To the OP…this skitis why you see so many overweight folks.
begbert, the reason that weight loss is important for diabetics is that it tends to improve blood sugar control. If your blood sugar control is already perfect, you don’t need to lose weight. All complications of diabetes are caused by poor blood sugar control over time. Excessive weight is just a contributing factor to poor blood sugar control.
Also, telling someone that they look like a moron is 1) subjective and 2) rude. I don’t care what he said to you first. This is a lesson that I work on teaching my second-grader as well, although hopefully he’ll figure out before he’s 40 years old.
It’s not that I’m not pooping, it’s that I’m pooping substantially less than when I…wait for it…ate substantially more. The notion that there’s a correlation there is supported by incidents a little while back where I would binge for a day, and dump more copiously the day after. And I don’t actually think I’m pooping to little for what I eat; the only reason I mentioned it all was to support my freewheeling ‘theory’ that poop was the major determiner in your caloric levels, 'cause I was tired of repeating the actual determiner over and over and over to no apparent effect.
Oh, and I do eat one of those little cups of low-fat yogurt each day. It’s my daily dairy!
I’m afraid I don’t believe this. It contradicts everything I’ve heard everywhere, including from my doctor. Now, I couldn’t tell you what the mechanism by which obesity exacerbates type-2 diabetes is, but I’m pretty sure it exists, and isn’t just the blood sugar. After all obesity is a cause of diabetes prior to when your blood sugar suddenly decides to go out of whack.
Also, my blood sugar is only perfect due to the magic of modern pharmacology. If I stopped taking the pills, I doubt it would be. I do still have the disease, after all.
I’m not 40 yet either, so I guess I dodged that bullet!
As for the being rude thing, I have a hard time getting bothered about the idea of insulting people’s hobbies, probably because most or all of my hobbies are so very, very insultable. So I kind of expect a mature person to grin and accept that their hobbies are dumb in various ways, and not care because they like the hobby anyway - which Try2B Comprehensive did.
Plus the fact that yoga looks goofy is kind of relevent to the discussion, because the point of relevence is that I don’t want to be seen looking goofy doing it. This actually works even though it is a subjective assessment, because this issue is specific to my perspective on things anyway.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
Quite seriously, I don’t really laugh at yogaers or exercise fiends. I shake my head in pity. Poor folks, wasting their lives like that…
[/quote]
I’d expect an overweight person to be more sensitive to how negative comments can hurt. “Quite seriously, I don’t really laugh at my overweight friends. I shake my head in pity. Poor folks, wasting their lives like that…” How many overweight people here have posted how worried they are about joining a gym because they think everyone will make fun of them?
Begbert, I really don’t understand your point in this thread. I could see if everyone was saying exercise was the only way to lose weight and you were trying to prove them wrong. But we’re not saying that. Exercise can be useful to losing weight. You have to agree with that. Even you are doing some exercising. You have to agree with the fact that there is some benefit.
But when you’re posting how exercise is ineffective and people look like morons doing it, you’re doing a disservice to overweight people. There are two ways to lose weight: eat less or be more active. Don’t discourage people from trying one of the ways to lose weight. Most people gain 2 pounds per year. A little extra exercise of 100 calories per day would negate that gain.
Go ask your doctor why obesity is bad for diabetics. My guess is she’ll say something to the effect of, “Because it makes blood sugar control more difficult.” Body fat tends to increase insulin resistance. Sure, being obese is a risk factor for diabetes. So is having a genetic predisposition. That doesn’t mean that either of those things in and of themselves increase your blood sugar. If it did, then every single fat person would have high blood sugar and be diabetic, and they’re certainly not. A friend of mine who used to weigh well over 300 pounds would routinely get beautiful blood sugar results on her yearly physical exam.
You don’t have to believe me. Ask your doctor or read some books on diabetes. You continue to demonstrate that you have a very poor understanding of your disease.
