These are some excerpts from Jesus Camp. I still haven’t seen it, but I want to:
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I’ve seen “Jesus Camp” twice, and was so impressed that i went to the website of the film to get more information on the film makers. I was reading comments on their site, and was so impressed to see enthusiastic high praise coming from religious folks, atheists and everything in between. That just goes to show you how a sincere and complex interpretation is possible when a story is told in its own authentic voice. I loved it. I loved how the experience was presented, and the shock of what i’ve seen just enhances the resolve of my own viewpoints, which always feels pretty great. :)
This movie just frightened me. Made me absolutely scared of what parents can do to kids.
I find it to be one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. What’s more, the kids they focus on are from a town in Missouri that I drive through quite often, so the landmarks mean something to me as well.
one of the scariest movies I have seen since Exorcist when I was 5…
As usual, you can check out Jesus Camp from the Library of the Internets.
If you have Netflix, it’s in the watch instantly section. Well, it’s there whether you have Netflix or not, actually.
Hi all, first comment from me, although, I’ve been a follower for quite some time.
My girl child, now 18 was invited to church about 10 years ago by one of her friends; she’s an all or nothing kind of kid and for about 6 years she did/went everywhere with the youth group. She’d come home after an evening service or weekend camping experience and tell me about her impressions of the ‘teaching’, and we’d discuss the merits of the information presented and try to find ways she could implement the good points, outside of the local church community. When there were points/areas of teaching I strongly disagreed with; which was often, I’d call the youth pastor and to discuss which points I thought were wrong/misleading, along with describing how un-christian the kids would become if they followed the line of thought preached. (as a side note, that particular pastor is in the midst of transitioning himself out of the church and into the real world, because he took the time to seriously consider and question the denominational teaching and realized that the church culture was damaging the vary kids he wanted to help)
I think the beginning of the end, for the girl child, came about when a new youth pastor challenged the group to stand on top of the high school cafeteria tables and say (yell) grace and include an alter call at the end of grace. That incident coincided with her realization that the churchies always seemed to let her down and weren’t there to support her during normal teenage angst. They used those confidences to fuel the church rumour mill.
I feel sorry for the kids who attend these type of services who have no one to bounce the ‘new’ ideas off of, or are willing to provide another world view. Long story short, I’d be very interested in a follow up story; where are the Jesus camp kids now and what do they believe?
That would be pretty interesting.
FYI, a better term for girl child might be daughter.
lol – I was thinking the exact same thing. I have never heard anyone refer to their daughter as “the girl child” in that type of context. Not that there is anything wrong with it, it just struck me as very odd.
Oh my Thor, I almost died at the extreme irony of that lady saying there are too many fat and lazy parents in this world. SEE, that’s how blind some people are. Even as a christian I wouldn’t have been able to hold back my giggles!
I know this is even MORE of a tangent, but why is gluttony such an overlooked sin? Especially one of the most common types of gluttony.
I haven’t seen this yet, and have been afraid too. I think I have to see it now.
She’s not fat! She’s filled with the holy spirit!
She puts her left plate in, she puts her left plate out….
I know this is even MORE of a tangent, but why is gluttony such an overlooked sin?
You make an excellent point. There seemed to be a lot of overweight people at the Baptist church I attended as a child in the 1970s. And I am not talking about slightly overweight, more like the people who rent scoters to shop at Wal-Mart. One of my pastors claimed vegetarianism was a sin. God put animals on the planet for us to eat. There was also suspicion of the growing interest in aerobics and jogging. Having a nice body might lead to vanity, plus the apostle Paul write that exercise was a waste on time. Also the Rapture was going to happen soon, and one would soon get their new glorified body.
The favorite restaurant for many in my church was the local cafeteria style, all you can eat restaurant. My parents were not into it, but I can remember going there some Sunday’s after church and waiting in line for more then an hour. Not only was in gluttony, its was greed as well. One could play $10 for all you can eat, and I am sure many of the follow congregants, thought they would be able to eat more then $10 worth of food.
It is interesting the many religions oppose drugs and alcohol because they are addicting. But food can also be an addiction. When I think back to my overweight former congregants, I wonder what kind on emotional problems they had that caused them to overeat. I guess being full of the Holy Spirit do not full all of the emotion voids in their lives.
The late Jerry Falwell claimed he opposed homosexuality, because it was an unhealthy lifestyle. But so is gluttony, and that is what killed the overweight Falwell.
This lady is insane.
HOLY SPIRIT!!!!!!!
“Especially one of the most common types of gluttony.”
It’s not that simple. It’s not a matter of overeating, either, or of will power, or laziness. In fact, the more we exercise, the more hungry we become, so exercising is useless for weight loss.
Our culture consumes an enormous amount of sugar, and our doctors and advertising suggest we should consume high amounts of carbohydrates, i.e, sugars (witness – so to speak – the kid with the Pepsi cup), which, unfortunately, is what causes weight gain.
Suggested reading: Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes.
Meanwhile, that camp leader scared the hell out of me. The poor kids.
I know too many thin people who stay that way through regular exercise, and too many fat people who remain sedentary and eat a ton of food, to chalk it all up to sugar quite that simplistically.
Not that a high sugar diet is a good thing. But you can get pretty fat eating a ton of low sugar foods and remaining sedentary.
How about us skinny people who eat whatever and never exercise.
I used to be you.
Then I hit 40.
Blame a high metabolism for that.
If you want to lose wieght, you can either eat fewer calories a day, and hope to maintain healthy but getting the vitamins and mineral, you need.
or
you can maintain your same eating habits but exercise.
In the end, your body will start to burn up excess calories in the body, and hence lose weight. You’ll see quicker results if you combine the two. I should know, I’ve lost 30lbs following this.
“you can either eat fewer calories a day, and hope to maintain healthy but getting the vitamins and mineral, you need.”
Unfortunately, this leads to hunger. And as we can see by looking around us, at least in the U.S., people aren’t will to be hungry.
“or you can maintain your same eating habits but exercise.”
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work either. More exercise simply drives more hunger. As in, “I worked up a good appetite working on the railroad today.”
We will eat as much as we need to replace energy lost. Eat lots of carbs, and energy will be stored as fat, more in some people, less in others.
“I should know, I’ve lost 30lbs following this.”
In your case, Moe, we don’t know if it was your changed eating habits alone, your exercise, or both together – or neither.
You sound like Bill Maher, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but in a woo-vangelism sort of way.
I mean, exercise only leads to hunger and can’t help you lose weight? WTF, d00d.
You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend as a nurse trying to educate fatties (of which I myself am one) who are adamant that their weight does not cause health issues and that exercise can’t help them. Total denial. As bad as any Biblical literalist.
It breaks down like this: You can eat as much as you like provided you only eat fruit, vegetables (NOT potatos) and grains. The minute you add meat, sugar and refined carbs to the mix, you’re going to put weight on.
Exercise is good, but cardiovascular exercise is over-rated. If you build muscle instead of pounding the treadmill, you’ll increase your base metabolic rate and thereby burn more calories naturally – which doesn’t increase hunger. Hunger is a function of stomach size, and lots of Americans and Britons have distended stomachs. If you want it to shrink back to normal you have to stop filling it up all the time. A few weeks of hunger is a small price to pay for not having to give up meat.
No. The problem is that Americans…and I include myself in that category…simply eat too much. Restaurant portion sizes are much larger than elsewhere in the world. And, thes size of portions have grown substantially over the decades.
Some argue that high fructose corn syrup is one factor. While I am not a veggie, I would also agree that a heavily meat based diet is a factor. Sedentary lifestyles (office work). It is not simply sugar and carbs. As a long distance cyclist, I cannot get by on an Atkins diet…I don’t believe it at all.
From personal experience, I am indeed a sugar addict. Always have been. But it is not a matter of cuting back calories to the point of starvation. It’s portion control and food choices. Take half the restaurant meal home. Eat soup instead of the six ounce hamburger and fries. And your stomach adjusts…you really cannot imagine eating that much anymore.
I am down 57 pounds and maybe an inch from my high school jeans size. That’s with heavy exercise and weight lifting…so the weight distribution is probably actually better than my skinny nerdy high school self.
They’ve been blessed.
“How about us skinny people who eat whatever and never exercise.”
I’d want to know what you eat, and how old you are before making a judgement about that. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t count, anyway.
While a starvation diet could certainly stunt growth, we wouldn’t expect to tell someone to “stop eating so much, you’re too tall,” or “eat more, you’re too short.”
Some people have brown hair, some have red, some hair is redder on one person than another. We’re all different, including the way we process food in our bodies.
By the same token, some people are naturally more lean than others, and others are more fat than others. Some people store food more readily as fat than others, and some have trouble storing fat at all.
Dave, you’re talking absolute crap. In Britain and the US, we eat much, much more than in other countries, we do far less exercise and we’re much, much fatter. These things are not coincidental. You can try and delude yourself that your being fat has nothing to do with a crap diet and sitting on your arse all day, but you’re fooling nobody else. I am also fat – but I lose a lot of weight when I’m doing placements on hospital wards, because I’m on my feet and working all day. I do eat more in those periods, but I still lose weight and I’m not any more hungry than usual.
I spent a summer in Spain eating ice cream, fried food, and drinking beer; and in total I lost 20 lbs! Why? Because I was walking everywhere, for one. The second reason I believe is that the food was more natural there and not packed with preservatives and chemicals.
I should have prefaced my statement with the fact that I agree – being sedentary and eating too much / too preserved food is what makes us all fat in the US.
“I should have prefaced my statement with the fact that I agree – being sedentary and eating too much / too preserved food is what makes us all fat in the US.”
Then we are in agreement, Gringa.
Tell me, did you keep that 20 pounds off? Or has some or all of it come back? Are you exercising as much as you did in Spain, and eating what you ate in Spain?
Yes, the simplistic formula Dave espouses ignores the fact that muscle burns calories even when at rest. Having a lot of muscles burns more calories all day, even when you’re not actually exercising.
“Yes, the simplistic formula Dave espouses ignores the fact that muscle burns calories even when at rest. Having a lot of muscles burns more calories all day, even when you’re not actually exercising.”
OK, Ty, I’m going to answer this one, too, as it’s a common claim.
If a lot of muscles burn more calories than less calories all day, even when we’re not actually exercising, it only means that we will become hungrier that much faster.
After all, we burn calories whether or not we exercise, and whether or not we exercise, we will become, at some point, hungry. Expend more calories, whether running around a track or cycling up a mountain, and our body will simply become hungrier sooner than if we sat still on a couch.
And it won’t matter if we’re burning more calories after exercise than if we didn’t exercise at all. We’ll simply become hungrier faster, which will tend, in most people, to negate the weight reducing attribute of exercise.
“And it won’t matter if we’re burning more calories after exercise than if we didn’t exercise at all. We’ll simply become hungrier faster, which will tend, in most people, to negate the weight reducing attribute of exercise.”
Actually – “…which will tend, in most people WHO WOULD RATHER EAT THAN LOSE WEIGHT, to negate the weight reducing attribute of exercise.”
Who left you with the impression that losing weight should be easy?
Bill wrote:
“Who left you with the impression that losing weight should be easy?”
If you aren’t going to bother to digest what I’ve actually written, please don’t put words into my mouth.
Which is why I would like to know, Bill, what gave you the impression I’ve said, here, that losing weight should be easy. In fact, I’ve said the opposite.
For example, I’ve said walking to lose weight, as a few people here have said they have done, is a short term solution to weight loss. Two of the three simply gain the weight back, and the third person hasn’t responded to my question about what happened after her walk-induced weight loss.
I’ve said exercise alone won’t help us lose weight.
I’ve said we’re surrounded by a culture that extolls the intake of sugars that make us fat, and I’ve said its difficult because of that culture to eat healthy foods that could help us lose weight.
I’ve said it’s difficult to lose weight.
“people WHO WOULD RATHER EAT THAN LOSE WEIGHT”
Imagine that, people would rather eat than lose weight. If you were consumed with hunger, Bill, how long would you last? That’s a test I’d probably enjoy administering to you. Most people can’t last under those conditions.
No, there’s nothing easy about losing weight, and I certainly haven’t said so here.
“No, there’s nothing easy about losing weight, and I certainly haven’t said so here.”
Yes you have. You’ve said that people can’t lose weight and keep it off with diet and exercise because exercise makes them hungry. Basically a statement that feeling hungry is hard, and if it’s hard people won’t or can’t do it. That is your whole premise in a nut shell. Don’t back away from it now.
