IT’S AN UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE! I’M ONLY MENTIONING YOUR WEIGHT BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU!
Thank you, but I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different options and decided that this is…
YOU’RE GOING TO DIE BEFORE YOU TURN 60! WHAT WILL YOUR WIFE AND KIDS THINK?!!
I don’t mind most marine mammals, but sea lions? I could do without sea lions.
I thought this was interesting, TLDW is that exercising in cold (water/environment) increases appetite after, so it’s not great for a person that’s trying to lose weight
that’s muscles!
Muscles don’t keep you warm in freezing ocean water! Blubber does that.
…Man I wish I had a bulletproof excuse like that.
during climate change apocalypse being pudgy is a difference between life and death!
In the hot areas it’ll be death.
such is climate apocalypse
a seal abs and muscles were built, because they swim all the time. they can hold thier breath for 30minutes, i think some others can hold longer. the southern elephant seal holds the record at 2hours.
another fun fact is when seals/sea lions deep dive they it automatically shuts down thier digestive system. also seals can survive on thier blubbler and fat for quite a long time too. they have mechanisms that allow them to extact alot of oxygen into thier tissues, blood.
seals are quite fast in the water, seal lions even faster. seals do have trouble on land, as the have to act like a caterpillar, while sea lions can walk and run/
I choose to imagine you’re the polar bear version of jason statham’s character in every movie he’s ever done.
Specifically Snatch.
“A seou 'as got abs like a brick shi-ouse’s got shit”
It really is what peak performance looks like
southern elephant seal holds the record at 2hours
Don’t want to think how the scientists made them compete for this record
probably a tracking collar, so it can determine how long they stayed underwater hunting squid.
Are we drunk or just 8 years old?
Wow. I thought only redditors were this insecure about their own intelligence.
All of the anti-carb diets are a joke. Carbs are fucking great.
Carbs are a great delivery mechanism for calories. So good, in fact, that the caveman part of your brain really insists on eating as much of them as you possibly can. Some people have problems getting the caveman part of their brain to shut the fuck up and consequently they eat too many carbs. They do that for so long that that end up having a foot amputated and die young of kidney failure.
Empty carbs, the carbs most people think of as carbs, are a terrible source of nutrition and are the primary reason most people are fat. Bread, skinned potatoes, pasta, corn, and sugar. That kind of shit. You know, the delicious carbs. The carbs that the caveman part of your brain really insists you eat more of. Cutting those from the diet helps regulate hunger for people who are calorie counting.
You can get 100% of your daily carbohydrate needs from green vegetables. You can do that pretty easily because you don’t actually need that many carbs.
That said, if you have a healthy relationship with food, are at a healthy weight, and your bloodwork doesn’t show any signs of metabolic syndrome or heart disease, keep on keeping on. Congratulations, you can eat whatever you want. Just understand that being adult, especially an adult in the US, that can tick all of those boxes is pretty rare and other people do have issues they’re trying to correct, and have to keep an eye on their diet. Generally, that means cutting out the fun carbs even if they’re not doing keto.
Carbs/fats/proteins are just the delivery of calories.
If you’re wondering we burn them in the order of protein > carbs > fats. That’s why we store them as fat, eat carbs before an athletic event, and eat protein after one.
I’m aware of the basics of macronutrient digestion and metabolism, and your description is… weird. Would you care to share a source on your claims?
It also needs to be noted, unless you’re eating nothing but supplements and highly processed powders, no one eats fat, or carbs, or protein. We eat foods, and virtually all foods contain all three macros in varying ratios. In the real world we get all three together every meal, and if you’re not, it means you’re following a diet that you probably shouldn’t.
no one eats fat, or carbs, or protein. We eat foods
Okay, but pork chops and pasta have very different proportions of the above. You can definitely structure your diet to weight towards one or the other.
In the real world we get all three together every meal, and if you’re not, it means you’re following a diet that you probably shouldn’t.
