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Adult Obesity Facts

cdc.gov

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Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#161

Post by yupper32 »

lkey wrote: post #149
yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

Knowing calories matter doesn't solve a thing. You pointing it out like it's a revelation indicates you don't understand the difficulty of what you expect. Let's say you are now 120 lbs over weight. You know CICO. How long will it take you to get skinny, assuming you ate nothing at all until you hit your goal weight? A pound of fat is 454g. A gram of fat contains 9 kcal. Being 120 lbs over weight means you have to bu…

Not only is this post wildly incorrect, you also seem to have just given up with the populous?

I lose around 2 lbs per week at 1500 calories/day. This is pretty normal. 120lbs would be 60 weeks of that. Little over a year. You are completely off with 700 calories for 3-4 years. It's irresponsible to spout that nonsense.

> A more reasonable position is to just accept that some people are going to remain fat and focus on positive health outcomes for those people.

Unbelievable. You've given up.

Edit:

> but I'd wager the reason folks are downvoting you isn't because they hate trivially obvious facts, it's more to do with your analysis being shallow compared to the scale and complexity of the actual problem.

I'd believe you if a ton of responses weren't people claiming that insulin levels or how fat is stored is actually what matters.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#162

Post by paulddraper »

CanceledAccount wrote: post #102
paulddraper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "policy solutions" is that they don't account for individual preferences. Do people want walkable cities? Or do they want single-family dwellings and yards? Do people want to be healthy? Or do they want sugary foods and television programs? Fortunately, the U.S. has plenty of each, to accommodate multiple preferences. Life is trade-offs. It's the conceit of policy makers to force their trade-off pref…

Urban design catering almost exclusively to single family detached housing commuting exclusively by cars was not driven by individual preferences. It is the result of intentional choices made by urban planners in the 1950s and onward. Effectively, these lifestyles are highly subsidized. Only today are we seeing market forces and individual preferences take over as oppressive car-centric zoning policies are relaxed an…

> It is the result of intentional choices made by urban planners in the 1950s and onward.

(A) Emphasis on "onward." There's a massive amount of development since 70 years ago; if it were a fluke there's been ample opportunity for it to change.

(B) Who chooses urban planners?

(C) A large number of people want to live in dense population centers. Also, a large number of people don't.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#163

Post by hncurious »

dangus wrote: post #131
hncurious wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: It's both a personal and societal failing, but personal choice is dominant. You can choose to eat rice and beans and drink water. You don't have to eat hamburgers and fries and drink sugar.

I disagree with you because this view considers people in a vacuum as if they are receiving unbiased information to make choices from. In reality, from a very young age people are bombarded with advertisements and other marketing materials that promote foods packed with sugar, carbs, and salt. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is "part of this complete breakfast." In reality, it should never be a part of any breakfast. Unhealthy…

That's all true and why I included social failing. We are fighting against an industry that's trying to convince us to eat their junk food. They are making it as addictive as possible. They are trying to present it as healthier than it is. It is hard to resist. So yes, it's absolutely a factor and a significant one.

However, despite that, I have a hard time believing that most people think eating at McDonalds is healthy, or that drinking Coca-Cola is healthy, or eating a bag of chips is healthy. They know it's not. Don't they? Am I wrong about that?

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#164

Post by rm445 »

yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

The nice thing about calories in minus calories out is, IF you maintain a calorie deficit, the laws of physics of the universe guarantee you must lose weight. The laws of physics are a pretty powerful thing to have on your side.

But that doesn't make it necessarily the most useful model for a complex animal to modify its own behaviour. We are dynamic systems that can voluntarily and involuntarily vary the amount of energy we expend. Our bodies send appetite signals to our consciousness, which can be pretty hard to ignore.

The only times I've consistently lost weight has been via a calorie deficit. But it's totally understandable that people want another model, either something like keto which purportedly produces weight loss without a calorie deficit by messing with the body's fat-storage mechanics in some way, or some behaviour+diet which produces a calorie deficit but with minimum lethargy and hunger. There's a lot of nonsense around dieting but the basic desire is understandable.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#165

Post by WorldMaker »

yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

I think food Calories are the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any of the sciences.

First of all, I'm glad that it worked for you. You sound like you came out lucky in the calorie counting lottery. I know many people who have never had success and before you try to blame them for lacking willpower or some other victim blaming, I think if CICO worked well Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers wouldn't be for-profit companies with new "systems" every 6 months.

