There is a theory that this is the cause of obesity, we now have bigger plates and those facists from school trained us into eating it all.
Its a conspiracy by the government to turn us into fat, tv addicts so we are easier to control - honest, its all TRUEEEE.
I’ve been to Rio de janiero (Brazil) several times, and it is indeed noticable that the Brazilian women are beautiful. Moreover, they are quite slim, in spite of the fact that Brazilians eat HUGE amounts of meat.
The answer?
-Brazilain beef is grass-fed, so it has very little fat.
-the beach: since these gals wear next to nothing at the beach, they spend a lot of time in the gym!
-plastic surgery (liposuction) helps as well-the Rio phone book lists hundreds of plastic surgeons.
Finally, I do think there is something to Dr. Atkins theories-as I mentioned, the Brazilians consume huge amounts of meat, but they don’t put the weight on!
When its hot you tend to feel less hungry and eat salads and stuff also as you have to keep stripping off at the beach looks become a priority ?
Webmastr:
And a word about genetics. As we once again accuse fat people of being “out of control,” “slobs,” “lazy couch potatoes” and so on, we might like to ask: is it possible they’re just HUNGRY? Why would that be? Could it be because they are NOT responsible for the higher number of fat cells on their bodies, a number which is fixed both by genetics and by the eating habits of pregnant women?
For instance, during the 40’s and 50’s, pregnant women in the U.S. were told “don’t worry, you’re eating for two” and obstetricians thought that a forty to fifty pound weight gain during pregnancy was in the normal range…and led to a higher birth weight for babies, which was considered a Good Thing… Nowadays, women are told to gain no more than thirty to thirty-five pounds during pregnancy and are actually told to slow down their eating if they’re gaining too fast.
So fifty years ago, you had a lot of women trying to make big healthy babies, who actually made big babies with lots of extra fat cells. And guess what fat cells do? They send out chemical signals asking to be filled up. And a lot of those fat babies have now made their own fat kids, of course.
Thin people just don’t get it. We’re not eating just to gratify our taste buds: we’re eating because our stomachs are growling and cramping and we feel a little faint. We are, in fact, NATURALLY fat, and in order to get UNNATURALLY thin, we have to starve ourselves; not just for a short period like several weeks or several months, but forever.
I once had a thin doctor explain to me (condescendingly) that since I don’t lose weight eating 1500 calories a day, I just had to eat less than that, for the rest of my life. Unfortunately 1500 calories a day is roughly one-and-three-fourths good meals and about eight waking hours of feeling distinctly peckish.
The other solution is of course to exercise more…but lots of allegedly lazy overweight people DO exercise a lot (drop by, I’ll bet you can’t keep up with me in a full hour of tap or country dancing.) Exercise helps a lot in keeping your metabolism jacked up, so some of what you consume is immediately burned off rather than being stored. But even with plenty of exercise, nothing but liposuction actually removes those whiny little fat cells from your body. Diets simply hyperactivate their “fill-me-up” response.
Why’s Europe skinnier? Because fifty years ago, they were recovering from World War II, and couldn’t overfeed their pregnant women.
I wondered if anyone would come forth and state this.
I have a friend who is my age. His patterns of eating, drinking, excercise etc. are practically identical to mine.
The only differences are, he eats more, and excercises less.
So why is he 185 while I’m 340? maybe his metabolisim?
I work on average 12-14 hrs daily. On the weekends it’s usually more. I take three showers a day. I wear a beard which I trim weekly. I shave (Where the beard doesn’t grow)in the morning and at night. My pants are always pressed as are my shirts. Does the fact that I’m clinically obese make me a slob, uninterested in my appearance? Granted there are tons (sic) of people out there who just need to lay off the chow and walk around a bit, and perhaps I’m one of them, but don’t call me lazy or a slob. And Web, if you have a “beef”, what whoud it be? are we taking up too much of your space? Would you like to try my metabolisim on for size, for a few years, and see what kind of “beef” you have then?
Billy
I’ll jump in with a second on AuntPam’s post, and add in a comment about what those fat babies born in the 50’s & 60’s were fed. In my family and those of most of my friends (being a Navy family and on a tight budget), we were fed large quantities of nutrionally horrible food, like white bread, white sugar, fatty, low-quality meat, frozen vegetables, etc. Quality was unattainable, but mom did what she could with quantity. For me, the extreme dieting and yo-yo weight required for pubescent girls hoping to have any sort of social life started at age 11 and left me with a metabolism similar to AuntPam’s. Anything over 1400-1500 calories a day (with exercise) and I start gaining weight.