Angry JBP noises
More seriously, there’s plenty of dumb fad diets, to be sure. And now we’ve got a host of medications for basically shitting out all your calories faster than you can eat them to lose weight. But there’s definitely a problem in our general food delivery system, especially with regards to fats and sugars in fast foods.
Like, you can be blase about food composition. But there’s some shit that simply shouldn’t ever be in your diet (carbonated sodas, heavy preservatives in baked goods, lead). A lot of the “fad” aspects of diets tend to take these fundamentals and extrapolate them out to the extremes.
So you have people running away from freshly made rigatoni because it shares some of the fundamentals with fast food french fries.
And I would take the pasta over the pork chops any day, although they would be whole grain pasta.
They’re really not, but not everyone needs them.
If you’re bordering type 2 diabetes and carbs just make your blood sugar shoot up and crash down, reducing or eliminating carbs can get your shit back in check without medication, and make it much easier to reduce your calories (since you don’t feel compelled to stuff your face again because of shaky hands)
Yeah, they really are. The only valid medical reason to ever use the keto diet is if you have severe epilepsy, and that is an intervention that is only supposed to be done short term, and under close medical supervision.
At best keto as a general diet generally shows to result in rapid weight loss for only about a year at most, before it plateaus. Odds are any results that come from it are only because the person dropped a few high caloric foods. If your plate is usually full of meat and Mac and Cheese, and you replace that with more meat and, I dunno, buttered veggies, then you’re probably eating less calories overall. That would explain the plateau too, because being in a calorie deficit is a state of starvation, and even unconsciously we have a tendency to seek out ways to calm our cravings. That’s why plant-based diets are the most effective and consistent for weight loss, because they are naturally lower in overall calories while also providing foods that are known to be satiating.
Obesity in and of itself is the primary driver of type 2 diabetes, and overconsumption of fats - especially saturated fats - are drivers of insulin resistance. So while keto might provide short term symptom relief since your body doesn’t have to process sugars, it is about the worst thing you could do for yourself to treat the illness, because you are making the underlying cause worse in the long run, as well as driving progression of cardiovascular disease. Effective, sustainable treatment of type 2 diabetes has to involve, first most chiefly, overall weight loss; but you also need to lower total fat intake, as well as replacing the harmful fats like butter, lard, coconut and palm oils, as well as meat and dairy, with good fats like canola and olive oil, and whole food sources of good fats like nuts and seeds, and avocado.
You can find a solid, real scientifically backed program for both type 2 and type 1 diabetes treatment here.
I want it to be understood, I am not interested in internet arguments when it comes to this subject matter. This is not banal identity politics. This is life and death. I have seen too many loved ones die and all from poor lifestyle habits, including type 2 diabetes. It doesn’t need to fucking happen, and I am sick of people flippantly advocating for something that is quite literally the opposite of everything that nutritional science has found to be truly effective. It is grossly irresponsible. Keto is just one more re-branding of a long history of failed anti-carb diets. They never have worked, they never will work, and the only job they need to do is sow enough doubt in people’s minds to get them to keep eating all of the things that are killing them. It is the tobacco industry playbook plain and simple.
This was me, is me. I had to start a no grain diet to get my blood sugar down. Between that and exercise, I have avoided, so far, having to take meds for diabetes.
I am diabetic, but my average blood sugar is in the normal range without medication. If I eat wrong or get lazy, I have problems
I have diabetes and I have this guide to carbs and healthy eating. It’s 45-60g carbs per meal I think, and the portions are hilarious. It’s like 1/100th of a bagel or something.
That’s a pretty absurd amount of bagel to eat. XD
Here is a really good program for treatment of both type 1 and 2 diabetes. If you follow it you might actually be able to eat a whole bagel.
A regular sized bagel is 60g of carbs, more or less. My dietician had me target 60-75 grams of carbs per meal with a total daily target of 225-245 for my type 2 diagnosis.
Checks out, if your bagel weighs more than 4.5-6kg
Sounds about right for average US bagel size.
I’ve never seen a bagel under 20kg so that makes sense.
