us," I think the key insight is that the "killing us" was never a selective pressure, because in the EEA, hunter gatherers basically had to be 5x more active than sedentary moderns, and that extra exercise released all the anti-inflammatory and anti-diseases-of-civilization measures that keep us healthy. In a regime like that, being able to put on more fat is a strict good, because the higher inflammation and cardiovascular loads from it are mitigated by the constant need for physical activity, and it's basically capped (you can't get TOO fat when most food isn't energy dense and you need to move all day to get it).
It's only in our modern environments, when we get endless abundant tasty food with zero physical effort that it's become an issue, because our bodies no longer do all the anti-inflammatory and repair mechanism things keyed on exercise unless people deliberately make the difficult choice to exercise.
I agree that it's likely that environmental contaminants, plastics, antibiotics, and pesticides have contributed somewhat. I disagree with their contention that it can't be CICO (calories in, calories out), because we plainly see significant deltas in calories consumed over that time, AND we know we have a smoking gun to point to on all these fronts - ultra processed foods.
As I pointed to in my first processed food post, KD Hall ran a well controlled study comparing whole food vs processed food diets, and people ate ~500 calories per day more with the processed food. People will in general get more calories from processed food for multiple reasons, and eat more when presented with a "cafeteria style" selection of procressed food, which is more or less the default environment of every convenience store and home pantry now.
I have a second processed food post coming out in about a week that digs in one layer deeper, in which we find that it's one of those "adversarial" dynamics where thousands of well-paid Phd's have been pooling their collective brainpower for decades to make processed food denser in calories, tastier, and more addictive, because the competitive market for processed food companies like Kraft and Nestle is infamously cutthroat (as in, even cigarette company executives found it to be too cutthroat). This arms race has led to processed food steadily getting more calorie dense, tastier, and more addictive.
At the same time, the FDA does basically zero regulation of food additives, letting companies "self certify" that any given additive is safe and put it directly in the food supply. As a result, we have ~10k additives in the US, versus ~2k in Europe and the UK.
I dive into a particular case study there that shows that it's pretty likely that many of these "self certified" additives have higher levels of exactly the things that SMTM point to - plastics, environmental pollutants, pesticides, and antibiotics.
So it's sort of a 1-2 hit - people eat more food overall, because processed food is literally designed under strenuous arms race conditions to need to be tastier, more energy dense, and more addictive, and then within those processed foods that people are eating more of, they are likely also absorbing more environmental contaminants of the type that SMTM point to.
If that sounds interesting, keep an eye out - that post is scheduled for Jan 18, 5 days from now.
I'm not so interested as to why Kraft wants their processed food to be more fattening, but as to what has been done to it. I know SMTM suggests it might be lithium, but the evidence for that seems pretty sparse to me. What is it about (some) processed foods that is so fat inducing? Is it the mechanical processing? Is it each of those 10k additives in American food that makes Americans fat, or is it some big family of chemicals? Questions for the ages.
> What is it about (some) processed foods that is so fat inducing?
I do go into this in the two posts, but it's basically:
1) They just literally pump more sugar, fat, and salt into the processed foods. They are more energy dense, because this makes them tastier and more likely to be eaten in larger quantities, and more often, which is what they're aiming for, because that's more revenue and sales for them. But of course, if you eat energy dense foods more often or in larger quantities, you gain weight.
2) Even if you pay attention to calorie labels, processed foods have between 10-25% more calories than you'd be getting from similarly calorie-labeled "real" foods, for various reasons.
3) Between being a superstimuli and having a bunch of unregulated additives and flavoring agents, processed food wrecks people's appetite / weight homeostats, moving their baseline appetite higher, and this leads to weight steadily accreting over time.
It's not any particular "single chemical" smoking gun within processed foods, we can't just ban lithium or seed oils or isoeugenol or anything like that and be done, and suddenly processed food is fine. It literally IS the processed foods, and moving stuff at the margins isn't going to change the overall dynamics all that much.
If you want a "one stop answer," the trick is just not eating processed food, and instead choosing to cook and eat real foods, unfortunately.
I disagree that just having more energy dense foods results in weight gain. Butter wasn't recently invented. If your lipostat works, then you maintain the same weight (and automatically eat less) with an availability of calorie dense food.
It also isn't just any food processing causes weight gain, because ice cream, yogurt, and if SMTM is right french fries do not cause weight gain. Or at least it means it is some processing more than others.
Maybe it would help if you told me what you mean specifically by "processed foods"?
I wish I could just drop some Amazon links here, but the ones I've bought on Amazon over the years are (apparently) no longer available. Still, I'll give the best advice I can.
On getting a good treadmill desk, I think the first consideration is space / footprint, because if you're getting it for your kids, or fitting it into your own room or office, you want to get one (or multiple ones if kids) that fits comfortably in the required space. There's quite small treadmill desks and treadmills out there, and it's relatively easy to rig up a desk yourself if you're trying to fit into a smaller space, I have a smaller one in my RV like this.