“Imagine that, people would rather eat than lose weight. If you were consumed with hunger, Bill, how long would you last?”
Consumed with hunger is a massive over statement. You don’t have to starve your self to lose weight and keep it off. you do have to deal with hunger pangs, watch what you eat and exercise. As noted elsewhere in this thread. I’ve lasted 9 years.
“…I’ve said walking to lose weight, as a few people here have said they have done, is a short term solution to weight loss. ”
BTW – walking to lose weight is a long term solution to weight loss. BUT YOU HAVE TO KEEEP WALKING! You can’t hit your goal weight, go back to the sedentary life style and eating choices that made you fat in the first place and think the weight will stay off.
It’s statements like this that make it clear you think weight loss and maintenance should be easy.
OK, Bill. I really should know when to quit, but I’ll make one more response to you, and then if you wish to answer, I’ll remain silent.
First, you wrote:
“Who left you with the impression that losing weight should be easy?”
Then you wrote:
“Yes you have said [it's easy to lose weight]. You’ve said [snip] feeling hungry is hard, and if it’s hard people won’t or can’t do it.”
If you think when I write that hunger makes weight loss hard actually means I’m saying losing weight is easy, then I think it’s obvious to anyone reading your words that you are twisting the meaning of words.
I’m sure you are rational and logical in most of your life. In this case, I don’t think that’s so.
“Consumed with hunger is a massive over statement.”
That’s your opinion, Bill. Some experts assert losing weight requires starvation.
“As noted elsewhere in this thread. I’ve lasted nine years.”
I missed that. Congrats. Well, what is your weight now? What was it then? What is your height? And do you mind telling us how long you considered yourself overweight? If it was for a period of years, why did you lack the will power to change for so long? And why should others be different from you?
“you do have to deal with hunger pangs”
YOU do. Maybe it’s you who have self-control problems. I eat as much as I want and I don’t gain weight. In fact, I’m a pound down from yesterday, with zero exercise (except for all the crazy typing I’ve done). I ate a lot food yesterday, too.
I attribute the ease of maintaining my weight – about 6′ and 171 pounds this morning – to what I eat (and I’ve kept a log of my weight and my exercise since 2001). You, though, admit to hunger pangs and the need to exercise in order to maintain your weight.
Are you going to claim you’re different than me? That, unlike me, you require exercise and hunger pangs to lose weight and maintain that weight loss?
I think that’s what you think – you’re different than me, that your path to weight loss and weight maintenance was and is necessarily different than my path.
Why not, then, think the same way about other people, including those who can’t lose weight by exercising and/or by restricting their caloric intake?
When it comes to food and weight and exercise, why SHOULD everyone be like you? I’m not saying everyone should be like me – one f*cktard is probably enough – however I am saying everyone is not like you, Bill.
You require much more effort to maintain your weight compared to me. Well, that’s how it is for other people compared to you. It’s “weigh” more difficult for some people to lose weight, even by cutting calories and exercising. In fact, it’s that way for an ever-increasing number of people.
I’ve suggested why that is so: the type of foods we have urged on us by advertising and by many medical and nutritional experts.
Change what we eat, I say, and we can change our weight. And I suggested a good way to learn about this concept is to read a particular book. I don’t expect everyone, or anyone, here to do that. However, I wanted to counter the claim that people are overweight because they are gluttons, because they lack will power, because it’s easy to suffer pangs of hunger.
“BTW – walking to lose weight is a long term solution to weight loss. BUT YOU HAVE TO KEEEP WALKING!”
Click on the link provided by custador showing the results of 25 years of studies about dieting, exercise and weight loss. Note that exercise on average after 15 weeks leads to a 6.4 pound reduction in weight. If you’re fat, that’s not much.
Then note that after maintaining such a regimen – for another year – people have gained back some of that weight.
Why don’t some – lots of – people keep up their lifestyle change that allowed them to lose weight? I’ve already mentioned one possible reason in a study I quoted from:
“‘the disconcerting message is that the initiation of [weight gain] may have a detrimental effect on the motivation to continue a regular exercise program.”
And we know that even people who have exercised and dieted continuously for a year will begin to regain some of the weight they lost.
If people are going to regain weight they’ve lost even as they diet and exercise, and if the initial regaining of weight leads to a loss of motivation to exercise, then keeping weight off is going to be a very difficult process.
So yes, we need to maintain a healthy lifestyle to keep off the weight we’ve lost. The reasons so many people can’t do that are – I say – far more profound, far deeper, than a simple lack will power, or putting up with occasional hunger pangs.
You wrote: “You can’t hit your goal weight, go back to the sedentary life style and eating choices that made you fat in the first place and think the weight will stay off.”
I haven’t said otherwise. Implicit in my comments, since I referred specifically to people like custador about the short term effects of walking to lose weight, is the acknowledgement that some people – like custador – don’t keep their weigh off.
I don’t think custador or others here want to be overweight, yet they are. Do you think custador and others chalk up their overweight to a lack of will power? Custador admits to being “fat”, then says weight loss occurs by walking while working, yet is regained during off hours. You tell custador it’s due to a lack of will power, custador’s inability to suffer hunger pangs. I don’t think it’s that at all.
Everything I’ve written has been to show that losing weight is hard. I might be wrong about that, maybe it is easy, but I haven’t, as you claim, said losing weight is easy.
OK, I’ve said my piece and if you want a last word, it’s yours.
“If you think when I write that hunger makes weight loss hard actually means I’m saying losing weight is easy, then I think it’s obvious to anyone reading your words that you are twisting the meaning of words.”
Don’t play semantic games with someone who plays semantic games for a living. I said: “Who left you with the impression that losing weight should be easy?” Note the word SHOULD. I never said that you said it is easy but that you are taking a position it SHOULD BE easy. Basiclaly your psoition is that if feeling hungry, or staying motivated to exercise is hard, well then people shouldn’t have to put up with that. Essentially that the fact it’s hard, leads to failure and therefore it doesn’t work. That’s a load of crap. It does work, as noted by your own study. (Don’t like the rate at which you are losing while walking. Try jogging, sprinting, biking uphill, swimming, mountain climbing etc… all burn more calories than walking.)
Let me see if I understand your position:
1. You admit that weight can be lost by creating a calorie deficit.
2. You admit that a calorie deficit can be created in part by exercise.
3. You admit that weight can be maintained by keeping your calorie burn/intake even.
4. You admit that part of keeping your calorie burn/intake even is getting exercise to match your caloric intake.
5. Yet your position is that exercise does nothing to help with weight loss because eating less and exercising more is hard, and people lack the motivation and will power to stay at it.
That my friends is a logical phallacy.
“Maybe it’s you who have self-control problems…You, though, admit to hunger pangs and the need to exercise in order to maintain your weight.”
Now you’re just reaching. Plus you have serious reading comprehension issues. I said hunger pangs are part of losing weight – not maintaining. I’m not trying to lose weight.
As for my “self control” – I too eat whatever I want and maintain or lose weight. You know why? Because I’m an Iron distance triathlete. I exercise a lot. That way I can eat as I wish and still maintain a racing weight. Sounds like decent self control. No?
Very very simple really. Increased exercise means I can and should increase calorie intake.
Yes, some people burn calories faster than others. Yes some people have medical conditions that cause them to gain weight wven when at a calorie deficit. Those people are the exception that proves the rule I’m talking about though.
“Do you think custador and others chalk up their overweight to a lack of will power?”
Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. (Sorry Custador.)
BTW – I agree with you that a low sugar diet will help you lose weight. But only because sugar is LOADED WITH CALORIES. Decreasing sugar intake will as a general rule decrease calorie intake.
BTW Dave – I note from your blog that you are a distance cyclist.
I think I’ve figured out how you maintain your weight.
Custador wrote: “Dave, you’re talking absolute crap”
Again, are such hurtful words necessary?
“In Britain and the US, we eat much, much more than in other countries, we do far less exercise and we’re much, much fatter.”
Have I said otherwise? On the contrary, this is just what I’ve said.
“You can try and delude yourself that your being fat has nothing to do with a crap diet”
Pardon me, custador, but I have said just the opposite. I have said that consuming vast amounts of sugar – a “crap diet” leads to obesity. You’ve twisted, for whatever reason, what I’ve written here. Definitely I don’t appreciate you putting words in my mouth.
I’ve also said, though, that exercise alone doesn’t lead to weight loss; at best, as shown from one link I believe you’ve provided here, it leads to a couple of kilograms of weight reduction, even after a year of both continuous caloric reduction and exercise.
“I am also fat – but I lose a lot of weight when I’m doing placements on hospital wards, because I’m on my feet and working all day.”
Custador – think about what you’ve written, above! If you don’t mind, I’ll rephrase it with a Mark Twain quote:
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”
Yes, you lose a lot of weight when you’re exercising. But you gain it back. Over and over and over again.
“I do eat more in those periods, but I still lose weight and I’m not any more hungry than usual.”
Again, read what you’ve written above: You eat more, but you’re not more hungry than usual. That doesn’t make sense, you know. You wouldn’t eat more unless you were more hungry than usual (usual being the times you don’t exercise). In fact, you’re just hungry enough to eat back the energy you’ve lost walking the wards.
I don’t claim to be the most rational person on the planet – the good lord I don’t believe in knows I’ve acted very irrationally at times. However, I have studied about exercise and diet, which I’m thinking is more than most responders to my comments have done.
When someone claims he (or she) eats more when they exercise but not because they are hungry, when I see someone claim they both lose their appetite when exercising and suffer from the bonk when they exercise, when I see someone claim athletes can’t be overweight because they exercise, then I suspect that logical thought is at least somewhat lacking.
“Yes, you lose a lot of weight when you’re exercising. But you gain it back. Over and over and over again.”
Actually it’s more accurate to say “some people gain it back over and over again.” Do you know why that is? It’s because they STOP EXERCISING but still eat like they are. They create a calorie surplus.
Some of us – like oh say ME – lost 40 lbs nine years ago and have kept it off by exercising every single day since then while watching how many calories they consume.
This is not that hard. You can’t really be this thick.
The difference in gaining 40 lbs of weight over 20 years and not doing so is less than 20 cals per day. I doubt it has much to do with buffets, non micro managed sugar intake, etc.
“to chalk it all up to sugar quite that simplistically.”
And I opened by saying the subject isn’t as simple as gluttony.
“But you can get pretty fat eating a ton of low sugar foods and remaining sedentary.”
Correct. But not necessarily by eating zero sugar foods (e.g. Eskimos and the Masai, a variety of research subjects over the years who ate extremely low or zero carbohydrate diets).
What doctors tell us to eat lots of sugar? I’m pretty sure none do. But assuming you were talking about carbs in general, well, there is a good reason for that.
Frankly, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” is a disaster of misinformation. Taubes combines obvious facts (“Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation”), questionable claims (“The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.”), utter nonsense (“Sugars—sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically—are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates. [The mixture of glucose and fructose? Is he talking about invert sugar?]), and outright, demonstrably false statements (“Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.”).
Over-consumption of fat is known to cause all kinds of problems, as any research on the Atkins diet will tell you. The “lipid hypothesis” is about as proven as any hypothesis gets in nutrition. The idea that exercise doesn’t help with weight loss is, well, ridiculous, given the volume of evidence to the contrary. In fact, nearly all of the controversial claims the book makes face a nearly unanimous scientific consensus to contradict it. The numbers I have seen on these issues are very similar to the numbers of scientists who reject, say, homeopathy. It just isn’t even close.
As a diabetic, I find many of his conclusions regarding insulin and metabolic pathways laughable. In his model, it just doesn’t make sense that type 1 diabetics with no insulin production can still gain huge amounts of weight, but they often do.
Taubes is cherry-picking his favorite studies from a field in which qualified researchers have produced thousands of peer-reviewed articles, so it is not surprising that he can build up a decent bibliography. But no single point he makes is backed up by even ten percent of the relevant studies.
I agree exercise does help with the weight loss. I think that many people get confused when after 6 months or so they start to see themselves gaining some weight from the exercise. What many people don’t understand is that muscle is much denser then fat and as you develop more muscle you will actually gain some weight. The difference is this weight is a good thing not bad. Education is where the answer is, not following the latest trendy book on weight loss.
“I agree exercise does help with the weight loss.”
Except this isn’t true. It only makes us hungrier.
