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Being fat is a trap

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Re: Being fat is a trap

#251

Post by LoganDark »

millerm wrote: post #141
LoganDark wrote: post #9

I feel like the author is generalizing by assuming that everyone who is fat has an "obsession with food".

Yeah, I can see that. I recently dropped good chunk of fat. For context, I'm a 5'11 (~180 cm) male (early 50s, ugh). I'd been going to my doctor yearly and my weight had been around 195 lbs (88.45 kg) for 5 years. I didn't like it anymore, as that is considered overweight. My doc didn't mind as she said since it was consistent she wasn't worried about it. Sometimes I'd catch my reflection in my car window as I walked…

Worth noting that even though there totally is an epidemic, they've also gotten better at diagnosing mental disorders that would've just gone unnoticed before. So it's hard to say exactly how much of it is new and how much of it just went unnoticed. There's still plenty of new though.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#252

Post by cubefox »

myrmidon wrote: post #188
stronglikedan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone drink tea when there's coffee!?!

Which one you prefer is just a matter of taste. But also, you can stay sufficiently hydrated by drinking just tea. Trying that with coffee will skyrocket your caffeine intake to unhealthy levels.

Also, caffeine is addictive. As someone who is severely addicted to caffeine, I really recommend not getting addicted. Try to drink tea without caffeine, even if you "don't mind" the caffeine in black/green/white tea.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#253

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dahart wrote: post #192
SonOfLilit wrote: post #35

I have extremely lucky genes and have managed to stay just within the green BMI range despite eating all the carbs and fats you can imagine and at times consuming 200-300g of milk chocolate a day. Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day. Finding ways you enjoy to keep an active lifestyle is a great idea, probably the highest impact thing you can do for your long term well being (for people i…

> Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day. I’ve been chubby despite heavy exercise most of my life. It took me at least 30 years to come to what now seems like the dumbest most obvious realization: Exercise makes me strong. Food makes me fat. Now I think of them separately, to a first approximation, as the high order bit. To affect change to my strength, I first need to modify my exercise ha…

To support what you said, there has been exactly one time in my life where I was exercising enough that it affected my weight, and that was when I was playing water polo for 3 hours a day, every day. That is a level of exercise that just about no one will put themselves through, where even your down time is spent treading water. And all that working out? Equivalent to pretty much one meal you'll get at a restaurant. And makes you ravenous, so the real reason it worked was that it capped out my availability of food, not my appetite for it.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#254

Post by DrillShopper »

Balgair wrote: post #143
knighthack wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I remember two churches I attended. In the first one, the communion was actual wine. The priest was adamant about it being real wine. But, we had a guy who was a recovering alcoholic in the congregation. Now, if you know anyone that is recovering from alcohol abuse, then you know that even one sip of booze is enough to send you on a bender. But, our priest was adamant that we all take communion in full bodied wine. T…

[flagged]

Re: Being fat is a trap

#255

Post by insane_dreamer »

ericmay wrote: post #243
insane_dreamer wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because going to McDonalds tastes better. this is a problem for a some people however for many more people, the issue is affordability unhealthy food is cheap and widely available healthy food is more expensive and in some neighborhoods unavailable -- so there's the cost and effort of going somewhere where you can actually get it; food deserts are a real thing, while soda and chips vending machines are ubiquitous t…

Idk, McDonald's doesn't seem that cheap to me but I haven't been in quite some time. Food deserts are a real issue, but if you're driving to McDonald's you can just keep on driving to the grocery store IMO. There's an educational piece, a motivational piece, and a marketing piece (you'll be like Lebron James if you eat Burger King!!! or whatever) and lots of other general barriers. But it's a problem that we can make…

> McDonald's doesn't seem that cheap to me but I haven't been in quite some time

I don't go either, but I do know that it's cheap compared to healthy alternatives (especially organic); the immediate availability is a huge factor as well

> t's a problem that we can make progress toward

agreed; what really bothers/saddens me is that there seems to be so little social desire to do so -- probably because there's no money to be made from solving the problem, and lots of money to be made from letting it be and "solving" the symptom (but not the root problems) post-hoc with big money-makers like ozempic. it's disgusting.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#256

Post by OkayPhysicist »

almost_usual wrote: post #77
EbNar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I lost about 10 kg back to ~60 kg of the teen myself (now I'm 50). It took quite a lot of exercise but that was the easy part. The most difficult part was avoiding eating off hours apart from avoiding alcohol and sugar altogether. Now. Maintenance is surely easier. On a side note, I keep exercising at least 2-3 hours per week and honestly I feel physically much better than I used to feel in my 30s.