I mean, if you aren’t counting your calories and eating in a deficit, you’re not going to lose weight.
Eating in a deficit? Yes, counting calories? No. There’s times I lose weight just because of activity load. Hell I did a 3 hour bike ride on Sunday that burned around 2000 calories. When ski touring season hits I’ll probably lose a bunch of weight. I get that most folks can’t do activities like that, but there’s a lot more to fitness than just your body fat. If I loose weight due to exercise it’s usually 10 lbs but over the summer I went from 180 to 165 without thinking once about my calorie intake.
The joy of youth.
Yeah, you’re definitely an outlier in this lol. Most people who need to lose weight cannot (or, realistic, don’t want to) exercise enough to create a deficit without also changing their diet. You sound like you’re already at a healthy weight and have an appetite that makes it easy to maintain, which is fucking awesome, but a lot of people have too much of an appetite to lose weight strictly by working out.
Yup, I was doing keto for over a year to lose weight. Got to a healthy weight, stayed there for 3 months, and decided I wanted to gain weight to help build muscle. Put on 20 pounds while still being on keto. Then lost weight again to look leaner. It’s all calories in, calories out. However some people find certain diet types to be easier and preferable to others.
LOL, I’m 5’2" and hover around 100 lbs, and I’ve had trouble gaining weight my whole life. Eating more doesn’t seem to help much. But I have noticed the more I eat, the more I shit. Perhaps that’s where all my calories are going 😭 .
I would have thought that too… But I recently saw a youtube video about how we lose weight mostly through our breath! So maybe you’re breathing too much?
It’s all genetics. Some people gain a lot of weight easily, some eat as much as they can but still lose weight.
I’m 5’7 and 130lbs. It took me 3 years to gain 30lbs. Gaining more is legitimately impossible. There simply isn’t enough time in a day to eat enough calories, unless I do nothing else.
I thought research said it is mostly how much you get calories and how much you spent, with genetics playing a smaller role
True, but consuming the calories isn’t as easy for everyone.
the more I shit
I mean that’s still ‘calories out’ if you’re not actually absorbing them. Guessing you’ve already done this if it’s been a life long thing, but just in case, you might want to hit up a gastrointestinal doctor - there are conditions that cause usable nutrients to literally just go through you. You may have one of those - and if yes, knowing which will give you a path to fixing it or working around it.
Then again, 5’2 at 100 lb is only just a hair into the underweight range. If you feel good where you’re at, maybe fuck it.
Thanks! I’ve been to a few doctors over the years, and they didn’t find any specific diagnosis. It was really a problem during my adolescence, at first delayed, then bang-o (and then I had all kinds of other things to worry about). Now that I’m past all that things have settled down, and my doc says I’m doing well. This is just my normal, he says.
Fair enough! Keep this in the back of your head though if you ever become critically injured or sick - daily caloric requirement goes up when you’re recovering from something, so yours specifically might be even higher than that already-higher-normal.
There comes a point where eating anything just feels gross cuz you’re already stuffed, so you’d have to start being strategic about meal/snack timing, and prioritizing high calorie foods and drinks. Hopefully your team would have access to your history in that situation, and account for that shit from square one, but YOU are your best advocate, so don’t be afraid to prod them if needed.
…and sorry lol, been doing a fuck ton of nursing school homework the past few weeks, so my brain is still in nurse mode when I hop on Lemmy. You’re basically an NCLEX question! :P
No worries! And you’re going to be an awesome nurse 💯 👍🏼!
Research shows that small amounts of physical fitness during the day can be just as beneficial as a full workout
A 2019 review of 19 studies looked at this question, involving more than 1,000 participants. It found multiple, shorter “chunks” of exercise in a day improved heart and lung fitness and blood pressure as much as doing one longer session.
And there was some evidence these chunks actually led to more weight loss and lower cholesterol.
honestly, makes sense. a lot of people don’t want to dedicate a whole chunk of time out of their busy lives, but it’s easy to squeeze in a set of squats or something between tasks
just as beneficial as a full workout
So if a full workout doesn’t do much for losing weight, these small amounts of physical fitness can be “just as beneficial”?