“I think that many people get confused when after 6 months or so they start to see themselves gaining some weight from the exercise. What many people don’t understand is that muscle is much denser then fat and as you develop more muscle you will actually gain some weight.”
True. But this weight gain from increased muscle mass doesn’t take six months to show its ugly face. It begins to happen as soon as we start exercising.
You keep saying that, but you haven’t provided evidence for it. Your repetitive postings are pointless.
Ivan wrote:
“You keep saying that, but you haven’t provided evidence for it. Your repetitive postings are pointless.”
Hmmm……….well, I’ll repeat something I wrote below:
“Here is what the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published in joint guidelines for physical activity and health in 2007:
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time compared with those who have low energy expenditures. SO FAR, DATA TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS IS NOT PARTICULARLY COMPELLING.” [My emphasis.] So far, data to support this hypothesis is not particularly compelling.”
So you can see that organizations that promote exercise also admit that there is no evidence showing it will help anyone lose weight.
And here’s a quote from Steven Gortmaker, the director of the Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, at Harvard:
“If you’re more physically active, you’re going to get hungry and eat more.”
I’ll repeat my point, too, counterintuitive as it may seem: exercise doesn’t help us lose weight.
Twenty seconds on Google Scholar was long enough to find experts who disagree with you.
Pubmed also disagrees with you.
Exercise builds muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat. Therefore, if you get hungry after you work out, eat and your muscles will help burn it off.
This goes for not exercising too. Eat when you are hungry; don’t eat when you are not hungry. Period. Too many people overeat either because they weren’t hungry to begin with, or because they don’t know how to properly portion their food.
The real question here is what you eat and how much you consume at once. If you have a healthy meal (both contents and size), of course you will lose weight or maintain your healthy weight b/c your body knows how to process it and utilize it fully for energy. If you eat crap, you may never lose weight even with exercise.
Custador wrote: “Twenty seconds on Google Scholar was long enough to find experts who disagree with you.”
Your link fails, custador. The money quote:
“Exercise is especially important in maintaining weight loss in overweight persons.” Which is to say, no claim is made that exercise HELPS us lose weight, only that it can help maintain the loss, once it occurs.
Another negation of your claim:
“Several prospective studies have shown that overweight men and women who are active and fit have lower rates of morbidity and mortality than overweight persons who are sedentary and unfit. Therefore, exercise is of benefit to overweight persons, EVEN IF IT DOES NOT MAKE THEM LEAN.
So “experts” and me are not in disagreement, as per your claim. I’ve simply stated that exercise doesn’t lead to permanent weight loss. Of course being in good physical condition is beneficial, in the sense it can help us live longer and offers us more choices in the way we conduct our lives.
But, as the very link you’ve chosen to highlight shows us, exercise doesn’t NOT lead to weight reduction. Instead, the link discusses the effect of exercise on people who ARE obese.
Custador wrote: “Pubmed also disagrees with you.”
You’re looking at a 1997 study. Hardly current. Even so, you fail to understand the data.
Note that exercise is the least effect method, by far, to obtain weight loss:
Diet alone: someone on average will lose 10.7 +/- 0.5 kg weight loss – 23.5 pounds.
Exercise: 2.9 +/- 0.4* kg (astrick not explained) – 6.4 pounds.
Diet and Exercise: 11.0 +/- 0.6 kg – 24.2 pounds.
Note that exercise barely works. That is, after 15 weeks of exercise, the average weight loss in 25 years of quoted studies is all of 6.4 pounds, which is a drop in the bucket for someone who’s already obese.
While our link shows that on average 24.2 pounds were lost with a 15 week diet-plus-exercise program, a year later people on average regained 5.3 pounds. Yes, that is a still significant weight loss for someone who is slightly overweight, but not so much on someone who is obese.
As we know, though, extending the time period beyond a years means most people will regain all the weight they lost.
And even with a YEAR’S worth of diet and exercise, on average people will gain back most of the weight they would lost with exercise alone. Your second link therefore shows exercise is all but useless without caloric restriction – which validates my point, not yours.
So I continue to hold that exercise does not lead to long term weight loss, which is born out by the links you’ve offered.
Gringa wrote: “Exercise builds muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat. Therefore, if you get hungry after you work out, eat and your muscles will help burn it off.”
Sounds good and I’ve heard it so many times before. However, there is that fly in the ointment. The more we “burn it off,” that is, the more calories we burn, the more we experience hunger, and the more we eat to replace those lost calories.
“Too many people overeat either because they weren’t hungry to begin with”
This is your opinion, gringa. It’s not backed up with evidence. Or do you have some?
“or because they don’t know how to properly portion their food.”
I’ll agree here. Most people, at least in the U.S. (and Britain, according to custador) consume vast amounts of sugars; in fact, it’s difficult not to eat these sugars (or carbohydrates) in the form of pasta, bread, potatoes, and sweets.
As I’ve already pointed out, many in the medical (and nutrition) profession advocate that we eat high carb diets (by cutting down on fats). So we have both professional health experts and advertising by the food industry urging us to eat carbs.
By the way, we need only look at the ingredients of any food that lists itself as “low-fat.” It’s high in carbs.
However, many doctors (and researchers) believe differently, that high carb diets lead to obesity (in a process that’s too complicated to describe here in a few words, which is why I recommended the Taubes book, Good Calories, Bad Calories; Taubes explains the mechanisms of obesity, and, among other objectives, pulls together hundreds of research papers on the effects of diet).
I didn’t say it was the only thing you have to do to lose weight. The type of exercise along with diet are the two important parts of weight lose. There are other elements but with these two you will get some lose of fat. I think to many people just focus on losing weight not on losing the fat which is the actual goal of those claiming to be trying to lose weight. I think people need to educate themselves on why they look as they do and if they do they might better understand how to rid themselves of the fat look.
Someone asked my age and yeah I am turning 47 this year so you can’t say it is because of my youth that I am skinny. I am one of those body types that doesn’t store large amount of fat it seems. The only time I weight more then 160-170 was when I exercised at least 3 days a week. I weight about 20 lbs. more then I did when i graduated from HS.
No. Time Magazine is not The Gospel.
My being fat was not related at all to increased appetite from exercise but addictive behavior and a genetic predisposition to obesity. Seriously ramping up exercise did not increase my level of hunger…in fact, in many cases exercise kills/reduces my appetite. On serious bicycling days I have more of a challenge in eating enough to replenish blood sugar (I’m a notorious bonker)
I will agree that exercise alone will not magically lead to weight loss. The calories numbers are humbling. I have always exercised so I always would have been skinny. Still…when you are bicycling 200 miles in a week and you are not eating more, you will lose weight. I know that takes a lot of time, but you know what…so does watching television. It’s all a matter of choices. And that includes portion size.
Brian M wrote:
“My being fat was not related at all to increased appetite from exercise but addictive behavior and a genetic predisposition to obesity.”
Sounds good to me. Exercise makes the body want to replace lost energy, not to necessarily adding extra energy.
Certainly I’ve not said here that exercise LEADS to obesity. I think I did write that exercise can lead to increased muscle mass – that’s hardly the same as saying exercise makes us fat. (Time Magazine suggested that exercising, and then stopping off at Starbucks for a latte and muffin might more than offset weight loss, which may or may not be true for some people, and has nothing to do with the topic of whether or not exercise by itself leads to weight loss).
“Seriously ramping up exercise did not increase my level of hunger…in fact, in many cases exercise kills/reduces my appetite.”
(But you contradict yourself below, as we shall see below.)
So it is with me, appetite is suppressed, but only for a while, after a long and/or hard bike ride.
“On serious bicycling days I have more of a challenge in eating enough to replenish blood sugar (I’m a notorious bonker)”
I rarely bonk (which is also called “hunger bonk” and “hitting the wall) on a long ride, because I try to take in enough energy to offset energy loss. It’s difficult to continue to exercise when we bonk – that’s what bonking means.
So when you bonk, what do you do, Brian. Are you saying you DON’T try to replenish blood sugar? You continue to ride in an enervated state?
Now to that contradiction: if your are a “notorious bonker,” it means you are hungry.
You can’t have it both ways, even if you don’t realize it. You can’t claim ramping up exercise does NOT lead to an increased appetite, and then turn around and say you are well known for running out of energy, i.e. you bonk (hunger bonk, hit the wall), which is the same thing as saying you’re hungry.
Think through what you’ve written: that ramping up your exercise doesn’t make you hungry, and that ramping up exercise turns you into a well-known bonker. The are mutually exclusive.
Well, when I was a kid my doctor gave me a lolly after vaccinations.
“What doctors tell us to eat lots of sugar? I’m pretty sure none do.”
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. :-)
If you look at the official position of the American Heart Association, the AMA, and the USDA, you’ll discover that their advice is to eat a low fat diet, which by definition must be a high carbohydrate diet.
Ever look at the back of a package advertising a “low-fat” food? It’s very high in carbohydrates.
And carbohydrates are: sugar.
“outright, demonstrably false statements (”Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.”).”
I think you’re wrong. For example, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzed 21 studies, covering 384,000 adults for up to 21 years. The results, published in May of last year: saturated fat intake were not shown to be linked to heart attacks.
“questionable claims (”The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.”)
So you think eating all the candy, ice cream, and soda pop you want, compared to eating fruits and vegetables and fats and proteins, is a questionable claim? I think I won’t put much credence into what you claim.
“Taubes is cherry-picking his favorite studies from a field in which qualified researchers have produced thousands of peer-reviewed articles, so it is not surprising that he can build up a decent bibliography.”
Duh! But you, of course, have chosen to put your faith in the studies you like, that back up your world view.
“But no single point he makes is backed up by even ten percent of the relevant studies.”
What is “relevant” and what isn’t, is what Taubes’ book is about; I think you have completely missed that point.
“The idea that exercise doesn’t help with weight loss is, well, ridiculous, given the volume of evidence to the contrary.”
Here is what the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published in joint guidelines for physical activity and health in 2007:
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis is not particularly compelling.”
Re-read the last sentence. no data supports the idea that exercise helps us lose weight.
If you think evidence shows exercise helps us lose weight, show us.
So, I’ll continue to stay away from carbohydrates: pastas, potatoes, fruit juice, dried fruits, ice cream, candy, cake and pies. And I’ll remain my svelte self.
The burden of proof quite clearly falls to you, and your AHA/ACSM citation only shows your lack of reading comprehension.
It’s quite clear that changing one’s balance of food intake and exercise will necessarily lead to changes in weight. A person can get lots of exercise and still gain weight (by eating more than necessary), but that doesn’t show that exercise is useless for losing weight!
If it makes you personally feel more righteous to avoid all carbohydrates, fine. But don’t expect us to swallow your claims without a little more evidence for them.
“The burden of proof quite clearly falls to you”
Come now, Ivan. You’ve got it backwards. You’re making an assertion that exercise leads to weight loss. You have to come up with the proof.
It’s not up to me to prove there IS no evidence. However, I’ve quoted from a nutrition expert, and I’ve quoted from a couple of organizations who admit in their public guidelines for weight control that NO evidence exists to show that exercise helps us lose weight.
“It’s quite clear that changing one’s balance of food intake and exercise will necessarily lead to changes in weight.”
No, this is not clear. Exercising more leads to greater hunger. Now you’re being repetitive.
“If it makes you personally feel more righteous to avoid all carbohydrates, fine.”
I didn’t say I avoided all carbohydrates. Among items I stay away from (and not religiously) I listed pasta, potatoes, and a variety of sweets. Fruits and vegetables contain carbohydrates, too; I didn’t say I kept away from these foods, whether or not you think I did.
“But don’t expect us to swallow your claims without a little more evidence for them.”
Again, you’re making a claim, without evidence, that exercise helps control weight. I’ve answered that there IS no evidence to show this is true.
What’s next? If I assert there is no evidence that a god exists, you’re going to claim the burden of proof lies with me?
Try this: substitute “exercise” for “god” and “helps lose weight” for “exists,” and I think you’ll see it’s not me who’s feeling more righteous.
Exercise leads to hunger so is useless for weight loss? Ah! THAT’S why there are all those obese athletes waddling around.
“THAT’S why there are all those obese athletes waddling around.”
Do you think, Mike, that all football players are lean? The average height of an offensive lineman: 6”3″ – weight: about 300 pounds. These are definitely not skinny athletes.
What about Sumo wrestlers? Average height is a little under 6 feet, and they weigh hundreds of pounds – certainly more than 300 pounds. They are obese. They are strong, they exercise, and they are obese.
