They don't get fat — why not?
"To try to unravel the complexity of all of this, researchers at an NIH diabetes and obesity lab in Phoenix have begun to incorporate thin people into their studies. Why "some" people "tend to overeat more than they need more consistently and why this occurs is clearly complex and involves levels of behavior that we are just beginning to understand," said Jonathan Krakoff, an endocrinologist at the lab.
Krakoff and his colleagues are recruiting for a study in which thin people will consume about 4,000 calories in a 24-hour period, about twice the amount an average healthy person needs in a day.
"Some people might be able to burn off more excess calories as heat when they overeat, so they are the people more likely to be thin," said Marie Thearle, a staff clinician involved in the study. "We are also asking our volunteers to come back for follow-up visits once a year for up to seven years to see if any of the energy expenditure measurements with overeating during the baseline study visit predict who gains weight over time and who does not."
Thearle said the researchers hope to find out whether food choices matter. "Once you have met the needs of your body, does it matter what else you consume?" she said. "There's the popular myth that people don't gain weight because they have a high metabolism; we want to see if that is true. We will be looking at hormones and brown fat. We don't think the answer is differences in metabolism." Brown fat is the "good" fat scientists say helps burn calories; white fat is what we think of as regular fat."
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