That’s not saying much hah.
Exercise is for muscle strength and endurance, mostly. Eating is for weight loss or gain.
So it depends on your goal.
has nothing to do with eating a deficit in calories. you can workout all day everyday, but if you eat garbage mcdonalds and packaged food, you are not going to lose weight ‘micro working out’ or even full day workouts.
Well they can loose weight eating nothing but processed food, as long as its a caloric deficit
Yarp, about a decade ago after a break up I went on a 2 month bender, nothing but alcohol and fast food. Drink maybe 10-12 hours a day on average. So more than 2000 calories a day in drinks for sure, and idk what in fast food. But I walked everywhere to not get myself into DUI situations. I lost 20 pounds in 2 months.
Edit: Throw in the couple packs of cigarettes and you could call it super healthy
Lol, going through a similar situation right at this moment. Lost 7 kilos in a month eating barely anything and walking a lot to get my mind distracted from panicking about my bleak lonely future. Majority of calories I get are from vodka and whisky 🥃
sending virtual hugs
Sorry to hear it stranger. If you ever need to rant or something feel free to dm me
Aye, thank you. It means a lot. I have no shortage of friends to talk to at the moment, but if the day comes I’ll message you :)
But, and hear me out, fried potatoes.
i was with you when you said fried but then potato and plural? hell yeah vote ayyy for grand senator
Ahhhh to be young and without stomach problems again… Ahahah, I loved making fried potatoes in college alright. But now, alas, it’s boiled potatoes time.
The quality of food has little impact on weight loss. It’s calories in calories out. Period.
Dunning Kruger.
Your body is so much more complicated than a function that takes calories as input and outputs an expected result. You need more than just calories, you need nutrients. A nutrient deficient person does not burn calories the same way a person with a balanced diet does.
Like just think for a second. Is the only variable of food that matters is calories, then why do you need vitamins? Why do we split calories into categories like protein, carbs, veggies, fruits, etc? Why can you get a PhD in nutrition if it’s only as simple as calories in calories out?
The simple answer is it’s not simple. Asserting that it is when it isn’t creates some terrible narratives around exercise, diet, and body image.
Ok, bud.
Guys, eat nothing but vitamins!
Eh. Calories are… Tricky. What is a calorie? A unit of food which, when burned, will heat a gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. But your body isnt just a furnace, it’s complex. And everyone is physiologically different - we aren’t all running at the same efficiency (base metabolism). And not all calories are available. For example, fiber is not digestable and can’t be absorbed by the digestive system and it also associates with simple sugars which also prevents them from being properly absorbed. So, eating whole fruits will result in absorbing less sugar than drinking juice which has the same total amount of sugar. Processing food - even just cooking it - makes calories more bioavailable.
For sure it can conceptually be boiled down to calories effectively absorbed and calories burned. But digging into what that actually means can actually be quite tricky.
You’re making it sound trickier than it is. Nutrition data on all foods will already discount fiber from the calorie counts.
But in a sense you’re also not wrong, that while calories are king when it comes to weight loss/gain, there are complications for that. For example if you give two different people the exact same food in the exact same amount of calories, they will gain or lose weight at different rates - highlighting the role of genetics. Another genetic factor related to calories only indirectly is how some people have much higher impulses to eat than others, making calories only a part of the story for their challenges with weight loss. I’ve also seen a headline for a study claiming that an amount of dairy caused more weight gain than the same amount of calories of peanut butter, though you may want to take that one with a grain of salt unless you actually see the study.
Personally I’m not a fan of measuring calories. Instead I use base knowledge to have ways to intuit calories more naturally. For example, I know that carbs and protein are 4 calories per gram, and fat is 9 calories per gram, making fat almost always the quickest way to make foods significantly more calorie dense. Other things can be very calorie dense too though, like sugary or other caloric beverages. Replacing those with water, coffee, or teas can be enough on its own for some people to start losing weight.