Steven Holcomb, pilot of the winning U.S. bobsled team at the recent winter Olympics: height: 5’10″ – weight: 231 lbs. Hardly a lightweight athlete.
Lindsey Vonn? She’s 5’10″ and 160 pounds. She’s not skinny, even with all the exercise she puts in.
Baseball players are often quite heavy.
If you’ve ever visited a gym, you’ve noted that there are lots of fit people running on treadmills, spinning on bikes, lifting weights, etc. A good proportion of them, fit as they may be, are overweight or obese.
Thus all athletes are not skinny, and indeed, some literally waddle, even though they are in excellent physical condition. That is, even though heavy-set athletes exercise – a lot – they remain heavy-set.
It’s certainly the case that physically fit people who are thin are not going to become football linebackers or Sumo wrestlers.
It’s the other way around: the athletes who are thin to begin with are those who become the star basketball players, cyclists, and swimmers.
And by the same token, athletic people who are on the larger side become football linesmen and Sumo wrestlers, basketball players and even bobsledders.
By the way, football linesmen and Sumo wrestlers eat enormous amounts of food to stay as large as they are. They don’t go hungry.
And neither do swimmers and other lean athletes. They eat what they need to in order to maintain their weight.
Whether they are larger or slimmer, athletes don’t live in a constant state of hunger.
Thus, exercise does not cause weight loss. Exercise causes hunger. There’s no evidence exercise causes people to lose weight, and as we can see from the examples above, some athletes who exercise heavily are heavy, or even grotesquely obese – and often do their best to grow even larger.
“If you’ve ever visited a gym, you’ve noted that there are lots of fit people running on treadmills, spinning on bikes, lifting weights, etc. A good proportion of them, fit as they may be, are overweight or obese.”
This is because those people over consume or don’t exercise enough to create a calorie deficitt. If they didn’t work out they way they do, they would be even fatter.
Your arguments are just ridiculous.
Dave, that bit about linemen is just moronic. Linemen bulk up on purpose. Like sumo wrestlers. Being an enormously heavy and immovable object is the GOAL of interior defensive linemen, and offensive linemen. They are not skinny because if they were they would not play those positions.
But at the ends of the defensive line are the ends, the pass rushers. They tend to be tall, extremely muscular, and not fat. This is not because they exercise less.
“Do you think, Mike, that all football players are lean? The average height of an offensive lineman: 6”3″ – weight: about 300 pounds. These are definitely not skinny athletes.”
LEAN simply means not having a lot of fat, it DOESN’T mean “skinny”, as you imply. Technically, a 300lb body builder is obese without having more than 4% body fat.
Ty wrote: “Dave, that bit about linemen is just moronic.”
I don’t think insulting me serves much of a purpose, especially on this website.
“Linemen bulk up on purpose. Like sumo wrestlers. Being an enormously heavy and immovable object is the GOAL of interior defensive linemen, and offensive linemen. They are not skinny because if they were they would not play those positions.”
Ty, you’re simply repeating what I originally wrote. As I also wrote, no one who is rail-thin can become a linesman or Sumo wrestler. And people who are heavy-set from early on in their lives don’t become competitive swimmers, cyclists, runners, and yes, defensive linesmen, are not fat.
I made those points – the same ones you are making even as you accuse me of saying something else – in response to Mike’s assertion that there are no overweight athletes. All you’ve done is restate what I’ve already said: some athletes carry an enormous amount of weight. They are, by any standard, overweight and even, in the case of linesmen and Sumo wrestlers, obese, and on purpose.
You want to think, for whatever reason, that I’ve said something different from what you’ve said. I haven’t.
And I won’t stoop to calling you moronic just because you’ve called me that.
Custador wrote: “LEAN simply means not having a lot of fat, it DOESN’T mean “skinny”, as you imply.”
Yes, lean means skinny. Skinny means not having a lot of fat.
Go to any thesaurus and look up the synonyms for the word “skinny.” The word “lean” is one such synonym. Look up the work “lean.” The word “skinny” is listed an a synonym.
“Technically, a 300lb body builder is obese without having more than 4% body fat.”
I’m not aware that a 300lb body builder is obese with 4% body fat. I’d like to see where you came up with such an assertion, custador. Can you provide it?
Whether or not 4% of boy fat constitutes “obesity” has nothing to do with the fat content of Sumo wrestlers and offensive linesman. These athletes are well over 300 pounds and carry significantly more body fat than 4%.
From a reported Ohio State study of one Division 1 team:
“Nineteen of 29 linemen were obese,” registering 25 percent or more body fat. Four percent wouldn’t count as obese.
So I’m sticking to my response to Mike’s assertion: athletes can be fat (and I’ve got Ty, above, backing me up, even though he may not have figured it out, yet).
No f*cktard, YOU said:
“Do you think, Mike, that all football players are lean? The average height of an offensive lineman: 6”3″ – weight: about 300 pounds. These are definitely not skinny athletes.”
They’re NOT skinny, but they ARE lean. And you ARE a f*cktard.
“I don’t think insulting me serves much of a purpose, especially on this website.”
Why do we always need to do the refresher course on this?
Calling your argument moronic is not the same as calling you moronic.
But you are in fact claiming that the obesity of these particular athletes makes some sort of point about what CAUSES obesity, and it does not. At all. And that is why the use of these athletes in this context is moronic.
“you are in fact claiming that the obesity of these particular athletes makes some sort of point about what CAUSES obesity, and it does not. At all. And that is why the use of these athletes in this context is moronic.”
No, Ty, I haven’t claimed that obesity of some athletes makes a point. I offered up examples of obese/overweight/large athleets to refute Mike’s assertion, above, that athletes can’t be overweight.
However, I apologize if, in the flow of my comments below Mike’s, I did otherwise.
I think, though, it’s you who have taken my comments out of context. Again, I’ve only said that some athletes, contrary to Mike’s claim, can be overweight. I don’t think I’ve said why they weigh more than most athletes, other than that they need to be huge for the types of sports they are involved with.
Again, if I’m wrong and I’ve made some a point about the cause of obesity in my past several comments following Mike’s, or if I’ve unduly offended you, I apologize.
“Calling your argument moronic is not the same as calling you moronic.”
Only in a technical sense, Ty. And I notice that above, despite conciliatory comments on my part, custador has now described me as a “f*cktard,” twice.
That sounds at least a bit insulting, even if true, don’t you agree? :-)
I’ll stick with what I’ve studied (and lived), and what I said here from my earliest comments: a healthy diet is far more important than exercise when it comes to losing weight. In fact, exercise won’t help much – if at all – in losing weight, at least not in the long term, born out in study after study, including, if not specifically, the one quoted by custador.
“And you ARE a f*cktard.”
If I angered you that much, custador, then I apologize for going too far.
My offer to reward your weight loss still stands.
And if you want it, I offer you the last word between us.
I come to this board to avoid this kind of stoopid.
You can assert all day long that there’s no evidence that exercise leads to weight loss, but that doesn’t make it so.
Your body has energy reserves. Your body will dip into these reserves if necessary. Ergo, if you (a) exercise slightly more while keeping your diet fixed, or (b) eat slightly less while keeping your exercise fixed, you’ll lose weight.
Of course exercise leads to greater hunger. But if you’re careful, you can satisfy your hunger while still forcing your body to burn a little fat overall.
Your comparison of your argument to the argument for the nonexistence of gods is pretty pathetic.
“Your body has energy reserves. Your body will dip into these reserves if necessary.”
Yes.
“Ergo, if you (a) exercise slightly more while keeping your diet fixed, or (b) eat slightly less while keeping your exercise fixed, you’ll lose weight.”
This is not correct, because it’s not possible for most humans to exercise even slightly more while keeping their diet (intake of energy) fixed. Their need to maintain homeostasis, which exhibits as hunger, overwhelms most people. Nor can most humans eat slightly less, while keeping exercise fixed. The same problem aries – there is the need to replace energy that is lost, energy that keeps the system that runs our bodies in equilibrium.
“Of course exercise leads to greater hunger. But if you’re careful, you can satisfy your hunger while still forcing your body to burn a little fat overall.”
There’s the rub, by which you are proving my point: by nature, humans can’t be careful, particularly when the foods they eat help create fat, i.e. carbohydrates. They can’t satisfy hunger by burning a little fat overall.
If it was that simple – eating a little less – then exercise would be completely unnecessary, by your own reasoning, to lose weight. Simply burning a little fat overall, by eating less, would achieve the same result. (Of course, there are good reasons for exercising.)
And some foods, specifically carbohydrates, make it easier to gain weight by helping to create fat, rather than turning food into energy to fuel muscles and organs.
“Your comparison of your argument to the argument for the nonexistence of gods is pretty pathetic.”
I find that comment somewhat insulting, and not in keeping with the rational tone of the conversation.
People do lose weight by eating less. There is an entire subculture of skinny people who eat fewer calories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_calorie_diet
I watched a documetary about these people. They were all very skinny.
And, anecdotally, I’m about 20 pounds overweight. Past experience has shown that if I just walk for half an hour three or four times a week I drop ten pounds in the first two months. All without changing my diet at all.
You kind of come across as a ‘good calorie, bad calorie’ evangelist a bit. And, as several people have shown with links, that book isn’t even considered good science.
“Their need to maintain homeostasis, which exhibits as hunger, overwhelms most people.”
Bollocks! just because YOU are too weak to say no to an extra cookie or twelve, don’t try to justify yourself by lumping everybody else in with you! You know what, f*ck it, I’m going to drop 50lbs through exercise alone just to prove YOU wrong. Daniel has access to my facebook and can therefore see pictures of me; Dan, you willing to witness this?
Custador wrote:
“Bollocks! just because YOU are too weak to say no to an extra cookie or twelve, don’t try to justify yourself by lumping everybody else in with you!”
Bollocks? ;-) What, you have clairvoyant powers that allow you see how I conduct my life, custador? Apparently you don’t. I’m just under 6 ft and weighed 172.0 pounds this morning; I’m fit enough to ride a bike 100 miles in a day, or summit up a 14,000 ft. peak in our Sierra Nevada Mountains, probably faster than anyone on this forum. I’m having a piece of fish for lunch and I’m not having a single cookie for dessert, much less an extra one or 12.
“You know what, f*ck it, I’m going to drop 50lbs through exercise alone just to prove YOU wrong.”
I LOVE it! As in LOL, and in a nice way. If you pull it off – and you’ll have to continue eating just as you do now – what do you eat now? – I promise to suitably reward you. Even if you lose that much (assuming you need to) with diet and exercise, I’ll do something good for you. However, would you mind giving me some credit for motivating you?
And hey, I’ll provide you with plenty of pictures of me, via any online vehicle of your choice which I’m on or can join. Why show just Daniel what you look like. Are you afraid to show your face, er, body to me? :-)
Here’s a recent self-made photo of me I like: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V9XlaFTo-R8/S0w6FhNwdbI/AAAAAAAABqk/WWjGe2_IrBA/s400/jan10bike16.jpg
I rather like that one. And while I’m fairly skinny (or should I say lean), I attribute my weight (and weight loss, as I weighed a lot more in 2001), to an improved diet more than exercise.
I’m definitely going to have to cry “uncle!” soon, if only because I’m being nibbled to death. ;-)
“People do lose weight by eating less. There is an entire subculture of skinny people who eat fewer calories.
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_calorie_diet”
Are you saying I’ve claimed this? I haven’t.
I’ve specifically said losing weight by exercise alone is difficult and in fact impossible for most people.
“And, anecdotally, I’m about 20 pounds overweight. Past experience has shown that if I just walk for half an hour three or four times a week I drop ten pounds in the first two months.”
I believe you. I also believe that, without changing your diet at all, you gain back this weight. (And hey, you may be 20 pounds overweight, but I think you look great!). Your admittedly anecdotal weight loss is, then, only temporary, and I’ve never said that isn’t the case.
“You kind of come across as a ‘good calorie, bad calorie’ evangelist a bit.”
I suppose I am. And apparently, more than a bit. ;-) I’ve thought high carb diets are worse than low carb diets for a long time, and Taube’s writings have provided lots of evidence – from my perspective – to back that up.
My living depends on me being in relatively good shape, and my avocational pursuits include occasional physically challenging enterprises, so I’m at least somewhat interested in keeping up with current knowledge about what foods can and cannot keep me healthy.
