Know better than what? 5’8" and 170 pounds is a BMI of 25.8, which is overweight. At 200 pounds you are classified as obese.
Sorry, but no, *you *need to work on that. A steak the size of the palm of your hand is more than enough meat for anyone at one sitting. Current guidelines for healthy portions suggest meat servings approximately the size of a deck of cards. Which is smaller than the entire palm of most adult’s hands. It doesn’t satisfy you because your stomach is stretched out from chronic overeating. And it’s that constant, chronic overeating that has made you fat. Not the “agricultural revolution”.
Oh, you got me there Dripping. I constantly, c-o-n-s-t-a-n-t-l-y, CONSTANTLY (maybe even chronically) eat. I had a tracheotomy put in so I wouldn’t have to come up for air. Next week, I’m having a feeding tube put in so I can EAT WHILE I’M EATING!!
You know, I don’t believe I could’ve lifted my father from bed to wheelchair to bath to toilet to sofa to car and back again for nine years until his muscular dystrophy killed him, if I had been one of these willowy little sticks everyone thinks women should be. I’ve needed every ounce of my strength, pal, and I didn’t get it eating lettuce.
Uh, anyone who reads the label on the food container?
Native Americans are not getting diabetes from sweet corn (developed for corn on the cob), which is not the same variety as the corn grown for corn meal. The diet that is responsible for diabetes in Native Americans is high in fat and carbs, in such foods as fry bread. I think you need to do some research before you make unfounded claims.
Actually, IIRC we appear to have been evolved to gorge on meat. To eat as much as possible in one sitting. Both to cut how much there was to carry, and to use it up before it went bad; it’s not like our Stone Age ancestors had a fridge to stick the meat in. Our ancestors would generally kill an animal, and eat most of it right there.
True. That’s why I said current guidelines. Stone age folks were also burning huge amounts of calories running down game, foraging and just staying warm. They also dealt with periods of famine, so it made sense to gorge when food was available.
Regardless, the OP claims that “no one knows” what a healthy portion size is 
and in any case, seems to believe that portion sizes don’t apply to her. Yet, it’s the fault of “the food industry” that she’s obese. Some major denial going on there it seems.
I agree. We have a big unappreciation of how food has been changing over this century due to selective breeding.
That’s really not the same thing.
Wow. It’s amazing how little awareness there is of the fact that we’ve been using directed evolution to modify our food for centuries, but especially during the last 70 years. And that the culmination of that is far more significant than all the genetic modification and hormones.
Our fruits and vegetables have indeed gotten sweeter. Our beef fattier. Etc. My concern in thinking about this (heck, by coincidence I was giving this thought earlier today) is how the lowest-common-denominator capitalist approach to flavor has infiltrated everything, not just processed food. What is the stuff I’m eating actually supposed to taste like? But there might be a point regarding weight gain too.
Yeah, and this is pretty common. It’s easy to learn about healthy portion sizes, you just have to realize that no restaurant (in the US, at least) is serving healthy portions sizes, they’re usually serving at least twice that. You have to be responsible for reading food labels yourself, not relying on what’s handed to you. It’s not always easy to, in practice, eat half of what is served to you, but you won’t starve on a 4oz portion of meat, especially if you’re eating it as part of a meal.
IMO, there are a LOT of factors in why so many people are more overweight than they used to be. One, sedentary jobs. Farming, and even cooking from scratch & cleaning all day, burn a lot of calories. Plus, it’s now easy just to grab a 1,000 calorie meal without doing any work at all. And it’s pretty cheap, even people with very little money can eat a lot of food - it might not be healthy food, but it’ll keep you alive, and even overweight.
That gym that told the OP she should be 112 lbs sounds like an anomoly, or a trainer that doesn’t know what they’re talking about - I’ve never been told by a professional that I should weight less than 125, and I’m 5’4" (on a good day). And that’s above the minimum weight for my age & height on most charts.
Omnivore’s Dilema and In Defense of Food were best sellers. I think we are starting to get educated (at least the educated are starting to get educated) on food. On what factory farming and genetic engineering has done to our food, what correct portion sizes are.
We seldom at home use more than a pound (maybe a pound and a half) to feed four people. I love a good steak - and never finish it at a restaurant - that much meat leaves me feeling vaguely ill. Our kids are limited in sodas and candy and chips - but its a moderation thing, not a forbidden thing - and maintain a healthy weight. This isn’t hard. This can be satisfying once you get the hang of it. But you have to stop thinking in terms of big hunks of meat, refined sugar, and processes grains - and getting to that point means developing a whole new sense of what tastes good.
I’m 5’7" - not far off the OP’s 5’8" I weigh about 130 pounds. When I get over 140 pounds - which happens once in a while - I start feeling the extra weight on my health. I’m pretty firmly in the middle of normal - but 112 is the minimum weight before I go underweight on a medical chart - so I suspect that was what the health club was using “your minimum healthy weight (and looking one row up at the 5’7” and not 5’8" line). Now, I’m a fairly “small boned” person - I’m also in my 40s, pre-menopausal, have given birth, seditary, and am carrying a rather large and heavy chest on a small frame.