Some foods are more dense than others. Being that leafy greens and many other vegetables are naturally some of the least caloric foods you can eat, loading all of your meals full of them is an elegant way to reduce calorie consumption without needing to starve yourself. It also has the double benefit that high fiber foods are more satiating - they calm food cravings.
Point is, calorie management doesn’t have to be a headache, and it doesn’t mean a person has to starve themself.
I wasn’t talking about fiber, but the sugars bound to fiber. Its very hard to accurately labele just the bioavailable calories, even if you account for things like fiber.
On the note of genetics, it’s not just about metabolism. People have different abilities to even absorb the same calories. People have food intolerances, different rates at which they move food through the digestive tract, and different intestinal permeability.
This isn’t meant as an excuse to eat junk and not pay attention to your food. But, I actually find more help in paying attention to food quality and listening to how your body interacts with different food. E.g., eat less processed food, be aware that eating fat slows digestion, pay attention to your intolerances, stop eating when full, cut out snacking (again, especially processed foods). If you do this, its very likely you won’t need to count at all.
That’s not to say that, if calorie counting works for you, then you shouldn’t do it. Its just not the end all be all people act like it is. Pretty much any diet and paying more attention to what you eat in any way works: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32238384/
Yeah those are pretty useful common sense approaches.
None of that actually matters when it comes to weight control. What matters is that the linear relationship is retained in your proxy measure of Calories. Meaning that if you eat two pieces of cake, you’ve doubled your Calorie intake compared to eating one piece.
Ok but my point is you’re not just eating cake so its hard to keep track of the linear relationship sometimes. Calorie reporting can be incorrect and bodies are weird. That’s all I’m saying.
Realistically, being on most any diet is equally effective. From simple calorie counting to the keto diet. It turns out that, if you find a diet you can stick to, then just kind of paying attention to what you’re eating in a general sense works.
An example with an oversimplified diet to illustrate the point I think you’re trying to make: You have a diet that’s exclusively cake and you’ve determined that you need 2000 Calories of cake to maintain your weight. That 2000 Calories figure is an estimate and we don’t know exactly how much of it we’re actually absorbing. In reality, it’s actually more like 1800 Calories. Now all of a sudden, you switch your diet to eating exclusively cookies. You measure out exactly 2000 Calories of cookies and eat the same thing every day. But your Calorie estimate is wrong and you’re actually eating 2100 Calories of cookies per day. Now you gain weight on this supposed 2000 Calorie diet.
I argue that this doesn’t matter either. If you see that you’re gaining weight, then it means you’re eating too much. Reduce your Calorie target and you’ll be back on track. In a real world scenario, you’re going to have a much more varied diet than only cake or only cookies, and each item will come with their own measurement errors. But for most people, their diets are varied in a fairly consistent way, so these errors are also consistent on average. If you ever make changes in your diet (e.g. completely cut out McDonald’s), you’ll change both your estimated Calorie intake and target like in the example above. Adjust your numbers accordingly based on how your bodyweight moves and you’re good.
Of course, other ways of dieting are also effective. It depends mostly on what you can adhere to and your goals.
Yeah, exactly, calories in vs calories out is just another myth that feeds the diet industry’s bottom line. It’s not accurate. Like bmi used to be the big thing, but that’s not an accurate measurement system at all.
question, you point out the diet industry, but how do you feel about the fast food industry purposely making their food addictive just to make a profit, health be damned?
Calories in calories out is literally just the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy. It’s a fact.
Where it gets tricky is that the actual equation has quite a lot of variables.
You could, for example, increase your passive energy requirements with this micro dose of exercise situation. Does it raise your body temp (or rather the demands to maintain it at homeostasis) for a longer period of time and thus increase calories demanded that way?
Or, like a lot of fitness studies, it’s fucking junk because it trusts self reported calorie intakes.
This is untrue. Calories in vs calories out continues to be, and will always be the center point of weight loss. It’s just complicated by other factors like genetics, finding each individual calorie needs, and following diet and lifestyle patterns that are effective and sustainable.