“And, as several people have shown with links, that book isn’t even considered good science.”
I challenge you to show me which people here have come up with links showing the book isn’t considered good science. I believe only custador has done so, to his credit. However, the conclusions shown by his links state otherwise (as in showing exercise by itself does almost nothing to help reduce weight, which is in fact what I’ve said).
OK, you don’t have to show me those links, it’s way too much work to look back over all this. Just because you think people here have come up with links doesn’t mean they have, though, and it doesn’t mean the links provided actually support the claim that Taubes’ science isn’t good.
Anyway, the book itself isn’t “science.” It’s a book that reports about science, and the lack of it, in regards to the way science has concerned itself with what we eat and what it does to us. (Taubes does, by the way, discuss extremely low calorie diets.)
Tthe comments here about food and exercise started when I took issue with a statement, at the top somewhere, that people are overweight because they are gluttons. I think, as I first said, that it’s more complicated than people just stuffing their faces with food.
Perhaps I did want to stir up controversy, rather than simply attempt to inform. Perhaps I should have been careful about what I wished for with my comments.
And given that the conversation has devolved to the level of having someone here call me a f*cktard, I’ll re-evaluate how many more responses to comments, if any, I’ll make (assuming there are any more comments).
Your example of sumo wrestlers shows just how pathetically weak this argument is. To cited a sport whose participants consume upwards of 12,000 calories per day and do zero CV exercise is disingenuous at best. Name me one fat, let’s say… marathon runner and I will concede the point.
There is confusion here between fat and weight; and CV and strength exercises, and while BMI might be a reasonable guide for the general populace, it breaks down for serious athletes who need to be measuring BFP. No-one is arguing that just lifting plates will stop you getting fat if you eat burgers all day, but whether your body burns or stores fat is very simple to determine – if calories in > calories out, you’ll store, if in<out you'll burn. Two ways to do this – eat (or to be more accurate absorb) fewer calories, or increase the metabolism to burn more. Moderate CV exercise will do the latter. A combination of both works best.
Mike wrote:
“Your example of sumo wrestlers shows just how pathetically weak this argument is.”
Talk about flogging a dead horse. I’m not sure why you are reviving this, and why you find it necessary to employ mean spirited words, but I’ll answer – hopefully not in kind – anyway.
Somewhere, higher on the page, you made fun of my assertion that exercise does not lead to weight:
“Exercise leads to hunger so is useless for weight loss? Ah! THAT’S why there are all those obese athletes waddling around.”
I gave a serious response (that was my first mistake) that some athletes are indeed overweight, on purpose, even though they exercise. I included types of football players and Sumo wrestlers.
In addition, I wrote that while some people seem genetically built for these sports, others are clearly better suited for sports like swimming, basketball, running, etc.
Now you, apparently without realizing it, have repeated my observations in an attempt to wriggle out of the fact that your original comment was simply flippant.
As for your claim, Mike, that my “example of sumo wrestlers shows just how pathetically weak this argument is,” do me the favor of telling me what you think I’m arguing about. Because I think you lost that concept somewhere in the jungle of all the words we’ve spent on this subject.
“To cited a sport whose participants consume upwards of 12,000 calories per day and do zero CV exercise is disingenuous at best.”
Please explain what’s disingenuous, Mike. I see nothing disingenuous in saying some athletes eat lots of food to bulk up for their particular sports. I see nothing disingenuous in writing that some athletes are genetically larger than others. YOU’VE now said it, too. I made those observations to answer your claim that athletes can’t be overweight.
Now you’ve come up with the “No True Scotsman” argument, to claim that Sumo wrestlers aren’t athletes because they don’t perform CV exercise. They certainly work hard at their sport. (Following your logic, that means body builders are not athletes, either.).
I do see you cherry picked from my examples of overweight athletes. You picked Sumo wrestlers, but left hanging football linesmen, who, like Sumo wrestlers, have rather large physiques to begin with, and who also consume huge amounts of food to bulk up for their sport.
These football linesmen most certainly undergo CV exercise. They don’t move nearly as fast as their slimmer counterparts who aren’t on the line next to them. LInesmen are fat, on purpose. Strong, fat, and they perform CV exercise.
Of course, when one of these players scoops up a fumble and heads 50 yards into the end zone, he’s obviously more winded than his slimmer teammates who aren’t defensive linesmen – but he’s no less an athlete. And he certainly exercises.
Like Sumo wrestlers, defensive linesmen do a dance with offensive linesmen, and compared to fullbacks, speed skaters, cyclists and swimmers, it’s a very slow dance; it’s slow because of their vast bulk. And if they don’t get a huge lead when they pick up a fumble, or some awesome blocking from their teammates, a linesman who scoops up a ball won’t make it 50 yards into the end zone before a slimmer, and therefore faster player runs him down.
You asked for a picture of an overweight marathoner, even though I went into detail – which you’ve repeated – to show that certain kinds of bodies work better at some sports than others. Please remember it was you, Mike, who first made the broad statement that athletes are slim because they exercise. When you made that comment, you didn’t add a qualifier that only those who indulge in CV exercise can be athletes, as you now do.
So, even though I specifically stated that some people are better suited for some sports – football linesmen by nature come large to the sport, runners are slim – you still want me to show you an overweight marathoner. To me, that request shows you haven’t done me the courtesy of reading my comments, as I have yours.
However, below is your link, for a marathoner who is obviously overweight, who went as long and hard as she could, and who had extra difficulty training due to medical issues.
http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/fitcity/entries/2009/02/23/last_place_marathoner_shares_s.html
(The google link, which loads quickly, is too long to post here; scroll down the very long, slow loading web page to find the photo; or type the search terms – overweight marathoner – into images.google.com, and go to the second page. You’ll see the thumbnail of the overweight marathoner, second row, second from the right.)
Your turn: find me one slim, let’s say… professional or college defensive linesman and I just might concede the point, whatever you think it is.
“There is confusion here between fat and weight”
On your part, Mike. Football linesmen are fat, as well as strong. Same with Sumo wrestlers. I’m not confused.
“whether your body burns or stores fat is very simple to determine [snip] if in<out you'll burn."
Which, in fact, I say is not true, and was the point of my very first comment on this post. Whether you're right or I'm right, though, that's what the comments about weight here have been about; for you to simply repeat what's been repeated over and over again makes me wonder why you've re-entered the fray.
In a place far away and long ago, I said people don't become overweight just because they have no self control. I pointed out that we in the U.S., at least, eat huge amounts of the one type of food that can easily be turned into fat, we're discouraged from eating the kinds of food that less easily make us fat, and that we are encouraged to eat fattening foods by some of our doctors and by advertising.
Yet once again, you throw in "Moderate CV exercise will burn [calories]. A combination of [diet and CV] works best." As if I haven't been hammered with that over and over again.
If you'd given some thought to what I've written, you'd know I don't deny that diet and exercise work best at weight loss, and although you probably missed it, I've explicitly stated it on this page.
It's just that, at best, it barely works at all for most people.
As the study custador linked to pointed out, 25 years of research shows that even after a year of continuous diet control and exercise to lose weight, people will still regain some of the weight they lost initially lost, and they will lost almost most of the weight they would have lost with exercise alone.
And I pointed to a study that shows that while exercise – after the fact – can help maintain weight loss, some weight is invariably gained back, and that it is the initiation of weight gain itself that may trigger, on deep physiological/psychological levels, a loss of motivation to keep weight off.
Meanwhile, you've made mean-spirted, flippant comments and repeated the same comments several others have made to me.
In my first comment on this post, I suppose I did come across as a troll, since all here who responded to me think I made inflammatory comments about diet and exercise. I was reacting to another comment about the ease with which people allegedly become gluttons. And now we are here.
If if I've offended you, I apologize, Mike. Unless you really want me to, I won't respond to any more of your comments, and by that I mean you may have the last word, if you wish it.
Cycling counts as exercise btw
“Cycling counts as exercise btw”
One of the awesomest forms of exercise!
“Ever look at the back of a package advertising a “low-fat” food? It’s very high in carbohydrates. ”
Ever look at natural food?
Eating processed food is always bad. If it is altered to be “low fat” then the fat is replaced by carbs like sugar. If you eat natural foods you wo’nt have that problem. I dont’ think your doctor is telling you to eat processed crap.
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. :-)
If you look at the official position of the American Heart Association, the AMA, and the USDA, you’ll discover that their advice is to eat a low fat diet, which by definition must be a high carbohydrate diet.
Ever look at the back of a package advertising a “low-fat” food? It’s very high in carbohydrates.
And carbohydrates are: sugar.
You were so close. Sugars are carbohydrates. The converse is not necessarily true. You mentioned yourself that some complex carbs can be fine (I think you mentioned potatoes and some others). So your beef isn’t really with carbs, it’s with sugars. Obviously these are not the same things.
If you ever ACTUALLY looked at the food pyramid, you would notice that the bottom isn’t just “carbs,” it’s “starch.” That is, they actively discourage eating sugar as your main source of carbs. Sugars are relegated to the top bit where they basically put everything you aren’t supposed to eat.
In fact, I doubt you can show me one single dietitian who claims that eating sugar is good.
I think you’re wrong. For example, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzed 21 studies, covering 384,000 adults for up to 21 years. The results, published in May of last year: saturated fat intake were not shown to be linked to heart attacks.
Way to go AJCN. I noticed you didn’t cite the article, so I can’t look it up. Fine, I will outweigh it anyways.
According to the Journal of Lipid Research, although there was extremely strong evidence from animal tests in the seventies, the lipid hypothesis was not universally accepted by physicians until 1984, when the NIH funded “Coronary Primary Prevention Trial” showed in a double-blind study that treating hypercholestemic men with a drug shown to reduce LDL by 20-25% resulted in 19% fewer coronary events (defined as heart attacks or heat disease, P < 0.05). This study was pretty convincing, especially since the actual effectiveness of the drug was probably higher (many men admitted to not taking the prescribed doses every day), and because it was consonant with numerous previous studies. However, overall mortality did not decrease significantly. The conclusion was that the study was simply too small, since while overall mortality did decrease 7% in the treated group, this was not significant, and furthermore, several accidental deaths had skewed the statistics. Later much larger studies showed a clear decline in mortality of the treated group.
Source (full text, free online): http://www.jlr.org/cgi/content/full/47/1/1
Here are a couple more articles that emphasize that the "controversy" is now over, and that there is a strong scientific consensus and has been for years.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9633288
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2676235
This article in particular from Current Atherosclerosis Reports claims: “The “lipid hypothesis” is now universally recognized as a law. Few issues in medicine are as completely resolved as the question of whether reducing serum cholesterol increases longevity.”
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2073909" This European Heart Journal article reviews a large number of studies that show a strong causative link between decreasing dietary consumption of cholesterol, decreasing serum cholesterol, and decreasing atherosclerosis.
I could continue, but I will wait until you have some evidence of your own.
So you think eating all the candy, ice cream, and soda pop you want, compared to eating fruits and vegetables and fats and proteins, is a questionable claim? I think I won’t put much credence into what you claim.
Oh I get it. To prove your point that refined sugar destroys our health, you compare two completely nutritionally different groups of foods.
Now let’s get to a real comparison. Does rice boiled for one minute affect our “weight, health, and well-being” more than rice boiled for six minutes? How about one hundred calories of sugar compared to one hundred calories of molasses? Because the evidence pretty clearly shows that, at least in the case of weight loss, a calorie is a calorie, and it doesn’t matter how “refined” it is.
The book also makes hilarious statements like “sugars – sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically – are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.” What is it talking about? “The combination of fructose and glucose?” That’s invert sugar, and is not in sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup. Sucrose is in fact the disaccharide of glucose and fructose, which is quite different. Furthermore, they do not elevate insulin levels especially fast. Glucose does, of course, but fructose and sucrose do not, and none of the above raise it as quickly as dates, the “fresh fruit” you so love. And overloading your liver with carbs? Where is the evidence for that?
Duh! But you, of course, have chosen to put your faith in the studies you like, that back up your world view.
I choose to put my belief in the scientific consensus, reviews, and metastudies, not individual statements taken out of context and pet nutrition theories that no legitimate physician, dietitian, or researcher accepts.
What is “relevant” and what isn’t, is what Taubes’ book is about; I think you have completely missed that point.
No, I didn’t. Taubes dismisses 90% of studies as being irrelevant because they do not support his conclusion. That is my point.
