backpedal much, counselor??
Nope. You?
Well, I am sorry too because I was over-reacting when I wrote the post that made you so mad. It is a VERY sensitive issue to me, too. I won’t go on any more about it here except to say that I for one, do not see AA as “PC nonsense”, and I do think it has helped some people. You may be one of them; my best friend is another. I have more of an issue with the fact that almost everyone who seeks help from a doctor about ANY issue with drinking–no matter how minor–is shoved into AA which, number 1, may not be the appropriate place for them, and number 2, their care is turned over to an unlicensed, untrained layperson who may give harmful advice for which the layperson (sponsor) can not be held legally or ethically responsible for.
It just seems a little too close to malpractice for a physician to send a patient that he/she has diagnosed as having a “chronic, progressive, incurable disease” to an anonymous, untrained person with no accountability.
That is actually what I was trying to say in my last post. I just “put some lipstick on the pig” because I felt bad about the way I had posted earlier.
Well, it wasn’t me, but two of my family members – one of them a favorite aunt. I don’t know the details of whether or not they were forced to go, but as far as the my aunt, I’m guessing she got counseling from my great-aunt.
Truce?
I will not directly address you or your family members and your/their choices of treatment for their chemical use/abuse situations. I can only go that far though, because I firmly believe it to be, on balance, destructive for medical providers to refer their patients to untrained, unlicensed, unaccountable laypersons.
I love you, Vol. 1.
Fair enough.
As for the OP, though, I doubt his “methods” would work for any addiction…
No, it’s about getting you to admit that you’re pushing entirely one side of the story. I have said, repeatedly, that it’s a combination of genetics & other predecided factors and personal choice. You keep screaming “genetics.” I’m fighting **your **ignorance.
This isn’t about “winning” or “losing”–this is about getting you to admit reality. I feel like I’m saying, “Green pigment is a combination of yellow and blue pigments,” while you shout back, “Green isn’t YELLOW, you idiot! It’s blue! Blue, blue, blue!”
So, if an obese person cuts their caloric intake to below their caloric needs, through some combination of taking in fewer calories or burning more, they won’t lose weight? It **is **as simple as that, because that is **literally **the only way to lose weight. Now, getting someone to the point where they are able to make the decisions to do that, that’s the part that’s more complicated. But the actual basis of how it works? Very, very simple.
Also, did you seriously skim past every single post where I acknowledged that people’s metabolisms aren’t built alike? That it’s much easier for some people to stay fit than others?
Here’s an analogy for you: my car has a 5 gallon gas tank. (Shut up, it’s a very tiny car.) Your car has a 15 gallon gas tank. I see you filling your car with 15 gallons of gas, so I do the same thing. Whoops, suddenly gas is spurting everywhere! If I don’t turn the pump off, that’s not my fault, though, right? Because if you put 15 gallons of gas in your tank, surely I must be able to put 15 gallons in mine! All this gas spilling everywhere isn’t **my **fault.
If you can find anywhere in this thread that I said that fat people are fat for no other reason than their own choices, I’ll send you a dollar. You’re not going to find it. Seriously, do you have some sort of problem with comprehension, that you can only see the parts of my posts that are about personal choice?
If genetics is everything, why is obesity so much more of a problem in the U.S. than in other countries? Why are Amish men with “fat” genes, who get plenty of exercise, **not **obese?
A lot of people don’t have a choice about AA–it will be part of a sentence. AA isn’t medical treatment; it’s pseudoscience, and there’s evidence to show that it doesn’t even really work.
You have cancer. Now, imagine that instead of chemo or radiation or surgery, you’re just going to get handed off to some other guy who had cancer before, and he’s going to give you some pills. No clue what’s in 'em, but he says they worked for him! You’ve heard rumors about other treatments, administered by actual doctors, but you can’t get any real details, because everybody keeps pushing you into the group where you get this sponsor. Does that seem fair to you?
Well said.
When eating less, more healthily, and exercising more takes as little time, money and, most importantly, effort and deprivation as getting glasses, get back to me.
Of course, doing that is just as easy as getting glasses too, right?
I don’t disagree with you in general - I think it’s obviously true that everyone’s metabolism is different, and different metabolic needs lead to different behaviours needed to stay at a healthy weight. What I think you discount is the difficulty of implementing those behaviours.
