Original subtitles

(man) Up next, the results of the weekly weigh-in.

Now back to Mandy.

(Mandy) Remember, fat is the enemy!

I am fat! I am the enemy.

You gotta lose weight if you wanna look great!

I gotta lose weight to look great

for my high school reunion- slash-pool party.

Hey, great work, guys! Hey, time for a healthy snack!

Whew! Time for a low-fat snack.

(cartoon whale laughing)

Come on, Sam.

You can change this monster body.

All you gotta do is eat low-fat foods,

track your calories, and work out like crazy.

Actually... Aah!

Man in my fridge!

None of the things you're doing are likely to make you lose weight.

You ruined my fridge!

Yeah, because I'm Adam Conover,

and this is "Adam Ruins Everything."

**

Oh! Ugh.

(screaming)

Thanks for letting me out of that fridge.

It got really creepy in there overnight.

Ugh! You spilled my low-fat yogurt!

I need this so I can lose weight

for my high school reunion pool party.

Wait, who would combine a high school reunion with a pool party?

Sociopaths.

Sociopaths with rock-hard bodies.

Even worse, my high school crush is gonna be there.

Marcy Leonardo.

(male singers) Marc *

And if I want to look good for Marcy,

I gotta eat nothing but low-fat foods.

Just like Snacky the Snack Whale says.

(Snacky laughs)

I'll never be as cut as that whale.

Sorry, but low-fat foods don't help you lose weight.

And the only reason you think they do

is because of bad science and worse marketing.

Heh! That's ridiculous.

When I eat fat, it goes in my body and becomes fat,

and fat is bad.

Yeah, that's what everybody thinks,

but it's not true.

Oh, hey, an egg timer!

(timer tingling)

(blows) People have been eating fat

for as long as humans have existed,

and their lives were swell.

(whoosh)

Fat tastes good!

Also, salve for tiger wound.

Okay, maybe not swell.

The point is, fat is one of our oldest

and most basic nutrients.

Wow, thank you for the history lesson, Adam.

But I need to lose weight,

and the most important thing is for me to cut out fat.

Yep, that's what the sugar industry wants you to think.

(whoosh)

** (upbeat jazz playing)

Holy, hambone!

Are you trying to give me a heart attack?

Funny you should say that,

because in the early 20th century,

doctors began to notice a disturbing rise

in a once rare condition called heart disease.

Americans' hearts are failing.

But where will the love go?

And when President Eisenhower

suffered a heart attack in 1955,

it galvanized the nation.

Mmm, mmm-- (gasps)

Someone look into this! Uhh!

Americans were determined to fight heart disease,

but instead, they were bamboozled by the sugar industry

and one very suave scientist.

(whoosh)

This is Ancel Keys, a scientist so popular,

he once made the cover of "Time" magazine.

(camera shutters clicking, people cheering)

(wolf whistle)

Keys was certain that fat

was the cause of heart disease,

but only because he cherry-picked his data

to get the result he wanted.

This data's out of sight! This data can sit on it!

Fat makes you fat. Ehh!

(people laugh and hoot)

And nobody cared that his research was bad?

Not really.

Except for one slightly less popular scientist

named John Yudkin.

Actually, sugar is the likely culprit.

When you eat more sugar than your liver can normally process,

it's stored as fat.

Hey, get a load of the nerd!

(laughter)

Keys denounced Yudkin

and made fun of his research in public.

(Yudkin stammering)

Fat makes you fat. End of story!

(people cheering)

And people just believed this jerk?

Yeah, because of a big assist

from a group with a sickly sweet agenda,

the sugar industry. (pop music playing)

In the '60s, these candy-coated capitalists

started straight up paying scientists

to downplay the dangers of sugar

and shift the blame to fat.

Here's a little something for that big

"fat problem" we have.

You got it, sugar. (music stops)

I mean, "you" the sugar industry.

I wasn't calling you "sugar."

When John Yudkin spoke out against sugar in 1972,

the industry publicly mocked him,

calling his research "science fiction."

Now, now, we've been eating fat for millennia,

but if we track the rise in sugar consumption,

there's a clear correlation with the rise

in heart disease and obesity.

(laughing) If we track the rise of sugar consumption!

Live long and prosper! Beep beep!

I am a sugar robot!

(laughter) I am not a sugar robot.

I'm not!

The sad truth is, Yudkin was right.

We now know that sugar is linked

to both heart disease and weight gain

and has been found to be more addictive than cocaine.