The second characteristic after footprint I'd recommend considering is incline capability, because being able to put up the incline gets you more optionality for burning more calories, getting yourself into slightly higher heartrates, and keeping up with your own fitness as it increases.
Probably the one I've been happiest with in terms of price point and having a nice, large, adjustable desk with integrated controls has been a Sunny TD7704, which is unfortunately no longer sold on Amazon. That thing has thousands of miles on it by now.
My best treadmill desk is a standing desk I rigged over a commercial grade, 700 pound Freemotion that has up to 18% incline, that I got from a gym that was going out of business. Also thousands of miles, and a delight to use.
Budget or low-space option, I'd go for a cheap under-desk treadmill or "walking pad" and a cheap standing desk, both of which you can get on Amazon, just make sure the dimensions work for you. I did this in my RV with a folding one called "FYC walking pad" that is still on Amazon at only $100, and the desk I made for that I used wood I already had laying around to rig up a desk that also folds down, but a standing desk or a "treadmill laptop desk" is generally <$100 on Amazon too.
If you have a lot of space and are willing to put some money and effort in, I'd recommend getting a big treadmill with robust incline and good footfall / suspension (like the commercial one I got), then getting a big adjustable standing desk, "treadmill laptop desk," or fabbing something up.
I did that on the "always be willing to spend money on anything between you and the ground" philosophy and am quite happy with it, it's a delight to use.
While this does appear to be an important piece in the puzzle of how to lose weight, I can’t help but feel that researchers have yet more to discover. You said yourself that you accidentally lost weight while using your treadmill. Strictly speaking, is that even possible given Lieberman’s thesis? More generally, I expect we all have experience of losing weight through exercise only to find our bodies suddenly adapting and hitting plateaus.
I haven’t a real argument, but I find it strange that evolution decided that extra calories are for either getting fat or for killing us, while fat exists exclusively to save us from famine. Our simian ancestors don’t seem to get the same deal, which is also strange. But please correct me if I’m mistaken.
In any case, I very much appreciate your articles on health and exercise!
> While this does appear to be an important piece in the puzzle of how to lose weight, I can’t help but feel that researchers have yet more to discover.
Oh, 100%. Like most biology, we're a giant pile of feedback loops and homeostatic mechanisms all piled on top of each other, from the cellular level to the organism level. One thing we know for sure is that "it's complicated."
On weight loss being possible in the Lieberman / Pontzer regimes - it definitely is, and indeed, many people can lose weight (even accidentally) in the short term. But then those feedback loops rear their heads and in the long term is when things get difficult. Because in the long term, all the different homeostatic layers get to say their piece, so to speak - your base appetite PLUS individual variation in stress PLUS individual variations in cravings PLUS the ability to crank down fidgeting or base activity PLUS the ability to push you towards "just not feeling it today" in terms of making it to the gym, etc.
And that's why in the long term, people hit plateaus, people regain the weight they've lost, etc. Your body has 12 different ways to tackle the problem and bring you back to the homeostatic state it thinks you should be in, and to fight back against all of them requires constant vigilance AND enduring change in habits.
> I haven’t a real argument, but I find it strange that evolution decided that extra calories are for either getting fat or for killing us, while fat exists exclusively to save us from famine. Our simian ancestors don’t seem to get the same deal, which is also strange. But please correct me if I’m mistaken.
No, you're right, great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans) don't get fat in zoos, even with generous diets and a more sedentary life. In general, they're 20-30% larger than wild great apes, and that's extra muscle mass and bigger organs rather than fat.
In terms of "getting fat or killing us," I think the key insight is that the "killing us" was never a selective pressure, because in the EEA, hunter gatherers basically had to be 5x more active than sedentary moderns, and that extra exercise released all the anti-inflammatory and anti-diseases-of-civilization measures that keep us healthy. In a regime like that, being able to put on more fat is a strict good, because the higher inflammation and cardiovascular loads from it are mitigated by the constant need for physical activity, and it's basically capped (you can't get TOO fat when most food isn't energy dense and you need to move all day to get it).
It's only in our modern environments, when we get endless abundant tasty food with zero physical effort that it's become an issue, because our bodies no longer do all the anti-inflammatory and repair mechanism things keyed on exercise unless people deliberately make the difficult choice to exercise.
What do you think of SlimeMoldTimeMold's A Chemical Hunger idea?
I read that entire series with great interest!
I agree that it's likely that environmental contaminants, plastics, antibiotics, and pesticides have contributed somewhat. I disagree with their contention that it can't be CICO (calories in, calories out), because we plainly see significant deltas in calories consumed over that time, AND we know we have a smoking gun to point to on all these fronts - ultra processed foods.
As I pointed to in my first processed food post, KD Hall ran a well controlled study comparing whole food vs processed food diets, and people ate ~500 calories per day more with the processed food. People will in general get more calories from processed food for multiple reasons, and eat more when presented with a "cafeteria style" selection of procressed food, which is more or less the default environment of every convenience store and home pantry now.