Sleeps With Butterflies, there actually are people who are naturally thin, though. Not my mother - she’s a size 4 but monitors everything that enters her mouth. My roommate on the other hand (and trust me - we spend a scary amount of time together, I know what she actually eats and how much activity she does) is a size 2 with no effort at all. I try to go to the gym (1-2 a week lately, I’m not the best at going), she hasn’t deliberately exercised since I’ve met her. She walks to school more than I do. I try to watch my weight and what I’m eating with varying levels of success, she will happily order three cheeseburgers from the drive-through at McDonalds. She smokes, and drinks at least 4 cups of coffee a day with mountains of sugar and whole milk.
Yes, if I acted differently, I would weigh a different amount. But let’s not pretend that the effort levels for everyone are the same.
How expensive and time consuming is eating healthier food?
I’ll take your question at face-value, although I’m a little dubious that anyone nowadays hasn’t figured this out for themselves.
The answer - very. Homecooked meals, in which I control the amount of calories and fat completely, take a lot more time and effort than picking something up on the way home. Good fruits and vegetables cost more than chicken nuggets. Obviously not everything that’s healthy is harder and more expensive than everything that’s less healthy, but it’s definitely the overall pattern.
There’s no restaurant you can pick up food from other than McDonald’s, or some other place that only sells unhealthy, fattening food? Even so, McDonald’s offers salads, some with as little as 90 calories, and a more typical chicken salad with 410. You can also order yogurt with fruit, which will cost you about 160. I’m not recommending an all McDonald’s diet, but if we’re talking price and convenience here, it’s just as easy to order a salad with yogurt as it is to order a Big Mac with fries.
I rarely, if ever, eat at McDonalds. In fact, the thing I most often pick up on my way home is salad. Salads can have lots of calories - often more than hamburgers. In fact, both McDonald’s hamburgers and cheeseburgers have fewer calories than the chicken salad (at 250 and 300 respectively). Heck, even the 6 piece McNuggets are only 280.
I do find it quite difficult to find things that are low in calories, healthy and easy to pick up. If you only do it once in a while, it’s okay, but I’m not willing to eat Subway every single day.
I don’t eat at McDonald’s either, primarily because the food tastes like flavor threw up then died in it. But my post wasn’t about what McDonald’s tastes like, or who eats there. I suppose you’ll have to continue to be dubious, because I do not see where the deprivation, cost and time consumption come into ordering a different menu item, or simply going to another restaurant. Where do you live that restaurants that serve healthy food are expensive, and not readily available? They don’t have to be chains, but there aren’t little delis, stands or markets that’ll sell you something reasonably healthy and cheap on the go?
Regarding buying groceries and cooking at home, chicken leg quarters and rice are dirt cheap. And if you don’t have the money, time or knowledge to cook rice, you’re probably dead by now.
Should you decide to engage in this conversation from a fundamentally honest perspective, I will reply. Until then, it is a pointless exercise. (Considering this statement it’s pretty funny that you accuse me of not paying attention to everything that YOU say.)
Actually, I’m willing to spend money to eat better - expense is one thing I can handle (to a certain extent). But sometimes (not often anymore, thankfully) I really did not have the time to cook rice. And I certainly didn’t have the time to go food shopping.
I’m not saying, and have never said, that it’s impossible to eat in a calorie-restricted way when eating out. Only that it’s harder. Portion control is especially difficult when food is served TO me. And, honestly, it’s not always easy for me to order the lowest-calorie item on the menu, time after time, when my favourite food is more calories. That’s part of the ‘effort’ category.
Clearly you’ve never tried to get comfy laying down while wearing glasses. 
Seriously, though–it wasn’t intended to be a 1:1 correlation, and I never said it was.
Oh, good, so you **can **point out a single post in this thread where you’ve ascribed **any **reason to people’s obesity that isn’t something out of their control?
I know plenty of people who quit drinking on their own. I know plenty of people who had no luck with AA. It’s not a magic wand. You still have to “quit drinking.” AA isn’t the answer for people who aren’t Joiners (at least that’s my observation).
Me and my -8.5/-9 eyes beg to differ on your first statement! One of the happiest days of my life was when I was finally old enough to get contact lenses.
It’s true that you didn’t, but not mentioning the vast, vast differences between the two makes the comparison invalid, in my opinion.