But Keyes and sugar industry

spent so many years swaying the research

that by the time that Yudkin retired, the public was convinced.

Despite being right the whole time,

he died in obscurity.

(wind blows)

Wow. Science is a harsh business.

And Big Sweet's relentless lobbying didn't stop there.

They spent years packing health panels

with sugar-friendly scientists.

We need reliable, objective research!

I've got just the man. (drum roll)

(playing whistle) Fat's bad.

Their campaign reached its sugar height

when the USDA officially recommended

a low-fat diet in 1980.

("Star Spangled Banner" plays) Fat is the enemy!

(laughter)

This lead to a full-blown craze for low-fat food

starting in the '80s.

It eventually became a $32 billion industry.

And misleading ads made it sound like

we could eat as much low-fat food as we wanted

and never gain weight.

(female announcer) McDonald's new low-fat frozen yogurt.

(male announcer) It tastes fattening but if feels skinny.

You can eat cake!

What about the fat? No fat!

(woman 1) So how can she eat like that?

(woman 2) And still be a size six?

Oh, this isn't a cookie. It's a fat-free Newton.

Yes, and once everyone switched to low-fat foods,

everyone started getting thinner.

Right? Quite the opposite.

After the USDA came out against fat,

obesity rates actually skyrocketed.

(laughing) But why?!

Low-fat foods must help me lose weight.

I mean, I'm cutting out something, right? Wrong.

When you take the fat out, it makes food taste worse,

so to make it more palatable,

food companies typically a little something--

piles and piles of sugar.

Oh! This fat-free cake tastes like Styrofoam, y'all.

Let's just add a little sugar.

And... much better.

(giggles) Now, let's talk about

why I think white sugar is superior to brown--

Okay, that's enough! Oh, yikes.

But you said that sugar makes you gain weight.

Exactly.

The sugar industry peddled bad science

and demonized fat in order to sell us more of the product

that actually causes heart disease and weight gain.

And now, eating so much sugar

has made us fatter and unhealthier.

Et tu, Snacky?

Sorry, Sam, it's true! (laughs)

(growling angrily)

(fitness tracker beeps)

Whew! Okay.

At least that little outburst helped me burn a few calories.

I guess I'll just have to rely on

good, old-fashioned calorie counting,

the scientific and precise way to lose weight.

Actually, counting calories is totally imprecise.

Want me to tell you about it?

(screaming angrily)

(fitness tracker beeping)

Whoa! Where we goin'?

I am off to count calories

so that I can lose weight and look good for Marcy.

(singers) Marc *

Sorry, but calorie counts are so difficult to measure,

they're basically useless for weight-loss.

Yeah, right.

Everyone knows that you need 2,000 per day,

and if you have less than 2,000,

you automatically lose weight.

All I have to do is calculate that number exactly.

It's like a fun little math equation that makes your hungry.

Ah, yes, the fabled government-recommended 2,000 calories.

So clean, so exact,

and so totally wrong.

The way the government got that number is real stupid.

Our citizens can't think for themselves.

How much should they eat in a day?

Well, everyone's body has different needs,

but I guess if you were to grossly over-generalize and average them,

you'd get 2,350 calories.

Oh, say, can I see that?

2,350? Yuck!

How are you supposed to remember such a weird number?

Let's round it down to 2,000.

The fatties'll thank us later.

So they literally just rounded down?

Yes, they quite literally did.

And the fact is, any single number would be wrong,

because there is a massive variation

in the number of calories needed by men, women,

the elderly, tall people, short people,

every people in the background

who aren't supposed to be part of our show.

It's basically impossible to know with precision

exactly how many calories your body needs.

Oh, but I can still cut calories

but reading labels.

See, 100 calories.

Simple, precise, scientific.

And essentially a guess.

Calorie counts on labels are often estimated

based on century-old data.

Well, this old one is 100 calories.

So I guess this one is 100 calories.

And the FDA legally allows calorie labels

to be off by 20%

Or maybe it's 80 calories. Or 120.

Who knows? I'm lazy.

And that's just packaged foods.

Calories in fresh foods can vary year to year

or even item to item.

Step right up, try your luck!

Guess which farm-fresh meal

is 700 calories and which is 1,000.

But beware!

Guess wrong and you'll ruin your waistline.

And restaurant food is the worst.

One study found that menu listings

are often off by hundreds of calories.

