Geoengineering is rapidly gaining ground as a serious method of combating global climate change. Why? We’ve got everything we already need to slow or even reverse climate change already here. We’d need to switch our economies over to clean energies, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc. and cut our consumption to a level which would be sustainable. But still those crazy scientists are talking about building massive solar shades to block some of the sun’s energy, or putting particulates high in the atmosphere that would turn the sky from blue to white and increase the Earth’s albedo.
It’s a solution fraught with dangers because we don’t know what the effects of such large scale engineering would be and there’s no fall-back plan(how do you scrub the atmosphere or space of all these tiny particles?). We know it would reduce the amount of light and infrared radiation from the sun that hits the earth, but what would those reductions do to light-sensitive organisms, trees, algae, etc that convert CO2 into oxygen? Would we be reducing the ability of our planet to naturally sequester carbon? Isn’t that exactly the wrong direction to go?
Still, the geoengineering solutions are getting ever more serious consideration at all levels of scientific and government bodies. Because the lifestyle changes humanity must undertake to reverse climate change seem a practical impossibility. This is different from a true impossibility, but not in any meaningful sense.
Wait, how does one weekend undo 4 months of effort here? I don’t understand this at all. So maybe you slip and overeat one weekend–how does this put 20 pounds back on you like overnight? Why not just say “Ooops, well back to the diet on Monday”?
That’s not science. That’s statistics. It has nothing to do with what works scientifically. You are confusing biology and bio-chemistry with human behavior.
OK, so I’m wrong. Someone called you stupid. Your posts lack any signs of empathy and understanding at either an emotional or, more importantly, intellectual or scientific, level. Suck it up if this causes you to get called names.
It’s fun for you to now pretend that all you are saying is that it is not impossible to lose weight through diet and exercise, and that all you said was that it was hard, but I’ve actually read your post #112 and that isn’t all you are saying at all. Your post is full of moral judgment and holier than thou and name calling.
But look how you whine when someone calls you stupid, eh?
:rolleyes: Sorry, did you think that was me getting butt-hurt because some idiot called me names on the internet? You’ve got an awfully sensitive nose for that if you took “Really, bitch?” to be me whining.
I didn’t come to this thread to debate the science of weight loss. We did that a year ago in Stoid’s mega-thread about Gary Taubes. If you think my posts were so dripping with judgment, you may want to re-read them. Some of my earlier quotes include “But expectations need to be managed, and maintaining a healthy weight is a life long investment, not a phase,” “People failing is not the same as things not working. If I fail to learn how to drive a manual transmission, does that mean that manual transmissions don’t work? No, it just means I didn’t learn how to do it correctly. Nobody said it was easy. Psychologically, emotionally; it’s not easy. But it does work. I’m not making a moral judgment on people for the struggle involved, but you’re not doing anyone any favors by pretending it’s actually impossible to do”. And the extent of my moral judgment in that post was “I think people who are overweight and say that dieting and exercise unequivocally does not work either have unrealistic expectations about the results they will get, the amount of work that will go into it, or the amount of time (forever) they will have to dedicate to a lifestyle change.”
If that was what you took such a major issue with, you may be too sensitive for the internet.
I agree with pretty much all you listed but this bit interests me, I love TV, I just no longer see a need to sit still while watching it. I do proper capital E exercise in front of it on my exercise bike/step/mini trampoline/cable machine/yoga mat but I also just stand up and move around a bit when just watching the box. The biggest difference between the planet sized me and the little me is the amount I move. I learned this from watching skinny young things in my office, they never just sit. They fidget, they get up and wander to and fro, they are like sharks, they just move constantly. It took a while but I am now the same and it really does make a difference.
I also love dark chocolate now too, dark choc covered coffee beans are the best thing anyone ever thought of in the history of the world some days. A little goes a long way.
Weight training gives me an unbelievable high, cardio is just a drudge. Others feel the opposite but I know I get to eat a hell of a lot more these days than I ever did because of my movement and my muscle which is great because I still love all the shit that got me fat in the first place, well not the doughnuts - they send me straight to sleep.
Did I come in here to charm? I must have forgotten where I am…oh no wait…it’s not huggy MPSIMS where everybody’s problems are special and nobody is responsible. I struggle with my weight too. But I work at it, and people who want to pretend it’s all so out of their reach for any of the million reasons they can come up with do a disservice to people who do work hard.
I’ll break it down for you. I know losing weight is hard. I have acknowledged that many times here. I never said it was easy. What I said is that it is simple. Simple does not equal easy. Pretending that weight loss is impossible does no one any favors. It is a dangerous pervasive myth that encourages people to give up before they even start. I didn’t come here to charm you, or anyone else.
I just cannot believe there is yet another one of these threads.
The following are some basic facts:
There really is virtually no one who believes that it is literally impossible to lose weight and the very few who do would be very deluded. Few enough calories and more calories burned will cause weight loss. Period, full stop. Those who do state otherwise are almost invariably speaking hyperbolically, like those who say “literally” when they just mean “really really like.” And there are even few of those.
