Who said anything about ordering the lowest calorie option every time? You think every thin person around has never eaten a cheeseburger? The statement was “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,” and my response was some curiosity about how much effort is involved in eating better food. As a rule, we should eat healthy food (which apparently can be difficult for some people), but no one is going to plunge into diabetes for having a slice of cake every now and again.
I have heard this so often that it’s cheaper to eat unhealthfully than healthfully, and I don’t get it at all. The most expensive foods in the grocery store are the convenience products, which are generally processed and loaded with calories. The fresh produce section is probably the most cost-efficient place to shop in the whole store, especially if you try to shop seasonally. It does take some effort to cook healthfully, but I don’t think it costs more. Of course, if you buy pre-made salads, that is expensive because you’re paying someone to do the chopping for you (again, the convenience products are the most expensive), so if you want to pick up dinner on the way home, all bets are off.
Maybe I’m not being clear, I’m sorry. I think that, as a general principle, food obtained outside the home in a timely manner often has more calories, can well be cheaper, and certainly takes less time to get than cooking at home for oneself.
The most important thing to me in my statement which you quoted above is the effort and deprivation thing. And I don’t mean just time spent. Of course thin people have cheeseburgers and cake - as I mentioned above, my roommate loves cheeseburgers. If I want to lose weight, however, I consistently need to choose lower-calorie options over foods I want to eat, and eat less of them than I want to.
All right, let me break this down.
Obesity is much more of a problem in America than in many other countries with similiar levels of technology, health care, education, etc. Clearly, this cannot be a **purely **genetic problem, because, being a nation of immigrants, we’re pretty diverse in terms of our ethnic makeup as a whole. So, there must be something about the **choices **Americans make that leads more of us to becoming fat. If we continue to dishonestly insist that obesity is **entirely **caused by factors that we cannot control (genetics), we cannot begin to search for and address the reasons why Americans make poor choices in terms of diet and exercise that cause our epidemic of obesity. As long as we continue to deny that it’s anything we do that makes us fat, we can’t trace those choices back to the attitudes that influenced them, thereby giving us the opportunity to address and change those attitudes.
I do not believe this is true. Sure, there are a staggering number of Burger Kings around, but quick and cheap food obtained outside the home need not be picked up via a fast food chain drive-thru window. There is no shortage of places where you can grab, say, a cheap taco -that is, some grilled up meat thrown into a corn tortilla with pico on top- in two minutes. I know the unhealthy places may seem like the automatic “Don’t have time. Don’t have a lot of money” go-to option, but they are not.
Okay. Believe me or don’t believe me. I have an easier time eating healthily when I eat at home than when I do not.
Shit, I misread you wrote. Yes, of course it’s easier to eat healthy when you go to the market, pick out your own food, and prepare it yourself. I guess I was getting previous posts mixed up in my mind, and was reading that as “generally, food obtained outside the home cheaply and quickly is necessarily unhealthy, or difficult to find,” which is what I was disagreeing with.
I disagree with that, too. Glad we’re back on the same page!
I think one major cause of weight gain in America that perhaps is less prevalent elsewhere is dieting. Specifically, weight cycling (“yo-yo dieting”).
People think they’re overweight, so naturally it’s as easy as eating less and exercising more, right? But over 95% of people who diet regain all that weight within five years, and often regain a little more. Usually when people diet they lost fat and muscle tissue. Often when they regain, they regain mostly fat tissue. This imbalance in fat/lean tissue is unhealthy in and of itself, it lowers your overall metabolism, and makes it harder to lose weight in the future. Not impossible, just harder. So then the person tries to diet again, they lost some weight, and then mostly likely they regain it all again plus some more. Wash, rinse, repeat.
It’s far more healthy to be someone who gradually gained weight to 250 pounds and then stayed there than to be someone who was 190, then 140, then 210, then 140, then 240, then 140, then 250. You end up at the same weight, but you’ve frakked up your metabolism and body composition and put yourself at a much higher risk for health problems.
Not I’m saying people shouldn’t try to lose weight. But obviously, statistically across the American population, the “you just need to diet” message isn’t being effective at producing long-term weight loss. In fact, I think obsession with dieting may be contributing to making Americans even fatter than they would have been. Maybe other cultures also have some overweight people, but due to less social obsession with dieting, those overweight people don’t often weight-cycle themselves into obesity.
There are great examples of people who show us how dieting can work when it’s presented as a healthy lifestyle change, but we do need to recognize that in the real world this is unlikely to happen to most dieters. Why this is so and what can be done about it is a much more complicated question. Just blaming obese people for eating too much isn’t the best answer though, as their very efforts to eat less and diet, and then not succeeding long-term for various reasons, likely contributes to their increasing weight.
Side note: “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.”
Your credibility would be vastly improved if you argued as honestly as you insist others should. As it stands, you are setting the example for the behavior you decry.
Well right, that’s my point. I would never advise someone to “just diet” because that automatically conjures up images of someone eating rice cakes and sweating to the oldies until coming to the realization that eating all this fad food, and trying to exercise for an hour everyday is not a lifestyle change that’s sustainable. I’m talking about taking a different approach entirely to eating and physical activity.
Do not eat shit, fattening, processed, artificial foods. Do not take the stairs to the third floor. Do not drive your car three blocks. Participate in activities that don’t involve cards or keyboards like swimming, bicycling, or hiking. We’re not saying “just diet,” we’re saying “live differently” which will involve eating healthier and increased exercise.
By saying, flat-out, that obesity is influenced by genetics and environment, and also involves an element of personal responsibility? By saying that food culture in America is fucked up? By saying that it is easier for some people to stay thin than others? Yes, very dishonest of me.
I see you’re still weaseling out of doing anything remotely resembling being honest, Mr. Weasel McWeaselalot.