If you get 0 calories what happens?
I was trying to count calories for my soup, some ingredients had calories on the package, but vegies and meat didn’t, so I went to online calculators. None of them were capable of measuring ingredients in grams - I have kitchen scales so can easily weight raw ingredients and put them in the calorie calculator, but all of them measure food in servings instead of concrete number, like what is one serving of my soup? And are the calories for raw ingredient going to be the same after being cooked? The only way to measure calories is to dehydrate it, burn in a special chamber and count the ammount of excluded energy. You can find people onlain making claims like “I’ve eaten 2017 kcals today”, but like how did you measure that 17 kcals with such a precision? The measurements I got from online calculators gave me a 500 kcal range of error, as in a serving of my soup could be 400 kcals or 900 kcal and again those are just estimates made from combining known calories of raw ingredients. Calories are for scientists and experiments, without equipment you can’t actually calculate the calories, just like you can’t really measure how many calories did you burn during the workout, again the range of error is huge, it’s good to keep in mind the calories in calories out idea, but actually measuring them is not for the 99% of thr population
Calorie counts on food are an approximation, sure, but it’s not unreliable. If someone eats roughly X amounts of calories every day and they lose/gain weight at Y rate, then the exact amount isn’t as important.
It’s weird that it works for most people.
You are not making sense. If I’m a football player and use 3000 calories a day working out, I will lose weight. When you’re counting calories, do you put the exercise factor in?
Yes, calories matter, but working out is usually part of it. This is because it burns calories at the time, but continues to speed up your metabolism.
Our bodies are meant to move, plus counting calories is a defeating process. I’m not saying eat crap, but try to eat healthier and move your ass.
Most people severely overestimate the amount of calories they burn working out and eat more than they need to as a result. Working out is important for health, yeah, but losing weight is best done by changing your diet
Tell this to the guy who ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month and lost 60 pounds (26kg)
Kevin Maginnis
Pretty sure this guy can’t even count.
Not fat, ideal body form, I’d even say: superior
fat AND ideal form
Same reason chimps are built like trucks without having to train a lick. Superior genetics baby.
Yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blubber
Blubber is the primary fat storage layer for some mammals, especially for those that live in water. It is particularly important for species that feed and breed in different parts of the ocean. During these periods, the animals metabolize fat. Blubber may save energy for marine mammals, such as dolphins, in that it adds buoyancy while swimming.
Blubber has advantages over fur (as in sea otters) in that, though fur retains heat by holding pockets of air, the air expels under pressure (i.e., when the animal dives). Blubber, however, does not compress under pressure. It is effective enough that some whales can dwell in temperatures as low as 4 °C (40 °F). While diving in cold water, blood vessels covering the blubber constrict and decrease blood flow, thus increasing blubber’s efficiency as an insulator.
I was looking into that recently, specifically gorillas, just because it’s such a common sentiment that humans have to work so hard and eat so particularly to build muscle but gorillas are naturally jacked.
It turns out they have a lot going for them in that regard
So first of all they low key do actually strength train. They use their strength to break and process vegetation. These dudes will straight up rip a tree apart with their bare hands. It’s pretty crazy. It’s also how they spend most of their time.
Like they literally wake up at 6am, do a crazy workout, eat a ton, take a nap, then do another crazy workout, eat another ton, then go to bed. Every day. It’s basically the same routine Arnold ran when training for the olympia.
The other thing that comes up is how they mostly eat plants but humans need tons of protein. This part is the most fascinating to me.
So humans have a concept of “essential amino acids (essential proteins)”. There’s like over 500 aminos in general, and for the most part if we need one for any particular bodily function, our bodies can just make them out of whatever. EDIT: this has caused some confusion further down, apologies. As I explained to another user I wanted to be selective about the depth of every specific biological mechanism for the sake of brevity. However I should mention the aminos are not created out of thin air, but through the breakdown of other proteins consumed in the diet. The exceptions are these 9 particular aminos which we require, but cannot create ourselves, so we have to get them directly from our diets.