If you don’t appreciate the incomparability of “persistent traits” and “momentary activities”, then there is no way to discuss this with you.
I disagree that exercise is useful for losing weight. Exercise has other benefits, but not for losing weight. If you’re doing it for the express purpose of losing weight, you are acting on false information and wasting your time.
I do some exercising, but not to lose weight. I do it mainly because I’m a moron with habits, who will continue to entertain a habit even after it has proven to be ineffective. Also, I bought the bloody bike, and if I never ever use it it just sits around taking up space for no reason.
I have also lately been told to do some exercise by my doctor, because my “good” cholesterol levels were a little low in my blood test. Let’s note that the purpose of this is NOT to lose weight. Of course, her advice on this matter is barely a blip on my radar; I’m not particularly worried about my “good” cholesterol level at the moment.
People who tell people that exercise is a good way to lose weight are doing a disservice to fat people, because it’s not true. Particularly for fat people, who will almost certainly not be doing the excessive levels of exercise required to burn enough calories to matter. Telling them that they should be exercising is just shoving them into a time-consuming unpleasant activity that will not be effective, and which as a result will impell them to give up and quit their entire diet program altogether. Gee, what a great result to be pushing them towards!
There are two ways to lose weight: eat less, and eat better foods. Exercise has effects so negligible that they may safely be disregarded. (Seriously, you just told me it’s a easy way to alter your weight two pounds in the span of a year. Just think about that for a while.)
And you said “If your blood sugar control is already perfect, you don’t need to lose weight.” That is a false statement. You start bringing in secondary side effects of weight, then you are talking about “the mechanism by which obesity exacerbates type-2 diabetes”, and you have changed your position to agree with me.
But if you want to keep pretending that you’re oh so smart and I’m oh so ignorant about diabetes, go ahead. It just convinces me you’re more interested in scoring points than in the facts.
I’m not trying to score points. I think you misunderstood what I said. What causes complications of diabetes is high blood sugar over time. If your blood sugar is perfect, then you’re good to go. Yeah, having more fat can make it tougher to get your blood sugar in good control, but if your blood sugar is already in great control, then that’s clearly not a problem for you, is it?
The issue with foot amputations is vascular damage caused by high blood glucose. There’s some research out there right now that says that maybe high blood glucose isn’t 100% of the cause of complications (which I just found out five minutes ago by surfing around the NIH website) but certainly the extreme complications such as amputation are caused by vascular damage (supported by the NIH website, FYI), which again, is caused by high blood glucose. Being fat will not cause you to have a foot amputation. It may make it harder for you to control your blood glucose, although even that is up in the air, because there is also research indicating that some people’s insulin resistance changes significantly with changes in body fat, and some people’s does not. (Ungrammatical, but you get the point, I hope.)
Here’s something I’ve learned in years of being in and out of different diabetes clinics, seen by different experts, including GPs, diabetes nurses, and endocrinologists: Most people with diabetes don’t want to learn a damn thing about their disease. (I am not saying this includes you, begbert; I am leading up to a bigger point, here.) Most people just want to take the pills or do the exercises or whatever, and get better. They do not want to know what the mechanism of the disease is. They do not want to know what causes it. They do not want to have to do a lot of work. They just want a relatively easy way to fix it. Doctors have experience with this type of patient, and tend to assume that most patients are going to be like this, and so a lot of times they give patients the dumbed-down version of reality, i.e. just enough information to get the patient into a good blood glucose range. So you tend to hear things like, “Being overweight will cause your diabetes to be worse,” which is kind of true in a sense, but not necessarily true, and not technically all that accurate.
Anyway, this experience of mine is why I keep urging you to do some reading on your own. I am certainly not telling you not to lose weight, as that has benefits all on its own. I am just saying that the goal with diabetes is primarily to get your blood glucose into the normal range most or all of the time. Weight loss is only important insofar as it helps you meet that primary goal.
