Just the walking alone seemed to do it for me in England. After seven years there I moved back to England and immediately started putting on weight simply because I wasn’t walking or cycling everywhere. It’s not as if moving to the US made me eat more food, because I was actually eating even less in restaurants than I had before when I temporarily lacked a job and means of transport.
I’m not sure what we can do about that part of it. There would have to be a massive rethinking of city planning, public transportation, and a whole lot else before walking instead of driving became the norm in the US. It’s not simply a matter of “live downtown instead of the suburbs if you want to walk everywhere.” I lived in what you’d probably call the suburbs for a while in England, too, and I still was able to walk to local shops or to the bus stop where a not overly-expensive ride took me to the city center to work. There aren’t even any sidewalks where I live in the US. The nearest bus stop is about four miles away, and if I wanted to take the bus to work I’d probably be looking at an extra two hours’ travel each day even after that walk. The point is that I didn’t go out of my way to walk and cycle all the time when I lived in the UK–it was a side benefit of doing other things. If I want to walk in the US, I have to take time out of other things I’d be doing because here it takes as long to get somewhere by car as it did to get to the equivalent place in the UK by walking or cycling.
Not really. Some rides do have weight limits. A large friend of mine was taken off Space Mountain once. However the park was very nice about it and pulled the car off the track and announced that his seat belt wasn’t working.
I just went to London few months ago, I would be shocked to see a fat person there. The amount of walking one had to do, plus the speed to keep up the pace on the streets. There is simply no reason to be fat in England! And also their largest size for women is a U.S. size 12. Here, it is middle of the rung.
I actually lost several pounds there. I would never walk that much again as in my hometown here as everything is far away and travel by car only.
I also want to add: Lots of smoking in Europe, which helps keep weight down. So what is worse, smoking or obesity? Straight Dope got this answered and said smoking.
For those of you who are complaining that there just isn’t enough time in the day to exercise, I have a helpful hint for you. You can also lose weight by just eating less.
Your health indicators probably won’t go up as much as if you were exercising, but you WILL lose weight.
So, stop rationalizing (as I predicted you would), and stop making excuses, and just eat less. If you TRULY have NO time at all, just eat less. And eat healthier foods.
It really isn’t much more complicated than that. If you feel hungry, tough it out.
I’m on no pedestal. I’ve struggled with my weight wildly and I sympathize with everyone who has health problems due to being overweight and try their best to live a healthy life. Weight is only an indicator, and if you are eating well and working out, even if you are overweight, you are probably pretty healthy.
But I also have no sympathy for people who rationalize bad behavior.
How dare you suggest that a person has any responsibility for how their life turns out! Why, stuff just happens to people randomly, beyond their control–e.g., whether they are rich or poor, skinny or fat, etc. etc. Please report to re-education at your earliest convenience.
I agree with this. I work with a woman who is severely obese to the point she’s gasping for air as she walks. You would have to be shoveling down food 24/7 to be that heavy were it food-related, surely. I mean “hot dog eating contest” eating.
I recently separated from my husband and can’t be arsed to cook for myself so my eating habits have become atrocious. (Lots of fast food, frozen/canned food, dinners out, etc.) I haven’t gained any weight - in fact I think I may have lost some.
Re: large portion sizes. I don’t think people actually EAT an entire large portion at once - they take some home in a to-go box. There’s a pasta dish I get at Chili’s that I manage to get three whole meals out of. The only time I have seen an outright brassy instance of overeating was when I was in my twenties and my teenage brother and his friend came out to visit me when I moved to SF. The friend was about 6’6", skinny as a rail, and ate an entire large pizza, a salad, half the breadsticks, and part of OUR pizza.
Re: medical care. I once for some reason started receiving a business/investment magazine in the mail I’d never subscribed to. I remember an article discussing that some of the hottest up-and-coming businesses were those making special medical equipment for obese people: larger cat scan machines, wheelchairs, reinforced beds, etc.