Humans also have relatively pathetic digestive systems. There’s an entire large category of plant matter we consume that we simply cannot process, and it passes through us. We call this material “fiber”, and it’s still very important for us to eat, but nonetheless it is simply not broken down into energy or other building blocks.
Gorillas do not suffer from either of these limitations. Their bodies can produce all necessary amino acids, and they can break down fiber.
So with all this, when you look at their diet as a whole, (which is about 40lbs per day of plants, and keeping in mind the plants are simply more nutritive to them biologically, and their neutrality towards the specific amino profile of their food), when you crunch the math, they actually end up eating slightly higher than the daily protein value recommended for high level human bodybuilders.
That coincidence totally blew my mind. Like we’re so closely related and require the same basic conditions for muscle growth, but achieve it in such parallel yet unrelated ways. Totally awe inspiring
What the fuck? There’s 20 amino acids. And I’ll bet you anything that the same amino acids are essential to gorillas and humans. We are weird creatures and our genetics stand out among the great apes but that’s too much difference.
Gorilla digestive systems are longer and they have this special thingie that I’ve forgotten the name of to help with plant matter digestion. They aren’t like ruminants so they can’t really digest fiber but also don’t think they are coprophages like rabbits.
Humans have massive brains that suck up a bunch of energy. We use the brain so our bodies don’t have to do as much work. Carrying around more muscle than you have to is a recipe for being out-competed (e.g. Neanderthals). But if something like the myostatin gene is knocked out or it’s expression is reduced by generic mutation then we also build a lot more muscle. The only issue is that we don’t have millions of years of evolution for that situation to match the rest of our bodies.
also don’t think they are coprophages like rabbits.
Gorillas do selectively engage in coprophagy in certain situations, depending in large part on their nutrition and diet. Certain fruits in their diet, and the accompanying seeds in their shit, increase the likelihood that they’ll go back for seconds.
To add to what carnelian replied, there are actually more than 20 amino acids. Archaea and bacteria domains use a couple different ones, making 23 or so known amino acids used. There are also tons of possible and some (like 700+, that I remember being taught, lol) documented examples of different amino acids, because all that it takes to be an amino acid is the basic carbon structure with the carboxylic acid and the nitrate group in their correct positions, with an R group that defines which amino acid you’re dealing with.
Gorillas aren’t bacteria, archae, or chemists.
Hey,
So the confusion here comes from the application of the term ‘essential’
The reason humans differentiate between essential/not is because it is “essential” for us to ingest those amino acids directly in our diet, because we cannot synthesize them ourselves.
Gorillas do not have a separate “essential” category because they can synthesize everything they need. This is not to suggest they do not physiologically “need” the ones we deem as essential, simply that they can make them.
As an aside, the special thing you’re thinking of is just their gut bacteria. There’s a ton of specific biological information I left out as the comment was already getting too long, and I didn’t really feel like the exact mechanism of action there was critical
No?
Like, read this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20095763
If their bodies were able to synthesize all the amino acids they need they couldn’t get an amino acid deficiency syndrome.
Apologies, yes, the non-essential aminos need to be synthesized from protein specifically, which gorillas typically consume in abundance. Edited my post to clarify this issue, thank you
because they can synthesize everything they need.
What are you talking about. Pretty much every animal lacks the ability to synthesize certain amino acids. No animal can rearrange the carbon skeletons of 11 out of the 21 amino acids relevant to animal protein (cysteine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine), so the ability to synthesize certain amino acids necessarily relies on the presence of the amino acids that share the same carbon structure. See here, which talks about the essential/non-essential categorization as being outdated and needing to be understood as a sliding scale in which synthesizing even non-essential amino acids carries a cost, and that eating complete proteins in a species-appropriate ratio is still necessary for animals to thrive.
Gorillas consume something like 20-30% of their calories from protein depending on the ratio of low protein fruit to high protein leaves in their diets. Their plant food sources just don’t have all that much in the way of energy, so even the small amounts of protein in any given leaf is made up for the fact that they’re eating up to 40 kg of food per day.