I know you can ‘learn portion control’. You can also save tons of money clipping coupons if you do it right. And both are tremendous pains in the asses to do consistantly.
Take packaging. Take a can of Chunk Light Tuna, very healthy. A single serving according to the label is 2 ounces drained. The can contains six ounces. Okay, I’m at work, I measure on our postage meter 2 ounces, or maybe just eyeball it.
Now I have an open can of tuna. I have a choice of leaving it in the fridge and pissing off sensitive nosed co-workers, or taking it home, messy unless I thought to bring tupperware in advance which is bulky on the train and bus along with everything else I have to carry, or I can throw away the rest, which is wasteful, or I can just eat the whole damn thing. I suppose I can offer the rest to my co-workers but they have their own lunches. The hell with it, it’s easier just to go out to lunch. Uh-oh, that’s the wrong thing to do.
I’m aware that the gym person in my case was either (A) wrong or (B) looking to drum up business using the same despicable tactics that have the rest of us afraid to be a little big. I agree I should lose weight. It’s the manipulation tactics that piss me off, and the myth that doing losing weight is so outrageously simple that you are a lazy slug if you don’t. And big business has nothing to do with it.
You open the tuna can at home. You portion it into thirds into old margerine countainers. You take one to work each day. Or you buy tuna in the 3 oz can/pouch and throw out a little - or eat it all knowing an extra ounce of tuna is better than an extra four. Or you leave the tuna a home because its a lot of work and you are self aware enough to know you will eat six ounces of tuna and you bring a single serving of lowfat yogurt and a banana.
One of the biggest changes I needed to make when I hit middle age and got rid of my “kid metabolism” that let me eat anything was the concept that throwing away food was wasting it. I either waste it by throwing it the trash, or I need to go through a lot of work and sacrifice to take it off my hips later. Since I’m lazy - it goes in the trash - don’t even feel guilty about it anymore. Losing weight is TOUGH. I’d rather just not put it on to start with. Looking at what I eat as a long term decision (am I going to want to have to - oh, my God - jog to get rid of this milkshake) changed my relationship with food.
Sorry, but I will never feel this blase about throwing away food. Maybe it’s my upbringing as a child of refugees from WWII. One of my family’s funnier stories is how my three-year-old uncle urinated into his soup to keep his brother and sister from stealing it from him.
Did they not teach you fractions in elementary school? Can you not figure out that you probably want to be eating a third of the can?
You can come up with a million excuses. The truth is that to pack a tuna sandwich in the morning takes five minutes if that. Sure, it’s not the absolute rock bottom easiest thing in the world. But it’s pretty darn close. This is why so many people who don’t bother to do this stuff get called “lazy.”
Yep, sure can.
1 Sandwiches contain bread, which is a big no-no.
2 My sandwiches suck.
3 If I make tuna sandwiches at home, my cats, (which are two too many) will make blood sausages out of my legs.
4 After fighting off my cats to finish my sandwich, I might get blood on my hands and this might get into my sandwich, and while I am a lapsed Jehovah’s Witness, the thought of eating blood still gives me pause.
5 First aid for cat shredded legs certainly takes longer than five minutes.
Whoops, gotta run. I’ll get to the rest of the 999,995 excuses later.
Bread is not a “big no-no”, depending on what kind you eat.
Yes, it takes effort to be healthy and to lose weight. If you don’t want to put in that effort that is your choice, but the information and support is out there, for free in many cases.
I’ve heard some pretty lame excuses from fatties about why its not their fault they’re fat, but this really takes the cake. You can’t eat healthy because your cats claw at you when you are cooking? :rolleyes:
PUT.THE.CATS.IN.ANOTHER.ROOM. or better yet. TRAIN.THEM.NOT.TO.DO.THIS.
And BTW, an ENTIRE 6 oz can of tuna only has about 240 calories total. You *could *eat the whole thing, plus have a small peice of fruit and still have a healthy, low-calorie lunch there. But no, easier to whine and make outlandish excuses for why you “had to” got out to Wendy’s, right? :rolleyes:
I, personally, DO eat the entire can much of the time - I think water-packed has even fewer calories than that. Or I buy the smaller (3oz?) cans, readily availably at most stores, so I don’t have extra tuna laying around that I won’t eat.
Swing and a miss. Whoosh. And use of the word “fatties” shows real class.
Anyway to continue:
6 Tuna, in close contact, say on a crowded train cause fishy odors that might be misinterpreted emanating from a female.
7 How can you be absolutely certain that tuna is “dolphin safe”?
8 And the condiments, my god, who knows how many calories we slather on when we use condiments!
To be continued. Sometime.
Is “absolute certainty” the standard you apply to all the judgements you make? You must not get very much done.