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A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

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Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#51

Post by magic_beans »

Thriptic wrote: post #11

Personally, I feel like the media frequently tries to over complicate the issue of obesity and make excuses for people who can't lose weight. The individual depicted here clearly has underlying psychological and substance abuse problems, but in no way is he reflective of the general population of obese individuals. Baring psychological issues, it's really not hard at all to pick a diet and adhere to it. It literally…

"Baring psychological issues."

There's the problem. Obesity IS a psychological issue for 90% of obese people. It is not a disease that can be combatted with simple will.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#52

Post by yummyfajitas »

BSousa wrote: post #37
Thriptic wrote: post #11

Personally, I feel like the media frequently tries to over complicate the issue of obesity and make excuses for people who can't lose weight. The individual depicted here clearly has underlying psychological and substance abuse problems, but in no way is he reflective of the general population of obese individuals. Baring psychological issues, it's really not hard at all to pick a diet and adhere to it. It literally…

It really isn't and I say this as someone that never went over 180 pounds and is usually around 12% body fat. Just the 'lifting 3 times a week' will take out a lot of the working population out of the picture. Why? If include commute to gym, working out time and shower/etc, we are looking at least 6 hours per week. Add the gym costs/going to the gym costs and you have maybe 100 bucks a month as a cost. We are fortuna…

The average American spends 3 hours per day watching TV. To find 6 hours/week, it's just a matter of turning off the TV for 2 hours, 3x/week. http://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2013.pdf

As for not affording a gym, that's nonsense. Bodyweight fitness exists and it works great.

Last year I met a super skinny tall Indian dude. He asked my help on how to get in shape (I'm tall but not so skinny), so I invited him to join me for a bodyweight workout in the free public park. He joined me, stuck with the program ("if you do 7 pushups today, try 8 tomorrow"), and got into considerably better shape.

He works 6 days/week and probably earns about 10,000rs/month ($150, maybe $300-400 after adjusting for cost of living). He can't even afford an internet-capable phone to visit the /r/fitness FAQ. Rather than making excuses, he just decided that fitness was more important than TV and made it happen.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#53

Post by genericresponse »

wongarsu wrote: post #41
pantalaimon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never paid attention to what I ate 'Normal' (non-overweight) people usually don't have to pay attention to what they eat either, still they don't gain weight.

I think most non-overweight people do pay attention to what we eat. Most of us don't count calories, but we do use heuristics. For example I wouldn't eat three normal-sized pizzas a day. I could over the course of a day and it would be delicious, but I know that it wouldn't be good for me.

Speaking as someone who's clinically obese, I think everyone but the most extreme use that high level of a heuristic. 3 pizzas a day is way too much.

As someone who's tried to lose weight (with on and off success) for years. Once you are in this place, you have to apply much tighter heuristics. Your body isn't giving you the right messages about food. (e.g. Can I have 3 slices of pizza today, is this salad actually lower calorie than that slice of pizza, which one will make the rest of the day easier.) Your body dopes you with Serotonin every time you eat. trying to lose weight has many withdrawal like aspects to it.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#54

Post by magic_beans »

Thriptic wrote: post #49
jere wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have a high metabolism and abundant energy and willpower. Otherwise you wouldn't say "dieting was not difficult" or it only takes "a bit of time each day." Not overeating requires willpower every waking moment... forever. This is sort of like someone who makes $500,000 a year claiming that getting out of debt is easy because they were able to do it after they finally stopped buying mansions and sports c…

> You obviously have a high metabolism Not particularly. If I had a high metabolism I would not have put on the weight easily in the first place. > and abundant energy and willpower. Not overeating requires willpower every waking moment... forever. In my opinion, successful dieting isn't a willpower issue, it's a systems issue. I have designed a straight forward system which works for me: Every morning I wake up and…

You're obviously not a person who comes home and binges because your day has been terrible. It's a psychological issue.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#55

Post by jere »

Thriptic wrote: post #49
jere wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have a high metabolism and abundant energy and willpower. Otherwise you wouldn't say "dieting was not difficult" or it only takes "a bit of time each day." Not overeating requires willpower every waking moment... forever. This is sort of like someone who makes $500,000 a year claiming that getting out of debt is easy because they were able to do it after they finally stopped buying mansions and sports c…

> You obviously have a high metabolism Not particularly. If I had a high metabolism I would not have put on the weight easily in the first place. > and abundant energy and willpower. Not overeating requires willpower every waking moment... forever. In my opinion, successful dieting isn't a willpower issue, it's a systems issue. I have designed a straight forward system which works for me: Every morning I wake up and…

I'm very happy for you, but I'm not sure you even know what willpower means.

>In my opinion, successful dieting isn't a willpower issue.... I wake up and plan my meals in accordance with my diet plan. I then only eat those meals.

Imagine a recipe for overcoming drug addiction. In the morning, you decide not to take drugs. Then you don't take drugs that day. This is nonsense.