The truth is, gorillas do consume quite a bit of protein. Plant matter, like pretty much any living organism, has protein. Leaves are relatively high in protein compared to other plant foods. Let’s not forget, broccoli has more protein per 100 calories than steaks do.
So no, gorillas are not capable of freely synthesizing the amino acids they need. The truth is that they’re eating a lot of protein from various sources at different amino acid ratios and using those amino acids pretty efficiently.
What are you talking about
Why are people so rude when critiquing a bodybuilding gorilla post on a shit posting community?
Anyway, as I have apologized to the other user who took umbrage with my glossing over of a particular biological detail, so now I apologize to you. Yes, you are correct that the essential amino acids are not synthesized out of just anything, but through a specific process which requires other amino acids acquired through the breakdown of protein consumed in the diet. I have edited my post to provide specific clarify to this point.
Have you read my post? Because the back half of your comment simply restates what I was saying about their diet. Thank you for providing supporting links.
Finally, you should edit your own post to clear up some misconceptions you may be spreading. The researchers in your link argued (ineffectively, as the current paradigm of essential/non-essential is still being printed in textbooks more than a decade later) against the concept because they believed it would be better to also include many non-essential aminos in a new category called “functional” amino acids. It should also be made clear that this proposed paradigm exists in the context of optimizing chicken feed, and at no point rebuts the fact that the essential amino acids are themselves ultimately essential
at no point rebuts the fact that the essential amino acids are themselves ultimately essential
I’m taking issue with your claim that no specific amino acids are essential for gorillas. That’s wildly implausible, given that pretty much any animal studied has shown that animals all have essential amino acids, and that mammals generally require the same 9 amino acids as nutritionally essential. Even ruminants, whose gut microbes can synthesize many of the essential amino acids, still have issues if they don’t separately consume enough of those amino acids, because the rumen microbes can’t actually provide enough for their metabolic needs.
Yes, essential amino acids are essential. No, gorillas are not some kind of sole exception in animals to that general principle. They just get enough from their relatively high protein plant diets.
You are simply factually mistaken about the nature of herbivores generally. You are also, intentionally or not, engaging in equivocation between the concepts of what is nutritionally required to eat and what is biologically required to function further down the line. You are also engaged in an ongoing adjustment of your argument, apparently just for the sake of argument, without addressing the serious issues with your argument as it was originally presented.
For these reasons I’m not terribly interested in an ongoing dialogue with you on this topic. It’s simply not a productive use of my time to keep on reading large papers you link to but haven’t read yourself, then correcting the claims you make that the evidence you provide doesn’t support. I also do not feel any need to directly address the false claims you falsely accuse me of making, when my above posts already clearly contradict them. I trust that readers with a genuine interest will be able to navigate these posts without issue, and then delve into the textbooks worth of fully unsimplified research if it strikes their fancy to do so.
Have a good day
I just wanted to let you know that I found your comments very interesting! Also, what would happen if adding human got a fecal transplant from a gorilla? Asking for a friend
Maybe when they throw their poo at you, they’re simply trying to share their superior gut biome
Thank you! Most likely the human would not inherit gorilla powers, although it’s certainly worth investigating
For those unaware, emerging research on fecal transplants is crazy! Very worth looking into. It seems like to some extent, characteristics can be transferred from one person to another. Like giving a transplant from a fit person to an untrained overweight person can spontaneously result in weight loss and increased muscle mass, for a period of time. The world is truly an incredible and mysterious place!
I’d like to have a gorilla digestive system now. 🥲
It could be handy but I think I’d rather not have to eat forty pounds of leaves every day! +termites sometimes
So you’re saying that the theory about über und unter mensch is real, but that the über mensch isn’t white and proud but rather blackish and hairy?
TIL - thank you for sharing!
Seals aren’t humans.
WHAT
I was shocked too.
That’s right, they’re Marines.
So they eat crayons?
Crayolas in, crayolas out
