I think exercise is an integral part. It has 2 effects- it immediately burns calories during the activity, and by building up muscle and raising the activity level, it tends to supercharge people’s metabolisms.
Plus, for a lot of people, obesity isn’t so much a matter of extreme, crazy weight gain, but much more gradual weight gain over many years. Exercise would help offset this to a great extent.
For example, if a person gains 5 lbs a year steadily, they’d be 50 lbs heavier within a decade. Combine that with the sort of snowball-effect that seems to happen, and it’s easier than people think.
That 5 lbs a year is only about 50 calories a day (50 * 365 = 18250, 18250 / 3500 = 5.214 lbs) which is not very much at all.
If you really want to derail a thread you need to use more derogatory terms like “fatties” and “lardasses”. Not that I am suggesting this, mind you. Your schtick is boring and unfunny after only two posts, and the addition of more posts on the same theme will fail to improve it, I think. Yes, yes; you were being serious and not trying to be funny at all! Of course. Now run along.
Exercise is a great way to keep the weight from creeping up. But it has to be done in combination with attention to diet. This is because of two reasons:
Exercise can make you more hungry. If you don’t pay attention, you can easily overeat the calories burned during that exercise in response to that hunger.
People want to reward themselves for exercise. They may think they can have larger servings of food since they went jogging. This means they may reward themselves with more calories than they just burned off.
Rarely will people naturally keep eating the same exact amount of calories if exercise is added. The natural response is to eat more to meet the demands of exercise. That’s why you have to monitor your food unless you’re doing some crazy amount of exercise which is burning calories faster than you can replenish.
Shame and humiliation haven’t gone away though. That’s the point we’re trying to make. Attitudes such as yours “cram your gaping maw” etc, are alive, well and quite verbal, cruel and nasty out in society.
You’re naively assuming that some mythical societal reaction to fat people is what used to be the dam holding back the tide 'o blubber. This is the simplistic and ineffective mentality we’re talking about. Obviously, shaming and humiliating fat people does NOT work to get them to lose weight, or we wouldn’t have any.
Logically it doesn’t hold true either. The reaction to shaming and humiliation, when a person is already suffering from depression and food related emotional issues is to self-medicate MORE, not less. In fact, an effective method to treat eating disorders is to help BOOST, not tank the person’s self-esteem. Specifically to help them see that they are worth being healthy and looking nice. People with depression and lack of self-esteem are going to react to shaming by thinking something along the lines of “yup, that’s what I thought. I’m a fat ugly pig, there’s no use in even trying, I’m not worth anything anyway” and so on. Human nature doesn’t work such that “Oh! how right they are, I’ll hie me to a gym HENCEFORTH”!
Do you really believe that they somehow mysteriously don’t know that they’re overweight?
How funny! I know, I don’t like french fries and I’m always getting the hardsell of “do you want fries with that, it’s cheaper, blah blah blah”.
No, just the sandwich and a diet soda (and no, I’m under no illusion that a diet soda is a magic bullet, I just like the taste better and want “cold caffeine”). Grrrrr
Actually, the real place to start is to systematically and scientifically identify all the reasons people overeat and maintain their overweight, and then test solutions thoroughly.
The best figure I ever saw for the long-term effectiveness of reasonable diets/programs was in Consumer Reports. The figure: 25% success rate. This isn’t a huge amount above the standard placebo effect.
There’s nothing against ordering a kid’s meal for yourself. It does have fewer calories.
I learned from a fellow business traveler to only eat half of what is on my plate when I am travelling on business. It is way too easy to overeat when dining out all the time.
I think there is something to be said for downsizing the plates you serve food on at home as well. It’s psychological, but it can help. Everything that can help in this fight is worth a try.
I wish they would. We don’t seem to have any water taps at the soda stations - they always make up the cup of water for me, just like a soda. Except for, you know, the forgetting to actually do it part.
No more corn subsidies. No more HFCS in anything, it becomes a banned controlled substance. I’d go back to sweetening things with sugarcane, as grandma intended. No more ads (see more details below).
