How to fight obesity

Great Debates
41

Insurance payments for what?
How did you separate obesity-related payments from non-obesity-related payments?
Even in a case like diabetes payments, how did you separate between people who have always had it and are height/weight proportionate versus diabetes brought on by being overweight?
Did people at your work collectively “get fat” over the course of just the last 12 months?
And how can I find data like this at my work?

In all honesty, I’m wondering whether you’re passing the buck right past an insurance company onto the fat people.

42

Bingo - to that, and to many other things that HOMS said.

I do work out, quite a bit, and it adds to the tiredness. And at the end of the day, (usually 10-11 on my way home from the gym) I need to make a decision, I can go to the store, buy wholesome food (much of which will go to waste because they only sell portions for families of 6), spend the next 40 minutes preparing it, eat for 10 minutes, and then spend another 20+ minutes cleaning up. In the short term, when you’re tired, that seems like an awful lot of work for minimal return.
Or I can drive up to a speaker, yell out my order, and have a nice teenager hand me hot food out of a window for a mere $2+tax… Plus, when I go home, the clean up involves crumpling the bag.
The drive-thru wins more often than it should. I expect it does for many people.

In the meantime, I like even sven’s first and second suggestions - I’m not sure how much they’ll do, but it couldn’t hurt.

43

I would say that your condition is rather rare. I have things to say about it, but it could come off in a way that I don’t indend it to come off. So I won’t comment on your situation. However, I would wager that very few people are in your position.

I would suggest that you take your next few days and evaluate your position though. If your jobs require you lack sleep for so long, how can you find happiness at all? You certainly are endangering your health for a few bucks. I don’t mean to sound rude or preachy, and I say this only because as a fellow human being, I don’t like the idea that you suffer… but isn’t there an alternative? You are killing yourself!

44

How many kids these days take Home Ec or Foods in school? I’d bet not many. I had an advantage because my Dad came from a restaurant family, and I also learned to cook in the Boy Scouts.

Here’s how it was 35 years ago when I was a kid. Very few fast food places (I didn’t go to my first McDonalds until I was in college,) so I never got hooked on it. Gym all through junior high and highschool, except for the term we had health. Today, because of a shorter school day, my kids got two years of gym. Not so many high fat packaged foods, just some TV dinners. Np concept of takeout food. My mother worked, but we still ate real meals every day.

My school had no soda machines, and no candy. My high school, which had over 4,000 students, managed to feed everyone, with a closed campus. (Even when the local schools have a closed campus, they bring in pizza, so the nutritional value of lunches don’t improve all that much.)

I don’t buy the no time to cook or exercise argument. The sum of TV watching is still damn high. Poor people do have special problems, but obesity is not limited to them. Or to single parents. Or to people with pre-existing health problems.

Well, the silver lining is that maybe there will be enough in the Social Security fund left over to pay for my thin ass when I retire.

45

I hear you but it still comes down to a person making their own best choices. If you eat well, exercise moderately (30-45 minutes, 4 X weekly) and get enough sleep, you will not only feel better, but have more energy, be more relaxed and think better. One thing I’ve learned form my latest spate of unemployment is that I NEED 8 hours of sleep daily. If I get less, I get ornery, surly and don’t feel 100%. When I return to work, I WILL NOT go back to the 5 1/2 - 6 hours of sleep I was trying to get by on for most of my life in the past.

It really isn’t the chore you describe to make your own dinner. I do it virtually every evening and once you get a routine down, it flows nicely.

Some examples that may help:
Since I went to Costco yesterday, I brought a 2 1/2 lb roasted chicken for $4.99. I prepared part of it along with a salad and a microwaved potato. Total time to prepare everything was about 10-12 minutes. I have a lot of left-over chicken that will make another 2 meals later in the week.

You can make a pot of real rice (not the minute stuff) in the microwave in about 15-20 minutes. That pot will last up to a week for a single person. Just take out what you want and microwave to warm it up.

You can go over to the supermarket on the way home and buy something fresh. For instance, I like trout. I can buy a 1/2lb piece of trout fillet for about $3 (or if you know how to fillet it yourself, for about $1.50-$2.00/lb). You can buy a bottle of pre-mixed spices. Sprinkle the pre-mixed seasonings on the trout, cover with plastic wrap and microwave for 4 minutes. Warm up some rice in the microwave. Make a salad. Voila! Time to make this dinner, about 10 minutes. Don’t like trout? You can make a piece of chicken in the same time.