Oh, that definitely includes me. I don’t want to make diabetes a time-consuming hobby any more than I want to make exercise a time-consuming hobby; as previously noted I have better things to do with my time.
I’m torn about the diabetes discussion, because on the one hand as soon as it departs from the issue of weight loss it doesn’t belong in this thread, but on the other hand it’s mildly interesting anyway (as long as I’m watching things compile, anyway). But I’ll ask one question anyway. I was told this thing was a progressive disease. If it can be completely halted by controlling blood sugar, which my metformin hydrochloride does a perfect job of doing, then it’s effectively not one; it will be held in place indefinitely. Which is it?
I am not a doctor, but this question is of personal interest to me as well and I’ve spent some time trying to find out the answer, and as far as I can tell, the answer is: You can reduce your risk of complications almost (but not completely) down to zero, by keeping your blood sugar in the normal range. If you do not keep your blood sugar in the normal range, then the disease will indeed progress slowly. It does incremental damage over time (which is one of the reasons it can be hard to get people to take it seriously - it is hard to put out any effort to fix something when you feel completely 100% OK right now).
Now, there are some people who apparently develop complications of diabetes even though their blood sugar is in good control. My personal opinion about this is as follows. This is all personal conjecture and I don’t have cites for it, I’m just speculating here. First, even keeping your blood sugar in “good control” may not actually be keeping it in the range of a normal, non-diabetic person’s blood sugar, so even “good control” may lead to minor damage over a long period of time. Second, there is possibly some mechanism that causes damage to the body besides for high blood glucose. I’ve seen speculation in some studies that diabetics’ blood can be harmful to nerves and blood vessels in and of itself, even when blood glucose is not high. So that’s a possibility. Third, a lot of people who are diagnosed as diabetic ran high blood glucose numbers for some time prior to diagnosis, so some damage could have been done at that time.
But, it is known that if you get your blood glucose into the normal range, this greatly minimizes the risk of complications, and can apparently reverse some complications such as neuropathy. So, it’s not a 100% guarantee but it’s close.
I am with you, by the way, on not making this a time-consuming hobby. I did spend quite a bit of time reading up on it when I was first diagnosed, partially because that’s just how I am, and partially because I was pregnant when diagnosed and wanted to make extra sure I wasn’t harming my baby. But once you have the info, you have the info (more or less - research does change over time; but you still have the basics).
And yeah, this is a major hijack, I know, but it’s like page 15 and I don’t think that many people are still with us anyway. 
Thanks for the response.
So you’re saying it’s okay to mock someone for what they do but not how they look? Furthermore, being overweight is not a persistent trait. And I seriously doubt you would be okay with people mocking you doing your hobbies.
Seriously, how can you say this? Losing weight involves creating a calorie deficit. Any exercise will increase that deficit. Therefore, exercise is useful for losing weight.
I bolded your negative opinions. How do you know they won’t do enough exercise? How do you know they will find it unpleasant? Some people do enjoy running, biking, swimming, etc. Why are you sitting here shouting that people shouldn’t even try? You’re like a guy standing on the edge of the pool telling everyone not to get in because it’s too cold and they won’t have any fun. Jeez, let them find out if they like it for themselves. It is a huge uphill battle for overweight people to find the motivation to lose weight. There’s no need to discourage someone from trying something that may help. Just because you find exercise unpleasant doesn’t mean everyone else does.
That’s to counter the typical 2lb/year creep. And in actuality, 100 calories/day is 10lb/year. In addition, if you chose to do more intense exercise (where you breathe hard and sweat) your metabolism goes up. This will help you burn more calories even when you’re not working out. Just diet alone tends to slow your metabolism. Being sedate slows your metabolism. So regardless of the extra calories exercise burns, excercise can prevent the metabolism slowdown that would happen with just diet alone.
filmore, there is no scientific proof for any of what you just claimed. And no, your doctor, your trainer, your mom, and Google don’t know how it all works either.