We ostracize and mock the people who fall victim to buying cheap foods because they don’t have enough money or time to either buy expensive, more nutritious food, or they can’t raise their own food (society is too highly specialized to allow us all to go back to the farm, and most people wouldn’t want to anyway). It’s at least in part because corn’s price is kept artificially low by the government, so first world countries have state-sponsored obesity (which is preferable to starvation, duh, but there has to be an achievable happy medium).
I’d also outlaw all current “normal” advertising on television channels, radio stations, and billboards (ALL advertising, food ads included). There will be a new Commercial Channel for tv and radio, and all paid ads will go there, or they will go nowhere (there can also be a cheaper local commercial channel, like the stuff that scrolls on hotel room tv screens when you walk into the room at first). Businesses can put up tasteful signs at ground-level at the site of their business (up to 20 feet off the ground, max) advertising their existence to people in the immediate vicinity. There can be coupon books and stuff like that, that cost whatever fees a place wants to charge–as long as the exposure is voluntary. But no mass advertising to people whose eyes just happen to wander over your billboard, or whose ears happen to wander past your radio station.
People will get to choose to expose themselves to advertising, or block it out completely by never going to the channels. Product placement in movies would be okay as long as it was natural-looking, and had a purpose. But no more ad revenue kickbacks for it. Like, Natalie Portman can drink a coke on camera when her character gets thirsty, but Coca Cola doesn’t pay the movie a million dollars for it.
I don’t disagree; I was just saying that exercise is integral as well, and the time factor is a huge component of the reason many people don’t exercise.
Personally, I think school intervention isn’t where it’s at- many people have already learned their eating habits from their families by the time they hit school, and unless the lessons from school are reinforced at home, the teacher may be wasting their breath. (this is true for most school subjects also)
I’m for the taxation route; economic incentives will work better than anything. If you made refined sugar, pre-packaged foods and products like lard, bacon, etc… cost 8x what they do now, you’d see an en-masse migration to lower fat foods, if only because of the cost. I realize this doesn’t solve the problem of access to healthy foods(like in the ghetto), but in people with access, it would work.
If I’m dictator and I’m going to solve the problem, I’d get rid of junk food. I’d define nutritional requirements and a maximum number of calories permitted by mass. I’d also take kids away from their parents when they hit obese, put them in schools and send them back when they are within normal range again (i.e. no longer overweight). I think both these things are gross violations of human rights, but I don’t think anything else is going to solve our “instant gratification” culture. Therefore, I wouldn’t actually do it.
The school my kids go to has mandatory nutritional education, mandatory health information, and serves lunches that are not bad nutritionally. But they still have a large number of obese kids. I’m lucky enough to be “naturally thin” and am trying to loose 10-15 lbs right now gained in just bad habits over the course of 18 months - I only have five pounds before I’ve overweight - and 20 before I’m underweight - I’d rather sit it the middle. Education and food awareness, plus access to good healthy choices helps - but I have all that and will be obese in two years if I keep eating like I have - even with all the advantages of “good genes, good education and access to healthy food.”
Those who would do things like this. . .how would you deal with the black marketeers that would obviously spring up selling bootlegged hohos and twinkies?
Have you ever ridden a bus? They usually do not stop at every block, but every other block. (Downtown, that is; in the outskirts, distances between stops can be longer. As are the waits between buses.) I commute by bus & light rail; I & most of the other riders do plenty of walking. Buses now carry bike racks; they are used.
Why are you singling out mass transit users while the Truly Jumbo drive by in their SUV’s? I’m all for limiting drivers, but how far would they have to walk to work? In Chicago, in the winter? In Houston, in the summer? Better mass transit would be great; this would encourage some walking. As would walkable neighborhoods. (There are some now, for those who occasionally turn off their TV’s.)
You do know that limiting elevators & escalators would be cruel for the disabled. Or the tired or the people carrying groceries. Please, feel free to climb all the stairs you want.
My work place opened a free fitness center a few months ago. People come in before work, stay after work or go on their lunch hour. Users range from the obese to body builders; most of us are in the middle, just trying to stay fit & trim down a bit. (It’s working for me. I’ve also paid more attention to portion control; there’s no reason to give up good food forever.)
If I were Queen, I’d put the energy into educating the young. Let PE be varied enough to suit the shy, chubby types as well as the future jocks. Teach everybody how to cook. My grandmother ran the elementary cafeteria. Food was old fashioned Southern, with little processing; hardly fishheads & brown rice. But portions were reasonable. There were far fewer truly obese kids back then.