Pizza isn’t the most healthful thing for you to eat but is OK now and then. You can buy a personal size pizza (Trader Joe’s has a good chicken and artichoke version) that takes 10-12 minutes to cook in a toaster over. Make a salad while it is cooking. slice an orange for dessert and pout yourself a glass of apple juice. Dinner’s done in 10-15 minutes.

You can make some stir-fry and a salad in 10 minutes. The possibilities are endless, only depending on your creativity and desire.

I have one of those George Forman type grills and I cook a lot of things on it. It’s great for fish steaks, boneless chicken, hamburgers, etc. You can cook two hamburgers in 3-4 minutes, a halibut or tuna steak in 5-6 minutes. I highly recommend one of these. In fact, I haven’t used the oven in years.

46

You’re assuming virtually everyone has 1) a vehicle, personal or shared; 2) storage and prep space for these large portions; and 3) a steady income to allow ‘stocking up’ for lower prices-per-serving.

Like many urbanites, I don’t have a car, and trying to lug groceries from the nearest discount supermarket (30 minutes each way by bus, in an unpleasant neighborhood) is not feasible. There isn’t much storage space in the freezer; my husband and I can’t consume the typical ‘family pak’ of produce or meat before it goes bad. Thus I end up shopping more frequently (can’t always wait to take advantage of sales) and paying more per portion.

And we aren’t even poor. Some people live in apartments with a tiny fridge and a microwave or hot plate–some of the urban poor has no means for food preparation.

47

Cigarettes?

48

Well, I live in a jr. one bedroom apartment and I can find places to store the bigger packages,like 12 rolls of paper towels. Sure, it’s not as easy as would be in a house, but you have to make do.

As to not having a car, that is certainly a real problem when trying to shop at these stores. But there are possible solutions. Perhaps get together with a neighbor, co-worker, church group, etc. that has a car or access to one. Or get together a group of people and rent a car for a few hours or a day. I’m sure you are not the only one’s who faces this problem. Also, you might also want to look into Car Sharing which is available in a number of urban areas.

As I’ve said previously, it’s your decision and choice as to what you do. No one is going to do anything special just for you. You have to help yourself. Carpe diem…

49

Not throwing away money at stupid high school sports and ineffective computerization programs?

50

Here’s a few good stories on the subject I coincidentally saw today:

Excess calories, obesity may increase risk of an enlarged prostate

51

Maybe you could walk or bicycle to work? That way, your transportation time would become exercise time. Just a thought.

52

I think all of you who make replies with “get off the couch and do something” are going to be eating your words (along with a few too many Fudgesicles).

I was once skinny. I mean, underweight skinny. Nothing bad, but I never gave it a second thought. I took it for granted.

Then I turned 21. Three things happened. I lost my childhood metabolism (which happens to a LOT of people), I developed a hyperthyroid condition, and I began taking a medicine cabinet full of medications for various things, and over the time of finding the “right” med, I was on several with weight gain as a side effect.

In less than a year, I ballooned to become overweight. I hardly recognize pictures of me from a few years ago. I mean, I’m not obese, but I have a belly and my face is pudgy and my ass is big. I eat pretty healthy, I get regular exercise (not having a car does that to you). I hate sweets and sugars and Coke and stuff now. But between my metabolism slowdown, a physical condition, and side effects of meds, I’m now officially overweight. I never gorged on piles of junkfood. I never sat on my couch eating 5 meals a day. At most, I ate a Mexican meal once a day and had a lemonade.

Don’t take it for granted that if you’re skinny, it is because of merit, and if you are overweight, it is your fault. One day, something can happen to you that changes everything, and there may not be much you can do about it. I used to think that my high metabolism would last forever. I used to laugh at jokes about overweight people. Not anymore.

You have to remember that for some people, yes, it is a result of bad choices and poor health. For other people, it is a disease, a side effect, or genetics. For some people, it can be a physical condition. A mental disorder. A body malfunction.

Don’t start throwing around judgements about people based on your presumptions.

Further, it is easier for some people to lose weight than others. Part of it depends on how you gained the weight. If you have a thyroid problem, you aren’t going to be able to go on Atkins and jog 2 miles every day and start dropping pounds. If you have a mental disorder, you probably have to take care of that before you can start working on your body, and that can be a very hard thing to do.

I’ve finally found the right balance of medications, have a good diet, and I’m continuing my daily long walks to and from, of all places, the hospital. I stopped gaining weight a few months ago, and I’ve been slowly eating away at it, but it is a god damn hard fight. Maybe not nearly as hard as fighting alcoholism, but it is in the same ballpark.