I’m saying that changing “doing yoga” to “being overweight” is changing the equation completely. If you make a change that does not change the equation competely, like from “doing yoga” to “wearing a top hat”, then it doesn’t demonstrate quite the same level of cutting-remarkness, now does it?
Pardon me for a moment, I’m laughing uproariously at your statement that being overweight isn’t a persistent condition. I shall try to recover sufficiently to take anything you say from here on out seriously, but it shall be tough.
And I mock my hobbies. Would you like to? I can list them if you like, though technically this thread isn’t actually all about me.
I can say this because it’s not that simple and it doesn’t work that way. Particularly not in practice for persons who are already overweight and have the eating habits of an overweight person, and the physical disinclination to severe exercise of an overweight person.
I know they won’t do enough exercise because it takes an assload of exercise to have any effect at all, beyond the effects of changes in diet that may be occurring. There’s a load of goalpost-shifting in this thread about what “enough” exercise to lose weight actually is, and the degree to which it is expected it act on its own as opposed to being used simultaneously with a change in diet that would alone be sufficient to make a person lose weight. And regardless of misleading claims and implications, backfloating leisurely around the pool or taking a stroll through a department store once a week is not sufficient to make you lose weight. If it was, there would be no fat people. No, in real life, if you wanted to get rid of your ass through exercise alone, you’d have to exercise your ass off. That’s the facts.
And you just said why I want to discourage people from relying on something that won’t help to any noticeable degree - because it is a huge uphill battle for overweight people to find the motivation to lose weight. The weird part is that some people think that telling people they should be engaging in hard physical labor is going to motivate them somehow.
(This is not to say that there aren’t some people who would be able to find motivation in the fact that their lifestyle change includes arduous levels of exercise. People are widely varied and some of them pretty strange, after all. But the notion that this should be the first line of attack on weight is deranged.)
What’s your point? If the panting tired sweaty person flops down on the couch afterward with a bag of chips to satify their exercise-driven hunger afterwards then it’s all for naught, no matter how wound up you are.
This exercise stuff has petty little negligible effects on weight, compared to the impact of diet. If you really wanna get thin, you have to stop buying twinkies by the box. Period.
I just wanted to revisit this, because I believe it proves that the biology here does not function like the calorie-summing exerciseophiles seem to think it does.
Do you think that the typical person eats exactly the number of calories they need per day? Remember, the typical person doesn’t count their calories, or even eat precisely the same things each day. Note that according to filmore that 2lb/year creep only gives them an extra 20 calories per day to play with, which is nothing. Heck, 100 calories a day of extra food is nothing.
I think that a lot of people average 500 or more extra calories a day, easy. If the calorie-summing math actually worked, then by the filmore numbers such people would be gaining 50 pounds a year. Each year. Like clockwork. So take me - estimating very conservatively, I overate pretty gratuitously for at least twelve years prior to this diet thing. So, I should have weighed 600 pounds - assuming I only ate 500 extra calories a day, which I seriously doubt. (And also presuming I was weightless when I started, which seems unlikely but let’s not quibble over small details.)
Of course, if we go back to the conservative 2lbs/100 cals/day, then I would only have gained 120 pounds, which actually understates it some, keeping in mind that I didn’t actually eat that little. So this is an actually plausible number. Of course, this also means that to burn off 20 pounds in a year, I’d have to burn off 500 cals a day with exercise. Or rather I’d have to burn off 1000cals a day, because first I have to burn off what I’m overeating. I don’t suppose anybody would be willing to admit that that would count as strenuous exercise? No?
(I’ve lost nearly 100lbs in 9 months, by dieting, averaging less than 300 cals of exercise a day. In exercise alone that would be, what, 2500 or 3000 calories of exercise a day? Are we at strenuous yet?)
