Why Women Lose Weight—or Don’t

Oh, again, overweight is a word defined in the English language to mean unhealthy. So you are not overweight if you claim you are healthy...

The smartest people in the world are ignorant of most facts.
But they are separated by their quest for the truth.
For your enlightenment I will re-post my response, but it is limited by the web for number of charaters.
There are an infinite number of misconceptions about weight gain and weight loss. As a board certified physician in both Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology (which is study of the digestive system) I believe I can add some clarity. Unfortunately, I know it will cause about a million of comments, all based in emotion and ignorance.
Simply put, weight gain is a matter of input vs. output. If you eat more calories than you use up, your body will store it and you will gain weight. If you burn up more calories than you eat, you will loose weight.
The only tissue that actually controls your metabolism is your muscle mass. Your muscle mass to fat ratio is the true determinate of metabolism.
The number one determinate of calorie burning through activity during the day is Non-exertional Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) which is the amount of activity you do during the day to complete your activities of daily living (ie work or home activities (not workout activities))
Your thyroid or other "glands" or "hormones" have nothing to do with it. This is a commonly held myth by both patients and many physicians.
There is a misunderstanding in the general population and the lay-man's (common) literature that there are good and bad proteins and good and bad carbs and good and bad fats and that food items that are good for you are a fair or reasonable substitute for the other bad stuff.
The truth, for weight loss there is NO SUCH THING. It is simply a formula of input vs output. If you take in 1 gram of carbohydrates you take in about 4 calories of food. If you take in any type of fat, you take in about 9 cal per gram. EVERYTHING that goes into your mouth has calories and contributes to you input.
The "good" and "bad" are derived from the side-effects of excess. If you don't take in excess, then it is not bad, you body will convert it into stuff it can use. But if you take in excess of the bad stuff, it will store the bad stuff and you will get the side effects of the excessive storage (which are heart disease, joint pain from too much weight, pancreas failure and diabetes due to too much stress on that organ from too much fat etc.)
So if you are fat, you took in too many calories over your lifetime, if you are slender, you havent.
Your body frames etc have NOTHING to do with it. If I did a bone-scan, I would see that you, if you are fat, have a normal skeleton (not big boned)
A simple example is that if you eat one handful of peanuts every day as a snack, you will ingest 100 extra calories per day. If you do that for a year, then you will have eaten 36,500 calories in that year There are 3,500 calories per pound of fat. So then you WILL have gained 10 pounds in a year
The opposite is true for weight loss

Can you delete this happyhappyjoy comment it is not constructive or tastefull.

I am very overweight...300+ and i realized lately that the heavier I get the less I want to lose. Because of my size now I would be happy being ...lets say...240 because that is 60lb for me my ideal weight has gone from 130 to 175.. Losing 190lbs seems soooo far out of reach.but losing 145 feels like something that I could do!
So that is why I think that overweight women would be happy at a weight that is still considered to be obese....because any amount of wieght lost is a GREAT thing!

Can you delete this happyhappyjoy comment it is not constructive or tastefull.

Why is there even a discussion about God. Religion plays no part in this. If there is a God, do you really think he cares about you? I'm sure he, she, it has much more important things to worry about then how much we weigh.

Leave God out of it.

I'm stupid because?? What, because I have said something you don't like? Grow up.

Please read my earlier post.
Remove your personal emotions from this discussion.
Focus on the facts.
Then make your personal lifestyle choice based on your paradigm of life and deal with the consequences of your actions.

the ARTICLE doesnt mak sense..we have free chouce..g-d doesn't decide for us...if you need to lose weight, pull yourself together, get the willpower and do it, stop talking!!!

The first part of the article doesn't make sense...g-d doesn't choose what he wants us to be..we have free choice...we have the ability to decide what to be. Get on your feet, and make the right decisions!

Then you're not really overweight. But the textbook def of overweight is unhealthy - it's in the dictionary. It's why we developed teh word into our language.

Do people still fall for this "BMI" crap... but at the same time there are people who believe that they have a thyroid problem. How many of you fat people who claim to have a thyroid problem have a closet full of Oreo cookies, Twinkie's and a fridge full of soda and ice cream... And eating less isn't going to make you lose weight and be healthy.... eating less crap, exercising and not lying to yourself will make you a healthier person... fat unhealthy people need more exrecise... getting up from the couch to grab another box of doritos is not exercise

You are contradicting yourself. First you said that we can't blame fat people for being fat because god has a plan for us and it must include fat people, now you are saying gluttony is a sin and to live in moderation. Moderation implies choice. It implies that we could do things excessively. So which is it that you believe? Does God have a plan, or do we have choice??

691 miles in 3.5 years is less than 60 calories per day average.
So you can drink a gatorade a day and gain weight with that small "recovery" drink
Keep in mind EVERYTHING that passes over your lips and you swallow has calories and will contribute to weight gain.
Even veggies, fruits etc. You can eat two apples and get the same weight gain from eating a candybar.
"Good for you" and "healthy" alludes to nutrients (vitamins) not calories. So you may-as-well as have a Snickers than two apples. Same effect, but tastes better.
Calories are the source of weigt gain.
Keep in mind, in the USA there are more cases of vitamin excess than vitamin deficiency due to the fact our foods are fortified. As far as I can tell people take vitamins to support the vitamin manufactures.