Reply to comment

The idea of obesity and set points is particularly interesting to me. I took Biopsych at Haverford last year, and we spent a considerable amount of time on this topic. The way I understand it is a little bit different (I think) than how it was explained in class. As you ingest more calories your body begins to increase your set point and store more and more. This process is relatively easy, as humans are designed to hold onto fat just in case there isn’t more food in the future. When someone tries to lose weight they are going against what our bodies are naturally designed for. The body wants to hold on to fat deposits especially when caloric intake is down. This is why it’s so much harder to lose weight than to gain weight. Back to gaining weight, it takes repeated “over-eating”. Eating a lot once in a while won’t cause you to gain weight but eating 200 extra calories a day for two weeks will being to change your set point. I think this concept is so interesting. On the topic of obesity, I don’t think it’s that our notion of thin has changed; people have gotten heavier. Due to processed foods and more available nutrition, increasing set point is becoming easier and easier. While I don’t argue that some people have a naturally higher set point than other people, I do not think some people are naturally unhealthily overweight. Obesity is a very challenging problem to tackle because unlike other health problems like high cholesterol or high blood pressure, there is no pill to “cure” it. It will be interesting to see how the problem is solved in the future.