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/why-processed-food-makes-us-fat?r=17hw9h
I have a second processed food post coming out in about a week that digs in one layer deeper, in which we find that it's one of those "adversarial" dynamics where thousands of well-paid Phd's have been pooling their collective brainpower for decades to make processed food denser in calories, tastier, and more addictive, because the competitive market for processed food companies like Kraft and Nestle is infamously cutthroat (as in, even cigarette company executives found it to be too cutthroat). This arms race has led to processed food steadily getting more calorie dense, tastier, and more addictive.
At the same time, the FDA does basically zero regulation of food additives, letting companies "self certify" that any given additive is safe and put it directly in the food supply. As a result, we have ~10k additives in the US, versus ~2k in Europe and the UK.
I dive into a particular case study there that shows that it's pretty likely that many of these "self certified" additives have higher levels of exactly the things that SMTM point to - plastics, environmental pollutants, pesticides, and antibiotics.
So it's sort of a 1-2 hit - people eat more food overall, because processed food is literally designed under strenuous arms race conditions to need to be tastier, more energy dense, and more addictive, and then within those processed foods that people are eating more of, they are likely also absorbing more environmental contaminants of the type that SMTM point to.
If that sounds interesting, keep an eye out - that post is scheduled for Jan 18, 5 days from now.
I'm not so interested as to why Kraft wants their processed food to be more fattening, but as to what has been done to it. I know SMTM suggests it might be lithium, but the evidence for that seems pretty sparse to me. What is it about (some) processed foods that is so fat inducing? Is it the mechanical processing? Is it each of those 10k additives in American food that makes Americans fat, or is it some big family of chemicals? Questions for the ages.
> What is it about (some) processed foods that is so fat inducing?
I do go into this in the two posts, but it's basically:
1) They just literally pump more sugar, fat, and salt into the processed foods. They are more energy dense, because this makes them tastier and more likely to be eaten in larger quantities, and more often, which is what they're aiming for, because that's more revenue and sales for them. But of course, if you eat energy dense foods more often or in larger quantities, you gain weight.
2) Even if you pay attention to calorie labels, processed foods have between 10-25% more calories than you'd be getting from similarly calorie-labeled "real" foods, for various reasons.
3) Between being a superstimuli and having a bunch of unregulated additives and flavoring agents, processed food wrecks people's appetite / weight homeostats, moving their baseline appetite higher, and this leads to weight steadily accreting over time.
It's not any particular "single chemical" smoking gun within processed foods, we can't just ban lithium or seed oils or isoeugenol or anything like that and be done, and suddenly processed food is fine. It literally IS the processed foods, and moving stuff at the margins isn't going to change the overall dynamics all that much.
If you want a "one stop answer," the trick is just not eating processed food, and instead choosing to cook and eat real foods, unfortunately.
I disagree that just having more energy dense foods results in weight gain. Butter wasn't recently invented. If your lipostat works, then you maintain the same weight (and automatically eat less) with an availability of calorie dense food.
It also isn't just any food processing causes weight gain, because ice cream, yogurt, and if SMTM is right french fries do not cause weight gain. Or at least it means it is some processing more than others.
Maybe it would help if you told me what you mean specifically by "processed foods"?
Great article! What desk treadmill do you recommend?
Thanks, I appreciate that.
I wish I could just drop some Amazon links here, but the ones I've bought on Amazon over the years are (apparently) no longer available. Still, I'll give the best advice I can.
On getting a good treadmill desk, I think the first consideration is space / footprint, because if you're getting it for your kids, or fitting it into your own room or office, you want to get one (or multiple ones if kids) that fits comfortably in the required space. There's quite small treadmill desks and treadmills out there, and it's relatively easy to rig up a desk yourself if you're trying to fit into a smaller space, I have a smaller one in my RV like this.
The second characteristic after footprint I'd recommend considering is incline capability, because being able to put up the incline gets you more optionality for burning more calories, getting yourself into slightly higher heartrates, and keeping up with your own fitness as it increases.
Probably the one I've been happiest with in terms of price point and having a nice, large, adjustable desk with integrated controls has been a Sunny TD7704, which is unfortunately no longer sold on Amazon. That thing has thousands of miles on it by now.
My best treadmill desk is a standing desk I rigged over a commercial grade, 700 pound Freemotion that has up to 18% incline, that I got from a gym that was going out of business. Also thousands of miles, and a delight to use.
Budget or low-space option, I'd go for a cheap under-desk treadmill or "walking pad" and a cheap standing desk, both of which you can get on Amazon, just make sure the dimensions work for you. I did this in my RV with a folding one called "FYC walking pad" that is still on Amazon at only $100, and the desk I made for that I used wood I already had laying around to rig up a desk that also folds down, but a standing desk or a "treadmill laptop desk" is generally <$100 on Amazon too.
If you have a lot of space and are willing to put some money and effort in, I'd recommend getting a big treadmill with robust incline and good footfall / suspension (like the commercial one I got), then getting a big adjustable standing desk, "treadmill laptop desk," or fabbing something up.
I did that on the "always be willing to spend money on anything between you and the ground" philosophy and am quite happy with it, it's a delight to use.
Thank you for the detailed recommendations!