Here is what the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published in joint guidelines for physical activity and health in 2007:
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis is not particularly compelling.”
So the AHA once said that people who exercise more probably don’t gain as much weight as people who exercise less, but there isn’t too much evidence. How does this support your point at all? First, they don’t say there is a shred of evidence to the contrary, only that there isn’t much supporting evidence. Second, they are talking about people who exercise at different rates currently in terms of their prospective weight gain, NOT the effect of increasing exercise on weight. The difference is crucially important, as it has to do with different body types and natural levels of exercise, not to mention the fact that the people who already exercise a lot might be thinner, and thus more prone to gain weight. Finally, you did not provide a citation, so I have no way of verifying this quote.
I reread it, and that’s not what it said. It said that there was no compelling evidence that people who exercise will not gain weight. It did not discuss the effect of increased exercise on weight loss.
Fine.
This article from the American College of Physicians–American Society of Internal Medicine describes a randomized, controlled study on the comparative effects of weight loss from dietary changes, weight loss from exercise, exercise without weight loss, and a control group. It concludes:
This study from Annals of Internal Medicine is just perfect at explaining why Taubes is misinterpreting the evidence. Here I copy the entire abstract:
A meta-study from the International journal of obesity and related metabolic disorders found that while diet clearly was superior for short-term weight loss than exercise, both were effective, and diet plus exercise was the most effective. In the long term, only diet plus exercise was effective. Plus, the weight loss resulting from diet was largely lean body mass, which was not true of exercise, and exercise has a positive effect on weight distribution.
Now, you claim that exercise makes you hungrier, but that also is not supported by the evidence. This article from Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise concludes that there is no significant evidence that exercise increases energy intake in the short or long term (it actually inhibits it in the very short term for men, but not in-day or day-to-day), nor is there any evidence that it causes a drive toward a particular nutrient (although there is a weak link between increased exercise and increased consumption of carbohydrates in the long term, this is usually assumed to be behavioral, not physiological).
I don’t have a lot on the issue of exercise and appetite, because my contention is that there isn’t any evidence that exercise increases appetite. It is also difficult to find the right studies as there is considerable research on short-term appetite-suppression of exercise in males.
You do that, but keep in mind that fruit juice, dried fruits, ice cream, candy, cakes, and pies are all extremely unhealthy for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with them containing carbohydrates. The fruit juice, candy, and dried fruits have large amounts of food energy with comparatively low levels of essential nutrients, making them “empty calories,” which necessarily contribute to weight-gain regardless of what “kind” of calories they are. Furthermore, they are very sugary, promoting tooth-decay and hyperglycemia. Ice cream, cakes, and pies generally also have this problem, but in addition, they have very high fat contents. So I could use half of the foods you listed to “prove” that it was actually fat, not carbohydrates, that are the problem. In fact, ice cream, cake, and pie, have a far higher percentage of calories from fat than most foods.
I, on the other hand, will continue to eat a balanced diet with plenty of carbs and also to exercise, and I will remain not only thin, but healthy.
I have tried several times to post this response, and it won’t show up. I have concluded that the problem is probably length, so I will split it in half. This is a reply to Dave.
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. :-)
If you look at the official position of the American Heart Association, the AMA, and the USDA, you’ll discover that their advice is to eat a low fat diet, which by definition must be a high carbohydrate diet.
Ever look at the back of a package advertising a “low-fat” food? It’s very high in carbohydrates.
And carbohydrates are: sugar.
You were so close. Sugars are carbohydrates. The converse is not necessarily true. You mentioned yourself that some complex carbs can be fine (I think you mentioned potatoes and some others). So your beef isn’t really with carbs, it’s with sugars. Obviously these are not the same things.
If you ever ACTUALLY looked at the food pyramid, you would notice that the bottom isn’t just “carbs,” it’s “starch.” That is, they actively discourage eating sugar as your main source of carbs. Sugars are relegated to the top bit where they basically put everything you aren’t supposed to eat.
In fact, I doubt you can show me one single dietitian who claims that eating sugar is good.
I think you’re wrong. For example, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzed 21 studies, covering 384,000 adults for up to 21 years. The results, published in May of last year: saturated fat intake were not shown to be linked to heart attacks.
Way to go AJCN. I noticed you didn’t cite the article, so I can’t look it up. Fine, I will outweigh it anyways.
According to the Journal of Lipid Research, although there was extremely strong evidence from animal tests in the seventies, the lipid hypothesis was not universally accepted by physicians until 1984, when the NIH funded “Coronary Primary Prevention Trial” showed in a double-blind study that treating hypercholestemic men with a drug shown to reduce LDL by 20-25% resulted in 19% fewer coronary events (defined as heart attacks or heat disease, P < 0.05). This study was pretty convincing, especially since the actual effectiveness of the drug was probably higher (many men admitted to not taking the prescribed doses every day), and because it was consonant with numerous previous studies. However, overall mortality did not decrease significantly. The conclusion was that the study was simply too small, since while overall mortality did decrease 7% in the treated group, this was not significant, and furthermore, several accidental deaths had skewed the statistics. Later much larger studies showed a clear decline in mortality of the treated group.
Source (full text, free online): http://www.jlr.org/cgi/content/full/47/1/1
Here are a couple more articles that emphasize that the "controversy" is now over, and that there is a strong scientific consensus and has been for years.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9633288
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2676235
This article in particular from Current Atherosclerosis Reports claims: “The “lipid hypothesis” is now universally recognized as a law. Few issues in medicine are as completely resolved as the question of whether reducing serum cholesterol increases longevity.”
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2073909" This European Heart Journal article reviews a large number of studies that show a strong causative link between decreasing dietary consumption of cholesterol, decreasing serum cholesterol, and decreasing atherosclerosis.
I could continue, but I will wait until you have some evidence of your own.
So you think eating all the candy, ice cream, and soda pop you want, compared to eating fruits and vegetables and fats and proteins, is a questionable claim? I think I won’t put much credence into what you claim.
Oh I get it. To prove your point that refined sugar destroys our health, you compare two completely nutritionally different groups of foods.
Now let’s get to a real comparison. Does rice boiled for one minute affect our “weight, health, and well-being” more than rice boiled for six minutes? How about one hundred calories of sugar compared to one hundred calories of molasses? Because the evidence pretty clearly shows that, at least in the case of weight loss, a calorie is a calorie, and it doesn’t matter how “refined” it is.
The book also makes hilarious statements like “sugars – sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically – are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.” What is it talking about? “The combination of fructose and glucose?” That’s invert sugar, and is not in sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup. Sucrose is in fact the disaccharide of glucose and fructose, which is quite different. Furthermore, they do not elevate insulin levels especially fast. Glucose does, of course, but fructose and sucrose do not, and none of the above raise it as quickly as dates, the “fresh fruit” you so love. And overloading your liver with carbs? Where is the evidence for that?
Duh! But you, of course, have chosen to put your faith in the studies you like, that back up your world view.
I choose to put my belief in the scientific consensus, reviews, and metastudies, not individual statements taken out of context and pet nutrition theories that no legitimate physician, dietitian, or researcher accepts.
Part 2:
What is “relevant” and what isn’t, is what Taubes’ book is about; I think you have completely missed that point.
No, I didn’t. Taubes dismisses 90% of studies as being irrelevant because they do not support his conclusion. That is my point.
Here is what the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published in joint guidelines for physical activity and health in 2007:
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis is not particularly compelling.”
So the AHA once said that people who exercise more probably don’t gain as much weight as people who exercise less, but there isn’t too much evidence. How does this support your point at all? First, they don’t say there is a shred of evidence to the contrary, only that there isn’t much supporting evidence. Second, they are talking about people who exercise at different rates currently in terms of their prospective weight gain, NOT the effect of increasing exercise on weight. The difference is crucially important, as it has to do with different body types and natural levels of exercise, not to mention the fact that the people who already exercise a lot might be thinner, and thus more prone to gain weight. Finally, you did not provide a citation, so I have no way of verifying this quote.
I reread it, and that’s not what it said. It said that there was no compelling evidence that people who exercise will not gain weight. It did not discuss the effect of increased exercise on weight loss.
Fine.
This article from the American College of Physicians–American Society of Internal Medicine describes a randomized, controlled study on the comparative effects of weight loss from dietary changes, weight loss from exercise, exercise without weight loss, and a control group. It concludes:
This study from Annals of Internal Medicine is just perfect at explaining why Taubes is misinterpreting the evidence. Here I copy the entire abstract:
A meta-study from the International journal of obesity and related metabolic disorders found that while diet clearly was superior for short-term weight loss than exercise, both were effective, and diet plus exercise was the most effective. In the long term, only diet plus exercise was effective. Plus, the weight loss resulting from diet was largely lean body mass, which was not true of exercise, and exercise has a positive effect on weight distribution.
Now, you claim that exercise makes you hungrier, but that also is not supported by the evidence. This article from Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise concludes that there is no significant evidence that exercise increases energy intake in the short or long term (it actually inhibits it in the very short term for men, but not in-day or day-to-day), nor is there any evidence that it causes a drive toward a particular nutrient (although there is a weak link between increased exercise and increased consumption of carbohydrates in the long term, this is usually assumed to be behavioral, not physiological).
I don’t have a lot on the issue of exercise and appetite, because my contention is that there isn’t any evidence that exercise increases appetite. It is also difficult to find the right studies as there is considerable research on short-term appetite-suppression of exercise in males.
You do that, but keep in mind that fruit juice, dried fruits, ice cream, candy, cakes, and pies are all extremely unhealthy for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with them containing carbohydrates. The fruit juice, candy, and dried fruits have large amounts of food energy with comparatively low levels of essential nutrients, making them “empty calories,” which necessarily contribute to weight-gain regardless of what “kind” of calories they are. Furthermore, they are very sugary, promoting tooth-decay and hyperglycemia. Ice cream, cakes, and pies generally also have this problem, but in addition, they have very high fat contents. So I could use half of the foods you listed to “prove” that it was actually fat, not carbohydrates, that are the problem. In fact, ice cream, cake, and pie, have a far higher percentage of calories from fat than most foods.
I, on the other hand, will continue to eat a balanced diet with plenty of carbs and also to exercise, and I will remain not only thin, but healthy.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH. Why do the tags not work? I used
Hopefully you can figure out which parts are quotes and which are original, though.
ok, and now it removes spaces. To be clear, I used the “”, “”, and “” tags.
This is ridiculous. Why can’t this web site behave like normal HTML?
I used a, q, and blockquote tags. There.
Michael,
I’ll answer some of your points. And then, if you wish, you may have the last word.
- You write: “sugars are carbohydrates. The converse is not necessarily true.”
I concede the technical point only. While carbohydrates aren’t necessarily sugars, they certainly can be. Carbohydrates are, after all, known as saccharides, which derives from the Greek word for “sugar.”
You wrote: “If you ever ACTUALLY looked at the food pyramid, you would notice that the bottom isn’t just “carbs,” it’s “starch.”
Here’s what the Harvard School of Public Health has to say, in part, about the food pyramid:
“The guidelines suggest that it is fine to consume half of our grains as refined starch. That’s a shame, since refined starches, such as white bread and white rice, behave like sugar.”
Do I believe you and the U.S.-recommended food pyramid, or do I believe Harvard?
While starches may not start out as sugars, they act just like sugars, and they are certainly turned into sugars, not just in the body, but commercially, whereby they are used as sweeteners in all sorts of processed foods.
The back of any package of food advertised as “low-fat” will show that it contains carbohydrates, and under the general list of carbs, at least some specific sugar content will be listed. Mashed potatoes and fruit juices contain carbohydrates, with a fair amount of easily digested sugars.
Therefore, I’m sticking to my contention that some doctors advocate sugars over foods that don’t contain sugar, which includes the U.S. government’s suggestion that starches are good for us, and saturated fats are bad for us.
I didn’t mean to suggest, and I don’t think I did, that nutritionists want us to gulp down milkshakes, candy bars or soda pop.
- “This study from Annals of Internal Medicine is just perfect at explaining why Taubes is misinterpreting the evidence.”
Is it? Have you read the article, or just the abstract? Here’s some of what the (1993) study states:
“The usefulness of increased physical activity in attempts to lose weight is controversial. Most controlled exercise training studies show modest weight loss (usually 2 to 3 kg) in the treated group compared with controls.”
“exercise training results in [snip] average reduction in the percentage of body fat in the 55 studies reviewed by Wilmore was 1.6%.”