Alcohol destroys any diet. I’m amazed how much more energy I have and how much weight I’ve lost being sober.

In my experience, beer is the biggest one. I got gout young (which my weight didn't help, but mostly truly cursed genes), and beer was/is a huge trigger. Turns out excruciating pain is a hell of a motivator, so all my beer consumption was swapped out for equivalent alcohol amounts of liquor pretty much overnight. I lost a significant amount of weight over the next year.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#257

Post by AstroBen »

orev wrote: post #250
ffsm8 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a single almost 40yo overweight man I've gotta disagree. McDonald's doesn't taste better, it tastes worse, but what working adult has the time next to their day job to eat healthy? You have to be either 1. Rich enough to be able to spend a premium at restaurants for most of the week 2. Be rich enough to have a partner that doesn't have to work a 40-50h work week 3. Be rich enough to have a personal cook 4. Not wor…

Unless you’re working 16h per day, every day, you have time to cook. There are many things that are very easy to cook and don’t even take that much effort, but people just refuse to learn how to use the tools they have. All you need is an oven and some baking pans, and you can easily make a well balanced meal in less than an hour. Roasted chicken, potatoes, vegetables. Done. There’s only a little bit of prep, then it…

To expand on this further: You can make a well balanced meal in less than an hour. You can make 5 well balanced meals by cooking 5 times the amount and dividing it up for 15% extra time

Cooking takes hardly any time when you're smart about it

Re: Being fat is a trap

#258

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Trasmatta wrote: post #162
mytailorisrich wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make a shopping list, stick to that, ignore and don't buy from the "bad aisles". If you have nothing "bad" at home and in your fridge you can't eat badly, and personally I have found that it is much easier not to buy than not to eat what you already have.

The problem, again, though is if the food you were eating was fulfilling an emotional need that you don't try to address after you start to make changes like this. That's why it's hard to sustain for a lot of people. You buy better food for a few weeks, and then suddenly you find that you're eating takeout every day again.

I think there is some evidence that energy dense foods dampen down the stress response.

If this is the case then you would need to make other changes in your life at the same time as adjusting your diet.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#259

Post by tonyedgecombe »

pryelluw wrote: post #64

Don’t forget the millions and millions of dollars companies invest into marketing their cheap junk food. It works, makes them rich and us unhealthy. There is a constant supply of pressure and propaganda from the junk food makers that most people don’t notice and can’t fight against. It is brutal. This t should be regulated, but …

I think the chance that the food companies are going to lie down and accept regulations without complaint is close to zero.

Re: Being fat is a trap

#260

Post by ethbr1 »

blooalien wrote: post #249
xnx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people mentioning willpower but not as much attention is given to the fact that everything in our millions of years evolutionary design is biased toward heavy reward for caloric foods, and within the past 100 years we are suddenly in an environment where those cravings can be fulfilled in abundance.

> ... "within the past 100 years we are suddenly in an environment where those cravings can be fulfilled in abundance." And an environment where a massive completely out of control advertising industry that's injected into pretty much everything these days abuses every psychological trick in the book to capitalize on those evolutionary cravings.

This. If the ad industry put half as much effort into promoting healthy eating, we wouldn't train everyone to eat poorly and/or excessively at a young age.

FFS, look at how long it took to get calorie counts on menu signage! And that's the lowest hanging fruit.

1. Fix fast food + the ad industry by financially penalizing pushing unhealthy food.

2. Rework the food supply chain to support healthier eating. (Less ultra-processed, shelf-stable items, more easy-to-cook healthy options + increase availability in food deserts)

Between lost productivity and end of life health expenses, I can't believe there isn't an economic argument for this.

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