111–120 of 139 posts
Until this is treated like the public epidemic it is, and promote education, this will only get worse. Calories in - calories out = fat accumulation. It is literally that simple.
At best the results range from "inconclusive" or "wide variation" to "they tried to expend more calories via exercise and gained weight, oopsie" https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gai...
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Every complexity you posted still comes down to consuming more calories than is needed. The reality is the vast majority of people eat way too much, and the dietary guidelines for caloric intake are far too high for a largely sedentary society.
That's one of the things you really have to accept if you want to lose weight - yes you will have to eat less, and yes you will feel hungry a lot.
On a global scale countries low on the obesity scale (Japan, Singapore, Korea, France) are not teeming with starving under-nourished citizens, and countries high on the obesity scale (Mexico, US) are not lacking gyms, exercise equipment, or opportunities for simple nature walks.
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But clearly the "it's stimple, just fix it" approach isn't effective at improving the overall health of a population. I honestly don't care at all about the overall health of the population. I really don't. Not that I wish them any ill-will, but I can't even begin to muster up the slightest bit of care for people I don't know ruining their lives because they eat too much or smoke. It's just not even on my radar. I re…
You pay for their healthcare through your taxes. Every pothole on the road, unbuilt subway station and uneducated youth is a result of more tax money being redirected to the healthcare system in order to treat some smoker's lung cancer or some sweet tooth's diabetes.
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No, it's the individual's fault. I was severely overweight a year ago and lost 80lb doing nothing other than eating healthy, exercising, and...being patient. The deferment of responsibility and lack of self-control is the problem. Of course, companies–and more specifically, their marketing teams/firms–know people are weak-minded and as a result, can more or less control people's habits (read: greed outweighs public c…
The point is that until this last century the average human didn't have to obsess over this stuff as much as we do now. No keto, no HIIT, no fitness trackers, no low carb, no leptin management. You ate what you could get your hands on and you mostly stayed in pretty average shape because food wasn't that stimulating, that heavily processed, heavily advertised, and you have to be a lot more mobile than you are today.…
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At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? We all know the secret to not being obese. Asking the government to step in and help us just seems... childish. Are we not adults? Do we have no agency?
> At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? This question touches on some very deep and controversial ideas kicking around in the current conversation. The question of whether we have an inherent "human nature", a biological substrate that informs our capabilities and behavior, touches on everything from education to tech employment. I don't want to debate the subject gener…
I don't agree that this is what's going on.
People don't avoid obesity by exceptional willpower. They just have healthy eating habits, usually ones formed during childhood.
Likewise, overcoming obesity and returning oneself to a healthier weight that one can maintain requires changing habits and one's relationship with food.
Habit formation and modification can be difficult, but it's sufficiently well understood that it can be implemented.
The difficulty is getting information into people's hands about how to modify habits successfully (I like the book The Power of Habit), cutting through the misinformation surrounding what constitutes healthy eating habits and how to lose weight, and often just education about how to cook food cheaply and in a way that doesn't seem intimidating to people who are pressed for time and resort to fast food out of convenience.
When people know the concrete steps one must take to achieve something, they become that much more willing to believe they can do it.
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Once you cutout the obvious high calorie culprits like sugar, 400 calories is a pretty decent sized, healthy meal. Cutting out a meal a day is really hard to do. Hunger sucks, and had a lot of negative impacts on the rest of your day.
Yes, losing 30 pounds in a year will involve skipping about 1 meal per day and is not easy at all actually.
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At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? We all know the secret to not being obese. Asking the government to step in and help us just seems... childish. Are we not adults? Do we have no agency?
Do we all know? I currently weigh 270lbs (and climbing) and I * Don't consume soda or sugary drinks of any kind * Go on 3 mile walks 3-4x weekly * Have switched to soylent 100% of meals to make calorie counting dead simple * Recently cut out alcohol too And yet pounds are adding on not coming off. I've been gaining about 10-15lbs a year every year since I hit 30 after being at a stable weight of 170lbs for all of my…
If you're gaining 10-15lbs per year, then you know how much you're overconsuming. An annual gain of 15 lbs * 3500 Calories per pound of fat is about 150 Calories per day over your TDEE.
Reduce your daily caloric intake by 250-500 Calories and you should see weight loss over the long term.
If not, and you actually do know exactly how many calories you're consuming and have been tracking your weight to see how it changes, then you need to see a physician.
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Perhaps unfortunately, the human body cannot ignore physics - weight gain does ultimately come down to "you are consuming more calories than you are expending"! You're right that "eat less, fatty" is not a helpful message. That's actually the key point in these discussions - we do know how to avoid weight gain in the abstract sense (consume less than you burn), but the implementation of that is what's difficult. Diff…
> weight gain does ultimately come down to "you are consuming more calories than you are expending" That is incorrect, but it does help sell gym memerships. Moreover, expending more calories via exercise typically leads to weight gain, according to emprirical studies (and anecdotal look around gym's elliptical machines next time you're in one) https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gai... Fat accumm…
"While this study didn’t track the women’s eating and movement habits away from the lab, it is likely that those who gained weight began eating more and moving less when they weren’t on the treadmills, “probably without meaning to,” Dr. Gaesser said."
Expending more calories via exercise increases one's weight when you eat more calories than you burned. There's nothing new there.
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The secret is eat less calories than you burn. What are you talking about?
As the article notes, eating less than you burn is effective for a while until the body works to get back up to a previous set point to maintain homeostasis. An excellent book on this topic is The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung
Until this is treated like the public epidemic it is, and promote education, this will only get worse. Calories in - calories out = fat accumulation. It is literally that simple.
Show me a study with a large control group where this was proven true for 100% of participants. At best the results range from "inconclusive" or "wide variation" to "they tried to expend more calories via exercise and gained weight, oopsie" https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gai...