A 1.6% reduction in percentage of body fat – what does that mean to someone who is 50, 100, or 200 pounds overweight? It means nothing.
“The groups combining diet with exercise lost more weight and more fat [snip] than did the groups using diet alone, although the differences were not statistically significant in women.”
So women aren’t helped at all by exercise.
And there is this quote, too, which dovetails with my original comment here that exercise isn’t particularly helpful in the battle to lose weight:
“the amount of weight that can be lost [by exercise] quickly is probably less than that achieved through dieting alone.”
How much weight can be lost with exercise? After three years, according to your study, the total is 11 pounds. For someone who is obese, 11 pounds is a drop in the bucket. For me, at 6′, dropping from 168 lbs to 157 pounds would be significant, but then, I don’t have a reason to lose 11 pounds. Someone who’s 6′ feet tall and weighs 250 pounds or 300 pounds needs to lose more than 11 pounds.
Again, from the study to which you link: “Overall, little difference in weight loss was seen between the groups using diet alone…and the groups using diet plus exercise.”
The above quote referred to a study of overweight police officers. That is, exercise helps but little – if at all – in losing weight. On average, with both diet control and exercise, overweight officers lost 4.4 pounds.
Yes, exercise may help to MAINTAIN weight loss, but it doesn’t help to actually LOSE weight.
“15 months of endurance exercise training followed by 14 months of exercise and a low-fat diet on the metabolic profiles of four obese women who had an average baseline weight of 92 kg. After the 29 months of intervention, THE WOMEN REMAINED OVERWEIGHT [emphasis mine].
Your link, it seems, shows the opposite of what you claim. That is, it shows exercise does little to help us lose weight.
Of course, exercise has benefits, as I’ve said elsewhere here. Weight loss just isn’t one of those benefits. Exercise helped me survive a heart attack 15 months ago. Exercise helped me ride 100 miles in one day on my bike three months later.
I rode 100 miles on my bike this past Sunday, too. I ate enough – and I was hungry enough – to bring me back to the same weight I was the morning of the ride.
- Here’s something else that I don’t think helps your cause, even though it’s from the American College of Physicians–American Society of Internal Medicine, to which you link:
“Our study has several important limitations. [snip] We also acknowledge that the small number of participants in each group may have underpowered the study and we may therefore have been unable to detect true differences be- tween treatments. [snip] Finally, because the response for the principal outcome measures varied in the intervention groups, we note that our findings are preliminary and should be confirmed in studies with larger cohorts.
So – it’s 17 years later. Where’s the confirmation? I don’t think it’s there.
- Your meta-study:
It shows that, after a year of regimented diet and exercise, weight loss from exercise totals 2 kg (4.4 lbs). To someone who is obese, that isn’t much comfort.
So I’m sticking with my original comment far, far above, about exercise: “In fact, the more we exercise, the more hungry we become, so exercising is useless for weight loss.”
- You write:
“So the AHA once said that people who exercise more probably don’t gain as much weight as people who exercise less, but there isn’t too much evidence.”
Well, they said it in 2007, which is a lot more recent than your study from 1993. No matter, that’s not what the AHA said. You have rephrased the wording to suit your own purpose. The statement from the AHA says there is no evidence that exercise helps us to lose weight.
You try to make the statement read as if it’s the opposite, when clearly that’s not the case.
Then you complain “they don’t say there is a shred of evidence to the contrary, only that there isn’t much supporting evidence.” To the contrary of what? I’m at a loss to understand what you’re getting at.
The assertion is that exercise helps reduce weight. It’s up to those making that assertion to prove it, not the other way round. That’s akin to saying, “God exists. Prove he doesn’t.”
In fact, there is no proof that exercise helps us lose more than a few pounds, which, according to one of the studies you linked to, are gained back within a year.
Finally, I’ll respond to your comments about the lipid hypothesis. Yes, drugs that lower the incidence of CHD (as one of your linked abstracts states) may indeed lower cholesterol. That isn’t the same as saying lowering cholesterol is what lowers the incidence of CHD, even though that might be true.
- Here is a quote from 2007 (http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/54/1/24):
“many cardiovascular events occur in individuals with plasma cholesterol concentrations below the National Cholesterol Education Program thresholds…for total cholesterol and…low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
That would be me, by the way. My cholesterol readings were fine, but that didn’t stop me from having a heart attack.
In fact, drugs like statins that seem to help lower the incidence of CHD lower both total cholesterol and lower inflammation in the body, the latter of which has in the past few years garnered much attention. So what really does the trick to lower the risk of a heart attack, and what really causes heart attacks?
As my cardiologist put it to me: “We don’t know if high cholesterol or inflammation causes CHD, but we do know that statins work on both those possibilities, so keep taking your statins, Dave.”
- There’s more, including this April, 2009 review (far more current than, for example, the 1993 review you offered) also appearing the the Annals of Internal Medicine. This review looks at the evidence which supports links between diet and CHD.
Money quote: “Insufficient evidence (2 criteria) of association is present for intake of…saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids; total fat; -linolenic acid; meat; eggs; and milk.”
That is, there is NO relationship between saturated fat and CHD.
But there is, of course, a high correlation between carbohydrates (including those supposedly healthy starches at the bottom of the food pyramid you believe in), obesity and CHD.
Again, I’m sticking to my guns: Obesity is not just a matter of overeating, or of lack of will power, or laziness. It’s far more complicated than that.
Our culture consumes an enormous amount of sugar (as they occur in carbohydrates), including in the form of starches. Official government policy calls for eating plenty of starches.
I’m sticking to my guns about this, too: the more we exercise, the more hungry we become. As backed up in the links you present, exercising is useless for weight loss.
“In fact, the more we exercise, the more hungry we become, so exercising is useless for weight loss.”
This is 100% bullshit. Yes exercise increases appetite. That doesn’t make it “useless for weight loss.” Weight loss is about calorie deficit. Burning more calories than you take in is the key to losing weight. Exercise burns more calories. The key to weight loss is exercising more and consuming fewer calories, it’s that simple. Yes you will feel hungry while losing weight. Deal with it.
It is the rare person for whom this simple formula doesn’t work. You don’t have to lose weight – it’s a perfectly valid choice to say “I’m happy the way I am” – but if you want to there is no secret to it.
Bill wrote: “Weight loss is about calorie deficit. Burning more calories than you take in is the key to losing weight.”
Correct.
“The key to weight loss is exercising more and consuming fewer calories, it’s that simple. Yes you will feel hungry while losing weight. Deal with it.”
Incorrect. Humans by nature won’t tolerate hunger for extended periods of time.
By your own reasoning, Bill, exercise is unnecessary to losing weight. We could simply eat less, without any exercising, and lose weight.
People do lose weight by exercising and eating less, and they do loose weight be eating less, without exercising. But we also know, from study after study, that no matter what people do to lose weight, it comes back after a while. So human beings are NOT able to simply “deal with it.”
A prime example is Ryan Benson, who was the winner of the BIggest Loster t.v. show’s first season. He’s gained back the 122 pounds he lost and didn’t make it onto the reunion program.
“It is the rare person for whom this simple formula doesn’t work.”
I don’t think this is true. Here’s a claim published by the University of Chicago medical center: most individuals who lose a large amount of weight regain it two to three years later.
And here’s an observation from a 2009 study, funded in part by the National Institute of Diabetes, and conducted by researches from the University of Colorado, Denver: when people who have lost weight through dieting begin to regain any weight, “the disconcerting message” is that they lose the motivation to exercise. (http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/297/3/R793)
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/859
Here’s a study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating that weight loss is in fact all about calorie deficit.
“By your own reasoning, Bill, exercise is unnecessary to losing weight. We could simply eat less, without any exercising, and lose weight.”
Yes if you ate so little that you created a claorie deficit through your everyday activities of existence. It’s much easier to create that deficit through exercise though.
“Incorrect. Humans by nature won’t tolerate hunger for extended periods of time.”
There is a difference between “can’t” and “won’t.” The fact that it’s “hard” or “doesn’t feel good” doesn’t make it impossible.
“A prime example is Ryan Benson, who was the winner of the BIggest Loster t.v. show’s first season. He’s gained back the 122 pounds he lost and didn’t make it onto the reunion program.”
Look -the fact that people don’t do what needs to be done in order to keep weight off doesn’t mean the underlying premise is wrong. You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit through diet and exercise. You maintain weight by having your calorie burn equal your calorie intake.
Again, I’m not being judgmental about the choices people make. People should be able to chose how they want to look and their own level of health. But the idea that exercise doesn’t help with weight loss is ridiculous. It does, so long as you appropriately regulate your calorie intake.
Stop confusing him with logic and facts.
I fear it may be somewhat late for that …
Why does reading Dave’s post remind me of reading caddy’s.
“Why does reading Dave’s post remind me of reading caddy’s”
Hmmm….why, jabster, do I think the same thing about all of you who illogically oppose me? ;-)
Discussion about beliefs and facts about religion and exercise (and obesity) seem to have some commonality. Now I can empathize with what the occasional Christian who wanders into here feels, and what an atheist must experience who enters a theist-dominated website.
Er, I meant to quote yahweh, not jabster. Goodness – I was wrong about something?!? Oh, oh….
Dave, you’re a crank.
Yep, now you can empathize with zealous crackpots everywhere! Even though you are surely the most open-minded person in the universe.
Now please whine about how I’m calling you names, and I know you are but what am I and all that.
Ivan, in the comment you referred to, above, I used a smiley face and I attempted (apparently without success) to use humor to poke a little fun at myself. You can stop taking me so seriously.
If I upset you, I apologize to you, and if you wish, you can have the last word.
@Sunny Day — I do my best to control my caloric intake, and eat healthy foods, but I’m limited by availability, price, and preparation methods. (I can’t cook worth shit.)
Let me tell you all, when you’re hungry enough, you don’t CARE if it’s nutritionally sound, or low-fat, or whatever, you just care that it’s FOOD.
@Dave — You’re a crank. All you’ve posted is weight-loss woo. STFU and GTFO.
WMDKitty wrote:
“@Dave — You’re a crank. All you’ve posted is weight-loss woo. STFU and GTFO.”
Thanks for expressing your feelings about me. I think, in addition to coming off as mean spirited they reveal something about your character. Or perhaps your parents didn’t suggest that if you had nothing good to say, that you remain quiet.
“when you’re hungry enough, you don’t CARE if it’s nutritionally sound, or low-fat, or whatever, you just care that it’s FOOD”
And thanks, too, for serving as an example of my “woo,” er, point, that it’s difficult to lose weight.
Dave, I likened your posts to caddy’s because like caddy, you ignore facts and evidence that are contrary to the belief you are peddling.
I will repeat what has been clearly stated before….you lose weight by burning more calories than you take in. You can accomplish that by only taking in less calories (diet alone), only burning more calories (exerise alone) or a combination of both (diet and exercise).
If you exercise, you will probably increase your hunger, but if you control your caloric intake, you will still lose weight or maintain.
I learned and experienced this firsthand 25 years ago. This is not new information. Keep your head in the sand if you wish.
Also, your empathy is misplaced. If you choose to go to a cerain website that is based on a specific stance (ie atheism or fundamental xianity) and post comments that are in opposition to those views then you will probably be ridiculed and/or banned. I would expect that treatment if I did that. I certainly wouldn’t need someone feeling for me in that case.
Actually you should expect this treatment anytime you stick your fingers in your ears and repeatedly spout stupidity.
I think I’m making a mistake responding, but what the heck, the day is young.
“If you choose to go to a cerain website that is based on a specific stance (ie atheism or fundamental xianity) and post comments that are in opposition to those views then you will probably be ridiculed and/or banned.”
You’re stating the obvious to me. I said I hadn’t experienced that form of ridicule before, not that I didn’t expect it. Calling my comments “moronic,” and “pathetic” and being called a “f*cktard” was, in my mind, mean-spirited, and beneath the level of people who are usually civil and rational. Whether that’s true or not, though, I’m the one usually heaping on the ridicule, and being on the other end of that was a new experience.
On the other hand, I brought it upon myself, and I did and do apologize to those I offended.
As to your diet-related comments, again, I think in the main you’re stating the obvious, and I don’t disagree with that. Burn more calories than we take in and we will – eventually – lose weight.
When you write, though, that it’s possible to control “if you control your caloric intake,” you’re asserting something that can be true for some people, but isn’t necessarily true for all or even most people.