Calorie counting fails to account for macronutrients. The human body is not an ideal spherical furnace and never has been, but most food Calorie continues to have that as an underlying assumption. So many of our Calorie statistics for foods and exercises still derive from the mad experiments at Kellogg's (racist, anti-masturbatory, and divorced from general reality) Wellville.

I get it, calorie counting is simple and gets results some of the time (when you are lucky). It's a decent first approximation when someone is trying to review their diet. But it's still just a first approximation and we keep finding new incredible ways that the error bars are huge and good science suggests you can't always stop at the first approximation, especially when it is doing real harm to some people in the real world where calorie counting approximations continues to fail for them and they blame themselves and self-harm over "being weak" or "lacking willpower" rather than blaming a poor approximation with a lot of questionable looking science behind that people still love because it looks so deceptively simple.

"You need to eat less heat particles than you burn in daily activities" sounds like great advice if you believe heat particles are a real thing that exists (Phlogiston theory). It sounds like way too much of an oversimplification to me in a world where we know "heat particles" are not a thing that exists.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#166

Post by nradov »

cf100clunk wrote: post #88

Purely from my own viewpoint, the general size of U.S. restaurant portions in comparison with those in any other country I've visited is noticeably larger. Dishes are more likely to contain processed food products, less likely to contain fresh vegetables, and more likely to contain higher levels of sugars and salt. Again, just my own take. I found when working in Texas and the deep south that booking a room with a ki…

One of my colleagues is a vegetarian. During a business trip to Dallas his associates took him out for dinner at a steakhouse. After reading through the menu he asked the waitress whether they had anything without meat and she cheerfully replied, "We have chicken!"

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#167

Post by yupper32 »

aplusbi wrote: post #140
yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

I think the major problem with CICO is that advocates for it present it as if it is a diet when it's actually just an explanation for why diets work (or fail). I've seen a lot of threads with people asking for advice on losing weight and inevitably someone chimes in with "Calories in, calories out." Great, but that doesn't provide any strategy or guidelines for actually losing weight. Calorie counting and tracking is…

This is why I want it to be taught in schools. It's not a topic that can be fully covered in a 100 word post. People get mad at me for bringing it up and not covering everything.

Like duh, if you eat burgers and fries you're going to be hungry when you hit your calorie limit, and then cheat on the diet. Then it won't work. That must mean CICO is useless! Why bother teaching it!

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#168

Post by orwin »

hncurious wrote: post #82
rjbwork wrote: post #2

We've designed our cities, suburbs, food industry, and society such that the average person is at least overweight, nearing obese. If the average person suffers from what should be an anomaly, perhaps it is less a personal failing than a societal failing and we should try to fix the societal problems generating the poor outcome.

Unpopular opinion: It's both a personal and societal failing, but personal choice is dominant. You can choose to eat rice and beans and drink water. You don't have to eat hamburgers and fries and drink sugar.

If personal choice was dominant, or rather, if personal choices were not determined by society, there is no way the Japanese obesity rates would be so low.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#169

Post by paulddraper »

zen_of_prog wrote: post #98
paulddraper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "policy solutions" is that they don't account for individual preferences. Do people want walkable cities? Or do they want single-family dwellings and yards? Do people want to be healthy? Or do they want sugary foods and television programs? Fortunately, the U.S. has plenty of each, to accommodate multiple preferences. Life is trade-offs. It's the conceit of policy makers to force their trade-off pref…

But the trade-offs are already affected by policy. Do people want oil policies that make driving cheap? Do people want subsidized corn leading to cheap sugary foods? It's worth questioning what led to policies existing in their current form.

Something decisions require all-or-nothing social consensus.

But as much as possible, it's best to reduce decisions to the individual level.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#170

Post by josephcsible »

lkey wrote: post #149
yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

Knowing calories matter doesn't solve a thing. You pointing it out like it's a revelation indicates you don't understand the difficulty of what you expect. Let's say you are now 120 lbs over weight. You know CICO. How long will it take you to get skinny, assuming you ate nothing at all until you hit your goal weight? A pound of fat is 454g. A gram of fat contains 9 kcal. Being 120 lbs over weight means you have to bu…

People who are 120 pounds overweight didn't gain it all overnight. It's completely unreasonable to expect to lose it all overnight either, and that fact has nothing to do with CICO.
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