Throw all these factors together and add in a very media-oriented culture (kids are plopped down in front of the TV for the advertisers to hard-wire by age 3) and you create a population of self-loathing, debt-ridden Americans, each with some sort of media-identified (and often created) disorder.
Incidentally, most of my life was spent in Southern California, usually by the beach. There were a lot more thin people out there than in the Midwest, maybe because there is a whole lot more skin on display, maybe because more thin, attractive people want to live where they can display the bodies they work so hard on. But I’ve seen one hell of a lot fewer eating disorders and people miserable about not being a size 3 in Iowa.
And one other thing, webmastr, do you think that living in Japan may have skewed your perception a bit, to the point where 5 feet tall and 93 pounds seem the norm for all woman, not just those of Asian descent? I don’t mean you are judging Americans that way intentionally, but as pointed out in an earlier post, people become comfortable with the body types they are around all the time. While there is more obesity in America than in the Far East, it may just seem worse to you than it really is.
most diets plans of any sort are advertised by showing one or a few people who lost an incredible amount of weight while tiny text at the bottom of the screen or page says “results not typical”. While this is technically legal, it’s a sneaky tactic that fools a lot of people.
The assertion about people being hardwired to eat everything they’re offered seems correct to me. Lately, portions have been getting bigger. For example, I remember that about ten years ago, soft drinks in my local McDonalds were a maximum of 16 ounces. Now, Jack-in-the-Box gives you 44 ounce drinks. 44 ounces! People (especially children) just have a tendency to eat what the restaraunt gives them without thinking.
Billy Rubin wrote:
As Cecil noted in this Straight Dope article, differences in basal metabolic rate between individuals are relatively minor, and great discrepancies are rare and usually caused by conditions such as hyperthyroidism (which have other symptoms).
However, there’s another factor to consider: Your basal metabolic rate is essentially your metabolic rate when you’re sleeping. Your metabolic rate when you are “just sitting around” can vary dramatically depending on how much you fidget, have nervous shakes, “can’t stay still”, etc.
If you’re the type of person that tends not to squirm around a lot, and your friend is the opposite, that could go a long way toward explaining the difference.
Identical twins DO look the same even if raised apart therefore it is partly genetic BUT that could also be linked to what foods you like and if you like exercise.
I think the thing is to exercise and try eat healthy, even if you don’t lose weight you will feel better for it.
You can also shut people up, a mate of mine, bob, started running with me and lost weight and someone at his work said something about his beer belly and he responded with ‘going running monday,wednesday,friday – wanna come with me, wanna see if you can keep up ?’ and this person shut up then.
Having said all this… look around, are you comparing yourself to people in the ‘real world’ or those on tv and films ?
Actors area usually fit because its part of there job to be so.
All anecdotal evidence I’ve found indicates that obesity can result either from genetics or lifestyle. As other threads on this board have discussed, assuming that overweight people are in such a state as a result of slovenly behavior is plain wrong. Some people are just larger than others.
And maybe there are a few people who are extra-sized simply because they eat too much. Maybe we have more of them in the U.S. Why are these people more prevalent in my country? Our culture seems to be at odds with itself – on one hand, various sources influence us to be self-conscious about our appearance. On the other hand,we eat tremendously unhealthy meals – at restaurants, fast-food joints, and even at school (no, Mr. Jeb Bush, ketchup is not a vegetable).
Why do U.S. citizens, on the whole, tend more towards obesity than non-U.S. citizens? Some of us are genetically predisposed to be that way. Others eat too much.
You can beef about whatever you want, ridiculous as it may make you appear: that is the beauty of the board. This is obviously a very personal issue-----you are viewing people with an un-objective eye, so who gets tagged as obese, who gets tagged as merely a tad plump? Only you know this. It seems as if it would be a bit frustrating for you…people all around choosing to live their lives independantly of your guidelines, but be fair: they don’t know it.
While much of your description of Montreal sounds like the Montreal where I spent two years ('94-96), I will have to challenge this statement. I don’t know who your friends are in Montreal, but when I was a postdoc there at McGill, most of the students and postdocs at McGill who I knew didn’t even have a car…I was the exception. And, I would say people in Montreal did about an order of magnitude more walking than people do here in Rochester. So, it may look to you that Montreal is very car-oriented, but you ain’t seen nothing, my friend!
