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More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

diabetes.co.uk

201–210 of 217 posts

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#201
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I started weightlifting for three months and my BMI went into overweight territory. I had an athletic build both before and after. Probably good for a lot of people but weightlifting really puts it into question. It's not like weightlifting is something only few men can do; most men can weightlift. Then they end up having healthy body fat levels, but end up with BMI in the overweight category. If something as s…

The question is not whether most men can weightlift, but whether most men do weightlift. They don't.

The question is what criteria would you want a measure to have for it to be called a good measure.

You are arguing that if it empirically works for most people, then it’s a good measure. I’m saying that a good measure should in principle work for most people.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#202
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious. Is that not a trap? Most professional cooks who want to stand out use lots of salt and sugar, sometimes up to a point that I find it disgusting. I can imagine if you are used to that much salt and sugar, you need it again to taste anything. But believe me, you can unlearn it and start to taste the food itself, instead of…

I agree on the sugar aspect, but having been brought up firmly in the "salt is the devil" camp by my parents, it was an absolute revelation for me that the way you get rid of that hollow taste in food is by adding salt. I used to always make dishes that had all the right ingredients to taste good, but just didn't. The thing they were missing was salt.

Sadly there are numerous substitutes for sugar but haven't found anything for salt.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#203

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

Not everyone has that same feeling about food. And It's not something everyone's addicted to. I've mostly stopped consuming "regular food" in favor of Huel. Funnily enough it has made me appreciate the few meals i eat way more, since the rest of the meals are literally the same Huel Vanilla flavor.

Exercise makes you feel better long-term, even light exercise such as walking helps, where I would argue the negative reinforcement is low. People are just too busy "being controlled" by corporations feeding them the next dopamine kick. NFLX and FB mostly is my understanding.

I understand that It's easy to become obese in 2020 where you barely have to get out of the couch to get food, but i find it arcane how people can let it get so out of hand. It's happening slowly but steadily in Sweden too, my understanding is that bad food is cheaper in the US than here though, which makes us cook more overall.

Dieting doesn't necessarily have to mean saying no to tasty food, just eat a bit less of the bad stuff.

When i was a little kid my mother would give me 100$ a year if I didn't eat candy (what a deal!?). So i withheld completely (except on my Birthday and xmas) for ~5 years. Since then I don't have the craving for any candy or sweets. Takeaway being it is probably important how you're brought up. I find it exhausting to get my 2.2kcal that I'm supposed to consume daily.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#204

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

> Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium.

No, I wholeheartedly disagree. I strive for some exercise, daily. I really really long for those hours of solitude into the mountain, the physical exertion too. The sweaty and cold days. What you are referring to is mechanical repetition inside a gym or something, because one can feel forced to "work out". Exercise can have any form and location. You can run, walk, swim, paddle a kayak or bike your way into nature and reap every benefit exercise has to give without feeling pain or tedium.

Sorry but you speak like someone who does not exercise a lot and thus perceives movement as a chore.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#205

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

It's short term culture at play.

Good diet and sport have non linear curves. It's bad the first 3 weeks, then suddenly it's "so" great.

I'm in a special situation but I couldn't eat fat/sugar/salt for a while. Forced me to eat veggies.. if you don't eat burgers or pringles and soda your tastes becomes finer. Diets are full of pleasure but they're subtle. And the food industry got away by saturating all the key sensors to make sure whatever you ingest will feel amazingly better.

These days I can eat more stuff but I almost don't feel the need, I know it's mostly artificial and very detrimental to my health long term (if you believe nutrition and medicine, they seem to hint at less is more)

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#206
post #204

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

> Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. No, I wholeheartedly disagree. I strive for some exercise, daily. I really really long for those hours of solitude into the mountain, the physical exertion too. The sweaty and cold days. What you are referring to is mechanical repetition inside a gym or something, because one can feel forced to "work out". Exercise…

This.

I'm about to go out bicycling for about four hours. Have been looking forward to it all week. It's a bit of a chore until I get into the flow, or perhaps until the traffic light density recedes as I leave the city, then it's so good.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As pointed out by others, this is happening in other developed countries as well, it’s just lagging behind the US. Personally, I largely blame our learned culture of referencing “children in Africa”. Want to fuck up a child’s eating patterns for life? Force them to clean their plate.

Hu? I grew up in France and I have always cleaned my plate as my mother told me. In my familly, it's the polite and sensitive way to eat. Same expectation when visiting friends. Really few are overweight. Since I moved to Japan, I learned that here too food is treated with the same deference : "you shall not let a grain of rice left in your bowl" is basic table decency. Few overweigh people here either. Both France a…

Cleaning your plate when you decide how much to put on it is one thing, cleaning it when your parents decide is quite another and IMO harmful.

I've told my children that they should usually clean their plate. Not always, because noone's perfect, but if they make a mistake often it's time to think about what they put on that plate.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#208

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

The point that it's far worse in north America went literally over your head.

It's not out of reach to stay in shape and even have en entire population be mostly in shape. You don't even need discipline, what you need is an overall culture that it's "good" to be in shape, "bad" to eat crappy food (basically the opposite of the US), and people will naturally and almost unconsciously pay attention to the food they it all their life, starting by taking good habits when they are young.

Of course if your first thoughts are to look for "explanations" and "excuses" (which btw are the most bullshit I have ever seen on that subject, you could have at least talked at least about stress as an actual obesity factor in people's life) you will never get there..

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#209
post #204

I mean, duh? Eating makes you feel good. It releases all kinds of feel-good chemicals in your body, and it just feels good to be, if not full, satiated. It's an activity chock-full of positive reinforcements. Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. If you're lucky, you get an endorphin rush to help offset these, but not everybody (and not every exercise re…

> Exercise, in contrast, is filled with various forms of pain (short and long term) and lots of tedium. No, I wholeheartedly disagree. I strive for some exercise, daily. I really really long for those hours of solitude into the mountain, the physical exertion too. The sweaty and cold days. What you are referring to is mechanical repetition inside a gym or something, because one can feel forced to "work out". Exercise…

This varies by individual. For me, almost the only form of exercise that doesn’t induce lots of suffering is lindy hop. And that’s only when there’s an extremely cute gal on the other end. Otherwise, I’m like, “yeah, I’m good. Next song please be slower. I don’t need to sweat through my third shirt tonight.”

I’ve done the multi-hour bike rides. (Road and mountain) The ten hour long hikes in beautiful scenery. Kayaking from one beautiful island to another in Thailand. Didn’t like it. Never have. Likely never will. Unless there’s a hot girl I’m focused on, I will be focused on the pain.

If you’re arguing you need to be an iron man athlete to get to some magical point where you start enjoying exercise, maybe consider that that pool of people is self-selected. Those who enjoy exercise probably do it a lot and those who don’t enjoy it... might not.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was happy to close the tab once "Fit" popped up until I saw the waist measurement is to be done "at navel".

But can I inhale sharply and hold while measuring?

Sure, if you breathe properly[1]

1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/take-a-deep-b...

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