Re: vanity sizing/stores like Wal-Mart catering to fat people. I’m 5’1" and about 165 pounds. 165 is not HORRIBLE but because I’m so short it’s technically fat. Most stores I go into I struggle to find things that fit well. K-mart? I’m a size medium, and even then my pants are a little loose around the waist.
Re: “Fat-bashing thread”: Not. There have been truly disgusting fat-bashing threads here and this is not it.
Haha, I am a strong believer in people being responsible for their ACTIONS. If somebody happens to be born into a shitty situation and the deck is stacked against them, I am a little bit more sympathetic.
For example, people who let their kids become obese during adolescence are doing a huge disservice to their kids, and possibly drastically shortening their kid’s life. Is this the kid’s fault? Not at all.
Now when that kid becomes a fat adult, he’s responsible for getting into shape and living a healthy life. He can’t blame his parents forever, but you have to admit that in a situation like that, he certainly has it harder than a kid who had good nutrition and exercise drilled into his head from childhood.
And still the most critically important question doesn’t occur to you: why does he eat that much? If all three of you are grown men, how is that the two who are not overweight can barely manage to split an appetizer while the obese man can eat it all by himself along with a burger and dessert? Are you not the same species as he? What’s different about you two vs. him that creates such an enormous disparity in desire?
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If? When one starves oneself to lose weight (required if one is losing weight by simply reducing the amount of food one eats, vs. what kind), hnger is the natural result. Since some degree of starvation will be necessary forever to maintain the reduced weight, such a person will have to cope with hunger pretty much constantly.
Does this seem like a reasonable expectation to you?
Starvation? Serioulsy? And constant hunger? Prone to exaggeration much? Get an appetite surpressant. It doesn’t take that long to train your body into eating less, and nobody suggests a total starvation diet.
I don’t know why you would be skeptical about a person’s own experience of weight loss - especially considering Stoid has been losing weight successfully for quite some time. For some people, losing weight is a lot harder than it is for others. That’s just reality. We’ve all got shit to deal with - for me it’s chronic depression. Pretty hard to get my ass off the couch and exercise when I don’t even particularly want to be alive. It doesn’t stop me from trying, but Jesus, show a little compassion.
They are temporary, and when they stop working, the appetite comes back with a vengeance.
Starvation is starvation, and “eating less”, to the point where the body will feed off of its stores of fat, is by definition starvation. It has to be in order to work. Which leads to changes in the body that will, with almost no exceptions, lead to a more ravenous appetite than before, more overeating in response to the body screaming at you to eat more, and greater obesity than you started with.
Olives: yes, I’m losing weight - but it is completely painless, the only way I could possibly have lasted so long. I am constitutionally incapable of white-knuckling for more than a very short period of time.
I gave myself a Thanksgiving Week break and watched myself in total fascination as my body shifted gears completely and suddenly (about Day 3, actually) it seemed as if there was simply not enough food to ever truly fill me up and satisfy my desire for more; the only thing that really worked to stop me was phsyical capacity and even then I wanted more. Coming on the heels of 9 months of borderline indifference to food it was amazing- just a crystal clear confirmation.
And it wasn’t painless shutting it down, either- I knew that returning to my normal eating patterns WOULD shut it down, of that there was no question, but the cravings lingered (though steadily decreasing) for a solid 10 days after I went back to my now-normal diet of fat and protein.
And over the course of that week (which was actually 5 days, not 7) I gained about 10 pounds, but I’ve lost 7 of it already.
In future I will limit my splurges to a maximum of 2 days. I’ve done three other 2-day breaks over the past 9 months and they were all much mellower. It was letting it go to that third day that was the killer.
Tone aside, I think benganmo is questioning that a maintenance diet is starvation. While as Stoid says a fat-burning diet is starvation by definition, one that keeps you the same weight is not, by definition.
People are full of stupid excuses. My favorite is, “I don’t have *time *to lose weight!!” Um, if all you do is eat less, you *will *lose weight. And since you would be spending less time eating, it actually *saves *you time.
Another I love is, “But I’m too poor to lose weight! I can only afford fast food and junk food.” This is so pathetic that it doesn’t even deserve a response.