I would make a similar point in regards to food—Okay, the diet in Montreal isn’t great but it is a damn bit better than that here in Rochester.
While I agree with your assessment of Montreal as being extremely fashion-conscious, etc., and agree that plays an important role, I believe at least some of the differences in average body type between Montreal and here in Rochester are attributable to the above two factors.
In an unrelated vein, I don’t think people should be too quick to dismiss arguments about portion size by saying “you don’t have to eat it all.” The question we are asking is not what people have to do; it is what they actually do do. The thing about these super-size soft drinks is particularly relevant since I read in my Nutrition Action magazine that the body seems particularly bad at “counting” calories it gets from these drinks. I.e., if people were fed these drinks vs. being fed something else of equal caloric value and then were given a meal following that, those fed the drinks hardly cut back on the meal calories at all while those fed the other stuff did cut back.
A number of my friends who have visited the USA have mentioned the HUGE portions of food you get so i think this is a MAJOR factor.
re: don’t have to eat it all
Your right, there is a psychological factor of ‘finish it all’ that pervades society.
I suspect it is the combination of these two factors that have meant Americans have got larger, perhaps if places had been competing on quality instead of quantity then this would not be so.
The trend for ‘more’ started off in the UK as well but some places do now serve less but better.
when mcdonalds say ‘do you want to go large’ they mean YOU !
I did read an interview with a model once who said she eats what she wants but not all of it and the american portions are too large.
We still have not evolved beyond our hunter-gatherer bodies, we live in those bodies but our whole style of living (and eating) has changed. We no longer walk for our food and what’s what we were built to do. Weight problems should probably be in proportion to car ownership. What kind of overweight problems occur in those countries were the principle form of transportation is the bike? I’d bet it is low. And, of course, we live way longer than the hunter-gatherer, does the metabolic rate continue at the same rate in a 20 year old as it runs in a 60 year old?
Research being aimed at genetic treatment:
Enzyme could provide continual fat burning
Embargoed until 1 p.m. CST Thursday, March 29, 2001
HOUSTON–(March 29, 2001)–An enzyme discovered by Baylor College of Medicine researchers is critical to the metabolic pathway that governs the body’s ability to burn fat and could open a door into new ways to reduce obesity, diabetes and other fat-related human diseases.
In an article in the March 30 issue of the journal Science, Dr. Salih Wakil described laboratory mice, whose genes were manipulated to make them deficient in the enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylase 2, or ACC2, as being able to eat as much as 40 percent more than normal mice and weigh 10 to 15 percent less. (jfoltin@bcm.tmc.edu in a press release embargoes until 1 p.m. CST Thursday, March 29, 2001)
And slight different:
Press release from: Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
Hormone the trigger for fat metabolism; scientists closer to tests in humans
DENVER – March 27, 2001 – Most people believe that obesity is only caused by eating too much or not getting enough exercise. But researchers from Denver’s Eleanor Roosevelt Institute have dramatic new evidence that implicates a low level of a certain hormone as an important factor in obesity.
[snip]
“Despite the perception in both the scientific community and the lay public that the only cause of obesity is either appetite or lack of exercise, this new study provides us with more information about how and why we do or do not store fat in our bodies.”
Published in the March 27 issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
[snip]
…Dr. Patterson said that this new understanding of weight control may also help people with cancer who often times experience dramatic and undesirable weight loss due to chemotherapy and radiation.
Dr. Brennan and his colleague Ute Hochgeschwender, Ph.D, of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, originally discovered that the gene, POMC, was tied to fat metabolism. They published their findings in the international journal Nature Medicine in the fall of 1999.
I’m still betting on walking as the best way to take care of balancing out most of our body over weight problems.
Jois
In the April 2001 issue of Discover (page 15) is a bar graph: By The Numbers - Obesity Goes Global
According to new statistics, 1.1 billion people world wide have a body mass index higher than 25, which classifies them as obese or overweight.
United States 61%
Russia 51%
Germany 50%
Columbia 41%
Brazil 36%
China 15%
Figures given = Percentage of overweight adults.
This trend was blaned on the spread of the sedentary, urban lifestyle.
It is not say that these were the seven highest countries or why these countries were chosen for the graph.
Jois