The calorie-summing argument for exercise relies on stating that calories convert to pounds at a fixed rate, and vaccilating wildly between goalposts on exactly how much a calorie is worth in fat - because at any value where exercise would cause significant weight loss, most of humanity would literally weigh half a ton. Which is a pretty large elephant in the room to be tiptoeing around.
I don’t want to mock you for anything. I won’t mock you for how you look, dress, talk, the car you drive, the hobbies you do, anything. I view all mocking as wrong. I think you should be sensitive to mocking when you are in a condition that gets mocked quite often.
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Why are you trying to speak for all overweight people? Not everyone is like you. Some people do get off the couch and run races. Read this article about an overweight woman who did the Danskin triathlon. She still does them today, and even enjoys it. And I hope no one mocked her for how she looked in cycling gear.
You seem to only see things in extremes. Either only diet or only exercise, but not both. Exercise is either backfloating leisurely around the pool or strenuous activity that causes you to pass out.
If the only choices you had to lose weight is to only diet or to only exercise, then diet is 100% the way to go. Exercise alone will not be very effective in losing weight. But if you are doing diet anyway, why not increase your calorie deficit with some added exercise? What is your daily diet deficit supposed to be? 500 calories? 1000 calories? Why not add an extra 100 calories of exercise and lose weight 10-20% faster? That’s 1 mile of walking (about 15-20 minutes). If that’s too strenuous, do less. If not, do more. Any additional calories is a bonus to what you’re cutting out of your diet.
You seem to be saying that any amount of exercise will cause the overweight person to flop down in exhaustion and give up their entire program in desperation. But if a person does 100 calories of walking, how does that harm their weight loss goals? You say they’ll flop down with a bag of chips. But if they can’t control their hunger from working out, how are they going to control their hunger from their diet?
If you want to say that you, begbert, don’t like exercise, that’s fine. But if you’re trying to say that the extra calories burned by exercise either has no effect or a negative effect on weight loss, please back that up with facts. And just to re-iterate, no one is saying to only exercise to lose weight. Exercise is in addition to diet.
I’m not a diet researcher, but I think people eat according to signals they receive from their body. They eat until their body feels satisfied or they feel they’ve eaten enough. I’m the type of person who suffers from the 2lb/year creep. I don’t eat 500 extra calories a day. I eat a little bit extra each day. But I keep it in check by weighing myself. If I see my weight going up, I cut back on the eating a bit.
Actually, 100lbs is 360,000 calories. That works out to about 1300 calories a day over that period. That is a lot of calories per day. It would be practically impossible for most people to exercise that amount. But you don’t have to only do exercise. You can diet 1000 calories and do 300 in exercise. Or 800 in diet and 500 in exercise. Or 1300 in diet and 0 from exercise.
Do you closely track the food you eat? How many calories did you eat before dieting and how many do you eat now?
well, more later. But first:
re: diabetes. I thought diabetes started with the eating away or ulceration of a valve in the duodenum, which screws up your hormones and insulin resistance/production… somehow. Well, I found an article that suggests surgery can resolve the issue.
Diabetes May Be Disorder Of Upper Intestine: Surgery May Correct It
It’d difficult to discuss this matter with somebody who doesn’t comprehend the incomparability of “persistent traits” and “momentary activities”.
But to put it simply, when dealing with the momentary activities - you know, the things you choose to do at a given moment? Those self-select. I suspect most people who are mortified at the thought of doing ballet, don’t do ballet, due to the mortification. So it it naturally follows that any person who engages in such an activity is going to be somewhat innoculated against criticism of it. (Admittedly this factor is lessened for ‘secret hobbies’, but if you were that ashamed of them, you wouldn’t ever mention them anyway.)
What does this mean? To put it in simple terms, people who mock you for things you can’t help (or which are very, very difficult to help) are jerks, but people who require everyone else to tiptoe around their elective hobbies are sensitive little hothouse flowers.
Dude. This is a message board thread. You have to speak in generalities. Requiring somebody to list every exception in the human race is absurd, even if it’s not the case that the statements are completely universal.