53

Yes, some good points. True medical conditions are one thing. Also meds can have a huge effect on both your body and mind and I think that we as a society depend too much on them.

That being said, I’d say the majority of people who are overweight are not so because of medical conditions or genetics. If most overweight people were in a situation similar to the Survivor TV show, where their calories were cut back significantly for 40 days or so, they would lose a lot of weight (Rupert really trimmed down after his second stint on the show). No, the reason most people are overweight is because they eat wrongly, eat too much and don’t exercise enough. Everything else is denial, lack of discipline, excuses and refusal to accept personal responsibility, something that has become much more socially acceptable in recent years.

My metabolism has slowed down also. Although I generally eat well and exercise regularly, last year, I acknowledged to myself that I weighed more than I wanted to or should. I didn’t think that I needed to increase my exercise much, so that left cutting out some calories. For years, I had been drinking about 12 oz of wine with every dinner and generally eating some chocolate or ice cream for dessert. I completely gave up wine and replaced the chocolate or ice cream with fresh fruit. 6 months later, I had lost 15 lbs and my waist size dropped by 2.5 inches also! That is the only change I made. Since then, I’ve increased my aerobic exercise a little bit, eat two meals a day, and find that I can maintain the weight loss and still get away with eating a little chocolate now and then. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve seen people at my health club lose tremendous amounts of weight over the course of a year or two through proper diet and exercise. You just have to have persistence and the desire to make the change.

Here’s a good book reference for those counting calories, carbs, etc.:
Food Values of Portions Commonly Used

54

Or getting rid of all the arts programs.

Marc

55

I live in California. The arts programs are long gone.

56

Yea, good point. Why should schools have anything to do with teaching anything.

I vote Marc for schoolboard chairman! The kids will be dumb as rocks and cultured as much as American Idol, but by george, the football will be GREAT.

57

[hijack]Actually I believe both sports and the arts play an important part in the educational system and I certainly don’t want to see either one of them cut. Interesting that nobody defended sports but are reacted so negatively to the idea of the arts being cut.[/hijack]

Marc

58

What value are sports again?

Maybe we need another thread :-p

59

Among many benefits, they can help children build muscles and coordination, learn about teamwork, discipline, how to deal with competition, help develop self-confidence, build friendships and potentially introduce them to an activity they can participate in as they grow older, or for the rest of their lives.

On the down side, they can encourage an inflated view of self, foster idol worship, act as an excusatory mechanism, sometimes encourage winning at any cost, introduce them to athletic drugs, etc.

There are a lot of variables and yes, I think this to be a better subject for another thread…

60

I don’t think it’s quite that clear cut, as least for base causes. Determing causes is the first step, then apportioning responsiblity can follow.
The dramatic rise in obesity is fairly recent, and geographically limited. That’s just way too short a time for physiological explantions, which drastically reduces credibilty of many medical “explanations” for obesity. The human animal just plain doesn’t morph out biological changes that quickly. The significant change factors are societal.
Which isn’t to say those factors aren’t real and immediate. Picking out and isolating the factors is the tricky part. Basic human psychology, for lack of a bettter term, doesn’t change all that rapidly either though. I don’t think basic human software has changed all that much either. The problem is spread (so to speak) too far around the world, throughout too many cultures for the roots to just be laziness, lack of self-discipline, irresponsibility, etc. Basic human nature isn’t all that fluid either.
I’m muddling through this, so take it as a work in progress, but I suspect there are many causes, most of them having to do with habit and economics. Most nations haven’t changed all that much in the last few decades in terms of transportation, riding vs. walking, but maybe leisure habits have. TV has been around for ages, but the widespread (ahem!) social acceptance of computers, videos, solitary-sitting-games, etc. is new.
Food is approached differently as well. Convenience food–frozen out of season produce, the slightly shameful TV dinners–metasized into the norm faster, highly processed and HUGE. One of the biggest complaints about “diet” pre-fab food options is that they’re tiny. No, they’re realistic, besides at least trying to be nutritionally reasonable. And they’re the optimum (and usually expensive) offerings, mind, in a glut of dubious alternatives.
Eating well, healthily and zestfully, just plain takes 1. time and 2. conscious effort any more. Same goes for exercise. Positive options aren’t the defaults.
What are the answers? I dunno. Possibly a very messy settling-in of market forces. IMO blame games and penalities–govermental or otherwise–are counterproductive.