Aren't you worried about misleading your customers?

Honey, I serve food out of a wagon.

(fitness tracker beeping)

Wait, yes!

My fitness tracker is scientific,

and it tracks how many calories I burn.

And you can't ruin fitness trackers

because I can see you're wearing a Fitbit.

Oh, no, this is my Factbit.

Every time I say a fact, I get a point.

And while fitness trackers are pretty good

at counting steps, they've been found to overestimate

the number of calories burned in a workout

by up 40%.

(Factbit) Correct.

Oh! What? Why would they overestimate?

Because it's flattering. Correct, correct, correct.

Oh, man, I am killing it today.

But I thought these were scientific medical devices. Nope.

The company Fitbit has actually said

their products "are not intended

to be scientific or medical devices."

Fitness trackers are basically

for entertainment purposes only,

not solid data.

Ahh.

(melancholy music playing)

(sighs) I don't believe this.

Counting calories was supposed to be simple.

Yeah, that's problem. We think it's simple.

But when your food label's off by 20%,

your fitness tracker's off by 40%,

and your body's so complex that you have no idea

how many you actually need, well, you can think

you got all the math right and still gain weight.

(buzzer) Oh, no, my equation.

(fitness tracker beeping)

Sorry, Sam, it's true.

Sam, this is Marion Nestle,

a professor of nutrition at NYU,

and she literally wrote the book on calories.

So here's the problem with calories.

They're just almost impossible to estimate.

You can't see them, taste them, feel them.

You have no idea how many are in food,

and people of very similar

size, height, weight, and gender

may need very different number of calories,

depending on how active they are

and what their basal metabolic rate is.

But if-- if I can't count calories,

what else am I supposed to do?

You don't have to count calories!

That one number isn't going to take care of all of your problems.

You're much better off cutting down on portion size

or weighing yourself.

The best thing you can do for yourself

is to eat healthfully.

Thanks, Professor Nestle.

But I don't want to eat healthy!

That'll take forever!

I want to lose weight now.

Like the people on "Fatty Melt."

If you insist.

(insects buzzing)

Right this way.

Uh...

You want to be on "Fatty Melt" or not?

(whoosh)

Okay.

(fitness machines clanking)

(inspiring music playing)

I am in body heaven!

(animal roars) More like body hell!

Now drop and give me 50, butterball!

Unh!

And find out why shows like this are full of it.

(groans)

(announcer) Previous on "Fatty Melt,"

we met Sam, a man who thinks intense exercise

will help him lose weight

for a high school reunion pool party,

whatever that is.

But Mandy Powers wasn't going to go easy on him.

Come on, remember, there's no body types!

There's only fat losers and thin winners.

Agh!

(announcer) But after Sam failed

the Supermodel Wheelbarrow Derby,

Mandy doubted his commitment.

No, get back up! Come on!

You want to be happy, or you want to be skinny?

Skinny. Yeah!

Well, get ready to be neither,

because the ultra-intense diet and exercise programs

you see on TV actually make it almost impossible

to keep the weight off.

And cut! (bell rings)

Great job, everyone. Let's take five. Thank you.

Hey, sorry, buddy,

but we're all full up on fatties this season.

Time out. I've been pushing models all day.

What do you mean I won't lose weight?

Uh, of course you will, stupid!

Just look at Erica, our season leader.

(suspenseful music playing)

(dramatic music playing)

You can't fake results like that.

Actually, you can.

Contestants on weight-loss shows like "The Biggest Loser"

have reported being told to gain extra weight

before going on camera in order to make

their transformations more dramatic.

Someone is not a "before" photo yet.

(Sam) Holy crow!

That is evil!

Even worse, some contestants have reported

being pressured by the show to dehydrate themselves

just to shave off a few extra pounds.

So thirsty!

Ah! Nothing hydrates as good as thin feels.

(breathing heavily)

Erica's gonna look so hot!

But that's so unhealthy!

Wait. You're telling me it's all lies?

I mean, I bought the "Fatty Melt" book,

and DVD and Blu-ray for higher video quality,

and the phone app and the video game,

and none of it was real?!

Okay, a little Hollywood magic

just makes the story more inspiring, okay?

People eat it up.

Hey, don't eat that up! (Sam gasps)

And contestants on our show really do lose weight.

You know what?

Take a look at this artist's rendering

of what you could look like.

Huh? Inspired yet?

Well, now, that is... sexy.

Yeah, I want to look like that.

