Hook your PC power supply to the treadmill! No tread, no SDMB!
I honestly never thought that the argument would ever be “it’s not about exercise, it’s not about calories in/calories out, it’s about some magical reason that I won’t tell anyone because I want you all to read my mind and figure it out”
rationalization? Sure. Being lazy and busy, not wanting to put up with hunger pains, sure. I can see that, and predict that. But never could I have predicted what Stoid is doing.
Cable TV
The Internet
Video Games
Unwalkable Suburban growth
Increasing portion sizes
Cheaper food
More eating out
“Stranger Danger” paranoia
Less physical Jobs/Automation
There are tons and tons of little reasons why the issue has grown over the past several decades, the solution is STILL the same, if you are Overweight eat less and or move more, if you are a Healthy weight, still move for cardio health and don’t eat too much.
The math is easy…it is as simple as quitting smoking though…just doing it is how most people quit (I did) but you have to re-learn how to do many many things in life.
At home I cook by weight, my cooking is better and I can estimate calories far better than by volume.
I make a serious effort when eating out to start with the salad, order the clear soups, take left overs home etc…
These are all learned behaviors, they take work and suck at the start (just like quitting smoking) but there is a watershed moment where it becomes just who you are and life is better in the end.
People want quick weight loss and then they reward themselves by going back to their old habits, the ones that added the pounds to their frame in the first place.
Like quitting smoking it only works if you are willing to make the life change and wait for and trust that results will happen over time.
Welp, Stoid’s here. Party’s over, guys.
Oh please. Not quite, sir.
You’re kind of getting me a lot of shit, but that’s okay. I’ll allow it.
Forty years ago, everybody and their momma smoked. Buildings reeked of cigarettes and cigars. People, even little kids, stunk of tobacco. For millions of people, the memories of their childhood are nicotine-stained images shot through a smoked lens.
Now you light one up, and people scream bloody murder. People who smoke do so in a cloud of shame and stigma.
Forty years ago, people let their kids dangle their legs out of the back of the family station wagon while going seventy miles an hour on the expressway. Or the ten-year-old would be holding the two-year-old in her lap, both in the front seat. No seat belts were in the car. Nowadays, both kids are strapped in their own special seats in the backseat. Parents won’t pull out of the driveway until everyone is strapped in tight.
Forty years ago, people didn’t talk about gay people. It was possible to grow up not knowing anything about homosexuality. Now little kids are wearing gay pride T-shirts. People are rooting for the gay penguins to stay together.
If it didn’t take some magical fairy dust to change American’s attitudes in these areas, why would our attitude towards food be any different? We aren’t fundamentally different people, and yet we ARE different. Plop a 1970s person here right now and they’d be blown away by a million things. It’s amazing how much people can change in just a few decades.
Nobody’s special. As I’ve already reported, I put on weight dramatically when I first arrived in the States, and had I not realised it I would have probably been “seduced into overeating by the mere existence of the food” in front of me too. Possibly until I also distended my stomach. Because it was cheap, plentiful, and absolutely delicious.
By the time we were sitting in a bar in 1997, my coworker had had a lot of practice at eating a large volume of food, whereas Steve and I hadn’t. When someone consistently eats a lot of food, their stomach volume increases, and gradually distends beyond its ability to revert. At that point, to achieve a feeling of physical satiety, a large volume of food is always required (hence the need for gastric bypass, lap bands, etc.). Add to that a high calorific value, and you’ve got a recipe for morbid obesity in some people. My coworker’s self-reported experience in Ireland was that he was constantly hungry because he physically could not get enough food in restaurants to fill his stomach - that he could afford, anyway - and had to walk everywhere, and he lost weight.
I’m wondering if the reason that you’re thus far withholding is HFCS subsidies? If so, I suspect that probably is part of the picture.