(Of course, right now in Texas, budget shortfalls are going to further cripple education. Updating mass transit? Forget it. Governor Good Hair & his Republican majority have begun the push: towards Voter ID! With all the problems facing the state, the dozen fraudulent voters we had last year are Problem #1! Time to sprint over to the Pit.)
Sometimes it’s worse than that. If you order a combo that doesn’t come with a drink, it usually has more food. For example, at Long John Silvers(a fried fish and chips place) you can get a combo with fries, coleslaw, two fish, and three chicken strips for seven bucks. No drink there, but that’s almost two thousand calories of food, with a high amount of fat. If you downsize to a basket combo, two pieces of meat, and only the one side dish, they add on a 32 oz soda into the combo. So you’ve gone from fat-laden calories to carb-laden calories.
Some of the “healthy” options are just a bad joke. A small fruit bowl which is 60% apples? That’s junk food even if it grows on a tree. Plus they charge $1.49 or more for what is about $0.35 worth of fruit.
Sometimes I think about starting a business where I’ll go to various fast food restaurants and buy a combo meal, no upsizing or anything, and then go to a lab and analyze the caloric content. Carefully weigh everything, test the syrup mix of the soda, sodium content, then blend and centrifuge the food to separate the oils, etc. Then I can see how it stacks up against the nutrition facts as published by the company. Cultivate bacterial colonies from the wrappers, food trays, or ice in the drinks. Given how often I’m put off by the ridiculous salty taste of a fast food meal I’d bet they go way overboard in the field kitchen as opposed to what the corporate test kitchen did when they created the recipe. Then publish all the findings on each location. Things like “this location apparently doesn’t drain their fries or change their fry oil frequently enough and their french fries have higher oil content with a higher number of saturated fats than the baseline the nutrition info is based on.” “They don’t sanitize their drink equipment properly, a swab from the ice in their soda grew larger than normal bacterial colonies.” I don’t know if there would be a market for this, but it would be interesting to know.
Dictator - no, I wouldn’t imprision them. I’d shoot them.
You want to take care of the problem. Go draconian.
(Not that I would, I actually believe in human rights - including your right to gorge yourself on Twinkies. However, I also think you should pay more in health insurance premiums if you do so.)
Bullying? Please. There was bullying 30 years ago, when every school had The Fat Kid to pick on. Today, the fat kids are the majority.
Yes, they have. Fat people used to get fingers pointed at them in public. Circuses used to have a “fat man” as one of the FREAKS. Now, it’s considered horribly rude and beyond the pale to say anything about anyone’s weight or even let on noticing that someone is fat.
Oh, really? When was the last time you heard someone say something like that to a fat person’s face? It should be happening every day, on every street in America.
Not if they know they’re going to be treated even worse if they get fatter.
I’m not talking about people with depression and lack of self-esteem; I’m talking about fat people.
No, of course they know that they’re overweight. The problem is that they don’t have a sufficient sense that there’s something wrong with that, because people like you are too busy boosting their self-esteem.
The one other idea in this thread I support is ending the corn subsidies.
And it’s ridiculous that on page 2 people are still talking about exercise, when people have already pointed out that exercise doesn’t do squat. The number of calories a 150 lb person burns in half an hour on the treadmill or eliptical machine is about the same as is found in one 12 oz. can of soda.
This is why I think there is too much emphasis on “gym” exercise and not enough on normal, everyday, physical activities. You burn about 100 calories walking a mile. I don’t have a car, and so I walk about four miles a day as part of my everyday activities. That is enough to make a difference.
How many fat teachers do you see? I’d reckon it’s a lot fewer than you’d find in a desk job, since teaching calls for standing up and pacing around a lot. A kid running around and playing with her friends all day is going to use up a lot more energy than the kid playing video games. Someone who gardens as a hobby is going to be better off physically than someone who watches TV.
Going to the gym a couple times a week may help you build muscle and tone, but you are right that it won’t lead to dramatic weight loss. A consistently active lifestyle, however, can easily incorporate hours of physical activity into ordinary everyday life without any special effort, which certainly will protect against creeping weight gain.