Unfortunately, it probably won't last.

In a few years, you could actually end up looking

more or less like you did before.

Why? Who are you?

Oh, this is Dr. Kevin Hall.

He's an expert on metabolism

at the National Institutes of Health,

and he conducted a six-year study

of contestants on "The Bigger Loser."

Hey, Sam, while I can't speak

to how they produce these shows,

what I can tell you is that of the 14 contestants

that we studied, 80% of them

regained most of the weight that they'd lost.

But why? I don't understand.

When you work out, you shed pounds.

When you go on one of these extreme diet and exercise programs,

your body doesn't have enough food energy available,

so it does burn body fat.

Right! Very thin-spiring.

Unfortunately, the body soon lowers its metabolism

to offset that energy deficit.

And that means that you'd have to keep

exercising and dieting at this extreme rate

just to maintain the weight-loss.

But on the show we work out, like,

18 hours a day and eat nothing.

I can't keep that up. That's impossible.

Exactly.

That's why most of the contestants

we studied regained the weight.

Aah! Okay, all right!

I'll work out this hard forever.

Then will I stay thin?

Not necessarily.

One of our most surprising findings of our study

was that "The Biggest Loser" contestants

had slowed their metabolism

by several hundred calories per day,

and that's even after they regained the weight.

So you're telling me that losing weight faster

could make it harder for me to stay thin?

I'm afraid so.

But Mandy said that willpower was the key.

Sam, if anyone had willpower,

it was the people that I studied,

and they showed that willpower alone isn't enough.

In fact, research has shown that genetics explains

most of the weight differences between people.

So, as much as we all want to be thin,

we have to accept that that might not be

an achievable or realistic goal for many of us.

Now, who wants some fruit?

(excited chatter)

Bye, Dr. Hall!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey, hey, hey!

What's goin' on here? Lunch is over!

No, back to work.

So losing weight is impossible.

It's not impossible,

it's just a lot less likely than we think.

Once study found that only 1% of people who tried to lose weight

were able to keep it off.

The rest either couldn't lose it or gained it back.

And that's okay.

It's just how our bodies work.

But what's not okay is when we're cruel

to each other or ourselves

because we demand these massive changes

that might not even be possible.

Look, I know that's hard to hear,

but there are still steps you can take--

Aah! No!

Uhh! I just don't wanna be fat anymore!

**

It's useless. I might as well just give up

and go to the high school reunion pool party now.

Oh, that's a great idea!

(whoosh)

(dramatic music)

Oh, no!

(singers) Marcy

Shh, not now, doo-wop group!

Wait! Don't you wanna hear my positive takeaway?

Hey, guys, I'm here on the "Adam Ruins Everything" set with Dr. Kevin Hall

'cause I got a couple more questions about his work.

So, the study was done in collaboration with "The Biggest Loser"?

The first study was, while they were still losing the weight.

We did the follow-up study

because they weren't interested

in participating in the follow-up study.

Maybe for obvious reasons, now, retrospectively.

Uh, this issue of their metabolism slowing down in some way,

uh, can you expand on that at all?

One of the main things that we were interested in

when we were studying these folks originally

was whether or not the slowing of metabolism

helps prevent weight loss. Mm-hmm.

In particular, a lot of the fitness magazines

that you read about will say,

if you do enough exercise,

you'll prevent the slowing of metabolism,

'cause you'll burn--

you'll keep your muscles larger

and you'll burn more calories.

Yeah, I've heard that. Um, that's wrong.

Really? (chuckling) Yeah.

So what we found is, clearly, these folks

were doing tons of physical activity.

Lots of resistance training.

They actually did increase their muscle mass.

But they had this plunge in metabolic rate

of about 600 calories per day, on average.

Wow. But the interesting thing was is that

that didn't prevent the weight loss.

In fact, the people who lost the most weight

were the ones who had the most slowing of metabolism.

So you had some people gain some weight back,

some people gain a lot of weight back,

and then one person actually...

Kept going. Kept going.

And so do you have any idea what the difference was

with that one person, what their--

what the secret is or...

She among the most active people on that program that--

uh, continuing to this day.

In fact, the people who continue to exercise the most

are the ones who keep the weight off the best.

So what do you say to people that say,

"Oh, the only reason they gained all that weight back

"was, oh, they were on the wrong diet.

"They should, uh, do my special diet.

"They should do the low-carb or the low-protein

"or the low, you know, whatever it is.