It amazes me that you can talk about credibility. You made a big display about genetics, but when I asked you to specifically tell me what about your genetics makes it nearly impossible for you to lose weight you ignore it. You want to spout that popular “Genetics!” mantra, but do you understand what that means in relation to losing weight? You took another poster to task about not knowing enough about bariatrics, but what do you know? Your posts smack of someone who reads a lot of media-catchphrase articles and regurgitates it as if it should be accepted as fact.
Well said. Of course we can’t ignore the reality of genetics, but what angers me more than anything is the insinuation that you’re fucked before you even try so why try OR just the negativity that DOES NOT HELP the situation at all.
It angers me because it gives the idea that you are helpless and hopeless. It isn’t that people want to beat someone over the head with personal responsibility. Also, how did personal responsibility become such a negative concept? With responsibility comes ABILITY. You can take control of the things you can affect. You can educate yourself and take an active role in your own health.
Yes there is a lot of bad information out there regarding food and weight. As a healthcare worker who has worked with the morbidly obese, this infuriates me more than you can imagine. It sucks that we all have to think about “What are they trying to sell me?” when it comes to health.
Still, I can’t think of anything else in life more important than your health. Not money, not career, not anything. It is important to take care of yourself the best you can. Eat whole foods, not processed foods and you can control the fat, sodium, and calories much easier. Do yourself a favor and go to the websites of your favorite fast food or chain restaurants and look at the nutrition information to make the best choice possible when it comes to eating out. Go to the library and get “Eat This, Not That” or go to Weight Watchers and get their guide to eating out. Educate yourself and make good choices.
People need to realize that it isn’t a diet in the traditional sense. It’s a change in how you look at food. Find other things to bring you comfort or find foods that are good for you to be your comfort foods. Think of food as energy and eat what can give you the most to build muscle to burn fat more effectively. Just look at the passion eating inspires in a lot of people, especially on this site. Of course we want food that tastes good, but is that more important than your health? Splurges are okay once in a while, but jeez.
Most of all: there isn’t a time you can just say “OK, I’m at the weight I want to be so I can stop eating right and exercising.” It has to be a forever change or it isn’t going to last.
Define “display” - are you just jumping on the idea that because I put in red, the meaning of that was “It’s the only thing that counts and it means nothing else matters so don’t even bother”? Because if you did, that would be a stupid interpretation of what I wrote. Reding complete sentences and paragraphs and, god forbid, whole posts in context can really be remarkably helpful in fully understanding what someone is saying, including any nuace, sarcasm, or other attitudes not directly conveyed by the words standing alone. Let’s try it:
I emphasized the word genetics because it is the #1 “Oh you’re so full of shit you’re just making excuses” attack, so I knew that even mentioning it was going to trigger that knee jerking so hard you’d probably kick yourself in the face - so, if you read it again, you’ll see that what I was clearly doing was letting you (and anyone else know)I knew that it was going to be attacked by shining a red light on it.
Bottom line: Someone who says: “I can’t help it, I’m just genetically preprogrammed to be fat and there’s nothing else that contributes to the situation whatsoever.” is full of shit.
Someone who says “You blame it all on your genes and that’s just a big excuse!” is also full of shit, both because saying genes don’t matter is false but when speaking to ME, it is additionally false because I do not and never have blamed obesity on genetics alone, or even primarily.
Now. Show me where I’ve obsessed about genetics as the end all be all of obesity again? Good luck with that.
Oh please, you did more than just emphasize the word genetics. Your entire paragraph was one big bitchy display of regurgitation of information that you apparently don’t really grasp.
I said you were obsessed with genetics? Are you always this delusional because that would explain many threads I’ve read of yours over the years. As it is I’ll just take your blah-blah-blah for what it’s worth… more nonsense from one of our resident nutjobs.
Wrap yourself up in whatever you need to feel better about your situation, it matters not to me. You can either educate yourself and work toward your goals or continue to come here and play your post-lawyering games and pretend you have very little control over your body. It’s your life.
If that’s what you were trying to do, I have to say that it’s really not clear at all…even after you explained it.
Drop one little “n’t” from that,and it’d be answered then asked. I mean did you read the OP of the thread you’re posting in?
Also the troll op also used personal responsibility as the poor should die in the streets, and teenage mothers should starve in another thread. You have sociopaths like Carol Stream trying to say Katrina victims deserved what they got and shouldn’t have gotten any help. How about the bank thread where the same $5 crack whore poster used personal responsibility to call an upset victim of the economy a thief for choosing default over becoming a hobo?
Personal responsibly is great, and empowering, but it shouldn’t be a fucking bludgeon to beat the unfortunate senseless. All too often “personal responsibility” means “fuck the down trodden. I’ve got mine and I’d like to laugh at their misfortune, and screw them them further, if possible”
Apparently it happens a lot easier for Canadians than Americans. Why is that?
If you want to lose weight than that is great, arm your self with knowledge and go at it. It’ll be hard but it’s definitely doable, and a positive change for you life. However if you want to berate people, who’s weight seems to be heavily dependent on whether they grew saying aboot or about, by calling them worthless, pigs, “its”, etc. as the bigot op has made this thread for, than it’s gonna make people hostile.
Not that you’ve done, but you can see why this thread might be extra hostile, yea?
I’ve never understood why people find it satisfying to shift into personal attacks when they run out of genuine substantive arguments. But I guess it makes you feel better, so…<shrug>
And at least in doing it you make your motives clear, that’s always helpful going forward
I think the difficulty of being fit is pretty equal for most people. I think it’s harder for some people to be thin, though.
I agree
Why not? Why shouldn’t people want to be healthier, as opposed to thinner? Though they may correlate somewhat, they are not the same.