When you're hungry and low on energy, it's a constant battle. You have a burning awareness that any moment you could go get something to eat. I'm glad it doesn't work that way for you, seriously.

>Not particularly. If I had a high metabolism I would not have put on the weight easily in the first place.

Sure you would. Eating a surplus is easy. You already said you ate until you were stuffed, didn't exercise, and consumed too much beer. This is why I used the money example. You can make a huge amount of money and still burn it.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#56

Post by yummyfajitas »

mkr-hn wrote: post #46
tomjen3 wrote: post #3

I sincerely don't understand people like that. Sure you can ignore your physical health, eat too much and become obese (I did so), you can stay obese even, although weightloss isn't that fucking difficult (spoiler-warning: track your food, stay within your calories limit and perhaps move a bit more). But grow to be 300, let alone 600 pounds? To the point where you can't even got to the bathroom so your mother can was…

I think it takes a special kind of delusion to be aware of obesity maps with clear trends and still think it's 100% personal choice. http://www.maxmasnick.com/2011/11/15/obesity_by_county/

Why do you believe that personal choices cannot be correlated with the county one lives in? For example, people in Portland tend (according to stereotypes, at least) to eat a lot of Granola and Kale. Does choice play no role, and the city government merely forces hipsters in these locales to eat these things?

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#57

Post by SixSigma »

jere wrote: post #48
SixSigma wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You obviously have a high metabolism such a tired excuse 96% of the population is in the range of 1680-2320kcal daily http://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-peop...

The top and bottom of that range is an entire meal difference. Or put another way, if two people on opposite ends of that range eat 2320kcal daily, we expect the person with the lower metabolism to gain 50lb a year. Awesome. This is where you come in and say, "Oh well, the person with the lower metabolism should eat less." So now the person with the lower metabolism has to eat a meal's worth of food less than the oth…

> entire meal difference

not for fatties, that's an entree's worth

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#58

Post by riffraff »

BSousa wrote: post #42
riffraff wrote: post #6

obesity, even if not at this levels, is an understated problem, and seems to me the US is one of the worst hit. If you can, I'd recommend watching "Fed Up" [0], a documentary which tries to show that the problem is a bit more complex than just people being lazy ("light" food being effectively worse, complete lack of food education, lobbying at it's worse etc). As many documentaries, it has a rather clear agenda, but…

I'm on the opposite camp and think Fed Up is not a good movie to watch and seems the author (Kuric I think) had a bone to grind mostly with the fast food and shitty food industry. I remember a scene about a mother going to the store, and buying 'light' oreos/chips/other stuff, and giving that to their kids instead of the regular ones to their kids and then complaining he didn't lose weight and taking as a conclusion…

that is way I said that the movie has a clear agenda, but what you point out is exactly what she said is one of the problems:people believe that they can buy "light" stuff and that will be ok when it's in fact worse than non-light.

This is very much the same as for cigarettes, and why the "light" label on those has been banned for years.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#59

Post by fbe »

BSousa wrote: post #40
jimmaswell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I counted calories for over a month with some intense exercise and nothing happened. Maybe because I had an extra burger one of those days and that ruined the whole thing, or I was absorbing calories through photosynthesis. If it takes even more than what I tried then I hardly believe it's even worth it. I'd rather live happily for one less year than never get to eat fulfillingly and live on a bootcamp exercise regim…

Hi Jim One of the main problems people have with counting calories is accurately being able to do so. While I don't think counting calories is for everyone, if you do try again, try to weight everything you eat. Don't forget the teaspoon of olive oil in the salad and those kinds of small things that add up. Research has shown that comparing food logs of people that say they have a slow metabolism and that they count…

Also, "intense exercise" can cause you to gain muscle mass, which is denser than fat. So, if you have never worked out before and try to loose weight by working out a lot, you can actually gain more weight from muscle mass than what you loose from fat (and, so, your scale will move up even if you are loosing fat).

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#60

Post by BSousa »

riffraff wrote: post #58
BSousa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the opposite camp and think Fed Up is not a good movie to watch and seems the author (Kuric I think) had a bone to grind mostly with the fast food and shitty food industry. I remember a scene about a mother going to the store, and buying 'light' oreos/chips/other stuff, and giving that to their kids instead of the regular ones to their kids and then complaining he didn't lose weight and taking as a conclusion…

that is way I said that the movie has a clear agenda, but what you point out is exactly what she said is one of the problems:people believe that they can buy "light" stuff and that will be ok when it's in fact worse than non-light. This is very much the same as for cigarettes, and why the "light" label on those has been banned for years.

I watched it a few months ago so I maybe confused, but wasn't one of the main ideas the movie tried expose is that "move more, eat less" didn't work? I may be confused, but I think she spent a good part of the movie trying to explain why that didn't work by using cases like the 'light' food family for example.
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