Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#61

Post by mdekkers »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #52
BSousa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> Bodyweight fitness exists and it works great.

Damn right it does. I struggle with weight, and have done so all my life. After my divorce 7 years ago i piled on the kilo's. Combination of overeating, and being lazy. I started a gym a few times, and got personal trainers involved at some point. All the same thing: pound the treadmill and stairmaster for an hour, and go home.

I have been on and off diets and few, if any, are long term doable for me.

Last October, I hooked up with a personal trainer who is totally awesome, and got me into the "if you do 7 today, try 8 tomorrow" perspective. The first weeks were brutal, and very, very hard, but his approach was to find my limit, and push me ever so slightly over it. I used to go 3 times a week, half an hour, early morning. Now I also join in with evening sessions.

Everything we do is bodyweight training, boxing, kickboxing, and some cardio workout. No running (it would destroy my knees anyway), just simple stuff: squats, pushups, pull ups (from a horizontal position, working to "proper" pull ups), etc. His mantra is "small victories, every day".

It works. Although he does give me gentle nudges about my eating habits every now and then ("eat less meat, more green veg. Drink water with lemon") he emphatically doesn't want me to worry about dieting. "Get fit, and the weightloss will follow".

I have lost about 20 kilo's so far, feel better than I have in a very long time, and have an unbelievable amount of fun doing it (I am lazy, and I hate working out)

Bodyweight training is where it's at.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#62

Post by __david__ »

SixSigma wrote: post #57
jere wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Fatties", really? I don't think that's called for, here.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#63

Post by riffraff »

maxerickson wrote: post #22
riffraff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that very little is done to actually face the problem. I probably should have said "underestimated", please forgive a foreign speaker :)

I don't think that fits either, at least not in the US. It's true that there are not tight regulations about what foods people can buy, but there are extensive programs working to inform people, and to improve their choices and the like. There is even some evidence that suggests it might be working: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/07/news/la-heb-obesity-... ("Might be" because of In a news conference that was th…

More than 30% of the adult population is obese (not overweight: obese), and 17% of the children are.

You seem to consider the fact these percentages are "growing less" as a success, but in my eyes, it is a failure to implement drastic measures, so (IMHO) you'd be also underestimating the problem.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#64

Post by riffraff »

BSousa wrote: post #60
riffraff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yes, the movie makes a big deal of the fact that "just be more active" is not enough, and I agree with you that she seems to push it too hard.

But she made it in relation to the fact that for some categories (i.e. the US has had a constant increase in obesity for kids ages 2-5 which are not naturally not "sitting all day" types) moving more is not enough, and I felt the underlying points are still valid (school food is crap, adults are unable to understand what "healthy food", that "eat healthy" is not "eat less" etc).

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#65

Post by mkr-hn »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #56
mkr-hn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Which part of my post indicated that I think personal choice can't be a factor?

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#66

Post by maxerickson »

riffraff wrote: post #63
maxerickson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that fits either, at least not in the US. It's true that there are not tight regulations about what foods people can buy, but there are extensive programs working to inform people, and to improve their choices and the like. There is even some evidence that suggests it might be working: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/07/news/la-heb-obesity-... ("Might be" because of In a news conference that was th…

More than 30% of the adult population is obese (not overweight: obese), and 17% of the children are. You seem to consider the fact these percentages are "growing less" as a success, but in my eyes, it is a failure to implement drastic measures, so (IMHO) you'd be also underestimating the problem.

Not having a solution is not the same thing as underestimating the problem.

On the other end of it, you have the question of how far drastic measures can go and still be compatible with a reasonable society.

I was pointing at the change in the slope as evidence that the programs are (perhaps) having an effect, not that everything was all fixed and a great success. I'm perhaps optimistic, because I think countering obesity in children is the most important thing to be doing, and because I think that over time people will tend to learn habits that are useful in the face of food abundance (which is a reasonably recent phenomenon when you look at it in terms of generations).

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#68

Post by dragonwriter »

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, it's really not hard at all to pick a diet and adhere to it.

More accurately, barring psychological, physiological, or economic issues, its not hard to pick a diet and exercise pattern and adhere to it and lose weight.

> I was able to go from about 300 lbs as a 6'3" male to 210 lbs with significant muscle mass added by following a basic diet and lifting 3 times a week

Look, I'm a male whose been able to loose substantial weight without even having a structured diet just a few loose guidelines on eating patterns -- plus ballroom dancing, and then adding in other activity later once the weight loss was well under way (and that, more to improve performance for dancing than for weight loss.)

But I also recognize that being male is, itself, a substantial advantage for both weight loss and muscle building over much of the population. And I've known lots of other people for whom my pattern wouldn't work as well (many of whom have succeeded in weight loss, with much greater difficulty) for reasons that aren't primarily psychological.

I don't know if media tries to overcomplicate the issue, but you are definitely oversimplifying it.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#69

Post by tomjen3 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #23
Thriptic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's kind of how metabolism works. If you run a caloric deficit, you will lose weight...

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…

Please try again. Almost certainly you counted incorrectly because you didn't use a food scale or you didn't include things like oil, etc.

You also don't have to live a bootcamp experience, since essentially all your weightloss will come from not eating too much. Calories are flexible though, if you note which foods you get most saity/calorie then it is better to go with those foods than others that may be "healthier". In my case the key turned out to be meat and higher fat content plus bread.

Your month may have sucked, but you can absolutely do it, you will live better for it and whether you die earlier or not your quality of life is going to be much, much better when you aren't fat. It isn't just a matter of dying earlier - that tradeof may seem worthwhile - but a matter of whether you will spend ten years in a wheel chair, whether you can reach your own butt to wipe yourself, whether you need a machine to make sure you don't die in your sleep, etc.

You can totally do this. I know because I have been down that route and yes, the payof is worth it. Email me.

Re: A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity

#70

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

I mostly only ate things with the calories printed on a label somewhere most days. Stayed around 1500 to leave a lot of margin for error. Could've been muscle and water, yeah. It was actually half a college semester, where I had an exhausting Spinning class I picked as a credit requirement filler, along with badminton.

Apparently my BMI is 'obese' but I don't feel or look 'obese', by whatever value of obese seems to be my intuition gained over time, oddly. Maybe overweight is so common that it looks normal.

Post reply on HN