Many people in fact can’t control their caloric intake, and so to ascribe obesity in all who suffer from it to gluttony is an unfounded assumption.
This assumption is somewhat analogous, in my mind, to a facet of Pascal’s Wager: simply believe in a (Christian) god because there’s everything to gain and nothing to lose. (Read: simply control “calorie intake” because there is everything to lose and nothing to gain.)
Beyond wondering why believing Jesus over another god makes sense, Pascal’s assumption that we can overthrow reason by simply wanting to is, of course, impossible, because we can’t believe what we know is not true.
By the same token, saying losing weight is as simple as “taking control” is similarly impossible for many people. You and others here assert people can control their caloric intake – through diet and/or exercise – if they want to enough.
I say something different. For whatever reason, those who are overweight can’t take control.
I think people are overweight, in our time and culture, because of the kinds of foods they eat; and I also think some people are always going to be larger than other, and some will always be skinnier than others. Skinny people don’t become linesmen, and cyclists will always be lean; these people are predisposed by genetics to be a certain size, no matter what they eat or don’t eat.
In other times and in other cultures, obesity (and cancer, heart disease, and diabetes) were rare occurrences. Why? I don’t think, from what I’ve read, that it’s because people in other times and cultures had less will power or less access to food. They did, though, eat less of one kind of food that we in our cultures consume.
“I learned and experienced this firsthand 25 years ago. This is not new information.”
I believe you, but I don’t know how you lost weight. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t count. We don’t know if you changed your diet through informed choice about healthy foods, we don’t know how much you exercised, if you’ve kept the weight off with diet and/or exercise, etc. We just know you lost weight. You believe you lost weight from exercising your self control, but we can’t know this.
Lots of people who’ve wandered into here have claim they have experienced firsthand a religious conversion that revealed to them Jesus is real. For them, their experience is real, but it doesn’t mean Jesus is real.
We’ve had at least one person here admit to being overweight, and I’d be willing to bet a box of Irish Oatmeal at Trader Joe’s that some others who visit these pages are overweight, too. Do those otherwise rational people simply lack self control?
And just because I disagree with the majority of people here doesn’t mean I’m sticking my head in the sand. Is Richard Dawkins sticking his head in the sand because he has a different view of Jesus than most people do? Di DF bury his head in the sand because his chained views about faith were in opposition to the majority of people he associated with in his church?
As I have to others, I’ll give you the last word if you wish it.
“Many people in fact can’t control their caloric intake…”
This is tantamount to saying “an alcoholic can’t control his alcohol intake.” While in and of itself a true enough statement, it doesn’t alter the fact that the “cure” for alcoholism is simply to stop drinking. It’s hard. It’s very very often requires help, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Similarly for people who struggle with over eating or being overweight, an inability to control caloric intake may be true, but that doesn’t make the solution any less true. Stop taking in so many calories, and increase exercise. It’s hard. It very often requires help. Doesn’t make it any less true.
Should we have empathy for people who struggle controling caloric intake. I think so. That doesn’t change the solution: eat less and exercise more. And exercise IS a key component.
“Many people in fact can’t control their caloric intake…”
I agree.
I too feel sorry for those people who have no arms or are paralyzed and must be fed through an intermediary.
But you are probably are not talking about those people.
“Actually you should expect this treatment anytime you stick your fingers in your ears and repeatedly spout stupidity.”
Actually, Sunny, I’ve presented evidence with references to and quotes from studies, including those listed by custador, to back up what I think is true. I don’t think I’ve been sticking my fingers in my ears and in fact, I’ve been willing to read and repeat back what others have written here.
Thanks, though, for stating that I “spout stupidity,” which, while I admit isn’t quite the same calling me stupid, does tell me something about you.
Sunny Day wrote:
“I too feel sorry for those people who have no arms or are paralyzed and must be fed through an intermediary.
But you are probably are not talking about those people.”
You don’t, though, feel sorry for the overweight. And you don’t feel sorry for alcoholics mentioned by Bill, above. (“If only that Navajo teenager hadn’t had that first beer, he wouldn’t have become the alcoholic that we know affects so many Native Americans. Serves him right,” I can hear you saying.)
You don’t feel sorry for heroin or amphetamine addicts, either. You don’t feel sorry for them, I suppose, because they merely have to stop shooting up or popping pills.
You do feel sorry for people with no arms or are paralyzed, because, even with will power, they can’t grow back their limbs or rise from their wheel chairs.
Just say no to lose weight, or sober up, or end drug addiction. It’s that easy, huh? (Except for drinking and losing weight, if you believe Bill, above, who says “it’s hard” and “very very often requires help.” You disagree with Bill on this. Which one of you is sticking fingers in their ears?)
To you, it’s easy enough to lose weight (or not, if we believe Bill). To you, the overweight, the alcoholic, and drug addicts suffer a defect of will. They just aren’t trying hard enough.
That’s where we differ. I don’t think obesity or alcoholism is a defect of will.
OK, I’ve said my piece and I think, if you want it, you can have the last word.
Dave, you said:
“Calling my comments “moronic,” and “pathetic” and being called a “f*cktard” was, in my mind, mean-spirited, and beneath the level of people who are usually civil and rational.”
Just to set the record straight, that was not me. I only likened your posts to caddy’s.
I was responding to your original post (March 1 6:32pm) in which you stated “so exercising is useless for weight loss”. That is incorrect. That is what started it all. And like caddy, when your comments were questioned, you sidetracked the topic by bringing other issues into the discussion.
“Just to set the record straight, that was not me.”
I’ll break my silence to say I know that is so, and I didn’t mean to imply it.
I don’t think that’s how a 7-week foetus actually looks…
I find this kind of indoctrination to be exceptionally odious, not because of its content (which is bad enough) but because of the knowing and cynical manner in which the adults are going about it. They KNOW they are manipulating and brainwashing these children, and they like it. They appear to be getting a thrill from the power of being the masters of puppets, and they make no attempt to hide their attempts to use them as pawns in a culture war. To prey on the vulnerable like this, for your own agenda and gratification, is pure abuse. Just because it doesn’t involve a penis doesn’t make it any less disgusting.
If you have Netflix, you can watch “Jesus Camp” instantly.
I’ve watched it and it’s quite disturbing. I was raised in the south and went to church camps, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. People who say that religion isn’t dangerous should be required to view this movie. The sad thing about this film as compared to any other crazy thing done in the name of god or religion is that it targets the children. They are being indoctrinated and don’t know any better.
This should be a crime.
Where is child protective services?
I have had the unpleasant misfortune of sitting through this epic Orwellian saga, starting because I was curious, and then, unable to look away as the horror unfolded.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything that actually gave me nightmares, but “Jesus Camp” still haunts me to this day. *twitch*
It’s High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
Would. Not. Watch. Again.
Fffuu- now I need to scrub my brain; where’s the bleach?
They call brain-bleach ‘vodka’.
Won’t work.
Well, I do know a man who can sort you out something better….
In my head, that line sounded like a Guy Ritchie line.
I got as far as 2m59 than i had to turn it off.
(when they started brabbling).
Dear Fictional Being
Please make these kids gay so they might have a chance to escape from the indoctrination of the life they are being raised in.
Sincerely
An Unbeliever
I was raised on a steady program of
Indoctrination CentersBible Camps and here I am. So, Praise Fict. Let’s start a camp camp!Fat people are weak. So there.
Justify it however you like, fatty!
It’s definitely something you should see… It’s scary to think that parents are /allowed/ to do that.
I’ve got some pagan friends who have gotten such a kick out of that movie. They especially love the mug ceremony, because the ritual is such blatant sympathetic magic (or, the belief that like produces like). Yay, witchcraft! I just love it when Pentacostals practice witchcraft. Makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside!
Apparently, a local church of some evangelical stripe or another does a very similar ceremony involving writing things you want to go away onto a slip of paper, and then tossing it onto a giant, roaring bonfire. One friend had gone to a pagan one of these just the week before being invited to the Christian one and was absolutely dumbstruck by the profound similarities, right down to defining the “sacred space” by addressing the four points of the compass and pouring libation on the ground.
Admittedly, I had to pause that disc after the mug scene because I was laughing so hard. But, on the whole, the documentary is as utterly creepifying as a Reaver in the ventilation ducts and gnaws on one about the same. The really sad thing is that such treatment of children as demonstrated in that film isn’t legally classified as abuse. If the proprietors of that camp weren’t Christian (or at least people who identify themselves as such), I’d be willing to lay down some serious cash to wager that it WOULD be legally classified as such. Seems to me, it’s sure morally classifiable as such. *shudder* Those poor kids…. I hope someday, they’ll be able recover from this and lead productive lives, though I fear such a goal might be attained only through some serious deprogramming and therapy from all the brainwashing and psychological mess.
I live about 80 mi away from where this was filmed.
I’m moving in a few months.
Aw, I miss Fargo. But then again I downgraded to Bismarck for work and have regretted it ever since. Good luck with the transfer.
I saw this film years ago and it disgusted me. I’m even nauseous watching the clip again. Except for the Harry Potter part, that made me laugh.
I about died laughing when she declared Harry Potter an enemy of God and they would put harry to death in the Old Testament. I wonder if she realizes its a fictional character?
I seriously was hoping it was going to be a joke. A giant hoax. A funny video. I had to force myself into accepting that it’s all serious and actually happens. Very disturbing….
I actually saw Jesus Camp in New York City during the week that it opened. There was actually a Q&A with the people who made the film afterwards. It was hard to watch for me. It was very personal, in a lot of ways, because it hit home on so many of my life experiences. But it was also very frustrating, because it was so one-sided in its presentation. That’s the nature of any film, I guess; all films carry the agenda of the people who make them.
For atheists and believers alike, I’d say it’s worth watching, but it’s also worth studying up a bit on the agenda of the film makers as well.
From the director team of the movie…
When we heard that that Pastor Haggard has described us as having an “agenda” we were alarmed. Of course, there are plenty of filmmakers that do make films with a political or personal agenda, but our conscience is clear that we aren’t among them. We filmed with an open-mind and with a beginner’s eye (neither of us are Evangelicals) that allowed the story to emerge in a natural way.
As for accusing us of portraying our protagonists (people whom we’ve grown close to over the past year) “sinister,” this is a disturbing charge. Perhaps Pastor Haggard is projecting his own point of view on the film’s characters, as we absolutely do not see them as such, and went out of our way too make sure that they were shown in a human, three-dimensional light. The children come across as kind, passionate and intelligent. Pastor Becky Fischer is a very likeable and real person, both on and off the screen.
etc… etc…
I found this article in full on http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/
So what “agenda” do you believe they had?
What was “one-sided” about this film? As I remember it, the movie pretty much let the JCampers and the little fuhrers speak for themselves.
There is something worst then Jesus camp. There is an isolated camp in the Dominican Republic, Escuela Caribe, where “troubled” Christian teens are isolated from their family, friends and the American government. You can read more about it in Julia Scheeres “Jesus Land”.
http://www.juliascheeres.com/
You people dont realize that this video has been WAYY edited. the makers of this film want you to feel scared and thats the only reason it was put on this website. what these people are honestly saying is that the kids should spread the word of god. and help others to understand the meaning too. granted there are some radical people in this world who wish to do radical things that dont always make sense to the rest of us but id be willing to wager there are plenty of people who dont understand what the purpose of putting that video on in the first place was. and i’ll admit i am one of them. and with all of the “fat and lazy” comments, i think that is being used metophorically. they believe too many people are not doing enough for their religion. And the music guys? rele? it’s not a documentary if you add in creepy music during parts you dont like to try and persuade people that what they are watching is scary. this was a stupid video and i dont see you as much different from the lady if you are willing to post it or defend it without looking into it.
You and capitalization seem to be on odd speaking terms.
At any rate, have you actually watched all of “Jesus Camp”? I have. And it was scary–not because of the music (of which there was not that much). And from the clips–you do realize what clips of a movie are intended to do, do you not?–did you miss the overtly militaristic language being imposed upon these children? And your argument that appears to equate those who put the clips up on YouTube with those who do radical things in the name of religion…well, that’s just utterly moronic. And how are we to understand a godbot calling Americans “fat and lazy” as “metaphorical”? You are using the word, but it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means.
Harry Potter and the Bible have something in common…the Bible.
You can always go over to Free Documentaries and watch it there. Here is the link to the film. http://freedocumentaries.org/int.php?filmID=226
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