Uh, low-Vitamin C diet." Right, right.

And that would have solved all their problems.

Yeah, I know, it's a great question,

because there's a lot of people who've made those exact claims.

Yeah. Not the Vitamin C diet, but...

Someone's gonna come-- someone's gonna come around

and say, "Cut out Vitamin C."

No, they will, you're right, um...

First of all, these "Biggest Loser" folks,

if you think that they haven't tried

every diet under the sun, you're delusional, right?

They've tried everything. Yeah.

And nothing is working to kind of just keep

that very low body weight.

Our research has shown that when you bring people in

and you monitor everything that they eat

and control every morsel

and match for calories in the diet

that lower carb diets actually don't offer any sort of advantages...

Really? ...than lower fat diets.

Now, they might be easier to stick to for some people,

and some people might find them

a lot easier to maintain over the long term,

um, but others don't.

And, on average, there's really no great benefit.

But I know people in my life who say,

"Oh, I'm paleo, I'm low-carb, and it worked for me."

You know, there's always that person,

"I'm trying the diet and nothing's happening,

but my friend is doing it and it's working great for him."

Uh, uh, how do we explain that?

Um, one of the questions for those folks is,

"Well, how long have you been doing it?"

And typically, the answer is,

"Well, I've, you know, been doing it a few weeks."

Or maybe, at most, a few months.

The real test is what happens after, you know, a couple years.

And we know that if you randomize people

to two different diets, for example,

Diet "A," Diet "B."

There are some people who are hugely successful

on Diet "A," and there are some people

who are hugely successful on Diet "B."

And there's complete failures on both of those diets.

Huh. You should try to make changes

in your diet and your physical activity

or exercise patterns that are persistent,

and they don't change that much over time.

Because it's the persistence that's key.

That's what's gonna drive long-term health.

Well, thank you again so much for coming on the show

to talk to us about this, Kevin.

Ah, my pleasure.

I can't believe you brought me

to my high school reunion pool party.

Look at me!

I'm still fat.

That's not what matters. Listen...

(gasps) There's Marcy Leonardo.

(singers) Talk to her

I can't, doo-wop group.

I gotta get home and work out for like ten more years

and possibly get lipo.

Oh, my gosh, Sam?

(gasping)

I'm so glad you're here!

How's everything?

Good. Bad. Sorry I'm fat.

It just-- What?

Sam, you look great.

Look, this stupid pool party has everybody freaking out.

I've been trying to lose weight forever.

But every ad you see is always like,

"Oh, be thin. Why aren't you thin yet?"

It's ridiculous.

Thank you, Marcy!

That's exactly the point that I was trying to make.

Sam, who's your friend?

Hi, I'm Adam Conover.

And this is "Adam--"

His first time in public,

and he really should get going.

Sam, Marcy is right.

The amount of stress we put on this one little number

is totally out of proportion.

Did you know weight isn't even directly connected to health?

Oh, yeah! I read that one UCLA study

found that 50 million Americans

who are classified as obese or overweight

are actually perfectly healthy.

So, what, I should just stop eating healthy and working out?

No, keep it up.

But don't do those things

because they'll make you lose weight.

Do them because they'll make you look and feel better.

Look, I don't have a perfect body, either,

but I used to hate myself for it.

I would stay inside, watching old Carl Sagan documentaries,

and eating Snack Whales all day.

Until one day I decided, "Enough is enough.

"I'm gonna start eating a little better

and exercising a little more every day."

And, no, I didn't lose a ton of weight,

but my skin got better, my confidence improved.

Heck, it was an overall life upgrade!

The point is, if you can make small changes

towards a more active and healthy lifestyle,

that's great and something to be proud of.

But it's such a shame that we let our obsession

with this one number

make all of us feel like crap about ourselves.

Is that why no one's getting in the pool?

Yeah, everyone here feels bad about their body.

You're right.

What we've been doing to ourselves,

it's so cruel.

They should be having fun.

We should be having fun.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Sam?

(Sam chuckles)

(splash splash)

You know, I think an episode of "Doug" ended this way.

(upbeat music)

Oh, hey, you guys wanna know how sausages are made?

It's real gross. Let me tell you about it.

(guests cheering)

Just like actual high school.

Aww, I'll never be swoll enough to win back my wife.

I miss you, Diana.

I hope Todd breaches for you, like I used to.

I hope Todd gives her life "porpoise."

(sobbing)

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