Obesity can be a consequence of unbridled gluttony.
OTOH many who are obese are not gluttonous and have just as much will power as those who are thin.
Once someone is an obese adult it is often extremely difficult to become non-obese and even more difficult to stay non-obese. The body defends set points strongly. Metabolism adjusts causing fewer calories to be burned and at the same time the drive to eat more gets ramped up. The effort involved would be quite similar to asking a person with a “normal” BMI to lose and maintain a loss of 20 pounds.* Those who have achieved and maintained more dramatic fat loss have done so by virtue of tremendous discipline usually coupled with great social supports. It can be done but setting that up as a goal is often setting yourself up for failure.
It is also possible to have very healthy habits, eat healthy foods in moderation, exercise regularly, and remain obese. Which from a health perspective is just fine because those people are healthy. The habits matter much more than the BMI. From a health perspective becoming “normal” BMI is not required. Adopt and maintain the habits which will very likely result in a maintained loss of 5 to 10% of body weight, and improved health outcomes result, even if the individual remains obese. Further weight loss is for vanity and to shut up the idiots who assume all sorts of failings on your part based on a stereotype of “fat.” Whether that is worth the difficulty of achieving and maintaining that level of loss is questionable at best. Success on a nutrition/exercise plan is not weight loss; it is keeping with the plan long term for its own sake. Losing fat is just bonus points.
*My personal experience is that my body defends at 150 pounds. Which luckily for me is in the BMI sweet spot of high normal to low “overweight” associated with lowest mortality rates (24.6 to be precise). I usually exercise about 6 to 7 hours a week with at least moderate intensity and eat a very healthy diet but even much less exercise will keep me within a pound or two of that weight. When work and home life have simultaneously gone nuts and I have no time to exercise at all for months I have gained ten or so … but it drops right back to 150 very soon after I start up any exercise at all. Dropping below 150 OTOH is not something that happens even when I cut my intake down and ramp up my exercise further. I maintain there. The only time I dropped below was a marathon training year when I ran distances exclusively with no weight training (usually a significant part of what I do). I am very confident that I had less muscle mass that year and that my body defended whatever percent body fat it was to the same degree (and no 6 pack abs then either). Is it impossible for me to lose more weight, and to get to a BMI of say 20? No of course not. But doing that would be very very difficult, and likely unhealthy for me. An obese adult’s body is convinced that an obese point is where they should be no less than my body is sure that 150 is where I should be.
DSeid; don’t you think that some, perhaps even many people who struggle with weight (not necessarily obesity) hear the facts that you address and use them as rationalizations to not take personal accountability into their weight issues whatsoever?
And don’t you think you are minimizing, even dismissing, the mental and psychological benefits of weight loss beyond that 5-10% for the medically obese? You say anything beyond that amount is strictly for “vanity”; but what about a person’s self-esteem, body-image, confidence-levels and so much more? These things have a impact on a person’s physical health as well, so to say it’s just “vanity” seems to be falling short. You say “from a health perspective” prior to saying it’s only important to lose up to 10% of one’s weight if obese. But mental health is very much intertwined with physical, no?
I’m not going to slog through this but I will ad fwiw I was diagnosed with a medical problem just over three months ago and since beginning treatment have lost 30 lbs and have seen dramatic improvement in my blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure. So sometimes diet and exercise don’t work.
I think it is. Obesity can lead to mega amounts of self-hatred, which is the backbone of depression. But how much of that self-hatred stems from a sense of failure and lack of self-acceptance? If a person could believe that they were are not a bad person just because they are obese, then maybe a lot of the mental health problems associated with obesity would diminish.
There are a lot of health problems that don’t generate the kind of self-loathing that obesity does. If we could do away with the fat stigma, then maybe more people would be in a better position mentally to lose weight.
I am stating quite clearly that they are accountable for their choices. I am also pointing out that the scale is not a completely reliable judge of how good of a job they are doing.
From the psychological perspective I think setting people up for failure is much worse, especially when a more doable goal would accomplish so much. Telling people who are making an honest effort, and who have been making good food choices and exercising regularly that they are failures because they are still fat (albeit a bit less fat) does not raise confidence levels much.
People were all over snakescatslady in this thread and not without reason, but her distorted thinking is pretty typical. They set their goal as becoming “normal” BMI and they then get discouraged by their failure to achieve that goal and then give up on the behavioral changes that had in fact already improved their health risks tremendously. Most who have “dieted”, including those few who hit normal BMI and stayed there, can remember the frustration of the dreaded plateau, when no weight loss occurs for weeks or longer despite doing everything right. Many give up during that period. It is frustrating to people in particular because they are focusing on the less important goal, the weight loss. If they recognized that another day of staying with the plan is another day of improving health no matter what the scale says they could instead give themselves a much deserved attaboy at the end of each of those days for hitting those target behaviors … and I think be more likely to persevere and feel better about themselves in the process.