I’m actually aware of this fact, too, so I can’t be fooled by the “you can’t make generalizations because here’s this one exception, which proves that my generalizations are correct” argument. So when people use triatholoners and olympic atheletes as ‘proof’ that their generalizations about the average fat person are the correct generalizations, it’s doesn’t really merit a response anymore.
And you have critical comprehension failures about this whole mockery thing. I suggest you just drop it.
Right. There are two goalposts here: A, and B.
A: Enough exercise to cause discernible weight loss.
B: Enough exercise to qualify as strenuous.
For your criticism of my stating this in extremes not to be hallucinatory, A must be less than B - if A < B then there would indeed be a ‘middle ground’ where non-strenuous exercise would cause discernible weight loss.
But if B < A, then there is no middle ground and the only correct way to speak of this is in terms of extremes. And as best I can tell, both from limited experience and the numbers given by exerciseophiles*, B < A. For the average overweight person.
*tossing out distorted numbers that calculate that all heavy people weigh 1500 lbs.
Three reasons: 1) it’s easier to just eat another 100 calories less, if calories added and subtracted that linearly, 2) calories don’t add and subtract that linearly anyway, and 3) 'Cause in my experience minimal exercise doesn’t have that much effect.
In case you haven’t been listening, I’ve got an exercise bike. I’ve used it occasionally, a few days a week for stretches at a time. When I use it, I use it for an hour, and according to it burn somewhat less than 300 calories. I have never noticed any change in my rate of weight gain or loss as a result. Does that mean I didn’t have a 1 or 2 or even 5% improvement in speed of weight loss? Not necessarily; that could be happening and I’d never notice. But it does mean it’s worth going out of my way to do such exercise? Heck no.
Exercising to lose weight is a waste of time. Mind you, I’m saying this as a person who’s not going to be shot if I don’t meet a tight deadline. If you really needed to be thin right now, then sure, at some point it begins to make sense. Right about the time you’re desperate. Not so much until then, though.
If a person does 100 calories of walking it won’t do crap either way. Page me when they work their ass off.
I’ve both examined your numbers and cited extremely anecdotal personal experience. I don’t think there’s any evidence you’ll accept.
I think it’s safe to say this body signals stuff doesn’t apply to fat people. Who is this thread about again?
Seriously, it’s tiring to hear skinny people who naturally eat less assuming that their experience applies to everyone. It don’t, m’kay?
Actually, I don’t track this closely at all. If I scrambled I could assemble a list of daily calories (which will vary hugely per day because the beef jerky I sometimes eat is calorie-loaded - but doesn’t have similar weight gain effects as the similar calorie-count of cookies, through the magic of non-linear biology), but I don’t know offhand and certainly never actually calculated my prior calories. It was more, “Gotta lose weight, huh? Okay, no more of this, or this, or this, or this…”, and a lot more recoiling in horror when I read nutritional labels.
I’m dubious; page me when there’s not a ‘may’ in that article title. (And when I have a kind of insurance that I can trust to actually cover the elective procedure.)
Seriously. Many of the skinny people I know*, including myself, are big eaters. Yes, I know how to count calories accurately, I do it sometimes, and I am getting about 2500 per day right now, which is more than 1500 above my basal metabolic rate, according to those silly online calculators.
I’m still over 15 lbs underweight at 104 lbs. I weigh about 9 lbs more than I did when I ate very lightly. Both my sisters eat a ton, one of them is an athlete, and they both just barely edge into the ‘normal’ BMI (theirs are 18.5, mine is 17.5 - my athletic sister’s was 16 before she took up her sport and put on some muscle).
There is a huge genetic component here, people. Often, your body shape and size doesn’t reflect exactly how much or what you eat, or how much you move. It’s highly individual.
*Many of them are also deluded in that they think their skinniness is totally due to their superior habits and lack of binge eating disorder.